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 All agree to go out to Spain again in search of our old jollity.

week passed by, and then Dawson, short-sighted as he was in his selfishness, began to perceive that things were not coming all right, as he had expected. Once or twice when I went into his shop, I caught him sitting idle before his lathe, with a most woe-begone look in his face.

"What's amiss, Jack?" asks I, one day when I found him thus. He looked to see that the door was shut, and then says he, gloomily:

"She don't sing as she used to, Kit; she don't laugh hearty."

I hunched my shoulders.

"She doesn't play us any of her old pranks," continues he. "She don't say one thing and go and do t'other the next moment, as she used to do. She's too good."

What could I say to one who was fond enough to think that the summer would come back at his wish and last for ever?

"She's not the same, Kit," he goes on. "No, not by twenty years. One would say she is older than I am, yet she's scarce the age of woman. And I do see she gets more pale and thin each day. D'ye think she's fretting for him?" 281