In the afternoon they went round Ch. Ch. meadow, and saw the Barges belonging to the Colleges, and some pretty views of Magdalen Tower through the trees.
Then they went through the Botanical Gardens, built in the year——no, by the bye, they never were built at all. And then to Magdalen College. At the top of the wall, in one corner, they saw a very large jolly face, carved in stone, with a broad grin, and a little man at the side, helping him to laugh by pulling up the corner of his mouth for him. Isa thought that, the next time she wants to laugh, she will get Nellie and Maggie to help her. With two people to pull up the corners of your mouth for you, it is as easy to laugh as can be!
They went into Magdalen Meadow, which has a pretty walk all round it, arched over with trees: and there they met a lady “from Amurrica,” as she told them, who wanted to know the way to “Addison’s Walk,” and particularly wanted to know if there would be “any danger” in going there. They told her the way, and that most of the lions and tigers and buffaloes, round the meadow, were quite gentle and hardly ever killed people: so she set off, pale and trembling, and they saw her no more: only they heard her screams in the distance: so they guessed what had happened to her
Then they rode in a tram-car to another part of Oxford, and called on a lady called Mrs Jeane, and her little grand-daughter, called “Noël”, because she was born on Christmas-Day. (“Noël” is the French name for “Christmas”.) And there they had so much Tea that at last Isa nearly turned into a “Teaser”.
Then they went home, down a little narrow street, where there was a little dog standing fixed in the middle of the street, as if its feet were glued to the ground: they asked it how long it meant to stand there, and it said (as well as it could) “till the week after next”.
Then Isa went to bed, and dreamed she was going round Magdalen Meadow, with the “Amurrican” lady, and there was a buffalo sitting at the top of every tree, handing her cups of tea as she went underneath: but they all held the cups upside-down, so that the tea poured all over her head and ran down her face.
Chap. VI.
On Sunday morning they went to St. Mary’s church, in High Street. In coming home, down the street next to the one where they had found a fixed dog, they found a fixed cat—a poor little kitten, that had put out its head through the bars of the cellar-window, and get back again. They rang the bell at the next door, but the maid said the cellar wasn’t in that house, and, before they could get to the right door the cat had unfixed its head——either from its neck or from the bars, and had gone inside. Isa thought the animals in this city have a curious way of fixing themselves up and down the place, as if they were hat-pegs.
Then they went back to Ch. Ch., and looked at a lot of dresses, which the A.A.M kept in a cupboard, to dress up children in, when they come to be photographed. Some of the dresses had been used in Pantomimes at Drury Lane: some were rags, to dress up beggar-children in: some had been very magnificent once, but were getting quite old and shabby. Talking of old dresses, there is one College in Oxford, so old that it is not known for certain when it was built The people, who live there, say it was built more than 1000 years ago: and, when they say this, the people who live in the other Colleges never contradict them, but listen most respectfully——only they wink a little with one eye, as if they didn’t quite believe it.
The same day, Isa saw a curious book of pictures of ghosts. If you look hard at one for a minute, and then look at the ceiling, you see another ghost there: only, when you have a black one in the book, it is a white one on the ceiling: when it is green in the book, it is pink on the ceiling.