give it to a favourite nephew who is a
bibliomaniac. I am begging the shocked Miss Peabody to explain that the
volume in question is not for sale, and to ask at the same time if her
correspondent wishes to purchase the Lakes of Killarney or the Giant's
Causeway in its stead. Francesca, in a whirl of excitement, is buying
cobweb linens, harp brooches, creamy poplins with golden shamrocks woven
into their lustrous surfaces; and as for laces, we spend hours in the
shops, when our respective squires wish us to show them the sights of
Dublin.

Benella is in her element, nursing Salemina, who sprained her ankle just
as we were leaving Devorgilla. At the last moment our side-cars were
so crowded with passengers and packages that she accepted a seat in Dr.
Gerald's carriage, and drove to the station with him. She had a few last
farewells to say in the village, and a few modest remembrances to leave
with some of the poor old women; and I afterward learned that the drive
was not without its embarrassments. The butcher's wife said fervently,
"May you long be spared to each other!" The old weaver exclaimed,
"'Twould be an ojus pity to spoil two houses wid ye!" While the woman
who sells apples at the station capped all by wishing the couple "a long
life and a happy death together." No wonder poor Salemina slipped and
twisted her ankle as she alighted from the carriage! Though walking
without help is still an impossibility, twenty-four hours of rubbing and
bathing and bandaging have made it possible for her to limp discreetly,
and we all went to St. Patrick's Cathedral together this morning.

We had been in the quiet churchyard, where a soft, misty rain was
falling on the yellow acacias and the pink hawthorns. We had stood under
the willow-tree in the deanery garden--the tree that marks the site of
the house from which Dean Swift watched the movements of the torches in
the cathedral at the midnight burial of Stella. They are lying side by
side at the foot of a column in the south side of the nave, and a brass
plate in the pavement announces:--

'Here lies Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world by the name
of Stella, under which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. Jonathan
Swift, Dean of this Cathedral.'

Poor Stella, at rest for a century and a half beside the man who caused
her such pangs of love and grief--who does not mourn her?

The nave of the cathedral was dim, and empty of all sightseers save our
own group.