XVII 



HOW delightful it is to come back to our moors after 

 London ! Loki's Grandmother's heart always sinks when 

 the bricks and mortar begin to spring up about the 

 road, and the houses close in around her. Some- 

 times she thinks that what weighs upon it is the 

 sense of all those miles of squalor/ of all those 

 hives of human misery/ of all the sin and 

 suffering. Perhaps, however, she is influenced 

 by mere distaste of the crowd / displeasure in 

 living one of a herd in a jostle of houses / the 

 ignominy of being a number in a row with 

 undesired neighbours on either side! Who 

 would prefer to look on pavements, area 

 railings and lamp-posts / to listen to the roar 



- and turmoil of a life one has no ambition 



- to share a life vexing the peace of night 

 and day, rather than feast the eyes on cool 

 green loveliness, on rolling moorland/ the 

 ear on vast delicious silence or the choiring of 



windswept woods ? How, in fact, can anyone who has the 

 choice live in town, instead of in the fair, quiet, spacious 

 country? One cannot feel one's soul one's own in 

 London: bits of it are perpetually escaping to join the 

 giddy midge dance. The individuality evaporates. But 

 then there are concerts, and Wagner's operas / and one's 

 own select friends and the interest of the great intellectual 

 movements ! The splendid activities of life seem to pass 

 one by in the country. Well, we suppose, like everything 

 else in existence, one must take the see-saw as it comes, 

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