im, quivering all over. His father and mother leaned back in their
chairs and looked at each other. I think they said not a single word.
The son caught up his hat, turned round, and went quickly out of the
room. Then the old man threw back his head and laughed, and the old lady
laughed too, not so boisterously.

I turned back to the window. It was as I expected. Outside the garden
gate, in the road, a young slight girl in a large poke-bonnet and shawl
and rather short-skirted dress was waiting, in great anxiety, as I could
see by the way she held to the railings. Her face I could not see. The
young man came out; she clasped her hands, he shook his head; they went
off together slowly up the road, he with bowed shoulders, supporting
her, she, I dare say, crying. Again I looked round to the sitting-room.
The wall hid it now.

It sounds a dull ordinary scene enough, but I can assure you it was
horribly disturbing to watch, and the cruel calm way in which the father
and mother, who looked so nice and worthy and were so abominable,
treated their son, was like nothing I had ever seen.

Of course I know now what the effect of the Fourth Jar was; it made me
able to see what had happened in any place. I did not yet know how far
back the memories would go, or whether I was obliged to see them if I
did not want to. But it was clear to me that the boys were sometimes
taught in this way. "We were watching them like we do at school," one of
them said, and though the grammar was poor, the meaning was plain, and I
would ask Slim about it when we next met. Meanwhile I must say I hoped
the gift would not go on working instead of letting me go to sleep. It
did not.

Next day I met my landlady employing herself in the garden, and asked
her about the people who had formerly lived in the house.

"Oh yes," said she. "I can tell you about them, for my father he
remembered old Mr. and Mrs. Eld quite well when he was a slip of a lad.
They wasn't liked in the place, neither of them, partly through bein' so
hard-like to their workpeople, and partly from them treating their only
son so bad--I mean to say turning him right off because he married
without asking permission. Well, no doubt, that's what he shouldn't have
done, but my father said it was a very nice respectable young girl he
married, and it do seem hard for them never to say a word of kindness
all those years and leave every penny away from the young people. What
become of them, do yo