“Doesn’t it seem as if you were a child again?” Kate asked me.  “I am sure this is just the same as the first circus I ever saw.  It grows more and more familiar, and it puzzles me to think they should not have altered in the least while I have changed so much, and have even had time to grow up.  You don’t know how it is making me remember other things of which I have not thought for years.  I was seven years old when I went that first time.  Uncle Jack invited me.  I had a new parasol, and he laughed because I would hold it over my shoulder when the sun was in my face.  He took me into the side-shows and bought me everything I asked for, on the way home, and we did not get home until twilight.  The rest of the family had dined at four o’clock and gone out for a long drive, and it was such fun to have our dinner by ourselves.  I sat at the head of the table in mamma’s place, and when Bridget came down and insisted that I must go to bed, Uncle Jack came softly up stairs and sat by the window, smoking and telling me stories.  He ran and hid in the closet when we heard mamma coming up, and when she found him out by the cigar-smoke, and made believe scold him, I thought she was in earnest, and begged him off.  Yes; and I remember that Bridget sat in the next room, making her new dress so she could wear it to church next day.  I thought it was a beautiful dress, and besought mamma to have one like it.  It was bright green with yellow spots all over it,” said Kate.  “Ah, poor Uncle Jack! he was so good to me!  We were always telling stories of what we would do when I was grown up.  He died in Canton the next year, and I cried myself ill; but for a long time I thought he might not be dead, after all, and might come home any day.  He used to seem so old to me, and he really was just out of college and not so old as I am now.  That day at the circus he had a pink rosebud in his buttonhole, and—­ah! when have I ever thought of this before!—­a woman sat before us who had a stiff little cape on her bonnet like a shelf, and I carefully put peanuts round the edge of it, and when she moved her head they would fall.  I thought it was the best fun in the world, and I wished Uncle Jack to ride the donkey; I was sure he could keep on, because his horse had capered about with him one day on Beacon Street, and I thought him a perfect rider, since nothing had happened to him then.”

“I remember,” said Mrs. Kew, presently, “that just before I was married ‘he’ took me over to Wareham Corners to a caravan.  My sister Hannah and the young man who was keeping company with her went too.  I haven’t been to one since till to-day, and it does carry me back same’s it does you, Miss Kate.  It doesn’t seem more than five years ago, and what would I have thought if I had known ‘he’ and I were going to keep a lighthouse and be contented there, what’s more, and sometimes not get ashore for a fortnight; settled, gray-headed old folks!  We were gay enough in those days.  I know old