I know the exact spot where it should stand, facing south-east,
so that we should get all the cheerfulness of the morning,
and close to the stream, so that we might wash our plates among the flags. Sometimes, when in the
mood for society,
we would invite the remaining babies to tea and entertain them
with wild strawberries on plates of horse-chestnut leaves;
but no one less innocent and easily pleased than a baby would
be permitted to darken the effulgence of our sunny cottage--
indeed, I don't suppose that anybody wiser would care to come.
Wise people want so many things before they can even begin to
enjoy themselves, and I feel perpetually apologetic when with them,
for only being able to offer them that which I love best myself--
apologetic, and ashamed of being so easily contented.

The other day at a dinner party in the nearest town
(it took us the whole afternoon to get there) the women after
dinner were curious to know how I had endured the winter,
cut off from everybody and snowed up sometimes for weeks.

"Ah, these husbands!" sighed an ample lady, lugubriously shaking
her head; "they shut up their wives because it suits them, and don't
care what their sufferings are."

Then the others sighed and shook their heads too, for the ample lady
was a great local potentate, and one began to tell how another dreadful
husband had brought his young wife into the country and had kept
her there, concealing her beauty and accomplishments from the public
in a most cruel manner, and how, after spending a certain number of years
in alternately weeping and producing progeny, she had quite lately run
away with somebody unspeakable--I think it was the footman, or the baker,