ller finds his love in
the mill-stream, who by and by turns out to be a princess and makes
him a king, or how the fisherman jumps into the river, and at the
bottom finds the most glittering and gorgeous wonders. Or a little
shepherdess is playing with her lambs on the meadow, and a handsome
prince, sitting upon a great horse, rides by and falls in love with
her. And then, if the evening bells chance to peal through the dusk,
and the wind brings the noise of the hammering and knocking from yon
black mountain, or I hear the sledge-hammer from afar, I could cry,
and yet in fact am glad at my very heart. But our surly gloomy
Eleazar, one day that I was telling him of this, abused me bitterly,
and said that busying oneself with such thoughts is the very pitch of
sin and wickedness. And yet I can't help it; for it all comes into my
head just of its own accord."

"Dear innocent creature!" said Edward, and seized the blooming girl's
hand.

"To you," she went on, "one may talk of all this, and you understand
everything in the right way: but other people immediately begin
scolding me, because they put a wrong meaning into everything. It was
just the same with my old nurse, who is now dead. You had been a long
time in the house before I ever thought I could tell you anything or
trust you; I was so very little then and used to play with my doll.
Dear Heaven, it is now full ten years since the last time I dandled my
Clary, as we called her. To my old Bridget, and my father, and
Eleazar, and the cook, I thought I might say everything, because they
were so grave: you were always laughing; and this made me fancy that
you did not rightly belong to us. Now when prayer time came, they would
not let me look at Clary, or carry her with me; but she was shut up in
the cupboard. This made me very sorry; for I fancied she must be
crying after me. So I found out a way, and took her along with me hid
under my pinafore, and held her close to my heart to keep her warm;
and when we came into the prayer-room I began by praying in private to
God that he would forgive me if I was too fond of my Clary, that he
would pardon me too, great and mighty as he was, for having brought
her in secret into his high presence, and that he would not think I
meant to deceive him or to treat him with disrespect, for he knew it
was not so. After this preface I fancied I had made my peace, and
repeated my usual prayers very devoutly. Thus all went on well for a
week: