“Oh, Hughie, just a short one!” he said. “We’ve got to go to bed. Do people go to bed later and later as they get older?”
“Yes. I never go to bed at all, because I’m ninety-nine.”
“You aren’t,” said Daisy. “You’re a corpse.”
“Oh, Daisy, don’t be stupid!” said Jim. “That’s finished. Hughie’s going to tell us a story.”
“Will it be silly?” asked Daisy anxiously.
“I can’t tell. It depends on internal evidence,” said Hugh.
Daisy sighed.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
“Nor do I,” said Hugh. “I’m a corpse, I am. You said so.”
“Oh, shut up!” said Jim, bounding up and down. “Now begin, Hugh. A minute’s gone.”
Hugh was far too sensible and serious to waste more of the time of the children, which is so infinitely precious when bedtime looms like a thunder-cloud, and began.
“Once upon a time,” he said, “there were three absurd old men, who lived together in an enormous castle built of strawberries.”
“I should have ate them!” said Jim.
“They did. When they felt the least hungry, and very often when they didn’t, they ate a piece of the wall, which instantly grew again. Sometimes they forgot, and ate the chairs on which they were sitting. Because the chairs never grew again, and so after a year or two they all had to sit on the floor.”
He paused, for to talk pure nonsense requires an effort of the imagination. It is fatal if any sense creeps in. In the pause Daisy brushed away the last remnants of hay from his face, because she thought she would hear better so. The face was very red and hot and extraordinarily young—the face of a man, it is true, but of a very boyish person.
“Oh, get on!” said Jim.
Hugh again gave an involuntary grunt.
“They were all, all three of them, very absurd people,” he said, “chiefly because they had never had any mothers, but had been found in gooseberry-bushes in the garden.”
Daisy gave a long appreciative sigh.
“Oh, were you found there, Hughie?” she said.
Hugh thought a moment.
“No. Otherwise I should have been an absurd person. None of us were found in gooseberry-bushes. Try to remember that, and don’t say I said anything about it. But these people were found there, so they were all very peculiar. One was so tall that he had to go up to the attics to brush his hair, and one was so short that he had to go down to the cellar to put on his boots; and the third had such long sight that he saw all round the world, and could thus see the back of his own head, because the world is round and he saw all round it. But he could see nothing nearer than America, unless—unless he wore spectacles. What’s that?”
“It isn’t anything,” said Daisy in a faltering tone.
Hugh thought he had heard some extraneous sound, but he did not trouble to look round.
“Now, though the castle was made of strawberries,” he said, “and there was no trouble about washing up or cleaning——”
“What happened to the stalks?” asked Jim.
“There weren’t any. They were the best strawberries, like those you see when you come down to tea with mummy.”
“Was there cream?” asked Daisy.
“Yes; it came out of sugar-taps in the wall, so that you held the strawberry under the tap and it was covered with cream and sugar, because the taps always melted very fast. That was all right. But what wasn’t all right was that the first absurd old man, whose name was Bang, was always running up to the attic to brush his hair, and the second silly old man was always sitting in the cellar to put on his boots. His name was Bing; and the third old man, whose name was Bong, was always putting on his spectacles, because he wanted to see something nearer than America. So after they had lived like this for rather more than two hundred years, it struck them that a system of coöperative and auxiliary mutualness——”
“What?” shrieked both the children together.
“I don’t know,” said Hugh. “So the tall man always lived up in the attic and brushed everybody’s hair, and the short man always lived in the cellar and tied everybody’s bootlaces, and——”
This time there was a distinct sound of suppressed laughter, and Hugh sat up.
“And the long-sighted man put on all the spectacles he could find in the garden and went to bed, because the five minutes were up, and he expected that a good long night, especially if he wore spectacles, would make him think of something in the morning.”
Daisy saw through this.
“Oh, mummy, you spoiled it all by laughing!” she said with deep reproach. “I know he wouldn’t have gone to bed quite at once.”
“More than five minutes, darlings,” said Lady Rye. “Say good night to Hugh.”
“And you’ll come and see us when you go down to dinner?”
“Yes, if you go at once.”
The two obedient little figures galloped off to the house, and Hugh dispossessed himself of the sand of the American desert and sat up.
“Dressing-time?” he asked.
“No, only dressing-bell,” said she. “I came to sit in the hay for five minutes. When did you get here?”
“About tea-time. You were all out on the river, so we played Indians.”
“Daisy said you played better than anybody she knew,” said Lady Rye. “I wish you’d teach me. They don’t think I play at all well.”
Hugh was combing bits of things out of his hair.
“No, I expect you are not quite serious enough,” he said. “You probably don’t concentrate your mind on the fact that you are an Indian and that this is an American desert. Heavens, I shall never get rid of this hay; I wish it wasn’t so prickly!”
“One has to suffer to be absurd,” said she.
“Oh, but surely it isn’t absurd to play Indians!” said Hugh. “Anyhow, it isn’t more absurd than it is for all us grown-up people to dress up every evening and go to parties. That is just as absurd as children’s dressing-up. In fact, they are more sensible; they dress up and are what they dress up as. We dress up, and behave exactly as usual.”
Lady Rye considered this.
“Why do you go to parties, then, if it’s absurd?” she asked.
“Why? Because it’s such fun. I play wild Indians with Daisy and Jim for the same reason. But in both cases it’s playing. If you come to think of it, it is ridiculous for some distinguished statesman or general to put on stars and ribands when he goes to see his friends. It’s dressing-up. So why not say so?”
“Well, it’s time for us to go and dress up. Oh, isn’t it nice just for a day or two to have a pause? There’s no one here but Edith and Toby and you, and I shall make no efforts, but only go out in a punt and fill my pond.”
“Fill your pond?” asked Hugh.
“Yes; you and Edith shall both help. Don’t you know the feeling, when you have been racketting about and talking and trying to arrange things for other people how one’s whole brain and mind seem to be just like an empty pond—no water in it, only some mud, in which an occasional half-stranded