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twinkling, and breathless. They are no longer front benchers—to them belongs the mid-distance. Theirs is the partial obscurity of the publisher whose mind is full of plans for a new edition of an old work.
Some more pages and we are nearing the last. Old threads may be picked up here and old friends followed out. That white cross marks a bit of England in a valley below Passchendaele. Ernie—you remember Ernie?—his boy lies under that cross, with his father’s moustache and his mother’s dimple. That spaniel had soft eyes and affectionate habits and died of being run over. Those twins belong to Mary, who was such a good parlourmaid and married a postman who got a D.C.M. during the war and was clever at chip-carving.
“Do you know,” said Jessica, seriously, “I don’t like this portrait of our Edward? He looks so smug in it. A young man like that.”
“Forty,” said her husband. “Forty, my dear!”
Jessica sniffed.
“What's forty? I think I shall speak to Phyllis about him. He wants a good shake-up.”
"Eh?"
“I wonder ?” she said, slowly. “I wonder where that youngest boy of Carlton Meakin’s could be found?”
Edward Freemantle turned an astonished face to his wife.
“Why ever do you wonder that?”
But she only laughed a perplexing little laugh.
“Have you been happy, Edward?”
“Yes,” he said. "I think very happy. I wonder why, sometimes."
He found she was looking at him and somehow it made him feel very content.
She dropped her eyes slowly, as old people must, and they settled on the last page. She pointed with a thin, almost transparent finger.
“Edward the third,” she said, in a glowing voice.
Such a scrubby boy he was, all hands and feet and untidy hair.
“It’s late, Jessica. Time we were abed.”
“Yes,” she nodded, and closed the book gently.
On the lowest stair, while he was lighting the candles, she said :—
“Edward, I’ve thought of something rather nice.”
“Well?”
“As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.”
“You didn’t think of that, you old silly,” he said.
“No, p’r'aps I didn’t, but it’s nice that ends are only beginnings, isn’t it?”
The two candles went twinkling up the stairs, gilding the rail and casting long shadows behind them.
