I didn’t know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting on into the afternoon; and feeling that my deer hunt was over, I thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Jone, so I followed on after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping a little back of them, though, for I didn’t know what the older one might do if he happened to turn and see me.

I was sure that Jone had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could, though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little, for while I had been stag hunting I was so excited I didn’t know how much work I was doing.  There was sign-posts enough to tell me the way to Chedcombe, and so I kept straight on, up hill and down hill, until at last I saw a man ahead on a bicycle, which I soon knew to be Mr. Poplington.  He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my husband had gone ahead.  I didn’t explain anything, and it wasn’t until we got nearly to Chedcombe that we met Jone.  He had been to Chedcombe, and was coming back.

Jone is a good fellow, but he’s got a will of his own, and he said that this would be the end of my tricycle riding, and that the next time we went out together on wheels he’d drive.  I didn’t tell him anything about the stag hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the talking himself; but after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase, and they both laughed, Mr. Poplington the most.

Letter Number Thirteen

CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE

It is now about a week since my stag hunt, and Jone and I have kept pretty quiet, taking short walks, and doing a good deal of reading in our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr. Poplington spends most of his time fishing.  He works very hard at this, partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for.

It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself certain and plain in Jone.  I had been thinking that perhaps I might have it first, but it wasn’t so, and it began in Jone, which, though I don’t want you to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better; for if it had not been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable little cottage, where he’d be perfectly content to stay until it was time for us to sail for America.  The beautiful greenness which spreads over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines, but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and never to be forgotten; but when this moist greenness spreads itself to one’s bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more easy-going joints.  Jone says the English take their climate as they do their whiskey; and he calls it climate-and-water, with a very little of the first and a good deal of the other.