Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/487

78 not to meddle with the Wandle: so this time I am quit for the fright, and whatsoever part of ₤50 the lawyers' conscience will let them grab of me. Cheap at the price both for me and the public I think, since I have seen more of the river. On Wednesday Wardle and I went up the river and saw as much as we could get at: a wild day of storm and bitter wind it turned out, yet I think we enjoyed it. As we got to Wallington I thought I would go and call on Arthur Hughes, and did so to my pleasure: we were very glad to see each other, though perhaps when we got to talking were somewhat gravelled: he lives in a beautiful place, and the Croydon branch of the Wandle sweeps round his bit of close.

"I went up the water again on Friday with G. Howard and R. Grosvenor and had a pleasant half rainy day, seeing a great deal of the water, much of it quite quiet and unspoiled; it is really very beautiful, crystal clear in spite of all the mills. When you come on the ponds at Carshalton, where it rises or seems to rise, the surprise is most delightful and strange: a village green, only the green is the pond, quite bright and clear, the road across the fall of it from one level to another, and springs bubbling up amidst it all over. The whole river swarms with trout."

This peril over, work at Merton went on pleasantly and successfully. "I have just twice as much to do since we began at Merton," he writes in June. "At the same time I think it likely enough that my carpet business may fail commercially. I shan't like that; but as to giving up the whole affair because of it, if I say so it is mere ill-temper on my part, always supposing we can struggle on somehow." But his daughter's severe and repeated illnesses during the summer and autumn upset the whole year for him. It is not put-