Huge strawberry
beds attracted me, the ripe fruit I found tempting; but feeling still a
stranger, the old weakness that comes down to us from Mother Eve to reach
forth and pluck, was restrained. "What a perfect Eden it is!" I could not
help exclaiming, though no ears save the birds, and multitudinous insects
existences, were within reach of my voice, and probably for the latter,
any sound I could make would be as unheard by them as the music of the
spheres must be to me until another body, with finer intuitions to catch
such harmonies, shall be provided. Ere the dinner bell rang I found a new
wonderland of beauty reaching away beyond me. To watch from early spring
till winter's icy breath destroyed them, these multiplied varieties of
vegetable life gradually passing through all their beautiful changes of
bud and blossom, and ripened seed or fruit would be a training in some
respects, equalling that of the schools. What higher lessons in botany I
might take, day by day exploring the secrets of plant life! I went back
to the house in a happier mood than I had left it. At the dinner table I
expressed, no doubt with amusing enthusiasm, my gladness at this garden
of delight.
"You should become a practical botanist, Miss Selwyn. But then your heart
might prove too tender to tear your pets to pieces in order to find out
their secrets."
"I did not know my heart was specially tender."
"I only judged so from your sympathy for the Blakes. Only think, mother,
Miss Selwyn was prophesying the time when I should be mourning over a
departed wife.
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