“Not much better, I fear: but no worse, I am thankful to say.”

“Let us sit here awhile, and have a quiet chat,” she said. The calmness—almost indifference—of her manner quite took me by surprise. I little guessed what a fierce restraint she was putting upon herself.

“One can be so quiet here,” she resumed. “I come here every—every day.”

“It is very peaceful,” I said.

“You got my letter?”

“Yes, but I delayed writing. It is so hard to say—on paper—”

“I know. It was kind of you. You were with us when we saw the last of——” She paused a moment, and went on more hurriedly. “I went down to the harbour several times, but no one knows which of those vast graves it is. However, they showed me the house he died in: that was some comfort. I stood in the very room where—where——.” She struggled in vain to go on. The flood-gates had given way at last, and the outburst of grief was the most terrible I had ever witnessed. Totally regardless of my presence, she flung herself down on the turf, burying her face in the grass, and with her hands clasped round the little marble cross, “Oh, my darling, my darling!” she sobbed. “And God meant your life to be so beautiful!”

I was startled to hear, thus repeated by Lady Muriel, the very words of the darling child whom I had seen weeping so bitterly over the dead hare. Had some mysterious influence passed, from that sweet fairy-spirit, ere she went back to Fairyland, into the human spirit that loved her so dearly? The idea seemed too wild for belief. And yet, are there not ‘more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy’?

“God meant it to be beautiful,” I whispered, “and surely it was beautiful? God’s purpose never fails!” I dared say no more, but rose and left her. At the entrance-gate to the Earl’s house I waited, leaning on the gate and watching the sun set, revolving many memories—some happy, some sorrowful—until Lady Muriel joined me.

She was quite calm again now. “Do come in,” she said. “My father will be so pleased to see you!”

The old man rose from his chair, with a smile, to welcome me; but his self-command was far less than his daughter’s, and the tears coursed down his face as he grasped both my hands in his, and pressed them warmly.

My heart was too full to speak; and we all sat silent for a minute or two. Then Lady Muriel rang the bell for tea. “You do take five o’clock tea, I know!” she said to me, with the sweet playfulness of manner I remembered so well, “even though you ca’n’t work your wicked will on the Law of Gravity, and make the teacups descend into Infinite Space, a little faster than the tea!”

This remark gave the tone to our conversation. By a tacit mutual consent, we avoided, during this our first meeting after her great sorrow, the painful topics that filled our thoughts, and talked like light-hearted children who had never known a care.

“Did you ever ask yourself the question,” Lady Muriel began, à propos of nothing, “what is the chief advantage of being a Man instead of a Dog?”

“No, indeed,” I said: “but I think there are advantages on the Dog’s side of the question, as well.”

“No doubt,” she replied, with that pretty mock-gravity that became her so well: “but, on Man’s side, the chief advantage seems to me to consist in having pockets! It was borne in upon me—upon us, I should say; for my father and I were returning from a walk—only yesterday. We met a dog carrying home a bone. What it wanted it for, I’ve no idea: certainly there was no meat on it——”

A strange sensation came over me, that I had heard all this, or something exactly like it, before: and I almost expected her next words to be “perhaps he meant to make a cloak for the winter?” However what she really said was “and my father tried to account for it by some wretched joke about pro bono publico. Well, the dog laid down the bone—not in disgust with the pun, which would have shown it to be a dog of taste—but simply to rest its jaws, poor thing! I did pity it so! Won’t you join my Charitable Association for supplying dogs with pockets? How would you like to have to carry your walking-stick in your mouth?”

Ignoring the difficult question as to the raison d’être of a walking-stick, supposing one had no hands, I mentioned a curious instance, I had once witnessed, of reasoning by a dog. A gentleman, with a lady, and child, and a large dog, were down at the end of a pier on which I was walking. To amuse his child, I suppose, the gentleman put down on the ground his umbrella and the lady’s parasol, and then led the way to the other end of the pier, from which he sent the dog back for the deserted articles. I was watching with some curiosity. The dog came racing back to where I stood, but found an unexpected difficulty in picking up the things it had come for. With the umbrella in its mouth, its jaws were so far apart that it could get no firm grip on the parasol. After two or three failures, it paused and considered the matter.

Then it put down the umbrella and began with the parasol. Of course that didn’t open its jaws nearly so wide, and it was able to get a good hold of the umbrella, and galloped off in triumph. One couldn’t doubt that it had gone through a real train of logical thought.

“I entirely agree with you,” said Lady Muriel: “but don’t orthodox writers condemn that view, as putting Man on the level of the lower animals? Don’t they draw a sharp boundary-line between Reason and Instinct?”

“That certainly was the orthodox view, a generation ago,” said the Earl. “The truth of Religion seemed ready to stand or fall with the assertion that Man was the only reasoning animal. But that is at an end now. Man can still claim certain monopolies—for instance, such a use of language as enables us to utilise the work of many, by ‘division of labour.’ But the belief, that we have a monopoly of Reason, has long been swept away. Yet no catastrophe has followed. As some old poet says, ‘God is where he was.’”

“Most religious believers would now agree with Bishop Butler,” said I, “and not reject a line of argument, even if it led straight to the conclusion that animals have some kind of soul, which survives their bodily death.”

“I would like to know that to be true!” Lady Muriel exclaimed. “If only for the sake of the poor horses. Sometimes I’ve thought that, if anything could make me cease to believe in a God of perfect justice, it would be the sufferings of horses—without guilt to deserve it, and without any compensation!”

“It is only part of the great Riddle,” said the Earl, “why innocent beings ever suffer. It is a great strain on Faith—but not a breaking strain, I think.”

“The sufferings of horses,” I said, “are chiefly caused by Man’s cruelty. So that is merely one of the many instances of Sin causing suffering to others than the Sinner himself. But don’t you find a greater difficulty in sufferings inflicted by animals upon each other? For instance, a cat playing with a mouse. Assuming it to have no moral responsibility, isn’t that a greater mystery than a man over-driving a horse?”

“I think it is,” said Lady Muriel, looking a mute appeal to her father.

“What right have we to make that assumption?” said the Earl. “Many of our religious difficulties are merely deductions from unwarranted assumptions. The wisest answer to most of them, is, I think, ‘behold, we know not anything.’”

“You mentioned ‘division of labour,’ just now,” I said. “Surely it is carried to a wonderful perfection in a hive of bees?”

“So wonderful—so entirely super-human—” said the Earl, “and so entirely inconsistent with the intelligence they show in other ways—that I feel no doubt at all that it is pure Instinct, and not, as some hold, a very high order of Reason. Look at the utter stupidity of a bee, trying to find its way out of an open window! It doesn’t try, in any reasonable sense of the word: it simply bangs itself about! We should call a puppy imbecile, that behaved so. And yet we are asked to believe that its intellectual level is above Sir Isaac Newton!”

“Then you hold that pure Instinct contains no Reason at all?”

“On the contrary,” said the Earl, “I hold that the work of a bee-hive involves Reason of the highest order. But none of it is done by the Bee. God has reasoned it all out, and has put into the mind of the Bee the conclusions, only, of the reasoning process.”

“But how do their minds come to work together?” I asked.

“What right have we to assume that they have minds?”

“Special pleading, special pleading!” Lady Muriel cried, in a most unfilial tone of triumph. “Why, you yourself said, just now, ‘the mind of the Bee’!”

“But I did not say ‘minds,’ my child,” the Earl gently replied. “It has occurred to me, as the most probable solution of the ‘Bee’-mystery, that a swarm of Bees have only one mind among them. We often see one mind animating a most complex collection of limbs and organs, when joined together. How do we know that any material connection is necessary? May not mere neighbourhood be enough? If so, a swarm of bees is simply a single animal whose many limbs are not quite close together!”

“It is a bewildering thought,” I said, “and needs a night’s rest to grasp it properly. Reason and Instinct both tell me I ought to go home. So, good-night!”

“I’ll ‘set’ you part of the way,” said Lady Muriel. “I’ve had no walk to-day. It will do me good, and I have more to say to you. Shall we go through the wood? It will be pleasanter than over the common, even though it is getting a little dark.”

We turned aside into the shade of interlacing boughs, which formed an architecture of almost perfect symmetry, grouped into lovely groined arches, or running out, far as the eye could follow, into endless aisles, and chancels, and naves, like some ghostly cathedral, fashioned out of the dream of a moon-struck poet.

“Always, in this wood,” she began after a pause (silence seemed natural in this dim solitude), “I begin thinking of Fairies! May I ask you a question?” she added hesitatingly. “Do you believe in Fairies?”

The momentary impulse was so strong to tell her of my experiences in this very wood, that I had to make a real effort to keep back the words that rushed to my lips. “If you mean, by ‘believe,’ ‘believe in their possible existence,’ I say ‘Yes.’ For their actual existence, of course, one would need evidence.”

“You were saying, the other day,” she went on, “that you would accept anything, on good evidence, that was not à priori impossible. And I think you named Ghosts as an instance of a provable phenomenon. Would Fairies be another instance?”

“Yes, I think so.” And again it was hard to check the wish to say more: but I was not yet sure of a sympathetic listener.

“And have you any theory as to what sort of place they would occupy in Creation? Do tell me what you think about them! Would they, for instance (supposing such beings to exist), would they have any moral responsibility? I mean” (and the light bantering tone suddenly changed to one of deep seriousness) “would they be capable of sin?”

“They can reason—on a lower level, perhaps, than men and women—never rising, I think, above the faculties of a child; and they have a moral sense, most surely. Such a being, without free will, would be an absurdity. So I am driven to the conclusion that they are capable of sin.”

“You believe in them?” she cried delightedly, with a sudden motion as if about to clap her hands. “Now tell me, have you any reason for it?”

And still I strove to keep back the revelation I felt sure was coming. “I believe that there is life everywhere—not material only, not merely what is palpable to our senses—but immaterial and invisible as well. We believe in our own immaterial essence—call it ‘soul,’ or ‘spirit,’ or what you will. Why should not other similar essences exist around us, not linked on to a visible and material body? Did not God make this swarm of happy insects, to dance in this sunbeam for one hour of bliss, for no other object, that we can imagine, than to swell the sum of conscious happiness? And where shall we dare to draw the line, and say ‘He has made all these and no more’?”

“Yes, yes!” she assented, watching me with sparkling eyes. “But these are only reasons for not denying. You have more reasons than this, have you not?”

“Well, yes,” I said, feeling I might safely tell all now. “And I could not find a fitter time or place to say it. I have seen them—and in this very wood!”

Lady Muriel asked no more questions. Silently she paced at my side, with head bowed down and hands clasped tightly together. Only, as my tale went on, she drew a little short quick breath now and then, like a child panting with delight. And I told her what I had never yet breathed to any other listener, of my double life, and, more than that (for mine might have been but a noonday-dream), of the double life of those two dear children.

And when I told her of Bruno’s wild gambols, she laughed merrily; and when I spoke of Sylvie’s sweetness and her utter unselfishness and trustful love, she drew a deep breath, like one who hears at last some precious tidings for which the heart has ached for a long while; and the happy tears chased one another down her cheeks.

“I have often longed to meet an angel,” she whispered, so low that I could hardly catch the words. “I’m so glad I’ve seen Sylvie! My heart went out to the child the first moment that I saw her—— Listen!” she broke off suddenly. “That’s Sylvie singing! I’m sure of it! Don’t you know her voice?”

“I have heard Bruno sing, more than once,” I said: “but I never heard Sylvie.”

“I have only heard her once,” said Lady Muriel. “It was that day when you brought us those mysterious flowers. The children had run out into the garden; and I saw Eric coming in that way, and went to the window to meet him: and Sylvie was singing, under the trees, a song I had never heard before. The words were something like ‘I think it is Love, I feel it is Love.’ Her voice sounded far away, like a dream, but it was beautiful beyond all words—as sweet as an infant’s first smile, or the first gleam of the white cliffs when one is coming home after weary years—a voice that seemed to fill one’s whole being with peace and heavenly thoughts—— Listen!” she cried, breaking off again in her excitement. “That is her voice, and that’s the very song!”

I could distinguish no words, but there was a dreamy sense of music in the air that seemed to grow ever louder and louder, as if coming nearer to us. We stood quite silent, and in another minute the two children appeared, coming straight towards us through an arched opening among the trees. Each had an arm round the other, and the setting sun shed a golden halo round their heads, like what one sees in pictures of saints. They were looking in our direction, but evidently did not see us, and I soon made out that Lady Muriel had for once passed into a condition familiar to me, that we were both of us ‘eerie,’ and that, though we could see the children so plainly, we were quite invisible to them.

The song ceased just as they came into sight: but, to my delight, Bruno instantly said “Let’s sing it all again, Sylvie! It did sound so pretty!” And Sylvie replied “Very well. It’s you to begin, you know.”

So Bruno began, in the sweet childish treble I knew so well:—

And now ensued quite the strangest of all the strange experiences that marked the wonderful year whose history I am writing—the experience of first hearing Sylvie’s voice in song. Her part was a very short one—only a few words—and she sang it timidly, and very low indeed, scarcely audibly, but the sweetness of her voice was simply indescribable; I have never heard any earthly music like it.

On me the first effect of her voice was a sudden sharp pang that seemed to pierce through one’s very heart. (I had felt such a pang only once before in my life, and it had been from seeing what, at the moment, realised one’s idea of perfect beauty—it was in a London exhibition, where, in making my way through a crowd, I suddenly met, face to face, a child of quite unearthly beauty.) Then came a rush of burning tears to the eyes, as though one could weep one’s soul away for pure delight. And lastly there fell on me a sense of awe that was almost terror—some such feeling as Moses must have had when he heard the words “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” The figures of the children became vague and shadowy, like glimmering meteors: while their voices rang together in exquisite harmony as they sang:—

By this time I could see them clearly once more. Bruno again sang by himself:—

Sylvie sang more courageously, this time: the words seemed to carry her away, out of herself:—

And clear and strong the chorus rang out:—

Once more we heard Bruno’s delicate little voice alone:—

And again uprose that silvery voice, whose angelic sweetness I could hardly bear:—

And then Bruno joined in again with

“That are pretty!” the little fellow exclaimed, as the children passed us—so closely that we drew back a little to make room for them, and it seemed we had only to reach out a hand to touch them: but this we did not attempt.

“No use to try and stop them!” I said, as they passed away into the shadows. “Why, they could not even see us!”

“No use at all,” Lady Muriel echoed with a sigh. “One would like to meet them again, in living form! But I feel, somehow, that can never be. They have passed out of our lives!” She sighed again; and no more was said, till we came out into the main road, at a point near my lodgings.

“Well, I will leave you here,” she said. “I want to get back before dark: and I have a cottage-friend to visit, first. Good night, dear friend! Let us see you soon—and often!” she added, with an affectionate warmth that went to my very heart. “For those are few we hold as dear!”

“Good night!” I answered. “Tennyson said that of a worthier friend than me.”

“Tennyson didn’t know what he was talking about!” she saucily rejoined, with a touch of her old childish gaiety; and we parted.

CHAPTER XX.
GAMMON AND SPINACH.

My landlady’s welcome had an extra heartiness about it: and though, with a rare delicacy of feeling, she made no direct allusion to the friend whose companionship had done so much to brighten life for me, I felt sure that it was a kindly sympathy with my solitary state that made her so specially anxious to do all she could think of to ensure my comfort, and make me feel at home.

The lonely evening seemed long and tedious: yet I lingered on, watching the dying fire, and letting Fancy mould the red embers into the forms and faces belonging to bygone scenes. Now it seemed to be Bruno’s roguish smile that sparkled for a moment, and died away: now it was Sylvie’s rosy cheek: and now the Professor’s jolly round face, beaming with delight. “You’re welcome, my little ones!” he seemed to say. And then the red coal, which for the moment embodied the dear old Professor, began to wax dim, and with its dying lustre the words seemed to die away into silence. I seized the poker, and with an artful touch or two revived the waning glow, while Fancy—no coy minstrel she—sang me once again the magic strain I loved to hear.

“You’re welcome, little ones!” the cheery voice repeated. “I told them you were coming. Your rooms are all ready for you. And the Emperor and the Empress—well, I think they’re rather pleased than otherwise! In fact, Her Highness said ‘I hope they’ll be in time for the Banquet!’ Those were her very words, I assure you!”

“Will Uggug be at the Banquet?” Bruno asked. And both children looked uneasy at the dismal suggestion.

“Why, of course he will!” chuckled the Professor. “Why, it’s his birthday, don’t you know? And his health will be drunk, and all that sort of thing. What would the Banquet be without him?”

“Ever so much nicer,” said Bruno. But he said it in a very low voice, and nobody but Sylvie heard him.

The Professor chuckled again. “It’ll be a jolly Banquet, now you’ve come, my little man! I am so glad to see you again!”

“I ’fraid we’ve been very long in coming,” Bruno politely remarked.

“Well, yes,” the Professor assented. “However, you’re very short now you’re come: that’s some comfort.” And he went on to enumerate the plans for the day. “The Lecture comes first,” he said. “That the Empress insists on. She says people will eat so much at the Banquet, they’ll be too sleepy to attend to the Lecture afterwards—and perhaps she’s right. There’ll just be a little refreshment, when the people first arrive—as a kind of surprise for the Empress, you know. Ever since she’s been—well, not quite so clever as she once was—we’ve found it desirable to concoct little surprises for her. Then comes the Lecture——”

“What? The Lecture you were getting ready—ever so long ago?” Sylvie enquired.

“Yes—that’s the one,” the Professor rather reluctantly admitted. “It has taken a goodish time to prepare. I’ve got so many other things to attend to. For instance, I’m Court-Physician. I have to keep all the Royal Servants in good health—and that reminds me!” he cried, ringing the bell in a great hurry. “This is Medicine-Day! We only give Medicine once a week. If we were to begin giving it every day, the bottles would soon be empty!”

“But if they were ill on the other days?” Sylvie suggested.

“What, ill on the wrong day!” exclaimed the Professor. “Oh, that would never do! A Servant would be dismissed at once, who was ill on the wrong day! This is the Medicine for today,” he went on, taking down a large jug from a shelf. “I mixed it, myself, first thing this morning. Taste it!” he said, holding out the jug to Bruno. “Dip in your finger, and taste it!”

Bruno did so, and made such an excruciatingly wry face that Sylvie exclaimed, in alarm, “Oh, Bruno, you mustn’t!”

“It’s welly extremely nasty!” Bruno said, as his face resumed its natural shape.

“Nasty?” said the Professor. “Why, of course it is! What would Medicine be, if it wasn’t nasty?”

“Nice,” said Bruno.

“I was going to say—” the Professor faltered, rather taken aback by the promptness of Bruno’s reply, “—that that would never do! Medicine has to be nasty, you know. Be good enough to take this jug, down into the Servants’ Hall,” he said to the footman who answered the bell: “and tell them it’s their Medicine for today.”

“Which of them is to drink it?” the footman asked, as he carried off the jug.

“Oh, I’ve not settled that yet!” the Professor briskly replied. “I’ll come and settle that, soon. Tell them not to begin, on any account, till I come! It’s really wonderful,” he said, turning to the children, “the success I’ve had in curing Diseases! Here are some of my memoranda.” He took down from the shelf a heap of little bits of paper, pinned together in twos and threes. “Just look at this set, now. ‘Under-Cook Number Thirteen recovered from Common Fever—Febris Communis.’ And now see what’s pinned to it. ‘Gave Under-Cook Number Thirteen a Double Dose of Medicine.’ That’s something to be proud of, isn’t it?”

“But which happened first?” said Sylvie, looking very much puzzled.

The Professor examined the papers carefully. “They are not dated, I find,” he said with a slightly dejected air: “so I fear I ca’n’t tell you. But they both happened: there’s no doubt of that. The Medicine’s the great thing, you know. The Diseases are much less important. You can keep a Medicine, for years and years: but nobody ever wants to keep a Disease! By the way, come and look at the platform. The Gardener asked me to come and see if it would do. We may as well go before it gets dark.”

“We’d like to, very much!” Sylvie replied. “Come, Bruno, put on your hat. Don’t keep the dear Professor waiting!”

“Ca’n’t find my hat!” the little fellow sadly replied. “I were rolling it about. And it’s rolled itself away!”

“Maybe it’s rolled in there,” Sylvie suggested, pointing to a dark recess, the door of which stood half open: and Bruno ran in to look. After a minute he came slowly out again, looking very grave, and carefully shut the cupboard-door after him.

“It aren’t in there,” he said, with such unusual solemnity, that Sylvie’s curiosity was roused.

“What is in there, Bruno?”

“There’s cobwebs—and two spiders—” Bruno thoughtfully replied, checking off the catalogue on his fingers, “—and the cover of a picture-book—and a tortoise—and a dish of nuts—and an old man.”

“An old man!” cried the Professor, trotting across the room in great excitement. “Why, it must be the Other Professor, that’s been lost for ever so long!”

He opened the door of the cupboard wide: and there he was, the Other Professor, sitting in a chair, with a book on his knee, and in the act of helping himself to a nut from a dish, which he had taken down off a shelf just within his reach. He looked round at us, but said nothing till he had cracked and eaten the nut. Then he asked the old question. “Is the Lecture all ready?”

“It’ll begin in an hour,” the Professor said, evading the question. “First, we must have something to surprise the Empress. And then comes the Banquet——”

“The Banquet!” cried the Other Professor, springing up, and filling the room with a cloud of dust. “Then I’d better go and—and brush myself a little. What a state I’m in!”

“He does want brushing!” the Professor said, with a critical air, “Here’s your hat, little man! I had put it on by mistake. I’d quite forgotten I had one on, already. Let’s go and look at the platform.”

“And there’s that nice old Gardener singing still!” Bruno exclaimed in delight, as we went out into the garden. “I do believe he’s been singing that very song ever since we went away!”

“Why, of course he has!” replied the Professor. “It wouldn’t be the thing to leave off, you know.”

“Wouldn’t be what thing?” said Bruno: but the Professor thought it best not to hear the question. “What are you doing with that hedgehog?” he shouted at the Gardener, whom they found standing upon one foot, singing softly to himself, and rolling a hedgehog up and down with the other foot.

“Well, I wanted fur to know what hedgehogs lives on: so I be a-keeping this here hedgehog—fur to see if it eats potatoes——”

“Much better keep a potato,” said the Professor; “and see if hedgehogs eat it!”

“That be the roight way, sure-ly!” the delighted Gardener exclaimed. “Be you come to see the platform?”

“Aye, aye!” the Professor cheerily replied. “And the children have come back, you see!”

The Gardener looked round at them with a grin. Then he led the way to the Pavilion; and as he went he sang:—

“You’ve been months over that song,” said the Professor. “Isn’t it finished yet?”

“There be only one verse more,” the Gardener sadly replied. And, with tears streaming down his cheeks, he sang the last verse:—

Choking with sobs, the Gardener hastily stepped on a few yards ahead of the party, to conceal his emotion.

“Did he see the Bar of Mottled Soap?” Sylvie enquired, as we followed.

“Oh, certainly!” said the Professor. “That song is his own history, you know.”

Tears of an ever-ready sympathy glittered in Bruno’s eyes. “I’s welly sorry he isn’t the Pope!” he said. “Aren’t you sorry, Sylvie?”

“Well—I hardly know,” Sylvie replied in the vaguest manner. “Would it make him any happier?” she asked the Professor.

“It wouldn’t make the Pope any happier,” said the Professor. “Isn’t the platform lovely?” he asked, as we entered the Pavilion.

“I’ve put an extra beam under it!” said the Gardener, patting it affectionately as he spoke. “And now it’s that strong, as—as a mad elephant might dance upon it!”

“Thank you very much!” the Professor heartily rejoined. “I don’t know that we shall exactly require—but it’s convenient to know.” And he led the children upon the platform, to explain the arrangements to them. “Here are three seats, you see, for the Emperor and the Empress and Prince Uggug. But there must be two more chairs here!” he said, looking down at the Gardener. “One for Lady Sylvie, and one for the smaller animal!”

“And may I help in the Lecture?” said Bruno. “I can do some conjuring-tricks.”

“Well, it’s not exactly a conjuring lecture,” the Professor said, as he arranged some curious-looking machines on the table. “However, what can you do? Did you ever go through a table, for instance?”

“Often!” said Bruno. “Haven’t I, Sylvie?”

The Professor was evidently surprised, though he tried not to show it. “This must be looked into,” he muttered to himself, taking out a note-book. “And first—what kind of table?”

“Tell him!” Bruno whispered to Sylvie, putting his arms round her neck.

“Tell him yourself,” said Sylvie.

“Ca’n’t,” said Bruno. “It’s a bony word.”

“Nonsense!” laughed Sylvie. “You can say it well enough, if you only try. Come!”

“Muddle—” said Bruno. “That’s a bit of it.”

“What does he say?” cried the bewildered Professor.

“He means the multiplication-table,” Sylvie explained.

The Professor looked annoyed, and shut up his note-book again. “Oh, that’s quite another thing,” he said.

“It are ever so many other things,” said Bruno. “Aren’t it, Sylvie?”

A loud blast of trumpets interrupted this conversation. “Why, the entertainment has begun!” the Professor exclaimed, as he hurried the children into the Reception-Saloon. “I had no idea it was so late!”

A small table, containing cake and wine, stood in a corner of the Saloon; and here we found the Emperor and Empress waiting for us. The rest of the Saloon had been cleared of furniture, to make room for the guests. I was much struck by the great change a few months had made in the faces of the Imperial Pair. A vacant stare was now the Emperor’s usual expression; while over the face of the Empress there flitted, ever and anon, a meaningless smile.

“So you’re come at last!” the Emperor sulkily remarked, as the Professor and the children took their places. It was evident that he was very much out of temper: and we were not long in learning the cause of this. He did not consider the preparations, made for the Imperial party, to be such as suited their rank. “A common mahogany table!” he growled, pointing to it contemptuously with his thumb. “Why wasn’t it made of gold, I should like to know?”

“It would have taken a very long——” the Professor began, but the Emperor cut the sentence short.

“Then the cake! Ordinary plum! Why wasn’t it made of—of——” He broke off again. “Then the wine! Merely old Madeira! Why wasn’t it——? Then this chair! That’s worst of all. Why wasn’t it a throne? One might excuse the other omissions, but I ca’n’t get over the chair!”

“What I ca’n’t get over,” said the Empress, in eager sympathy with her angry husband, “is the table!”

“Pooh!” said the Emperor.

“It is much to be regretted!” the Professor mildly replied, as soon as he had a chance of speaking. After a moment’s thought he strengthened the remark. “Everything,” he said, addressing Society in general, “is very much to be regretted!”

A murmur of “Hear, hear!” rose from the crowded Saloon.

There was a rather awkward pause: the Professor evidently didn’t know how to begin. The Empress leant forwards, and whispered to him. “A few jokes, you know, Professor—just to put people at their ease!”

“True, true, Madam!” the Professor meekly replied. “This little boy——”

“Please don’t make any jokes about me!” Bruno exclaimed, his eyes filling with tears.

“I won’t if you’d rather I didn’t,” said the kind-hearted Professor. “It was only something about a Ship’s Buoy: a harmless pun—but it doesn’t matter.” Here he turned to the crowd and addressed them in a loud voice. “Learn your A’s!” he shouted. “Your B’s! Your C’s! And your D’s! Then you’ll be at your ease!”

There was a roar of laughter from all the assembly, and then a great deal of confused whispering. “What was it he said? Something about bees, I fancy——.”

The Empress smiled in her meaningless way, and fanned herself. The poor Professor looked at her timidly: he was clearly at his wits’ end again, and hoping for another hint. The Empress whispered again.

“Some spinach, you know, Professor, as a surprise.”

The Professor beckoned to the Head-Cook, and said something to him in a low voice. Then the Head-Cook left the room, followed by all the other cooks.

“It’s difficult to get things started,” the Professor remarked to Bruno. “When once we get started, it’ll go on all right, you’ll see.”

“If oo want to startle people,” said Bruno, “oo should put live frogs on their backs.”

Here the cooks all came in again, in a procession, the Head-Cook coming last and carrying something, which the others tried to hide by waving flags all round it. “Nothing but flags, Your Imperial Highness! Nothing but flags!” he kept repeating, as he set it before her. Then all the flags were dropped in a moment, as the Head-Cook raised the cover from an enormous dish.

“What is it?” the Empress said faintly, as she put her spy-glass to her eye. “Why, it’s Spinach, I declare!”

“Her Imperial Highness is surprised,” the Professor explained to the attendants: and some of them clapped their hands. The Head-Cook made a low bow, and in doing so dropped a spoon on the table, as if by accident, just within reach of the Empress, who looked the other way and pretended not to see it.

“I am surprised!” the Empress said to Bruno. “Aren’t you?”

“Not a bit,” said Bruno. “I heard——” but Sylvie put her hand over his mouth, and spoke for him. “He’s rather tired, I think. He wants the Lecture to begin.”

“I want the supper to begin,” Bruno corrected her.

The Empress took up the spoon in an absent manner, and tried to balance it across the back of her hand, and in doing this she dropped it into the dish: and, when she took it out again, it was full of spinach. “How curious!” she said, and put it into her mouth. “It tastes just like real spinach! I thought it was an imitation—but I do believe it’s real!” And she took another spoonful.

“It wo’n’t be real much longer,” said Bruno.

But the Empress had had enough spinach by this time, and somehow—I failed to notice the exact process—we all found ourselves in the Pavilion, and the Professor in the act of beginning the long-expected Lecture.