The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse
by Michael Fairless [Margaret Fairless Barber]
The Grey Brethren
Contents
The Grey Brethren
A Song of Low Degree
A German Christmas Eve
A Christmas Idyll
The Manifestation
All Souls' Day in a German Town
By Rivers and Streams
Spring
A Lark's Song
'Luvly Miss'
Four Stories Told To Children:
The Dreadful Griffin
The Discontented Daffodils
The Fairy Fluffikins
The Story of the Tinkle-Tinkle
The Grey Brethren
Some of the happiest remembrances of my childhood are of days spent
in a little Quaker colony on a high hill.
The walk was in itself a preparation, for the hill was long and
steep and at the mercy of the north-east wind; but at the top,
sheltered by a copse and a few tall trees, stood a small house,
reached by a flagged pathway skirting one side of a bright trim
garden.
I, with my seven summers of lonely, delicate childhood, felt, when
I gently closed the gate behind me, that I shut myself into Peace.
The house was always somewhat dark, and there were no domestic
sounds. The two old ladies, sisters, both born in the last
century, sat in the cool, dim parlour, netting or sewing. Rebecca
was small, with a nut-cracker nose and chin; Mary, tall and
dignified, needed no velvet under the net cap. I can feel now the
touch of the cool dove-coloured silk against my cheek, as I sat on
the floor, watching the nimble fingers with the shuttle, and
listened as Mary read aloud a letter received that morning,
describing a meeting of the faithful and the 'moving of the Spirit'
among them. I had a mental picture of the 'Holy Heavenly Dove,with its wings of silvery grey, hovering over my ...
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