elve o'clock
approaches to carry on the beautiful fiction that there is still only one
clock in London, and they have to hold their noses in the air to watch
for the moment when it is going to strike. But in the midst of the light
and life of this splendid city I know my heart will go back with a tender
twinge to the little dark streets on the edge of the sea, where the
Methodist choirs will be singing, 'Hail, smiling morn,' preparatory to
coffee and currant cake.

"Who will be your 'first foot' this year, I wonder? It was John Storm
last year, you remember, and being as dark as a gipsy, he made a perfect
_qualtagh_. [* Manx for "first foot."] And how we laughed when, disguised
in the snow that was falling at the time, he pretended to be a beggar and
came in just as grandfather was reading the bit about the Good Shepherd,
and how he loved his lambs--and then I found him out! Ah me!

"I am looking perfectly dazzling in a new hat to-day, having been going
about hitherto in one of those little frights that used to be cocked up
on the top of your hair like a hen on a cornstack. But now I am carrying
about the Prince of Wales's feathers, and if he could only see me himself
in them!----

"You see what a scatter-brained creature I am! Leaving the hospital has
made me grow so much younger every day that I am almost afraid I may come
to contemplate short frocks. But really it's the first time I've looked
nice for an eternity, and now I entirely retract and repent me of all I
said about wishing to be a man. Being a girl, I'll put up with it, and if
all the old mushroom says on that head also is true---- But then men are
such funny things, bless them! Glory.

"P.S.--No word from John Storm yet. Apparently he never thinks of us
now--of me at all events--and I suppose he has resigned himself and taken
the vows. That's one kind of religion, I dare say, but I can't understand
it; and I don't know how a dog, even, can be nailed up to a wall and not
go mad. In the night lying in bed I sometimes think of him. A dark cell,
a bench for a bed, a crucifix, and no other furniture, praying with
trembling limbs and chattering teeth--No; such things are too high for
me; I can not reach to them.

"It seems impossible that _he_ can be in London too. What a place this
London is! Such a mixture! Fashion, religion, gaiety, devotion, pride,
depravity, wealth, poverty! I find that for a girl to succeed in London
her moral colour must be heightened