“My body is afraid, Delia, but my soul is filled with joy, and at this minute, when I am sitting here looking at you, and thinking of you and also of your grandmother, whose true daughter you are, I am all gratitude. I think of the days when I used to walk down the lane from the village of Oylegate to Poulbwee. It is a mile walk. You know it as well as I do. You must have walked that lane thousands of times. Oh, I can see you on that lane, walking along, admiring the scenery, missing nothing. That is why my soul is full of joy, when I think of the last minute that makes all the other minutes blaze up, and up, in praise of Almighty God and in recognition of ourselves and the way we are always reaching up, always being better than we are able to be. Your father and I used to walk along that lane from school every day, and then I would cut off across the fields to our place, Cooldearg. Cooldearg is gone; even the house is gone, torn down, and there is not one of my family left. But Poulbwee is still there the way it always was. Your father and I used to have great times. We were the best of friends from the time we were infants. We used to have great talks. I often think, if we could only call back into our minds the words we said when we were children we would know a good deal about ourselves, and what we would know would be the best of ourselves. I used to watch the children out there in the mission — little small black children, very mysterious, very friendly and open. I used to watch them talking among themselves, and when I walked up to them they stopped talking, or if they went on talking it was with me in mind, and what they said was not the same. And it was the same with your father and me when we were children. Even with your grandmother, we watched ourselves. What we said when we were by ourselves was very different from what we said when there was a member of the older generation at hand. And so there is never anybody to remember what the children say, because the children vanish. Nobody ever knows what the children say.”