'
'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.
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