One funny little pet turn of speech to which Rose was addicted comes back to me very vividly as I write. Every one has favourite locutions, and Rose had the habit of prefacing many of her remarks with the phrase “As a matter of fact”; only, being mostly in a hurry to express herself, she used to contract the last three words to one: “As a maffact.” Very few minutes could pass, when we were together and she was unburdening herself on this or that question, without her beginning a sentence: “As a maffact, Dombeen.” * * * * * When the War came Rose was thirteen and I was sixty-five; and we were therefore both non-combatants. But it did not leave us—any more than anyone else—untouched; for I was old enough to be saddened and shocked by the calamities that it bred; and Rose was young enough to be ripe for the new Hedonism which the peace inaugurated and which is still in full swing. Ronnie, the other Rose told me, longed to be in it, but was too delicate, and they remained on their estate throughout its lengthy course. The War found the old Colonel still living, but he did not long survive. He was not of the kind that spends its breath in lamenting the decadence of the Army in present times—I never heard him couple the Service and the dogs—but he had had his little autobiographical weaknesses, in which border skirmishes played no inconspicuous part, and in the presence of the gigantic drama in Belgium and France he found his occupation gone. No one wanted to listen to him any more; and he was too aged and infirm to be of any use. The War must have hit countless other retired officers in this way and in a moment have dried up their streams of reminiscence and emptied all their boasts. The Colonel was, however, a rural gentleman and not a frequenter of clubs, and his lot was comparatively easy; but I saw a steady decline in his strength, and he did not long survive the death of two of his grandsons in the Battle of Mons. * * * * * The Colonel was not our only loss. Mrs. O’Gorman had been declining for some time, and in the early spring she also left us. I have been at many death-beds, and at most the grief was that of the living rather than the dying. Nature has mercifully arranged that most people are ready for the end—even look forward to it. Suffering or weakness has broken down their resistance: the goal they desire is peace. Others, with more fight in them, morphia lulls into acquiescence. But Mrs. O’Gorman needed no drugs, nor were there tears to distress her. Being the last of her clan her house was uninvested by relations. Only the faithful Julia, her servants and I were about. Steadily and quietly her flame lowered and was extinguished.