"When we had finished talking about Rosamond, he made me tell him how I liked being at Morfa. He feared that the sight of the old places might have brought painful regrets for the old times. I assured him, as I now tell you, dear children, that it has not brought any pain to me. I used to think it would. Now I could laugh at myself, and wonder that I never found out before how much better and dearer the present times are than the past. I told Hilary, as I once before told you, Janet, what a trouble it was to me when he was born, to think that he would never live at Morfa, and how I fancied it was impossible for him to be happy in any other place. Now I begin to see how little happiness depends on outward things; as one gets older, as one sees the end, one learns to smile at the violent wishes of one's youth, and to see that, after all, it has been easy enough to do without a thing that once seemed necessary to one's very life. Dear Hilary put his arm round my neck and kissed me as I said this. He told me I had comforted him, and done him more good than I knew. He would remember my words, and try to believe that a time would come when he, too, should smile at the violent wish of his youth.

"As we were leaving the beach, Hilary pointed

out to me a grassy ledge, nearly at the top of a steep rock, on the southern side of the bay, and told me that Rosamond Lester once climbed up to it to bring down a poor little mountain lamb that had fallen from the top and broken its leg. To look at the steep sides of the rock, one would think only a seabird could reach the ledge, but Hilary assures me that Rosamond not only climbed up, but brought down the lamb in her arms. Hilary was riding on the sands, at some distance from the head, when he saw something white fluttering half way up the rock. He tried to persuade himself that it could not be a person's dress, and happily he did not get near enough to recognise Rosamond till she was within a few yards of the bottom. He must have been much frightened, however; for even while we were talking, the recollection of the danger she had been in, agitated him so, that he put his hands over his face and shuddered.

"Nesta will like to know what became of the lamb. I asked, and Hilary told me that Rosamond carried it home and cared for it till it was quite well; then she took no more notice of it, and it was sent away to the Morfa Bar farm-house. It is now a great lazy sheep, Hilary says, and it has a troublesome habit of

following him about wherever he goes. He calls it troublesome, but he confesses that he always has a lump of rock-salt for it in his pocket, and that he has never left off the habit of feeding and caressing it. Is not that like Hilary? It would be impossible to him to leave off being kind to any creature he had once protected, however ugly, or old, or troublesome it grew."

My next extract is from a letter dated a week later :

:

“I have been thinking, Janet, how much easier it is for some men to be amiable when they have to do with women, than when they are in each other's company. Mr. Carr, now, is really always very pleasant when he and I are together. To me he is almost humble, and when I am obliged to find fault with things he says, and to give him a little lecture, he takes it so prettily, as if I had a right (as I have not) to find fault. I cannot say, however, that his manner to Hilary pleases me; indeed, to tell the truth, I quite dread being in the same room with Mr. Carr and Hilary. They always will talk, and yet they never by any chance get into a conversation that does not become an argument. Hilary means

well, I know, yet I must confess there is a want of kindliness in his way of treating Mr. Carr, that I cannot understand. He will sometimes fix on some remark that Mr. Carr has made (a foolish, high-flown speech, perhaps), and go on all the evening talking about it, showing its absurdity in his downright, matter-of-fact way, till I do not wonder that Mr. Carr grows contemptuous and angry. When he is really roused (and I must allow that he bears a great deal without disturbing himself about it) he can say very cutting, scornful things. The words often don't seem to mean much, or at least I don't catch their meaning; it is the contemptuous expression on his face that distresses me. To-day, I am sorry to say, they had one of these foolish quarrels. It began about a little bit of stone wall that divides two fields behind Morfa Bar farm-house. A briar-rose had crept up this wall, and quite a garden of wild flowers had taken root in a lodgment of earth on the top. Mr. Carr pointed out the flowers to me one day, when we were walking together, and he stood still for more than ten minutes, counting the different colours on that one piece of old wall. He said it was worth all the gardens at Morfa Mawr, and then, in a laughing way, he tried to coax me into making a

solemn promise that I would not betray the existence of this wild garden to Hilary.

"I did not mention it, for I really forgot all about it; but Hilary's sharp eyes spied it out, and, of course, he set a man to work immediately to clear away the weeds. Mr. Carr reproached him with what he called this barbarism, when they met to-day at dinner, and they had a long discussion. I felt that Hilary had done quite right; for, as he says, the flowers would not have stayed on the wall; they would have sent their seeds all over the fields, and cost the farmer I don't know how much labour to root them out. But I wish he had justified his own doings without expressing such disdain for Mr. Carr's taste, and showing so plainly that he thought his arguments in favour of the weeds because they are beautiful, not only very foolish, but even selfish. Mr. Carr did not say much in answer, but what he did say pained and puzzled me extremely. He spoke as if he thought it were a question of right and wrongsomething to do with religion-but such an odd sort of religion; I could not understand him. He spoke of people making a display of building churches for the service of God, while, by destroying all beauty in the world, and looking at it only as a place to make