Kate sighed.
"Hey! Miss Vernon, what was that sigh for?"
"Oh, I was thinking of last Christmas, we were a very pleasant party, though poor Captain, I mean Major Egerton, was so terribly in the blues about leaving England; and now how different everything is! how silently and gradually a great gulf has been opened between the past and the present!"
"Well, well, it is melancholy enough, not to be either a pleasant or a profitable subject of cogitation. Forward, forward, as your favourite, Longfellow, says,
'Let the dead past, bury it's dead,
Act, act, in the living present,
Heart within, and God o'er head!'"
"A word in season, how good it is!" returned Miss Vernon, smiling pensively.
"Well, here we are, I wonder what Mrs. Winter will say to your powers of persuasion?"