Till my own grew glazed with a dread surmise,

    And my hat whooped up on my lifted hair,

    And I felt the heart in my breast snap to

    As you've heard the lid of a snuff-box do.

    And they sang, "You're asleep! There is no board-fence,

    And never a Goblin with green-glass eyes!—

    'Tis only a vision the mind invents

    After a supper of cold mince-pies,—

    And you're doomed to dream this way," they said,—

    "

     And you sha'n't wake up till you're clean plum dead!

    "

   It was natural that it should be quiet for Mrs. Cairnes in her empty house. Once there had been such a family of brothers and sisters there! But one by one they had married, or died, and at any rate had drifted out of the house, so that she was quite alone with her work, and her memories, and the echoes in her vacant rooms. She hadn't a great deal of work; her memories were not pleasant; and the echoes were no pleasanter. Her house was as comfortable otherwise as one could wish; in the very centre of the village it was, too, so that no one could go to church, or to shop, or to call, unless Mrs. Cairnes was aware of the fact, if she chose; and the only thing that protected the neighbors from this supervision was Mrs. Cairnes's mortal dread of the sun on her carpet; for the sun lay in that bay-windowed corner nearly all the day, and even though she filled the window full of geraniums and vines and calla-lilies she could not quite shut it out, till she resorted to sweeping inner curtains.

   Mrs. Cairnes did her own work, because, as she said, then she knew it was done. She had refused the company of various individuals, because, as she said again, she wouldn't give them 

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