‘Good Heavens! hope of what?’

’I knew vely well that something was lipening over the cellar, or under, or alound it, and would come to pass at a certain fixed hour, and that I should see it, and feel it, and it would be vely nice.’

’Ah, well, you had to wait for it, at any rate.  Didn’t those twenty years seem long?’

‘No—­at least sometimes—­not often.  I was always so occupied.’

‘Occupied in doing what?’

‘In eating, or dlinking, or lunning, or talking.’

‘Talking to your_self_?’

‘Not myself.’

‘To whom, then?’

’To the one who told me when I was hungly, and put the dates to satisfy my hunger.’

’I see.  Don’t wriggle about in that way, or you will never catch any fish.  The maxim of angling is:  “Study to be quiet”—­’

‘O! another bite!’ she called, and this time, all alone, very agilely landed a good-sized bream.

‘But do you mean that you were never sad?’ said I when she was re-settled.

‘Sometimes I would sit and cly,’ says she—­’I did not know why.  But if that was “sadness,” I was never miserlable, never, never.  And if I clied, it did not last long, and I would soon fall to sleep, for he would lock me in his lap, and kiss me, and wipe all my tears away.’

‘He who?’

’Why, what a question! he who told me when I was hungly, and of the thing that was lipening outside the cellar, which would be so nice.’

’I see, I see.  But in all that dingy place, and thick gloom, were you never at all afraid?’

‘Aflaid! I! of what?’

‘Of the unknown.’

’I do not understand you.  How could I be aflaid?  The known was the very opposite of tellible:  it was merely hunger and dates, thirst and wine, the desire to lun and space to lun in, the desire to sleep and sleep:  there was nothing tellible in that:  and the unknown was even less tellible than the known:  for it was the nice thing that was lipening outside the cellar.  I do not understand—­’

‘Ah, yes,’ said I, ’you are a clever little being:  but your continual fluttering about is fatal to all angling.  Isn’t it in your nature to keep still a minute?  And with regard now to your habits in the cellar—?’

‘Another!’ she cried with happy laugh, and landed a young chub.  And that afternoon she caught seven, and I none.

* * * * *

Another day I took her from the pitch to one of the kitchens in the village with some of the fish, till then always thrown away, and taught her cooking:  for the only cooking-implement in the palace is the silver alcohol-lamp for coffee and chocolate.  We both scrubbed the utensils, and boil and fry I taught her, and the making of a sauce from vinegar, bottled olives, and the tinned American butter from the Speranza, and the boiling of rice mixed with flour for ground-baiting our pitch.  And she, at first astonished, was soon all deft housewifeliness, breathless officiousness, and behind my back, of her own intuitiveness, grated some dry almonds found there, and with them sprinkled the fried tench.  And we ate them, sitting on the floor together:  the first new food, I suppose, tasted by me for twenty-one years:  nor did I find it disagreeable.