I agreed with him; but I couldn’t put into words what a wonderfully good place I had found it.

I could only think what a contrast was presented between the poor, forlorn thing who arrived those months before, and the still-very-wobbly, but cheerfully-smiling, person who was now driving away, while the nurses leaned out of the upper windows and showered rice all over the vehicle.

XV
The Return to the Flower-Patch

And because it is the correct thing to introduce a wedding into the last chapter, I had better mention the one I know most about.

I always did say that, whenever I married, my wedding should be characterised by everything appertaining to common sense; while all the feebleness and foolishness and weakmindedness I had noticed at other people’s weddings would be entirely lacking. I have often remarked how strange it is that otherwise sensible people seem to lose all idea of proportion when it comes to arranging a wedding; how they let themselves be obsessed with clothes and furniture and wedding presents that they don’t require; or if they do require them, they might have been dealt with on orderly systematic lines.

“Why need there be a chaos of garments in the spare room and every wardrobe and chest of drawers in the house just because one person is going to be married?” I have said many a time. Well, I’m not going to say it again. In fact, the older I get the more I find life resolves itself into one continual discovery that I needn’t have said half the things that I did say in my first youth.

But with regard to the wedding, I think I started all right; it was as matters proceeded that I was overtaken by the inevitable. I really was too busy with arrears of work that accumulated during my long illness to see to the trousseau details in extenso, so I asked an intimate friend if she would take this in hand for me—which she kindly agreed to do. She had had lots of experience, and her taste was exquisite; so I knew matters were safe with her. She asked me what frocks I already had. I replied, “Not a rag fit to wear!”