It ’s true, you know. The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way. The whole secret is in being pliable. In the country, especially, there are such a lot of entertaining things. I can walk over everybody’s land, and look at everybody’s view, and dabble in everybody’s brook; and enjoy it just as much as though I owned the land—and with no taxes to pay!
.......
It ’s Sunday night now, about eleven o’clock, and I am supposed to be getting some beauty sleep, but I had black coffee for dinner, so—no beauty sleep for me!
This morning, said Mrs. Semple to Mr. Pendleton, with a very determined accent:
“We have to leave here at a quarter past ten in order to get to church by eleven.”
“Very well, Lizzie,” said Master Jervie, “you have the surrey ready, and if I ’m not dressed, just go on without waiting.”
“We ’ll wait,” said she.
“As you please,” said he, “only don’t keep the horses standing too long.”
Then while she was dressing, he told Carrie to pack up a lunch, and he told me to scramble into my walking clothes; and we slipped out the back way and went fishing.
It discommoded the household dreadfully, because Lock Willow of a Sunday dines at two. But he ordered dinner at seven—he orders meals whenever he chooses; you would think the place were a restaurant—and that kept Carrie and Amasai from going driving. But he said it was all the better because it was n’t proper for them to go driving without a chaperon; and anyway, he wanted the horses himself to take me driving. Did you ever hear anything so funny?