Margaret made a plate for the pears out of a beet-root leaf, which threw up their brown gold colour admirably. Mr. Lennox looked more at her than at the pears; but her father, inclined to cull fastidiously the very zest and perfection of the hour he had stolen from his anxiety, chose daintily the ripest fruit, and sat down on the garden bench to enjoy it at his leisure. Margaret and Mr. Lennox strolled along the little terrace-walk under the south wall, where the bees still hummed and worked busily in their hives.
"What a perfect life you seem to live here! I have always felt rather contemptuously towards the poets before, with their wishes, 'Mine be a cot beside a hill,' and that sort of thing; but now I am afraid that the truth is, I have been nothing better than a Cockney. Just now I feel as if twenty years' hard study of law would be amply rewarded by one year of such an exquisite serene life as this--such skies!" looking up--"such crimson and amber foliage, so perfectly motionless as that!" pointing to some of the great forest trees which shut in the garden as if it were a nest.

She made a plate for the pears out of a beetroot leaf, which threw up their colour admirably. Mr. Lennox looked more at her than at the pears; but her father, determined to make the most of the hour he had stolen from his anxiety, chose the ripest fruit, and sat down on the garden bench to enjoy it. Margaret and Mr. Lennox strolled along the little terrace-walk under the south wall, where the bees still hummed busily.
'What a perfect life you seem to live here! I have always felt rather contemptuously towards the poets, with their "Mine be a cot beside a hill," and that sort of thing: but just now I feel as if twenty years' hard study of law would be amply rewarded by one year of such an exquisite serene life as this. Such skies!' - looking up - 'such crimson and amber foliage, so perfectly motionless!' He pointed to some of the great forest trees which shut in the garden like a nest.
