time and whom he thought of but did not regret. He was a detached man
even in a crowd and carried with him a cold atmosphere; even his smile
was bleak and aloof. Mary Makebelieve noticed that many people nudged
each other as he went by, and then they would turn and look after him
and go away whispering.

These and many others she saw almost daily, and used to look for with
a feeling of friendship. At other times she walked up the long line of
quays sentineling the Liffey, watching the swift boats of Guinness
puffing down the river and the thousands of sea-gulls hovering above
or swimming on the dark waters, until she came to the Phoenix Park,
where there was always a cricket or football match being played, or
some young men or girls playing hurley, or children playing
tip-and-tig, running after one another, and dancing and screaming in
the sunshine. Her mother liked very much to go with her to the
Phoenix Park on days when there was no work to be done. Leaving the
great, white main road, up which the bicycles and motor cars are
continually whizzing, a few minutes' walk brings one to quiet alleys
sheltered by trees and groves of hawthorn. In these passages one can
walk for a long time without meeting a person, or lie on the grass in
the shadow of a tree and watch the sunlight beating down on the green
fields and shimmering between the trees. There is a deep silence to be
found here, very strange and beautiful to one fresh from the city, and
it is strange also to look about in the broad sunshine and see no
person near at all, and no movement saving the roll and folding of the
grass, the slow swinging of the branches of the trees or the noiseless
flight of a bee, a butterfly, or a bird.

These things Mary Makebelieve liked, but her mother would pine for the
dances of the little children, the gallant hurrying of the motor cars,
and the movement to and fro of the people with gay dresses and colored
parasols and all the circumstance of holiday.

VII

One morning Mary Makebelieve jumped out of bed and lit the fire. For a
wonder it lit easily: the match was scarcely applied when the flames
were leaping up the black chimney, and this made her feel at ease with
the world. Her mother stayed in bed chatting with something more of
gayety than usual. It was nearly six o'clock, and the early summer sun
was flooding against the grimy window. The previous evening's post had
brought a post-card for Mrs. Makebelieve, requesti