The Rover's Secret

"Ah, poor lamb! you've been dreaming about your mother."

Which remark annoyed me, for I felt convinced that so realistic an experience could not possibly result from a mere dream.

It sometimes happened that there were no tragedies or other horrors in the newspapers sufficiently piquant to tempt the cook's intellectual palate; and in the absence of these, if it happened also to be Jane's "evening out," Mary would occasionally produce a well-thumbed copy of the Arabian Nights, or some old volume of fairy tales, from which she read aloud.

How I enjoyed those evenings with the old Eastern romancist! How I revelled in the imaginary