'You're out, old girl, at last!' he cried.

'G.o.d bless my soul, I am!' she answered. Their sentences came both together, and their blues and yellows swam into each other and made a lovely green. 'It's what I've been trying to do all these years without knowing it. What a glory! I understand now--understand myself and you. I see life clearly as a whole. Hooray, hooray!' She glided nearer to him, her face was beaming.

'Mother's going to explode,' said Monkey in a whisper. But, of course, everybody 'heard' it; for the faintest whisper of thought sent a ripple through that sea of delicate colour. The Laugher bent behind the cupboard to hide her face, and the Gardener by the window stooped to examine his flower-pots. The Woman of the Haystack drew back a little into the corridor again, preparatory to another effort to squeeze through. But Mother, regardless of them all, swam on towards her husband, wrapped in joy and light as in a garment. Hitherto, in her body, the nearest she had come to coruscating was once when she had taken a course of sulphur baths. This was a very different matter.

She fairly glittered.

'We'll never go apart again,' Daddy was telling her. 'This inner sympathy will last, you know. _He_ did it. It's him we have to thank,'

and he pointed at his cousin. 'It's starlight, of course, he has brought down into us.'

But Rogers missed the compliment, being busy in a corner with Monkey and Jimbo, playing at mixing colours with startling results. Mother swam across to her old friend, Mile. Lemaire. For a quarter of a century these two had understood one another, though never consciously been 'out' together. She moved like a frigate still, gliding and stately, but a frigate that has snapped its hawsers and meant to sail the skies.

'Our poor, stupid, sleeping old bodies,' she smiled.

But the radiant form of the other turned to her motionless cage upon the bed behind her. 'Don't despise them,' she replied, looking down upon the worn-out prison-house, while a little dazzle of brilliance flashed through her atmosphere. 'They are our means of spreading this starlight about the world and giving it to others. Our brains transmit it cunningly; it flashes from our eyes, and the touch of our fingers pa.s.ses it on. We gather it here, when we are "out," but we can communicate it best to others when we are "in."'

There was sound of confusion and uproar in the room behind as some one came tumbling in with a rush, scattering the figures in all directions as when a gust of wind descends upon a bed of flowers.

'In at last!' cried a m.u.f.fled voice that sounded as though a tarpaulin smothered it, and the Woman of the Haystack swept into the room with a kind of clumsy majesty. The Tramp and Gypsy, whose efforts had at length dislodged her awkward bulk, came rolling after. They had been pushing steadily from behind all this time, though no one had noticed them slip out.

'_We_ can do more than the smaller folk,' she said proudly, sailing up to Mother. 'We can't be overlooked, for one thing'; and arm-in-arm, like a pair of frigates then, they sailed about the room, magnificent as whales that swim in a phosph.o.r.escent sea. The Laugher straightened up to watch them, the Gardener turned his head, and Rogers and the children paused a moment in their artificial mixing, to stare with wonder.

'I'm in!' said the Woman.

'I'm out!' said Mother.

And the children felt a trifle envious. Instantly their brilliance dimmed a little. The entire room was aware of it.

'Think always of the world in gold and silver,' shot from Mile.

Lemaire. The dimness pa.s.sed as she said it.

'It was my doing,' laughed Monkey, turning round to acknowledge her wickedness lest some one else should do it for her and thus increase her shame.

'Sweep! Sweep!' cried Rogers.

But this thought-created sprite was there before the message flashed.

With his sack wide open, he stood by Monkey, full of importance. A moment he examined her. Then, his long black fingers darting like a shuttle, he discovered the false colouring that envy had caused, picked it neatly out--a thread of dirty grey--and, winding it into a tiny ball, tossed it with contempt into his sack.

'Over the edge of the world you go, With the mud and the leaves and the dirty snow!'

he sang, skipping off towards the door. The child's star-body glowed and shone again, pulsing all over with a shimmering, dancing light that was like moonshine upon running water.

'Isn't it time to start now?' inquired Jinny; and as she said it all turned instinctively towards the corner of the room where they were a.s.sembled. They gathered round Mlle. Lemaire. It was quite clear who was leader now. The crystal brilliance of her whiteness shone like a little oval sun. So sparkling was her atmosphere, that its purity scarcely knew a hint of colour even. Her stream of thought seemed undiluted, emitting rays in all directions till it resembled a wheel of sheer white fire. The others fluttered round her as l.u.s.trous moths about an electric light.

'Start where?' asked Mother, new to this great adventure.

Her old friend looked at her, so that she caught a darting ray full in the face, and instantly understood.

'First to the Cave to load up,' flashed the answer; 'and then over the sleeping world to mix the light with everybody's dreams. Then back again before the morning spiders are abroad with the interfering sun.'

She floated out into the corridor, and all the others fell into line as she went. The draught of her going drew Mother into place immediately behind her. Daddy followed close, their respective colours making it inevitable, and Jinny swept in after him, bright and eager as a little angel. She tripped on the edge of something he held tightly in one hand, a woven maze of tiny glittering lines, exquisitely inter-threaded--a skeleton of beauty, waiting to be filled in and clothed, yet already alive with spontaneous fire of its own. It was the Pattern of his story he had been busy with in the corner.

'I won't step on it, Daddy,' she said gravely.

'It doesn't matter if you do. You're in it,' he answered, yet lifted it higher so that it flew behind him like a banner in the night.

The procession was formed now. Rogers and the younger children came after their sister at a little distance, and then, flitting to and fro in darker shades, like a fringe of rich embroidery that framed the moving picture, came the figures of the sprites, born by Imagination out of Love in an old Kentish garden years and years ago. They rose from the tangle of the ancient building. Climbing the shoulder of a big, blue wind, they were off and away!

It was a jolly night, a windy night, a night without clouds, when all the lanes of the sky were smooth and swept, and the interstellar s.p.a.ces seemed close down upon the earth.

'Kind thoughts, like fine weather, Link sweetly together G.o.d's stars With the heart of a boy,'

sang Rogers, following swiftly with Jimbo and his sister. For all moved along as easily as light across the surfaces of polished gla.s.s.

And the sound of Rogers's voice seemed to bring singing from every side, as the gay procession swept onwards. Every one contributed lines of their own, it seemed, though there was a tiny little distant voice, soft and silvery, that intruded from time to time and made all wonder where it came from. No one could see the singer. At first very far away, it came nearer and nearer.

DADDY. 'The Interfering Sun has set!

GARDENER. Now Sirius flings down the Net!

LAMPLIGHTER. See, the meshes flash and quiver, As the golden, silent river

SWEEP. Clears the dark world's troubled dream.

DUSTMAN. Takes it sleeping, Gilds its weeping With a star's mysterious beam.

Tiny, distant Voice. Oh, think Beauty!

It's your duty!

In the Cave you work for others, All the stars are little brothers;

ROGERS. Think their splendour,

Strong and tender; DADDY. Think their glory In the Story MOTHER. Of each day your nights redeem?

Voice (nearer). Every loving, gentle thought Of this fairy brilliance wrought, JANE ANNE. Every wish that you surrender, MONKEY. Every little impulse tender, JIMBO. Every service that you render TANTE ANNA. Brings its tributary stream!

TRAMP AND GYFSY. In the fretwork Of the network Hearts lie patterned and a-gleam!

WOMAN OF THE Think with pa.s.sion HAYSTACK. That shall fashion Life's entire design well-planned; Voice (still nearer). While the busy Pleiades, ROGERS. Sisters to the Hyades, Voice (quite close). Seven by seven, Across the heaven, ROGERS. Light desire With their fire!

Voice (in his ear). Working cunningly together in a soft and tireless band, Sweetly linking All our thinking, In the Net of Sympathy that brings back Fairyland!'

Mother kept close to her husband; she felt a little bewildered, and uncertain in her movements; it was her first conscious experience of being out. She wanted to go in every direction at once; for she knew everybody in the village, knew all their troubles and perplexities, and felt the call from every house.

'Steady,' he told her; 'one thing at a time, you know.' Her thoughts, he saw, had turned across the sea to Ireland where her strongest ties were. Ireland seemed close, and quite as accessible as the village.

Her friend of the Haystack, on the other hand, seemed a long way off by comparison.

'That's because Henry never realised her personality very clearly,'

said Daddy, seeing by her colour that she needed explanation. 'When creating all these Garden Sprites, he didn't _think_ her sharply, vividly enough to make her effective. He just felt that a haystack suggested the elderly spread of a bulky and untidy old woman whose frame had settled beneath too many clothes, till she had collapsed into a field and stuck there. But he left her where he found her. He a.s.signed no duties to her. She's only half alive. As a rule, she merely sits--just "stays put"--until some one moves her.'

Mother turned and saw her far in the rear, settling down comfortably upon a flat roof near the church. She rather envied her amiable disposition. It seemed so safe. Every one else was alive with such dangerous activity.

'Are we going _much_ further--?' she began, when Monkey rushed by, caught up the sentence, and discharged herself with impudence into Daddy.

'Which is right, "further" or "farther"?' she asked with a flash of light.

'Further, of course,' said unsuspecting Mother.