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 favouring us with almost incessant rain for about three weeks; and I am a demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body, as Mr Mantalini puts it.
Our next door neighbour 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.
