Everything, brother and I believed, belonged to mother, the whole universe, as far as we had yet seen it, belonged to her, and the slaves that came softly stealing across the thick carpets and placed mother’s food before her in dishes of solid gold and silver, were, in our opinion, if we thought about the matter at all, only creatures of common clay that lived and moved and had their beings merely to minister to mother’s wants and needs.
I am much wiser now, children, and I can tell you that the splendid apartments where mother lived when we were very young, were furnished with splendour and elegance, unknown to this land of cloudy skies and misty rain.
That silk cushion, children, on which mother lay, was richly embroidered with threads of gold, and tasselled with pearls and precious stones. The room itself was lofty, and hung everywhere with curtains of rarest value. Great punkahs, moved by invisible hands, depended from the roof, and, waving to and fro, kept us cool. Costly vases and musical instruments stood here and there, and couches of pale-blue silk and silver were ranged along the walls. There was a dim religious light throughout, and from an arched window we could catch glimpses of gardens filled with lovely flowers and fruit, and watered by cool fountains that threw their snow-white spray far up against the blue of the sky. And everywhere the air was laden with the rich and rare odour of orange and citron blooms.
Then on the soft Persian carpets, I was afterwards told, my brother and I used to play with rubies as large as marbles.
“Something to eat?” said Dick, thoughtfully.
“No, Dick, a ruby is nothing to eat, but it is something held so sacred by human beings, that one such precious stone would buy all the fine things a man could use in a long, long lifetime.”
Now, some weeks after brother and I opened our eyes, we learned to lap milk. It was difficult to do this at first, though we wanted to, because our eyes were not yet strong enough to judge distances, and sometimes when we thought we were licking the milk we were only lapping the air; then when we put our heads further down our noses went into the silver saucer up to the eyes, and we thought we were drowned, and sprang up and sneezed.
While trying one day to lap some milk, we noticed that mother was singing to a very pretty human being, who sat cross-legged upon a low ottoman. Mother was singing, and she was also rubbing her head backwards and forwards against this lovely human creature’s bare arm. Brother and I sat back and looked up in astonishment, although looking up made our heads so light that we nearly tumbled.
“Oh! aren’t they funny, funny, funny?” cried a voice. It was that of the beautiful human being.
The words only sounded to us like rippling music then, music such as the birds in their golden cages made, and the spray of the fountain splashing down and falling into its marble basin. But mother afterwards translated the language to us.