And the result was chaos. Daddy was not clear-headed;
there was no concentration. Something of the perplexed confusion that
afflicted his elder daughter in the daytime mixed up the patterns
inextricably. There was no main pathway through his inner world.
And the picture proved it. It explained why Jinny pulled in vain. His
night-body came out easily as far as the head, then stuck hopelessly.
He looked like a knotted skein of coloured wools. Upon the paper where
he had been making notes before going to sleep--for personal
atmosphere is communicated to all its owner touches--lay the same
confusion. Scraps of muddle, odds and ends of different patterns,
hovered in thick blots of colour over the paragraphs and sentences.
His own uncertainty was thus imparted to what he wrote, and his
stories brought no conviction to his readers. He was too much the
Dreamer, or too much the Thinker, which of the two was not quite
clear. Harmony was lacking.
'That's probably what I'M like, too,' thought his friend, but so
softly that the children did not hear it. That Scheme of his passed
vaguely through his mind.
Then he cried louder--a definite thought:--
'There's no good tugging like that, my dears. Let him slip in again.
You'll only make him restless, and give him distorted dreams.'
'I've tugged like this every night for months,' said Jinny, 'but the
moment I let go he flies back like elastic.
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