"A wife?" he asked suddenly. "Perhaps if I could find another Sarah Jane——"
"My stars! what a thought! Poor company for 'e—the likes of me!"
"I've never seen such another, all the same."
She laughed.
"Well, why for don't you look round?"
He stood still and did not reply.
"My! how bright the moon be this evening," she said. "There they are—Daniel and Walter Agg. I see 'em long ways off.":
"Do you know that the moon was alive once?" he asked. "She was a mother; and now she's only a grave for all the things she bore. She's our picture, too—the skeleton at the world's feast of life. It will be just the same here, Sarah Jane—cold—dead—the earth and moon going round together—like two corpses dancing at a dying fire."
"What dreadful things you know!"
"Life's only conjuring with dust. I suppose we shall never find out how 'tis done. But there are clever chaps in the audience always jumping up and saying 'That's it! I see the trick!' Only they don't. Each new book I get hold of gives the lie to the last. There's nothing true that I can see. Like a boy chasing a butterfly: down comes his hat after a long run. But the butterfly's in the air."