I am driven mad by all this singing and playing! One would think the steamboats were driven by the force of song, and that atrocious orchestras were a new kind of motive power. From morning till night there is no cessation from patriotic choruses and folk-songs.
Sometimes The Sound looks like a huge drying-ground in which all these red and white sails are spread out to air.
How I wish these pleasure-boats were birds! I would buy a gun and practise shooting, in the hopes of killing a few. But this is the close season.... The principal thoroughfares of a large town could hardly be more bustling than the sea just now—the sea that in winter was as silent and deserted as a graveyard.
People begin to trespass in my forest and to prowl round my garden. I see their inquisitive faces at my gates. I think I must buy a dog to frighten them away. But then I should have to put up with his howling after some dear and distant female friend.
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How that gardener enrages me! His eyes literally twinkle with sneaky thoughts. I would give anything to get rid of him.
But he moves so well! Never in my life have I seen a man with such a walk, and he knows it, and knows too that I cannot help looking at him when he passes by.
Torp is bewitched. She prepares the most succulent viands in his honour. Her French cookery book is daily in requisition, and, judging from the savoury smells which mount from the basement, he likes his food well seasoned.
Fortunately he is nothing to Jeanne, although she does notice the way he walks from his hips, and his fine carriage.
Midday is the pleasantest hour now. Then the sea is quiet and free from trippers. Even the birds cease to sing, and the gardener takes his sleep. Jeanne sits on the verandah, as I have given her permission to do, with some little piece of sewing. She is making artificial roses with narrow pink ribbon; a delightful kind of work.