1890 LAST DAYS AT GEANIES 279 



row going on here in the Free Kirk, which bids fair to 

 end in bloodshed locally, if not disruption generally. 



I am so glad you do not repent going, and am 

 longing to hear what you think of the play. I took 

 Ethel and Ernest partridge-shooting, and had tea out- 

 side. The new hound, ' Dart,' has arrived. He is 

 beautiful, and as gentle as a lamb with the children. 

 This threw us off our guard, and at tea there was a 

 horrible scene, ending in the murder of Sharpe. 1 

 The latter barked at him, and five minutes afterwards 

 was a mangled misery. Have returned Dart with a 

 civil note, for the sake of Norah and Jack, 2 the latter 

 having only been saved by heroic measures on the 

 part of Mytsie. 



Later in the autumn he wrote : 



To Mrs. Henry Polloch. 



Geanies : October 9, 1890. 



My dear Mentor, — The lyric is certainly very 

 pretty, but I am still — and much — more touched 

 by the unrhymed, and perhaps unconscious, poetry 

 that accompanies it. We have, indeed, many associ- 

 ations with Geanies in common ; 3 and as neither the 

 joys nor the sorrows of them can ever return into our 

 lives as they were when they arose, it is perhaps 

 better that they should be kept in our memories as 

 they now are, without being overlaid by future 

 experiences in the same moods and the same cliffs by 

 ,the same sea. ' The water that has passed ' has been 



1 A beautiful terrier. 2 Two more dogs. 



3 This was the last summer at Geanies. 



