e lilac beat against the leaded window. I could see
the flowers through an open pane, and smell their delightful perfume.
There was an apple tree in view, too, with all its blossoms hanging in
pink limpness.

I had forgotten my grandfather and grandmother sitting by the library
fire, within the hooded settle that made the fireside like a little
room; and they had forgotten my presence, if indeed they had known of
it.

"Bawn is the very moral of what I was at her age," my grandmother said.
"Have you noticed, Toby"--my grandfather also was a Theobald--"how tall
she grows? And how she sways in walking like a poplar tree? She has my
complexion before it ran in streaks, and my hair before it faded, and
my eyes before they were dim. She has the carriage of the head which
made them call me the Swan of Dunclody. She will be fifteen come
Michaelmas, and she shall have my pearls for her neck."

I heard her in an excessive surprise. My grandmother had been esteemed a
great beauty in her day and had been sung by the ballad-singers. Was it
possible that my looks could be like hers? I had not thought about them
hitherto any more than my cousin had about his. It was with almost a
sense of relief that I heard my grandfather's reply.

"The child is well enough," he said, "but as for being so like you, that
she is not, nor ever will have your share of beauty. As for your spoilt
roses I do not see them, nor the dimmed eyes, nor the faded hair. You
were lovely when I saw you first, and you are no less lovely in my sight
to-day."

"In your sight--at seventy!" my grandmother said; and I could picture to
myself the well-pleased expression of her dear face.

As for my Uncle Luke, of him I have but a dim memory, yet it is of
something bonny. To be sure I have his picture in my grandmother's
boudoir to remind me of him, a fair, full-lipped, smiling and merry
face, with dark brown hair which would have curled if it were permitted.
His comeliness survived even the hideous fashion of men's dress of his
day, and my memory of him is of one in riding-breeches and a scarlet
coat, for I think that must have been how I saw him oftenest.

He used to lift me to his shoulders and let me climb upon his head, and
I remember that it seemed very fine to me to survey the world from that
eminence.

I could have been no more than six years of age when my Uncle Luke
vanished out of my surroundings.

At that time Theobald had not come to be an inmate of A