'For I'm a tremendously busy Sweep,
Dusting the room while you're all asleep,
And shoving you all in the rubbish heap,
Over the edge of the tiles'
—a little wumbled, it is true, but its source unmistakable.
And all day long, with every one, it was similar, this curious intrusion of the night into the day, the sub-conscious into the conscious—a kind of subtle trespassing. The flower of forgotten dreams rose so softly to the surface of consciousness that they had an air of sneaking in, anxious to be regarded as an integral part of normal waking life. Like bubbles in water they rose, discharged their puff of fragrant air, and disappeared again. Jane Anne, in particular, was simply radiant all day long, and more than usually clear-headed. Once or twice she wumbled, but there was big sense in her even then. It was only the expression that evaded her. Her little brain was a poor transmitter somehow.
'I feel all endowed to-day,' she informed Rogers, when he congratulated her later in the day on some cunning act of attention she bestowed upon him. It was in the courtyard where they all sat sunning themselves after dejeuner, and before the younger children returned to afternoon school.
'I feel emaciated, you know,' she added, uncertain whether emancipated was the word she really sought.
'You'll be quite grown-up,' he told her, 'by the time I come back to little Bourcelles in the autumn.' Little Bourcelles! It sounded, the caressing way he said it, as if it lay in the palm of his big brown hand.
'But you'll never come back, because you'll never go,' Monkey chimed in. 'My hair, remember—-'
'My trains won't take you,' said Jimbo gravely.
'Oh, a train may take you,' continued Monkey, 'but you can't leave.
Going away by train isn't leaving.'
'It's only like going to sleep,' explained her brother. You'll come back every night in a Starlight Express—-'