A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 115 



half hidden in the hedge. Besides these came a 

 middle distance of variously gleaming border, closed 

 by the tangle of apple boughs and spaces of turquoise 

 sky. When we left this enchantment, another subject 

 opened itself the fir-clump with one shining cloud 

 entangled, so it seemed, among the dark-tufted 

 branches ; the lower sky clear between the shadowed 

 stems ; and ail the slope of the garden falling from 

 the foot of the wood in vivid sunlight. Before the 

 light shifted, the artist was framing between small 

 fingers a width of aquilegias, a hundred soft and 

 tender passages of rose, yellow, pale purple, and 

 white, and uttering little explosions of appreciative 

 delight. Margaret Fletcher, who does a little honest 

 amateur water-colour work, followed her, rather 

 puzzled by the superlatives, but clearly impressed 

 by the fine technicality of the language. 



Tea was set under the yew hedge, and Mrs. Lydia 

 poured out. The talk was mainly artistic Miss 

 Cottingham in a pretty way teaching us the last 

 conclusions of the London schools, and what they 

 do at Julian's, and how her friends had been hung at 

 Manchester or crowded out at Birmingham. All of 

 us except Mrs. Lydia were attentive, as befits the 

 shy amateur in the presence of the real artist. We all 

 do a little in our own ways ; Mrs. Kitty makes little 



