The Happy Garden 



1830's — nothing has really been bought of set 

 purpose : things only that have pleased me, and 

 have clamoured to be mine ; for charming things 

 are often impatient of the company they keep in 

 shop-windows, and, when they see the right person 

 coming along, they cry : 



" Buy me ! Buy me ! " 



And, let me tell you, they hate collectors. 



One thing I'm rather proud of — the radiators. 

 I could not bear the sight of them, so I set to work 

 to make them look like something else. Do you 

 see that curtain of mauve silk behind a door of 

 brass latticework ? It conceals a radiator ; in the 

 drawing-room, it is between two bookcases that are 

 under the window, and a green curtain hides it ; 

 a boot cupboard and medicine shelves are on either 

 side of it in the bedroom ; and so on in all the 

 rooms. Nobody suspects that they are there, and 

 they banish all the cold damp terrors of the winter. 



The little courtyard out there was where the 

 " lean-to " stood originally. The yew hedge sur- 

 rounding it is doing famously, clipped into ingenious 

 patterns. The stones came from a church, and one 

 of them bears the remains of an epitaph. 



The sundial is a trite person, and says in all 

 weathers, even when it is not telling the time : 



" Time can do much." 

 16 



