92 SUMMER IN A BOG. 



day she will go "oalling" on her country 

 friends, dressed in "best bib and tucker," quite 

 determined to conduct herself like an ordinary 

 Christian, to that end abstemiously leaving her 

 vasculum at home ; yet she wiU come back with 

 her hat awry, her hair flying in strands and 

 tangled up with bits of branch and leaf, her 

 best lace handkerchief lost — she went back and 

 found it in a roadside ditch — ^her fine mull gown 

 with zig-z£ig tears in the front breadth, her 

 sleeve torn up half its length — ^but radiantly 

 happy and totally impervious to reproof. And 

 why? Because in that sheaf of spoil she car- 

 ries there are specimens of the wild flowers 

 never before seen by her. 



She will take impromptu Turkish baths in 

 an attic, heated under its slate roof by the sum- 

 mer sun to the temperature of an enameling 

 oven, or thereabout, while placing her speci- 

 mens in press or changing the papers during 

 the drying process. She will litter her vacant 

 rooms with all manner of plant debris, though 

 otherwise an immaculate housekeeper. Under 

 the atlas and dictionary you will find her treas- 

 ures, and she will contrive to invest them with 

 a romantic and sensational personality almost 

 astounding to her family, who, nevertheless, in 

 their moments of disillusion and impatience, 

 sometimes rail and scoff. 



