Then the citizen went to his own house, and Matthew with him. The wall was no wall, but a hedge, and the garden was very beautiful. And lo, when they went in, there came tumbling along the path little beings made in the image of the citizen himself. And with them a woman of exceeding beauty and power, which the little ones also bore. As if the citizen had chosen her beauty and power to make them into something other.
It was as it had been when the bird was fluttering and beating at the boy's breast, but he did not even heed.
"Tell me!" he cried. "These—do they live here with you? Are they yours?"
"We are one another's," said the citizen.
Matthew sat among them, and to pleasure him they did many sweet tasks. They brought him to eat and drink in the garden. The woman gave quiet answers that had in them something living, and alive, too, some while after she had spoken. ("So she could answer," Matthew thought, "and better, too, than that.") And the children brought him a shell, a pretty stone, a broken watch, and a little woolly lamb on three wheels, and the fourth wheel missing. The lamb had a sound to make by squeezing, and this sound Matthew made a great many times, and every time the children laughed. And when they did that Matthew could think of nothing to say that seemed a thing to be said, but he was inscrutably elated, and did the trick again.
And when he rose to take his leave:—
"Is it for them that you make bread and a dream or two?" he asked.
He knew that he should always like to remember the citizen's smile as he answered.
They stood at the opening of the hedge and folk were going by.
"Are they not jealous of you?" Matthew asked.