'Well, then. How did I get here? I got here through having made them bricks what you built this tumble-down old ancient place with.'
'I built?'
'Yes, with them bricks I made you. I understand as this was the first building you ever put up. That's why it's first on the road to where you want to get to!'
Philip looked round at the Stonehenge building and saw that it was indeed built of enormous oak bricks.
'Of course,' he said, 'only I've grown smaller.'
'Or they've grown bigger,' said Mr. Perrin; 'it's the same thing. You see it's like this. All the cities and things you ever built is in this country. I don't know how it's managed, no more'n what you do. But so it is. And as you made 'em, you've the right to come to them—if you can get there. And you have got there. It isn't every one has the luck, I'm told. Well, then, you made the cities, but you made 'em out of what other folks had made, things like bricks and chessmen and books and candlesticks and dominoes and brass basins and every sort of kind of thing. An' all the people who helped to make all them things you used to build with, they're all here too. D'you see? Making's the thing. If it was no more than the lad that turned the handle of the grindstone to sharp the knife that carved a bit of a cabinet or what not, or a child that picked a teazle to finish a bit of the cloth that's glued on to the bottom of a chessman—they're all here. They're what's called the population of your cities.'
'I see. They've got small, like I have,' said Philip.
'Or the cities has got big,' said the carpenter; 'it comes to the same thing. I wish you wouldn't interrupt, Master Philip. You put me out.'
'I won't again,' said Philip. 'Only do tell me just one thing. How can you be here and at Amblehurst too?'
'We come here,' said the carpenter slowly, 'when we're asleep.'