They stood for several minutes, listening together, while the brightness of their near approach seemed to change the woman's face a little. She looked up and listened as though aware of something near her.
'She's praying for others as well as herself,' explained Jimbo.
'Ca vaut la peine alors,' said Monkey. And they drew cautiously nearer…. But, soon desisting, the children were far away, hovering about the mountains. They had no steadiness as yet.
'Starlight,' Jimbo was singing to himself, 'runs along my mind.'
'You're all up-jumbled,' Monkey interrupted him with a laugh, turning repeated somersaults till she looked like a catherine wheel of brightness.
'… the pattern of my verse or story…' continued Jimbo half aloud, '… a little ball of tangled glory….'
'You must unwind!' cried Monkey. 'Look out, it's the sun! It'll melt us into dew!'
But it was not the sun. Out there beyond them, towards the purple woods still sleeping, appeared a draught of starbeams like a broad, deep river of gold. The rays, coming from all corners of the sky, wove a pattern like a network.
'Jimbo!' gasped the girl, 'it's like a fishing-net. We've never noticed it before.'
'It is a net,' he answered, standing still as a stone, though he had not thought of it himself until she said so. He instantly dressed himself, as he always translated il se dressait in his funny Franco- English. Deja and comme ca, too, appeared everywhere. 'It is a net like that. I saw it already before, once.'