Torp has observed that I take far more pleasure in good cooking than I did at first.

My dresses are getting too tight.  I miss my masseuse.

* * * * *

To-day I inspected my linen cupboard with all the care of the lady superior of an aristocratic convent.  I delighted in the spectacle of the snowy-white piles, and counted it all.  I am careful with my money, and yet I like to have great supplies in the house.  The more bottles, cases, and bags I see in the larder, the better pleased I am.  In that respect Torp and I are agreed.  If we were cut off from the outer world by flood, or an earthquake, we could hold out for a considerable time.

* * * * *

If I had more sensibility, and a little imagination—­even as much as Torp, who makes verses with the help of her hymn-book—­I think I should turn my attention to literature.  Women like to wade in their memories as one wades through dry leaves in autumn.  I believe I should be very clever in opening a series of whited sepulchres, and, without betraying any personalities, I should collect my exhumed mummies under the general title of, “Woman at the Dangerous Age.”  But besides imagination, I lack the necessary perseverance to occupy myself for long together with other people’s affairs.

* * * * *

We most of us sail under a false flag; but it is necessary.  If we were intended to be as transparent as glass, why were we born with our thoughts concealed?

If we ventured to show ourselves as we really are, we should be either hermits, each dwelling on his own mountain-top, or criminals down in the valleys.

* * * * *

Torp has gone to evening service.  Angelic creature!  She has taken a lantern with her, therefore we shall probably not see her again before midnight.  In consequence of her religious enthusiasm, we dined at breakfast-time.  Yes, Torp knows how to grease the wheels of her existence!

Naturally she is about as likely to attend church as I am.  Her vespers will be read by one of the sailors whose ship has been laid up near here for the winter.  Peace be with her—­but I am dreadfully bored.

I have a bitter feeling as though Jeanne and I were doing penance, each in a dark corner of our respective quarters.  The Sundays of my childhood were not worse than this.

In the distance a cracked, tinkling bell “tolls the knell of parting day.”  Jeanne and I are depressed by it.  I have taken up a dozen different occupations and dropped them all.

If it were only summer!  I am oppressed as though I were sitting in a close bower of jasmine; but we are in mid-winter, and I have not used a drop of scent for months.

But, after all, Sundays were no better in the Old Market Place.  There I had Richard from morning till night.  To be bored alone is bad; to be bored in the society of one other person is much worse.  And to think that Richard never even noticed it!  His incessant talk reminded me of a mill-wheel, and I felt as though all the flour was blowing into my eyes.