Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/50

 thought, were fighting at Oxford the cause of universal truth and reverend antiquity, she remembered in her petitions the poor godless youth, with his troubled and troubling eloquence? But it was strange that she blushed when she mentioned his name—why should she not pray for him as she prayed for others?

Perhaps she felt that she did not pray for him as she prayed for others.

She left the Æolian harp in the window, as a luxury if she should wake, and coiled herself up among lace pillows and eider blemos; and the hound coiled himself up on the gravel-walk, after a solemn vesper-ceremony of three turns round in his own length, looking vainly for 'a soft stone.' The finest of us are animals after all, and live by eating and sleeping and, taken as animals, not so badly off either-unless we happen to be Dorsetshire labourers—or Spitalfields weavers—or colliery children-or marching soldiers—or, I am afraid, one-half of English souls this day.

And Argemone dreamed;—that she was a fox, flying for her life through a churchyard—and Lancelot was a hound, yelling and leaping, in a red coat and white buckskins, close upon her—and she felt his hot breath, and saw his white teeth glare And then her father was there; and he was an Italian boy, and played the organ—and Lancelot was a dancing dog, and stood up and danced to the tune of 'C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour,' pitifully enough, in his red coat—and she stood up and danced too; but she