a beach; and round
this pile Georgie found himself running races with little boys and
girls. These ended, ships ran high up the dry land and opened into
cardboard boxes; or gilt-and-green iron railings that surrounded
beautiful gardens turned all soft and could be walked through and
overthrown so long as he remembered it was only a dream. He could never
hold that knowledge more than a few seconds ere things became real, and
instead of pushing down houses full of grown-up people (a just
revenge), he sat miserably upon gigantic door-steps trying to sing the
multiplication-table up to four times six.

The princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty (she came
from the old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out of print), and as she
always applauded Georgie's valour among the dragons and buffaloes, he
gave her the two finest names he had ever heard in his life--Annie and
Louise, pronounced "Annieanlouise." When the dreams swamped the stories,
she would change into one of the little girls round the brushwood-pile,
still keeping her title and crown. She saw Georgie drown once in a
dream-sea by the beach (it was the day after he had been taken to
bathe in a real sea by his nurse); and he said as he sank: "Poor
Annieanlouise! She'll be sorry for me now!" But "Annieanlouise," walking
slowly on the beach, called, "'Ha! ha!' said the duck, laughing," which
to a waking mind might not seem to bear on the situation. It consoled
Georgie at once, and must have been some kind of spell, for it raised
the bottom of the deep, and he waded out with a twelve-inch flower-pot
on each foot. As he was strictly forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in
real life, he felt triumphantly wicked.

* * * * *

The movements of the grown-ups, whom Georgie tolerated, but did not
pretend to understand, removed his world, when he was seven years
old, to a place called "Oxford-on-a-visit. "Here were huge buildings
surrounded by vast prairies, with streets of infinite length, and, above
all, something called the "buttery," which Georgie was dying to
see, because he knew it must be greasy, and therefore delightful. He
perceived how correct were his judgments when his nurse led him through
a stone arch into the presence of an enormously fat man, who asked him
if he would like some, bread and cheese. Georgie was used to eat all
round the clock, so he took what "buttery" gave him, and would have
taken some brown liquid called "auditale"