lacquey was fain to filch for my poor geraniums and campanulas and
tuberoses. We were forced to smuggle them in through my faithful
adherent's territories, the stable, to avoid lectures within doors
and at last even that resource failed; my garden, my blooming
garden, the joy of my eyes, was forced to go waterless like its
neighbours, and became shrivelled, scorched, and sunburnt, like
them. It really went to my heart to look at it.

On the other side of the house matters were still worse. What a
dusty world it was, when about sunset we became cool enough to creep
into it! Flowers in the court looking fit for a 'hortus siccus;'
mummies of plants, dried as in an oven; hollyhocks, once pink,
turned into Quakers; cloves smelling of dust. Oh, dusty world! May
herself looked of that complexion; so did Lizzy; so did all the
houses, windows, chickens, children, trees, and pigs in the village;
so above all did the shoes. No foot could make three plunges into
that abyss of pulverised gravel, which had the impudence to call
itself a hard road, without being clothed with a coat a quarter of
an inch thick. Woe to white gowns! woe to black! Drab was your
only wear.

Then, when we were out of the street, what a toil it was to mount
the hill, climbing with weary steps and slow upon the brown turf by
the wayside, slippery, hot, and hard as a rock! And then if we
happened to meet a carriage coming along the middle of the road,--
the bottomless middle,--what a sandy whirlwind it was! What
choking! what suffocation! No state could be more pitiable, except
indeed that of the travellers who carried this misery about with
them. I shall never forget the plight in which we met the coach one
evening in last August, full an hour after its time, steeds and