I wondered if to idle at adventure might not be the way to June, so I went out on the six o'clock street in somewhat the spirit in which another might ride the greenwood. Almost immediately I had an encounter, for I came on my neighbour in her garden. Not my neighbour who lives on the other side of me, and who is a big and obvious deacon, with a family of a great many Light Gowns; but My Neighbour. She was watering her garden. These water rules and regulations of the village are among its spells. To look at the members of the water commission one would never suspect them of romance. But if they have it not, why have they named from five until nine o'clock the only morning hours when one may use the city water for one's lawn and garden? I insist that it cannot be a mere regard for the municipal resources, and that the commissioners must see something of the romance of getting up before five o'clock to drench one's garden, and are providing for the special educational value of such a custom. Or, if I do not believe this, I wish very much that I did, with the proper grounds. To tell the truth, however, I do not credit even my neighbour with feeling the romance of the hour and of her occupation. She is a still woman of more than forty, who does not feel a difference between her flower and her vegetable gardens, but regards them both as a part of her life in the kind of car-window indifference and complacency of certain travellers. She raises foxgloves and parsley, and the sun shines over all. I must note a strange impression which my neighbour gives me: she has always for me an air of personal impermanence. I have the fancy, amounting to a sensation, that she is where she is for just a moment, and that she must rush back and be at it again. I do not know at what. But whether I see her in church or at a festival, I have always all I can do to resist saying to her, "How _did_ you get away?" It was so that she was watering her flowers; as if she were intending at any moment to hurry off to get breakfast or put up the hammock or mend. And yet before she did so she told me, who was a willing listener, a motion or two of the spirit of the village. There is, I observe, a nicety of etiquette here, about the Not-quite-news, Not-quite-gossip shared with strangers and semi-strangers. The rules seem to be:-- Strangers shall be told only the pleasant occurrences and conditions. Half strangers may discuss the unpleasant matters which they themselves have somehow heard, but only pleasant matters may be added by accretion. The rest of society may say whatever it "has a mind." But this mind, as I believe, is not harsh, since nobody ever gossips except to people who gossip back. "Mis' Toplady told me last night that Calliope Marsh is coming home for the Java entertainment, next week," my neighbour imparted first. And this was the best news that she could have given me.