; she and her husband lived
for the children. They were just going to take them home when they
sickened with some ailment. Mr. Martin at the time was prostrate after
a bad attack of fever. There was no doctor within thirty miles. One
child died, and the mother started with the other on the long drive to
the nearest doctor. The last ten miles it was a dead child she held in
her arms.

When Boggley finished I was silent, remembering the little
chintz-covered chair--empty but for a broken doll.

Now that I have tasted the joys of solitude I don't see how I am to
enjoy living in a crowd again. I am practically alone all day, for
Boggley has long distances to ride and bicycle--and I never was so
happy in my life, I write, and I read, and I fold my hands in newly
acquired Oriental calm (which my bustling, busy little mother most
certainly won't admire), and sit looking before me for hours.

The books lent me by various people are all read long ago, and I have
gone back to those that are always with me.

They are all before me as I write. The little fat green one at the end
of the row is Lamb's _Essays of Elia_: he so well fits some moods, and
certain minutes of the day, that gentle writer. Next is my _Pilgrim's
Progress_, the one I have had since my tenth birthday. Father gave
each of us a copy when we reached the mature age of ten. It was only
on high days and holy-days that we were allowed to look at his
own treasured copy, which stayed behind glass doors in the corner
book-case. The illustrations, I know now, were very fine, and even
then we found them wonderful. Then comes my little old Bible. I
coveted it for years before I got it because it had pages like
five-pound notes; I value it now for other reasons. Next the Bible
is Q's _Anthology of English Verse_, its brave leather cover rather
impaired by the fact that for two mornings Boggley, having mislaid his
strop, has stropped his razor on it. Lastly comes my Shakespeare.

Sometimes in a night-marish moment I wonder what the world would have
been like had there been no Shakespeare. Suppose we had never known
Falstaff, never heard the Clown sing "O Mistress Mine," never laughed
with Beatrice nor masqueraded with Rosalind, never thrilled when
Cleopatra "again for Cydnos to meet Mark Antony" cries "Give me my
robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me."

What would we do when surfeited with the company of those around us if
we couldn't creep away and pass