The "nine" was the queerest, suddenly, before I knew what it
was about, standing on its head to look like "six," whilst "two" would
turn into a pert interrogation-point, as if to ask me, "What in the
world is to become of you, you poor zero? Without the others, the
slender 'one' and all the rest, you never can come to anything!"
I had no longer any ease in sitting before my door. I took out a stool
to make myself more comfortable, and put my feet upon it; I patched up
an old parasol, and held it over me like a Chinese pleasure-dome. But
all would not do. As I sat smoking and speculating, my legs seemed
to stretch to twice their size from weariness, and my nose lengthened
visibly as I looked down at it for hours. And when sometimes, before
daybreak, an express drove up, and I went out, half asleep, into the
cool air, and a pretty face, but dimly seen in the dawning except for
its sparkling eyes, looked out at me from the coach window and kindly
bade me good-morning, while from the villages around the cock's clear
crow echoed across the fields of gently-waving grain, and an early
lark, high in the skies among the flushes of morning, soared here and
there, and the Postilion wound his horn and blew, and blew--as the
coach drove off, I would stand looking after it, feeling as if I could
not but start off with it on the instant into the wide, wide world.
I still took my flowers every day, when the sun had set, to the marble
table in the dim arbor.
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