undigested, including Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson,
against whom, at that period, I entertained a strong prejudice by
reason of our divergent views upon the subject of spelling. Even in
this hour of our mutual discomfort Johnson would not leave me alone,
but persisted in asking me how I spelt Jonah. Nobody was looking, so
I kicked him. He sprang up and came after me. I tried to run away,
but became wedged between Hop-o'-my-Thumb and Julius Caesar. I
suppose our tearing about must have hurt the dragon, for at that
moment he gave vent to a most fearful scream, and I awoke to find the
fat man rubbing his left shin, while we struggled slowly, with steps
growing ever feebler, against a sea of brick that every moment closed
in closer round us.

We scrambled out of the carriage into a great echoing cave that might
have been the dragon's home, where, to my alarm, my mother was
immediately swooped down upon by a strange man in grey.

"Why's he do that?" I asked of my aunt.

"Because he's a fool," answered my aunt; "they all are."

He put my mother down and came towards us. He was a tall, thin man,
with eyes one felt one would never be afraid of; and instinctively
even then I associated him in my mind with windmills and a lank white
horse.

"Why, how he's grown," said the grey man, raising me in his arms until
my mother beside me appeared to me in a new light as quite a little
person; "and solid too."