"I enjoyed the winter immensely," I persisted when they were a little
quieter; "I sleighed and skated, and then there were the children, and
shelves and shelves full of--" I was going to say books, but stopped.
Reading is an occupation for men; for women it is reprehensible waste of
time. And how could I talk to them of the happiness I felt when the sun
shone on the snow, or of the deep delight of hear-frost days?

"It is entirely my doing that we have come down here," I proceeded, "and
my husband only did it to please me."

"Such a good little wife," repeated the patronising potentate, again
patting my hand with an air of understanding all about it, "really an
excellent little wife. But you must not let your husband have his own
way too much, my dear, and take my advice and insist on his bringing you
to town next winter." And then they fell to talking about their cooks,
having settled to their entire satisfaction that my fate was probably
lying in wait for me too, lurking perhaps at that very moment behind the
apparently harmless brass buttons of the man in the hall with my cloak.

I laughed on the way home, and I laughed again for sheer satisfaction
when we reached the garden and drove between the quiet trees to the
pretty old house; and when I went into the library, with its four
windows open to the moonlight and the scent, and looked round at the
familiar bookshelves, and could hear no sounds but sounds of peace, and
knew that here I might read or dream or idle exactly as I chose with
never a creature to disturb me, how grateful I felt to the kindly Fate
that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my own
blessedness, and rescued me from a life like that I had just seen--a
life spent with the odours of other people's dinners in one's nostrils,
and the noise of their wrangling servants in one's ears, and parties and
tattle for all amusement.

But I must confess to having felt sometimes quite crushed when some
grand person, examining the details of my home through her eyeglass, and
coolly dissecting all that I so much prize from the convenient distance
of the open window, has finished up by expressing sympathy with my
loneliness, and on my protesting that I like it, has murmured, "sebr
anspruchslos." Then indeed I have felt ashamed of the fewness of my
wants; but only for a moment, and only under the withering influence of
the eyeglass; for, after all, the owner's spirit is the same spirit as
that wh