hereabouts I see not in my waking hours, and when I
alighted at the station a dear lost love was waiting for me, and we went
away together. She met me in no ecstasy of emotion, nor was I surprised
to find her there; it was as if we had been married for years and parted
for a day. I like to think that I gave her some of the things to carry.

Were I to tell my delightful dream to David's mother, to whom I have
never in my life addressed one word, she would droop her head and raise
it bravely, to imply that I make her very sad but very proud, and she
would be wishful to lend me her absurd little pocket handkerchief. And
then, had I the heart, I might make a disclosure that would startle her,
for it is not the face of David's mother that I see in my dreams.

Has it ever been your lot, reader, to be persecuted by a pretty woman
who thinks, without a tittle of reason, that you are bowed down under
a hopeless partiality for her? It is thus that I have been pursued for
several years now by the unwelcome sympathy of the tender-hearted and
virtuous Mary A----. When we pass in the street the poor deluded soul
subdues her buoyancy, as if it were shame to walk happy before one she
has lamed, and at such times the rustle of her gown is whispered words
of comfort to me, and her arms are kindly wings that wish I was a little
boy like David. I also detect in her a fearful elation, which I am
unaware of until she has passed, when it comes back to me like a faint
note of challenge. Eyes that say you never must, nose that says why
don't you? and a mouth that says I rather wish you could: such is the
portrait of Mary A---- as she and I pass by.

Once she dared to address me, so that she could boast to David that I
had spoken to her. I was in the Kensington Gardens, and she asked would
I tell her the time please, just as children ask, and forget as they
run back with it to their nurse. But I was prepared even for this, and
raising my hat I pointed with my staff to a clock in the distance. She
should have been overwhelmed, but as I walked on listening intently, I
thought with displeasure that I heard her laughing.

Her laugh is very like David's, whom I could punch all day in order to
hear him laugh. I dare say she put this laugh into him. She has been
putting qualities into David, altering him, turning him forever on a
lathe since the day she first knew him, and indeed long before, and all
so deftly that he is still called a child of natur