them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal
sheep until the world is vegetarian.

Inside an arbour--which faced east, and thus avoided the bad
weather--there sat a complicated person who was dry. She looked
at the drenched world with a pleased expression, and would smile
when a cloud would lay down on the village, or when the rain
sighed louder than usual against her solid shelter. Ink,
paperclips, and foolscap paper were on the table before her, and
she could also reach an umbrella, a waterproof, a walking-stick,
and an electric bell. Her age was between elderly and old, and
her forehead was wrinkled with an expression of slight but
perpetual pain. But the lines round her mouth indicated that she
had laughed a great deal during her life, just as the clean tight
skin round her eyes perhaps indicated that she had not often
cried. She was dressed in brown silk. A brown silk shawl lay most
becomingly over her beautiful hair.

After long thought she wrote on the paper in front of her, "The
subject of this memoir first saw the light at Wolverhampton on
May the 14th, 1842." She laid down her pen and said "Ugh!" A
robin hopped in and she welcomed him. A sparrow followed and she
stamped her foot. She watched some thick white water which was
sliding like a snake down the gutter of the gravel path. It had
just appeared. It must have escaped from a hollow in the chalk up
behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The lady did not think
of all this, for she hated questions of whence and wherefore, and
the ways of the earth ("our dull stepmother") bored her
unspeakably. But the water, just the snake of water, was
amusing, and she flung her golosh at it to dam it up. Then she