unfinished duties, to study the flower catalogues and make
my lists of seeds and shrubs and trees for the spring.
It is a fascinating occupation, and acquires an additional
charm when you know you ought to be doing something else,
that Christmas is at the door, that children and servants
and farm hands depend on you for their pleasure, and that,
if you don't see to the decoration of the trees and house,
and the buying of the presents, nobody else will.
The hours fly by shut up with those catalogues and with Duty
snarling on the other side of the door. I don't like Duty--
everything in the least disagreeable is always sure to be one's duty.
Why cannot it be my duty to make lists and plans for the dear garden?
"And so it is," I insisted to the Man of Wrath, when he
protested against what he called wasting my time upstairs.
"No," he replied sagely; "your garden is not your duty,
because it is your Pleasure."

What a comfort it is to have such wells of wisdom constantly
at my disposal! Anybody can have a husband, but to few is it given
to have a sage, and the combination of both is as rare as it is useful.
Indeed, in its practical utility the only thing I ever saw to equal it
is a sofa my neighbour has bought as a Christmas surprise for her husband,
and which she showed me the last time I called there--a beautiful invention,
as she explained, combining a bedstead, a sofa, and a chest of drawers,
and into which you put your clothes, and on top of which you put yourself,
and if anybody calls in the middle of the night and you happen to be
using the drawing-room as a bedroom, you just pop the bedclothes inside,
and there you are discovered sitting on your sofa and looking for all
the world as though you had been expecting visitors for hours.