Now, on this last night of England the Abrahams party strolled far, two days like Summer days having come, on hedge and tree now tripping the shoots of Spring, the moon-haunted night of a mild mood: so from “Silverfern” lawns they passed up a steep field northward, down a path between village-houses, and idled within a pine-wood by the river-side.
The moon's glow was like one luminous ghost: and buttercup, daisy, snowdrop, primrose gathered Margaret, vagrant, flighty, light to the winds that wafted her as fluff, and tossed them suddenly aloft, and back they came to be tangled in her bare hair; and now she was a tipsy bacchante, singing:
“Will you come to the wedding?
Will you come?
Bring you own bread and butter,
And your own tea and sugar,
And we'll all pay a penny for the Rum”.
“Poor Ruth!”—from Rebekah, an arm about her waist.
“There is such a huge pool which is wheeling”, said Margaret, gazing at it with surprise, “and it goes hollow in the middle: my goodness, it does wheel! and there is a little grey duck in it ranging round and round with it, and this little grey duck is singing like an angel”.
“Do you know where we are going to?” asked Rebekah: “to the land of our fathers, Ruth, after all the exile in this ugly Western world; and it is he who sends us, the fierce-willed master of men”.
“My name”, said Margaret, “is Rachel Oppenheimer”; and immediately, wafted like a half-inflated balloon which leaps to descend a thousand feet away, she sang:
“Happy day! Happy day!
When Jesus washed my sins away...”
Then, woe-begone, she shook her head, and let fall her abandoned hand; and Rebekah, speaking more to herself: “Did you never hear of Hogarth, the King, Ruth? or see him in some dream in shining white, with a face like the face in the bush which burned and was not consumed?”
But now Margaret laughed, crying out: “Oh, there's a man riding a shorthorn bull that has wings; white it is: and up they fly, the bull pawing and snorting, all among the stars. Oh, and now the man is falling!—my goodness—”