264 IDLEHURST : 



We begin to prepare for hybernation ; summer 

 friends are leaving us. Gervase French is in the 

 North ; Margaret Fletcher has gone back to her folk, 

 and taken Alice with her. Mrs. Kitty meditates 

 Cromwell Road. Very soon we shall be settled 

 down to the bare woods and miry ways, the deeper 

 quiet of winter, the long looking forward to that 

 February day which shall mark again the opening 

 year. 



In the dead time, and in the failing season before 

 it, we have pleasures enough of our own ; and I 

 could tell you histories even in the three-days' 

 drowning rain and under the hedge-deep drifts. But 

 my little diurnal of the year ends rightly here ; it 

 has been a history of a summer, and closes with its 

 matter. The swallows are already going ; with their 

 departure my mind turns (I confess) to the palms 

 and temples of the south. I feel that much is to be 

 said in favour of migratory habits, since in your case 

 (perhaps also in mine) the further land ever grows 

 the dearer. Without yielding my old position in our 

 question of the homing and the straying natures, I 

 will say at least that some day I may with the 



