not a bit like granny. She was the sort of old lady who treats children
as if they had no sense at all; she never told the boys anything about
themselves or their family, and when they spent the holidays with her,
she always had a tutor for them--the strictest she could find, so that
they almost liked better to stay on at school.

The three years I have been writing about must have passed quickly to
grandmamma. They were so peaceful, and after we got to know the Nestors,
much less lonely. And grandmamma says that it is quite wonderful how
fast time goes once one begins to grow old. She does not seem to mind
it. She is so very good--I cannot help saying this, for my own story
would not be true if I did not keep saying _how_ good she is.
But I must take care not to let her see the places where I say it.
She loves me as dearly as she can, I know--and others beside me.
But still I try not to be selfish and to remember that when the
dreadful--dreadful-for-_me_--day comes that she must leave me, it will
only for _her_ be the going where she must often, often have longed to
be--the country 'across the river,' where her very dearest have been
watching for her for so long.

To me those three years seem like one bright summer. Of course we had
winters in them too, but there is a feeling of sunshine all over them.
And, actually speaking, those winters were very mild ones--nothing like
the occasional severe ones, of another of which I shall soon have to
tell.

I was so well too--growing so strong--stronger by far than grandmamma
had ever hoped to see me. And as I grew strong I seemed to take in the
delightfulness of it, though as a very little girl I had not often
_complained_ of feeling weak and tired, for I did not understand the
difference.

Now I must tell about the change that came to the Nestors--a sad change
for me, for though at first it seemed worse for them, in the end I
really think it brought more trouble to granny and me than to our dear
friends themselves.

It was one day in the autumn, early in October I think, that the first
beginning of the cloud came. Gerard had not long been back at school and
we were just settling down into our regular ways again.

'The girls are late this morning,' said grandmamma. 'You see nothing of
them from your watch-tower, do you, Helena?'

Granny always called the window-seat in our tiny drawing-room my
'watch-tower.' I had very long sight and I had found out that there was
a b