It would have been better if he had died straight away, for then
I should have known what to do; as it is, there he is still
occupying the best place, wrapped up carefully for the winter,
excluding kinder roses, and probably intending to repeat
the same conduct next year. Well, trials are the portion
of mankind, and gardeners have their share, and in any case
it is better to be tried by plants than persons, seeing that
with plants you know that it is you who are in the wrong,
and with persons it is always the other way about--and who is
there among us who has not felt the pangs of injured innocence,
and known them to be grievous?

I have two visitors staying with me, though I have done nothing
to provoke such an infliction, and had been looking forward to a happy
little Christmas alone with the Man of Wrath and the babies.
Fate decreed otherwise. Quite regularly, if I look forward to anything,
Fate steps in and decrees otherwise; I don't know why it should, but it does.
I had not even invited these good ladies--like greatness on the modest,
they were thrust upon me. One is Irais, the sweet singer of the summer,
whom I love as she deserves, but of whom I certainly thought I had seen
the last for at least a year, when she wrote and asked if I would have her
over Christmas, as her husband was out of sorts, and she didn't like him
in that state. Neither do I like sick husbands, so, full of sympathy,
I begged her to come, and here she is. And the other is Minora.

Why I have to have Minora I don't know, for I
was not even aware of her existence a fortnight ago.
Then coming down cheerfully one morning to breakfast--
it was the very day after my return from England--
I found a letter from an English friend, who up till then