“I let the old priest move a few paces in front of me, and quickly stepping back I touched it twice with my hand in token of farewell. I was filled with fear lest the priest should turn and see me, for however crazy one may be in these matters, one doesn’t like others to think one so.”
“No,” said Clare. “I know that. If somebody comes in when I’ve been talking to myself, or saying lines out loud when I’m alone, I always quickly turn it into a cough of some description. It never sounds in the least like one, though.”
“Have you always named things that belong to you?” asked Miss Ross. “Nothing can really live to you unless it has got a name.”
“Yes,” said the children, “Mummie has names for things. She used to think when she was little that her feet were boys, and that they were called Owen and Barber. And she had an umbrella called Harvey, for years.”
“It’s right to have fancies about things,” said Miss Ross. “I will tell you one that I read once long ago.
“The writer said, ‘When I have risen to walk abroad in the fresh new air of summer, in the hour of dawn when mankind is still at rest, the face of Nature has taken to me a new aspect, the unity of all things in creation appears revealed. It has seemed to me that I have surprised a great secret.
“‘I have seen Nature at such times depicted in the vast form of some great goddess, a woman of Titanic form. The races of mankind are her children, and according to the features of the land they live in, so are they placed upon her mother form. Those who live upon the plains dwell on the great palms of her hands; those whose dwellings are placed among the embosoming hills have her breast for their shelter. The lakes are her eyes and the great forests her hair, the rivers are her veins and the rain her tears, and she sighs in the sound of the Sea.
“‘The rainbows are her thoughts, and the mists rising from the quiet meadows are her meditations and her prayers. Her laughter is in the sound of brooks, and she breathes in the warmth that exhales from the earth, after it is dusk in Summer. The lightning is her anger, and in the thunder she finds utterance, and the darkness of the night is her great mantle over the land.’” Miss Ross ceased speaking, and there was silence for a time. Then Christopher said:
“And what are the earthquakes?”
“Perhaps when she yawns,” said Bim. Children often save people trouble by giving themselves a reply.