He could
not have held their attention.
They especially liked the huge, ridiculous words he used, because such
words concealed great mysteries that pulsed with wonder and
exquisitely wound them up. Daddy made things too clear. The bones of
impossibility were visible. They saw thin nakedness behind the
explanations, till the sense of wonder faded. They were not babies to
be fed with a string of one-syllable words!
Jimbo kept silence mostly, his instinct ever being to conceal his
ignorance; but Monkey talked fifteen to the dozen, filling the pauses
with long 'ohs' and bursts of laughter and impudent observations. Yet
her cheeky insolence never crossed the frontier where it could be
resented. Her audacity stopped short of impertinence.
'There's a point beyond which--' her cousin would say gravely, when
she grew more daring than usual; and, while answering 'It'll stick
into you, then, not into me,' she yet withdrew from the borders of
impertinence at once.
'What is star-stuff really then?' she asked.
'The primordial substance of the universe,' he answered solemnly, no
whit ashamed of his inaccuracy.
'Ah yes!' piped Jimbo, quietly. _Ecole primaire_ he understood. This
must be something similar.
'But what does it do, I mean, and why is it good for people to have it
in them--on them--whatever it is?' she inquired.
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