Cake could be had and eaten too. Tim, half-way down a rabbit-hole,
could instantly find himself at the opening again, bursting with all
the original excitement of trembling calculations. With the others it
was similar.
There was no end to anything. Yet--there was this general consciousness
of gigantic interval. It turned in a circle round them--everywhere....
They came together, then, all eight of them, into that place of
singular enchantment known as the End of the World, sitting in a group
about the prostrate elm that on ordinary days was Home. What they had
been doing each one knew assuredly, even if no one mentioned it. Tim,
who had been to India with Come-Back Stumper, had a feeling in his
heart that expressed itself in one word, "everywhere," accompanied by a
sigh of happy satisfaction; Judy felt what she knew as "Neverness"; she
had seen the Metropolis inside out, with Uncle Felix apparently. And
these two couples now sat side by side upon the tree, gazing
contentedly at the colony of wallflowers that flamed in the sunshine
just above their heads. WEEDEN, cleaning his spade with a great nailed
boot, turned his good eye affectionately upon the sack that lay beside
him, full now to bursting. Aunt Emily breathed on her gold-rimmed
glasses, rubbed them, and put them on her elastic nose, then looked
about her peacefully yet expectantly, ready, it seemed, to start again
at any moment--anywhere. She guarded carefully a mossy bundle in her
black silk lap. A little distance from her Thompson was fastening a
flower into Mrs. Horton's dress, and close to the gate stood the
Policeman, smoking a pipe and watching everybody with obvious
contentment. His belt was loose; both hands stuck into it; he leaned
against the wooden fence.
On the ground, between the tree and the fence, the Tramp had made a
fire. He lay crouched about it. He and the fire belonged to one
another. It seemed that he was dozing.
And this sense of lying in the heart of an enormous circular interval
touched everybody with delicious peace; each had apparently found
something real, and was content merely to lie and--be with it. All came
gradually to sitting or reclining postures. Yet there was no sense of
fatigue; any instant they would be up again and looking.
Occasionally one or other of them spoke, but it was not the kind of
speech that struggled to express difficult ideas with tedious sentences
of many words. There was very little to _say_: mere statements of
indubitable reality could be so easily and briefly made.
"Now," said Tim, unafraid of contradiction.
"Then," said Judy, equally certain of herself.
"Now then," declared Uncle Felix, positive at last of something.
"Naturally," affirmed Aunt Emily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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