TIME PASSES

by a red-hot poker among the nettles, or a scrap
of china in the hemlock, that here once some one
had lived; there had been a house.

If the feather had fallen, if it had tipped the
scale downwards, the whole house would have
plunged to the depths to lie upon the sands of
oblivion. But there was a force working; some-
thing not highly conscious; something that
leered, something that lurched; something not
inspired to go about its work with dignified ritual
or solemn chanting. Mrs. McNab groaned;
Mrs. Bast creaked. They were old; they were
stiff; their legs ached. They came with their
brooms and pails at last; they got to work. All of
a sudden, would Mrs. McNab see that the house
was ready, one of the young ladies wrote: would
she get this done; would she get that done; all in
a hurry. They might be coming for the summer;
had left everything to the last; expected to find
things as they had left them. Slowly and pain-
fully, with broom and pail, mopping, scouring,
Mrs. McNab, Mrs. Bast stayed the corruption
and the rot; rescued from the pool of Time that
was fast closing over them now a basin, now a
cupboard; fetched up from oblivion all the
Waverley novels and a tea-set one morning; in
the afternoon restored to sun and - air a brass
fender and a set of steel fire-irons. George,

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