Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/40

“Oh, my idea of the nearest thing to Paradise is an old English red-brick manor-house—built about the time that the Dutch sailors were making those limestone ramparts yonder—a house in the shape of a quadrangle, all covered up and buried with ivy and roses—sweet-smelling things, not like that scentless flower in your hand—and in the square between the two old wings of the house is a bit of green, green turf, so soft and smooth that you think it must be picked up and shaken and laid down again every morning like a carpet. And at one end there is an enormous chestnut-tree—something like a tree!” he continued, looking contemptuously at the noble proportions of their sheltering giant.

“Well, I haven’t seen that sort of thing yet; but this nearly drives me crazy—it is so beautiful! Just like the story-books of one’s childhood—the ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ for instance. There is the sago palm, in which we have so often escaped from desert islands (having previously taken out the pith for food), and the cinnamon-trees and the coffee-berries, and I dare say the Roc’s egg in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ if we knew where to look for it.”

“At all events, we shall have a rattling good dinner at the hotel to-night. You have never