I'm three years and six
months older than he was when he died. I couldn't very well have been
his mother, but I might have been his elder sister, and that seems to me
such a pleasant fancy. I'm going to start quite fresh this morning, and
get a lot done."

She began her sentence, at any rate, and Katharine sat down at her own
table, untied the bundle of old letters upon which she was working,
smoothed them out absent-mindedly, and began to decipher the faded
script. In a minute she looked across at her mother, to judge her mood.
Peace and happiness had relaxed every muscle in her face; her lips
were parted very slightly, and her breath came in smooth, controlled
inspirations like those of a child who is surrounding itself with a
building of bricks, and increasing in ecstasy as each brick is placed in
position. So Mrs. Hilbery was raising round her the skies and trees of
the past with every stroke of her pen, and recalling the voices of
the dead. Quiet as the room was, and undisturbed by the sounds of the
present moment, Katharine could fancy that here was a deep pool of past
time, and that she and her mother were bathed in the light of sixty
years ago. What could the present give, she wondered, to compare with
the rich crowd of gifts bestowed by the past? Here was a Thursday
morning in process of manufacture; each second was minted fresh by the
clock upon the mantelpiece. She strained her ears and could just hear,
far off, the hoot of a motor-car and the rush of wheels coming nearer
and dying away again, and the voices of men crying old iron and
vegetables in one of the poorer streets at the back of the house. Rooms,
of course, accumulate their suggestions, and any room in which one has
been used to carry on any particular occupation gives off memories
of moods, of ideas, of postures that have been seen in it; so that to
attempt any different kind of work there is almost impossible.

Katharine was unconsciously affected, each time she entered her mother's
room, by all these influences, which had had their birth years ago,
when she was a child, and had something sweet and solemn about them,
and connected themselves with early memories of the cavernous glooms and
sonorous echoes of the Abbey where her grandfather lay buried. All the
books and pictures, even the chairs and tables, had belonged to him,
or had reference to him; even the china dogs on the mantelpiece and the
little shepherdesses with their sheep had been bo