sheep had been bought by him for a penny a piece from a man who used
to stand with a tray of toys in Kensington High Street, as Katharine
had often heard her mother tell. Often she had sat in this room, with
her mind fixed so firmly on those vanished figures that she could
almost see the muscles round their eyes and lips, and had given to
each his own voice, with its tricks of accent, and his coat and his
cravat. Often she had seemed to herself to be moving among them, an
invisible ghost among the living, better acquainted with them than
with her own friends, because she knew their secrets and possessed a
divine foreknowledge of their destiny. They had been so unhappy, such
muddlers, so wrong-headed, it seemed to her. She could have told them
what to do, and what not to do. It was a melancholy fact that they
would pay no heed to her, and were bound to come to grief in their own
antiquated way. Their behavior was often grotesquely irrational; their
conventions monstrously absurd; and yet, as she brooded upon them, she
felt so closely attached to them that it was useless to try to pass
judgment upon them. She very nearly lost consciousness that she was a
separate being, with a future of her own. On a morning of slight
depression, such as this, she would try to find some sort of clue to
the muddle which their old letters presented; some reason which seemed
to make it worth while to them; some aim which they kept steadily in
view--but she was interrupted.

Mrs. Hilbery had risen from her table, and was standing looking out of
the window at a string of barges swimming up the river.

Katharine watched her. Suddenly Mrs. Hilbery turned abruptly, and
exclaimed:

"I really believe I'm bewitched! I only want three sentences, you see,