"I think," she said, smiling on him, "I think I was, once. I think I can remember that name. And you are—let me see; what was your name? Ah, yes, your name was Freddie. But we must hurry; we must not keep them waiting."
Freddie turned, and saw beside him four strange men, all gazing at the beautiful lady in amazement. In the right hand of each was an empty hour-glass.
Freddie looked down on the two men who stood nearest him; he looked down on them; he was suddenly aware that he was not looking up. They were short, for full-grown men, and of precisely the same height; their faces were square, their cheek-bones prominent, and their noses hooked; the head of one was bald, and the hair of the other's head lay flat down on his forehead where it curved back like a hairpin; except for their heads, they were in all respects twins. There was no hump on the back of either of them.
"Mr. Punch and Mr. Toby!" said Freddie.
"The wery same," said the bald-headed one.
"That's me," said the other.
Behind Mr. Toby stood a lean man in spectacles. His night-gown hung upon him very loosely, and he was very spare indeed. His smooth-shaven cheeks were somewhat hollow; his eyes behind his glasses were
deep and solemn; his frame was the frame of one who subdues the flesh by fasting; snow-white hair, curling inward at the back of his neck, made a kind of aureole around his thin face; he looked for all the world as he stood barefoot in his long white gown, like one of those saints you see in painted glass windows in a church.
"Is it," said Freddie, hesitating, "is it—the Churchwarden?"
"I have reason to believe," said the saintly looking man, "that I have been known by that name. But I am in reality, and always have been, in reality, something far more lowly than a churchwarden; I am, and always have been, at heart, a meek and humble follower of the holy Thomas à Kempis, whose life of serene and cloistered sanctity I have always wished to imitate. Now that I am myself, it is my ambition to be known, if it is not too presumptuous to say so, as Thomas the Inferior. Pax vobiscum."