But I’ve been wandering again. To return to that September day when I reached the cottage as weary of life and as downhearted about everything as any mortal could well be. The whole world seemed out of joint. Yet in my innermost soul I knew that religion was really all right, and that it was I who had gone wrong. But I refused to look at that aspect of it.
Next day I determined to give it all up, and just meditated on my own funeral. I tried to reckon up how many people I could really rely on to send wreaths; it didn’t make me feel any the less pessimistic when I decided there were only four who could be counted upon as certainties, and they included Virginia and Ursula!
And even one of these failed me; for when I mentioned the matter to the girls, they said: Surely I didn’t imagine they were going to be so wasteful as to send two wreaths, when one would do quite as well if both their names appeared on the card attached? But they did offer to make it a wreath of painted-white-tin flowers, under a glass shade (regardless of expense), if I preferred, suggesting that I might get longer pleasure out of a wreath of this kind.
Getting no more consolation from them than this, I said I would go for a walk. Virginia and Ursula anticipated my wishes and declined to accompany me. They had urgent work on hand that was far too important to postpone for a mere walk. It was the planting of onion seed.
The week before we had read in the papers how imperative it was that everybody should plant food crops in any available scrap of ground they might possess, to help keep starvation at bay.
We read the article eagerly.
I had several acres of land doing nothing in particular at the moment, that I was only too glad to use for a special crop of eatables against the time of national famine. Without finishing the article, we had started to discuss what would be best to lay down, taking into account the idiosyncrasies of our digestions.
“Green peas in the small field adjoining the orchard,” Ursula had decided for me; and then she proceeded: “Broad beans in half of the upper garden; scarlet runners at the back of the strawberry beds and along by the south wall; the potato garden can now have carrots, parsnips, turnips and beets; the west garden must have pickled cabbage (I mean the cabbage before it is pickled), shallots, spring onions and pickling onions, chives——”
“What are ‘chives’?” interrupted Virginia.