ned the literary sense in him as a schoolboy, on holiday from
Harchester, now nearly five decades ago. He judged it a matter of good
omen, moreover,--toying for the moment with kindly superstition--that the
book should issue from a house redeemed by his kinsman from base and
brutal uses and dedicated to the worship of knowledge and of the printed
word. That fat, soft-bodied, mercurial-minded little gentleman--to whom
no record of human endeavour, of human speculation, mental or moral
experiment, came amiss--would surely relish the compliment, if his
curious and genial ghost still, in any sort, had cognizance of this, his
former, dwelling-place.

The Hard, just now, showed a remarkably engaging countenance, the year
standing on the threshold of May.--Mild softly bright weather made amends
for a wet and windy April, with sunshine and high forget-me-not blue
skies shading to silver along the sea-line. The flower-beds, before the
garden house-front, were crowded with early tulips, scarlet, golden, and
shell-pink. Shrubberies glowed with rhododendrons, flamed with azaleas.
At the corner of the battery and sea-wall, misty grey-green plumes of
tamarisk veiled the tender background of grey-blue water and yellow-grey
sand. Birds peopled the scene. Gulls, in strong fierce flight, laughed
overhead. Swallows darted back and forth, ceaselessly twittering, as they
built their cup-shaped mud nests beneath the eaves. Upon the lawn
companies of starlings ran, flapping glossy wings, squealing, whistling;
to the annoyance of a song thrush, in spotted waistcoat and neatly
fitting brown _surtout_, who, now tall, now flattened to the level of the
turf, its head turned sideways, peered and listened, locating the
presence of the victim worm.--Three or four vigorous pecks--the starlings
running elsewhere--to loosen the surrounding soil, and the moist pink
living string was steadily, mercilessly, drawn upward into the
uncompromising light of day, to be devoured wriggling, bit by bit, with
most unlovely gusto.--The chaff-chaff sharpened his tiny saw tipping
about the branches of the fir trees in the Wilderness, along with the
linnets, tits, and gold-finches.

Such, out of doors, was the home world which received Damaris after those
many months of continental travel, on the eve of her twenty-first
birthday. To pass from the dynamic to the static mode must be always
something of an embarrassment and trial, especially to the young with
whom sensati