house. And this young Mr. Ireton has ideas, too, I believe.

Mr. Ireton is twenty-eight.

That accounts for it.

You don't think they just ought to be allowed to take the common away, do you, grandmother?

It makes no matter what I think.

Of course you don't. None of us do. We couldn't.

You mustn't tease your grandmother, Bridget.

She's a very old lady, and can't speak for herself.

I meant no ill manners, grandmother.

Never mind your manners child. But don't encourage your father. He doesn't need it. This house is all commotion as it is.

I can't help it. There's so much going on everywhere. The King doesn't deal fairly by people, I'm sure. Men like father must say it.

Have you put the lavender in the rooms?

No. I'll take it now.

I don't know what will happen. I sometimes think the world isn't worth quarrelling about at all. And yet I'm a silly old woman to talk like that. But Oliver is a brave fellow—and John, all of them. I want them to be brave in peace—that's the way you think at eighty.

This Mr. Donne is a very good poet, but he's rather hard to understand. I suppose that is being eighty, too. Mr. Herrick is very simple. John Hampden sent me some copies from a friend who knows Mr. Herrick. I like them better than John does.

But Mr. Shakespeare was best of all, I do believe. A very civil gentleman, too. I spoke to him once—that was forty years ago, the year Oliver was born, I remember. He didn't hold with all this talk against kings.

There are kings and kings. Oliver finds no offence in kings—it's in a king.

Well, it's all very dangerous, and I'm too old for it. Not but what Oliver's brain is better than mine. But we have to sit still and watch. However

Mr. Herrick has chosen a nice name for his book. Hesperides. He has taste as well as understanding.

That will be John and Mr. Ireton.