should not have had it with me. I wore the same
dress to the post-office yesterday that I wore to the Hen Conference to-
day, and so it chanced to be still in the pocket. If it had been
anything I valued, of course I should have lost or destroyed it by
mistake; it is only silly, worthless little things like this that keep
turning up and turning up after one has forgotten their existence.

"You are a mystery!" [it ran.] "I can apprehend, but not comprehend
you. I know you in part. I understand various bits of your nature;
but my knowledge is always fragmentary and disconnected, and when I
attempt to make a whole of the mosaics I merely get a kaleidoscopic
effect. Do you know those geographical dissected puzzles that they
give to children? You remind me of one of them.

"I have spent many charming (and dangerous) hours trying to 'put you
together'; but I find, when I examine my picture closely, that after
all I've made a purple mountain grow out of a green tree; that my
river is running up a steep hillside; and that the pretty milkmaid,
who should be wandering in the forest, is standing on her head with
her pail in the air

"Do you understand yourself clearly? Or is it just possible that when
you dive to the depths of your own consciousness, you sometimes find
the pretty milkmaid standing on her head? I wonder!" . . .

Ah, well, it is no wonder that he wonders! So do I, for that matter!

CHAPTER XII

{Along the highway: p89.jpg}

July 17th.

Thornycroft Farm seems to be the musical centre of the universe.

When I wake very early in the morning I lie in a drowsy sort of dream,
trying to disentangle, one from the other, the various bird notes,
trills, coos, croons, chirps, chirrups, and warbles. Suddenly there
falls on the air a delicious, liquid, finished song; so pure, so mellow,
so joyous, that I go to the window and look out at the morning world,
half awakened, like myself.

There is I know not what charm in a window that does not push up, but
opens its lattices out into the greenness. And mine is like a little
jewelled door, for the sun is shining from behind the chimneys and
lighting the tiny diamond panes with amber flashes.

A faint delicate haze lies over the meadow, and rising out of it, and
soaring toward the blue is the lark, flinging out that matchless matin
song, so rich, so thrilling, so lavish! As the blithe melody fades away,
I