speaking, and when to art excitement is added, I get on well enough. But
John, without being excited, says, and cares nothing about them, the
very things I should like to have said, but that will not perfectly
reveal themselves to me till my speech is over."

"But he is not eloquent."

"No; he does not on particular occasions rise above the ordinary level
of his thoughts. His everyday self suffices for what he has to do and
say. But sometimes, if we two have spoken at the same meeting, and I see
the speeches reported--though mine may have been most cheered--I find
little in it, while he has often said perfectly things of real use to
our party."

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY.

"Pleasures of memory! O supremely blest
And justly proud beyond a poet's praise,
If the pure confines of thy tranquil breast
Contain indeed the subject of thy lays."

(Said to be by Rogers.)

A few days after this Emily was coming down the lane leading to John
Mortimer's house, having taken leave of Justina at the railway station.
She was reading a letter just received from Valentine, signed for the
first time in full, Valentine Melcombe. The young gentleman, it
appeared, was quite as full of fun as ever; had been to Visp and
Rifflesdorf, and other of those places--found them dull on the
whole--had taken a bath. "And you may judge of the smell of the water,"
he went on to his sister, "when I tell you that I fell asleep after it,
and dreamt I was a bad egg. I hoped I shouldn't hatch into a bad fellow.
I've been here three days and seen nobody; the population (chiefly
Catholic) consists of three goats, a cock and hen, and a small lake!"

Here lifting up her head as she passed by John's gate, Emily observed
extraordinary signs of festivity about the place. Flags protruded from
various bedroom windows, wreaths and flowers dangling at the end of long
poles from others, rows of dolls dressed in their best sat in state on
the lower boughs of larches, together with tinsel butterflies, frail
balloons, and other gear not often seen excepting on Christmas-trees.

It was Saturday afternoon, a half-holiday; the two little boys, who were
weekly pupils of a clergyman in the immediate neighbourhood, always came
home at that auspicious time, and there remained till Monday morning.

From one of them Emily learned that some epidemic having broken out at
Harrow, in the "house" where Johnnie was, the boys had been