I. "Indeed you will not, sir! Billy shall pull some tomatoes and
lettuce, Tommy shall milk the cow, and Mrs. Bobby shall make you a
savory omelet that Delmonico might envy. Hark! Is that our fowl
cackling? It is, - at half-past six! She heard me mention omelet
and she must be calling, 'Now I lay me down to sleep.'"
. . . .
But all that is many days ago, and there are no more experiences to
relate at present. We are making history very fast, Willie
Beresford and I, but much of it is sacred history, and so I cannot
chronicle it for any one's amusement.
Mrs. Beresford is here, or at least she is in Great Belvern, a few
miles distant. I am not painting, these latter days. I have turned
the artist side of my nature to the wall just for a bit, and the
woman side is having full play. I do not know what the world will
think about it, if it stops to think at all, but I feel as if I were
'right side out' for the first time in my life; and when I take up
my brushes again, I shall have a new world within from which to
paint, - yes, and a new world without.
Good-bye, dear Belvern! Autumn and winter may come into my life,
but whenever I think of you it will be summer-time in my heart.
