They stared in great bewilderment. Their curiosity was immense. They were dying to know what the thing was, but it was against the Rules to ask outright. "Were their lives _very_ dull?"--Maria set this problem, suddenly recalling something at the beginning of the story. "Oh, very dull indeed. They had no sense of wonder--those who forgot." "How awful for them!" "Awful," he agreed, in a long-drawn whisper, shuddering. And that shudder ran through every one. The children turned towards the darkening room. The gloomy cupboard was a blotch of shadow. The table frowned. The bookshelves listened. The white face of the cuckoo clock peered down upon them dimly from the opposite wall, and the chairs, it seemed, moved up a little closer. But through the windows the stars were beginning to peep, and they saw the crests of the friendly cedars waving against the fading sky. He pointed. High above the cedars, where the first stars twinkled, the blue was deep and exquisitely shaded from the golden streak below it into a colour almost purple. "The thing that nobody could understand was even more wonderful than _that_," he whispered. "But no one could tell why it was there; no one could guess; no one could find out. And to this day--no one _can_ find out." His voice grew lower and lower and lower still. "To-morrow I'll show it to you. You shall see it for yourselves." They hardly heard him now. The voice seemed far away. What could it be--this very, very wonderful thing? "We'll go out and find one...by the stream ...where the willows bend...and shake their pointed leaves.... We'll go to-morrow...." His voice died away inside his waistcoat. Not a sound was audible. The children were very close against him. In his big hands he took each face in turn and put his lips inside the rim of three small ears. He told the secret then, while wonder filled the room and hovered exquisitely above the crowded chair.... Awakened by the silence, presently, the ball of black unrolled itself beside the wire fender, it stretched its four black legs. And the children, hushed, happy, and with a mysterious burning in their hearts, went off willingly to bed, to dream of wonder all night long, and to ask themselves in sleep, _"Why God has put blue dust upon the body of a dragon-fly?"_ CHAPTER VI THE GROWTH OF WONDER