ith her to Jamaica, packed with lovely shawls and
bonnets, because you couldn't get coffins in Jamaica, and she had a
horror of dying there (as she did), and being devoured by the white
ants. And there's Sabine, the loveliest of them all; ah! it was like
a star rising when she came into the room. And that's Miriam, in her
coachman's cloak, with all the little capes on, and she wore great
top-boots underneath. You young people may say you're unconventional,
but you're nothing compared with her."

Turning the page, she came upon the picture of a very masculine,
handsome lady, whose head the photographer had adorned with an imperial
crown.

"Ah, you wretch!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, "what a wicked old despot you
were, in your day! How we all bowed down before you! 'Maggie,' she used
to say, 'if it hadn't been for me, where would you be now?' And it was
true; she brought them together, you know. She said to my father, 'Marry
her,' and he did; and she said to poor little Clara, 'Fall down and
worship him,' and she did; but she got up again, of course. What else
could one expect? She was a mere child--eighteen--and half dead with
fright, too. But that old tyrant never repented. She used to say that
she had given them three perfect months, and no one had a right to more;
and I sometimes think, Katharine, that's true, you know. It's more than
most of us have, only we have to pretend, which was a thing neither of
them could ever do. I fancy," Mrs. Hilbery mused, "that there was a kind
of sincerity in those days between men and women which, with all your
outspokenness, you haven't got."

Katharine again tried to interrupt. But Mrs. Hilbery had been gathering
impetus from her recollections, and was now in high spirits.

"They must have been good friends at heart," she resumed, "because she
used to sing his songs. Ah, how did it go?" and Mrs. Hilbery, who had a
very sweet voice, trolled out a famous lyric of her father's which had
been set to an absurdly and charmingly sentimental air by some early
Victorian composer.

"It's the vitality of them!" she concluded, striking her fist against
the table. "That's what we haven't got! We're virtuous, we're earnest,
we go to meetings, we pay the poor their wages, but we don't live as
they lived. As often as not, my father wasn't in bed three nights out
of the seven, but always fresh as paint in the morning. I hear him now,
come singing up the stairs to the nursery, and tossing the loaf