They especially liked the huge, ridiculous words he used, because such words concealed great mysteries that pulsed with wonder and exquisitely wound them up. Daddy made things too clear. The bones of impossibility were visible. They saw thin nakedness behind the explanations, till the sense of wonder faded. They were not babies to be fed with a string of one-syllable words!
Jimbo kept silence mostly, his instinct ever being to conceal his ignorance; but Monkey talked fifteen to the dozen, filling the pauses with long 'ohs' and bursts of laughter and impudent observations. Yet her cheeky insolence never crossed the frontier where it could be resented. Her audacity stopped short of impertinence.
'There's a point beyond which—' her cousin would say gravely, when she grew more daring than usual; and, while answering 'It'll stick into you, then, not into me,' she yet withdrew from the borders of impertinence at once.
'What is star-stuff really then?' she asked.
'The primordial substance of the universe,' he answered solemnly, no whit ashamed of his inaccuracy.
'Ah yes!' piped Jimbo, quietly. Ecole primaire he understood. This must be something similar.
'But what does it do, I mean, and why is it good for people to have it in them—on them—whatever it is?' she inquired.
'It gives sympathy and insight; it's so awfully subtle and delicate,' he answered. 'A little of it travels down on every ray and soaks down into you. It makes you feel inclined to stick to other people and understand them. That's sympathy.'
'Sympathie,' said Jimbo for his sister's benefit apparently, but in reality because he himself was barely treading water.
'But sympathy,' the other went on, 'is no good without insight—which means seeing things as others see them—from inside. That's insight—- '
'Inside sight,' she corrected him.
'That's it. You see, the first stuff that existed in the universe was this star-stuff—nebulae. Having nothing else to stick to, it stuck to itself, and so got thicker. It whirled in vortices. It grew together in sympathy, for sympathy brings together. It whirled and twirled round itself till it got at last into solid round bodies—worlds— stars. It passed, that is, from mere dreaming into action. And when the rays soak into you, they change your dreaming into action. You feel the desire to do things—for others.'
'Ah! yes,' repeated Jimbo, 'like that.'
'You must be full of vorty seas, then, because you're so long,' said
Monkey, 'but you'll never grow into a solid round body——'
He took a handful of her hair and smothered the remainder of the sentence.
'The instant a sweet thought is born in your mind,' he continued, 'the heavenly stables send their starry messengers to harness it for use. A ray, perhaps, from mighty Sirius picks it out of your heart at birth.'
'Serious!' exclaimed Jimbo, as though the sun were listening.
'Sirius—another sun, that is, far bigger than our own—a perfect giant, yet so far away you hardly notice him.'
The boy clasped his dirty fingers and stared hard. The sun was listening.
'Then what I think is known—like that—all over the place?' he asked. He held himself very straight indeed.
'Everywhere,' replied Cousinenry gravely. 'The stars flash your thoughts over the whole universe. None are ever lost. Sooner or later they appear in visible shape. Some one, for instance, must have thought this flower long ago'—he stooped and picked a blue hepatica at their feet—'or it couldn't be growing here now.'
Jimbo accepted the statement with his usual gravity.
'Then I shall always think enormous and tremendous things—powerful locomotives, like that and—and——'
'The best is to think kind little sweet things about other people,' suggested the other. 'You see the results quicker then.'
'Mais oui,' was the reply, 'je pourrai faire ca au meme temps, n'est- ce pas?'
'Parfaitemong,' agreed his big cousin.
'There's no room in her for inside sight,' observed Monkey as a portly dame rolled by into the darkness. 'You can't tell her front from her back.' It was one of the governesses.
'We'll get her into the cave and change all that,' her cousin said reprovingly. 'You must never judge by outside alone. Puddings should teach you that.'
But no one could reprove Monkey without running a certain risk.
'We don't have puddings here,' she said, 'we have dessert—sour oranges and apples.'
She flew from his side and vanished down the street and into the Citadelle courtyard before he could think of anything to say. A shooting star flashed at the same moment behind the church tower, vanishing into the gulf of Boudry's shadow. They seemed to go at the same pace together.
'Oh, I say!' said Jimbo sedately, 'you must punish her for that, you know. Shall I come with you to the carpenter's?' he added, as they stood a moment by the fountain. 'There's just ten minutes to wash and brush your hair for supper.'
'I think I can find my way alone,' he answered, 'thank you all the same.'
'It's nothing,' he said, lifting his cap as the village fashion was, and watching his cousin's lengthy figure vanish down the street.
'We'll meet at the Pension later,' the voice came back, 'and in the morning I shall have a lot of correspondence to attend to. Bring your shorthand book and lots of pencils, mind.'
'How many?'
'Oh, half a dozen will do.'
The boy turned in and hurried after his sister. But he was so busy collecting all the pencils and paper he could find that he forgot to brush his hair, and consequently appeared at the supper table with a head like a tangled blackberry bush. His eyes were bright as stars.
CHAPTER XIV
O pure one, take thy seat in the barque of the Sun,
And sail thou over the sky.
Sail thou with the imperishable stars,
Sail thou with the unwearied stars.
Pyramid Texts, Dynasty VI.
But Henry Rogers ran the whole two hundred yards to his lodgings in the carpenter's house. He ran as though the entire field of brilliant stars were at his heels. There was bewilderment, happiness, exhilaration in his blood. He had never felt so light-hearted in his life. He felt exactly fifteen years of age—and a half. The half was added to ensure a good, safe margin over the other two.
But he was late for supper too—later than the children, for first he jotted down some notes upon the back of an envelope. He wrote them at high speed, meaning to correct them later, but the corrections were never made. Later, when he came to bed, the envelope had been tidied away by the careful housewife into the dustbin. And he was ashamed to ask for them. The carpenter's wife read English.
'Pity,' he said to himself. 'I don't believe Minks could have done it better!'
The energy that went to the making of those 'notes' would have run down different channels a few years ago. It would have gone into some ingenious patent. The patent, however, might equally have gone into the dustbin. There is an enormous quantity of misdirected