ken out of Manning's
window and a red gown with tucks at the shoulders and Irish lace at
the wrists put in its place; or that the diamond ring in Johnson's
marked One Hundred Pounds was gone from the case and that a slide of
brooches of beaten silver and blue enamel was there instead.

In the nighttime her mother and herself went round to each of the
theaters in turn and watched the people going in and looked at the big
posters. When they went home afterwards they had supper and used to
try to make out the plots of the various plays from the pictures they
had seen, so that generally they had lots to talk about before they
went to bed. Mary Makebelieve used to talk most in the nighttime, but
her mother talked most in the morning.

III

Her mother spoke sometimes of matrimony as a thing remote but very
certain; the remoteness of this adventure rather shocked Mary
Makebelieve; she knew that a girl had to get married, that a strange,
beautiful man would come from somewhere looking for a wife and would
retire again with his bride to that Somewhere which is the country of
Romance. At times (and she could easily picture it) he rode in armor
on a great bay horse, the plume of his helmet trailing among the high
leaves of the forest. Or he came standing on the prow of a swift ship
with the sunlight blazing back from his golden armor. Or on a grassy
plain, fleet as the wind, he came running, leaping, laughing.

When the subject of matrimony was under discussion her mother planned
minutely the person of the groom, his vast accomplishments, and yet
vaster wealth, the magnificence of his person, and the love in which
he was held by rich and poor alike. She also discussed, down to the
smallest detail, the elaborate trousseau she would provide for her
daughter, the extravagant presents the bridegroom would make to his
bride and her maids, and those, yet more costly, which the
bridegroom's family would send to the newly married pair. All these
wonders could only concentrate in the person of a lord. Mary
Makebelieve's questions as to the status and appurtenances of a lord
were searching and minute, her mother's rejoinders were equally
elaborate and particular.

At his birth a lord is cradled in silver, at his death he is laid in
a golden casket, an oaken coffin, and a leaden outer coffin until,
finally, a massy stone sarcophagus shrouds his remains forever. His
life is a whirl of gayety and freedom. Around his castle there