espeare to say so. "Different altogether.
And I've never thought, for my part, that Hamlet was as mad as they make
out. What is your opinion, Mr. Peyton?" For, as there was a minister of
literature present in the person of the editor of an esteemed review,
she deferred to him.

Mr. Peyton leant a little back in his chair, and, putting his head
rather on one side, observed that that was a question that he had never
been able to answer entirely to his satisfaction. There was much to be
said on both sides, but as he considered upon which side he should say
it, Mrs. Hilbery broke in upon his judicious meditations.

"Lovely, lovely Ophelia!" she exclaimed. "What a wonderful power it
is--poetry! I wake up in the morning all bedraggled; there's a yellow
fog outside; little Emily turns on the electric light when she brings
me my tea, and says, 'Oh, ma'am, the water's frozen in the cistern, and
cook's cut her finger to the bone.' And then I open a little green book,
and the birds are singing, the stars shining, the flowers twinkling--"
She looked about her as if these presences had suddenly manifested
themselves round her dining-room table.

"Has the cook cut her finger badly?" Aunt Eleanor demanded, addressing
herself naturally to Katharine.

"Oh, the cook's finger is only my way of putting it," said Mrs. Hilbery.
"But if she had cut her arm off, Katharine would have sewn it on again,"
she remarked, with an affectionate glance at her daughter, who looked,
she thought, a little sad. "But what horrid, horrid thoughts," she wound
up, laying down her napkin and pushing her chair back. "Come, let us
find something more cheerful to talk about upstairs."

Upstairs in the drawing-room Cassandra found fresh sources of pleasure,
first in the distinguished and expectant look of the room, and then in
the chance of exercising her divining-rod upon a new assortment of human
beings. But the low tones of the women, their meditative silences, the
beauty which, to her at least, shone even from black satin and the knobs
of amber which encircled elderly necks, changed her wish to chatter to
a more subdued desire merely to watch and to whisper. She entered
with delight into an atmosphere in which private matters were being
interchanged freely, almost in monosyllables, by the older women who now
accepted her as one of themselves. Her expression became very gentle and
sympathetic, as if she, too, were full of solicitude for the world which
was s