134 IDLEHURST: 



the " Shoulder of Mutton Surprised "- might be prac- 

 ticable. Lucy thinks she could manage it ; all except 

 the barberries for garnish. She is a little sceptical 

 about the " London Cookery," since the last attempt 

 to produce "Florendine Rabbits" by its directions 

 led to a bread-and-cheese lunch. For a sweet, I leave 

 her to choose between the Solomon's Temple in 

 Flummery and the Desert Island, and to find modern 

 substitutes for the sack, orange-flower water, and 

 eringo-root prescribed. Lucy departs to her province, 

 fired with the high task before her, and I turn again 

 to my morning of odds and ends. 



I possess one of those uncomfortably analytical 

 minds which count the footsteps in a walk and half- 

 consciously measure proportions in the pattern of a 

 carpet. When I had written my letters, I vacantly 

 watched for some little space the rain plashing on the 

 window-panes, and then found myself cataloguing, so 

 to say, the contents of my study. From a mere 

 mechanical counting of items I slipped into a sort of 

 catalogue raisonnt ; and letting the book I had opened 

 lie on my knee, I amused myself thus for half an 

 hour, perhaps, with my belongings. I began at the 

 corner of the ceiling next the door, where a couple of 

 spiders live frugally and to all appearance brotherly, 

 protected by a pencil line on the plaster, a magic 



