One heard
fragments of her sentences--'wumbled ... chronic ... busy monster. ...
'And two minutes later _la famille anglaise_ was seriously at tea.
CHAPTER XVIII
What art thou, then? I cannot guess;
But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less.
_Love and Death,_ TENNYSON.
In the act of waking up on the morning of the Star Cave experience,
Henry Rogers caught the face of a vivid dream close against his own--
but in rapid motion, already passing. He tried to seize it. There was
a happy, delightful atmosphere about it. Examination, however, was
impossible; the effort to recover the haunting dream dispersed it. He
saw the tip, like an express train flying round a corner; it flashed
and disappeared, fading into dimness. Only the delightful atmosphere
remained and the sense that he had been somewhere far away in very
happy conditions. People he knew quite well, had been there with him;
Jimbo and Monkey; Daddy too, as he had known him in his boyhood. More
than this was mere vague surmise; he could not recover details. Others
had been also of the merry company, familiar yet unrecognisable. Who
in the world were they? It all seemed oddly real.
'How I do dream in this place, to be sure,' he thought; 'I, who
normally dream so little! It was like a scene of my childhood--
Crayfield or somewhere.
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