This morning, when she had made herself smell of geraniums, and fastened
all the small contrivances that hold even the best of women together,
she went downstairs to her little dining-room, set the spirit lamp
going, and taking up her newspaper, stood waiting to make tea.
It was the hour of the day most dear to her. If the dew had been brushed
off her life, it was still out there every morning on the face of
Nature, and on the faces of her flowers; there was before her all the
pleasure of seeing how each of those little creatures in the garden had
slept; how many children had been born since the Dawn; who was ailing,
and needed attention. There was also the feeling, which renews itself
every morning in people who live lonely lives, that they are not lonely,
until, the day wearing on, assures them of the fact. Not that she was
idle, for she had obtained through Courtier the work of reviewing music
in a woman's paper, for which she was intuitively fitted. This,
her flowers, her own music, and the affairs of certain families of
cottagers, filled nearly all her time. And she asked no better fate than
to have every minute occupied, having that passion for work requiring no
initiation, which is natural to the owners of lazy minds.
Suddenly she dropped her newspaper, went to the bowl of flowers on the
breakfast-table, and plucked forth two stalks of lavender; holding them
away from her, she went out into the garden, and flung them over the
wall.
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