t must have been like to see a Shakespeare play for the
first time? Was the Globe filled, I wonder, with a quite unexpectant
first night audience? And did they realise that the words they heard
were deathless words? Imagine hearing for the first time:

'When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver
white....'

and then--'The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.'
Did you ever try to write, Jean?"

"Pamela," said Jean, "if you drop from Shakespeare to me in that sudden
way you'll be dizzy. I have thought of writing and trying to give a
truthful picture of Scottish life--a cross between _Drumtochty_ and _The
House with the Green Shutters_--but I'm sure I shall never do it. And if
by any chance I did accomplish it, it would probably be reviewed as a
'feebly written story of life in a Scots provincial town,' and then I
would beat my pen into a hatpin and retire from the literary arena. I
wonder how critics can bear to do it. I couldn't sleep at nights for
thinking of my victims--"

"You sentimental little absurdity! It wouldn't be honest to praise poor
work."

Jean shook her head. "They could always be a little kind ... Pamela, I
love myself in this coat. You can't think what a delight colours are to
me." She stopped, and then said shyly, "You have brought colour into all
our lives. I can see now how drab they were before you came."

"Oh dear, no, Jean, your life was never drab. It could never be drab
whatever your circumstances, you have so much happiness within yourself.
I don't think anything in life could ever quite down you, and even
death--what of death, Jean?"

Jean looked up from her stocking. "As Boswell said to Dr. Johnson, 'What
of death, Sir?' and the great man was so angry that the little
twittering genius should ask lightly of such a terrifying thing that he
barked at him and frightened him out of the room! I suppose the ordinary
thing is never to think about death at all, to keep the thought pushed
away. But that makes people so _afraid_ of it. It's such a bogey to
them. The Puritans went to the other extreme and dressed themselves in
their grave-clothes every day. Wasn't it Samuel Rutherford who advised
people to 'forefancy their latter end'? I think that's where Great-aunt
Alison got the idea; she certainly made us 'forefancy' ours! But apart
from what death may mean to each of us--life itself gets all its meaning
from death. If we didn't know that we had all