Mr. F. B., my cousin, had a very pretty country house and demesne on the banks of Lough Dan, County Wicklow, and was the Squire of the district, a sort of County Wicklow Sir Roger de Coverly. He had a little flock of children and a wife upon whom he depended a good deal. Every day she took the children for a walk, and if she stayed away a long time, as would occasionally happen on a fine day, and he missed her, he would bring out the dinner-gong and beat it, sending its mellow voice rolling among the hills. And his wife would say 'We must return, my dears, I hear your father calling.' Everyone liked that house and its despotically indulgent master and gentle mistress and the happy children who are now old people. Everything about that house partook of a sort of civility not to be found every where. The coachman, when required to yoke the car, would come out of the stable yard to the front of the house and give a loud halloo, and having done so would go back, and you would hear presently from far away down in the valley of the demesne the rapid hoof-beats of a horse, a handsome grey horse I remember, and like rushing wind he would gallop past you into the yard behind the house, eager to leave the solitude of his pasturage for the open road. There were other horses, and there were dogs and cats, all pleasant and friendly. And there were beehives that made a pleasant hum in the summer air, and there was a pony which no one in the house, not even the coachman, could catch. 'Herself', the mistress of the house, would have to come out on to the lawn, and he would let himself be taken and she would lead him to the coachman. There was also a wise old donkey, who, when we dined, would thrust his head through the window and ask to be fed. Dining there, I said 'Don't give him any thing and see what he will do.' 'He will come into the hall' they said, and when we heard him blundering about in that not particularly spacious place, I wanted them to try him further, but they said 'No, for he will bray'. Why did people like staying in that house? Partly because of the great natural beauty by which it was surrounded, and partly because of the great cordiality of your welcome from all that numerous company of men women and children. And yet there was something else. It was that they were a quaintly interesting people, not modern at all, just mediæval, who stirred the historical sense and made you think of some golden age when no one was in a hurry and so all had time to enjoy themselves, and for the sake of enjoyment to be courteous and witty and pleasant. There was an old butler and an old French woman who did the cooking. Indeed everything flavoured of 'tanned antiquity' except the brood of pretty children, who, as I remember, did on my first visit keep all together, bright and gay, with a life of their own, and rather silent. I was at the awkward age when a boy becomes self-conscious and is at his ease with no one.