Before you enter the garden, you pass the
green. On one side of it are cottages, and on the other the old
village church and its quiet churchyard. Some boys were playing
cricket on the sward, and children were getting as intimate with the
turf and the sweet earth as their nurses would let them. We turned
into a little cottage, which gave notice of hospitality for a
consideration; and were shown, by a pretty maid in calico, into an
upper room,--a neat, cheerful, common room, with bright flowers in
the open windows, and white muslin curtains for contrast. We looked
out on the green and over to the beautiful churchyard, where one of
England's greatest painters, Gainsborough, lies in rural repose. It
is nothing to you, who always dine off the best at home, and never
encounter dirty restaurants and snuffy inns, or run the gauntlet of
Continental hotels, every meal being an experiment of great interest,
if not of danger, to say that this brisk little waitress spread a
snowy cloth, and set thereon meat and bread and butter and a salad:
that conveys no idea to your mind. Because you cannot see that the
loaf of wheaten bread was white and delicate, and full of the
goodness of the grain; or that the butter, yellow as a guinea, tasted
of grass and cows, and all the rich juices of the verdant year, and
was not mere flavorless grease; or that the cuts of roast beef, fat
and lean, had qualities that indicate to me some moral elevation in
the cattle,--high-toned, rich meat; or that the salad was crisp and
delicious, and rather seemed to enjoy being eaten, at least, did n't
disconsolately wilt down at the prospect, as most salad does.
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