They were not quite sure. They expected a disclosure more out of the ordinary. It might be true, but—
"Hide-and-seek?" they repeated doubtfully. "But that's just a game."
They were unsettled in their minds.
"Not that kind," he replied significantly. "I mean the kind the rain plays with the wind and leaves, the stream with the stones and roots along its bank, the rivers with the sea. That's the kind of hide-and-seek I mean!"
He chose instinctively watery symbols. And his tone conveyed something so splendid and mysterious that it was impossible to doubt or hesitate a moment longer.
"Oh," they exclaimed. "It never ends, you mean?"
"Goes on for ever and ever," he murmured. "The moment the river finds the sea it disappears and the sea begins to look. The wind never really finds the clouds, and the sun and the stars—"
"We know!" they shouted, cutting his explanations short.
"Come on then!" he cried. "We've got the hunt of our lives before us." And he began to run about in a circle like an animal trying to catch its tail.
"But are we to look for him, or he for us?" inquired the boy, after a preliminary canter over the flower-beds.
"We for him." They sprang to attention and clapped their hands.