A little girl ran up the avenue from the porter's lodge and pushed the garden gate, which rang the bell as it opened, and she went into the garden, and I followed her; but she took no notice of me, nor did the others. It was Mimsey Seraskier. I went out and sat at my mother's feet, and looked long in her face. I must not speak to her, nor touch her--not even touch her busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur the dream." I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder. He was translating Gray's _Elegy_ into French; he had not got very far, and seemed to be stumped by the line-- _"And leaves the world to darkness and to me."_ Mimsey was silently looking over his other shoulder, her thumb in her mouth, one arm on the back of his chair. She seemed to be stumped also: it was an awkward line to translate. I stooped and put my hand to Medor's nose, and felt his warm breath. He wagged his rudiment of a tail, and whimpered in his sleep. Mimsey said-- "Regarde Medor, comme il remue la queue! _C'est le Prince Charmant qui lui chatouille le bout du nez._" Said my mother, who had not spoken hitherto: "Do speak English, Mimsey, please." Oh, my God! My mother's voice, so forgotten, yet so familiar, so unutterably dear! I rushed to her, and threw myself on my knees at her feet, and seized her hand and kissed it, crying, "Mother, mother!" A strange blur came over everything; the sense of reality was lost. All became as a dream--a beautiful dream--but only a dream; and I woke. * * * * * I woke in my small hotel bedroom, and saw all the furniture, and my hat and clothes, by the light of a lamp outside, and heard the ticking of the clock on the mantel-piece, and the rumbling of a cart and cracking of a whip in the street, and yet felt I was not a bit more awake than I had been a minute ago in my strange vision--not so much! I heard my watch ticking its little tick on the mantel-piece by the side of the clock, like a pony trotting by a big horse. The clock struck twelve, I got up and looked at my watch by the light of the gas-lit streets; it marked the same. My dream had lasted an hour--I had gone to bed at half-past ten. I tried to recall it all, and did so to the smallest particular--all except the tune the organ had played, and the words belonging to it; they were on the tip of my tongue, and refused to come further, I got up again and walked about the room, and felt that it had not been like a dream at all; it was more "recollectable" than all my real adventures of the previous day. It had ceased to be like a dream, and had become an actuality from the moment I first touched the duchess's hand to the moment I kissed my mother's, and the blur came. It was an entirely new and utterly bewildering experience that I had gone through.