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TIME PASSESdifficult these days; they had never come all theseyears; just sent her money; but never wrote, nevercame, and expected to find things as they had leftthem, ah dear! Why the dressing-table drawerswere full of things (she pulled them open), hand-kerchiefs, bits of ribbon. Yes, she could see Mrs.Ramsay as she came up the drive with the washing.

"Good-evening, Mrs. McNab," she would say.

She had a pleasant way with her. The girlsall liked her. But dear, many things had changedsince then (she shut the drawer); many familieshad lost their dearest. So she was dead; andMr. Andrew killed; and Miss Prue dead too,they said, with her first baby; but every one hadlost some one these years. Prices had gone upshamefully, and didn't come down again neither.She could well remember her in her grey cloak.

"Good-evening, Mrs. McNab," she said, andtold cook to keep a plate of milk soup for her—quite thought she wanted it, carrying that heavybasket all the way up from town. She could seeher now, stooping over her flowers; (and faint andflickering, like a yellow beam or the circle at theend of a telescope, a lady in a grey cloak, stoopingover her flowers, went wandering over the bed-room wall, up the dressing-table, across the wash-stand, as Mrs. McNab hobbled and ambled,dusting, straightening).211