pipes, and lighted by electricity. The weather is a country lass and
does not appear to advantage in town. We liked well enough to flirt
with her in the hay-field, but she does not seem so fascinating when
we meet her in Pall Mall. There is too much of her there. The frank,
free laugh and hearty voice that sounded so pleasant in the dairy jars
against the artificiality of town-bred life, and her ways become
exceedingly trying.

Just lately she has been favoring us with almost incessant rain for
about three weeks; and I am a demned damp, moist, unpleasant body, as
Mr. Mantalini puts it.

Our next-door neighbor comes out in the back garden every now and then
and says it's doing the country a world of good--not his coming out
into the back garden, but the weather. He doesn't understand anything
about it, but ever since he started a cucumber-frame last summer he
has regarded himself in the light of an agriculturist, and talks in
this absurd way with the idea of impressing the rest of the terrace
with the notion that he is a retired farmer. I can only hope that for
this once he is correct, and that the weather really is doing good to
something, because it is doing me a considerable amount of damage. It
is spoiling both my clothes and my temper. The latter I can afford,
as I have a good supply of it, but it wounds me to the quick to see my
dear old hats and trousers sinking, prematurely worn and aged, beneath
the cold world's blasts and snows.

There is my new spring suit, too. A beautiful suit it was, and now it
is hanging up so bespattered with mud I can't bear to look at it.

That was Jim's fault, that was. I should never have gone out in it