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SEED TIME.
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us; something new, unimagined, and wonderful meets our eyes at every step. Into my heart comes a dim ache that is not keen pleasure or satiety, but a passionate regret that my soul is not bigger, grander, capable of holding more of the great tide of rapture that sweeps through me in such a mighty flood. When Amberley comes for us, I turn away as one in a dream; from a long way off I seem to hear her exclamation at our condition; though, indeed, I am well aware that we are as forlorn, dirty, dripping little wretches as any to be found in the kingdom, all save Alice, over whom untidiness and dirt hold no power.

As we go inland my senses seem to come back to me, and I hail with delight the jolly, red-brick face of our new abode, which appears to smile jovially upon us and bid us kindly welcome. Inside it is in a most immoral, delicious state of topsy-turvydom—luggage, servants, children, and animals, all mixed up in most admired disorder; babies crying, small fry falling downstairs, servants rifling half-filled boxes, canaries shrieking for water and groundsel, Paul Pry cursing his fate with peculiar bitterness and intensity from his perch on Minerva's head, to which he has evidently betaken himself for safety. It is a fine hurly-burly, and if papa could only walk in and see it all, his appearance would put the finishing stroke to the scene and make it Bedlam.

We sit down to a nondescript meal, but can scarcely eat for talking. A thousand tongues would not express the half that we feel; and oh! how bald the words are that language provides for expressing a great delight. Deeply impressed as Jack is, he can find no words whereby to convey his admiration of the ocean than by those of "jolly" and "stunning."

It is too late to go out again this evening, so we go to bed that we may be able to rise with the first streak of daylight on the