“And I knew it would!” she added quietly, as I started at the sudden crash of broken glass. “You’ve been holding it sideways for the last minute, and letting all the champagne run out! Were you asleep, I wonder? I’m so sorry my singing has such a narcotic effect!”
CHAPTER 18. QUEER STREET, NUMBER FORTY
Lady Muriel was the speaker. And, for the moment, that was the only fact I could clearly realise. But how she came to be there and how I came to be there — and how the glass of champagne came to be there — all these were questions which I felt it better to think out in silence, and not commit myself to any statement till I understood things a little more clearly.
‘First accumulate a mass of Facts: and then construct a Theory.’
That, I believe, is the true Scientific Method.
I sat up, rubbed my eves, and began to accumulate Facts.
A smooth grassy slope, bounded, at the upper end, by venerable ruins half buried in ivy, at the lower, by a stream seen through arching trees — a dozen gaily-dressed people, seated in little groups here and there — some open hampers — the debris of a picnic — such were the Facts accumulated by the Scientific Researcher. And now, what deep, far-reaching Theory was he to construct from them? The Researcher found himself at fault. Yet stay! One Fact had escaped his notice. While all the rest were grouped in twos and in threes, Arthur was alone: while all tongues were talking, his was silent: while all faces were gay, his was gloomy and despondent. Here was a Fact indeed! The Researcher felt that a Theory must be constructed without delay.
Lady Muriel had just risen and left the party. Could that be the cause of his despondency? The Theory hardly rose to the dignity of a Working Hypothesis. Clearly more Facts were needed.
The Researcher looked round him once more: and now the Facts accumulated in such bewildering profusion, that the Theory was lost among them. For Lady Muriel had gone to meet a strange gentleman, just visible in the distance: and now she was returning with him, both of them talking eagerly and joyfully, like old friends who have been long parted: and now she was moving from group to group, introducing the new hero of the hour: and he, young, tall, and handsome, moved gracefully at her side, with the erect bearing and firm tread of a soldier. Verily, the Theory looked gloomy for Arthur! His eye caught mine, and he crossed to me.
“He is very handsome,” I said.
“Abominably handsome!” muttered Arthur: then smiled at his own bitter words. “Lucky no one heard me but you!”
“Doctor Forester,” said Lady Muriel, who had just joined us, “let me introduce to you my cousin Eric Lindon Captain Lindon, I should say.”
Arthur shook off his ill-temper instantly and completely, as he rose and gave the young soldier his hand. “I have heard of you,” he said. “I’m very glad to make the acquaintance of Lady Muriel’s cousin.”
“Yes, that’s all I’m distinguished for, as yet!” said Eric (so we soon got to call him) with a winning smile. “And I doubt,” glancing at Lady Muriel, “if it even amounts to a good-conduct-badge!
But it’s something to begin with.”
“You must come to my father, Eric,” said Lady Muriel. “I think he’s wandering among the ruins.” And the pair moved on.
The gloomy look returned to Arthur’s face: and I could see it was only to distract his thoughts that he took his place at the side of the metaphysical young lady, and resumed their interrupted discussion.
“Talking of Herbert Spencer,” he began, “do you really find no logical difficulty in regarding Nature as a process of involution, passing from definite coherent homogeneity to indefinite incoherent heterogeneity?”
Amused as I was at the ingenious jumble he had made of Spencer’s words, I kept as grave a face as I could.
No physical difficulty,” she confidently replied: “but I haven’t studied Logic much. Would you state the difficulty?”
“Well,” said Arthur, “do you accept it as self-evident? Is it as obvious, for instance, as that ‘things that are greater than the same are greater than one another’?”
“To my mind,” she modestly replied, “it seems quite as obvious. I grasp both truths by intuition. But other minds may need some logical — I forget the technical terms.”
“For a complete logical argument,” Arthur began with admirable solemnity, “we need two prim Misses — ”
“Of course!” she interrupted. “I remember that word now.
And they produce — ?”
“A Delusion,” said Arthur.
“Ye — es?” she said dubiously. “I don’t seem to remember that so well.
But what is the whole argument called?”
“A Sillygism?
“Ah, yes! I remember now. But I don’t need a Sillygism, you know, to prove that mathematical axiom you mentioned.”
“Nor to prove that ‘all angles are equal’, I suppose?”
“Why, of course not! One takes such a simple truth as that for granted!”
Here I ventured to interpose, and to offer her a plate of strawberries and cream. I felt really uneasy at the thought that she might detect the trick: and I contrived, unperceived by her, to shake my head reprovingly at the pseudo-philosopher. Equally unperceived by her, Arthur slightly raised his shoulders, and spread his hands abroad, as who should say “What else can I say to her?” and moved away, leaving her to discuss her strawberries by ‘involution,’ or any other way she preferred.
By this time the carriages, that were to convey the revelers to their respective homes, had begun to assemble outside the Castle-grounds: and it became evident — now that Lady Muriel’s cousin had joined our party that the problem, how to convey five people to Elveston, with a carriage that would only hold four, must somehow be solved.
The Honorable Eric Lindon, who was at this moment walking up and down with Lady Muriel, might have solved it at once, no doubt, by announcing his intention of returning on foot. Of this solution there did not seem to be the very smallest probability.
The next best solution, it seemed to me, was that I should walk home: and this I at once proposed.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?’, said the Earl. “I’m afraid the carriage wont take us all, and I don’t like to suggest to Eric to desert his cousin so soon.”
“So far from minding it,” I said, “I should prefer it. It will give me time to sketch this beautiful old ruin.”
“I’ll keep you company,” Arthur suddenly said. And, in answer to what I suppose was a look of surprise on my face, he said in a low voice, “I really would rather. I shall be quite de trop in the carriage!”
“I think I’ll walk too,” said the Earl. “You’ll have to be content with Eric as your escort,” he added, to Lady Muriel, who had joined us while he was speaking.
“You must be as entertaining as Cerberus — ’three gentlemen rolled into one’ — ” Lady Muriel said to her companion. “It will be a grand military exploit!”
“A sort of Forlorn Hope?” the Captain modestly suggested.
“You do pay pretty compliments!” laughed his fair cousin. “Good day to you, gentlemen three — or rather deserters three!” And the two young folk entered the carriage and were driven away.
“How long will your sketch take?” said Arthur.
“Well,” I said, “I should like an hour for it. Don’t you think you had better go without me? I’ll return by train. I know there’s one in about an hour’s time.”
“Perhaps that would be best,” said the Earl. “The Station is quite close.”
So I was left to my own devices, and soon found a comfortable seat, at the foot of a tree, from which I had a good view of the ruins.
“It is a very drowsy day,” I said to myself, idly turning over the leaves of the sketch-book to find a blank page. “Why, I thought you were a mile off by this time!” For, to my surprise, the two walkers were back again.
“I came back to remind you,” Arthur said, “that the trains go every ten minutes — ” “Nonsense!” I said. “It isn’t the Metropolitan Railway!”
“It is the Metropolitan Railway,” the Earl insisted. “’This is a part of Kensington.”
“Why do you talk with your eyes shut?” said Arthur. “Wake up!”
“I think it’s the heat makes me so drowsy,” I said, hoping, but not feeling quite sure, that I was talking sense. “Am I awake now?”
“I think not, “the Earl judicially pronounced. “What do you think, Doctor? He’s only got one eye open!”
“And he’s snoring like anything!” cried Bruno. “Do wake up, you dear old thing!” And he and Sylvie set to work, rolling the heavy head from side to side, as if its connection with the shoulders was a matter of no sort of importance.
And at last the Professor opened his eyes, and sat up, blinking at us with eyes of utter bewilderment. “Would you have the kindness to mention,” he said, addressing me with his usual old-fashioned courtesy, “whereabouts we are just now and who we are, beginning with me?”
I thought it best to begin with the children. “This is Sylvie. Sir; and this is Bruno.”
“Ah, yes! I know them well enough!” the old man murmured. “Its myself I’m most anxious about. And perhaps you’ll be good enough to mention, at the same time, how I got here?”
“A harder problem occurs to me,” I ventured to say: “and that is, how you’re to get back again.”
“True, true!” the Professor replied. “That’s the Problem, no doubt.
Viewed as a Problem, outside of oneself, it is a most interesting one. Viewed as a portion of one’s own biography, it is, I must admit, very distressing!” He groaned, but instantly added, with a chuckle,
“As to myself, I think you mentioned that I am — ”
“Oo’re the Professor!” Bruno shouted in his ear. “Didn’t oo know that?
Oo’ve come from Outland! And it’s ever so far away from here!”
The Professor leapt to his feet with the agility of a boy.
“Then there’s no time to lose!” he exclaimed anxiously.
“I’ll just ask this guileless peasant, with his brace of buckets
that contain (apparently) water, if he’ll be so kind as to direct us.
Guileless peasant!” he proceeded in a louder voice.
“Would you tell us the way to Outland?”
The guileless peasant turned with a sheepish grin. “Hey?” was all he said.
“The way — to — Outland!” the Professor repeated.
The guileless peasant set down his buckets and considered. “Ah dunnot — ”
“I ought to mention,” the Professor hastily put in, “that whatever you say will be used in evidence against you.”
The guileless peasant instantly resumed his buckets. “Then ah says nowt!” he answered briskly, and walked away at a great pace.
The children gazed sadly at the rapidly vanishing figure. “He goes very quick!” the Professor said with a sigh. “But I know that was the right thing to say. I’ve studied your English Laws. However, let’s ask this next man that’s coming. He is not guileless, and he is not a peasant — but I don’t know that either point is of vital importance.”
It was, in fact, the Honourable Eric Lindon, who had apparently fulfilled his task of escorting Lady Muriel home, and was now strolling leisurely up and down the road outside the house, enjoying; a solitary cigar.
“Might I trouble you, Sir, to tell us the nearest way to Outland!” Oddity as he was, in outward appearance, the Professor was, in that essential nature which no outward disguise could conceal, a thorough gentleman.
And, as such, Eric Lindon accepted him instantly. He took the cigar from his mouth, and delicately shook off the ash, while he considered. “The name sounds strange to me,” he said. “I doubt if I can help you?’
“It is not very far from Fairyland,” the Professor suggested.
Eric Lindon’s eye-brows were slightly raised at these words, and an amused smile, which he courteously tried to repress, flitted across his handsome face: “A trifle cracked!” he muttered to himself. “But what a jolly old patriarch it is!” Then he turned to the children. “And ca’n’t you help him, little folk?” he said, with a gentleness of tone that seemed to win their hearts at once. “Surely you know all about it?
‘How many miles to Babylon?
Three-score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again!’”
To my surprise, Bruno ran forwards to him, as if he were some old friend of theirs, seized the disengaged hand and hung on to it with both of his own: and there stood this tall dignified officer in the middle of the road, gravely swinging a little boy to and fro, while Sylvie stood ready to push him, exactly as if a real swing had suddenly been provided for their pastime.
“We don’t want to get to Babylon, oo know!” Bruno explained as he swung.
“And it isn’t candlelight: it’s daylight!” Sylvie added, giving the swing a push of extra vigour, which nearly took the whole machine off its balance.
By this time it was clear to me that Eric Lindon was quite unconscious of my presence. Even the Professor and the children seemed to have lost sight of me: and I stood in the midst of the group, as unconcernedly as a ghost, seeing but unseen.
“How perfectly isochronous!” the Professor exclaimed with enthusiasm.
He had his watch in his hand, and was carefully counting Bruno’s oscillations. “He measures time quite as accurately as a pendulum!”
“Yet even pendulums,” the good-natured young soldier observed, as he carefully released his hand from Bruno’s grasp, “are not a joy for ever! Come, that’s enough for one bout, little man!’ Next time we meet, you shall have another. Meanwhile you’d better take this old gentleman to Queer Street, Number — ”
“We’ll find it!” cried Bruno eagerly, as they dragged the Professor away.
“We are much indebted to you!” the Professor said, looking over his shoulder.
“Don’t mention it!” replied the officer, raising his hat as a parting salute.
“What number did you say!” the Professor called from the distance.
The officer made a trumpet of his two hands. “Forty!” he shouted in stentorian tones. “And not piano, by any means!” he added to himself. “It’s a mad world, my masters, a mad world!” He lit another cigar, and strolled on towards his hotel.
“What a lovely evening!” I said, joining him as he passed me.
“Lovely indeed,” he said. “Where did you come from?
Dropped from the clouds?”
“I’m strolling your way,” I said; and no further explanation seemed necessary.
“Have a cigar?”
“Thanks: I’m not a smoker.”
“Is there a Lunatic Asylum near here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Thought there might be. Met a lunatic just now. Queer old fish as ever I saw!”
And so, in friendly chat, we took our homeward ways, and wished each other ‘good-night’ at the door of his hotel.
Left to myself, I felt the ‘eerie’ feeling rush over me again, and saw, standing at the door of Number Forty, the three figures I knew so well.
“Then it’s the wrong house?” Bruno was saying.
“No, no! It’s the right house,” the Professor cheerfully replied: “but it’s the wrong street. That’s where we’ve made our mistake! Our best plan, now, will be to — ”
It was over. The street was empty, Commonplace life was around me, and the ‘eerie’ feeling had fled.
CHAPTER 19. HOW TO MAKE A PHLIZZ
The week passed without any further communication with the ‘Hall,’ as Arthur was evidently fearful that we might ‘wear out our welcome’; but when, on Sunday morning, we were setting out for church, I gladly agreed to his proposal to go round and enquire after the Earl, who was said to be unwell.
Eric, who was strolling in the garden, gave us a good report of the invalid, who was still in bed, with Lady Muriel in attendance.
“Are you coming with us to church?” I enquired.
“Thanks, no,” he courteously replied. “It’s not — exactly in my line, you know. It’s an excellent institution — for the poor. When I’m with my own folk, I go, just to set them an example. But I’m not known here: so I think I’ll excuse myself sitting out a sermon. Country-preachers are always so dull!”
Arthur was silent till we were out of hearing. Then he said to himself, almost inaudibly, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
“Yes,” I assented: “no doubt that is the principle on which church-going rests.”
“And when he does go,” he continued (our thoughts ran so much together, that our conversation was often slightly elliptical), “I suppose he repeats the words ‘I believe in the Communion of Saints’?”
But by this time we had reached the little church, into which a goodly stream of worshipers, consisting mainly of fishermen and their families, was flowing.
The service would have been pronounced by any modern aesthetic religionist — or religious aesthete, which is it? — to be crude and cold: to me, coming fresh from the ever-advancing developments of a London church under a soi-disant ‘Catholic’ Rector, it was unspeakably refreshing.
There was no theatrical procession of demure little choristers, trying their best not to simper under the admiring gaze of the congregation: the people’s share in the service was taken by the people themselves, unaided, except that a few good voices, judiciously posted here and there among them, kept the singing from going too far astray.
There was no murdering of the noble music, contained in the Bible and the Liturgy, by its recital in a dead monotone, with no more expression than a mechanical talking-doll.
No, the prayers were prayed, the lessons were read, and best of all the sermon was talked; and I found myself repeating, as we left the church, the words of Jacob, when he ‘awaked out of his sleep.’ “’Surely the Lord is in this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’”
“Yes,” said Arthur, apparently in answer to my thoughts, “those ‘high’ services are fast becoming pure Formalism. More and more the people are beginning to regard them as ‘performances,’ in which they only ‘assist’ in the French sense. And it is specially bad for the little boys. They’d be much less self-conscious as pantomime-fairies. With all that dressing-up, and stagy-entrances and exits, and being always en evidence, no wonder if they’re eaten up with vanity, the blatant little coxcombs!”
When we passed the Hall on our return, we found the Earl and Lady Muriel sitting out in the garden. Eric had gone for a stroll.
We joined them, and the conversation soon turned on the sermon we had just heard, the subject of which was ‘selfishness.’
“What a change has come over our pulpits,” Arthur remarked, “since the time when Paley gave that utterly selfish definition of virtue, ‘the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness’!”
Lady Muriel looked at him enquiringly, but she seemed to have learned by intuition, what years of experience had taught me, that the way to elicit Arthur’s deepest thoughts was neither to assent nor dissent, but simply to listen.
“At that time,” he went on, “a great tidal wave of selfishness was sweeping over human thought. Right and Wrong had somehow been transformed into Gain and Loss, and Religion had become a sort of commercial transaction. We may be thankful that our preachers are beginning to take a nobler view of life.”
“But is it not taught again and again in the Bible?” I ventured to ask.
“Not in the Bible as a whole,” said Arthur. “In the Old Testament, no doubt, rewards and punishments are constantly appealed to as motives for action. That teaching is best for children, and the Israelites seem to have been, mentally, utter children. We guide our children thus, at first: but we appeal, as soon as possible, to their innate sense of Right and Wrong: and, when that stage is safely past, we appeal to the highest motive of all, the desire for likeness to, and union with, the Supreme Good. I think you will find that to be the teaching of the Bible, as a whole, beginning with ‘that thy days may be long in the land,’ and ending with ‘be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’”
We were silent for awhile, and then Arthur went off on another tack. “Look at the literature of Hymns, now. How cankered it is, through and through, with selfishness! There are few human compositions more utterly degraded than some modern Hymns!”
I quoted the stanza
“Whatever, Lord, we tend to Thee,
Repaid a thousandfold shall be,
Then gladly will we give to Thee,
Giver of all!’
“Yes,” he said grimly: “that is the typical stanza. And the very last charity-sermon I heard was infected with it. After giving many good reasons for charity, the preacher wound up with ‘and, for all you give, you will be repaid a thousandfold!’ Oh the utter meanness of such a motive, to be put before men who do know what self-sacrifice is, who can appreciate generosity and heroism! Talk of Original Sin!” he went on with increasing bitterness. “Can you have a stronger proof of the Original Goodness there must be in this nation, than the fact that Religion has been preached to us, as a commercial speculation, for a century, and that we still believe in a God?”
“It couldn’t have gone on so long,” Lady Muriel musingly remarked, “if the Opposition hadn’t been practically silenced — put under what the French call la cloture. Surely in any lecture-hall, or in private society, such teaching would soon have been hooted down?”
“I trust so,” said Arthur: “and, though I don’t want to see ‘brawling in church’ legalised, I must say that our preachers enjoy an enormous privilege — which they ill deserve, and which they misuse terribly. We put our man into a pulpit, and we virtually tell him ‘Now, you may stand there and talk to us for half-an-hour. We won’t interrupt you by so much as a word! You shall have it all your own way!’ And what does he give us in return? Shallow twaddle, that, if it were addressed to you over a dinner-table, you would think ‘Does the man take me for a fool?’”
The return of Eric from his walk checked the tide of Arthur’s eloquence, and, after a few minutes’ talk on more conventional topics, we took our leave. Lady Muriel walked with us to the gate. “You have given me much to think about,” she said earnestly, as she gave Arthur her hand. “I’m so glad you came in!” And her words brought a real glow of pleasure into that pale worn face of his.
On the Tuesday, as Arthur did not seem equal to more walking, I took a long stroll by myself, having stipulated that he was not to give the whole day to his books, but was to meet me at the Hall at about tea-time. On my way back, I passed the Station just as the afternoon-train came in sight, and sauntered down the stairs to see it come in. But there was little to gratify my idle curiosity: and, when the train was empty, and the platform clear, I found it was about time to be moving on, if I meant to reach the Hall by five.
As I approached the end of the platform, from which a steep irregular wooden staircase conducted to the upper world, I noticed two passengers, who had evidently arrived by the train, but who, oddly enough, had entirely escaped my notice, though the arrivals had been so few. They were a young woman and a little girl: the former, so far as one could judge by appearances, was a nursemaid, or possibly a nursery-governess, in attendance on the child, whose refined face, even more than her dress, distinguished her as of a higher class than her companion.
The child’s face was refined, but it was also a worn and sad one, and told a tale (or so I seemed to read it) of much illness and suffering, sweetly and patiently borne. She had a little crutch to help herself along with: and she was now standing, looking wistfully up the long staircase, and apparently waiting till she could muster courage to begin the toilsome ascent.
There are some things one says in life — as well as things one does — which come automatically, by reflex action, as the physiologists say (meaning, no doubt, action without reflection, just as lucus is said to be derived ‘a non lucendo’). Closing one’s eyelids, when something seems to be flying into the eye, is one of those actions, and saying “May I carry the little girl up the stairs?” was another. It wasn’t that any thought of offering help occurred to me, and that then I spoke: the first intimation I had, of being likely to make that offer, was the sound of my own voice, and the discovery that the offer had been made. The servant paused, doubtfully glancing from her charge to me, and then back again to the child. “Would you like it, dear?” she asked her. But no such doubt appeared to cross the child’s mind: she lifted her arms eagerly to be taken up. “Please!” was all she said, while a faint smile flickered on the weary little face. I took her up with scrupulous care, and her little arm was at once clasped trustfully round my neck.
She was a very light weight — so light, in fact, that the ridiculous idea crossed my mind that it was rather easier going up, with her in my arms, than it would have been without her: and, when we reached the road above, with its cart-ruts and loose stones — all formidable obstacles for a lame child — I found that I had said “I’d better carry her over this rough place,” before I had formed any mental connection between its roughness and my gentle little burden. “Indeed it’s troubling you too much, Sir!” the maid exclaimed. “She can walk very well on the flat.” But the arm, that was twined about my neck, clung just an atom more closely at the suggestion, and decided me to say “She’s no weight, really. I’ll carry her a little further. I’m going your way.”
The nurse raised no further objection: and the next speaker was a ragged little boy, with bare feet, and a broom over his shoulder, who ran across the road, and pretended to sweep the perfectly dry road in front of us. “Give us a ‘ap’ny!” the little urchin pleaded, with a broad grin on his dirty face.
“Don’t give him a ‘ap’ny!” said the little lady in my arms. The words sounded harsh: but the tone was gentleness itself. “He’s an idle little boy!” And she laughed a laugh of such silvery sweetness as I had never yet heard from any lips but Sylvie’s. To my astonishment, the boy actually joined in the laugh, as if there were some subtle sympathy between them, as he ran away down the road and vanished through a gap in the hedge.
But he was back in a few moments, having discarded his broom and provided himself, from some mysterious source, with an exquisite bouquet of flowers. “Buy a posy, buy a posy! Only a ‘ap’ny!” he chanted, with the melancholy drawl of a professional beggar.
“Don’t buy it!” was Her Majesty’s edict as she looked down, with a lofty scorn that seemed curiously mixed with tender interest, on the ragged creature at her feet.
But this time I turned rebel, and ignored the royal commands. Such lovely flowers, and of forms so entirely new to me, were not to be abandoned at the bidding of any little maid, however imperious. I bought the bouquet: and the little boy, after popping the halfpenny into his mouth, turned head-over-heels, as if to ascertain whether the human mouth is really adapted to serve as a money-box.
With wonder, that increased every moment, I turned over the flowers, and examined them one by one: there was not a single one among them that I could remember having ever seen before. At last I turned to the nursemaid. “Do these flowers grow wild about here? I never saw — ” but the speech died away on my lips. The nursemaid had vanished!
“You can put me down, now, if you like,” Sylvie quietly remarked.
I obeyed in silence, and could only ask myself “Is this a dream?”, on finding Sylvie and Bruno walking one on either side of me, and clinging to my hands with the ready confidence of childhood.
“You’re larger than when I saw you last!” I began. “Really I think we ought to be introduced again! There’s so much of you that I never met before, you know.”
“Very well!” Sylvie merrily replied. “This is Bruno. It doesn’t take long. He’s only got one name!”
“There’s another name to me!” Bruno protested, with a reproachful look at the Mistress of the Ceremonies. “And it’s — ’ Esquire’!”
“Oh, of course. I forgot,” said Sylvie. “Bruno — Esquire!”
“And did you come here to meet me, my children?” I enquired.
“You know I said we’d come on Tuesday, Sylvie explained. “Are we the proper size for common children?”
“Quite the right size for children,” I replied, (adding mentally “though not common children, by any means!”) “But what became of the nursemaid?”
“It are gone!” Bruno solemnly replied.
“Then it wasn’t solid, like Sylvie and you?”
“No. Oo couldn’t touch it, oo know. If oo walked at it, oo’d go right froo!”
“I quite expected you’d find it out, once,” said Sylvie. “Bruno ran it against a telegraph post, by accident. And it went in two halves. But you were looking the other way.”
I felt that I had indeed missed an opportunity: to witness such an event as a nursemaid going ‘in two halves’ does not occur twice in a life-time!
“When did oo guess it were Sylvie?” Bruno enquired.
“I didn’t guess it, till it was Sylvie,” I said. “But how did
You manage the nursemaid? “
“Bruno managed it,” said Sylvie. “It’s called a Phlizz.”
“And how do you make a Phlizz, Bruno?”
“The Professor teached me how,” said Bruno.
“First oo takes a lot of air — ”
“Oh, Bruno!” Sylvie interposed. “The Professor said you weren’t to tell!”
But who did her voice?” I asked.
“Indeed it’s troubling you too much, Sir! She can walk very well on the flat.”
Bruno laughed merrily as I turned hastily from side to side, looking in all directions for the speaker. “That were me!” he gleefully proclaimed, in his own voice.
“She can indeed walk very well on the flat,” I said. “And I think I was the Flat.”
By this time we were near the Hall. “This is where my friends live,”
I said. “Will you come in and have some tea with them?”
Bruno gave a little jump of joy: and Sylvie said “Yes, please. You’d like some tea, Bruno, wouldn’t you? He hasn’t tasted tea,” she explained to me, “since we left Outland.”