The noise of the retreating sea came pleasantly to us from a distance.
Celia was lying on her--I never know how to put this nicely--well, she
was lying face downwards on a rock and gazing into a little pool which
the tide had forgotten about and left behind. I sat beside her and
annoyed a limpet. Three minutes ago I had taken it suddenly by surprise
and with an Herculean effort moved it an eighteenth of a millimetre
westwards. My silence since then was lulling it into a false security,
and in another two minutes I hoped to get a move on it again.
"Do you know," said Celia with a puzzled look on her face, "sometimes I
think I'm quite an ordinary person after all."
"You aren't a little bit," I said lazily; "you're just like nobody else
in the world."
"Well, of course, you had to say that."
"No, I hadn't. Lots of husbands would merely have yawned." I felt one
coming and stopped it just in time. Waiting for limpets to go to sleep
is drowsy work. "But why are you so morbid about yourself suddenly?"
"I don't know," she said. "Only every now and then I find myself
thinking the most _obvious_ thoughts."
"We all do," I answered, as I stroked my limpet gently. The noise of our
conversation had roused it, but a gentle stroking motion (I am told by
those to whom it has confided) will frequently cause its muscles to
relax. "The great thing is not to speak them. Still, you'd better tell
me now. What is it?"
"Well," she said, her cheeks perhaps a little pinker than usual, "I was
just thinking that life was very wonderful. But it's a _silly_ thing to
say."
"It's holiday time," I reminded her. "The necessity of sprinkling our
remarks with thoughtful words like 'economic' and 'sporadic' is over for
a bit. Let us be silly." I scratched in the rock the goal to which I was
urging my limpet and took out my watch. "Three thirty-five. I shall get
him there by four."
Celia was gazing at two baby fishes who played in and out a bunch of
sea-weed. Above the sea-weed an anemone sat fatly.
"I suppose they're all just as much alive as we are," she said
thoughtfully. "They marry"--I looked at my limpet with a new
interest--"and bring up families and go about their business, and it all
means just as much to them as it does to us."
"My limpet's business affairs mean nothing to me," I said firmly. "I am
only wrapped up in him as a sprinter."
"Aren't you going to try to move him again?"
"He's not quite ready yet. He still has his suspicions."
Celia dropped into silence. Her next question showed that she had left
the pool for a moment.
"Are there any people in Mars?" she asked.
"People down here say that there aren't. A man told me the other day
that he knew this for a fact. On the other hand, people in Mars know for
a fact that there isn't anybody on the Earth. Probably they are both
wrong."
"I should like to know a lot about things," sighed Celia. "Do you know
anything about limpets?"
"Only that they stick like billy-o."
"I suppose more about them _is_ known than that?"
"I suppose so. By people who have made a speciality of them. For one who
has preferred to amass general knowledge rather than to specialize it is
considered enough to know that they stick like billy-o."
"You haven't specialized in anything, have you?"
"Only in wives."