Sunday, as already stated, was her peaceful day;--her “stay-at-home” day, when she allowed herself some rest,--when, if the weather was fine, she would sit in the garden among the roses--the very roses where “Jack” was accustomed to look for some special bud which he thought fitting for the adornment of the “rose-lady,” and where the Philosopher had scratched his hand, to the imminent danger (according to his own diagnosis) of blood-poisoning. Just now the pretty “bosquet” was a sad place--there were no roses out, and though the sun shone, the wind was cold. Nevertheless she went there with a book, moved to distract her thoughts from sickness and wounds and death, if only for a brief interval. From the window of the drawing-room the Philosopher saw her,--and, first of all filling his pipe and putting a box of matches in his pocket, strolled slowly out to make her aware of his presence. He was in an agreeable mood, and his smile was a pleasant one.
“You are reading,” he said. “Am I in the way?”
“Oh, no!” she replied, gently. “I am not reading seriously--it is only what I call a ‘peep-in’ book.”
“Verse, I see!” he remarked. “Selections from the productions of various verse-mongers. Well!... and you ‘peep in’ at the general show! Not a bad expression that!--a ‘peep-in’ book. Most books merit no more than a ‘peep-in.’” Here he turned over the pages. “Dear, dear! It is astonishing that so much rhymed rubbish still goes on being printed! Dear, dear!
“‘As the flight of a river That flows to the sea, So my soul rushes ever In tumult to thee!’
Bulwer’s twaddle!--Lytton Bulwer or Bulwer Lytton! Curious person!--How he could reconcile his conscience to rhyming ‘ever’ with ‘river’ I cannot imagine! And of course his soul didn’t ‘rush in tumult’ to any one. He was the worst husband in the world,--Rosina Lady Lytton led a miserable life with him.”
“I quite believe it!” she said. “Poets are all the same--they write about love because they don’t feel it. If they felt it, they couldn’t write about it.”
“Wise child!” And the Philosopher, with his most attractively kindly glance, closed the book and returned it to her. “You really say very apt things now and then!”
“It’s not a very pleasant day for sitting out in the garden with a book,” he went on. “Especially a book of verse. A book of verse demands rather more sunshine and a less chilly wind. Don’t you think so?”