A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 113 



world already fresher and greener, the course of the 

 year set going the old way, and a rich atmosphere 

 steaming up from soil and leaf. The morning was 

 still and grey, under vast formless folds of vapour ; 

 the unseen sun, striking through these, turned the 

 world to a great glass-house. In the refreshed peace 

 of the day the long-delayed businesses of the garden 

 prosperously unrolled themselves, to the monotonous 

 purr of a dove in the fir-trees, that most domestic- 

 soothing of woodland voices. Bish, working " strip- 

 shirt " amongst the peas, I heard whistling now and 

 then in a furtive manner, showing thus unwonted 

 contentment in the favouring season. At times the 

 day gloomed somewhat, and a cloud of dusty rain 

 trailed up our hillside and drifted through the firs 

 a wet mist that pleasantly dewed the face, and re- 

 freshed the stocks and the asters planted out to 

 replace flowered-out wallflowers and forget-me-nots. 



Callers arrived in the afternoon Mrs. Lydia bring- 

 ing her niece Margaret Fletcher, and Mrs. Kitty with 

 a Miss Cottingham. Margaret spends some summer 

 months each year at the Rectory, and is of old an 

 associate of the inner circle with Alice, Zero, and 

 the rest. Helen Cottingham is a new-comer an 

 artist staying in the village to paint landscape and 

 country models, as a change from the life-school and 



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