He must have mentioned
it to his cousin perhaps, and _he_ had told the children. And all that
was in him of nonsense, poetry, love rose at a bound as he heard it.
He felt them settle themselves more comfortably upon his knees. He
forgot to think about the points and angles. Here surely a gateway was
opening before his very feet, a gateway into that world of fairyland
the old clergyman had spoken about. A great wave of tenderness swept
him--a flood strong and deep, as he had felt it long ago upon the hill
of that Kentish village. The golden boyhood's mood rushed over him
once more with all its original splendour. It took a slightly
different form, however. He knew better how to direct it for one
thing. He pressed the children closer to his side.
'A what?' he asked, speaking low as they did. 'Do I know a what?'
'A cave where lost starlight collects,' Monkey repeated, 'a Star
Cave.'
And Jimbo said aloud the verses he had already learned by heart. While
his small voice gave the words, more than a little mixed, a bird high
up among the boughs woke from its beauty sleep and sang. The two
sounds mingled. But the singing of the bird brought back the scenery
of the Vicarage garden, and with it the strange, passionate things the
old clergyman had said. The two scenes met in his mind, passed in and
out of one another like rings of smoke, interchanged, and finally
formed a new picture all their own, where flowers danced upon a carpet
of star-dust that glittered in mid-air.
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