birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh
in the tumbling chimneys.




_The Rose_


The old lady had always been proud of the great rose-tree in her
garden, and was fond of telling how it had grown from a cutting
she had brought years before from Italy, when she was first
married. She and her husband had been travelling back in their
carriage from Rome (it was before the time of railways), and on
a bad piece of road south of Siena they had broken down, and had
been forced to pass the night in a little house by the roadside.
The accommodation was wretched of course; she had spent a
sleepless night, and rising early had stood, wrapped up, at her
window, with the cool air blowing on her face, to watch the
dawn. She could still, after all these years, remember the blue
mountains with the bright moon above them, and how a far-off
town on one of the peaks had gradually grown whiter and whiter,
till the moon faded, the mountains were touched with the pink
of the rising sun, and suddenly the town was lit as by an
illumination, one window after another catching and reflecting
the sun's beams, till at last the whole little city twinkled and
sparkled up in the sky like a nest of stars.

That morning, finding they would have to wait while their
carriage was being repaired, they had driven in a local