“Your mind had to be tormented and fevered and exalted before you could see a god.”
“It was cruel of you to do this,” she said.
—James Stephens,
In the Land of Youth.
THUNDER ON THE LEFT
Thunder on the Left
I
NOW that the children were getting big, it wasn’t to be called the Nursery any longer. In fact, it was being repapered that very day: the old scribbled Mother Goose pattern had already been covered with new strips, damp and bitter-smelling. But Martin thought he would be able to remember the gay fairy-tale figures, even under the bright fresh paper. There were three bobtailed mice, dancing. They were repeated several times in the procession of pictures that ran round the wall. How often he had studied them as he lay in bed waiting for it to be time to get up. It must be excellent to be Grown Up and able to dress as early as you please. What a golden light lies across the garden those summer mornings.
At any rate, it would be comforting to know that the bobtailed mice were still there, underneath. To-day the smell of the paste and new paper was all through the house. The men were to have come last week. To-day it was awkward: it was Martin’s birthday (he was ten) and he and Bunny had been told to invite some friends for a small party. It was raining, too: one of those steady drumming rains that make a house so cosy. The Grown-Ups were having tea on the veranda, so the party was in the dining room. When Mrs. Richmond looked through the glass porch doors to see how they were getting on, she was surprised to find no one visible.
“Where on earth have those children gone?” she exclaimed. “How delightfully quiet they are.”
There was a seven-voiced halloo of triumph, and a great scuffle and movement under the big mahogany table. Several steamer rugs had been pinned together and draped across the board so that they hung down forming a kind of pavilion. From this concealment the children came scrambling and surrounded her in a lively group.