Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.djvu/318

280 "All that I shall need as a doctor, certainly. And my own personal needs are few: I shall not even take any of my own wardrobethere is a fisherman's suit, ready-made, that is waiting for me at my lodgings. I shall only take my watch, and a few books, andstaythere is one book I should like to add, a pocket-Testamentto use at the bedsides of the sick and dying"

"Take mine!" said Lady Muriel: and she ran upstairs to fetch it. "It has nothing written in it but 'Muriel, she said as she returned with it: "shall I inscribe"

"No, my own one," said Arthur, taking it from her. "What could you inscribe better than that? Could any human name mark it more clearly as my own individual property? Are you not mine? Are you not," (with all the old playfulness of manner) "as Bruno would say, 'my very mine'?"

He bade a long and loving adieu to the Earl and to me, and left the room, accompanied only by his wife, who was bearing up bravely, and wasoutwardly, at leastless overcome than her old father. We waited in the room a