SOME people say that if you sit alone in the nursery with no lamp lit, and look through your hands till you've counted thirty (provided you can and your hands aren't dirty!) Through the chink in your fingers you'll see in the deep armchair, an old woman who seems asleep. There's no need to wake her, because it seems we are all of us only the things she dreams, and the smaller you are the easier you become a part of the dreams and of her. As to her name it might be worse (others have done it) than call her "Nurse." As to her age there never was any nurse quite so old, because she admits that she nursed Hans Andersen when he was a little Dane, and then when she had done her task by him she undertook the Brothers Grimm, and when he was fat as any barrel who else but she bathed Lewis Carroll? These were her nurselings (children), and hers was the comfortable hand, the first, the last, the only one for Robert Louis Stevenson. What is her secret? Who knows? but listen! she has always one more babe to christen with the old immortal fairy dew -- Tug at her shawl; it might be you. |