ir return home from school and look forward to their entry into the
life of the world.

The two girls descended the stairs with their summer hats and sunshades,
and Alice stopped at the door of the schoolroom. It was here that, only
a few years ago, she had interceded with the dear old governess, and
aided Olive to master the difficulties against which the light brain
could not contend singly--the hardships of striving to recall the number
of continents the world possesses, the impossibility of learning to say
definitely if seven times four made twenty-eight or thirty.

At the end of the passage under the stairs the children used to play for
hours, building strange houses out of boxes of bricks, or dressing dolls
in fantastic costumes. Olive had forgotten, but Alice remembered, and
her thoughts wandered through the land of toys. The box of bricks had
come from an aunt that was now dead; the big doll mother had brought
from Dublin when she went to see the oculist about her eyes; and then
there were other toys that suggested nothing, and whose history was
entirely forgotten. But the clock that stood in the passage was well
remembered, and Alice thought how this old-fashioned timepiece used to
be the regulator and confidant of all their joys and hopes. She saw
herself again listening, amid her sums, for the welcome voice that would
call her away; she saw herself again examining its grave face and
striving to calculate, with childish eagerness, if she would have time
to build another Tower of Babel or put another tack in the doll's frock
before the ruthless iron tongue struck the fatal hour.

'Olive, is it possible you don't remember how we used to listen to the
dear old clock when we were children?'

'You are a funny girl, Alice; you remember everything. Fancy thinking of
that old clock! I hated it, for it brought me to lessons when it struck
eleven.'

'Yes, but it brought you out to play when it struck twelve. See! the
hands are just on the hour; let us wait to hear it strike.'

The girls listened vainly for a sound; and Alice felt as if she had been
apprised of the loss of a tried friend when one of the servants told
them the clock had been broken some years ago.

The kitchen windows looked on a street made by a line of buildings
parallel with the house. These were the stables and outhouses, and they
formed one of the walls of the garden that lay behind, sheltered on the
north side by a thin curtain of beeches, fi