Mother dropped a stitch, so keenly was she listening. A moment later she dropped a needle too, and the two men picked it up, and handed it back together as though it weighed several pounds.
'Well,' said Rogers slowly, 'I suppose all minds pour into one another somewhere—in and out of one another, rather—and that there's a common stock or pool all draw upon according to their needs and power to assimilate. But I'm not conscious, old man, of driving anything deliberately into you—'
'Only you think and feel these things vividly enough for me to get them too,' said Daddy. Luckily 'thought transference' was not actually mentioned, or Mother might have left the room, or at least have betrayed an uneasiness that must have chilled them.
'As a boy I imagined pretty strongly,' in a tone of apology, 'but never since. I was in the City, remember, twenty years—'
'It's the childhood things, then,' Daddy interrupted eagerly. 'You've brought the great childhood imagination with you—the sort of gorgeous, huge, and endless power that goes on fashioning of its own accord just as dreams do—'
'I did, indulge in that sort of thing as a boy, yes,' was the half- guilty reply; 'but that was years and years ago, wasn't it?'
'They have survived, then,' said Daddy with decision. 'The sweetness of this place has stimulated them afresh. The children'—he glanced suspiciously at his wife for a moment—'have appropriated them too. It's a powerful combination. After a pause he added, 'I might develop that idea in my story—that you've brought back the sweet creations of childhood with you and captured us all—a sort of starry army.'
'Why not?' interpolated Mother, as who should say there was no harm in that. 'They certainly have been full of mischief lately.'
'Creation is mischievous,' murmured her husband. 'But since you have come,' he continued aloud,—'how can I express it exactly?—the days have seemed larger, fuller, deeper, the forest richer and more mysterious, the sky much closer, and the stars more soft and intimate. I dream of them, and they all bring me messages that help my story. Do you know what I mean? There were days formerly, when life seemed empty, thin, peaked, impoverished, its scale of values horribly reduced, whereas now—since you've been up to your nonsense with the children—some tide stands at the full, and things are always happening.'
'Well, really, Daddy!' said the expression on Mother's face and hands and knitting-needles, 'you are splendid to-day'; but aloud she only repeated her little hold-all phrase, 'Why not?'