think about the lack of the news and the mail all day until they became
more than usually important!" So saying, Maria swept the stems and
litter of the flowers she had been arranging into her apron, and
annexing the Infant to one capable finger, all the other nine being
occupied, she went down the path toward the garden for fresh supplies,
leaving Ann-stasia, as the Infant calls her, to serve the coffee, a
prerogative of which she would not consent to be bereft, not even upon
the plea of lightening her labours!

"Isn't this perfect!" I exclaimed, looking toward a gap in the hills
that was framed by the debatable knoll on one side and reached by a
short cut across the old orchard and abandoned meadows of the farm
above, the lack of cultivation resulting in a wealth of field flowers.

"Entirely!" assented Bart, his spoon in the coffee cup stirring
vigorously and his head enveloped in the newspaper. But what did the
point of view matter: he was content and unhurried--what better
beginning for a vacation? In fact in those two words lies the real
vacation essence.

Meanwhile, as I munched and sipped, with luxurious irresponsibility, I
watched Maria moving to and fro between the shrubs that bounded the east
alley of the old garden. In her compressed city surroundings she had
always seemed to me a very big sort of person, with an efficiency that
was at times overpowering, whose brown eyes had a "charge bayonet" way
of fixing one, as if commanding the attention of her pupils by force of
eye had become a habit. But here, her most cherished belongings given
room to breathe in the spare room that rambles across one end of the
house, while her wardrobe has a chance to realize itself in the deep
closet, Maria in two short days had become another person.