, I am sincerely
sorry for you, but why waste every night renewing the whole painful
experience? Would it not be better forgotten? Good Heavens, madam,
suppose we living folk were to spend our lives wailing and wringing our
hands because of the wrongs done to us when we were children? It is all
over now. Had he lived, and had you married him, you might not have been
happy. I do not wish to say anything unkind, but marriages founded upon
the sincerest mutual love have sometimes turned out unfortunately, as
you must surely know.

Do take my advice. Talk the matter over with the young men themselves.
Persuade them to shake hands and be friends. Come in, all of you, out of
the cold, and let us have some reasonable talk.

Why seek you to trouble us, you poor pale ghosts? Are we not your
children? Be our wise friends. Tell me, how loved the young men in your
young days? how answered the maidens? Has the world changed much, do you
think? Had you not new women even then? girls who hated the everlasting
tapestry frame and spinning-wheel? Your father's servants, were they so
much worse off than the freemen who live in our East-end slums and sew
slippers for fourteen hours a day at a wage of nine shillings a week?
Do you think Society much improved during the last thousand years? Is it
worse? is it better? or is it, on the whole, about the same, save that
we call things by other names? Tell me, what have YOU learned?

Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, even for ghosts.

One has had a tiring day's shooting. One is looking forward to one's
bed. As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes from behind
the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what is in store for
one: a two or three hours' talk with rowdy old Sir Lanval--he of the
lance. We know all his tales by heart, and he will shout them. Suppose
our aunt, from whom we have expectations, and who sleeps in the next
room, should wake and overhear! They were fit and proper enough stories,
no doubt, for the Round Table, but we feel sure our aunt would not
appreciate them:--that story about Sir Agravain and the cooper's wife!
and he always will tell that story.

Or imagine the maid entering after dinner to say--

"Oh, if you please, sir, here is the veiled lady."

"What, again!" says your wife, looking up from her work.

"Yes, ma'am; shall I show her up into the bedroom?"

"You had better ask your master," is the reply. The tone is suggestive
of an u