Everybody carried sacks overflowing with dripping
gold and bursting at the seams. As each train filled, it shot away
across the starry heavens; for everyone had been to the Cave and
gathered their material even before she reached the scene of action.
And with every train went a _mecanicien_ and a _conducteur_ created by
Jimbo's vivid and believing thought; a Sweep, a Lamplighter, and a
Head Gardener went, too, for the children's thinking multiplied these,
too, according to their needs. They realised the meaning of these
Sprites so clearly now--their duties, appearance, laws of behaviour,
and the rest-that their awakened imaginations thought them instantly
into existence, as many as were necessary. Train after train, each
with its full complement of passengers, flashed forth across that
summer sky, till the people in the Observatories must have thought
they had miscalculated strangely and the Earth was passing amid the
showering Leonids before her appointed time.
'Where would you like to go first?' Mother heard her friend ask
softly. 'It's not possible to follow all the trains at once, you
know.'
'So I see,' she gasped. 'I'll just sit still a moment, and think.'
The size and freedom of existence, as she now saw it, suddenly
overwhelmed her. Accustomed too long to narrow channels, she found
space without railings and notice-boards bewildering.
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