een yet living on in the
time-honoured routine of your old abiding-place. They are to you, at
present, only so many little fly-blows on the scroll of time, so to
speak. But, there was a period when you would have regarded them as of
the utmost moment; and when, the deaths of people whom you thought would
never die, the marriages of those that seemed the most unlikely subjects
for matrimony, the flittings of persons of the "oldest inhabitant"
class--that you calculated would stick-on there for ever, and their
replacement by the advent of new families, whom you would have supposed
to be the last in the world to settle down in the locality in question--
would have been matters of nine days' wonderment.

It was so now with myself in, regard to Saint Canon's.

Horner's engagement, Lady Dasher's contemplated removal, the idea of the
curate's incubus--all of which would have once filled me with surprise,
astonishment, delight--I only looked upon with half-amused interest.

Even the intelligence that Miss Spight had joined the sisterhood
organised by Brother Ignatius, hardly affected me as it would formerly
have done.

I belonged to another world now, as it were; and, the announcements of
births--Mrs Mawley had already presented her lord and master with a
little pledge of her affection--and bridals, and burials, at the two
last of which I might once have assisted, hardly awoke a passing
interest in me!

I was too far removed from the orbit in which these phenomena were
displayed.

I felt that there were not many now in whom I felt concern at Saint
Canon's.

No exceptions, you ask?

Certainly, there were exceptions.

I am astonished at your making the observation.

How could I otherwise "prove the rule," eh?

Min told me that Monsieur Parole d'Honneur was as gay and as full of
anecdote as of yore. She also told me, too, that the kind-hearted
Frenchman having chanced to meet her out one day, long before she had
been able to hear from me directly, had, in the most delicately-
diplomatic way, led the conversation round to America, so that he might
tell her that I was not only well, but doing well!

This was at the time I had written a rapturous note to him, after my
first interview with my friend, "Brown of Philadelphia,"--before, you
may be tolerably certain, that philanthropical polisher had "sloped to
Texas" with the capital Parole d'Honneur endowed me with.

He did not mention that latter fact of his generos