good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright,
because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to
sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how
she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at
midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept;
but she said "those innocents would do her no harm"; and how
frightened I used to be, tho in those days I had my maid to sleep with
me, because I was never half so good or religious as she--and yet I
never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows, and tried
to look courageous.

Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to
the great house in the holidays, where I, in particular, used to spend
many hours by myself in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars
that had been emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem
to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I never
could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast
empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and
carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out--sometimes in
the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself,
unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me--and
how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever
offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now
and then, and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the
old melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red
berries and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look
at; or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden
smells around me; or basking in the orangery, till I could almost
fancy myself ripening, too, along with the oranges and the limes, in
that grateful warmth; or in watching the dace that darted to and fro
in the fish-pond at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a
great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent state, as if
it mocked at their impertinent friskings. I had more pleasure in these
busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flavors of peaches,
nectarines, oranges, and such like common baits of children. Here John
slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not
unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both
seemed willing to relinquish them for the present