A million tiny lines of light, they saw, wove living, moving patterns, very intricate and very exquisite. These lines and patterns the three drew in with their very breath. They swallowed light--the tenderest light the world can know. A scent of flowers--something between a violet and a wild rose--floated over all. And they understood these patterns while they breathed them in. They read them. Patterns in Nature, of course, are fairy script. Here lay all their secrets sweetly explained in golden writing, all mysteries made clear. The three understood beyond their years; and inside-sight, instead of glimmering, shone. For, somehow or other, the needs of other people blazed everywhere, obliterating their own. It was most singular. Monkey ceased from somersaulting and stared at Jimbo. 'You've got two stars in your face instead of eyes. They'll never set!' she whispered. 'I love you because I understand every bit of you.' 'And you,' he replied, as though he were a grande personne, 'have got hair like a mist of fire. It will never go out!' 'Every one will love me now,' she cried, 'my underneath is gold.' But her brother reproved her neatly:-- 'Let's get a lot--simply an awful lot'--he made a grimace to signify quantity--'and pour it over Daddy's head till it runs from his eyes and beard. He'll write real fairy stories then and make a fortune.' And Cousin Henry moved past them like a burning torch. They held their breath to see him. Jane Anne, their busy sister, alone excelled him in brightness. Her perfume, too, was sweeter. 'He's an old hand at this game,' Monkey said in French. 'But Jinny's never done anything else since she was born,' replied her brother proudly. And they all three fell to collecting, for it seemed the law of the place, a kind of gravity none could disobey. They stooped--three semi- circles of tender brilliance. Each lost the least desire to gather for himself; the needs of others drove them, filled them, made them eager and energetic. 'Riquette would like a bit,' cried Jimbo, almost balancing on his head in his efforts to get it all at once, while Monkey's shining fingers stuffed her blouse and skirts with sheaves of golden gossamer that later she meant to spread in a sheet upon the pillow of Mademoiselle Lemaire. 'She sleeps so little that she needs the best,' she sang, realising for once that her own amusement was not the end of life. 'I'll make her nights all wonder.' Cousinenry, meanwhile, worked steadily like a man who knows his time is short. He piled the stuff in heaps and pyramids, and then compressed it into what seemed solid blocks that made his pockets bulge like small balloons. Already a load was on his back that bent him double. 'Such a tiny bit is useful,' he explained, 'if you know exactly how and where to put it. This compression is my own patent.' 'Of course,' they echoed, trying in vain to pack it up as cleverly as he did.