h bated breath and awful joy.

December 22nd.--Up to now we have had a beautiful winter. Clear skies,
frost, little wind, and, except for a sharp touch now and then, very few
really cold days. My windows are gay with hyacinths and lilies of
the valley; and though, as I have said, I don't admire the smell of
hyacinths in the spring when it seems wanting in youth and chastity next
to that of other flowers, I am glad enough now to bury my nose in
their heavy sweetness. In December one cannot afford to be fastidious;
besides, one is actually less fastidious about everything in the winter.
The keen air braces soul as well as body into robustness, and the food
and the perfume disliked in the summer are perfectly welcome then.

I am very busy preparing for Christmas, but have often locked myself up
in a room alone, shutting out my unfinished duties, to study the flower
catalogues and make my lists of seeds and shrubs and trees for the
spring. It is a fascinating occupation, and acquires an additional charm
when you know you ought to be doing something else, that Christmas is
at the door, that children and servants and farm hands depend on you
for their pleasure, and that, if you don't see to the decoration of the
trees and house, and the buying of the presents, nobody else will. The
hours fly by shut up with those catalogues and with Duty snarling on
the other side of the door. I don't like Duty--everything in the least
disagreeable is always sure to be one's duty. Why cannot it be my duty
to make lists and plans for the dear garden? "And so it is," I insisted
to the Man of Wrath, when he protested against what he called wasting my
time upstairs. "No," he replied sagely; "your garden is not your duty,
because it is your Pleasure."

What a comfort it is to have such wells of wisdom constantly at my
disposal! Anybody can have a husband, but to few is it given to have a
sage, and the combination of both is as rare as it is useful. Indeed, in
its practical utility the only thing I ever saw to equal it is a sofa my
neighbour has bought as a Christmas surprise for her husband, and which
she showed me the last time I called there--a beautiful invention, as
she explained, combining a bedstead, a sofa, and a chest of drawers, and
into which you put your clothes, and on top of which you put yourself,
and if anybody calls in the middle of the night and you happen to be
using the drawing-room as a bedroom, you just pop the bedclothes i