'GOD'S PEACE' 303
To visit her meant to a child to go to fairyland. There were always curious things to see and hear, and besides one was given the most lovely coffee, coffee with sugar-candy, which was not put in the cup, but was crunched and sucked while one en- joyed the nectar.
I paid her a visit to-day. In the long sand- strewn corridor stood now, as then, old women who courtesied and put their heads together curiously, and I recognised again the well-known atmosphere of lavender, stuffiness, and prudish cleanliness. I knocked on the door of the room where my friend had lived for half a century, while member after member was laid in her coffin and carried away. In the long, narrow room, with a window looking over the vegetable garden of the institution, sat four old women. Each on her own territory, a quarter of the room which was just lar^e enough to hold a bed on the one wall, a chest of drawers and wash-stand on the other, and in between two chairs. My entrance caused bewildered curiosity amongst the room's inhabitants. The knitting fell from their hands, and they looked up inquiringly to find out which of them the strange gentleman had come to visit. I discovered my friend at once enthroned on the prima-donna's place near the window, withered and grey, and even thinner than before, but she had stilV her bright, clever eyes. She grew quite pink from emotion, and opened her arms to press me to her meagre bosom. 'Yes fancy, it is really he, and he comes here to see me.'
