A FEW days later Sabrina sat dozing in a deck-chair on the lawn, while Aunt Effie moved along the herbaceous border snipping faded blooms into a basket. It was nearly five. They were waiting for tea to come out to the table laid under a big tree.

The white lace cloth stirred in a languid breeze, the silver tray and flowered Worcester china glinted with shifting flecks of sunlight which fell through the whispering leaves above. A bowl of strawberries and an uncut cake had already arrived but were as yet undiscovered by any contentious wasp. Striped deck-chairs and bright chintz cushions, Sabrina’s blue and white frock, echoed the riotous color in the sunlit border where Aunt Effie in apple-green linen administered to a clump of snap-dragons.

Nuns Farthing drowsed in a peacefulness not of this bustling world, under a midsummer magic which seemed to hold time itself in thrall, so that the shadows forgot to creep across the grass and the sun delayed its evening plunge towards the treetops beyond the house.

Torpid with contentment and the pleasant contemplation of tea in the immediate offing, Sabrina lay back and watched through half-closed eyes a small, laggard cloud in a sky of almost tropical blueness, and wondered dimly how they had ever existed so long in a flat in London, with nothing to look at but walls, and nothing to do but eat and sleep and read books, or drift aimlessly in parks whose flowers all belonged to the King or the County and must not be picked, or even tended, by unauthorized persons. For years she had been buying flowers from barrows and shops, and often they were not fresh and died almost before she got them home. For years Aunt Effie had had no real occupation all day long, and now she was getting brown and positively plump from hours on her knees in the sun, digging and snipping and weeding. You read less in the country too, Sabrina was thinking in a rambling sort of way, half asleep in the deck-chair. You were less likely to be bored if you didn’t, because there was always something to look at. You read less and dreamed more, and that must be good for you, in the long run, because you had time to invent thoughts of your own and get them sorted out into conviction, and philosophy, and possibly religion, without their getting buried under the miscellaneous printed opinions of other people.