Now, every St. Peter's day, when the sun was at its hottest, in the mid-
summer noontide, my mother (though at other times she only wore such
clothes as the folk about us) would dress herself most richly, and shut
the shutters against all the windows, and light great candles, and sit as
though she were a queen, till the evening: sitting and working at a
frame, and singing as she worked.

And what she worked at was two wings, wrought in gold, on a blue ground.

And as for what she sung, I could never understand it, though I know now
it was not in Latin.

And she used to charge me straightly never to let any man into the house
on St. Peter's day; therefore, I and our dog, which was a great old
bloodhound, always kept the door together.

But one St. Peter's day, when I was nearly twenty, I sat in the house
watching the door with the bloodhound, and I was sleepy, because of the
shut-up heat and my mother's singing, so I began to nod, and at last,
though the dog often shook me by the hair to keep me awake, went fast
asleep, and began to dream a foolish dream without hearing, as men
sometimes do: for I thought that my mother and I were walking to mass
through the snow on a Christmas day, but my mother carried a live goose
in her hand, holding it by the neck, instead of her rosary, and that I
went along by her side, not walking, but turning somersaults like a
mountebank, my head never touching the ground; when we got to the chapel
door, the old priest met us, and said to my mother, 'Why dame alive, your
head is turned green! Ah! never mind, I will go and say mass, but don't
let little Mary there go,' and he pointed to the goose, and went.