They were all on the stairs, the Secret Friend and the children. They all wore untidy clothes, and hard-boiled eggs bulged from their pockets. The Secret Friend has red hair, you might call its colour vulgar. But Jay likes it very much. He hardly ever sits still, you can never see him think, he has a way of answering you almost before you have finished speaking. His mind always seems to be exploring among words, and sometimes you can hear him telling himself splendid sentences without meaning. For this reason everything connected with him has a name, from his dog, which is called Trelawney, to the last cigarette he smokes at night, which is called Isobel. This trick Jay has imported into her own establishment: she has an umbrella called Macdonald, and a little occasional pleurisy pain under one rib, which she introduces to the Family as Julia.
The children in the house were just those very children that every woman hopes, or has hoped, to have for her own.
They were just starting for a walk, and the Secret Friend was finishing a story.
"How can you remember things that happened—I suppose—squillions of years ago," said the eldest child. "You tell them as if they happened yesterday. Doesn't it seem as if all the happiest things happened yesterday?"
"To me it seems that they will happen to-morrow," said the Secret Friend. "But then there is so little difference between yesterday and to-morrow. How can you tell which is which? Only clocks and calendars are silly enough to tread on the tail of a little space between sunrise and sunset and call it to-day. How do you know which way up time is happening?"
"Because yesterday the sun set, and we went to bed," said the youngest child.
"I think to-morrow is a little person in dark clothes watching and listening," said the eldest child. "And to-day is Cinderella, all shiny and beautiful until twelve o'clock strikes."
"All yesterdays and all to-morrows are in this house listening," said the Secret Friend. "This is the place where time is without a name. Here the beginning comes after the end. To-morrow we shall be born. Yesterday we died. To-day was just a little passage built of twenty-four odd hours. And now we will sing the Loud Song."
They were on the rocky path now, and they sang the Loud Song. Both that path and that song go on for ever, and the words of the song are like this:
There is no house like our house
Even in Heaven.
There is no family like our family
Even in Heaven.
There is no Country like our Country
Even in Heaven.
There is no sea like our sea
Even in Heaven.