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SOMEWHERE OR NOWHERE? 2J
' Excuse me; I cannot help it: you seem to me to be talking sheer nonsense !'
' If you could but hear the music ! Those great long heads of wild hyacinth are inside the piano, among the strings of it, and give that peculiar sweetness to her playing \—Pardon me : I forgot your deafness ! '
' Two objects,' I said, ' cannot exist in the same place at the same time ! '
' Can they not ? I did not know!—I remember now they do teach that with you. It is a great mistake —one of the greatest ever wiseacre made ! No man of the universe, only a man of the world could have said so!'
' You a librarian, and talk such rubbish!' I cried. ' Plainly, you did not read many of the books in your charge !'
Oh, yes! I went through all in your library—at the time, and came out at the other side not much the wiser. I was a bookworm then, but when I came to know it, I woke among the butterflies. To be sure I have given up reading for a good many years—ever since I was made sexton.—There ! I smell Grieg's Wedding March in the quiver of those rose-petals ! '
I went to the rose-bush and listened hard, but could not hear the thinnest ghost of a sound; I only smelt something I had never before smelt in any rose. It was still rose-odour, but with a difference, caused, I suppose, by the Wedding March.
When I looked up, there was the bird by my side.
' Mr. Raven,' I said, forgive me for being so rude: I was irritated. Will you kindly show me my way home ? I must go, for I have an appointment with my bailiff. One must not break faith with his servants I' |
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