Between the comings and goings of visitors there were delightfully quiet evenings at home, spent during the summer in our lovely porch, or walking about the garden, until "tray time," ten o'clock. When the cooler nights came we had music in the drawing-room, and it is my happiness now to remember on how many evenings I played and sang all his favorite songs and tunes to my father during these last winters while he would listen while he smoked or read, or, in his more usual fashion, paced up and down the room. I never saw him more peacefully contented than at these times.
There were always "improvements"—as my father used to call his alterations—being made at "Gad's Hill," and each improvement was supposed to be the last. As each was completed, my sister—who was always a constant visitor, and an exceptionally dear one to my father—would have to come down and inspect, and as each was displayed, my father would say to her most solemnly:
