len to him if his love for his
mother hadn't kept him from expatriating himself. The Hon. Miss
Ellersby's vacant gate-lodge has been filled up by Kitty Keegan, who
is Mrs. Sheehy's special aversion out of all the world.

XIV

CHANGING THE NURSERIES

To-day the fiat has gone forth, and we are already deep in
consultation over paper and paint, chintz, and carpeting. How many
years I have dreaded it; how many staved off, beyond my hope, the
transformation of those two dear rooms! They have been a shabby corner
in my big, stately house for many a day--a corner to which in the
long, golden afternoons I could steal for an hour and shut out the
world, and nurse my sorrow at my breast like a crying child. You may
have heard Catholics talk about a 'retreat,' a quiet time in which one
shuffles off earthly cares, and steeps one's soul in the silence that
washes it and makes it strong. Such a 'retreat' I have given my heart
in many and many an hour in the old nurseries. I have sat there with
my hands folded, and let the long-still little voices sound sweet in
my ear--the voices of the dead children, the voices of the grown
children whose childhood is dead. The voices cry to me, indeed, many a
time when I have no leisure to hear them. When I am facing my dear man
at the other end of our long dining-table, when I am listening to the
chatter of callers in my drawing-room, at dinner-parties and balls, in
the glare of the theatre, I often hear the cries to which I must not
listen.

A mother has such times, though her matronhood be crowned like mine
with beautiful and dear children, and with the love of the best
husband in the world. I praise God with a full heart for His gifts;
but how often in the night I have wakened heart-hungry for the little
ones, and have held my breath and crushed back my sobs lest the dear
soul sleeping so placidly by my side should discover my inexplicable
trouble. In the nurseries that I shall have no more after to-day, the
memories of them have crowded about my knees like gentle little
ghosts. There were the screened fire-place and the tiny chairs which
in winter they drew near the blaze, and the window overlooking the
pleasance and a strip of the garden, where the wee faces crowded if I
were walking below. Things are just as they were: the little beds
huddled about the wall; the cheap American clock, long done ticking,
on the mantelshelf; the doll's house, staring from all its forlorn
windows,