there is no table to hide the legs or support the arms; a room which
compels an uncomfortable awkwardness, and forced conversation.
Would it not be more sincere if a saucepan took part in it than it
is now, when, in evening clothes, tea-cup in hand, we discuss the
show at the Royal Academy, while a lady at the piano sings a song
from Aida?

As to the food at Oakley, it was certainly rough, and included
dishes not often seen at home, but I liked it all the better. My
mother was by no means democratic. In fact she had a slight
weakness in favour of rank. Somehow or other she had managed to
know some people who lived in a "park" about five or six miles from
Bedford. It was called a "park", but in reality it was a big
garden, with a meadow beyond. However, and this was the great
point, none of my mother's town friends were callers at the Park.
But, notwithstanding her little affectations, she was always glad to
let us go to Oakley with Jane, not that she wanted to get rid of us,
but because she loved her. Nothing but good did I get from my
wholly unlearned nurse and Oakley. Never a coarse word, unbounded
generosity, and an unreasoning spontaneity, which I do think one of
the most blessed of virtues, suddenly making us glad when nothing is
expected. A child knows, no one so well, whereabouts in the scale
of goodness to place generosity. Nobody can estimate its true value
so accurately. Keeping the Sabbath, no swearing, very right and
proper, but generosity is first, although it is not in the
Decalogue. There was not much in my nurse's cottage with which to
prove her liberality, but a quart of damsons for my mother was
enough. Going home from Oakley one summer's night I saw some
magnificent apples in a window; I had a penny in my pocket, and I
asked how many I could have for that sum. "Twenty." How we got