The connexion was not entirely broken now--one link remained
between us and them. The Noah's Ark, with its cargo of sad-faced
emigrants, might be hull down on the horizon, but two of its
passengers had missed the boat and would henceforth be always
near us; and, as we played above them, an elephant would
understand, and a beetle would hear, and crawl again in
spirit along a familiar floor. Henceforth the spotty horse would
scour along far-distant plains and know the homesickness of alien
stables; but Potiphar, though never again would he paw the arena
when bull-fights were on the bill, was spared maltreatment by
town-bred strangers, quite capable of mistaking him for a cow.
Jerry and Esmeralda might shed their limbs and their stuffing, by
slow or swift degrees, in uttermost parts and unguessed corners
of the globe; but Rosa's book was finally closed, and no worse
fate awaited her than natural dissolution almost within touch and
hail of familiar faces and objects that had been friendly to her
since first she opened her eyes on a world where she had never
been treated as a stranger.

As we turned to go, the man in the moon, tangled in elm-boughs,
caught my eye for a moment, and I thought that never had he
looked so friendly. He was going to see after them, it was
evident; for he was always there, more or less, and it was no
trouble to him at all, and he would tell them how things were
still going, up here, and throw in a story or two of his own
whenever they seemed a trifle dull. It made the going away
rather easier, to know one had left somebody behind on the spot;
a good fellow, too, cheery, comforting, with a fund of anecdote;
a man in whom one had every confidence.