"Oh, qu' elle y sera mal--peu comfortable! And her clothes, they
will wear out: how can she get new ones?"
Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. "Hem!" said he. "What would
you do, Adele? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a
white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one
could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow."
"She is far better as she is," concluded Adele, after musing some
time: "besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the
moon. If I were mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with
you."
"She has consented: she has pledged her word."
"But you can't get her there; there is no road to the moon: it is
all air; and neither you nor she can fly."
"Adele, look at that field." We were now outside Thornfield gates,
and bowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote, where the
dust was well laid by the thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges
and lofty timber trees on each side glistened green and rain-
refreshed.
"In that field, Adele, I was walking late one evening about a
fortnight since--the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in
the orchard meadows; and, as I was tired with raking swaths, I sat
down to rest me on a stile; and there I took out a little book and a
pencil, and began to write about a misfortune that befell me long
ago, and a wish I had for happy days to come: I was writing away
very fast, though daylight was fading from the leaf, when something
came up the path and stopped two yards off me. I looked at it. It
was a little thing with a veil of gossamer on its head. I beckoned
it to come near me; it stood soon at my knee. I never spoke to it,
and it never spoke to me, in words; but I read its eyes, and it read
mine; and our speechless colloquy was to this effect "It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was
to make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a
lonely place--such as the moon, for instance--and it nodded its head
towards her horn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster
cave and silver vale where we might live. I said I should like to
go; but reminded it, as you did me, that I had no wings to fly.