was full of hope, and I vowed myself then and there to nature,
and have been happy ever since.

My other half being indulgent, and with some faint thought
perhaps that it might be as well to look after the place,
consented to live in it at any rate for a time; whereupon followed
six specially blissful weeks from the end of April into June,
during which I was here alone, supposed to be superintending
the painting and papering, but as a matter of fact only going
into the house when the workmen had gone out of it.

How happy I was! I don't remember any time quite so perfect
since the days when I was too little to do lessons and was
turned out with sugar on my eleven o'clock bread and butter
on to a lawn closely strewn with dandelions and daisies.
The sugar on the bread and butter has lost its charm,
but I love the dandelions and daisies even more passionately
now than then, and never would endure to see them all mown
away if I were not certain that in a day or two they would
be pushing up their little faces again as jauntily as ever.
During those six weeks I lived in a world of dandelions
and delights. The dandelions carpeted the three lawns,--
they used to be lawns, but have long since blossomed
out into meadows filled with every sort of pretty weed,--
and under and among the groups of leafless oaks and beeches were
blue hepaticas, white anemones, violets, and celandines in sheets.
The celandines in particular delighted me with their clean,
happy brightness, so beautifully trim and newly varnished,
as though they too had had the painters at work on them.
Then, when the anemones went, came a few stray periwinkles and