No, I was not surprised that Mrs. Widow graciously bestowed my door-key on her friends in search of an afternoon’s recreation; but I _was_ just a trifle curious to know how they had got hold of the lilac bedspread, seeing that it was put away in a cupboard that possessed—so I prided myself—a unique lock; and it had never been used yet—at least, not by me!
After dinner I wrestled womanfully with the overpowering desire to go down the orchard again and do nothing; but a shower seemed threatening, and I decided to answer letters and correct proofs indoors. I told myself I would put in a full afternoon at really solid work, and would even carry it right on into the night, if need be, without a moment’s cessation save for the conventional nourishment—this, in order to clear up some of my arrears, and to enable me to garden the whole of next day with a perky conscience.
“How _do_ you kill time on a wet day in the country?” people sometimes ask me. It’s simple enough. Here is the recipe:
* Draw up a chair to the table; get out ink and pens from one of the aged oak cupboards beside the fireplace. Open the dresser drawers and haul out stacks of unanswered queries from magazine readers, the office staff, printers, block-makers, artists, authors, and from people of whom I know nothing (friends and relatives gave me up long ago!).
Next, take the heavy lid right off the oak chest (hinges were broken fifty years ago, so it won’t lift up properly), dive in for armfuls of MSS., proofs, photographs, diagrams, sketches; place same on table; proceed to hunt among same for some one particular thing I feel I ought to deal with at that particular moment (though it may have lain unhonoured and unsung for weeks); can’t find it anywhere. Go through everything again, this time classifying matter slightly by putting it in piles around me on the floor; still can’t find it, but unearth much else that ought to have been attended to long ago but wasn’t.
Decide to search upstairs; turn out trunks, turn out cupboards, turn out drawers (incidentally discover and meditate upon various things needing mending); forget what I _was_ looking for; go on searching for it; remember presently, and eventually run it to earth in my blotting-book downstairs, where, if I had had any sense, I should have looked in the first instance. Breathe freely, sit down—rather exhausted—to serious work.