And I want 3 or 4 days of bright sunshine,—rides and drives, ices and champagne!—easy luxurious life for a few days’ change.
Ah, well! Some day I hope to have just such a bright easy home or nest somewhere—and to find brain and body workers to take to it for the 3 or 4 days’ rest and change! How one needs to experience needs in order to understand them!”
There are some perhaps who will read this entry with no little feeling when they remember how, long years after, she realized this ideal in the home of her retirement, Windydene.[[112]]
But the saving sense of humour was never less than dormant. She seldom has time to quote jokes in the diary now, but here is the very next entry:
“May 23rd. From Life of Barham. Dr. Thos. Hume charged 7s. 6d. instead of 5s. for death notice, because of ‘universally beloved and deeply regretted.’ To surly clerk,—'Congratulate yourself, Sir, that this is an expense to which your Executors will never be put!’”
The mood was not quite evanescent, however, for the anxious Mother reads it between the lines:
“13 Sussex Square,
28 May.
Darling,
I fear you were very weary when you wrote; Mother’s heart is constantly with her little one, and yearning for some little word of her health or her interests. Though I don’t want to be selfish and have her write often,—when she does write she must mention herself and how she is getting on.