ust take us a long round, because of our luggage; but
behind these high old walls are the canons' gardens. That high-pitched
roof, with the clumps of stonecrop on the walls near it, is Canon
Wilson's, whose four little girls I am to teach. Hark! the great
cathedral clock. How proud I used to be of its great boom when I was a
child! I thought all the other church clocks in the town sounded so
shrill and poor after that, which I considered mine especially. There
are rooks flying home to the elms in the Close. I wonder if they are the
same that used to be there when I was a girl. They say the rook is a
very long-lived bird, and I feel as if I could swear to the way they are
cawing. Ay, you may smile, Ellinor, but I understand now those lines of
Gray's you used to say so prettily--

"I feel the gales that from ye blow.
A momentary bliss bestow,
And breathe a second spring."

Now, dear, you must get out. This flagged walk leads to our front-door;
but our back rooms, which are the pleasantest, look on to the Close, and
the cathedral, and the lime-tree walk, and the deanery, and the rookery."

It was a mere slip of a house; the kitchen being wisely placed close to
the front-door, and so reserving the pretty view for the little dining-
room, out of which a glass-door opened into a small walled-in garden,
which had again an entrance into the Close. Upstairs was a bedroom to
the front, which Miss Monro had taken for herself, because as she said,
she had old associations with the back of every house in the High-street,
while Ellinor mounted to the pleasant chamber above the tiny drawing-room
both of which looked on to the vast and solemn cathedral, and the
peaceful dignified Close. East Chester Cathedral is Norman, with a low,
massive tower, a grand, majestic nave, and a choir full of stately
historic tombs. The whole city is so quiet and decorous a place, that
the perpetual daily chants and hymns of praise seemed to sound far and
wide over the roofs of the houses. Ellinor soon became a regular
attendant at all the morning and evening services. The sense of worship
calmed and soothed her aching weary heart, and to be punctual to the
cathedral hours she roused and exerted herself, when probably nothing
else would have been sufficient to this end.

By-and-by Miss Monro formed many acquaintances; she picked up, or was
picked up by, old friends, and the descendants of old friends. The grave
and kindly ca