TIME PASSES

difficult these days; they had never come all these
years; just sent her money; but never wrote, never
came, and expected to find things as they had left
them, ah dear! Why the dressing-table drawers
were full of things (she pulled them open), hand-
kerchiefs, bits of ribbon. Yes, she could see Mrs.
Ramsay as she came up the drive with the washing.

" Good-evening, Mrs. McNab," she would say.

She had a pleasant way with her. The girls
all liked her. But dear, many things had changed
since then (she shut the drawer); many families
had lost their dearest. So she was dead; and
Mr. Andrew killed; and Miss Prue dead too,
they said, with her first baby; but every one had
lost some one these years. Prices had gone up
shamefully, and didn't come down again neither.
She could well remember her in her grey cloak.

" Good-evening, Mrs. McNab," she said, and
told cook to keep a plate of milk soup for her—
quite thought she wanted it, carrying that heavy
basket all the way up from town. She could see
her now, stooping over her flowers; (and faint and
flickering, like a yellow beam or the circle at the
end of a telescope, a lady in a grey cloak, stooping
over her flowers, went wandering over the bed-
room wall, up the dressing-table, across the wash-
stand, as Mrs. McNab hobbled and ambled,
dusting, straightening).

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