You'll laugh when you read this, and say that I'm dramatizing my feelings and writing for effect; but if you've got any heart at all, you'd cry if you saw me (me of all girls!) buried alive out here without a single soul to speak to who's as young as I am--hushed if I laugh by mistake, scowled at if I let myself move quickly, catching old age every hour I stay here." "Why, Alice, just think of it! There's not a person or a thing in and out of this house that's not old.

I don't mean old as we thought of it at school, thirty and thirty-five, but really and awfully old.

The house is the oldest for miles round.

My grandfather is seventy-two, and my grandmother's seventy.

The servants are old, the trees are old, the horses are old; and even the dogs lie about with dim eyes waiting for death." "When Mother was here, it was bearable.