Oh! the waste
of all those years!"
"Waste?" Mrs. Colwood probed the phrase a little. Diana insisted, first
with warmth, and then with an eloquence that startled her companion,
that for an Englishwoman to be brought up outside England, away from
country and countrymen, was to waste and forego a hundred precious
things that might have been gathered up. "I used to be ashamed when I
talked to English people. Not that we saw many. We lived for years and
years at a little villa near Rapallo, and in the summer we used to go up
into the mountains, away from everybody. But after we came back from a
long tour, we lived for a time at a hotel in Mentone--our own little
house was let--and I used to talk to people there--though papa never
liked making friends. And I made ridiculous mistakes about English
things--and they'd laugh. But one can't know--unless one has
_lived_--has breathed in a country, from one's birth. That's what
I've lost."
Mrs. Colwood demurred.
"Think of the people who wish they had grown up without ever reading or
hearing about the Bible, so that they might read it for the first time,
when they could really understand it.
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