Although the building is humble and your pallet is straw

Although the building is humble and your pallet is straw

Although the building is humble and your pallet is straw

“My dear chee-ild,” said my mamma, “this has been a sad morning; but you’re safe ne-ow, although the building is humble and your pallet is straw. Shade of Cambyses!” continued the old lady, rubbing a paw over her right ear, “why ever did I leave the land of Egypt?”

When I got a little older I began to look around me. I thought our new home was one of the jolliest places that could be, despite all the flowery accounts my mother used to give me of the land of her birth, with its marble halls and gorgeous tesselated pavements. It was a large, roomy loft in an old, old mill, and I used to run about the floor and chase the great spiders before I was big and brave enough to attack a wild mouse, or the great, untamable rats that used to frighten me so when mother was out, by standing on their hind legs and making dreadful faces at me. But didn’t they scamper off when mother came back!