ed fire and
the singing kettle, and introduced to a very old man, who sits on the
settle in the warm chimney-corner, dressed in an ancient smock-frock,
and with both knotted hands clasped on the top of an old oak staff. He
is evidently childish, and breaks now and then into an anile laugh at
the thought, no doubt, of some dead old pot-house jest. A complication
arises through his persisting in taking me for a sister of Roger's, who
died thirty years ago, in early girlhood, and addressing me accordingly.
I struggle a little for my identity, but, finding the effort useless,
resign it.

"This poor ould person is quoite aimless," says his wife with
dispassionate apology; "but what can you expect at noinety-one?"

(Her own years cannot be much fewer.)

I say tritely that it is a great age.

"He's very fatiguin' on toimes!--that he is!" she continues, eying him
with contemplated candor--"he crumbles his wittles to that extent that I
'ave to make him sit upo' the _News of the World_."

As it seems to me that the conversation is taking a painful direction, I
try to divert it by telling my news; but the bloom is again taken off it
by the old man, who declines to be disabused of the idea that the
Peninsular is still raging, and that it is Roger's _grandfather_ who is
returning from that field of glory. After a few more minutes, during
which the old wife composedly tells me of all the children she has
buried--she has to think twice before she can recollect the exact
number--and in the same breath remarks, "How gallus bad their 'taters
were last year," I take my departure, and leave the old man still
nodding his weak old head, and chuckling to the kettle.

On first leaving the house, I feel dashed and sobered. The inertness and
phlegmatic apathy of dry and ugly old age seem to weigh upon and press
down the passionate life of my youth, but I have not crossed a couple of
ploughed fields and seen the long slices newly ploughed, lying rich and
thick in the sun; I have not heard two staves of the throstle's loud
song, before I have recovered myself. I also begin to sing. I am not
very harmonious, perhaps, I never am; and I wander now and then from the
tune; but it is good enough for the stalking geese, my only audience,
except a ragged jackass, who, moved by my example, lifts his nose and
gives vent to a lengthy bray of infinite yearning.

I am half-way home now. I have reached the wood--Brindley Wood;
henceforth I am not very l