hen you went into that monastery you only just got the start of me in
being dead. There used to be a few people in this place, but now there
doesn't seem to be a dog left. All the youngsters have 'gone foreign,'
and all the oldsters have gone to--'goodness knows which.' Sometimes we
hear the bleat of sheep on the mountains, and sometimes the scream of
seagulls overhead, and sometimes we hold a convocation of all living
rooks in the elms on the lawn. We take no thought for the morrow, what we
shall eat or what we shall put on, and on Sundays when the church bell
rings we go out, like the Israelites in the wilderness, in clothes which
wax not old after forty years. During the rest of the week we watch the
blue-bottles knocking their stupid heads against the ceiling, and listen
to the grasshoppers whispering in the grass, and fall asleep to the hum
of the bees, and awake to the _hee-haw_ of old Neilus's 'canary.' [*
Donkey] Such is the dead-alive life we live at Glenfaba, and the days of
our years are threescore years and ten, and if.... Ohoy! (A yawn.)

"I suppose it is basely ungrateful of me to talk like this, for the dear
place itself is lovely enough to disturb one's hope of paradise, and this
very morning is as fresh as the dew on the grass, with the larks singing
above, and the river singing below, and clouds like little curls of foam
hovering over the sea. And as for my three dear old dunces, who love me
so much more than I deserve, I am ashamed in my soul when I overhear them
planning good things for me to eat, and wild excitements for me to revel
in, that I may not be dull or miss the luxuries I am accustomed to. 'Do
you know I'm afraid Glory doesn't care so much for pinjane after all,' I
heard grandfather whispering to Aunt Anna one morning, and half an hour
afterward he was reproving Aunt Rachel for pressing me too hard to serve
at the soup kitchen.

"They govern me like a child in pinafores, and of course like a child I
revenge myself by governing all the house. But, oh, dear! oh, dear! gone
are the days when I could live on water-gruel and be happy in a go-cart.
Yes, the change is in me, not in them or the old home, and what's the
good of putting back the clock when the sun is so stubbornly keeping
pace? I might be happy enough at Glenfaba still, if I could only bring
back the days when the garden trees were my gymnasium and I used to rock
myself and sing like a bird on a bough in the wind, or when I led a ban