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Rh story-books are all about how they got it after wonderful adventures. There are no adventures now. The books tell us all this, but I want more. I want to know more: I want to see the old stories with my own eyes; I want to see you in your old dresses, talking in your own old way. The books cannot tell me how you talked and how you looked. I am sure it was not as you talk now—because you never talk."

"There is no reason why we should talk. All the old desires have ceased to be. We no longer want anything or expect anything."

"Come. I shall do my best to bring the Past back to you. First, I have learned who you were. That is why I have called you together. In the old times you all belonged to gentlefolk."

This announcement produced no effect at all. They listened with lack-lustre looks. They had entirely forgotten that there were ever such distinctions as gentle and simple.

"You will remember presently," said Christine, not discouraged. "I have found out in the ancient Rolls your names and your families."

"Names and families," said one of the men, "are gone long ago. Christine, what is the good of reviving the memory of things that can never be restored?"

But the man named Jack Carera, the sailor of whom I have already spoken, stepped forward. I have said that the sailors were a dangerous class, on account of their independence and their good meaning.

"Tell us," he said, "about our families. Why, I, for one, have never forgotten that I was once a gentleman. It is hard to tell now, because they have made us all alike; but for many, many years—I know not how many—we who had been gentlemen consorted together."