June 1.
In the Beech Wood all the morning. Heigh-ho! it's grand to lie out as straight as a line on your back, gaze upwards into the tree above, and with a caressing eye follow its branches out into their multitudinous ramifications forward and back—luxurious travel for the tired eye. ... Then I would shut my eyes and try to guess where her next kiss would descend. Then I opened my eyes and watched her face in the most extravagant detail, I counted the little filaments on her precious mole and saw the sun thro' the golden down of her throat....
Sunlight and a fresh wind. A day of tiny cameos, little coups d'œil, fleeting impressions snapshotted on the mind: the glint on the keeper's gun as he crossed a field a mile away below us, sunlight all along a silken hawser which some Spider engineer had spun between the tops of two tall trees spanning the whole width of a bridle path, the constant patter of Shrew-mice over dead leaves, the pendulum of a Bumble-bee in a flower, and the just perceptible oscillation of the tree tops in the wind. While we are at meals the perfume of Lilac and Stocks pours in thro' the window and when we go to bed it is still pouring in by the open lattice.
June 2.
Each day I drop a specially selected Buttercup in past the little "Peeler," at the apex of the "V" to lie among the blue ribbons of her camisoles—those dainty white leaves that wrap around her bosom like the petals around the heart of a Rose. Then at night when she undresses, it falls out and she preserves it.
In the woods, hearing an extra loud patter on the leaves, we turned our heads and saw a Frog hopping our way. I caught him and gave an elementary lesson in Anatomy. I described to her the brain, the pineal organ in Anguis, Sphenodon's pineal eye, etc. Then we fell to kissing again.... Every now and then she raises her head and listens (like a Thrush on the lawn) thinking she hears someone approach. We neither of us speak much ... and at the end of the day, the nerve endings on my lips are tingling.
Farmer Whaley is a funny old man with a soft pious voice. When he feeds the Fowls, he sucks in a gentle, caressing noise between his lips for all the world as if he fed them because he loved them, and not because he wants to fatten them up for killing. His daughter Lucy, aged 22, loves all the animals of the farm and they all love her; the Cows stand monumentally still while she strokes them down the blaze or affectionately waggles their dewlaps. This morning, she walked up to a little Calf in the farm-yard scarce a fortnight old which started to "back" in a funny way, spraddling out its legs and lowering its head. Miss Lucy laughed merrily and cried "Ah! you funny little thing," and went off on her way to feed the Fowls who all raced to the gate as soon as they heard her footsteps. She brought in two double-yolked Ducks' eggs for us to see and marvel at. In the breakfast room stands a stuffed Collie dog in a glass case. I'd as soon embalm my grandmother and keep her on the sideboard.
I asked young George, the farm-boy, what bird went like this: I whistled it. He looked abashed and said a Chaffinch. I told Miss Lucy who said George was a silly boy, and Miss Lucy told Farmer Whaley who said George ought to know better—it was a Mistle-Thrush.