Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/256
is one—though I can’t give any reason for my liking it—one never can give reasons for enchantment—and another is,
“That isn’t great poetry—but there’s a bit of magic in it for all that—concentrated in the last line, I think. I never read it without feeling that I am Clotilde, kneeling there—‘on the old Provençal shore’—with the banners of forgotten wars waving over me.
“Mr. Carpenter sneered at my ‘liking for slops’ and told me to go and read the Elsie books! But when I was coming away he paid me the first personal compliment I ever had from him.
“‘I like that blue dress you’ve got on. And you know how to wear it. That’s good. I can’t bear to see a woman badly dressed. It hurts me—and it must hurt God Almighty. I’ve no use for dowds and I’m sure He hasn’t. After all, if you know how to dress yourself it won’t matter if you do like Mrs. Hemans.’
“I met Old Kelly on the way home and he stopped and gave me a bag of candy and sent his ‘rispicts’ to him.’
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“August 15, 19—
“This is a wonderful year for columbines. The old orchard is full of them—all in lovely white and purple and fairy blue and dreamy pink colour. They are half wild and so have a charm no real tamed garden flower ever has. And what a name—columbine is poetry itself. How much lovelier the common names of flowers are than the horrid Latiny names the florists stick in their catalogues. Heartsease and Bride’s Bouquet, Prince’s Feather, Snap-dragon, Flora’s Paint Brush, Dusty