156 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



if I didn^t remain with my task until the very end 

 I should never return to it. 



When it was finished I had the floor scrubbed, 

 and I oiled and stained, varnished and polished it 

 myself. I laid the offering of my only Indian rug 

 in the centre, and hung the cool green curtains at 

 the windows. I enamelled a packing-case writing- 

 table, bestowed a picture here and there, placed 

 my bits and pieces, and bought a comfortable chair, 

 until it really seemed the place of dole e far niente. 

 But it was ages before I could be properly idle in 

 that room. My neck ached when I looked at the 

 ceiling, my knees ached when I looked at the floor, 

 and bitterness simply flooded my heart at the 

 memory of chore-boys when my eyes rested on the 

 cool, soft tint of the wall-paper. 



In the nature of things dolce far niente is an 

 open-air condition. This truth came to me on 

 the day that Spring really came to the prairie. 

 Spring comes in a day in Canada. There is none 

 of the announcement of arrival with which she 

 invites attention to her coming in England. One 

 morning at sunrise you look dolefully at a white 

 landscape, break thin ice with a grumble, and 

 another firm repetition of your conviction that 

 she never will come but before sunset she is with 

 you, actually sitting there in her petticoat of vivid, 

 sunlit, delicate, caressing green ; and in the spring 

 of 1906 the prairie blossomed and bloomed as 

 though love and life were one indeed. All the 

 tints bright and subtle, kind and cool, dangerous, 

 clear and gay, burst forth together. Palms innu- 

 merable, fragrant and exquisitely lovely ; poplars 

 drawn up in guardian groups dressed the landscape 



