"street" through one portion of it. There still lingers in her heart a coy belief in little green-clad oak-men, and flower-elves, and subtle sylvan creatures of fancy; indeed, it was only the other day that she asked me, "How does the sun keep up in the sky? Is it hanging on a fairy tree?" but I notice a growing impatience at "sham stories," and a preference for what has really happened,—"something about the Romans, or the Danes or Saxons, or Jesus." When I begin some wonderful saga, she looks up alertly, "True?"—then settles down to her enjoyment.
The shadowy figures of our old England perplex as much as they delight her imagination. I believe she cherishes a wild hope of finding some day the tiled floor of a Roman villa in a corner of her garden, "like the one in the Cotswolds, you know, father; Miss Jessie saw it." I find a note of the following conversation, just after the last hug had been given and the gas was being turned down to a peep:
W. V. The Ancient Britons are all dead, are they not?
Mother. Oh yes, of course; long ago.
W. V. Then they can't come and attack us now, can they?
Mother. No! No one wants to attack us. Besides, we are Britons ourselves, you know.
W. V. [after a pause]. I suppose we are the Ancient Britons' little babies. How funny!
And so to sleep, with, it may be, lively dreams springing out of that fearsome legend which Miss Jessie inscribes (in letters of fire) on the blackboard as a writing exercise: "England was once the home of the Britons. They were wild and savage."
In spite of her devotion to history and her love of truth, I fear W. V. cannot be counted on for accuracy. What am I to say when, in a rattle-pate mood, she tells me that not only Julius Cæsar but Oliver Cromwell was lost on board the "White Ship,"—like needles in a haystack? Her perception of the lapse of time and the remoteness of events is altogether untrustworthy. Last August we went across the Heath to visit the tumulus of Boadicea. As we passed the Ponds the sparkling of the water in the sun lit up her fancy,—"Wasn't it like fairies dancing?" After a little silence she was anxious to know whether there was a wreath on Boadicea's grave. Oh no. "Not any leaves either?" No, all the people who knew her had died long ago. There used to be two pine-trees, but they were dead too,—only two broken trunks left, which she could see yonder against the sky. A pause, and then, "We might have taken some flowers." Poor queen of old days, hear this, and smile and take solace! "If she hadn't poisoned herself, would she be alive now?" (Did she poison herself? How one forgets!) Alas, no! she, too, would have been dead long ago. A strange mystery, this of the long, long, long time that has gone by.
When I told her the story of the hound Gelert—"True?"—and described how, after the Prince had discovered that the child was safe, and had turned, full of pity and remorse, to the dying hound, poor Gelert had just strength to lick his hand before falling back dead, the licking of the hand moved her deeply and set her thinking for hours. Next day she wanted to know whether "that Gelert Prince" was still alive. No. Well, the Prince's son? No. His son then? No; it was all long, long ago.
It is incomprehensible to her that "every one" should have died so long ago. She does not understand how it happens that even I, venerable as I am, did not know the Druids, or the Saxons, or any of "those old Romans." "You are very old, aren't you, father?—thirty-four? " "I am more than thirty-five, dear!" "That is a lot older than me," somewhat dubiously. "Nearly six times." After a long pause: "What was your first little girl's name?" "Violet, dear." "How old would she have been?" "Nearly twenty, dearie." "Did I ever see her, father?" "No, chuck." "Did she ever see me?" N Who can tell? Perhaps, perhaps.
All these things appeal strongly to her imagination. What a delight it is to her to hear read for the twentieth time that passage about the giant Atlas in "The Heroes": "They asked him, and he answered mildly, pointing to the seaboard with his mighty hand, 'I can see the Gorgons lying on an island far away; but this youth can never come near them unless he has the hat of darkness.'" And they touch her feelings more nearly than I should have thought. On many occasions we have heard her crying shortly after being tucked up for the night. Some one always goes to her, for it is horrible to leave a child crying in the dark; and the cause of her distress has always been a mysterious pain, which vanishes at the moment any one sits down beside her. One evening, however, I had been reading her "The Wreck of the 'Hesperus,'" and while she
