It is already a long time since I was a little girl. Sometimes, when I look out upon the world and see how many changes have come about, how different many things are from what I can remember them, I could believe that a still longer time had passed since my childhood than is really the case. Sometimes, on the contrary, the remembrance of things that then happened comes over me so very vividly, so very real-ly, that I can scarcely believe myself to be as old as I am.

"Wherefore and whence we are ye cannot know." "The Winds' Song," Light of Asia.-Edwin Arnold The first thing that little Gratian Conyfer could remember in his life was hearing the wind blow. It had hushed him to sleep, it had scolded him when he was naughty, it had laughed with him at merry times, it had wailed and sobbed when he was in sorrow. For the wind has many ways of blowing, and no one knew this better than Gratian, and no one had more right to boast an intimate acquaintance with the wind than he. You would be sure to say so yourself if you could see the place where the boy was born...

"Hast thou seen that lordly castle, That castle by the sea? Golden and red above it The clouds float gorgeously." Trans. of Uhland: Longfellow. Do you remember Gratian-Gratian Conyfer, the godson of the four winds, the boy who lived at the old farmhouse up among the moors, where these strange beautiful sisters used to meet? Do you remember how full of fancies and stories Gratian's little head was, and how sometimes he put them into words to please Fergus, the lame child he loved so much? The story I am now going to tell you is one of these. I think it was their favourite one. I can not say...

A very little girl was sitting on the rug in front of a brightly burning fire. She was amusing herself with picture books, a number of which were scattered about her, but her small face was flushed, her eyes were heavy, and she seemed restless and dissatisfied. She was suffering from a very bad cold. "I can't read, and I can't see the picshures," she said complainingly, "my eyes hurts, and my head too. You read to me, Harvey."

Autumn-scarcely late autumn yet-and the day had been mild. But as the afternoon wore on towards evening, there came the chilliness and early gloom inevitable at the fall of the year-accompanied, to those who are sensitive to such things, by the indescribable touch of melancholy never present in the same way at other seasons.

"No," said Alix, "that's not a good plan at all. It's perfectly stupid. If you've no better ideas than that, Rafe, we needn't talk about it any more." Rafe looked and felt very snubbed indeed. He was ten, she was nine. But she generally took the lead; not always, as I daresay you will see when you hear more about them, but generally. They were a nice little pair, and they were constantly together, at lessons, at play, at everything. This was a convenient arrangement, for they were a good deal younger than the other brothers and sisters of the family, and what Rafe would have been without...

He was spoilt-deplorably, absurdly spoilt. But, so far, that was perhaps the worst that could fairly be said against him. There was genuine manliness still, some chivalry even, yet struggling spasmodically to make itself felt, and-what was practically, perhaps, of more account as a preservative-some small amount of originality in his character. He had still a good deal to learn, and something too to unlearn before he could take rank as past-master in the stupid worldliness of his class and time. For he was neither so blase nor so cynical as he flattered himself, but young enough to affect...

Lettice moved to the window. She choked down a little sob which was beginning to rise in her throat, and by dint of resolutely gazing out at what was before her, tried to imagine not only that she was not crying, but that she had not, never had had, the slightest inclination to cry.

Hathercourt Church is not beautiful, though the internal evidence in favour of its having at one time been so is considerable. It has suffered sorely at the hands of plasterers and white-washers; yet the utmost efforts of these misguided people have not altogether succeeded in effacing the traces of a better state of things-there is still grandeur in the sweep of the lofty roof, oak-raftered behind its dingy white covering; still "meaning and mystery" in the quaintly varying windows; much satisfaction for the learned in such matters, and indeed for the unlearned too, in the unmistakable...

The children sat round me in the gloaming. There were several of them; from Madge, dear Madge with her thick fair hair and soft kind grey eyes, down to pretty little Sybil-Gipsy, we called her for fun, -whom you would hardly have guessed, from her brown face and bright dark eyes, to be Madge's "own cousin." They were mostly girls, the big ones at least, which is what one would expect, for it is not often that big boys care much about sitting still, and even less about anything so sentimental as sitting still in the twilight doing nothing. There were two or three little boys however, nice...