The garden of experience . and love themthrough their bud and bloom. Their little lives areshort at best, and in years of drought they are mostcruelly shortened. Friends fled gasping from blis-tered London-town, to sleep in hammocks and campbeds under the pines. Scorched though it was, Icould rejoice in the garden still, for it harboured athankful crowd those days. Away in one corner two industrious creatureswere spending perspiring but happy hours attend-ing to the goats. They had bathed the kids, andwere now slaving with saw and plane upon longplanks of oak, making a very elegant milking sto
The garden of experience . and love themthrough their bud and bloom. Their little lives areshort at best, and in years of drought they are mostcruelly shortened. Friends fled gasping from blis-tered London-town, to sleep in hammocks and campbeds under the pines. Scorched though it was, Icould rejoice in the garden still, for it harboured athankful crowd those days. Away in one corner two industrious creatureswere spending perspiring but happy hours attend-ing to the goats. They had bathed the kids, andwere now slaving with saw and plane upon longplanks of oak, making a very elegant milking stool,which is a joy in the goathouse still, though the hotspell has long passed, and the carpenters returnedto the sophistications of town. No one would haveguessed, to look at them, that they were two well-known literary men. Anyone who has tried to milk a little goat fromthe ground will realise what a convenience some sortof platform is for the operation. The animals runto their stool and jump up eagerly night and morning,. oo w> o V rt) DROUGHT IN THE GARDEN 291 putting their heads through the bars, which thenclose lightly, as they know that a bowl of bran andoats is set in the opening under their noses. Andthere they munch delectably while the milker sitsalongside and milks at ease. In a shady corner beneath the crocus hill anardent group was trying to bleach some Governmentlinen, dashing out at frequent intervals from thevantage coign of shade to spray and turn the fabricspread out in the blazing sun. Violent controversyraged as to the progress of the bleaching, and frag-ments of linen wisdom were wafted through the studywindow to me from time to time : I like this quality best; it is so fine that Ishall make frocks of it and blouses too. I have the heavy T quality, and I am makingsheets of it. I shall keep them brown and embroidermy monogram on them ; then I shall put a blacksatin quilt over the bed drifted in upon me nextin a rich housewife voice ; and presently pipedan
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookidgardenofexpe, bookyear1922
