IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 119 



unconscious of effort as the procession of the equinoxes, 

 we found ourselves driving the manager slowly and 

 steadily before us towards the garden with the plum 

 trees. He submitted, he even shook the trees and 

 gathered the shower of ripe fruit for us, and we also 

 gathered for ourselves. It was an old garden, whose 

 fruit trees, standing in the after-grass, were like pic- 

 tures of the Garden of Eden ; wandering among them, 

 in hearing of the foreign speech that was going on 

 behind, some sensation of entering into the inner 

 and older life of Denmark came curiously and delici- 

 ously, and in a manner not to be acquired from 

 milk separators. Perhaps we absorbed it with the 

 plums. 



Somewhere above our heads there was suddenly a 

 voice, a young and fluent baritone, singing something 

 about " Danmark, O Danmark," with careless strength. 

 Nothing met the upward gaze but the purple plums 

 glowing among the branches ; the garden indeed was 

 mysteriously deserted, and the voice ceased as sud- 

 denly as it began. The tail, however, of Dahlia, the 

 red-and-white setter, was for one instant visible, 

 vanishing into the low branches of a beech-tree, and 

 that glimpse revealed a decorous tameness in the 

 carriage of the tail that told of society. We pene- 

 trated the branches and found a trunk, a discovery 

 not altogether unusual, but in this instance enhanced 

 by the addition of a staircase that went steeply up 

 among the manifold limbs. We followed the wary 

 ascent of Dahlia, and at the height of two storeys came 

 to a room with walls of growing branches and a roof 

 of leaves, where our hostess was in the act of eating 

 fruit and adjuring a fair-haired youth to sing again 

 for our mystification. The youth w'as acquainted with 

 one English phrase, and gallantly put it forth on being 

 introduced : it was unfortunate that it should have 



