day to you too ma am said my aunt turning suddenly upon his sister let me see you ride a donkey over my green again and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders i knock your bonnet off and tread upon it it would require a painter and no common painter too to my aunt s face as she delivered herself of this very unexpected sentiment and miss s face as she heard it but the manner of the speech no less than the matter was so fiery that miss without a word in answer put her arm through her brother s and walked out of the cottage my aunt remaining in the window looking after them prepared i have no doubt in case of the donkey s to carry her threat into instant execution no attempt at defiance being made however her face gradually relaxed and became so pleasant that i was to kiss and thank her which i did with great and with both my arms clasped round her neck i then shook hands with mr dick who shook hands with me a great many times and hailed this happy close of the proceedings with repeated bursts of laughter you ll consider yourself guardian with me of this child mr dick said my aunt i shall be delighted said mr dick to be the guardian of david s son very good returned my aunt that s settled i have been thinking do you know mr dick that i might call him certainly certainly call him certainly said mr dick david s son s you mean returned my aunt yes to be sure yes said mr dick a little abashed my aunt took so kindly to the notion that some ready made clothes which were purchased for me that afternoon were marked in her own handwriting and in marking ink before i put them on and it was settled that all the other clothes which were ordered to be made for me a complete was that afternoon should be marked in the same way thus i began my new life in a new name and with everything new about me now that the state of doubt was over i felt for many days like one in a dream i never thought that i had a curious couple of in my aunt and mr dick i never thought of anything about myself distinctly the two things in my mind were that a the personal history and experience had come upon the old life � which seemed to lie in the haze of an distance and that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at and s no one has ever raised that curtain since i have lifted it for a moment oven in this narrative with a reluctant hand and dropped it gladly the remembrance of that life is with so much pain to me with so much mental suffering and want of hope that i have never had the courage even to examine how long i was doomed to lead it whether it lasted for a year or more or less i do not know i only know that it was and ceased to be and that i have written and there i leave it xv i make another beginning mr dick and i soon became the best of friends and very often when his day s work was done went out together to fly the great eveiy day of his life he had a long sitting at the memorial which never made the least progress however hard he labored for king charles the first always strayed into it sooner or later and then it was thrown aside and another one begun the patience and hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments the mild perception he had that there was something wrong about king charles the first the feeble efforts he made to keep him out and the certainty with which he came in and tumbled the memorial out of all shape made a deep impression on me what mr dick supposed would come of the memorial if it were completed where he thought it was to go or what he thought it was to do he knew no more than anybody else i believe nor was it at all necessary that he should trouble himself with such questions for if anything were certain under the sun it was certain that the memorial never would be finished it was quite an affecting sight i used to think to see him with the when it was up a great height in the air what he had told me in his room about his in its the statements on it which were nothing but old leaves of might have been a fancy with him sometimes but not when he was out looking up at the in the sky and feeling it pull and at his hand he never looked so serene as he did then i used to fancy as i sat by him of an evening on a green slope and saw him watch the high in the quiet air that it lifted his mind out of its confusion and bore it such was my boyish thought into the skies as he wound the string in and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light until it fluttered to the ground and lay there like a dead thing he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream and i remember to have seen him take it up and look about him in a lost way as if they had both come down together so that i pitied him with all my heart while i advanced in friendship and intimacy with mr dick i did not go backward in the favor of his friend my aunt she took so of david kindly to me that in the course of a few weeks 