When before, in Joan’s knowledge, had Nicky ever had a chance to say, “And that’s all”? She was pricked by a light remorse. Some time she must be patient, let him say his say through to her, his mother,—and for reward at the end, hear his “And that’s all,” like a little clear bell ringing benedictus through a tranquil world. Ariel’s voice was pitched lower than Nicky’s, flat and clear. It had little carrying quality. But Joan was so close under the wall that she heard easily enough. “I’ll look for a path first. Hunt all around in Wild Acres for the path.” “A path! You! Are you sure, Ariel?” Nicky asked, surprised. “Yes. But not a regular path. Not one we have ever seen in there yet. A path to take me to the inside of the inside of the woods, you see, really into faërie. Once there, in faërie, I won’t need a path, of course.” Persis leaned forward and looked up into her brother’s face. “Do you see, Nicky,” she murmured. “A path to the inside of the inside, that’s what Ariel means. You’d need a path for that. It’s very hard to find it without.” Nicky nodded, and Ariel continued. “The path, I think, will begin at a place where there are little white and yellow violets, where it’s thick with them. The violets will show me the path. But not with words. They haven’t voices, and if they had they wouldn’t use them, not at the beginning of the path, where everything is hush, stiller than stillest water, airy stillness. And I couldn’t see it with my eyes, either. They’ll have to tell me in another way, their own way, where it starts off, and I’ll have to understand without seeing or hearing, at first.” “But you couldn’t,” Persis objected. “You’d have to see or hear to follow it. How would the violets tell you, if you can’t see it and they won’t speak and it’s _hush_?” Alice, the nurse, spoke up, surprising Joan immensely. “I know, Ariel. It’s funny about the first wildwood flowers in the spring. They do do that to you. And it’s the little white and yellow violets that do it hardest. They show you something, but something not to be seen or heard. They put a kind of glory over you....” “Yes. Spring glory. I’ll push away some of last year’s brown leaves, brown, brown, wet, earth-smelling.... I’ll clear a place for the little white and yellow violets in the air, so they’ll stand out on the air, clear, pure.... Then I’ll find where the path starts. I think it will lead to—”