The Low Park is pretty big, and has a stream running through it, quite slowly and steadily. Then down below is the river-bed, all rocks and pools. Because the water is drawn off for the mills below. We can play there in the summer-time, and keep fish as safe as in an aquarium.
Of course there are nice places higher up—where Esk goes along lipping over the pebbles, tugging at the overhanging branches of trees, or opening out to make a mirror for the purple heather on the slopes above. But of all these you shall hear before I have done. Oh, yes, I mean that you shall.
And in the evening all is lovely dark purple except the hills, which are light purple and green in patches, the shape of cloud-shadows.
I wonder if ever you got to love words, colors, and things till they grew to be part of yourself? What do I mean? Well, I will try and explain.
When I was little, the word "purple" somehow nearly made me cry. Oh, no—I did not like dresses that color, nor even ribbons—much. Only just the word. Sometimes funnily, as in the line—
"A pleasant purple Porpoise,
From the Waters of Chili."
Sometimes seriously, as in two lines which have always brought the tears to my eyes—I do not know why. I think I must have put them together myself when I was thinking in sermon-time (which is a very good time to think in). Because the first is the line of a Scottish psalm, and the rest is—I know not what—some jingle that ran in my head, I suppose. But they made me cry—they do still, I confess, and it is the color-word that does it!—that, and the feeling that it is years and years ago since first I began to say them over to myself. It seems as if there would never again be such hues on the mountains, never such richness on the heather, never sunsets so arrogant (yes, I got the word that time) as those when I was little.
But what, you ask, are the lines? Well, you won't think anything of them. I know you will laugh.
They are just—but oh! I am ashamed to put them down to be printed. For they are just altogether mine—all little girls who have been lonely little girls will know what I mean. Boys are pigs and will laugh—except Hugh John.
However, I can't put off any longer, can I? Oh, yes, I could, but—it is better to be over and done with it.