bank, taught her to take the sounding
for adjusting the float, and she lay down not far from me, holding the
rod. So I said to her:

'Well, this is better than living in a dark cellar twenty years, with
nothing to do but walk up and down, sleep, and consume dates and Ismidt
wine.'

'Yes!' says she.

'Twenty years!' said I: 'How did you bear it?'

'I was not closs,' says she.

'Did you never suspect that there was a world outside that cellar?' said
I.

'Never,' says she, 'or lather, yes: but I did not suppose that it was
_this_ world, but another where he lived.'

'He who?'

'He who spoke with me.'

'Who was that?'

'Oh! a bite!' she screamed gladly.

I saw her float bob under, and started up, rushed to her, and taught her
how to strike and play it, though it turned out when landed to be
nothing but a tiny barbel: but she was in ecstasies, holding it on her
palm, murmuring her fond coo.

She re-baited, and we lay again. I said:

'But what a life: no exit, no light, no prospect, no hope--'

'Plenty of _hope_!' says she.

'Good Heavens! hope of what?'

'I knew vely well that something was lipening over the cellar, or under,
or alound it, and would come to pass at a certain fixed hour, and that I
should see it, and feel it, and it would be vely nice.'

'Ah, well, you had to wait for it, at any rate. Didn't those twenty
years seem _long_?'

'No--at least sometimes--not often. I was always so occupied.'

'Occupied in doing what?'

'In eating, or dlinking, or lunning, or talking.'

'Talking to your_self_?'

'Not myself.'

'To whom, then?'

'To the one who told me when I was hungly, and put the dates to satisfy
my hunger.'

'I see. Don't wriggle about in that way, or you will never catch any
fish. The maxim of angling is: "Study to be quiet"--'

'O! another bite!' she called, and this time, all alone, very agilely
landed a good-sized bream.

'But do you mean that you were never sad?' said I when she was
re-settled.

'Sometimes I would sit and cly,' says she--'I did not know why. But if
that was "sadness," I was never miserlable, never, never. And if I
clied, it did not last long, and I would soon fall to sleep, for he
would lock me in his lap, and kiss me, and wipe all my tears away.'

'He who?'

'Why, what a question! he who told me when I was hungly, and of the
thing that was lipening outside the cellar, which would be so nice.'

'I see, I see. But in all that dingy place, and thic