t desire to see the old house all the time, but we had so
many engagements. Now, when my godmother wanted sleep and darkness but
was loth to leave me alone seemed to me an excellent moment.

"I shall go and see Bridget Kelly," I said, "while you rest. And when I
come back you will be better."

"Not alone, Bawn?"

"You seem to forget I am twenty."

"But--a country mouse--and other things. I went about freely when I was
your age, though the time was far more strict. But I could not let you
walk about the city alone, child. Your grandmother would have a fit if
she heard of such a thing."

At last I prevailed on her to let me go, on the understanding that I
should take a cab which should wait to bring me back. I had a thousand
times rather have had one of the outside cars, but I knew she would not
hear of it unless she was with me, so I resigned myself to the
stuffiness and rattling of a Dublin cab.

We crossed the city and climbed a steep hill and came presently to a
region of darkness and desolation as it seemed to me, in which the
houses were intolerably dreary--high, black houses that shut out the
sky, fallen on evil days, since they were all sooty and grimy, with
windows which had not been cleaned for years, many of them broken, and
twisted and rusty railings guarding the areas.

I shuddered at the thought of the people who lived in such places.

I could see that they had once been places of consideration but now they
were slums. Here and there a mean shop stood out, or the old house had
been turned into a pawn office, or a builder's or baker's. Dirty
children sat on the pavements or played in the gutters, while their
dirty mothers gossiped in groups; and the men lounged to and from the
public-houses, which were, indeed, the only bright spots in those
dreadful streets.

I was relieved, when at last the cab stopped, that I had come to the end
of my journey.

The last street down which we had driven was drearier than the rest, in
a sense, but more respectable. There were wire blinds to all the lower
windows, and there was no sign of life in the short street from end to
end.

Our house crossed the end of the street, which was in a way an approach
to it. It stood within stone walls, and was a great square building with
wings thrown out, the style of it the pseudo-classical which was so much
in favour in Ireland in the eighteenth century.

There was a great gate in the middle of the long wall; at one side of