Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/38

 the back to stiffen its limpness, washed its face, tidied its hair, retied its cravat, brushed its boots, and, in general, furbished it up into something really worth while. This is what it was at the end of the operation:

“You can only raise flowers with an exposure to the west, just as you can only raise flour with an exposure to the yeast. So you see it is principally a question of what kind of house you propose to build, in what position you intend to build it, and how much land it is designed to cover.”

Here I made another error, more fatal than the last. The subject so interested and absorbed me that at the slightest reference to my house I gave forth confidences as freely as a sugar-maple gives forth sap. The young person on the rock having, as I may say, thus driven in the spigot, I bled views on single blessedness unreservedly, confiding in her as I had confided in Uncle Ezra’s solicitor, in my architect, in the real estate agent — as I am