She has charge of the poultry, she tells me, and
is allowed half the profits. Mem.--I shall eat a great many eggs.
April 5.--I have done an excellent thing in exchanging the hollow shams
of society for the healing powers of nature. I shall live to forget
Catherine and to be happy yet. And there was after all something
artificial about that girl. Pretty, certainly, but with the beauty of
the stage; now little Annie here is pretty with the beauty of the sky
and meadows.
I am delighted with this place. There is nothing like the country in
early spring. Suppose I were never to go back to town again, but stay
with the Andersons, see them through the lambing season, lend a hand at
tossing the hay, swing a scythe at corn cutting (and probably cut off my
own legs into the bargain), drink a health at son Robert's wedding, and
then during the winter--yes, during the long dark winter evenings when
the wind raves round the old house and whistles down the chimneys, when
the boom of the sea echoes all along the coast as it breaks against the
cliffs--then to sit in the cosy sitting-room, with the curtains drawn
along the low windows, a famous fire flashing and glaring upon the
hearth, one's limbs pleasantly weary with the day's labour, one's cheeks
tingling from exposure to the keen air; would not this be an agreeable
exchange for the feverish anxieties and stagnant pleasures of London
life?
After a time, a considerable time no doubt, it would possibly occur to
Catherine to wonder what had become of me.
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