"Not on the top of each other," remarked Jack. "Otherwise——"
"Oh, don't be grammatical. On the top of each other."
"I'm following," said Jack.
"Very well. So I took the lid off my brain, let the stuffy air escape, and let in the wind and the sea. Now don't say 'water on the brain,' because it isn't true. It just lay open, and then after a time the sea-gulls and—and I've forgotten the name of the blighted thing, and that reminds me that it's sea-blite—the sea-gulls and the sea-blite got in; I think the gulls nested in the blite. So I got interested in them, but still I didn't want to see a single soul, not even you and David. But I sent for enormous books on birds and botany, and you'll find them in my bathing-hut with the bill: unpaid. Those jolly insolent things, going where they chose and growing where they chose healed me of people-sickness. They didn't care, bless them, if a convoy of wounded came in, or if nobody loved me. One of them squawked, and the other pricked my large ankles."
Dodo sat up.
"Yes, what made me want to see you and David again," she said, "was a course of sea-blite and Richardson's skuas. That's what I mean by people and things healing each other. I think I shall go back to Winston to-morrow."
"If I thought you meant that," said he, "I should tell you that you would do nothing of the sort."
Dodo looked wildly round.
"Oh, don't tell me that!" she said, "or out of pure self-willed vitality I should do it."
"Very well; you will go back to Winston to-morrow," said Jack.