CHAPTER XII. IN THE BACKGROUND
Surely as the world of night goes round, with clusters of stars thronging after one another, and loose wafts of vapour ever ready to flout them, and the spirit of dreams flitting over us, without any guidance of mind or matter, so surely will the dawn of our own little days bring new things to us, which we cannot understand in the clearest light of our wits beneath the sun. And of this I must give an instance now, sorry as I am to do it.
My sister Grace (the very sweetest girl, always excepting one of course, that ever tied a hat-string), what did she do but take a little touch of Cupid, without knowing anything about it? She denied it strongly, and hotly even; as a Swiss hotel-keeper abjures scarlet fever. But I insisted the more upon it; because it was
