The other day, at tea, she asked, 'Do
you still take three lumps, Dr. La Touche? You had always a sweet tooth,
I remember.'... Then they ring the changes in this way: 'You were always
fond of grey, Miss Peabody.' 'You had a great fancy for Moore, in the
old days, Miss Peabody: have you outgrown him, or does the 'Anacreontic
little chap,' as Father Prout called him, still appeal to you?'... 'You
used to admire Boyle O'Reilly, Dr. La Touche. Would you like to see
some of his letters?'... 'Aren't these magnificent rhododendrons, Dr.
La Touche,--even though they are magenta, the colour you specially
dislike?' And so on. Did you chance to look at either of them last
evening, Francesca, when I sang 'Let Erin remember the days of old'?"

"No; I was thinking of something else. I don't know what there is about
your singing, Penny love, that always makes me think of the past and
dream of the future. Which verse do you mean?"

And, still painting, I hummed:--

"'On Lough Neagh's banks, as the fisherman strays,
When the cool, calm eve's declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
Beneath the waters shining.
. . . . . .
Thus shall memory oft, in dreams sublime,
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over,
And, sighing, look thro' the waves of Time,
For the long-faded glories they cover.'

"That is what our two dear middle-aged lovers are constantly doing
now,--looking at the round towers of other days, as they bend over
memory's crystal pool and see them reflected there. It is because he
fears that the glories are over and gone that Dr. Gerald is troubled.
Some day he will realise that he need not live on reflections, and he
will seek realities."

"I hope so," said Francesca philosophically, as she folded her work;
"but sometimes these people who go mooning about, and looking through
the waves of Time, tumble in and are drowned."

Chapter XXIX. Aunt David's garden.

'O wind, O mighty, melancholy wind,
Blow through me, blow!
Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind
From long ago.'
John Todhunter.

No one ever had a better opportunity than we, of breathing in, so far
as a stranger and a foreigner may, the old Celtic atmosphere, and of
reliving the misty years of legend before the dawn of history; when

'Long, long ago, beyond the space
Of twice two hundred years,