CHAPTER LV.
A VENDETTA AND OTHBB THIXGS.
D0E1NO my three days* stay in the town, I woke up every morning
with the impression that I was a boy—for in my dreams the face*
were all yonng again, and looked as they had looked in the old times
—but I went to bed a hundred years old, every night—for meantime
I had been seeing those faces as they are now.
Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, before I had
become adjusted to the changed state of things. I met young Indies
who did not seem to have changed at all; but they fcorned out to be
the daughters of the young ladies I had in mind—sometimes their
grand-damghters. When you are told that a stranger of fifty is &
grandmother, there is nothing surprising about it; but if, on the
contrary, she is a person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems
impossible. You say to yourself, * How can a little girl be a grand-
mother ? * It takes some little time to accept and realise the fact
that while you have been growing old, your friends have not been
standing stilly in that matter.
I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the
women, not the men, I saw men whom thirty years had changed
but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These were good
women; it is very wearing to be good.
There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but he was gome.
Dead, these many years, they said. Once or twice a day, the saddler
used to go tearing down the street, putting on his coafc as he weat;
and then everybody knew a steamboat was coining. Everybody
knew, also, that John Stavely was not expecting Anybody % tbe
boat—or any freight, either 5 and Sfeavely must have known ifeat