k for my godmother, and found her
with Miss Standish, bathing her forehead with eau-de-Cologne.

"Poor little Bawn," she said, "you look tired. Louise has kept you
standing too long. Once set Louise to fitting clothes and she forgets
everything. Could you not sit down here and rest a while before starting
for home?"

"Yes, why not sit with me for a while?" Miss Standish put in eagerly. "I
always find your voice restful, Bawn."

But I would not stay. I had promised my grandmother to be home by
half-past six at latest, and I was not going to have her fretting about
my absence. It was six o'clock now and the shadows were growing longer;
the coolness of evening was coming. The birds were singing their
even-song. As I went down the marble steps in the grassy terraces from
the house I saw the peacock and his lady already at roost in a low tree,
although the darkness would not come for some hours yet, and indeed
would be then only a green twilight.

There was never anything to be afraid of on our roads. Our valley was in
such a quiet isolation, so far away from the main roads, that even a
tramp or an importunate beggar were not to be feared. The labourers
going home from the fields touched their caps with a friendly "God save
you kindly, Miss Bawn." The children by the cottage doors smiled at me
shyly. Even the dogs knew me. It was the road I had taken to the
Creamery and back every day; and I had been familiar with it from my
childhood.

The sun was yet so hot on the exposed road that Dido and I were glad to
get within the shelter of Daly's Wood. Though the sun poured upon the
wood it was cool within it and steeped in a golden haze. The pale stems
of the springing trees looked like so many great candles in a golden
house; there was a sweet sound of falling waters, for a little mountain
stream ran through the wood, and in its neighbourhood the air was damp
and deliciously sweet. Where the water tumbled over broken boulders and
formed a little pool Dido stood to drink, and I stood, too, a minute
listening to the bird-songs of which the wood was full.

When we had turned round and gone on our way I observed that there was
some one sitting on the stile which led out on the road nearly opposite
the postern gate in our park wall and supposed it to be some one resting
there who would rise up to let me pass.

I could not imagine myself being afraid of these quiet places, where, no
matter what happened elsewhere, the people we