Over the Hills and Far Away 



practical happiness of the garden, and, to jump 

 back to the objectiveness of the utilitarian, let me 

 say that the little winter garden is invaluable as a 

 table decoration. Not only does it feed the eye 

 but it furnishes a topic of conversation and saves 

 much uneasiness. For the country-hungry Londoner 

 it is precious, keeping memory alive, and furnishing 

 excuses for escape at the week-end, for it needs 

 replenishing from week to week, and the where- 

 withal cannot easily be purchased in the shops. . . . 

 The gossamers ! Sometimes they can be seen 

 where the glint of the low sun catches their threads, 

 but the marvel is when, in early spring and late 

 autumn, the morning mists and dews turn them 

 to sheets of glass and mirrors and bridal veils and 

 gauzy webs, spun thick over the heather, and 

 strings of glittering beads flung from tree to tree. 

 Often the spruces are clad in a soft grey veil. It 

 is as though the little people of the woods had gone 

 away and left their furniture in their winding sheets. 

 Foolishly, perhaps, one endows the wood-people 

 with human habits and desires. Not guessing the 

 purposes of the fairy rings, we vow that they must 

 dance in them, and when a toadstool thrusts itself 

 up through the peat and stands with a thatched 

 roof of pine-needles, that we call a fairy house : 

 though, if there are wood-people, it were more 



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