An inexhaustible stream
poured in through the narrow opening, and scattered itself at once in
all directions as though driven by a wind. How could the world let so
much escape it, when it was what the world most needed every day. It
ran naturally into patterns, patterns that could be folded and rolled
up like silken tablecloths. In silence, too. There was no sound of
drops falling. Sparks fly on noiseless feet. Sympathy makes no bustle.
'Even on the thickest nights it falls,' a voice issued from a robust
patch of light beside them that stooped with huge brown hands all
knotted into muscles; 'and it's a mistake to think different.' His
voice rolled on into a ridiculous bit of singing:--
It comes down with the rain drops,
It comes down with the dew,
There's always 'eaps for every one--
For 'im and me and you.
They recognised his big face, bronzed by the sun, and his great neck
where lines drove into the skin like the rivers they drew with blunt
pencils on their tedious maps of Europe. It was several faces in one.
The Head Gardener was no stranger to their imaginations, for they
remembered him of old somewhere, though not quite sure exactly where.
He worked incessantly for others, though these 'others' were only
flowers and cabbages and fruit-trees. He did his share in the world,
he and his army of queer assistants, the under-gardeners.
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