[Round and round went Hipponax until he found his path again. S ... and unkind? Yes, Nature and children with their parables of humour sometimes seem to be so ... but only if we lose all touch with them. Then the voice of Mercury is like music... MERCURY. Come; earthwards both of you. I smell the spring and fields and flowers. Is that Pan piping? No, a bird's song. Such little things as that does Psyche love and seek. On we go. [Mercury is gone. You should wonder how, though it looks mere walking. Charon is walking after, so tame an exit that it will never do. "Give us a back, old 'un," says Momus, and leap-frogs him. Poor old back, it gives way. For Momus is a weight indeed. But if you can't laugh at your own hurts, what can you laugh at? So Charon totters after, chuckling as he rubs his bones. And Uncle Edward and Alice draw the blue curtains. Uncle Edward's eye questions the audience. They don't so often applaud this scene. For one thing, they're still settling down. And then, applause is not the only sign they're liking it, nor yet the best. But you can tell by the feel of them. Edward can. And if it's a friendly, happy, a sort of "home-y" feel, why then, the quieter they sit the better. But Alice only thinks of how the actors do, and she is never too pleased with this scene. It's never beautiful enough to look at. Mercury (poor dear!) is never really like a god. And so she hurries to the next. * * * * * ALICE. The next part is going to be all in dumb-show, because it's in the fifteenth century, and that's how they used to play things in the fifteenth century, when they played heaps of Harlequinades ... and Uncle and I and the actors are nothing if not correct. UNCLE EDWARD. True. ALICE. But first we are going to skip an awful lot, all the part about the Early Ages, and the Middle Ages and all about how the gods gradually became actors... UNCLE EDWARD. Better tell them. ALICE. Well, it's rather difficult to understand. But you know if you stop believing in a thing, such as fairies, or that you like chocolate, or that your Uncle's fond of you ... after a bit it somehow isn't there any longer. That's what nearly happened to the gods. But Mercury knew that if people won't believe a thing when you say it's real, they'll just as good as believe it and understand it a great deal better when it only seems make-believe. And that's Art. And as the easiest art in the world is the art of acting ... I hope they didn't hear [She wags back her little head to the proscenium.] ... the gods became actors. UNCLE EDWARD. Now you get back to the story. It's all they [He wags his big head at the audience.] care about.