and it had to be eaten under a tree at the edge of a field;
and it was November, and the mist was thicker than ever and very wet--
the grass was wet with it, the gaunt tree was wet with it,
I was wet with it, and the sandwiches were wet with it.
Nobody's spirits can keep up under such conditions;
and as I ate the soaked sandwiches, I deplored the headlong
courage more with each mouthful that had torn me from a warm,
dry home where I was appreciated, and had brought me first
to the damp tree in the damp field, and when I had finished
my lunch and dessert of cold pears, was going to drag me into
the midst of a circle of unprepared and astonished cousins.
Vast sheep loomed through the mist a few yards off.
The sheep dog kept up a perpetual, irritating yap.
In the fog I could hardly tell where I was, though I
knew I must have played there a hundred times as a child.
After the fashion of woman directly she is not perfectly warm
and perfectly comfortable, I began to consider the uncertainty
of human life, and to shake my head in gloomy approval as
lugubrious lines of pessimistic poetry suggested themselves
to my mind.

Now it is clearly a desirable plan, if you want
to do anything, to do it in the way consecrated by custom,
more especially if you are a woman. The rattle of a carriage
along the road just behind me, and the fact that I started
and turned suddenly hot, drove this truth home to my soul.
The mist hid me, and the carriage, no doubt full of cousins,
drove on in the direction of the house; but what an absurd
position I was in! Suppose the kindly mist had lifted,
and revealed me lunching in the wet on their property, the cousin