<p>Georgie headed for his own country, wild with delight of his first long
furlough after the lean seasons. Nothing was changed in that orderly life,
from the coachman who met him at the station to the white peacock that
stormed at the carriage from the stone wall above the shaven lawns. The
house took toll of him with due regard to precedence—first the
mother; then the father; then the housekeeper, who wept and praised God;
then the butler, and so on down to the under-keeper, who had been dogboy
in Georgie's youth, and called him "Master Georgie," and was reproved by
the groom who had taught Georgie to ride.</p>
<p>"Not a thing changed," he sighed contentedly, when the three of them sat
down to dinner in the late sunlight, while the rabbits crept out upon the
lawn below the cedars, and the big trout in the ponds by the home paddock
rose for their evening meal.</p>
<p>"Our changes are all over, dear," cooed the mother; "and now I am getting
used to your size and your tan (you're very brown, Georgie), I see you
haven't changed in the least. You're exactly like the pater."</p>
<p>The father beamed on this man after his own heart,—"youngest major
in the army, and should have had the V.C., sir,"—and the butler
listened with his professional mask off when Master Georgie spoke of war
as it is waged to-day, and his father cross-questioned.</p>
<p>They went out on the terrace to smoke among the roses, and the shadow of
the old house lay long across the wonderful English foliage, which is the
only living green in the world.</p>
<p>"Perfect! By Jove, it's perfect!" Georgie was looking at the round-bosomed
woods beyond the home paddock, where the white pheasant boxes were ranged;
and the golden air was full of a hundred sacred scents and sounds. Georgie
felt his father's arm tighten in his.</p>
<p>"It's not half bad—but hodie mihi, cras tibi, isn't it? I suppose
you'll be turning up some fine day with a girl under your arm, if you
haven't one now, eh?"</p>
<p>"You can make your mind easy, sir. I haven't one."</p>
<p>"Not in all these years?" said the mother.</p>
<p>"I hadn't time, mummy. They keep a man pretty busy, these days, in the
service, and most of our mess are unmarried, too."</p>
<p>"But you must have met hundreds in society—at balls, and so on?"</p>
<p>"I'm like the Tenth, mummy: I don't dance."</p>
<p>"Don't dance! What have you been doing with yourself, then—backing
other men's bills?" said the father.</p>
<p>"Oh, yes; I've done a little of that too; but you see, as things are now,
a man has all his work cut out for him to keep abreast of his profession,
and my days were always too full to let me lark about half the night."</p>
<p>"Hmm!"—suspiciously.</p>
<p>"It's never too late to learn. We ought to give some kind of housewarming
for the people about, now you've come back. Unless you want to go straight
up to town, dear?"</p>
<p>"No. I don't want anything better than this. Let's sit still and enjoy
ourselves. I suppose there will be something for me to ride if I look for
it?"</p>
<p>"Seeing I've been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six weeks
because all the others were being got ready for Master Georgie, I should
say there might be," the father chuckled. "They're reminding me in a
hundred ways that I must take the second place now."</p>
<p>"Brutes!"</p>
<p>"The pater doesn't mean it, dear; but every one has been trying to make
your home-coming a success; and you do like it, don't you?"</p>
<p>"Perfect! Perfect! There's no place like England—when you 've done
your work."</p>
<p>"That's the proper way to look at it, my son."</p>
<p>And so up and down the flagged walk till their shadows grew long in the
moonlight, and the mother went indoors and played such songs as a small
boy once clamoured for, and the squat silver candlesticks were brought in,
and Georgie climbed to the two rooms in the west wing that had been his
nursery and his playroom in the beginning. Then who should come to tuck
him up for the night but the mother? And she sat down on the bed, and they
talked for a long hour, as mother and son should, if there is to be any
future for the Empire. With a simple woman's deep guile she asked
questions and suggested answers that should have waked some sign in the
face on the pillow, and there was neither quiver of eyelid nor quickening
of breath, neither evasion nor delay in reply. So she blessed him and
kissed him on the mouth, which is not always a mother's property, and said
something to her husband later, at which he laughed profane and
incredulous laughs.</p>
<p>All the establishment waited on Georgie next morning, from the tallest
six-year-old, "with a mouth like a kid glove, Master Georgie," to the
under-keeper strolling carelessly along the horizon, Georgie's pet rod in
his hand, and "There's a four-pounder risin' below the lasher. You don't
'ave 'em in Injia, Mast-Major Georgie." It was all beautiful beyond
telling, even though the mother insisted on taking him out in the landau
(the leather had the hot Sunday smell of his youth) and showing him off to
her friends at all the houses for six miles round; and the pater bore him
up to town and a lunch at the club, where he introduced him, quite
carelessly, to not less than thirty ancient warriors whose sons were not
the youngest majors in the army and had not the D.S.O. After that it was
Georgie's turn; and remembering his friends, he filled up the house with
that kind of officer who live in cheap lodgings at Southsea or Montpelier
Square, Brompton—good men all, but not well off. The mother
perceived that they needed girls to play with; and as there was no
scarcity of girls, the house hummed like a dovecote in spring. They tore
up the place for amateur theatricals; they disappeared in the gardens when
they ought to have been rehearsing; they swept off every available horse
and vehicle, especially the governess-cart and the fat pony; they fell
into the trout-ponds; they picnicked and they tennised; and they sat on
gates in the twilight, two by two, and Georgie found that he was not in
the least necessary to their entertainment.</p>
<p>"My word!" said he, when he saw the last of their dear backs. "They told
me they've enjoyed 'emselves, but they haven't done half the things they
said they would."</p>
<p>"I know they've enjoyed themselves—immensely," said the mother.
"You're a public benefactor, dear."</p>
<p>"Now we can be quiet again, can't we?"</p>
<p>"Oh, quite. I've a very dear friend of mine that I want you to know. She
couldn't come with the house so full, because she's an invalid, and she
was away when you first came. She's a Mrs. Lacy."</p>
<p>"Lacy! I don't remember the name about here."</p>
<p>"No; they came after you went to India—from Oxford. Her husband died
there, and she lost some money, I believe. They bought The Firs on the
Bassett Road. She's a very sweet woman, and we're very fond of them both."</p>
<p>"She's a widow, didn't you say?"</p>
<p>"She has a daughter. Surely I said so, dear?"</p>
<p>"Does she fall into trout-ponds, and gas and giggle, and 'Oh, Major
Cottah!' and all that sort of thing?"</p>
<p>"No, indeed. She's a very quiet girl, and very musical. She always came
over here with her music-books—composing, you know; and she
generally works all day, so you won't—"</p>
<p>"'Talking about Miriam?" said the pater, coming up. The mother edged
toward him within elbow-reach. There was no finesse about Georgie's
father. "Oh, Miriam's a dear girl. Plays beautifully. Rides beautifully,
too. She's a regular pet of the household. Used to call me—" The
elbow went home, and ignorant but obedient always, the pater shut himself
off.</p>
<p>"What used she to call you, sir?"</p>
<p>"All sorts of pet names. I'm very fond of Miriam."</p>
<p>"Sounds Jewish—Miriam."</p>
<p>"Jew! You'll be calling yourself a Jew next. She's one of the
Herefordshire Lacys. When her aunt dies—" Again the elbow.</p>
<p>"Oh, you won't see anything of her, Georgie. She's busy with her music or
her mother all day. Besides, you're going up to town tomorrow, aren't you?
I thought you said something about an Institute meeting?" The mother
spoke.</p>
<p>"Go up to town now! What nonsense!" Once more the pater was shut off.</p>
<p>"I had some idea of it, but I'm not quite sure," said the son of the
house. Why did the mother try to get him away because a musical girl and
her invalid parent were expected? He did not approve of unknown females
calling his father pet names. He would observe these pushing persons who
had been only seven years in the county.</p>
<p>All of which the delighted mother read in his countenance, herself keeping
an air of sweet disinterestedness.</p>
<p>"They'll be here this evening for dinner. I'm sending the carriage over
for them, and they won't stay more than a week."</p>
<p>"Perhaps I shall go up to town. I don't quite know yet." Georgie moved
away irresolutely. There was a lecture at the United Services Institute on
the supply of ammunition in the field, and the one man whose theories most
irritated Major Cottar would deliver it. A heated discussion was sure to
follow, and perhaps he might find himself moved to speak. He took his rod
that afternoon and went down to thrash it out among the trout.</p>
<p>"Good sport, dear!" said the mother, from the terrace.</p>
<p>"Fraid it won't be, mummy. All those men from town, and the girls
particularly, have put every trout off his feed for weeks. There isn't one
of 'em that cares for fishin'—really. Fancy stampin' and shoutin' on
the bank, and tellin' every fish for half a mile exactly what you're goin'
to do, and then chuckin' a brute of a fly at him! By Jove, it would scare
me if I was a trout!"</p>
<p>But things were not as bad as he had expected. The black gnat was on the
water, and the water was strictly preserved. A three-quarter-pounder at
the second cast set him for the campaign, and he worked down-stream,
crouching behind the reed and meadowsweet; creeping between a hornbeam
hedge and a foot-wide strip of bank, where he could see the trout, but
where they could not distinguish him from the background; lying almost on
his stomach to switch the blue-upright sidewise through the checkered
shadows of a gravelly ripple under overarching trees. But he had known
every inch of the water since he was four feet high. The aged and astute
between sunk roots, with the large and fat that lay in the frothy scum
below some strong rush of water, sucking as lazily as carp, came to
trouble in their turn, at the hand that imitated so delicately the flicker
and wimple of an egg-dropping fly. Consequently, Georgie found himself
five miles from home when he ought to have been dressing for dinner. The
housekeeper had taken good care that her boy should not go empty, and
before he changed to the white moth he sat down to excellent claret with
sandwiches of potted egg and things that adoring women make and men never
notice. Then back, to surprise the otter grubbing for fresh-water mussels,
the rabbits on the edge of the beechwoods foraging in the clover, and the
policeman-like white owl stooping to the little fieldmice, till the moon
was strong, and he took his rod apart, and went home through
well-remembered gaps in the hedges. He fetched a compass round the house,
for, though he might have broken every law of the establishment every
hour, the law of his boyhood was unbreakable: after fishing you went in by
the south garden back-door, cleaned up in the outer scullery, and did not
present yourself to your elders and your betters till you had washed and
changed.</p>
<p>"Half-past ten, by Jove! Well, we'll make the sport an excuse. They
wouldn't want to see me the first evening, at any rate. Gone to bed,
probably." He skirted by the open French windows of the drawing-room. "No,
they haven't. They look very comfy in there."</p>
<p>He could see his father in his own particular chair, the mother in hers,
and the back of a girl at the piano by the big potpourri-jar. The gardens
looked half divine in the moonlight, and he turned down through the roses
to finish his pipe.</p>
<p>A prelude-ended, and there floated out a voice of the kind that in his
childhood he used to call "creamy" a full, true contralto; and this is the
song that he heard, every syllable of it:</p>
<p>Over the edge of the purple down,<br/>
Where the single lamplight gleams,<br/>
Know ye the road to the Merciful Town<br/>
That is hard by the Sea of Dreams—<br/>
Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,<br/>
And the sick may forget to weep?<br/>
But we—pity us! Oh, pity us!<br/>
We wakeful; ah, pity us!—<br/>
We must go back with Policeman Day—<br/>
Back from the City of Sleep!<br/>
<br/>
Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,<br/>
Fetter and prayer and plough<br/>
They that go up to the Merciful Town,<br/>
For her gates are closing now.<br/>
It is their right in the Baths of Night<br/>
Body and soul to steep<br/>
But we—pity us! ah, pity us!<br/>
We wakeful; oh, pity us!—<br/>
We must go back with Policeman Day—<br/>
Back from the City of Sleep!<br/>
<br/>
Over the edge of the purple down,<br/>
Ere the tender dreams begin,<br/>
Look—we may look—at the Merciful Town,<br/>
But we may not enter in!<br/>
Outcasts all, from her guarded wall<br/>
Back to our watch we creep:<br/>
We—pity us! ah, pity us!<br/>
We wakeful; oh, pity us!—<br/>
We that go back with Policeman Day—<br/>
Back from the City of Sleep<br/></p>
<p>At the last echo he was aware that his mouth was dry and unknown pulses
were beating in the roof of it. The housekeeper, who would have it that he
must have fallen in and caught a chill, was waiting to catch him on the
stairs, and, since he neither saw nor answered her, carried a wild tale
abroad that brought his mother knocking at the door.</p>
<p>"Anything happened, dear? Harper said she thought you weren't—"</p>
<p>"No; it's nothing. I'm all right, mummy. Please don't bother."</p>
<p>He did not recognise his own voice, but that was a small matter beside
what he was considering. Obviously, most obviously, the whole coincidence
was crazy lunacy. He proved it to the satisfaction of Major George Cottar,
who was going up to town to-morrow to hear a lecture on the supply of
ammunition in the field; and having so proved it, the soul and brain and
heart and body of Georgie cried joyously: "That's the Lily Lock girl—the
Lost Continent girl—the Thirty-Mile Ride girl—the Brushwood
girl! I know her!"</p>
<p>He waked, stiff and cramped in his chair, to reconsider the situation by
sunlight, when it did not appear normal. But a man must eat, and he went
to breakfast, his heart between his teeth, holding himself severely in
hand.</p>
<p>"Late, as usual," said the mother. "'My boy, Miss Lacy."</p>
<p>A tall girl in black raised her eyes to his, and Georgie's life training
deserted him—just as soon as he realised that she did not know. He
stared coolly and critically. There was the abundant black hair, growing
in a widow's peak, turned back from the forehead, with that peculiar
ripple over the right ear; there were the grey eyes set a little close
together; the short upper lip, resolute chin, and the known poise of the
head. There was also the small well-cut mouth that had kissed him.</p>
<p>"Georgie—dear!" said the mother, amazedly, for Miriam was flushing
under the stare.</p>
<p>"I—I beg your pardon!" he gulped. "I don't know whether the mother
has told you, but I'm rather an idiot at times, specially before I've had
my breakfast. It's—it's a family failing." He turned to explore
among the hot-water dishes on the sideboard, rejoicing that she did not
know—she did not know.</p>
<p>His conversation for the rest of the meal was mildly insane, though the
mother thought she had never seen her boy look half so handsome. How could
any girl, least of all one of Miriam's discernment, forbear to fall down
and worship? But deeply Miriam was displeased. She had never been stared
at in that fashion before, and promptly retired into her shell when
Georgie announced that he had changed his mind about going to town, and
would stay to play with Miss Lacy if she had nothing better to do.</p>
<p>"Oh, but don't let me throw you out. I'm at work. I've things to do all
the morning."</p>
<p>"What possessed Georgie to behave so oddly?" the mother sighed to herself.
"Miriam's a bundle of feelings—like her mother."</p>
<p>"You compose—don't you? Must be a fine thing to be able to do that.
['Pig-oh, pig!' thought Miriam.] I think I heard you singin' when I came
in last night after fishin'. All about a Sea of Dreams, wasn't it? [Miriam
shuddered to the core of the soul that afflicted her.] Awfully pretty
song. How d' you think of such things?"</p>
<p>"You only composed the music, dear, didn't you?"</p>
<p>"The words too. I'm sure of it," said Georgie, with a sparkling eye. No;
she did not know.</p>
<p>"Yeth; I wrote the words too." Miriam spoke slowly, for she knew she
lisped when she was nervous.</p>
<p>"Now how could you tell, Georgie?" said the mother, as delighted as though
the youngest major in the army were ten years old, showing off before
company.</p>
<p>"I was sure of it, somehow. Oh, there are heaps of things about me, mummy,
that you don't understand. Looks as if it were goin' to be a hot day—for
England. Would you care for a ride this afternoon, Miss Lacy? We can start
out after tea, if you'd like it."</p>
<p>Miriam could not in decency refuse, but any woman might see she was not
filled with delight.</p>
<p>"That will be very nice, if you take the Bassett Road. It will save me
sending Martin down to the village," said the mother, filling in gaps.</p>
<p>Like all good managers, the mother had her one weakness—a mania for
little strategies that should economise horses and vehicles. Her men-folk
complained that she turned them into common carriers, and there was a
legend in the family that she had once said to the pater on the morning of
a meet: "If you should kill near Bassett, dear, and if it isn't too late,
would you mind just popping over and matching me this?"</p>
<p>"I knew that was coming. You'd never miss a chance, mother. If it's a fish
or a trunk I won't." Georgie laughed.</p>
<p>"It's only a duck. They can do it up very neatly at Mallett's," said the
mother, simply. "You won't mind, will you? We'll have a scratch dinner at
nine, because it's so hot."</p>
<p>The long summer day dragged itself out for centuries; but at last there
was tea on the lawn, and Miriam appeared.</p>
<p>She was in the saddle before he could offer to help, with the clean spring
of the child who mounted the pony for the Thirty-Mile Ride. The day held
mercilessly, though Georgie got down thrice to look for imaginary stones
in Rufus's foot. One cannot say even simple things in broad light, and
this that Georgie meditated was not simple. So he spoke seldom, and Miriam
was divided between relief and scorn. It annoyed her that the great
hulking thing should know she had written the words of the song overnight;
for though a maiden may sing her most secret fancies aloud, she does not
care to have them trampled over by the male Philistine. They rode into the
little red-brick street of Bassett, and Georgie made untold fuss over the
disposition of that duck. It must go in just such a package, and be
fastened to the saddle in just such a manner, though eight o'clock had
struck and they were miles from dinner.</p>
<p>"We must be quick!" said Miriam, bored and angry.</p>
<p>"There's no great hurry; but we can cut over Dowhead Down, and let 'em out
on the grass. That will save us half an hour."</p>
<p>The horses capered on the short, sweet-smelling turf, and the delaying
shadows gathered in the valley as they cantered over the great dun down
that overhangs Bassett and the Western coaching-road. Insensibly the pace
quickened without thought of mole-hills; Rufus, gentleman that he was,
waiting on Miriam's Dandy till they should have cleared the rise. Then
down the two-mile slope they raced together, the wind whistling in their
ears, to the steady throb of eight hoofs and the light click-click of the
shifting bits.</p>
<p>"Oh, that was glorious!" Miriam cried, reining in. "Dandy and I are old
friends, but I don't think we've ever gone better together."</p>
<p>"No; but you've gone quicker, once or twice."</p>
<p>"Really? When?"</p>
<p>Georgie moistened his lips. "Don't you remember the Thirty-Mile Ride—with
me—when 'They' were after us—on the beach-road, with the sea
to the left—going toward the lamp-post on the downs?"</p>
<p>The girl gasped. "What—what do you mean?" she said hysterically.</p>
<p>"The Thirty-Mile Ride, and—and all the rest of it."</p>
<p>"You mean—? I didn't sing anything about the Thirty-Mile Ride. I
know I didn't. I have never told a living soul.'"</p>
<p>"You told about Policeman Day, and the lamp at the top of the downs, and
the City of Sleep. It all joins on, you know—it's the same country—and
it was easy enough to see where you had been."</p>
<p>"Good God!—It joins on—of course it does; but—I have
been—you have been—Oh, let's walk, please, or I shall fall
off!"</p>
<p>Georgie ranged alongside, and laid a hand that shook below her
bridle-hand, pulling Dandy into a walk. Miriam was sobbing as he had seen
a man sob under the touch of the bullet.</p>
<p>"It's all right—it's all right," he whispered feebly. "Only—only
it's true, you know."</p>
<p>"True! Am I mad?"</p>
<p>"Not unless I'm mad as well. Do try to think a minute quietly. How could
any one conceivably know anything about the Thirty-Mile Ride having
anything to do with you, unless he had been there?"</p>
<p>"But where? But where? Tell me!"</p>
<p>"There—wherever it may be—in our country, I suppose. Do you
remember the first time you rode it—the Thirty-Mile Ride, I mean?
You must."</p>
<p>"It was all dreams—all dreams!"</p>
<p>"Yes, but tell, please; because I know."</p>
<p>"Let me think. I—we were on no account to make any noise—on no
account to make any noise." She was staring between Dandy's ears, with
eyes that did not see, and a suffocating heart.</p>
<p>"Because 'It' was dying in the big house?" Georgie went on, reining in
again.</p>
<p>"There was a garden with green-and-gilt railings—all hot. Do you
remember?"</p>
<p>"I ought to. I was sitting on the other side of the bed before 'It'
coughed and 'They' came in."</p>
<p>"You!"—the deep voice was unnaturally full and strong, and the
girl's wide-opened eyes burned in the dusk as she stared him through and
through. "Then you're the Boy—my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you
all my life!"</p>
<p>She fell forward on Dandy's neck. Georgie forced himself out of the
weakness that was overmastering his limbs, and slid an arm round her
waist. The head dropped on his shoulder, and he found himself with parched
lips saying things that up till then he believed existed only in printed
works of fiction. Mercifully the horses were quiet. She made no attempt to
draw herself away when she recovered, but lay still, whispering, "Of
course you're the Boy, and I didn't know—I didn't know."</p>
<p>"I knew last night; and when I saw you at breakfast—"</p>
<p>"Oh, that was why! I wondered at the time. You would, of course."</p>
<p>"I couldn't speak before this. Keep your head where it is, dear. It's all
right now—all right now, isn't it?"</p>
<p>"But how was it I didn't know—after all these years and years? I
remember—oh, what lots of things I remember!"</p>
<p>"Tell me some. I'll look after the horses."</p>
<p>"I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?"</p>
<p>"At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong-Kong and Java?"</p>
<p>"Do you call it that, too?"</p>
<p>"You told me it was when I was lost in the continent. That was you that
showed me the way through the mountains?"</p>
<p>"When the islands slid? It must have been, because you're the only one I
remember. All the others were 'Them.'</p>
<p>"Awful brutes they were, too."</p>
<p>"I remember showing you the Thirty-Mile Ride the first time. You ride just
as you used to—then. You are you!"</p>
<p>"That's odd. I thought that of you this afternoon. Isn't it wonderful?"</p>
<p>"What does it all mean? Why should you and I of the millions of people in
the world have this—this thing between us? What does it mean? I'm
frightened."</p>
<p>"This!" said Georgie. The horses quickened their pace. They thought they
had heard an order. "Perhaps when we die we may find out more, but it
means this now."</p>
<p>There was no answer. What could she say? As the world went, they had known
each other rather less than eight and a half hours, but the matter was one
that did not concern the world. There was a very long silence, while the
breath in their nostrils drew cold and sharp as it might have been a fume
of ether.</p>
<p>"That's the second," Georgie whispered. "You remember, don't you?"</p>
<p>"It's not!"—furiously. "It's not!"</p>
<p>"On the downs the other night-months ago. You were just as you are now,
and we went over the country for miles and miles."</p>
<p>"It was all empty, too. They had gone away. Nobody frightened us. I wonder
why, Boy?"</p>
<p>"Oh, if you remember that, you must remember the rest. Confess!"</p>
<p>"I remember lots of things, but I know I didn't. I never have—till
just now."</p>
<p>"You did, dear."</p>
<p>"I know I didn't, because—oh, it's no use keeping anything back!
because I truthfully meant to."</p>
<p>"And truthfully did."</p>
<p>"No; meant to; but some one else came by."</p>
<p>"There wasn't any one else. There never has been."</p>
<p>"There was—there always is. It was another woman—out there—on
the sea. I saw her. It was the 26th of May. I've got it written down
somewhere."</p>
<p>"Oh, you've kept a record of your dreams, too? That's odd about the other
woman, because I happened to be on the sea just then."</p>
<p>"I was right. How do I know what you've done when you were awake—and
I thought it was only you!"</p>
<p>"You never were more wrong in your life. What a little temper you've got!
Listen to me a minute, dear." And Georgie, though he knew it not,
committed black perjury. "It—it isn't the kind of thing one says to
any one, because they'd laugh; but on my word and honour, darling, I've
never been kissed by a living soul outside my own people in all my life.
Don't laugh, dear. I wouldn't tell any one but you, but it's the solemn
truth."</p>
<p>"I knew! You are you. Oh, I knew you'd come some day; but I didn't know
you were you in the least till you spoke."</p>
<p>"Then give me another."</p>
<p>"And you never cared or looked anywhere? Why, all the round world must
have loved you from the very minute they saw you, Boy."</p>
<p>"They kept it to themselves if they did. No; I never cared."</p>
<p>"And we shall be late for dinner—horribly late. Oh, how can I look
at you in the light before your mother—and mine!"</p>
<p>"We'll play you're Miss Lacy till the proper time comes. What's the
shortest limit for people to get engaged? S'pose we have got to go through
all the fuss of an engagement, haven't we?"</p>
<p>"Oh, I don't want to talk about that. It's so commonplace. I've thought of
something that you don't know. I'm sure of it. What's my name?"</p>
<p>"Miri—no, it isn't, by Jove! Wait half a second, and it'll come back
to me. You aren't—you can't? Why, those old tales—before I
went to school! I've never thought of 'em from that day to this. Are you
the original, only Annieanlouise?"</p>
<p>"It was what you always called me ever since the beginning. Oh! We've
turned into the avenue, and we must be an hour late."</p>
<p>"What does it matter? The chain goes as far back as those days? It must,
of course—of course it must. I've got to ride round with this
pestilent old bird-confound him!"</p>
<p>"'"Ha! ha!" said the duck, laughing'—do you remember that?"</p>
<p>"Yes, I do—flower-pots on my feet, and all. We've been together all
this while; and I've got to say good bye to you till dinner. Sure I'll see
you at dinner-time? Sure you won't sneak up to your room, darling, and
leave me all the evening? Good-bye, dear—good-bye."</p>
<p>"Good-bye, Boy, good-bye. Mind the arch! Don't let Rufus bolt into his
stables. Good-bye. Yes, I'll come down to dinner; but—what shall I
do when I see you in the light!"</p>
<p><br/><br/><br/><br/></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />