“Don’t speak of that,” groaned the old man.
“Cheer up, Father,” cried the young man. “Pull yourself together now. Snap your fingers and—tss—it is gone, remember.” And he beamed encouragingly down at the thin little old man beside him, who only looked more depressed than ever at his son’s efforts to cheer him up.
“But how is it we’ve played in this wood—I mean that wood—ever so many times and never found our way here before?” inquired Jack.
“Because though you’ve walked round that tree many times you’ve never come through it before,” said the young man. “There are two sides to every tree, just as there are two sides to every question. When you ‘walk round’ a question, do you see both its sides? No. It is only if you go into a question that you see this side and that. Well, then—when you only walked round that tree it stands to sense that you couldn’t find yourself here. But when you go into the tree—tss”—he threw out his hand—“behold! here you are. It’s perfectly simple.”
It certainly sounded sensible and quite simple as the young man explained it, but Jack and Molly still felt rather mystified.
“But why do you call ours the Impossible World?” asked Jack.
“Because it’s full of impossible things,” replied the young man. “Impossible people, impossible ideas, impossible laws, impossible houses, there is so much impossible misery and injustice, and impossible talk, that it’s quite impossible for any possible creature to live in it. On the other hand, this land (which is the other side of yours) is the Possible World now; for a time it was Impossible, but we sent——” Here the old man winced. “I’m sorry, Father. But you must let me tell the little lady and her brother where they are. I know. You go and sit down under that tree, and think of buttercups.”
“But they’re the colour of lemons,” whined the old man feebly.
“Not all of them—think of the ones that aren’t. There; run along. I shan’t be two minutes explaining.”
And he patted his father on the shoulder as the old man shuffled across the leaves to the foot of a tree some yards away, where he sat down, and remained shaking his head and looking on the ground, mumbling to himself, while the young man explained the cause of his depression to Jack and Molly.