fore you and all the pleasures of youth behind?
Anyhow, we don't, either you or I--and so there's an end on't.

O Pandora! I have promised myself that I would take a
great-grandchild of Barty's on a flying-machine from Marsfield to
London and back in half an hour--and that great-grandchild can't
well be born for several years--perhaps not for another twenty!

And now, gentle reader, I've had my little say, and I'm a good deal
better, thanks, and I'll try not to talk about myself any more.

Except just to mention that in the summer of 1876 I contested East
Rosherville in the Conservative interest and was successful--and
owed my success to the canvassing of Barty and Leah, who had no
politics of their own whatever, and would have canvassed for me just
as conscientiously if I'd been a Radical, probably more so! For if
Barty had permitted himself any politics at all, he would have been
a red-hot Radical, I fear--and his wife would have followed suit.
And so, perhaps, would I!

Part Tenth

"Je suis alle de bon matin
Cueillir la violette,
Et l'aubepine, et le jasmin,
Pour celebrer ta fete.
J'ai lie de ma propre main
Bouton de rose et romarin
Pour couronner ta blonde tete.

"Mais de ta royale beaute
Sois humble, je te prie.
Ici tout meurt, la fleur, l'ete,
La jeunesse et la vie:
Bientot, bientot ce jour sera,
Ma belle, ou l'on te portera
Dans un linceul, pale et fletrie."

--A _Favorite Song of_ Mary Trevor's.

That was a pleasant summer.

First of all we went to Ste. Adresse, a suburb of Havre, where there
is very good bathing--with rafts, _perissoires_, _pique-tetes_ to
dive from--all those aquatic delights the French are so clever at
inventing, and which make a "station balneaire" so much more amusing
than a mere British watering-place.

We made a large party and bathed together every morning; and Barty
and I taught the young ones to dive and do "la coupe" in the true
orthodox form, with that free horizontal sweep of each alternate arm
that gives it such distinction.

It was very good fun to see those rosy boys and girls taking their
"hussardes" neatly without a splash from the little platform at the
top of the pole, and solemnly performing "la coupe" in the wake of
their papa; one on his back. Right out to sea they went, I bringing
up the rear--and the faithful Jean-Baptiste in attendance