the hidden
emotions of the heart, these exquisite toys have thus been
enabled to gain a soul, a soul composed of sentience and of
memory. I think that as they lie all the long, long years in
those carved and scented boxes which are like little tombs, they
remember the lights and the flowers and the perfumes, the glimmer
and gleam of jewels and silks, the frothy fall of laces, the
laughter and whispers and glances, the murmured word, the stifled
sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used to brush
them lightly; and the poor things wonder a bit wistfully what has
become of all that gay and lovely life, all that perished bravery
and beauty that once they knew. So I am quite sure this
apparently soulless bit of carved ivory sighs inaudibly to feel
again the touch of a warm and young hand, to be held before gay
and smiling eyes, to have a flower-fresh face bent over it once
more.

"Accept it, then, my child, with your old friend's love. Use it in
your happy hours, dream over it a little, sigh lightly; and then
smile to remember that this is your Hour, that you are young, and
life and love are yours. It is in such youthful and happy smiles
that we whose day declines may relive for a brief and bright space
our golden noon. Shall I tell you a secret, before your time to
know it? _Youth alone is eternal and immortal!_ How do I know?
_'Et Ego in Arcadia vixi!'_"

Mary Virginia showed me that letter, long afterward, and I have
inserted it here, although I suppose it really isn't at all relevant.
But I shall let it stand, because it is so like my mother!

John Flint made for the schoolgirl a most wonderful tray with handles
and border of hammered and twisted copper. The tray itself was covered
with a layer of silvery thistle-down; and on this, hovering above
flowers, some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So
beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed, so
carefully was the work done, that you might fancy only the glass which
covered them kept them from escaping.

"You will remember telling me, when you were going away to grow
up," wrote John Flint, "to watch out for any big fine fellows
that came by of a morning, because they'd be messengers from you
to the Parish House people. Big and little they've come, and
I've played like they were all of them your carriers. So you see
we had word of you every single day of all these years y