It seemed impossible. Daddy skylarking on the roof of Night, and making notes! Yet with a moment's reflection the impossibility vanished; surprise went after it; it became natural, right, and true. Daddy, of course, sitting by his window in the carpenter's house, had seen the Twilight Scaffolding sweep past and had climbed into it. Its beauty had rapt him out and away. In the darkness his mind wandered, too, gathering notes subconsciously for his wonderful new story.
'Come down here to me,' he cried, as a man cries in his sleep, making no audible sound. 'There's less risk among the foundations.' And down came Daddy with an immediate rush. He arrived in a bundle, then straightened up. The two men stood side by side in these subterraneans of the night.
'You!' whispered Rogers, trying to seize his hand, while the other evaded him, hiding behind a shadow.
'Don't touch me,' he murmured breathlessly. 'You'll scatter my train of thought. Think of something else at once, please….' He moved into thicker shadows, half disappearing. 'I'm after something that suddenly occurred to me for my story.'
'What is it? I'll think it with you,' his cousin called after him.
'You'll see it better if I do. Tell me.'
'A train that carries Thought, as this darkness carries stars—a starlight express,' was the quick reply, 'and a cavern where lost starlight gathers till it's wanted-sort of terminus of the railway. They belong to the story somewhere if only I can find them and fit them in. Starlight binds all together as thought and sympathy bind minds….'
Rogers thought hard about them. Instantly his cousin vanished.
'Thank you,' ran a faint whisper among the pillars; 'I'm on their trail again now. I must go up again. I can see better from the top,' and the voice grew fainter and higher and further off with each word till it died away completely into silence. Daddy went chasing his inspiration through the scaffolding of reverie and dream.
'We did something for him the other night after all, then,' thought
Rogers with delight.
'Of course,' dropped down a wee, faint answer from above, as the author heard him thinking; 'you did a lot. I'm partly out at last. This is where all the Patterns hide. Awake, I only get their dim reflections, broken and distorted. This is reality, not that. Ha, ha! If only I can get it through, my lovely, beautiful pattern—'