Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/724

ÆT. 61] wear when the weather takes one of the sudden changes to cold, which come so often now. Thank you very much for it.

"Also, dearest mother, thank you very much for the handsome stands and dishes you were so kind as to send me; and the beautiful Dresden cups which I have always so much admired. And they are so pleasant to drink out of.

"We are all very well at present, and have pretty much got over our colds. I am looking forward to this Christmas as a quiet time, when there will be a lull in business matters: as I am hard at work, which I like very much.

"Dearest own mother, I send you my very best love and am "Your most affectionate son, "."

Mrs. Morris died in the following winter in her ninetieth year. "Tuesday I went to bury my mother," he wrote a few days afterwards: "a pleasant winter day with gleams of sun. She was laid in earth in the churchyard close by the house, a very pretty place among the great wych-elms, which, if it were of no use to her, was softening to us. Altogether my old and callous heart was touched by the absence of what had been so kind to me and fond of me. She was eighty-nine, and had been ill for nearly four years."

All that year Morris had been working hard at his press. But at Whitsuntide he took a holiday, and spent it in his favourite haunts of Northern France. He renewed there his delight in the indestructibly beautiful country, and the still lovely towns which seem as if they had grown out of the country like the fruit on a tree. The spring, too, was one of exceptional