"This brook is not mine, strictly speaking," said her host; "I
borrowed it of my neighbor." The lady opened her eyes; so he grinned
and revealed a characteristic transaction. A quarter of a century ago
he had found the brook flowing through a meadow close to his garden
hedge. He applied for a lease of the meadow, and was refused by the
proprietor in the following terms: "What is to become of my cows?"
He applied constantly for ten years, and met the same answer.
Proprietor died, the cows turned to ox-beef, and were eaten in London
along with flour and a little turmeric, and washed down with Spanish
licorice-water, salt, gentian and a little burned malt. Widow
inherited, made hay, and refused F. the meadow because her husband had
always refused him. But in the tenth year of her siege she assented,
for the following reasons: _primo,_ she had said "no" so often
the word gave her a sense of fatigue; _secundo,_ she liked
variety, and thought a change for the worse must be better than no
change at all.
Her tenant instantly cut a channel from the upper part of the stream
into his garden, and brought the brook into the lawn, made it write an
S upon his turf, then handed it but again upon the meadow "none the
worse," his own comment. These things could be done in the
country--_jadis._
It cost Mrs. Bazalgette a struggle to admire the garden and borrowed
stream--they were so pretty. She made the struggle and praised all.
Lucy, walking behind the pair, watched them with innocent
satisfaction.
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