“What is there grand about the Sea?” said the Professor. “Why, you could put it all into a teacup!”
“Some of it,” Sylvie corrected him.
“Well, you’d only want a certain number of tea-cups to hold it all. And then where’s the grandeur? Then as to a Mountain—why, you could carry it all away in a wheel-barrow, in a certain number of years!”
“It wouldn’t look grand—the bits of it in the wheel-barrow,” Sylvie candidly admitted.
“But when oo put it together again——” Bruno began.
“When you’re older,” said the Professor, “you’ll know that you ca’n’t put Mountains together again so easily! One lives and one learns, you know!”
“But it needn’t be the same one, need it?” said Bruno. “Won’t it do, if I live, and if Sylvie learns?”
“I ca’n’t learn without living!” said Sylvie.
“But I can live without learning!” Bruno retorted. “Oo just try me!”
“What I meant, was—” the Professor began, looking much puzzled, “—was—that you don’t know everything, you know.”