‘The earth,’ she went on, seeing that he did not laugh, ‘is somebody’s big round body rolling down the sky. It simply must be. Daddy always said that a fly settling on our bodies didn’t know we were, alive, so we can’t understand that the earth is alive either. Only I know it. Oh!’ she cried out with sudden enthusiasm, ‘how I would love to hear its real out-loud voice. What a t’riffic roar it must be. I only wish my ears were further——’
‘Sharper, you mean.’
‘But, all the same, I have heard it breathing,’ she added more quietly, lifting Pouf suddenly and wrapping its sleeping body round her neck like a boa, ‘just like this.’ She put her head on one side, so that her cheek was against the kitten’s lips, and the faint stream of its breathing tickled her ear. ‘Only the breathing of the earth is much, ever so much, longer and deeper. It’s whole months long.’
Paul was listening now with his undivided attention. He was being admitted to the very heart of an imaginative child’s world, and the knowledge of it charmed him inexpressibly. His eyes were almost as bright, his cheeks as pink with excitement, as her own. Only he must be very careful indeed. The least mistake on his part would close the door.
‘Months, Nixie?’
‘Oh, yes, a single breath is months long,’ she whispered, her eyes growing in size, and darkening with wonder and awe. ‘Pouf lies on me and breathes twice to my once, but I breathe millions of times—ever so many millions—as I lie on the earth’s body. And it breathes in and out just as Pouf and I do. Winter is breathing in, and summer is breathing out, you see.’
‘So the equinoctial gales are the changes from one breath to the other?’ he put in gravely.
‘I hadn’t thought about the—the gales,’ she said, putting her face closer and lowering her voice, ‘but I know that in the summer I often hear the earth breathing out—’specially on still warm nights when everything lies awake and listens for it.’
‘Then do “Things” really listen as we do?’ he asked gently.
‘Not ’xactly as we do. We only listen in one place—our ears. They listen all over. But they’re alive just the same, though so much quieter. Oh, Uncle Paul, everything is alive; everything, I know it!’ She fixed a searching look on him. ‘You knew that, didn’t you?’