--comfortable, commodious, ugly enough, except that stolidity
and age did much to soften its ugliness. It had, above all, the air of
being a home--a hospitable open-armed look, as if children had run in
and out of it for years, as if young men had gone out from it to see the
world and come back again to rest, as if young girls had fluttered about
it, confiding their sports and their loves to its ivy-clad walls. Now
there hung about it a silence and sobriety that were like the shadows of
coming oblivion. The gas was turned low in the hall. The old-fashioned
omnibus that came lumbering from the railway with a box for the new maid
seemed to startle the place with its noise.

In the large dining-room four people were sitting in dreary discussion.
The gas-light flared upon heavy mahogany furniture, upon red moreen
curtains and big silver trays and dishes. By the fire sat the two
daughters of the aged woman. They both had grey hair and wrinkled faces.
The married daughter was stout and energetic; the spinster was thin,
careworn and nervous. Two middle-aged men were listening to a complaint
she made; the one was Robert Macdonald the minister, the other was the
family doctor.

'It's no use Robina's telling me that I must coax my mother to eat, as
if I hadn't tried that'--the voice became shrill--'I've begged her, and
prayed her, and reasoned with her.'

'No, no, Miss Macdonald--no, no,' said the doctor soothingly. 'You've
done your best, we all understand that; it's Mistress Brown that's
thinking of the situation in a wrong light; it's needful to be plain and
to say that Mistress Macdonald's mind is affected.'

Robina Brown interposed with indignation and authority.

'My mother has always had her right mind; she's been losing her memory.
All aged people lose their memories.'

The minister spoke with a meditative interest in a psychological
phenomenon. 'Ay, she's been losing it backwards; she forgot who we were
first, and remembered us all as little children; then she forgot us and
your father altogether. Latterly she's been living back in the days when
her father and mother were living at Kelsey Farm. It's strange to hear
her talk. There's not, as far as I know, another being on this wide
earth of all those that came and went to Kelsey Farm that is alive now.'

Miss Macdonald wiped her eyes; her voice shook as she spoke; the
nervousness of fatigue and anxiety accentuated her grief. 'She was
asking me how much butter we m