With the wind in her hair she climbed the
slope again to the garden ground, where she found a solemn-eyed collie
sniffing the fragrant wind in his morning stroll.
Breakfast over, the forenoon hung heavy on her hands. It was Lady
Manorwater's custom to let her guests sit idle in the morning and follow
their own desire, but in the afternoon she would plan subtle and
far-reaching schemes of enjoyment. It was a common saying that in her
large good-nature she amused people regardless of their own expense.
She would light-heartedly make town-bred folk walk twenty miles or bear
the toil of infinite drives. But this was after lunch; before, her
guests might do as they pleased. Lord Manorwater went off to see some
tenant; Arthur, after vain efforts to decoy Alice into a fishing
expedition, went down the stream in a canoe, because to his fool's head
it seemed the riskiest means of passing the time at his disposal; Bertha
and her sister were writing letters; the spectacled people had settled
themselves below shady trees with voluminous papers and a pile of books.
Alice alone was idle. She made futile expeditions to the library, and
returned with an armful of volumes which she knew in her heart she would
never open. She found the deepest and most comfortable chair and placed
it in a shady place among beeches. But she could not stay there, and
must needs wander restlessly about the gardens, plucking flowers and
listlessly watching the gardeners at their work.
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