"
I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder. He was translating
Gray's _Elegy_ into French; he had not got very far, and seemed to be
stumped by the line--
_"And leaves the world to darkness and to me."_
Mimsey was silently looking over his other shoulder, her thumb in her
mouth, one arm on the back of his chair. She seemed to be stumped also:
it was an awkward line to translate.
I stooped and put my hand to Medor's nose, and felt his warm breath. He
wagged his rudiment of a tail, and whimpered in his sleep. Mimsey said--
"Regarde Medor, comme il remue la queue! _C'est le Prince Charmant qui
lui chatouille le bout du nez._"
Said my mother, who had not spoken hitherto: "Do speak English, Mimsey,
please."
Oh, my God! My mother's voice, so forgotten, yet so familiar, so
unutterably dear! I rushed to her, and threw myself on my knees at her
feet, and seized her hand and kissed it, crying, "Mother, mother!"
A strange blur came over everything; the sense of reality was lost. All
became as a dream--a beautiful dream--but only a dream; and I woke.
* * * * *
I woke in my small hotel bedroom, and saw all the furniture, and my hat
and clothes, by the light of a lamp outside, and heard the ticking of
the clock on the mantel-piece, and the rumbling of a cart and cracking
of a whip in the street, and yet felt I was not a bit more awake than I
had been a minute ago in my strange vision--not so much!
I heard my watch ticking its little tick on the mantel-piece by the side
of the clock, like a pony trotting by a big horse.
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