A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 189 



remark (which has served before this) that I am by 

 temperament too conservative for these innovations 

 of party strife. Then Mrs. Lydia delivers me from 

 the snare by coining upon us at a corner and carrying 

 off the huntress into the safe and happy common 

 ground of the nursery. I follow the pair, conscious of 

 Jack's croup and Mimi's singing-lessons, till we reach 

 the rose-quarter, and find the girls, driven from their 

 work by the lengthening shadows, scraping palette 

 and putting up traps, while Gervase charges himself 

 with the easel and umbrella and a posy of my finest 

 Teas, which were not to be denied to the desires of 

 Miss Helen, a lady, I think, not so constituted as to 

 be denied in many matters. 



When all the company were gone, I took a turn 

 back to the garden ; Zero, relieved from social con- 

 vention, in his wonted place at heel. While the 

 evening mist began to rise, a milk-white lake on the 

 meadows beyond the garden-wall, I thought of Mrs. 

 Latimer's question about loneliness ; whether there 

 are not cases when the accident of company does not 

 touch in the least the isolation of the subject ; when 

 nothing less than the proper dimidium sui avails to 

 fill a treasured solitude. 



2$t/i. Yesterday the Rector surprised me early in 

 the afternoon as I was half asleep over a book, my 



