s.

This morning I went back, with Emily, to service, and wandered from
chapel to chapel, till nearly luncheon time. Then Sir Lionel came, and
took me up strange, hidden, winding stairs, to the den of the librarian.
It was like stealing into an enchanted castle, where all save the
librarian slept, and had slept for centuries. When it was time to go
away, I was afraid that Sir Lionel might have forgotten the magic spell
which would open the door and let us escape. There were interesting
things there, but we weren't allowed to look at the ones we wanted to
see most, till we were too tired to enjoy them, after seeing the ones we
didn't want to see at all. But you know, in another enchanted castle,
that of the Sleeping Beauty, there was only _one_ lovely princess, and
goodness knows how many snorey bores.

At three, we started to motor out to Stonehenge; and Sir Lionel chose to
be late, because he wanted to be there at sunset, which he knew--from
memory--to be the most thrilling picture for us to carry away in our
heads.

Nobody ever told me what an imposing sight Old Sarum remains, to this
day, so I was surprised and impressed by the giant conical knoll
standing up out of the plain and its own intrenchments. I'd just been
reading about it in the guide-book, how important it used to be to
England, when it was still a city, and how it was a fortress of the
Celts when the Romans came and snatched it from them; but I had no idea
of its appearance. I would have liked to go with Sir Lionel to walk
round the intrenchments, but he asked only Dick. However, Mrs. Senter
volunteered to go, at the last moment, just as they were starting, and
Emily and I were left, flotsam and jetsam, in the car, to wait till they
came back.

I wasn't bored, however, because Emily read a religious novel by Marie
Corelli, and didn't worry to talk. So I could sit in peace, seeing with
my mind's eye the pageant of William the Conqueror reviewing his troops
in the plain over which Old Sarum gloomily towers. Such a lurid plain it
is, this month of poppies, red as if its arid slopes were stained with
the blood of ghostly armies slain in battle.

But it was going back further into history to come to Amesbury. You
know, dear, Queen Guinevere's Amesbury, where she repented in the
nunnery she'd founded, and the little novice sang to her "Too late! Too
late!" When she was buried, King Arthur had "a hundred torches ever
burning about the corpse of the queen.