_ CHAPTER XXXV. BACK TO REALITY
It was good to get back to reality, with Angel's blue eyes, Mike's laugh, and Esther's common sense.
"Let me look deep into them, Angel--deep--deep. It is so good to get back to something true."
"Are they true?" said Angel, opening them very wide.
"Something that will never forsake one, something we can never forsake! Something in all the wide world's change that will never change. Something that will still be Angel even in a thousand years."
"I hope to be a real angel long before that," said Angel, laughing.
"Do you think you can promise to be true so long, Angel?" asked Henry.
"Dear, you know that so long as there is one little part of me left anywhere in the world, that part will be true to you.--But come, tell me about London. I'm afraid you didn't enjoy it very much."
"Oh, yes, I loved London,--that is, old London; but new London made me a little sad. I expect it was only because I didn't quite understand the conditions."
"Perhaps so," said Angel. "But tell me,--did you go to the Zoo?"
"You dear child! Yes! I went out of pure love for you."
"Now you needn't be so grown up. You know you wanted to go just for yourself as well. And you saw the monkey-house?"
"Yes."
"And the lions?"
"Yes."
"And the snakes?"
"Yes!"
"Oh, I'd give anything to see the snakes! Did they eat any rabbits when you were there,--fascinate them, and then draw them slowly, slowly in?"
"Angel, what terrible interests you are developing! No, thank goodness, they didn't."
"Why, wouldn't it fascinate you to see something wonderfully killed?" asked Angel. "It is dreadful and wicked, of course. But it would be so thrillingly real."
"I think I must introduce you to a young man I met in London," said Henry, "who solemnly asked me if I had ever murdered anyone. You savage little wild thing! I suppose this is what you mean by saying sometimes that you are a gipsy, eh?"
"Well, and you went to the Tower, and Westminster Abbey, and everything, and it was really wonderful?"
"Yes, I saw everything--including the Queen."
For young people of Tyre and Sidon to go to London was like what it once was to make the pilgrimage to Rome.
Mike created some valuable nonsense on the occasion, which unfortunately has not been preserved, and Esther was disgusted with Henry because he could give no intelligible description of the latest London hats; and all examined with due reverence those wonderful books for review.
In Tichborne Street Aunt Tipping had taken advantage of his absence to enrich his room with a bargain in the shape of an old desk, which was the very thing he wanted. Dear old Aunt Tipping! And Gerard, it is to be feared, took a little more brandy than usual in honour of his young friend's adventures in the capital.
These excitements over, Henry sat down at his old desk to write his first review; and there for the present we may leave him, for he took it very seriously and was dangerous to interrupt. _