pretty place of our childhood" and all its associations, that our
greatest pleasure of all was to live our old life over again and again,
and make Gogo and Mimsey and our parents and cousins and M. le Major go
through their old paces once more; and to recall _new_ old paces for
them, which we were sometimes able to do, out of stray forgotten bits of
the past; to hunt for which was the most exciting sport in the world.

Our tenderness for these beloved shades increased with familiarity. We
could see all the charm and goodness and kindness of these dear fathers
and mothers of ours with the eyes of matured experience, for we were
pretty much of an age with them now; no other children could ever say as
much since the world began, and how few young parents could bear such a
scrutiny as ours.

Ah! what would we not have given to extort just a spark of recognition,
but that was impossible; or to have been able to whisper just a word of
warning, which would have averted the impending strokes of inexorable
fate! They might have been alive now, perhaps--old indeed, but honored
and loved as no parents ever were before. How different everything would
have been! Alas! alas!

And of all things in the world, we never tired of that walk through the
avenue and park and Bois de Boulogne to the Mare d'Auteuil; strolling
there leisurely on an early spring afternoon, just in time to spend a
midsummer hour or two on its bank, and watch the old water-rat and the
dytiscus and the tadpoles and newts, and see the frogs jump; and then
walking home at dusk in the school-room of my old home; and then back to
war, well-lighted "Magna sed Apta" by moonlight through the avenue on
New Year's Eve, ankle-deep in snow; all in a few short hours.