" said Clara, "and I think in a few months we shall make him look
younger; and I should like to see what he was like with the wrinkles
smoothed out of his face. Don't you think he will look younger after a
little time with us?"

The old man shook his head, and looked earnestly at me, but did not
answer her, and for a moment or two we were all silent. Then Clara broke
out:

"Kinsman, I don't like this: something or another troubles me, and I feel
as if something untoward were going to happen. You have been talking of
past miseries to the guest, and have been living in past unhappy times,
and it is in the air all round us, and makes us feel as if we were
longing for something that we cannot have."

The old man smiled on her kindly, and said: "Well, my child, if that be
so, go and live in the present, and you will soon shake it off." Then he
turned to me, and said: "Do you remember anything like that, guest, in
the country from which you come?"

The lovers had turned aside now, and were talking together softly, and
not heeding us; so I said, but in a low voice: "Yes, when I was a happy
child on a sunny holiday, and had everything that I could think of."

"So it is," said he. "You remember just now you twitted me with living
in the second childhood of the world. You will find it a happy world to
live in; you will be happy there--for a while."

Again I did not like his scarcely veiled threat, and was beginning to
trouble myself with trying to remember how I had got amongst this curious
people, when the old man called out in a cheery voice: "Now, my children,
take your guest away, and make much of him; for it is your business to
make him sleek of skin and peaceful of mind: he has by no means been as
lucky as you have. Farewell, guest!" and he grasped my hand warmly.

"Good-bye," said I, "and thank you very much for all that you have told
me. I will come and see you as soon as I come back to London. May I?"

"Yes," he said, "come by all means--if you can."

"It won't be for some time yet," quoth Dick, in his cheery voice; "for
when the hay is in up the river, I shall be for taking him a round
through the country between hay and wheat harvest, to see how our friends
live in the north country. Then in the wheat harvest we shall do a good
stroke of work, I should hope,--in Wiltshire by preference; for he will
be getting a little hard with all the open-air living, and I shall be as
tough as nails."

"But you wi