To=night I called upon Georgiana and sketched the arrested tragedy
of the morning. She watched me curiously, and then dashed into a
little treatise on the celebrated friendships of man for the lower
creatures, in fact and fiction, from camels down to white mice.
Her father must have been a remarkably learned man. I didn't
like this. It made me somehow feel as though I were one of Asp's
Fables, or were being translated into English as that old school-room
horror of Androclus and the Lion. In the bottom of my soul I don't
believe that Georgiana cares for birds, or knows the difference
between a blackbird and a crow. I am going to send her a little
story, "The Passion of the Desert." Mrs. Walters is now confident
that Georgiana regrets having broken off her engagement. But then
Mrs. Walters can be a great fool when she puts her whole mind to
it.



XIV


In April I commence to scratch and dig in my garden.

To-day, as I was raking off my strawberry bed, Georgiana, whom I
have not seen since the night when she satirized me, called from
the window:

"What are you going to plant this year?"

"Oh, a little of everything," I answered, under my hat. "What are
_you_ going to plant this year?"