“Yes, foolish things. I don’t mind your being so fond of your garden and natural history, but it doesn’t look becoming for you to come back as you did yesterday, with a bunch of weeds in one hand, a bundle of mosses in the other, and your hat pinned all over with butterflies. The people think you half mad.”
“But I had no pill-boxes, my dear Mary, and Thompson, of the Entomological, asked me to get him some of the large sulphurs.”
“Then I wish Thompson, of the Entomological, would come down and catch his butterflies himself. Give me a bit more fat.”
“For my part I should never wish to change.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the elderly lady, slowly, as she made a very hearty breakfast. “Little Magnus is very nice and the garden very pretty, but there seems to be a something wanting. Tilt the dish and give me a little more of that gravy, Arthur. Why don’t you pass your cup?”
“And yet we have an abundance of the good things of this life, Mary, that we could not enjoy in a town.”
“Ye-es,” said the little lady, dubiously; “but still there seems to be a something wanting.”
“I think we shall have plenty of honey this year, my dear Mary.”
“So we did last year, Arthur.”
“The mushrooms are coming on very fast in the pit. By the way, what did you do with those Saint George’s agarics I brought home yesterday?”