'Well,' he answered with conviction, 'it sticks to you. It sticks to the eyes most, but a little also to the hair and voice, and nobody loves you unless you've got a bit of it somewhere on you. A girl, before any one falls in love with her, has always been there, and people who write stories and music and things—all have got some on their fingers or else nobody cares for what they write—'
'Oh, Daddy, then why don't you go there and get sticky all over with it?' Jinny burst out with sudden eagerness, ever thinking of others before herself. 'I'll go and get some for you—lots and lots.'
'I have been there,' he answered slowly, 'once long, long ago. But it didn't stick very well with me. It wipes off so quickly in the day- time. The sunlight kills it.'
'But you got some!' the child insisted. 'And you've got it still, I mean?'
'A little, perhaps, a very little.'
All felt the sadness in his voice without understanding it. There was a moment's pause. Then the three of them spoke in a single breath—
'Please show it to us—now,' they cried.
'I'll try,' he said, after a slight hesitation, 'but—er—it's only a rhyme, you see'; and then began to murmur very low for fear of waking Mother: he almost sang it to them. The flock of tiny voices whispered it to his blood. He merely uttered what he heard:—
Starlight
Runs along my mind
And rolls into a ball of golden silk—
A little skein
Of tangled glory;
And when I want to get it out again
To weave the pattern of a verse or story,
It must unwind.
It then gets knotted, looped, and all up-jumbled,
And long before I get it straight again, unwumbled,
To make my verse or story,
The interfering sun has risen
And burst with passion through my silky prison
To melt it down in dew,
Like so much spider-gossamer or fairy-cotton.
Don't you?
I call it rotten!