se was satisfactory, and Mrs. Cantwell, moved to
give a sample of her bygone prowess, executed a hippopotamus-like hop
and shuffle among the rustling, orange beech leaves of last year.

"Polkas and Mazoorkas!" she exclaimed. "Them was all the go in my
time! Come on here, Barty, ye omadhaun! I believe I could dance you
off those long legs of yours this minute, if I was to give me mind to
it!"

Barty, thus adjured by his great-aunt, drew near. Mrs. Cantwell was
not a person to be lightly disobeyed, but his dark eyes were full of
apprehension. What might Aunt Bessie not say! She was incalculable,
terrible.

There are old people who appear to find an indemnity for their lost
youth in permitting to themselves, in dealing with later generations,
a scarifying freedom of humour in connection with subjects which once
they held sacred (for there are few souls that have not at some time
enshrined a tender emotion).

Barty had suffered before now from Aunt Bessy, and he thought that if
she made of him an offence to Miss Talbot-Lowry, he would straightway
rush into the river and drown himself. Aunt Bessy, however,
potentially Rabelaisian though she might be, was perfectly aware of
the fact that there is a time to speak and a time to keep silence.

"See here, Barty," she said, "let you go on now, and tell your mother
not to be waiting tea for me. I'll take me own time. Tell her never
fear I'll turn up, only I like to go me own pace!" She turned to
Christian. "Go on you too, my dear; I'm well enough pleased with me
own company, and I hate to be delaying you. I'll sit down for a while
and admire the scenery."

Thus did Aunt Bessy, as she complacently told herself, watch over the
interests of her great-nephew, and though her method was crude, it
indisputably achieved its object.

Christian and Barty Mangan walked on in silence that was made
companionable by the gurgling whisper of the river behind its screen
of hazels and alders; a whisper broken now and again by the tittering
laugh of the flying water over a shallow place, like someone with a
good story that he cannot quite venture to tell out loud.

Barty was saying to himself, distractedly: "What'll I say to her?
What'll I talk to her about?" with each repetition winding himself,
like a cocoon, deeper in webs of shyness.

Christian's social perceptions were hypersensitive, and the _cris de
coeur_ of her suffering companion were only too audible to her
spiritual ear. At ei