Suddenly the boy wriggled, and gave a sound of joy that was almost a yell. “Look!” he cried.
The covered top of the steam-car could just be seen gliding along above the high wall that separated Edwin’s garden from the street.
“Yes,” Edwin agreed. “Funny, isn’t it?” But he considered that such glee at such a trifle was really more characteristic of six or seven than of nine years. George’s face was transformed by ecstasy.
“It’s when things move like that—horizontal!” George explained, pronouncing the word carefully.
Edwin felt that there was no end to the surpassing strangeness of this boy. One moment he was aged six, and the next he was talking about horizontality.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know!” George sighed. “But somehow—” Then, with fresh vivacity: “I tell you—when Auntie Janet comes to wake me up in the morning the cat comes in too, with its tail up in the air—you know!” Edwin nodded. “Well, when I’m lying in bed I can’t see the cat, but I can see the top of its tail sailing along the edge of the bed. But if I sit up I can see all the cat, and that spoils it, so I don’t sit up at first.”
The child was eager for Edwin to understand his pleasure in horizontal motion that had no apparent cause, like the tip of a cat’s tail on the horizon of a bed, or the roof of a tram-car on the horizon of the wall. And Edwin was eager to understand, and almost persuaded himself that he did understand; but he could not be sure. A marvellous child—disconcerting! He had a feeling of inferiority to the child, because the child had seen beauty where he had not dreamed of seeing it.
“Want a swing,” he suggested, “before I have to go off to business?”