'What a fairy story for her children! How they must love it!' This time he spoke so loud that Minks started and looked up at him.
'Ah, but she has no children,' his cousin said.
They went upstairs, and the introductions to Monsieur and Madame Michaud began, with talk about rooms and luggage. The mist was over him once more. He heard Minks saying:—
'Oui, je comprongs un poo,' and the clatter of heavy boots up and down the stairs, … and then found himself washing his hands in stinging hot water in his cousin's room.
'The children simply adore her already,' he heard, 'and she won Mother's confidence at the very start. They can't manage her long name. They just call her the Little Countess—die kleine Grafin. She's doing a most astonishing work in Austria, it seems, with children… the Montessori method, and all that….'
'By George, now; is it possible? Bourcelles accepted her at once then?'
'She accepted Bourcelles rather—took it bodily into herself—our poverty, our magic boxes, our democratic intimacy, and all the rest; it was just as though she had lived here with us always. And she kept asking who Orion was—that's you, of course—and why you weren't here—-'
'And the Den too?' asked Rogers, with a sudden trembling in his heart, yet knowing well the answer.
'Simply appropriated it—came in naturally without being asked; Jimbo opened the door and Monkey pushed her in. She said it was her Star Cave. Oh, she's a remarkable being, you know, rather,' he went on more gravely, 'with unusual powers of sympathy. She seems to feel at once what you are feeling. Takes everything for granted as though she knew. I think she does know, if you ask me—-'
'Lives the story in fact,' the other interrupted, hiding his face rather in the towel, 'lives her belief instead of dreaming it, eh?'