Sometimes it is Monsieur le Cure, peacefully conning his "Hours," as with slow and thoughtful step he paces round and round. I can now read his calm, benevolent face by the light of half a century's experience of life, and have learned to love that still, black, meditative aspect which I found so antipathetic as a small boy--_he_ is no burner alive of little heretics! This world is big enough for us both--and so is the world to come! And he knows it. Now, at all events! [Illustration: "THIS WORLD IS BIG ENOUGH FOR US BOTH"] Sometimes even a couple of Prendergasts are admitted, or even three; they are not so bad, after all; they have the qualities of their faults, although you might not think it. But very often the old beloved shades arrive with their fishing-nets, and their high spirits, and their ringing Anglo-French--Charlie, and Alfred, and Madge, and the rest, and the grinning, barking, gyrating Medor, who dives after stones. Oh, how it does my heart good to see and hear them! They make me feel like a grandfather. Even Monsieur le Major is younger than I--his mustache less white than mine. He only comes to my chin; but I look up to him still, and love and revere him as when I was a little child. And Dr. Seraskier! I place myself between him and what he is looking at, so that he seems to be looking straight at me; but with a far-away look in his eyes, as is only natural. Presently something amuses him, and he smiles, and his eyes crinkle up as his daughter's used to do when she was a woman, and his majestic face becomes as that of an angel, like hers. _L'ange du sourire!_ And my gay, young, light-hearted father, with his vivacity and rollicking laugh and eternal good-humor! He is just like a boy to me now, le beau Pasquier! He has got a new sling of his own invention; he pulls it out of his pocket, and slings stones high over the tree-tops and far away out of sight--to the joy of himself and everybody else--and does not trouble much as to where they will fall. My mother is young enough now to be my daughter; it is as a daughter, a sweet, kind, lovely daughter, that I love her now--a happily-married daughter with a tall, handsome husband who yodles divinely and slings stones, and who has presented me with a grandson--_beau comme le jour_--for whatever Peter Ibbetson may have been in his time, there is no gainsaying the singular comeliness of little Gogo Pasquier. And Mimsey is just a child angel! Monsieur le Major is infallible. "Elle a toutes les intelligences de la tete et du coeur! Vous verrez un jour, quand ca ira mieux; vous verrez!" That day has long come and gone; it is easy to see all that now--to have the eyes of Monsieur le Major. Ah, poor little Mimsey, with her cropped head and her pale face, and long, thin arms and legs, and grave, kind, luminous eyes, that have not yet learned to smile. What she is to _me!!!!_