The bridge across the big lake was a fascinating place. On the sunny side lots of ducks were always standing on their heads searching for something in the water, so that they looked like only half ducks. On the shady side hundreds of eels were swimming about—they were most wonderful things; some of them were thin like ribbons, and others were round and plump like thick ropes. They never seemed to fight at all, and although the ducklings were so tiny the big eels never touched any of them, even when they dived right down amongst them. Some of the eels swam along very slowly, looking on this side and on that as if they were out of work or up from the country, and others whizzed by with incredible swiftness. Mary Makebelieve thought that the latter kind had just heard their babies crying; she wondered, when a little fish cried, could its mother see the tears where there was already so much water about, and then she thought that maybe they cried hard lumps of something that was easily visible.
After this she would go around the flowerbeds and look at each; some of them were shaped like stars, and some were quite round, and others again were square. She liked the star-shaped flowerbeds best, and next she liked the round ones, and last of all the square. But she loved all the flowers, and used to make up stories about them.
After that, growing hungry, she would go home for her lunch. She went home down Grafton Street and O’Connell Street. She always went along the right-hand side of the street going home, and looked in every shop window that she passed; and then, when she had eaten her lunch, she came out again and walked along the left-hand side of the road, looking at the shops on that side; and so she knew daily everything that was new in the city, and was able to tell her mother at night time that the black dress with Spanish lace was taken out of Manning’s window, and a red gown with tucks at the shoulders and Irish lace at the wrists put in its place; or that the diamond ring in Johnson’s marked One Hundred Pounds was gone from the case, and that a slide of brooches of beaten silver and blue enamel was there instead.
In the night time her mother and herself went round to each of the theatres in turn and watched the people going in, and looked at the big posters. When they went home afterwards they had supper, and used to try to make out the plots of the various plays from the pictures they had seen, so that generally they had lots to talk about before they went to bed. Mary Makebelieve used to talk most in the night time, but her mother talked most in the morning.
III
Her mother spoke sometimes of matrimony as a thing remote but very certain: the remoteness of this adventure rather shocked Mary Makebelieve; she knew that a girl had to get married, that a strange, beautiful man would come from somewhere looking for a wife, and would retire again with his bride to that Somewhere which is the country of Romance. At times (and she could easily picture it) he rode in armour on a great bay horse, the plume of his helmet trailing among the high leaves of the forest. Or he came standing on the prow of a swift ship with the sunlight blazing back from his golden armour. Or on a grassy plain, fleet as the wind, he came running, leaping, laughing.
When the subject of matrimony was under discussion her mother planned minutely the person of the groom, his vast accomplishments, and yet vaster wealth, the magnificence of his person, and the love in which he was held by rich and poor alike. She also discussed, down to the smallest detail, the elaborate trousseau she would provide for her daughter, the extravagant presents the bridegroom would make to his bride and her maids, and those, yet more costly, which the bridegroom’s family would send to the newly-married pair. All these wonders could only concentrate in the person of a lord. Mary Makebelieve’s questions as to the status and appurtenances of a lord were searching and minute; her mother’s rejoinders were equally elaborate and particular.
At his birth a lord is cradled in silver; at his death he is laid in a golden casket, an oaken coffin, and a leaden outer coffin, until, finally, a massy stone sarcophagus shrouds his remains forever. His life is a whirl of gaiety and freedom. Around his castle there spread miles upon miles of sunny grass lands and ripened orchards and waving forests, and through these he hunts with his laughing companions or walks gently with his lady. He has servants by the thousand, each anxious to die for him, and his wealth, prodigious beyond the computation of avarice, is
