from her
chair; so did the very South Street boys, gaping in the gutter, with
their hands full of stones, such a cry rang out from the palace window.

"_O, the glass! the glass! the glass!_"

In a twinkling the South Street boys were at the mercy of the South
Street police; and the Hospital doctor, bounding over a beachful of
shattered, scattered waves, stood, out of breath, beside the Lady of
Shalott's bed.

"O the little less, and what worlds away!"

The Lady of Shalott lay quite still in her little brown calico
night-gown [I cannot learn, by the way, that Bulfinch's studious and in
general trustworthy researches have put him in possession of this point.
Indeed, I feel justified in asserting that Mr. Bulfinch never so much as
_intimated_ that the Lady of Shalott wore a brown calico
night-dress]--the Lady of Shalott lay quite still, and her lips turned
blue.

"Are you very much hurt? Where were you struck? I heard the cry, and
came. Can you tell me where the blow was?"

But then the doctor saw the glass, broken and blown in a thousand
glittering sparks across the palace floor; and then the Lady of Shalott
gave him a little blue smile.

"It's not me. Never mind. I wish it was. I'd rather it was me than the
glass. O, my glass! my glass! But never mind. I suppose there'll be some
other--pleasant thing."

"Were you so fond of the glass?" asked the doctor, taking one of the two
chairs that Sary Jane brought him, and looking sorrowfully about the
room. What other "pleasant thing" could even the Lady of Shalott
discover in that room last summer, at the east end of South Street?

"How long have you lain here?" asked the sorrowful doctor, suddenly.

"Since I can remember, sir," said the Lady of Shalott, with that blue
smile. "But then I have always had my glass."

"Ah!" said the doctor, "the Lady of Shalott!"

"Sir?" said the Lady of Shalott.

"Where is the pain?" asked the doctor, gently, with his finger on the
Lady of Shalott's pulse.

The Lady of Shalott touched the shoulder of her brown calico night-dress,
smiling.

"And what did you see in your glass?" asked the doctor, once more
stooping to examine "the pain."

The Lady of Shalott tried to tell him, but felt confused; so many
strange things had been in the glass since it grew hot. So she only said
that there were waves and a purple wing, and that they were broken now,
and lay upon the floor.

"Purple wings?" asked the doctor.

"Over the sidewalk,"