"My darlings, my darlings," she said, as Haddie and I threw ourselves upon her.
She did look so pretty; she was all in white, and she had a rose—one of the lovely roses I had been admiring as we ran—fastened to the front of her dress.
"Mamma, mamma," I exclaimed, as I hugged her, "oh, mamma, I am so happy to be with you. Is this your garden, mamma, and may we stay with you always now? Wasn't it good of the lions to bring us? I have been so unhappy, mamma—somebody said you would get ill far away. But nobody could get ill here. Oh, mamma, you will let us stay always."
She did not speak, but looking at Haddie I saw a change in his face.
"Geraldine," he said, "I told you we couldn't stay long. The lions would be scolded if we did, and you know you must say your French poetry."
And then there came over me the most agonising feeling of disappointment and misery. All the pent-up wretchedness of the last weeks at school woke up and overwhelmed me like waves of dark water. It is as impossible for me to put this into words as it was for me to describe my exquisite happiness, for no words ever succeed in expressing the intense and extraordinary sensations of some dreams. And of course, as you will have found out by this time, the strange adventures I have been relating were those of a dream, though I still, after all the years that have passed since then, remember them so vividly.
It was the fatal words "French poetry" that seemed to awake me—to bring back my terrible unhappiness, exaggerated by the fact of my dreaming.
"French poetry," I gasped, "oh, Haddie, how can you remind me of it?"
Haddie suddenly turned away, and I saw the face of one of the lions looking over his shoulder, with, strange to say, a white frilled cap surrounding it.
"You must try to drink this, my dear," said the lion, if the lion it was, for as I stared at him the brown face changed into a rather ruddy one—a round good-humoured face, with pleasant eyes and smile, reminding me of mamma's old nurse who had once come to see us.