“Oh, _yes!_” from Peter, his clasped hands stretched toward her in an attitude of absurd supplication. “All in nice little words of one syllable or we won't understand.” “Well, once there were three little girls named Elsie, Lacie and Tillie and they lived in the bottom of a well.” [ILLUSTRATION: “WELL, ONCE THERE WERE THREE LITTLE GIRLS”] “What _kind_ of a well?” Oliver had caught the cue at once. “A treacle well--” * * * * * She went on with the Dormouse's Tale, but Ted, for once, hardly heard her--his mind was too busy with its odd, Egyptological dream. The princess who looked like Elinor. Her slaves would come first--a fat bawling eunuch, all one black glisten like new patent-leather, striking with a silver rod to clear dogs and crocodiles and Israelites out of the way. Then the litter--and a flash between curtains blown aside for an instant--and Hook Nose gazing and gazing--all the fine fighting curses of David on the infidel, that he had muttered sourly under breath all day, blowing away from him like sand from the face of a sphinx. Pomp sounding in brass and cries all around the litter like the boasting color of a trumpet--but in the litter not pomp but fineness passing. Fineness of youth untouched, from the clear contrast of white skin and crow-black hair to the hands that had the little stirrings of moon-moths against the green robe. Fineness of mind that will not admit the unescapable minor dirts of living, however much it may see them, a mind temperate with reticence and gentleness, seeing not life itself but its own delighted dream of it, a heart that had had few shocks as yet, and never the ones that the heart must be mailed or masked to withstand. The thing that passed had been continually sheltered, exquisitely guarded from the stronger airs of life as priests might guard a lotus, and yet it was neither tenderly unhealthy nor sumptuously weak. A lotus--that was it--and Hook Nose stood looking at the lotus--and because it was innocent he filled his eyes with it. And then it passed and its music went out of the mind. “_Ted_!” “What? What? Oh, yeah--sorry, Elinor, I wasn't paying proper attention.” “You mean you were asleep, you big cheese!” from Peter. “I wasn't--just thinking,” and seeing that this only brought raucous mirth from both Peter and Oliver, “Oh, shut up, you apes! Were you asking me something, El?” It was rather a change to come back from Elinor in scarab robes being carried along in a litter to Elinor sitting beside him in a bathing suit. But hardly an unpleasant change. “I've forgotten how it goes on--the Dormouse--after 'Well in.' Do you remember?” “Nope. Look it up when we get back. And anyhow--” “What?”