'Margaret, my child, you might have gathered us some pears for

our dessert,' said Mr. Hale, as the hospitable luxury of a

freshly-decanted bottle of wine was placed on the table.

Mrs. Hale was hurried. It seemed as if desserts were impromptu

and unusual things at the parsonage; whereas, if Mr. Hale would

only have looked behind him, he would have seen biscuits and

marmalade, and what not, all arranged in formal order on the

sideboard. But the idea of pears had taken possession of Mr.

Hale's mind, and was not to be got rid of.

'There are a few brown beurres against the south wall which are

worth all foreign fruits and preserves. Run, Margaret, and gather

us some.' 'I propose that we adjourn into the garden, and eat them there'

said Mr. Lennox.

'Nothing is so delicious as to set one's teeth into the crisp,

juicy fruit, warm and scented by the sun. The worst is, the wasps

are impudent enough to dispute it with one, even at the very

crisis and summit of enjoyment.

He rose, as if to follow Margaret, who had disappeared through

the window he only awaited Mrs. Hale's permission. She would

rather have wound up the dinner in the proper way, and with all

the ceremonies which had gone on so smoothly hitherto, especially

as she and Dixon had got out the finger-glasses from the

store-room on purpose to be as correct as became General Shaw's

widow's sister, but as Mr. Hale got up directly, and prepared to

accompany his guest, she could only submit.

'I shall arm myself with a knife,' said Mr. Hale: 'the days of

eating fruit so primitively as you describe are over with me. I

must pare it and quarter it before I can enjoy it.' Margaret made a plate for the pears out of a beetroot leaf, which

threw up their brown gold colour admirably. Mr. Lennox looked

more at her than at the pears; but her father, inclined to cull

fastidiously the very zest and perfection of the hour he had

stolen from his anxiety, chose daintily the ripest fruit, and sat

down on the garden bench to enjoy it at his leisure. Margaret and

Mr. Lennox strolled along the little terrace-walk under the south

wall, where the bees still hummed and worked busily in their

hives.

'What a perfect life you seem to live here! I have always felt

rather contemptuously towards the poets before, with their

wishes, "Mine be a cot beside a hill," and that sort of thing:

but now I am afraid that the truth is, I have been nothing better

than a cockney. Just now I feel as if twenty years' hard study of

law would be amply rewarded by one year of such an exquisite

serene life as this--such skies!' looking up--'such crimson and

amber foliage, so perfectly motionless as that!' pointing to some

of the great forest trees which shut in the garden as if it were

a nest.




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