Confidences

Friday, January 4th., Trinity Hall Farm, Hockliffe, Bedfordshire.

As we drove through Battlesden Park on a misty moist morning yesterday, Kennerley and Tertia in front, and Sharpe and I cramped and pinched behind, I had a sense of a constantly unrolling panorama of large rounded meadows, studded with immense bare cedars, also of a formal and balanced shape; bulls and sheep, all of fine breeds, wandered vaguely about; sometimes a house; often a gate to be opened, and Spot gallivanting tirelessly around the trap; in one distant clump of trees we saw a rook perched on an invisible twig on the top of a high elm; in the mist he seemed enormous, an incredible motionless fowl; at length he sretched his wings slowly, sank gently forward, and beat heavily away into the distance. Everything was a vague green and dark grey in the fog - everything except the red hips and the staring white of Spot's coat. 

On the way home we called for a dead snipe that had been given to us: the first snipe that I had ever seen; I was naively astonished at its small proportions, and the impossible length of its thin bill. 

In the afternoon Tertia began, at my request, to teach me to bake. I have very few practical skills but felt I could take to baking, and do it well. Here it seems very appropriate, in the same way that it would be appropriate to tend a vegetable garden, or shoot game. I enjoyed it and produced a very creditable mincemeat tart which was much admired at supper. There is a a real satisfaction in making things well. I expect William Morris tried his hand at baking. Tertia and I had quite a talk whilst alone in the kitchen. It seemed conducive to confidences. I told her about some of my experiences and misadventures in Paris and she confessed that she was not a virgin; it seems that she and Willie Boulton had anticipated their conjugal state. She said she didn't regret doing so, and was just glad that there had been no consequence. She is quite 'over' Willie's tragic death now, and has hopes of the relationship with Kennerley.