and stains, and was torn in one or two places; but it was
his own mother's own jacket, and made him think so vividly of her kind
face and loving eyes and warm soft arms, that he would heave a deep
sigh, and sit still with his eyes very wide open. Then there was the
comb that his mother used to wear in her hair. It was made of white
ivory prettily carved. Oscar remembered how his mother used sometimes
to take out this comb while he was sitting on her lap, and let her
hair tumble down about her shoulders; and she used to let him feel its
smoothness with his small hands, and taught him how to braid it by
weaving three strands of it in and out.

The feelings that Oscar had while sitting in the bedroom with these
and other things that had belonged to his mother were very different
from any that came to him while he was outdoors. They were less
cheerful than his outdoor feelings, but he liked them better. For in
thinking of his mother he forgot himself; he had been able to put his
arms round his mother's neck and to kiss her cheek. She had loved him
and called him by his name; he had known that no other boy could be to
her what he was; she had comforted him when he was hurt or grieved;
she had been made to be his mother, as he had been made to be her son.
It was not so with the world outdoors--with the earth and the sea and
the sky. These had been made for Oscar perhaps; but if Oscar had been
some other boy they would still have remained. They belonged to him
only because he was a boy, and not because he was the boy Oscar.
Therefore he could not forget himself in loving and giving himself to
them, as he had done in loving and giving himself to his mother. All
this brought him to think that unless, out of the earth and sea and
sky, something could come to him that should both bring them nearer
and yet be different from them, the promise which they seemed to hold
out to him would not be fulfilled. It was not a bigger or a more
beautiful world that he wanted, but a world within the world, which
should contain all that made the outer world beautiful and lovable,
and something more besides. Such a world within the world his mother
had been to him; but it was not his mother that the boy looked for,
because he knew that she was gone never to return. What was it then?
Oscar did not yet know; but now something began to stir within him
that seemed to mean that the answer would not be long delayed.

CHAPTER III.

THE PEARL-SHEL