And that reminds me of another thing. Wag had got rather fidgety while we were talking, and was flying up to the ceiling and down again, and walking on his hands, and so forth, when his mother said:
“Dear, do be quiet. Why don't you take a glass and amuse yourself with it? Here's the key of the cupboard.”
She threw it to him and he caught it and ran to a tall bureau opposite and unlocked it. After humming and flitting about in front of it for a little time, he pulled a thing like a slate off a shelf where there were a large number of them.
“What have you got?” said his mother.
“The one I didn't get to the end of yesterday, about the dragon.”
“Oh, that's a very good one,” said she. “I used to be very fond of that.”
“I liked it awfully as far as I got,” he said, and was betaking himself to a settle on the other side of the room when I asked if I might see it, and he brought it to me.
It was just like a small looking-glass in a frame, and the frame had one or two buttons or little knobs on it. Wag put it into my hand and then got behind me and put his chin on my shoulder.
“That's where I'd got to,” he said; “he's just going out through the forest.”
I thought at the first glance that I was looking at a very good copy of a picture. It was a knight on horseback, in plate-armour, and the armour looked as if it had really seen service. The horse was a massive white beast, rather of the cart-horse type, but not so “hairy in the hoof”; the background was a wood, chiefly of oak-trees; but the undergrowth was wonderfully painted. I felt that if I looked into it I should see every blade of grass and every bramble-leaf.