Pleasant Mrs. Muggins!
I tried not to feel elated at these little widowy attentions; but los hombres son mortales.
She handed me my coffee with a motherly tenderness that was perfectly touching. She looked at me with the eyes of Solicitude, and spoke with the lips of culminating Respect; and once, in a burst of confidence, she told me that she had six orphan sons, who were "sealurs."
My respect increased for Mrs. Muggins. My novel might run through only one edition, but she,—she had six editions of herself afloat! And I thought that, after all, a woman like her who had produced a half a dozen Neptunes, founded perhaps a half a dozen races, was rendering more service to this apple-like globe, than one poor devil of an author prolifically pregnant with indifferent books.
I spoke to Barescythe about it, and it was pleasant to have him coincide with me once.
It is an agreeable fact, that
"The world goes up and the world goes down,
And the sunshine follows the rain."
The new year was four months old. The flowers were teething: the tiny robins were able to go alone, and above the breezy hum of many thousand voices, above the monotonous and ocean-like jar of omnibus wheels, I could hear the babbling of hyaline rills in pleasant woodland places! I could not see the silver threads of water winding in and out among the cool young grass; I could not guess where they were; but through the city smoke, over the dingy chimney-tops, they spake to me with kindly voices!
I knew that daisies were fulling in sunny meadows, and that the dandelion trailed its gold by the dusty road-sides: for
"The delicate-footed Spring was come."