Only, when at last Uncle Felix looked down, their eyes met and a flash of knowledge too enormous ever to be forgotten passed noiselessly between the two of them.

"Perhaps...!" murmured his uncle.

"I wonder...!"

That was all.



CHAPTER XI

JUDY'S PARTICULAR ADVENTURE

Adventure means saying Yes, and being careless; children say Yes to everything and are very careless indeed: even their No is usually a Yes, inverted or deferred. "I won't play," parsed by a psychologist, means "I'll play when I'm ready." The adventurous spirit accepts what offers regardless of consequences; he who hesitates and thinks is but a Policeman who prevents adventure. Now everything offers itself to children, because they rightly think that everything belongs to them. Life is conditionless, if only people would let them accept it as it is. "Don't think; accept!" expresses the law of their swift and fluid being. They act on it. They take everything they can—get. But it is the Policeman who adds the "get," changing the whole significance of life with one ugly syllable.

Each of the children treasured an adventure of its very own; an adventure-in-chief, that could not possibly have happened to anybody else in the world. These three survivals in an age when education considers childhood a disease to be cured as hurriedly as possible— took their adventure the instant that it came, and each with a complete assurance that it was unique. To no one else in the world could such a thing have happened, least of all to the other two. Each took it characteristically, according to his or her individual nature —Judy, with a sense of Romance called deathless; Tim, with a taste for Poetic Drama, a dash of the supernatural in it; and Maria, with a magnificent inactivity that ruled the world by waiting for things to happen, then claiming them as her own. Her masterly instinct for repose ran no risk of failure from misdirected energy. And to all three secrecy, of course, was essential: "Don't never tell the others, Uncle! Promise faithfully!"

For to every adventure Uncle Felix acted as audience, atmosphere, and chorus. He watched whatever happened—audience; believed in its reality—atmosphere; and explained without explaining away—chorus. He had the unusual faculty of being ten years young as well as forty years old, and a real adventure was not possible without him.

The secrecy, of course, was not preserved for long; sooner or later the glory must be shared so that "the others" knew and envied. For only then was the joy complete, the splendour properly fulfilled. And so the old tired world went round, and life grew more and more wonderful every day. For children are an epitome of life—a self- creating universe.

That week was a memorable one for several reasons. Daddy, overworked among his sealing-wax, went for a change to Switzerland, taking Mother with him; Aunt Emily, in her black silk dress that crackled with disapproval, went to Tunbridge Wells—an awful place in another century somewhere; and Uncle Felix was left behind to "take charge of ''em'"—"'em" being the children and himself. It was evidence of monumental trust and power, placing him in their imaginations even above the recognised Authorities. His sway was never for a moment questioned.

"No lessons, then!" he had insisted as a condition of acceptance, and after much confabulation the point was yielded with reluctance. It was to be a fortnight's holiday all round. They had the house and grounds entirely to themselves, and with the departure of the elders a sheet was pulled by some one off the world, a curtain rolled away, another drop-scene fell, the word No disappeared. They saw invisible things.

Another reason, however, made the week memorable—the daisies. It was extraordinary. The very day after the grown-ups left the daisies came. Like thousands of small white birds, with bright and steady eyes, they arrived and settled, thick and plentiful. They appeared in sheets and crowds upon the grass, all of their own accord and unexplained. In a night the lawns turned white. It seemed a prearranged invasion. Judy, first awake that morning, looked out of her window to watch a squirrel playing, and noticed them. Then she told the others, and Maria, one eye above the blankets, ejaculated "Ah!" She claimed the daisies too.

Now, whereas a single daisy has no smell and seems a common, unimportant thing, a bunch of several hundred holds all the perfume of the spring. No flowers lie closer to the soil or bring the smell of earth more sweetly to the mind; upon the lips and cheeks they are as soft as a kitten's fur, and lie against the skin closer than tired eyelids. They are the common people of the flower world, yet have, in virtue of that fact, the beauty and simplicity of the common people. They own a subdued and unostentatious strength, are humble and ignored, are walked upon, unnoticed, rarely thought about and never praised; they are cut off in early youth by mowing machines; yet their pain in fading is unreported, their little sufferings unsung. They cling to earth, and never aspire to climb, but they hold the sweetest dew and nurse the tiniest little winds imaginable. Their patience is divine. They are proud to be the carpet for all walking, running things, and in their universal service is their strength. The rain stays longer with them than with grander flowers, and the best sunlight goes to sleep among them in great pools of fragrant and delicious heat. The daisies are a stalwart little people altogether.

But they have another quality as well—something elfin, wayward, mischievous. They peep and whisper. It is said they can cast spells. To sleep upon a daisied lawn is to run a certain risk. There is this hint of impudence in their attitude, half audacity, half knavery, that shows itself a little in the way they stare unwinkingly all day at everything above them—at the stately things that tower proudly in the air—then just shut up at sunset without a word of explanation or apology. They see everything, but keep their opinions to themselves. Because people notice them so little, and even tread upon their tiny and inquiring faces, they are up to things all the time—undiscovered things. They know, it is said, the thoughts of Painted Ladies and Clouded Brimstones, as well as the intentions of the disappearing golden flies; why wind often runs close to the ground when the tree- tops are without a single breath; but, also, they know what is going on below the surface. They live, moreover, in every country of the globe, and their system of intercommunication is so perfect that even birds and flying things can learn from it. They prove their breeding by their perfect taste in dress, the well-bred ever being inconspicuous; and their simplicity conceals enormous, undecipherable wonder. One daisy out of doors is worth a hundred shelves of text- books in the house. Their mischief, moreover, is not revenge, though some might think it so—but a natural desire to be recognised and thought and talked about a little. Daisies, in a word, are—daisies.

And it was by way of the daisies that Judy's great adventure came to her, the particular adventure that was her very own. For she had deep sympathy with flowers, a sympathy lacking in her brother and sister, and it was natural that her adventure in chief should come that way. She could play with flowers for long periods at a time; she knew their names and habits; she picked them gently, without cruelty, and never merely for the "fun" of picking them; while the way she arranged them about the house proved that she understood their silent, inner natures, their likes and dislikes—in a word, their souls. For Judy connected them in her mind with birds. Born in the air, they seemed to her.

As has been seen, she was the first to notice the arrival of the daisies. From the bedroom window she waved her arm to them, and showed plainly the pleasure that she felt. They arrived in troops and armies. Risen to the surface of the lawn like cream, she saw them staring with suspicious innocence at the sky. They stared at her.

"Just when the others have gone away!" was her instant thought, though unexpressed in words. There was meaning somewhere in this calculated arrival.

"They are alive," she asked that afternoon, "aren't they? But why do they all shut up at night? Who—" she changed the word—"what closes them?"

She was alone with Uncle Felix, and they had chosen with great difficulty a spot where they could lie down without crushing a single flower with their enormous bodies. After considerable difficulty they had found it. Having done a great many things since lunch—a feast involving several second helpings—they were feeling heavy and exhausted. So Judy chose this moment for her simple question. The world required explanation.

"There's life in everything," he mumbled, with his face against the grass, "everything that grows, especially." And having said it, he settled down comfortably again to doze. His pipe was out. He felt rather like a log.

"But stopping growing isn't dying," she informed him sharply.

"Oh, no," he agreed lazily, "you're alive for a long time after that."

"You stopped growing before I was born."

"And I'm not quite dead yet."

"Exactly," she said, "so daisies are alive."

It was absurd to think of dozing at such a time. He rolled round heavily and gazed at her through half-closed eyelids. "A daisy breathes," he murmured, "and drinks and eats; sap circulates in its little body. Probably it feels as well. Delicate threads like nerves run through it everywhere. It knows when it is being picked or walked on. Oh, yes, a daisy is alive all right enough." He sighed like a big dog that has just shaken a fly off its nose and lies waiting for the next attack. It came at once.

"But who knows it?" she asked. "I mean—there's no good in being alive unless some one else knows it too!"

Then he sat up and stared at her. Judy, he remembered, knew a lot of things she could tell to no one, not even to herself—and this seemed one of them. The question was a startling one.

"An intellectual mystic at twelve!" he gasped. "How on earth did you manage it?"

"I may be a mystillectual insect," she replied, proud of the compliment. "But what's the good of being alive, even like a daisy, unless others know it—us, for instance?"

He still stared at her, sitting up stiffly, and propped by his hands upon the grass behind him. After prolonged reflection, during which he closed his eyes and opened them several times in succession, sighing laboriously while he did so, low mumbled words became audible.

"Forgive my apparent slowness," he said, "but I feel like a mowing- machine this afternoon. I want oiling and pushing. The answer to your inquiry, however, is as follows: We could—if we took the trouble."

"Could know that daisies are alive?" she cried.

His great head nodded.

"If we thought about them very hard indeed," he went on, "and for a very, very long time we could feel as they feel, and so understand them, and know exactly how they are alive."

And the way he said it, the grave, thoughtful, solemn way, convinced her, who already was convinced beforehand.

"I do believe we could," she answered simply.

"I'm sure of it," he said.

"Let's try," she whispered breathlessly.

For a minute and a half they stared into each other's eyes, knowing themselves balanced upon the verge of an immense discovery. She did not doubt or question; she did not tell him he was only humbugging. Her heart thrilled with the right conditions—expectation and delight. Her dark-brown eyes were burning.

He murmured something that she did not properly understand:

Expect and delight Is the way to invite; Delight and expect, And you'll know things direct!

"Let's try!" she repeated, and her face proved that she fulfilled his conditions without knowing it; she was delighted, and she expected— everything.

He scratched his head, wrinkling up his nose and pursing his lips for a moment. "There's a dodge about it," he explained. "To know a flower yourself you must feel exactly like it. Its life, you see, is different to ours. It doesn't move and hurry, it just lives. It feels sun and wind and dew; it feels the insects' tread; it lifts its skin to meet the rain-drops and the whispering butterflies. It doesn't run away. It has no fear of anything, because it has the whole green earth behind it, and it feels safe because millions of other daisies feel the same"—

"And smells because it's happy," put in Judy. "Then what is a daisy? What is it really?"

She was "expecting" vividly. Her mind was hungry for essentials. This mere description told her nothing real. She wanted to feel "direct."

What is a daisy? The little word already had a wonderful and living sound—soft, sweet, and beautiful. But to tell the truth about this ordinary masterpiece was no easy matter. An ostentatious lily, a blazing rose, a wayward hyacinth, a mass of showy wisteria— advertised, notorious flowers—presented fewer difficulties. A daisy seemed too simple to be told, its mystery and honour too humble for proud human minds to understand. So he answered gently, while a Marble White sailed past between their very faces: "Let's think about it hard; perhaps we'll get it that way."

The butterfly sailed off across the lawn; another joined it, and then a third. They danced and flitted like winged marionettes on wires that the swallows tweaked; and, as they vanished, a breath of scented air stole round the trunk of the big lime tree and stirred the daisies' heads. A thousand small white faces turned towards them; a thousand steady eyes observed them; a thousand slender necks were bent. A wave of movement passed across the lawn as though the flowers pressed nearer, aware at last that they were being noticed. And both humans, the big one and the little one, felt a sudden thrill of happiness and beauty in their hearts. The rapture of the Spring slipped into them. They concentrated all their thoughts on daisies....

"I'm beginning to feel it already," whispered the Little Human, turning to gaze at him as though that breath of air impelled her too.

The wind blew her voice across his face like perfume; he looked, but could not see her clearly; she swayed a little; her eyes melted together into a single lovely circle, bright and steady within their fringe of feathery lashes. He tried to speak—"Delight and expect, and we'll know it direct"—but his voice spread across whole yards of lawn. It became a single word that rolled and floated everywhere about him, rising and falling like a wave upon a sea of green: "Daisy, daisy, daisy." On all sides, beneath, above his head as well, it passed with the music of the wandering wind, and he kept repeating it —"Daisy, daisy!" She kept repeating it, too, till the sound multiplied, yet never grew louder than a murmur of air and grass and tiny leaves—"Daisy, daisy, daisy." It broke like a sea upon the coast-line of another world. It seemed to contain an entire language in itself, nothing more to be said but those two soft syllables. It was everywhere.

But another vaster sound lay underneath. As the crest of a breaking wave utters its separate note of foam above the general booming of the sea that bears it, so the flying wave of daisy-tones rose out of this deeper sound beneath. Both humans became aware that it was but a surface-voice they imitated. They heard this other foundation-sound that bore it—deep, booming, thunderous, half lost and very far away. It was prodigious; yet there was safety and delight in it that brought no hint of fear. They swam upon the pulse of some enormous, gentle life that rose about and through them in a swelling tide. They felt the heave of something that was strong enough to draw the moon, yet soft enough to close a daisy's eyes. They heard the deep, lost roar of it, rising and coming nearer.

"The Earth!" he whispered. "And the Spring is rising through it. Listen!"

"We're growing together," replied the Little Human. "We're rising with the Spring!"

Ah, it was exquisite. They were in the Daisy World.... He tried to move and reach her, but found that he could not take a step in any direction, and that his feet were imbedded in the soft, damp soil. The movement which he tried to make spread wide among a hundred others like himself. They rose on every side. All shared his movements as they had shared his voice. He heard his whole body murmuring "Daisy, daisy, daisy...." And she leaned over, bending towards him a slim form in a graceful line of green that formed the segment of a circle. A little shining face came close for a moment against his own, rimmed with delicate spears of pink and white. It sang as it shone. The Spring was in it. There were hundreds like it everywhere, yet he recognised it as one he knew. There were thousands, tens of thousands, yet this one he distinguished because he loved it.

Their faces touched like the fringes of two clouds, and then withdrew. They remained very close together, side by side among thousands like themselves, slowly rising on the same great tide. The Earth's round body was beneath them. They felt quite safe—but different. Already they were otherwise than they had been. They felt the big world flying.

"We're changing," he murmured, seizing some fragments of half- remembered speech. "We're marvellously changed!"

"Daisies," he heard her vanishing reply, "we're two daisies on the lawn!"

And then their voices went. That was the end of speech, the end of thinking too. They only felt....

Long periods passed above their heads and then the air about them turned gorgeous as a sunset sky. It was a Clouded Yellow that sailed lazily past their faces with spreading wings as large as clouds. They shared that saffron glory. The draught of cool air fanned them. The splendid butterfly left its beauty in them before it sailed away. But that sunset sky had lasted for hours; that cool wind fanning them was a breeze that blew steadily from the hills, making "weather" for half an afternoon. Time and duration as humans measure them had passed away; there was existence without hurry; end and beginning had not been invented yet. They did not know things in the stupid sense of having names for them; all that there was they shared; that was enough. They knew by feeling.

For everything was plentiful and inexhaustible—the heavens emptied light and warmth upon them without stint or measure; space poured about them freely, for they had no wish to move; they felt themselves everywhere, for all they needed came to them without the painful effort of busy things that hunt and search outside themselves; both food and drink slipped into them unawares from an abundant source below that equally supplied whole forests without a trace of lessening or loss. All life was theirs, full, free, and generous beyond conception. They owned the world, without even the trouble of knowing that they owned it. They lived, simply staring at the universe with eyes of exquisitely fashioned beauty. They knew joy and peace, and were content with that.

They did communicate. Oh, yes, they shared each other's special happiness. There was, it is true, no sound of broken syllables, no speech which humans use to veil the very thing they would express; but there was that simpler language which all Nature knows, which cannot lie because it is unconscious, and by which constellations converse with buttercups, and cedars with the flying drops of rain—there was gesture. For gesture and attitude can convey all the important and necessary things, while speech in the human sense is but an invention of some sprite who wanted people to wonder what they really meant. In sublimest moments it is never used even in the best circles of intelligence; it drops away quite naturally; souls know one another face to face in dumb but eloquent—gesture.

"The sun is out; I feel warm and happy; there is nothing in the world I need!"

"You are beside me," he replied. "I love you, and we cannot go far apart. I smell you even when no wind stirs. You are sweetest when the dew has gone and left you moist and shiny."

A little shiver of enjoyment quivered through her curving stem. His petals brushed her own. She answered:

"Wet or fine, we stand together, and never stop staring at each other till we close our faces—"

"In the long darkness. But even then we whisper as we grow—"

"And open our eyes together at the same moment when the light comes back—"

"And feel warm and soft, and smell more delicious than ever in the dawn."

These two brave daisies, growing on the lawn, had lives of concentrated happiness, asking no pity for their humble station in the universe. All treated them with unadulterated respect, and everything made love to them because they were so tender and so easily pleased. They knew, for instance, that their splendid Earth was turning with them, for they felt the swerve of her, sharing from their roots upwards her gigantic curve through space; they knew the sun was part of them, because they felt it drawing their sweet-flavoured food up all their dainty length till it glowed in health upon their small, flushed faces; also they knew that streams of water made a tumbling fuss and sent them messages of laughter, because they caught the little rumble of it through miles of trembling ground. And some among them—though these were prophets and poets but half believed, and looked upon as partly mad and partly wonderful—affirmed that they felt the sea itself far leagues away, bending their heads this way and that for hours at a stretch, according to the thundering vibrations that the tide sent through the soil from distant shores.

But all, from the tallest spread-head to the smallest button-face—all knew the pleasure of the uncertain winds; all knew the game of holding flying things just a moment longer, by fascinating them, by drowsing them into sleepiness, by nipping their probosces, or by puffing perfume into their nostrils while they caught their feet with the pressure of a hundred yellow rods....

Enormous periods passed away. A cloud that for a man's "ten minutes" hid the sun, wearied them so that they simply closed their eyes and went to sleep. Showers of rain they loved, because it washed and cooled them, and they felt the huge satisfaction of the earth beneath them as it drank: the sweet sensation of wet soil that sponged their roots, the pleasant gush that sluiced their bodies and carried off the irritating dust. They also felt the heavier tumbling of the swollen streams in all directions. The drops from overhanging trees came down and played with them, bringing another set of perfumes altogether. A summer shower was, of course, "a month" to them, a day of rain like weeks of holiday by the sea.... But, most of all, they enjoyed the rough-and-tumble nonsense of the violent weather, when they were tied together by the ropes of running wind; for these were visiting days— all manner of strangers dropped in upon them from distant walks in life, and they never knew whether the next would be a fir-cone or one of those careless, irresponsible travellers, a bit of thistle-down....

Yet, for all their steadiness, they knew incessant change—the variety of a daisy's existence was proverbial. Nor was the surprise of being walked upon too alarming—it did not come to all—for they knew a way of bending beneath enormous pressure so that nothing broke, while sometimes it brought a queer, delicious pleasure, as when the bare feet of some flying child passed lightly over them, leaving wild laughter upon a group of them. They knew, indeed, a thousand joys, proudest of all, however, that the big Earth loved them so that she carried millions of them everywhere she went.

And all, without exception, communicated their knowledge by the movements, attitudes, and gestures they assumed; and since each stood close to each, the enjoyment spread quickly till the entire lawn felt one undivided sensation by itself. Anything passing across it at such a moment, whether insect, bird, loose leaf or even human being, would be aware of this, and thus, for a fleeting second, share another world. Poets, it is said, have received their sweetest inspirations upon a daisied lawn in the flush of spring. Nor is it always a sight of prey that makes the swallows dart so suddenly sideways and away, but some chance message of joy or warning intercepted from the hosts of flowers in the soil.

And from this region of the flower-life comes, of course, the legend that fairies have emotions that last for ever, with eternal youth, and with loves that do not pass away to die. This, too, they understood. Because the measurement of existence is a mightier business than with over-developed humans-in-a-hurry. For knowledge comes chiefly through the eye, and the eye can perceive only six times in a second—things that happen more quickly or more slowly than six times a second are invisible. No man can see the movement of a growing daisy, just as no man can distinguish the separate beats of a sparrow's wing: one is too slow, and the other is too quick. But the daisy is practically all eye. It is aware of most delightful things. In its short life of months it lives through an eternity of unhurrying perceptions and of big sensations. Its youth, its loves, its pleasures are—to it—quite endless....

"I can see the old sun moving," she murmured, "but you will love me for ever, won't you?"

"Even till it sinks behind the hills," he answered, "I shall not change."

"So long we have been friends already," she went on. "Do you remember when we first met each other, and you looked into my opening eyes?"

He sighed with joy as he thought of the long, long stretch of time.

"That was in our first reckless youth," he answered, catching the gold of passionate remembrance from an amber fly that hovered for an instant and was gone. "I remember well. You were half hidden by a drop of hanging dew, but I discovered you! That lilac bud across the world was just beginning to open." And, helped by the wind, he bent his shining head, taller than hers by the sixtieth part of an inch, towards the lilac trees beside the gravel path.

"So long ago as that!" she murmured, happy with the exquisite belief in him. "But you will never change or leave me—promise, oh, promise that!"

His stalk grew nearer to her own. He leaned protectively towards her eager face.

"Until that bud shall open fully to the light and smell its sweetest," he replied—the gesture of his petals told it plainly—"so long shall you and I enjoy our happy love."

It was an eternity to them.

"And longer still," she pleaded.

"And longer still," he whispered in the wind. "Even until the blossom falls."

Ah, it was good to be alive with such an age of happiness before them!

He felt the tears in her voice, however; he knew there was something that she longed to tell.

"What is your sadness?" he asked softly, "and why do you put such questions to me now? What is your little trouble?"

A moment's hesitation, a moment's hanging of the graceful head the width of a petal's top nearer to his shoulder—and then she told him.

"I was in darkness for a time," she faltered, "but it was a long, long time. It seemed that something came between us. I lost your face. I felt afraid."

And his laughter—for just then a puff of wind passed by and shook his sides for him—ran across many feet of lawn.

"It was a Bumble Bee," he comforted her. "It came between us for a bit, its shadow fell upon you, nothing more! Such things will happen; we must be prepared for them. It was nothing in myself that dimmed your world."

"Another time I will be braver, then," she told him, "and even in the darkness I shall know you close, ah, very close to me...."

For a long, long stretch of time, then, they stood joyfully together and watched the lilac growing. They also saw the movement of the sun across the sky. An eternity passed over them.... The vast disc of the sun went slowly gliding....

But all the enormous things that happened in their lives cannot be told. Lives crammed with a succession of such grand and palpitating adventures lie beyond the reach of clumsy words. The sweetness sometimes was intolerable, and then they shared it with the entire lawn and so obtained relief—yet merely in order to begin again. The humming of the rising Spring continued with the thunderous droning of the turning Earth. Never uncared for, part of everything, full of the big, rich life that brims the world in May—ah, almost fuller than they could hold sometimes—they passed with existence along to their appointed end.

"We began so long ago, I simply can't remember it," she sighed.

Yet the sun they watched had not left half a degree behind him since they met.

"There was no beginning," he reproved her, smiling, "and there will never be any end."

And the wind spread their happiness like perfume everywhere until the whole white lawn of daisies lay singing their rapture to the sunshine....

The minute underworld of grass and stalks seemed of a sudden to grow large; yet, till now, they had not realised it as "large"—but simply natural. A beetle, big and broad as a Newfoundland dog, went lumbering past them, brushing its polished back against their trembling necks; yet, till now, they had not thought of it as "big"—but simply normal. Its footsteps made a grating sound like the gardener's nailed boots upon the gravel paths. It was strange and startling. Something was different, something was changing. They realised dimly that there was another world somewhere, a world they had left behind long, long ago, forgotten. Something was slipping from them, as sleep slips from the skin and the eyes in the early morning when the bath comes "pinging" upon the floor. What did it mean?

Big and little, far and near, above, below, inside and outside—all were mixed together in a falling rush.

They themselves were changing.

They looked up. They saw an enormous thing rising behind them with vast caverns of square outline opening in its sides—a house. They saw huge, towering shapes whose tops were in the clouds—the familiar lime trees. Big and tiny were inextricably mixed together.

And that was wrong. For either the forest of grass was as big as themselves—in which case they still were daisies; or else it was tiny and far below them—in which case they were hurrying humans again. There was an odd confusion...while consciousness swung home to its appointed centre and Adventure brought them back towards the old, familiar starting-place again.

There came an ominous and portentous sound that rushed towards them through the air, and through the solid ground as well. They heard it, and grew pale with terror. Across the entire lawn it rumbled nearer, growing in volume awfully. The very earth seemed breaking into bits about them. And then they knew.

It was the End of the World that their prophets had long foretold.

It crashed upon them before they had time to think. The roar was appalling. The whole lawn trembled. The daisies bowed their little faces in a crowd. They had no time even to close their innocent eyes. Before a quarter of their sweet and happy life was known, the End swept them from the world, unsung and unlamented. Two of them who had planned Eternity together fell side by side before one terrible stroke....

"I do believe—" said Judy, brushing her tumbled hair out of her eyes.

"Not possible!" exclaimed Uncle Felix, sitting up and stretching himself like a dog. "It's a thing I never do, never, NEVER! I think my stupid watch has stopped again...."

They stared at each other with suspiciously sleepy eyes.

"Promise," she whispered presently, "promise never to tell the others!"

"I promise faithfully," he answered. "But we'd better get up, or we shall have our heads cut off like—all the other daisies."

He pulled her to her feet—out of the way of the heavy mowing machine which Weeden was pushing with a whirring, droning noise across the lawn.



CHAPTER XII

TIM'S PARTICULAR ADVENTURE

Tim's "particular adventure" was of another kind. It was a self- repeater—of some violence, moreover, when the smallness of the hero is considered. Whether in after-life he become an astronomer-poet or a "silver-and-mechanical engineer"—both dreams of his—he will ever be sharp upon rescuing something. A lost star or a burning mine will be his objective, but with the essential condition that it be— unattainable. Achievement would mean lost interest. For Tim's desire was, is, and ever will be insatiable. Profoundest mystery, insoluble difficulty, and endless searching were what his soul demanded of life. For him all ponds were bottomless, all gipsies older than the moon. He felt the universe within him, and was born to seek its inexplicable "explanation"—outside. The realisation of such passion, however, is not necessarily confined to writers of epics and lyrics. Tim was a man of action before he was a poet. "Forever questing" was his unacknowledged motto. Besides asking questions about stars and other inaccessible incidents of his Cosmos, he liked to "go busting about," as he called it—again with one essential condition that the thing should never come to an end by merely happening. Its mystery must remain its beauty.

"I want to save something from an awful, horrible death," he announced one evening, looking up from Half-hours with English Battles for a sign of beauty in distress.

"Not so easy," his uncle warned him, equally weary of another overrated book—his own.

"But I feel like it," he replied. "Come on."

Uncle Felix still held back. "That you feel like it doesn't prove that there's anything that wants rescuing," he objected.

The boy stared at him with patient tolerance and surprise.

"I promised," he said simply.

It was the other's turn to stare. "And when, pray?" They had been alone for the last half hour. It seemed strange.

"Oh—just now," replied the boy carelessly. "A few minutes ago— about."

"Indeed!" It seemed stranger still. No one had come in. Yet Tim never prevaricated.

"Yes," he said, "I gave my wordy honour." It was so gravely spoken that, while pledges involving life and death were obviously not new to him, this one was of exceptional kind.

"Who, then, did you promise—whom, I mean?" the man demanded, fixing him with his stern blue eyes.

And the answer came out pat: "Myself!"

"Aha!" said the other, with a sigh and a raising of the eyebrows, by way of apology. "That settles it—"

"Of course."

"Because what you think and say, you must also act," the man continued. "If you promise yourself a thing, and then don't do it, you've simply told a lie." And he drew another sigh. He scented action coming.

"Let's go at once and find it," said Tim, putting a text-book into seven words. He hitched his belt up, and looked round to make sure his sisters were not within reach of interference. There was a moment's pause, during which Uncle Felix hitched his will up. They rose, then, standing side by side. They left the room arm in arm on their way into the garden. The dusk was already laying its first net of shadows to catch the Night.

"Hadn't you better change first?" asked Tim, thoughtfully, on his way down. He glanced at his companion's white flannel suit. "You're so awfully visible."

"Visible!" It was not his bulk. Tim was never deliberately rude. Was it the risk of staining that he meant?

"Any one can see you miles away like that."

The other understood instantly. In an adventure everything sees, everything has eyes, everything watches. The world is alive and full of eyes. He hesitated a moment.

"Oh, that's all right," he replied. "To be easily seen is the best way. It disarms curiosity at once. Tell all about yourself and nobody ever thinks anything. It's trying to hide that makes the world suspect you. Keep nothing back and show yourself is the best way to go about unnoticed. I've tried it."

"Ah," exclaimed Tim, in an eager whisper, "same as walking into the strawberry-bed without asking—"

"So my white clothes are just the thing," said the other, avoiding the pit laid for him.

"Of course, yes." Tim still chased the big idea in his mind. "Besides," he added, full of another splendid thought, "like that they won't expect you to do very much. They'll watch you instead of me."

There was confusion in the utterance, but things were rather crowding in upon him, to tell the truth, and imagination leaped ahead upon two trails at once. He looked at his big companion with more approval. "You'll do," he signified, pulling his cap over his eyes, thrusting both hands in his pockets, and slithering rapidly down the bannisters in advance.

"Thanks," said Uncle Felix, following him, three steps at a time, with effort.

In the hall they paused a moment—a question of doors.

"Back," said Uncle Felix.

"Front's better," decided the boy. "Then nobody'll think anything, you see." He was quick to put the new principle into practice.

On the lawn there was another pause, this time a question of direction.

"The wood, of course!" And they set off together at a steady trot. Few words were wasted when Tim went "busting about" in this way. Uncle Felix resigned himself and looked to him for guidance; there was some one to be rescued; there was danger to be run; the risk was bigger than either of them realised; but more than that he knew not.

"Got a handkerchief with you?" the boy asked presently.

"Yes, thanks; got everything," panted the other.

"For signalling," was offered three minutes later by way of explanation, "in case we get lost—or anything like that."

"Quite so."

"Is it a clean one?"

"Yes."

"Good!"

They climbed the swinging gate of iron, rushed the orchard, crossed the smaller hayfield in the open, heedless of the rabbits that rolled like fat balls into pockets made to fit them, slipped out of sight behind a stack of straw whose threatening lopsidedness seemed to support a ladder, and so eventually came to a breathless and perspiring halt upon the edges of a—wood.

It was a very ordinary wood, small, inconspicuous, and unimposing. No big trees towered; there was no fence of thick, black trunks. It was not mysterious, like the dense evergreens on the other side of the grounds where the west wind shook half a mile of dripping branches in stormy weather:

Where the yew trees are gigantic, And the yellow coast of "Spain," Breasting on the dim "Atlantic," Stores the undesired rain.

It grew there in a kind of untidy muddle, on the very outskirts of the estate, meekly—rather disappointingly, Uncle Felix thought. There was no hint of anything haunted or terrible about it. Round rabbits fussed busily about its edges, darting as though pulled by wires, and the older wood-pigeons, no doubt, slept comfortably in its middle. But game despised it heartily, and traps were never laid. There was not even a trespassers' board, without which no wood is properly attractive. Indeed, for most people it was simply not worth the trouble of entering at all. Apparently no one ever bothered about it.

Yet, precisely for these very reasons, it was real. Tim described it afterwards as a "naked" wood. It had no fence to hold it together, it was not dressed up by human beings, it just grew naturally. To this very openness and want of concealment it owed its deep security, its safety was due entirely to the air of innocence it wore. But in reality it was disguised. It was a forest—without a middle, without a heart.

"This is our wood," announced Tim in a low voice, as they stood and mopped their faces. His tone suggested that they would enter at their peril.

"And is it a big wood?" the other asked with caution, as though he had not noticed it before.

"Much bigger than it looks," the boy replied. "You can easily get lost." Then added, with the first touch of awe about him, "It has no centre."

"That's the worst kind," said his companion shivering slightly. "Like a pond that has no bottom."

Tim nodded. His face had grown a trifle paler. He showed no immediate anxiety to make the first advance, reserving that privilege for his comrade. A breath of wind stole out and set the dry leaves rustling.

"We must look out," he said at length. "There'll be a sign."

Uncle Felix listened attentively to every word. The boy had moved up closer to him. "And if anything happens one of us must climb a tree and signal. You've got the clean handkerchief. You see, it's at the centre that it gets rather nasty—because anybody who gets there simply disappears and is never heard of again. That's why there's no centre at all really. It's a terrible rescue we've got to do."

The adventure fulfilled the desire of his heart, for, since there was no centre, the search would last for ever.

"Keep a sharp look-out for the sign," replied the man, feeling a small hand steal into his own. "We'd better go in before it gets any darker."

"Oh, that's nothing," was the whispered comment. "The great thing is not to lose our way. Just follow me!"

They then went into this wood without a centre, without a middle, without a heart. Into this heartless wood they moved stealthily, Uncle Felix singing under his breath to keep his courage up:

"A wood is a mysterious place, It never looks you in the face, But stares behind you all the time. Your safest plan is just to—climb! For, otherwise you lose your way, The week, the month, the time of day; It turns you round, it makes you blind, And in the end you lose your mind! Avoid the centre, If you enter!

"It grows upon you—grows immense, Its peace is not indifference, It sees you—and it takes offence, It knows you're interfering. Its sleepliness is all pretence, With trunks and twigs and foliage dense It's watching you, alert, intense, It's furious; it's peering.

"Upon the darkening paths below, Whichever way you try to go You'll meet with strange resistance. So climb a tree and wave your hand, The birds will see and understand, And may bring you assistance. Avoid the centre, If you enter, For once you're there You—disappear! Smothered by depth and distance!"

Tim listened without a sign of interest. Every one has his peculiarity, he supposed, and, provided his companion did not dance as well as sing, it was all right. The noise was unnecessary, perhaps, still—the sound of a human voice was not without its charm. The house was a very long way off; the gardeners never came this way. A wood was a mysterious place! "Is that all?" he asked—but whether glad or sorry, no man could possibly have told.

"For the present," came the reply, and the sound of both their voices fell a little dead, muffled by the density of the undergrowth. "Are we going right?"

"There'll be a sign," Tim explained again. And the way he said it, the air of positive belief in tone and manner, stung the man's consciousness with a thrill of genuine adventure. It began to creep over him. He kept near to the comforting presence of the boy, aware in quite a novel way of the Presence of the Wood. This very ordinary wood, without claim to particular notice, much less to a notice-board, changed his normal feelings by arresting their customary flow. An unusual sensation replaced what he meant to feel, expected to feel. He was aware of strangeness. He felt included in the purpose of a crowd of growing trees. "But it's just a common little wood," he assured himself, realising as he said it that both adjectives were wrong. For nothing left to itself is ever common, and as for "little"—well, it had suddenly become enormous.

Outside, in what was called the big world, things were going on with frantic hurry and change, but in here the leisured calm was huge, gigantic, so much so that the other dwindled into a kind of lost remoteness. "Smothered by depth and distance," he could almost forget it altogether. Out there nations were at war, republics fighting, empires tottering to ruin; great-hearted ladies were burning furniture and stabbing lovely pictures (not their own) to prove themselves intelligent enough to vote; and gallant gentlemen were flying across the Alps and hunting for the top and bottom of the earth instead of hurrying to help them. All manner of tremendous things were happening at a frightful pace—while this unnoticed wood just stood and grew, watching the sun and stars and listening to the brushing winds. Its unadvertised foliage concealed a busy universe of multitudinous, secret life.

How still the trees were—far more imposing than in a storm! Still, quiet things are much more impressive than things that draw attention to themselves by making a noise. They are more articulate. The strength of all these trees emerged in their silence. Their steadiness might easily wear one down.

And now, into its quiet presence, a man and a boy from that distressful outer world had entered. They moved with effort and difficulty into its untrodden depths. Uninvited and unasked, they sought its hidden and invisible centre, the mysterious heart of it which the younger of the adventurers could only describe by saying that "It isn't there, because when you get there, you disappear!" Two ways of expressing the same thing, of course! Moreover, entering involved getting out again. Escape and Rescue—the Wood always in opposition—took possession of the man's slow mind....

It was already thick about them, and the trees stood very still. The branches drooped, motionless in the warm evening air. The twigs pointed. Each leaf had an eye, but a hidden, lidless eye. The saplings saw them, but the heavier trunks observed them. It was known in what direction they were going, the direction, however, being chosen and insisted on by the Wood. Their very steps were counted. The whole business of the trees was suspended while they passed. They were being watched. And the stillness was so deep that it forced them, too, to make as little noise as possible. They moved with the utmost caution, pretending that a snapping twig might betray their presence, yet knowing quite well that each detail of their blundering advance was marked down with the accuracy of an instantaneous photograph. Tim, usually in advance, looked round from time to time, with a finger on his lips; and though he himself made far more noise than his companion, he stared with reproach when the latter snapped a stick or let a leafy branch swish through the air too loudly.

"Oh, hush!" he whispered. "Please do hush!" and the same moment caught his own foot in a root, placed cunningly across the path, and sprawled forward with the noise of an explosion. But he made no reference to the matter. His own noises did no harm apparently. He was perfectly honest about it, not merely putting the blame elsewhere to draw attention from himself. His uncle's size and visibility were co- related in his mind. Being convinced that he moved as stealthily and soundlessly as a Redskin, it followed obviously that his companion didn't.

The dusk had noticeably deepened when at length they reached a little clearing and stood upright, perspiring freely, and both a little flustered. The silence was really extraordinary. It seemed they had entered a private place, a secret chamber where they had no right, and were intruders. The clearing formed a circle, and from the open sky overhead a grey, mysterious light fell softly on the leafy walls. They paused and peered about them.

"Hark! What's that?" asked Tim in a whisper.

"Nothing," replied the other.

"But I heard it," the boy insisted; "something rushing."

"I'm rather out of breath, perhaps."

The boy looked at him reproachfully. His expression suggested "Why are you so noisy and enormous? It's hopeless, really!" But aloud he merely said, "It's got awfully dark all of a sudden."

"It's the wood does that," replied Uncle Felix. "Outside it's only twilight. I think we'd better be getting on."

"We're getting there," observed the boy.

"But we shan't be able to see the sign if this darkness gets worse," said the other apprehensively.

The answer gave him quite a turn. "It's been—ages and ages ago!"

The idea of rescue meanwhile had merged insensibly into escape, but neither remarked upon the change. It was only that the original emotion had spread a bit. Tim and Uncle Felix stood close together in this solemn clearing, waiting, peering about them, listening intently. But Tim had seen the sign; he knew what he was doing all the time; he was in more intimate relations with the Being of the Wood than his great floundering Uncle possibly could be.

"Which way, do you think?" asked the latter anxiously.

There seemed no possible exit from the clearing, no break anywhere in the leafy walls; even the entrance was covered up and hidden. The Wood blocked further advance deliberately.

"We're lost," said Tim bluntly, turning round and round. His eyes opened to their widest. "You've simply taken a wrong turning somewhere."

And before Uncle Felix could expostulate or say a word in self- defence, the inevitable reward of his mistake was upon him.

"You've got the handkerchief!"

Already the boy was looking about him for a suitable tree.

"But you saw the sign, Tim," he began excuses; "and it's your wood; I've never been here before—"

"That one looks the easiest," suggested Tim, pointing to a beech. It had one low branch, but the trunk was smooth and slippery as ice. He pushed aside the foliage with his hands to make an opening towards it. "I'll help you up." Tim spoke as though there was no time to lose.

But help came just then unexpectedly from another quarter—there was a sudden battering sound. Something went past them through the branches with a crashing noise. It was terrific, the way it smashed and clattered overhead, making a clapping rattle that died away into the distance with strange swiftness. They jumped; their hearts stood still a moment. It was so horribly close. But the stillness that followed the uproar was far worse than the noise. It felt as though the Wood had stretched a hand and aimed a crafty blow at them from behind the shield of foliage. A quiver of visible silence ran across the leafy walls. They stood stock still, staring blankly into each other's eyes.

"A wood-pigeon!" whispered Uncle Felix, recovering himself first. "We've been seen!"

A faint smile passed over Tim's startled face. There was no other expression in it. The tension was distressingly acute. One sentence, however, came to the lips of both adventurers. They uttered it under their breath together:

"It's—disappeared!"

Instinctively they held hands then. Tim stood, rooted to the ground.

"The centre!" They whispered it almost inaudibly. The horror of the spot where people vanished was upon them both. The power of the Wood had worn them down.

"Yes, but don't say it," cried Uncle Felix; "above all, don't say it aloud." And he clapped one hand upon his own mouth, and the other upon the boy's, as Tim came cuddling closer to his comforting expanse of side. "That only wakes it up, and—"

He did not finish the sentence. Instead, his mind began to think tremendously. They were both badly frightened. What was the best thing to be done? At first he thought: "Keep perfectly still, and make no slightest movement; a quiet person is not noticed." But, the next instant, came the truer wisdom: "If anything unusual occurs, go on doing exactly what you were doing before. Hold the atmosphere, as it were." And on this latter inspiration he decided to act at once—

Only to discover that Tim had realised it before him. The boy was pulling at him. "Do come on, Uncle!" he was saying. "We shall go mad with fright if we keep on standing here—we shall be raving lunatics!"

They set off wildly then, plunging helter-skelter into the silent, heartless wood. The trees miraculously opened up a way for them as they dived and stooped and wriggled forward. In which direction they were going neither of them had the least idea, but as neither one nor the other disappeared, it was clear they had not reached the actual centre. They gasped and spluttered, their breath grew shorter, the darkness increased. They came to all sorts of curious places that deceived them; ways opened invitingly, then closed down again and blocked advance; there were clearings that were obviously false, open places that were plainly sham; and a dozen times they came to spots that seemed familiar, but which really they had never seen before. Sense of direction left them, for they continually changed the angle, compelled by the undergrowth to do so. Twigs leaped at them and stung their faces, Tim's cheeks were splashed with mud, Uncle Felix's clean white flannels showed irregular lines of dirty water to his knees. It was altogether a tremendous affair in which rescue and escape were madly mingled with furious attack and terrified retreat. Everything was moving, and in all directions at once. They rushed headlong through the angry Wood. But the Wood itself rushed ever past them. It was roused.

The confusion and bewilderment had got a little more than they could manage, indeed, when—quite marvellously and unexpectedly—the darkness lifted. They saw trees separately instead of in a whirling mass. The trunks stood more apart from one another. There were patches of faint light. More—there was a line of light. It shone, grey and welcome, some dozen yards in front of them.

"Come on!" cried Tim. "Follow me!"

And two minutes later they found themselves outside, torn, worn, and breathless, upon the edge—standing exactly at the place where they had entered three-quarters of an hour before. They had made an enormous circle. Panting and half collapsed, they stood side by side in an exhausted heap.

"We're out," said Tim, with immense relief. Profoundly satisfied with himself, he looked round at his bedraggled Uncle. It was plain that he had rescued some one from "an awful-anorrible death."

"At last!" replied the other gratefully, aware that he was the rescued one. "But only just in time!"

And they moved away in the deepening dusk towards the house, whose welcome lights shone across the intervening hayfield.



CHAPTER XIII

TIME HESITATES

Meanwhile the coveted fortnight drew towards a close. It had begun on a Friday, and that left two full, clear weeks ahead. It had seemed an inexhaustible period—when it started. There was the feeling that it would draw out slowly, like an ordinary lesson-week; instead of which it shot downhill to Saturday with hardly a single stop. On looking back, the children almost felt unfairness; somebody had pushed it; they had been cheated.

And, of course, they had been cheated. Time had played his usual trick upon them. The beginning was so prodigal of reckless promises that they had really believed a week would last for ever. Childhood expects, quite rightly, to have its cake and eat it, for there is no true reason why anything should ever end at all. The devices are various: a titbit is set aside to enjoy later, thus deceiving Time and checking its ridiculous hurry. But in the long run Time invariably wins. After Thursday the week had shot into Saturday without a single pause. It whistled past. And the titbit, Saturday, had come.

Yet without the usual titbit flavour; for Saturday, as a rule, wore splashes of gold and yellow upon its latter end, being a half-holiday associated with open air and sunshine, but now, Monday already in sight, with lessons and early bed and other prohibitions by the dozen, hearts sank a little, a shadow crept upon the sun. They had a grievance; some one had cheated them of a final joy. The collapse was unexpected, therefore wrong. And the arch-deceiver who had humbugged them, they knew quite well, was Time. He was in their thoughts. He mocked them all day long. Clocks grinned; Saturday, June 3, flaunted itself insolently in their faces.

"The day after to-morrow," remarked some one, noticing a calendar staring on the wall; and from the moment that phrase could be used it meant the day was within measurable distance.

"Aunt Emily leaves Tunbridge Wells" was mentioned too, sounding less unpleasant than "Aunt Emily comes back." But the climax was reached when somebody stated bluntly without fear of contradiction:

"To-morrow's Sunday."

For Sunday had no particular colour. Monday was black, and Saturday was gold, but Sunday never had been painted anything. Though a buffer- day between a vanished week and a week of labour coming, it was of uncertain character. Queer, grave people came back to lunch. There were collects and a vague uneasiness about the heathen being unfed and naked. There was a collection, too—pennies emerged from stained leather purses and dropped clicking into a polished box with a slit in the top. Greenland's icy mountains also helped to put a chill into the sunshine. A pause came. Time went slower than usual—God rested, they remembered, on the seventh day—yet nothing happened much, and with their Sunday clothes they put on a sort of dreadful carefulness that made play seem stiff, unnatural, and out of place.

Daddy, too, before the day was over, invariably looked worried, the servants bored, Mother drowsy, and Aunt Emily "like a clergyman's wife." Time sighed audibly on Sunday.

"It's our last day, anyhow," they agreed, determined to live in the present and enjoy Saturday to the full.

It was then Uncle Felix, having overheard their comments upon Time, looked round abruptly and made one of his startling remarks. "To- morrow," he said, "is one of the most wonderful days that was ever invented. You'll see."

And the way he said it provided the very thrill that was needed to chase the shadow from the sun. For there was a hint of promise in his voice that almost meant he had some way of delaying the arrival of Black Monday.

"You'll see," he repeated significantly, shading his eyes with both hands and peering up at the sun.

Tim and Judy watched him with keen faces. They noticed that he said "to-morrow" instead of "Sunday." But before they could squeeze out a single question, there came a remarkable interruption from below. From somewhere near the ground it came. Maria, seated on a flower-pot whose flower didn't want to grow, opened her mouth and spoke. As is already known, this did not often happen. It was her characteristic to keep it closed. Even at the dentist's she never could be got to open her mouth, because he had once hurt her; she flatly refused to do so, and no amount of "Now open, please," ever had the least effect on her firm decision. She was taken in vain to see the dentist.

This last Saturday of the week, however, she opened.

"I've not had my partickler adventure," was what she said.

At the centre of that circle where she lived in a state of unalterable bliss, the fact had struck her, and she mentioned it accordingly.

Tim and Judy turned upon her hungrily, but before they could relieve their feelings by a single word their Uncle had turned upon her too. Lowering his eyes from the great circular sun that moved in a circle through the sky, he let them fall upon the circular Maria who reposed calmly upon the circle of the earth, which itself swung in another circle round the sun.

"Exactly," he said, "but it's coming. Your father told you a day would come. It is!"

He said no more than that, but it was enough to fill the remainder of the day with the recurrent thrill of a tremendous promise. Each hour seemed pregnant with a hint of exceptional delivery. There were signs and whispers everywhere, and everybody was aware of it. Uncle Felix looked "bursting with it," as though he could hardly keep it in, and even the Lesser Authorities had as much as they could do to prevent it flying out of them in sudden sentences. Jackman wore a curious smile, which Judy declared was "just the face she made the day Maria was born"; Mrs. Horton left her kitchen and was seen upon the lawn actually picking daisies; and even Thompson—well, when Tim and his sister came upon him basking with a pipe against the laundry window, wearing a discarded tweed coat of their father's, and looking "exactly like the Pope asleep," he explained his position to Tim with the extraordinary remark that "even the Servants' Hall 'as dreams," and went on puffing his pipe precisely as before. But Weeden betrayed it most. They knew by the smell—"per fumigated," as they called it—that he was in the passages, watering the flowers or arranging new ones on the window-sills, and when Tim said, "Seen any more water-rats to pot at, Weeden?" the man just smiled and replied, "Good mornin', Master Tim; it's Saturday."

The inflection of his tone was instantly noticed. "Oh, I say, Weeden, how do you know? Do tell me. I won't say a word, I promise." But the Head Gardener kept his one eye—the other was of glass—upon the spout of his watering-can, and answered in a voice that issued from his boots—"Because to-morrow's Sunday, Master Tim, unless something 'appens to prevent it." He then went quickly from the room, as though he feared more questions; he took the secret with him; he was nervous about betraying what he knew. But Judy agreed with Tim that "his answer proved it, because why should he have said it unless he knew!"

Meanwhile, that fine morning in early June slipped along its sunny way; a heavy treacle-pudding luncheon was treated properly; Uncle Felix lit his great meerschaum pipe, and they all went out on the lawn beneath the lime trees. The undercurrent of excitement filled the air. Something was going to happen, something so wonderful that they could not speak about it. They did not dare to ask questions lest they should somehow stop it. It was a most delicately poised affair. The least mistake might send it racing in the opposite direction. But their imaginations were so actively at work inside that they could not help whispering among themselves about it. The silence of their Uncle piled up the coming wonder in an enormous heap.

"Something is coming," affirmed Judy in an undertone for the twentieth time, "but I think it will be after tea, don't you?"

"Prob'ly," assented her brother, very full of treacle pudding. He sighed.

"Or p'r'aps it's somebody, d'you think?"

Tim shrugged his shoulders carefully, conscious of insecurity within.

"I shouldn't be surprised, would you?" Judy insisted. Of course she knew as much as he did, but she wanted to make him say something definite.

"It's both," he said grandly. "Things like this always come together."

"Yes, but it's quite new. It's never happened before."

He looked sideways at her with the pity of superior knowledge.

"How could it?" So great was his private information that he almost added "stupid." But he kept back the word for later. He repeated instead: "However could it?"

"Well, but—" she began.

"Don't you see, it's what Daddy always told us," he reminded her with an air. And instantly, with overwhelming certainty, those Wonder Sentences of their father's, first spoken years ago, crashed in upon their minds: Some day; a day is coming; a day will come.

Tim's assurance hurt her vanity a little, for it was only fair that she should know something too, however little. But the force of the discovery at once obliterated all lesser personal emotions.

"Tim!" she gasped, overcome with admiration. "Is it really that?"

Tim never forgot that moment of proud ascendancy. He felt like a king or something.

"Look out," he whispered quickly. "You'll spoil it all if he knows we've guessed." And he nodded his head towards Uncle Felix in his wicker-chair. "It's Maria's adventure, too, remember."

Judy smiled and flushed a little.

"He's not listening," she whispered back, ignoring Maria's claim. She was not quite so stupid as her brother thought her. "But how on earth did you know? It's too wonderful!" She flung the hair out of her eyes and wriggled away some of her suppressed excitement on the grass. Tim held his breath in agony while he watched her. But the smoke from his Uncle's pipe rose steadily into the sunny air, and his face was hidden by a paper that he held. The moment of danger passed. The boy leaned over towards his sister's ear.

"Where it comes from," he whispered, "is what I want to know," and straightened up again with the air of having delivered an ultimatum that no girl could ever possibly reply to.

"From?" she repeated. She seemed a little disappointed. "D'you mean that may stop it coming?"

"Of course not," he said contemptuously. "But everything must come from somewhere, mustn't it?"

Judy stared at him speechless, while he surveyed her with an air of calm omnipotence. To ask a thing no one could answer was the same as knowing the answer oneself.

"Mustn't it?" he repeated with triumph.

And, in the inevitable pause that followed, they both instinctively glanced up at Uncle Felix. The same idea had occurred to both of them. Although direct questions about what was coming were obviously impermissible, an indirect question seemed fairly within the rules. The fact was, neither of them could keep quiet about it any longer. The strain was more than human nature could stand. They simply must find out. They would get at it that way.

"Try him," whispered Judy. And Tim turned recklessly towards his Uncle and drew a long, deep breath.



CHAPTER XIV

MARIA STIRS

"Uncle," he began with a rush lest his courage should forsake him, "where does everything come from? Everything in the world, I mean?"— then waited for an answer that did not come.

Uncle Felix neither moved nor spoke, and the question, like a bomb that fails to explode, produced no result after considerable effort and expense. The boy looked down again at the alarum clock he had been trying to mend, and turned the handle. It was too tightly wound to go. A stopped clock has the sulkiest face in the world. He stared at it; the handle clicked beneath the pressure of his hand. "It must come from somewhere," he added with decision, half to himself.

"From the East, of course," advanced Judy, and tried to draw her Uncle by putting some buttercups against his cheek and mentioning loudly that he liked butter.

Then, since neither sound nor movement issued from the man in the wicker-chair, the children continued the discussion among themselves, but at the man, knowing that sooner or later he must become involved in it. Judy's answer, moreover, so far as it went, was excellent. The sun rose in the East, and the wind most frequently mentioned came also from that quarter. Easter, when everything rose again, was connected with the same point of the compass. The East was enormously far away with a kind of fairyland remoteness. The dragon-rugs in Daddy's study and the twisted weapons in the hall were "Easty" too. According to Tim, it was a "golden, yellow, crimson-sort-of, mysterious, blazing hole of a place" of which no adequate picture had ever been shown to them. China and Japan were too much photographed, but the East was vague and marvellous, the beginning of all things, "Camel-distant," as they phrased it, with Great Asia upon its magical frontiers. For Asia, being equally unphotographed, still shimmered with uncommon qualities.

But, chiefly, it was a vast hole where travellers disappeared and left no trace; and to leave no trace was simply horrible.

"The easier you go the less chance there is," maintained Judy. She said this straight into the paper that screened her uncle's face— without the smallest result of any kind whatsoever. Then Tim recalled something that Colonel Stumper had said once, and let fly with it, aiming his voice beneath the paper's edge.

"East is east," he announced with considerable violence, but might as well have declared that it was south for all the response obtained. It was very odd, he thought; his Uncle's mind must be awfully full of something. For he remembered Come-Back Stumper saying the same thing once to Daddy at the end of a frightful argument about missionaries and idols, and Daddy had been unable to find any reply at all. Yet Uncle Felix did not stir a finger even. Accordingly, he made one more effort. He recited in a loud voice the song that Stumper had made up about it. If that had no effect, they must try other means altogether:

The East is just an endless place That lies beyond discovery, Where travellers who leave no trace Are lost without recovery. Both North and South have got a pole— Men stand on the equator; But the East is just an awful hole— You're never heard of later!

It had no effect. Goodness! he thought, the man must be ill. Or, perhaps, like the alarum clock, he was too tightly wound to go, and the burden of the secret he contained so wonderfully up his sleeve half choked him. The boy grew impatient; he nudged Judy and made an odd grimace, and Judy, belonging to the sex that took risks and thought little of personal safety when a big end was to be obtained, stood up and put the buttercups against her own cheek.

"But I like it ever so much more than you do," she said in a loud voice.

The move was not a bad one; the paper wobbled, sank a quarter of an inch, revealed the bridge of the reader's nose, then held severely steady again. Whereupon Tim, noticing this sign of weakening, followed his sister's lead, rose, kicked the tired clock like a ball across the lawn, and exclaimed in a tone of challenge to the universe: "But where did everything come from before that—before the East, I mean?" And he glared at his immobile Uncle through the paper with an air of fearful accusation, as though he distinctly held he was to blame. If that didn't let the cat out of the bag, nothing would!

The big man, however, rested heavily with his legs crossed, as though still he had not heard. Doubtless he felt as heavy as he looked, for the afternoon was warm, and luncheon—well, at any rate, he remained neutral and inactive. Something might happen to divert philosophical inquiry into other channels; a rat might poke its nose above the pond; a big fish might jump; an awfully rare butterfly come dancing; or Maria, as on rare occasions she had been known to do, might stop discussion with a word of power. The chances were in his favour on the whole. He waited.

But nothing happened. No rat, nor fish, nor butterfly did the things expected of them; they were on the children's side. Maria sat blocked and motionless against the landscape; and the round world dozed. Yes— but the music of the world was humming. The bees droned by, there was a whisper among the unruffled leaves.

Tim tapped him sharply on the knee. The man shuffled, then looked over the top of his illustrated paper with an air of shocked surprise.

"Eh, Tim," he asked. "Where we all come from, did you say?"

"Everything, not only us," was the clean reply.

"That's it," Judy supported him.

"Now, then," Maria added quietly, as if she had done all the work.

Uncle Felix laid down his entertaining pictures of public men in misfit-clothing furiously hitting tiny balls over as much uncultivated land as possible—and sighed. Their violent attitudes had given him a delightful sensation of repose. They were the men who governed England, and this savage hitting was proof of their surplus energy. He resigned himself, but with an air.

"Well," he said vaguely, "I suppose—it all just—began somehow—of itself." And he stole a sideways glance at a picture of a stage Beauty attired like a female Guy Fawkes.

"It was created in six days, of course, us last," said Tim, regarding him with patient dignity. "We remember all that. But where it came from is what we thought you'd know." He closed the illustrated paper and moved it out of reach, while the man brushed from his beard the grass and stuff that Judy had arranged there cleverly in a decorative pattern.

"From?" repeated Uncle Felix, as though the word were unfamiliar.

"Your body and mind," the boy resumed, ignoring the pretence that laziness offered in place of information, "and all that kind of thing; trees and mountains, and birds and caterpillars and people like Aunt Emily, and clergymen and volcanoes and elephants—oh, everything in the world everywhere?"

There was another sigh. And another pause dropped down upon creation, while they watched a looper caterpillar that clung to the edge of the illustrated paper and made futile circles in the air with the knob it called its head. Some one had forgotten to let down the ladder it expected, or perhaps it, too, was asking unanswerable questions of the sun.

"I believe," announced Judy, still smarting under a sense of recent neglect, "it just came from nowhere. It's all in a great huge circle. And we go round and round and rounder," she went on, as no one met her challenge, "till we're finished!"

She avoided her brother's eye, but glanced winningly at Uncle Felix, remembering that she had gained support from him before by a similar device. At Maria she looked down. "You know nothing anyhow," her expression said, "so you must agree."

"I don't finish," said Maria quietly, whereupon Tim, feeling that the original question was being shelved, made preparation to obliterate her—when Uncle Felix intervened with a longer observation of his own.

"It's not such a bad idea," he said, glancing sideways at Maria with approval, "that circle business. Everything certainly goes round. The earth is round, and the sun is round, and, as Maria says, a circle never finishes." He paused, reflecting deeply.

"But who made the circle," demanded Tim.

"That is the point," agreed Uncle Felix, nodding his head. "Some one must have made it—some day—mustn't they?"

They stared at him, as probably the animals stared at Adam, wondering what their splendid names were going to be. The yearning in their eyes was enough to make a rock produce sweet-scented thyme. Even the looper steadied its pin-point head to listen. But nothing happened. Uncle Felix looked dumber than the clock. He looked hot, confused, and muddled too. He kept his eyes upon the grass. He fumbled in his pockets for a match. He spoke no word.

"What?" asked Tim abruptly, by way of a hint that something further was expected of him.

Uncle Felix looked up with a start. Like Proteus who changed his shape to save himself the trouble of prophesying, he swiftly changed the key to save himself providing accurate information that he didn't possess.

"It wasn't a circle, exactly," he said slowly; "it was a thought, a great, white, wonderful, shining thought. That's what started the whole business first," and he looked round hopefully at the eager faces. "Somebody thought it all," he went on, recklessly, "and it all came true that way. See?"

They waited in silence for particulars.

"Somebody thought it all out first," he elaborated, "and so it simply had to happen."

There was an interval of some thirty seconds, and then Tim asked:

"But who thought him?" He said it with much emphasis.

Uncle Felix sat up with energy and lit his pipe. His listeners drew closer, with the exception of Maria, whose life seemed concentrated in her fixed and steady eyes.

"It's like this, you see," the man explained between the puffs; "if you go into the schoolroom, you find a lot of things lying about everywhere—blocks, toys, engines, and all sorts of things—don't you?"

"Yes," they agreed, without enthusiasm.

"Well," he continued, "what's the good of them until you think something about them—think them into something—some game or meaning or other? They're nothing but a lot of useless stuff just lying untidily upon the floor. See what I mean?"

They nodded, but again without enthusiasm.

"With our End of the World place," he went on, seeing that they listened attentively, "it's the same again. It was nothing but a rubbish-heap until we thought it into something wonderful—which, of course, it is," he hastened to add. "But by thinking about it, we discovered—we created it!"

They nodded again. Somebody grunted. Maria watched the caterpillar crawling up his sleeve.

"The things—the place and the toys," he resumed hopefully, "were there all the time, but they meant nothing—they weren't alive—until we thought about them." He blew a cloud of smoke. "So, you see," he continued with an effort, "if we could only think out what everything meant, we could—er—find out what—what everything meant— and where it came from. Everything would be all right, don't you see?"

Judy's expression was distraught and puzzled. Maria's eyes were closed so tightly that her entire face seemed closed. The pause drew out.

"Yes, but where does everything come from?" inquired Tim calmly.

He valued the lengthy explanation at just exactly—nothing!

"Because there simply must be a beginning somewhere," added Judy.

They were at the starting-point again. They had merely made a circle.

And Uncle Felix found himself in difficulties of his own creating. Where everything came from puzzled him as much as it puzzled the children, or the looper caterpillar that was now crawling from his flannel collar to his neck and contemplating the thicket of his dense back hair. Why ask these terrible questions? he thought, as he looked around at the sunshine and the trees. Life would be no happier if he knew. Since everything was already here, going along quite pleasantly and usefully, it really couldn't help matters much to know precisely where it all came from. Possibly not. But it would have helped him enormously in his relations with the children—his particular world at the moment—if he could have provided them with a satisfactory explanation. And he knew quite well what they expected from him. That dreadful "Some Day" hung in the balance between success and failure.

And it was then that assistance came from a most unlikely quarter— from Maria. There was no movement in the stolid head. The eyes merely rolled round like small blue moons upon the expanse of the expressionless face. But the lips parted and she spoke. She asked a question. And her question shifted the universe back upon its ultimate foundations. It set a problem deeper far than the mere origin of everything. It touched the cause.

"Why?" she inquired blandly.

It seemed a bomb-shell had fallen among them. Maria had closed her eyes again. Her face was calm as a cabbage, still as a mushroom in a storm. She claimed the entire discussion somehow as her own. Yet she had merely exercised her prerogative of being herself. Having gone into the root of the matter with a monosyllable, she retired again into her eternal centre. She had nothing more to offer—at the moment.

Why?

They had never thought of Why there should be anything. It was far more interesting than Where. Why was a deeper question than whence. It made them feel more important, for one thing. Somebody—but Somebody who was not there—owed them a proper explanation about it. The burden of apology or excuse was lifted instantly from Uncle Felix's shoulders, for, obviously, he had nothing to do with the reason for their being in the world.

Without a moment's hesitation he flung his arms out, let the pipe fall from his lips, and—burst into song:

Why should there be anything? Why should we be here? It isn't where we come from, But why should we appear? It's really inexplicable, Extr'ordinary, queer: Why should we come and talk a bit, And then—just disappear?

"Why, why, why?" shouted the two elder children. The air was filled with flying "whys." They tried to sing the verse.

"Let's dance it," cried Judy, leaping to her feet. "Give us the words again, please." She picked up the clock and plumped it down into Maria's uncertain lap. "You beat time," she ordered. "It's the tune of 'Onward Christian Soldiers.'"

Maria, disinclined to budge unless obliged to, did nothing.

"It's a beastly tune," Tim supported her. "I hate those Sunday hymn tunes. They're not real a bit."

He watched Judy and his Uncle capering hand in hand among the flower- beds. He didn't feel like dancing himself. He looked at the clock that, like Maria and himself, refused to go. He looked at Maria, fastened immovably upon the lawn. The clock lay glittering in the sunshine. Maria sat like a shining ball beside it. He felt the afternoon was a failure somewhere. Things weren't going quite as he wanted, the clock wasn't going either. And when they did go they went of their own accord, independent of himself, of his direction, guidance, wishes. He was out of it. This was not the time to dance. What was the meaning of it all? It had to do somehow with the clock that wouldn't go. It had to do with Maria, who wouldn't budge. The clock had stopped of its own accord. That lay at the bottom of it all, he felt. Some day things would be different, more satisfactory—more real.... Some day!

And strange, new ideas, very vague and dim, very far away, very queer, and very wonderful, poured through his searching, questioning little mind.

"Beat time!" shouted Judy to her motionless sister. "I told you to beat time. You're doing nothing. You never do!"

Tim stood watching them, while the words rang on in his head: "You are doing nothing! You never do!" How wonderful it was! Maria never did anything, yet was always there in everything. And the others—how funny they were, too! They looked like an elephant and a bird, he thought, for Judy hopped and fluttered, while his Uncle moved heavily, making holes in the soft lawn with his great feet. "Beat time, beat time!" cried Judy at intervals.

What a queer phrase it was—to beat time. Why beat it? It wasn't there unless it was beaten. Poor Time; and Maria refused to beat it. His eye wandered from Maria to the dancers, and a kind of reverie stole over him. What was the use of dancing unless there was something to dance round? Maria was round; why didn't they dance round her? His thoughts returned to Maria. How funny Maria was! She just sat there doing nothing at all. Maria was dull and unenterprising, yet somehow everything came round to her in the end. It was just because she waited, she never hurried. She was a sort of centre. Only it must be rather stupid just to be a centre. Then, suddenly, two ideas struck him at the same instant, scattering his dreamy state of reverie. The first was—Everything comes from a centre like Maria; that's where everything comes from! The second, bearing no apparent relation to it, found expression in words:

He cried out: "I know what! Let's go to the End of the World and make a fire and burn things!"

And he looked at Maria as though he had discovered America.

"Beat time, oh, do beat time," cried Judy breathlessly.

"We're going to make a fire," he shouted; "there's lots of things to burn." He looked about him as though to choose a place. But he couldn't find one. He pointed vaguely, first at Maria, as though she was the thing to burn, and then at the landscape generally. "Then you can dance round it," he added convincingly to clinch the matter.

But the bird and the elephant continued their gymnastic exercises on the lawn, while Maria turned her eyes without moving her head and watched them too.

Then, while the tune of "Onward Christian Soldiers" filled the air, Tim and Maria began an irrelevant argument about things in general. Tim, at least, told her things, while she laid the clock down upon the grass and listened. But the flood of language rolled off her as minutes roll from the face of the sun, producing no effect. There was wonder in her big blue eyes, wonder that never seemed to end. But minutes don't decrease merely because the rising and setting of the sun sends them flying, and there are not fewer words in a boy's vocabulary merely because he uses up a lot in saying things. Both words and minutes seemed a circle without beginning or end. It was most odd and strange—this feeling of endlessness that was everywhere in the air. And, long before Tim had got even to the middle of his enormous speech, he had forgotten all about the fire, forgotten about dancing, about burning things, forgotten about everything everywhere, because his roving eye had fallen again upon the—clock. The clock absorbed his interest. It lay there glittering in the sunshine beside Maria. It wasn't going; Maria wasn't going either. It had stopped. He realised abruptly, realised it without rhyme or reason, that a stopped clock, a clock that isn't going, was a—mystery.

And the tide of words dried up in him; he choked; something was wrong with the universe; for if the clock stopped—his clock—time—time must—he was unable to think it out—but time must surely get muddled and go wrong too.

And he moved over to Maria just as she was about to burst into tears. He sat down beside her. At the same moment Judy and Uncle Felix, thinking a quarrel was threatening, stopped their dancing, and joined the circle too. They stood with arms akimbo, panting, silent, waiting for something to happen so that they could interfere and set it right again.

But nothing did happen. There was deep silence only. The slanting sunshine lay across the lawn, the wind passed sighing through the lime trees, and the clock stared up into their faces, motionless, a blank expression on it—stopped. They formed a circle round it. No one moved or spoke. There was a queer, deep pause. The sun watched them; the sky was listening; the entire afternoon stood still. Something else beside the clock, it seemed, was slowing up.

"To-morrow's Sunday. Time's getting awfully short," was in the air inaudibly.

"Let's sit down," whispered Tim, already seated himself, but anxious to feel the others close. Judy and Uncle Felix obeyed. They all sat round in a circle, staring at the shining disc of the motionless, stopped clock. It might have been a Lucky Bag by the way they watched it with expectant faces.

But Maria also was in that circle, sitting calmly in its centre.

Then Uncle Felix cautiously lifted the glittering round thing and held it in his hand. He put his ear down to listen. He shook his head.

"It hasn't gone since this time yesterday," said Tim in a low tone. "That's twenty-four hours," he added, calculating it on the fingers of both hands.

"A whole day," murmured Judy, as if taken by surprise somehow; "a day and a night, I mean."

She exchanged a glance of significant expectation with her brother, but it was at their uncle they looked the moment after, because of the strange and sudden sound that issued from his lips. For it was like a cry, and his face wore a flushed and curious expression they could not fathom. The face and the cry were signs of something utterly unusual. He was startled—out of himself. A marvellous idea had evidently struck him. "It's either something," thought Judy, "or else he's got a pain." But Tim's mind was quicker. "He's got it," the boy decided, meaning, "We've got it out of him at last!" Their manoeuvres had taken so long of accomplishment that their original purpose had almost been forgotten.

"A day, a whole day," Uncle Felix was mumbling to himself in a dazed kind of happy way, "an entire day, I do declare!" He looked round solemnly, yet with growing excitement, into the children's faces. "Twenty-four hours! An entire day," he went on, half beneath his breath.

"Some day; of course..." Tim said in a low voice, catching the mood of wonder, while Judy added, equally stirred up, "A day will come..." and then Uncle Felix, breaking out of his queer reverie with an effort, raised his voice and looked as if the end of the world had come.

"But do you realise what it means?" he asked them sharply. "D'you understand what's happened?"

He drew a long, deep breath that quivered with suppressed amazement, and waited several seconds for their answers—in vain. The children gazed at him without uttering a word; they made no movement either. The arresting tone of his voice and a certain huge expression in his eyes made everything in the world seem different. It was a moment of real life; he had discovered something stupendous. But, explanation being beyond them, they attempted no immediate answer to his question. The pressure of interest blocked every means of ordinary expression known to them.

Then Uncle Felix spoke again; his big eyes fixed Tim piercingly like a pin. "When did it stop?" he inquired gravely. He meant to make quite sure of his discovery before revealing it. There must be no escape, no slip, no carelessness. "When did it stop, I ask you, Tim?" he repeated.

Tim was a trifle vague. "I was asleep," he whispered. "When I woke up —it wasn't going."

"You wound it?"

"Oh, yes, I wound it right enough."

"What time was it?"

"The clock—or the day, Uncle?" He was confused a little; he wished to be awfully accurate.

Uncle Felix explained that he desired to know what time the clock had stopped. The importance of the answer could be judged by the intentness of his expression while he waited.

"The finger-hands were at four," said the boy at length.

Uncle Felix gave a jump. "Ha, ha!" he exclaimed triumphantly, "then it stopped of its own accord!" They could have screamed with excitement, though without the least idea what they were excited about. You could have heard a butterfly breathing.

"It stopped at dawn!" he continued, louder.

"Dawn!" piped Tim, unable to think of anything else, but obliged to utter something.

"Dawn, yes," cried Uncle Felix louder still. "It stopped of its own accord at dawn! Just at the beginning of a new day it stopped! It's marvellous! Don't you see? It's marvellous!"

"Goodness!" cried Judy, her mind obfuscated, yet thrilled with a transport of inexplicable delight. "It's marvellous!"

"I say!" Tim shouted, dropping his voice suddenly because he too was at a loss for any more intelligible relief in words.

They sat and stared at their amazing uncle. There was a hush upon the entire universe; there was marvel, mystery, but at first there was also muddle. They waited, holding their breath with difficulty. Some one, it seemed, must either explode or—or something else, they knew not exactly what. It would hardly have surprised them if Judy had suddenly flown through the air, Tim vanished down a hole, or Maria gleamed at them from the inside of a quivering bubble of soap. There was this kind of intoxicating feeling, delicious and intense. Even To- morrow might not be Sunday after all: it felt strange and wonderful enough for that!

The possibility that Some Day was coming—was close at hand—had in some mysterious way become a probability. It was clear at last why Uncle Felix had been so heavy and preoccupied.

"You see what's happened?" he continued after the long pause. "You see what it all means—this strange stopping of the clock—at Dawn?"

They admitted nothing; the least mistake on their part might prevent, might spoil or cripple it. The depth and softness of his tone warned them. They stared and waited. He gathered them closer to him with both arms. Even Maria wriggled slightly nearer—an inch or so.

"It means," he said in still lower tones, "the calendar,"—then stopped abruptly to examine the effect upon them.

Now, ordinarily, they knew quite well what a calendar was; but this new, strange emphasis he put upon it robbed the word suddenly of all its original meaning. Their minds went questioning at once:

"What is a calendar?" asked Judy carefully—"exactly?" she added, to make her meaning absolutely clear. It sounded almost like a nonsense word.

"Exactly," he repeated cautiously, yet with some great emotion working in him, "what is a calendar? That's the whole question. I'll try and tell you what a calendar is." He drew a deeper breath, a great effort being evidently needed. "A calendar," he went on, while the word sounded less real each time it was uttered, "is an invention of clever, scientific men to note the days as they pass; it records the passing days. It's a plan to measure Time. It's made of paper and has the date and the name of the day stamped in ink on separate sheets. When a day has passed you tear off a sheet. That day is done with— gone. There are three hundred and sixty-five of these separate sheets in a year. It's just an invention of scientific men to measure the passing of—Time, you see?"

They said they saw.

"Another invention," he resumed, his face betraying more and more emotion, "is a clock. A clock is just a mechanical invention that ticks off the movements of the sun into seconds and minutes and hours. Both clocks and calendars, therefore, are mere measuring tricks. Time goes on, or does not go on, just the same, whether you possess these inventions or whether you do not possess them. Both clocks and calendars go at the same rate whether Time goes fast or slow. See?"

A tremendous discovery began to poke its nose above the edge of their familiar world. But they could not pull it up far enough to "see" as yet. Uncle Felix continued to pull it up for them. That he, too, was muddled never once occurred to them.

"Scientific men, like all other people, are not always to be relied upon," he went on. "They make mistakes like—you, or Thompson, or Mrs. Horton, or—or even me. Clocks, we all know, are full of mistakes, and for ever going wrong. But the same thing has happened to calendars as well. Calendars are notoriously inaccurate; they simply cannot be depended upon. No calendar has ever been entirely veracious, nor ever will be. Like elastic, they are sometimes too long and sometimes too short—imperfectly constructed."

He paused and looked at them. "Yes," they said breathlessly, aware dimly that accustomed foundations were already sliding from beneath their feet.

"Half the calendars of the world are simply wrong," he continued, more boldly still, "and the people who live by them are in a muddle consequently—a muddle about Time. England is no exception to the rest. Is it any wonder that Time bothers us in the way it does—always time to do this, or time to do that, or not time enough to finish, and so on?"

"No," they said promptly, "it isn't."

"Of course," he resumed. "Well, sometimes a nation finds out its mistake and alters its calendar. Russia has done this; the Russian New Year and Easter are not the same as ours. Pope Gregory, the thirteenth, ordered that the day after October 4, 1582, should be called October 15. He called it the Gregorian Calendar; but there are lots of other calendars besides—there's the Jewish and Mohammedan, and a variety of calendars in the East. All of them can't be right. The result is that none of them are right, and the world is in confusion. Some calendars mark off too many days, others mark off too few. Half the world is ahead of Time, and the other half behind it. The Governments know this quite well, but they dare not say anything, because their officials are muddled enough as it is. There is everywhere this fearful rush and hurry to keep up with Time. All are terrified of being late—too late or too early."

"Naturally."

"And the extraordinary result of all these mistakes," he went on marvellously, "is simply this: that a considerable amount of Time has never been recorded at all by any of them. There are a lot of extra days, unused, unrecorded days, still at large—if only we could find them."

"Extra Days!" they gasped. Tim and Judy's mouths were open now, and slowly opening wider every minute. Only Maria's mouth kept closed. Her great blue eyes were closed as well. She looked as if she could have told them all this in a couple of words!

"Knocking about on the loose," he explained further, then paused and stared into the upturned faces; "sort of escaped days that have never been torn off calendars or ticked away by clocks—unused, unfilled, unlived—slipped out of Time, that is—"

"Then when Daddy said, 'A day is coming,' and all that—?" Tim managed to squeeze out as though the pain of the excitement hurt his lips.

"Of course," replied Uncle Felix, nodding his great head, "of course. Sooner or later one of these lost Extra Days is bound to crop up. And what's more—" he glanced down significantly at the stopped alarum- clock—"I think—"

He broke off in the middle of the sentence. They all stood up. Tim picked up the clock and handed it to his uncle, who held it tightly against his chest a moment, then put it into his capacious pocket.

"I think," he went on enormously, "it's come!"

An entire minute passed without a sound.

"We can fill it with anything we like?" asked Judy, overawed a little.

"Anything we like," came the sublime reply.

"And do things over and over again—sort of double—and no hurry?" Tim whispered.

"Anything, anywhere, anyhow, and no end to it all," he answered gloriously. "No hurry either!" It was too much to think about all at once, too big to realise. They all sat down again beside Maria, who had not moved an inch in any direction at all. She was a picture of sublime repose.

"We have only got to find it, then climb into it, then sail away," murmured Uncle Felix, with a strange catch in his breath they readily understood.

"When will it begin?" both children asked in the same breath.

"At dawn," he said.

"To-morrow morning?"

"At dawn to-morrow morning."

"But to-morrow's Sunday," they objected.

"To-morrow's—an Extra Day," he said amazingly.

They hesitated a moment, stared, frowned, smiled, then opened their eyes and mouths still wider than before.

"Oh, like that!" they exclaimed.

"Like that, yes," he said finally. "It means getting in behind Time, you see. There's no Time in an Extra Day because it's never been recorded by calendar or clock. And that means getting behind the great hurrying humbug of a thing that blinds and confuses everybody all the world over—it means getting closer to the big Reality that—"