of enchantment for me, a golden haze of memory.  I was allowed a freedom there I was allowed nowhere else, I was petted and made much of, and I used to spend most of my time in sauntering about, just looking, watching, scrutinising things, with the hard and uncritical observation of childhood.  When I got to the place, I was surprised to find that I knew well the look of the house I went to see, though I had not ever entered it.  Two neat, contented, slightly absurd old maiden ladies had lived there, who used to walk out together, dressed exactly alike in some faded fashion.  The laurels and yews still grew thickly in the shrubbery, and shaded the windows of the ugly little parlours.  An old, quiet, respectable maid showed me round; she had been in service there for twenty years, and she was tearfully lamenting over the break-up of the home.  The old ladies had lived there for sixty years.  One of them had died ten years before, the other had lingered on to extreme old age.  The house was like a museum, a specimen of a house of the thirties, in which nothing had ever been touched or changed.  The strange wall-papers and chintzes, the crewel-work chairs, the mirrors, the light maple furniture, the case of moth-eaten humming-birds, the dull engravings of historical pictures, the old books—­the drawing-room table was covered with annuals and keepsakes, Moore’s poems, Mrs. Barbauld’s works—­all had a pathetic ugliness, redeemed by a certain consistency of quality.  And then the poky, comfortable arrangements, the bath-chair in the coach-house, the four-post bedsteads, the hand-rail on the stairs, the sandbags for the doors, all spoke of a timid, invalid life, a dim backwater in the tide of things.  There had been children there at some time, for there were broken toys, collections of dried plants, curious stones, in an attic.  The little drama of the house shaped itself for me, as I walked through the frowsy, faded rooms, with a touching insistence.  This bedroom had never been used since Miss Eleanor died—­and I could fancy the poor, little, timid, precise life flitting away among the well-known surroundings.  This had been Miss Jackson’s favourite room—­it was so quiet—­she had died there, sitting in her chair, a few weeks before.  The leisurely, harmless routine of the quiet household rose before me.  I could imagine Miss Jackson writing her letters, reading her book, eating her small meals, making the same humble and grateful remarks, entertaining her old friends.  Year after year it had gone on, just the same, the clock ticking loud in the hall, the sun creeping round the old rooms, the birds singing in the garden, the faint footsteps in the road.  It had begun, that gentle routine, long before I had been born into the world; and it was strange to me to think that, as I passed through the most stirring experiences of my life, nothing ever stirred or moved or altered here.  Miss Jackson had felt Miss Eleanor’s death very much; she had hardly ever left the house since, and