pursuit of them all his life. He was apt to take up one subject of
interest after another, and to be for the time completely absorbed in
it. And, I must tell you, that whatever the subject might be, so long
as his head was full of it, the house seemed full of it too. It
influenced the conversation at meals, the habits of the household, the
names of the pet animals, and even of the children. I was called Mary,
in a fever of chivalrous enthusiasm for the fair and luckless Queen of
Scotland, and Fatima received her name when the study of Arabic had
brought about an eastern mania. My father had wished to call her
Shahrazád, after the renowned sultana of the 'Arabian Nights' but when
he called upon the curate to arrange for the baptism, that worthy man
flatly rebelled. A long discussion ended in my father's making a list
of eastern names, from which the curate selected that of Fatima as
being least repugnant to the sobriety of the parish registers. So
Fatima she was called, and as she grew up pale, and moon-faced, and
dark-eyed, the name became her very well."

"Was it this Fatima who went out visiting with you?" asked Ida.

"Yes, my dear; and now as to the visit. The invitation came on my
thirteenth birthday.

"One's birthday is generally a day of some importance. A very notable
day whilst one is young, but less so when one is old, when one is
being carried quickly through the last stages of life, and when it
seems hardly worth while to count time so near the end of the journey.
Even in youth, however some birthdays are more important than others.
I remember looking forward to my tenth birthday as to a high point of
dignity and advancement; and the just pride of the occasion on which I
first wrote my age with more figures than one. With similar feelings,