And Salemina Peabody was in the boat coming toward us, looking as serenely lovely in a grey tweed and broad white hat as any good sweet woman of forty could look, while he gazed at her “through a glass darkly” as if she were practically non-existent, or had nothing whatever to do with the case.
I concealed rebellious opinions of blind bats, deaf adders, meek lambs, and obstinate pigs, but said very gently and impersonally: “I hope you won’t always allow your pipe to be your only companion;—you, with your children, your name and position, your home and yourself to give—to somebody!”
But he only answered: “You exaggerate, my dear madam; there is not enough left in me or of me to offer to any woman!”
And I could do nothing but make his tea graciously and hand it to him, wondering that he was able to see the cup or the bread-and-butter sandwich that I put into his modest, ungrateful hand.
However, it is all a thing of the past, that dim, sweet, grey romance that had its rightful background in a country of subdued colourings, of pensive sweetness, of gentle greenery, where there is an eternal wistfulness in the face of the natural world, speaking of the springs of hidden tears.
Their union is a perfect success, and I echo the Boots of the inn at Devorgilla when he said: “An’ sure it’s the doctor that’s the satisfied man an’ the luck is on him as well as on e’er a man alive! As for her ladyship, she’s one o’ the blessings o’ the wurruld an’ ’t would be an o’jus pity to spile two houses wid ’em.”
July 12, 19–.
We were all out in the orchard sunning ourselves on the little haycocks that the “hired man” had piled up here and there under the trees.
“It is not really so beautiful as Italy,” I said to Himself, gazing up at the newly set fruit on the apple boughs and then across the close-cut hay field to the level pasture, with its rocks and cow paths, its blueberry bushes and sweet fern, its clumps of young sumachs, till my eyes fell upon the deep green of the distant pines. “I can’t bear to say it, because it seems disloyal, but I almost believe I think so.”
“It is not as picturesque,” Himself agreed grudgingly, his eye following mine from point to point; “and why do we love it so?”