s capacity for ignoring the past,
and, indeed, everything except a monotonous diet, naturally gave
her mind a bias towards the future, and hope grew in her heart
unconsciously, without reminding her that it might have been despair.
A bad alarm, when the creature was six months old, that an enteric
attack might end fatally, had revealed to its mother how completely
it had taken possession of her own life, and what a power for
compensation there was even in its most imperious and tyrannical
habits. As it gradually became articulate--however unreasonable it
continued--her interest in its future extinguished her memories of her
own past, and she found herself devising games for baby before the
little character was old enough to play them, and costumes before she
was big enough to wear them. By the time Saratoga Villa had become
Krakatoa, Miss Sally had had time to benefit by a reasonable
allowance of the many schemes her mother had developed for her
during her infancy. Had all the projects which were mooted for her
further education at this date been successfully carried out, she
would have been an admirable female Crichton, if her reason had
survived the curriculum. Luckily for her, she had a happy faculty
for being plucked at examinations, and her education was consequently
kept within reasonable bounds.

There was, however, one department of culture in which Sally outshot
all competitors. This was swimming. She would give a bath's length at
the Paddington Baths to the next strongest swimmer in the Ladies'
Club, and come in triumphant in a race of ten lengths. It was a grand
sight to see Sally rushing stem on, cleaving the water with her head
almost as if breath were an affectation, and doubling back at the end
while the other starters were scarcely half-way. Or shooting through
the air in her little blue costume straight for the deepest water, and
then making believe to be a fish on the shiny tiles at the bottom.

Her mother always said she was certain that if that little monkey
had managed to wriggle through some hole into the sea, on her voyage
home, she would have swum after the ship and climbed up the rudder
chains. Possibly, but she was only twelve months old! If, however, she
had met with an early death, her mother's lot would have lacked its
redemption. The joint life of the two supplies a possible answer
to the conundrum that has puzzled us. For in a certain sense the
absorption of her own existence in that of