JUDY'S PARTICULAR ADVENTURE
Adventure means saying Yes, and being careless; children say Yes to
everything and are very careless indeed: even their No is usually a
Yes, inverted or deferred. "I won't play," parsed by a psychologist,
means "I'll play when I'm ready." The adventurous spirit accepts what
offers regardless of consequences; he who hesitates and thinks is but a
Policeman who prevents adventure. Now everything offers itself to
children, because they rightly think that everything belongs to them.
Life is conditionless, if only people would let them accept it as it
is. "Don't think; accept!" expresses the law of their swift and fluid
being. They act on it. They take everything they can--get. But it is
the Policeman who adds the "get," changing the whole significance of
life with one ugly syllable.
Each of the children treasured an adventure of its very own; an
adventure-in-chief, that could not possibly have happened to anybody
else in the world. These three survivals in an age when education
considers childhood a disease to be cured as hurriedly as
possible--took their adventure the instant that it came, and each with
a complete assurance that it was unique. To no one else in the world
could such a thing have happened, least of all to the other two. Each
took it characteristically, according to his or her individual
nature--Judy, with a sense of Romance called deathless; Tim, with a
taste for Poetic Drama, a dash of the supernatural in it; and Maria,
with a magnificent inactivity that ruled the world by waiting for
things to happen, then claiming them as her own. Her masterly instinct
for repose ran no risk of failure from misdirected energy. And to all
three secrecy, of course, was essential: "Don't never tell the others,
Uncle! Promise faithfully!"
For to every adventure Uncle Felix acted as audience, atmosphere, and
chorus. He watched whatever happened--audience; believed in its
reality--atmosphere; and explained without explaining away--chorus. He
had the unusual faculty of being ten years young as well as forty years
old, and a real adventure was not possible without him.
The secrecy, of course, was not preserved for long; sooner or later the
glory must be shared so that "the others" knew and envied. For only
then was the joy complete, the splendour properly fulfilled. And so the
old tired world went round, and life grew more and more wonderful every
day. For children are an epitome of life--a self-creating universe.
That week was a memorable one for several reasons. Daddy, overworked
among his sealing-wax, went for a change to Switzerland, taking Mother
with him; Aunt Emily, in her black silk dress that crackled with
disapproval, went to Tunbridge Wells--an awful place in another century
somewhere; and Uncle Felix was left behind to "take charge of
''em'"--"'em" being the children and himself. It was evidence of
monumental trust and power, placing him in their imaginations even
above the recognised Authorities. His sway was never for a moment
questioned.
"No lessons, then!" he had insisted as a condition of acceptance, and
after much confabulation the point was yielded with reluctance. It was
to be a fortnight's holiday all round. They had the house and grounds
entirely to themselves, and with the departure of the elders a sheet
was pulled by some one off the world, a curtain rolled away, another
drop-scene fell, the word No disappeared. They saw invisible things.
Another reason, however, made the week memorable--the daisies. It was
extraordinary. The very day after the grown-ups left the daisies came.
Like thousands of small white birds, with bright and steady eyes, they
arrived and settled, thick and plentiful. They appeared in sheets and
crowds upon the grass, all of their own accord and unexplained. In a
night the lawns turned white. It seemed a prearranged invasion. Judy,
first awake that morning, looked out of her window to watch a squirrel
playing, and noticed them. Then she told the others, and Maria, one eye
above the blankets, ejaculated "Ah!" She claimed the daisies too.
Now, whereas a single daisy has no smell and seems a common,
unimportant thing, a bunch of several hundred holds all the perfume of
the spring. No flowers lie closer to the soil or bring the smell of
earth more sweetly to the mind; upon the lips and cheeks they are as
soft as a kitten's fur, and lie against the skin closer than tired
eyelids. They are the common people of the flower world, yet have, in
virtue of that fact, the beauty and simplicity of the common people.
They own a subdued and unostentatious strength, are humble and ignored,
are walked upon, unnoticed, rarely thought about and never praised;
they are cut off in early youth by mowing machines; yet their pain in
fading is unreported, their little sufferings unsung. They cling to
earth, and never aspire to climb, but they hold the sweetest dew and
nurse the tiniest little winds imaginable. Their patience is divine.
They are proud to be the carpet for all walking, running things, and in
their universal service is their strength. The rain stays longer with
them than with grander flowers, and the best sunlight goes to sleep
among them in great pools of fragrant and delicious heat. The daisies
are a stalwart little people altogether.
But they have another quality as well--something elfin, wayward,
mischievous. They peep and whisper. It is said they can cast spells. To
sleep upon a daisied lawn is to run a certain risk. There is this hint
of impudence in their attitude, half audacity, half knavery, that shows
itself a little in the way they stare unwinkingly all day at everything
above them--at the stately things that tower proudly in the air--then
just shut up at sunset without a word of explanation or apology. They
see everything, but keep their opinions to themselves. Because people
notice them so little, and even tread upon their tiny and inquiring
faces, they are up to things all the time--undiscovered things. They
know, it is said, the thoughts of Painted Ladies and Clouded
Brimstones, as well as the intentions of the disappearing golden flies;
why wind often runs close to the ground when the tree-tops are without
a single breath; but, also, they know what is going on _below_ the
surface. They live, moreover, in every country of the globe, and their
system of intercommunication is so perfect that even birds and flying
things can learn from it. They prove their breeding by their perfect
taste in dress, the well-bred ever being inconspicuous; and their
simplicity conceals enormous, undecipherable wonder. One daisy out of
doors is worth a hundred shelves of text-books in the house. Their
mischief, moreover, is not revenge, though some might think it so--but
a natural desire to be recognised and thought and talked about a
little. Daisies, in a word, are--daisies.
And it was by way of the daisies that Judy's great adventure came to
her, the particular adventure that was her very own. For she had deep
sympathy with flowers, a sympathy lacking in her brother and sister,
and it was natural that her adventure in chief should come that way.
She could play with flowers for long periods at a time; she knew their
names and habits; she picked them gently, without cruelty, and never
merely for the "fun" of picking them; while the way she arranged them
about the house proved that she understood their silent, inner natures,
their likes and dislikes--in a word, their souls. For Judy connected
them in her mind with birds. Born in the air, they seemed to her.
As has been seen, she was the first to notice the arrival of the
daisies. From the bedroom window she waved her arm to them, and showed
plainly the pleasure that she felt. They arrived in troops and armies.
Risen to the surface of the lawn like cream, she saw them staring with
suspicious innocence at the sky. They stared at _her_.
"Just when the others have gone away!" was her instant thought, though
unexpressed in words. There was meaning somewhere in this calculated
arrival.
"They _are_ alive," she asked that afternoon, "aren't they? But why do
they all shut up at night? Who--" she changed the word--"what closes
them?"
She was alone with Uncle Felix, and they had chosen with great
difficulty a spot where they could lie down without crushing a single
flower with their enormous bodies. After considerable difficulty they
had found it. Having done a great many things since lunch--a feast
involving several second helpings--they were feeling heavy and
exhausted. So Judy chose this moment for her simple question. The world
required explanation.
"There's life in everything," he mumbled, with his face against the
grass, "everything that grows, especially." And having said it, he
settled down comfortably again to doze. His pipe was out. He felt
rather like a log.
"But stopping growing isn't dying," she informed him sharply.
"Oh, no," he agreed lazily, "you're alive for a long time after that."
"_You_ stopped growing before I was born."
"And I'm not quite dead yet."
"Exactly," she said, "so daisies _are_ alive."
It was absurd to think of dozing at such a time. He rolled round
heavily and gazed at her through half-closed eyelids. "A daisy
breathes," he murmured, "and drinks and eats; sap circulates in its
little body. Probably it feels as well. Delicate threads like nerves
run through it everywhere. It knows when it is being picked or walked
on. Oh, yes, a daisy is alive all right enough." He sighed like a big
dog that has just shaken a fly off its nose and lies waiting for the
next attack. It came at once.
"But who knows it?" she asked. "I mean--there's no good in being alive
unless some one else knows it too!"
Then he sat up and stared at her. Judy, he remembered, knew a lot of
things she could tell to no one, not even to herself--and this seemed
one of them. The question was a startling one.
"An intellectual mystic at twelve!" he gasped. "How on earth did you
manage it?"
"I may be a mystillectual insect," she replied, proud of the
compliment. "But what's the good of being alive, even like a daisy,
unless others know it--_us_, for instance?"
He still stared at her, sitting up stiffly, and propped by his hands
upon the grass behind him. After prolonged reflection, during which he
closed his eyes and opened them several times in succession, sighing
laboriously while he did so, low mumbled words became audible.
"Forgive my apparent slowness," he said, "but I feel like a
mowing-machine this afternoon. I want oiling and pushing. The answer to
your inquiry, however, is as follows: We could--_if_ we took the
trouble."
"Could know that daisies are alive?" she cried.
His great head nodded.
"If we thought about them very hard indeed," he went on, "and for a
very, very long time we could feel as they feel, and so understand
them, and know exactly _how_ they are alive."
And the way he said it, the grave, thoughtful, solemn way, convinced
her, who already was convinced beforehand.
"I do believe we could," she answered simply.
"I'm sure of it," he said.
"Let's try," she whispered breathlessly.
For a minute and a half they stared into each other's eyes, knowing
themselves balanced upon the verge of an immense discovery. She did not
doubt or question; she did not tell him he was only humbugging. Her
heart thrilled with the right conditions--expectation and delight. Her
dark-brown eyes were burning.
He murmured something that she did not properly understand:
Expect and delight
Is the way to invite;
Delight and expect,
And you'll know things direct!
"Let's try!" she repeated, and her face proved that she fulfilled his
conditions without knowing it; she was delighted, and she
expected--everything.
He scratched his head, wrinkling up his nose and pursing his lips for a
moment. "There's a dodge about it," he explained. "To know a flower
yourself you must feel exactly like it. Its life, you see, is different
to ours. It doesn't move and hurry, it just lives. It feels sun and
wind and dew; it feels the insects' tread; it lifts its skin to meet
the rain-drops and the whispering butterflies. It doesn't run away. It
has no fear of anything, because it has the whole green earth behind
it, and it feels safe because millions of other daisies feel the same"--
"And smells because it's happy," put in Judy. "Then what _is_ a daisy?
What is it really?"
She was "expecting" vividly. Her mind was hungry for essentials. This
mere description told her nothing real. She wanted to feel "direct."
What is a daisy? The little word already had a wonderful and living
sound--soft, sweet, and beautiful. But to tell the truth about this
ordinary masterpiece was no easy matter. An ostentatious lily, a
blazing rose, a wayward hyacinth, a mass of showy wisteria--advertised,
notorious flowers--presented fewer difficulties. A daisy seemed too
simple to be told, its mystery and honour too humble for proud human
minds to understand. So he answered gently, while a Marble White sailed
past between their very faces: "Let's think about it hard; perhaps
we'll get it that way."
The butterfly sailed off across the lawn; another joined it, and then a
third. They danced and flitted like winged marionettes on wires that
the swallows tweaked; and, as they vanished, a breath of scented air
stole round the trunk of the big lime tree and stirred the daisies'
heads. A thousand small white faces turned towards them; a thousand
steady eyes observed them; a thousand slender necks were bent. A wave
of movement passed across the lawn as though the flowers pressed
nearer, aware at last that they were being noticed. And both humans,
the big one and the little one, felt a sudden thrill of happiness and
beauty in their hearts. The rapture of the Spring slipped into them.
They concentrated all their thoughts on daisies....
"I'm beginning to feel it already," whispered the Little Human, turning
to gaze at him as though that breath of air impelled her too.
The wind blew her voice across his face like perfume; he looked, but
could not see her clearly; she swayed a little; her eyes melted
together into a single lovely circle, bright and steady within their
fringe of feathery lashes. He tried to speak--"Delight and expect, and
we'll know it direct"--but his voice spread across whole yards of lawn.
It became a single word that rolled and floated everywhere about him,
rising and falling like a wave upon a sea of green: "Daisy, daisy,
daisy." On all sides, beneath, above his head as well, it passed with
the music of the wandering wind, and he kept repeating it--"Daisy,
daisy!" _She_ kept repeating it, too, till the sound multiplied, yet
never grew louder than a murmur of air and grass and tiny
leaves--"Daisy, daisy, daisy." It broke like a sea upon the coast-line
of another world. It seemed to contain an entire language in itself,
nothing more to be said but those two soft syllables. It was everywhere.
But another vaster sound lay underneath. As the crest of a breaking
wave utters its separate note of foam above the general booming of the
sea that bears it, so the flying wave of daisy-tones rose out of this
deeper sound beneath. Both humans became aware that it was but a
surface-voice they imitated. They heard this other foundation-sound
that bore it--deep, booming, thunderous, half lost and very far away.
It was prodigious; yet there was safety and delight in it that brought
no hint of fear. They swam upon the pulse of some enormous, gentle life
that rose about and through them in a swelling tide. They felt the
heave of something that was strong enough to draw the moon, yet soft
enough to close a daisy's eyes. They heard the deep, lost roar of it,
rising and coming nearer.
"The Earth!" he whispered. "And the Spring is rising through it.
Listen!"
"We're growing together," replied the Little Human. "We're rising with
the Spring!"
Ah, it was exquisite. They were in the Daisy World.... He tried to move
and reach her, but found that he could not take a step in any
direction, and that his feet were imbedded in the soft, damp soil. The
movement which he tried to make spread wide among a hundred others like
himself. They rose on every side. All shared his movements as they had
shared his voice. He heard his whole body murmuring "Daisy, daisy,
daisy...." And she leaned over, bending towards him a slim form in a
graceful line of green that formed the segment of a circle. A little
shining face came close for a moment against his own, rimmed with
delicate spears of pink and white. It sang as it shone. The Spring was
in it. There were hundreds like it everywhere, yet he recognised it as
one he knew. There were thousands, tens of thousands, yet this one he
distinguished because he loved it.
Their faces touched like the fringes of two clouds, and then withdrew.
They remained very close together, side by side among thousands like
themselves, slowly rising on the same great tide. The Earth's round
body was beneath them. They felt quite safe--but different. Already
they were otherwise than they had been. They felt the big world flying.
"We're changing," he murmured, seizing some fragments of
half-remembered speech. "We're marvellously changed!"
"Daisies," he heard her vanishing reply, "we're two daisies on the
lawn!"
And then their voices went. That was the end of speech, the end of
thinking too. They only felt....
Long periods passed above their heads and then the air about them
turned gorgeous as a sunset sky. It was a Clouded Yellow that sailed
lazily past their faces with spreading wings as large as clouds. They
shared that saffron glory. The draught of cool air fanned them. The
splendid butterfly left its beauty in them before it sailed away. But
that sunset sky had lasted for hours; that cool wind fanning them was a
breeze that blew steadily from the hills, making "weather" for half an
afternoon. Time and duration as humans measure them had passed away;
there was existence without hurry; end and beginning had not been
invented yet. They did not know things in the stupid sense of having
names for them; all that there was they shared; that was enough. They
knew by feeling.
For everything was plentiful and inexhaustible--the heavens emptied
light and warmth upon them without stint or measure; space poured about
them freely, for they had no wish to move; they felt themselves
everywhere, for all they needed came to them without the painful effort
of busy things that hunt and search outside themselves; both food and
drink slipped into them unawares from an abundant source below that
equally supplied whole forests without a trace of lessening or loss.
All life was theirs, full, free, and generous beyond conception. They
owned the world, without even the trouble of knowing that they owned
it. They lived, simply staring at the universe with eyes of exquisitely
fashioned beauty. They knew joy and peace, and were content with that.
They did communicate. Oh, yes, they shared each other's special
happiness. There was, it is true, no sound of broken syllables, no
speech which humans use to veil the very thing they would express; but
there was that simpler language which all Nature knows, which cannot
lie because it is unconscious, and by which constellations converse
with buttercups, and cedars with the flying drops of rain--there was
gesture. For gesture and attitude can convey all the important and
necessary things, while speech in the human sense is but an invention
of some sprite who wanted people to wonder what they really meant. In
sublimest moments it is never used even in the best circles of
intelligence; it drops away quite naturally; souls know one another
face to face in dumb but eloquent--gesture.
"The sun is out; I feel warm and happy; there is nothing in the world I
need!"
"You are beside me," he replied. "I love you, and we cannot go far
apart. I smell you even when no wind stirs. You are sweetest when the
dew has gone and left you moist and shiny."
A little shiver of enjoyment quivered through her curving stem. His
petals brushed her own. She answered:
"Wet or fine, we stand together, and never stop staring at each other
till we close our faces--"
"In the long darkness. But even then we whisper as we grow--"
"And open our eyes together at the same moment when the light comes
back--"
"And feel warm and soft, and smell more delicious than ever in the
dawn."
These two brave daisies, growing on the lawn, had lives of concentrated
happiness, asking no pity for their humble station in the universe. All
treated them with unadulterated respect, and everything made love to
them because they were so tender and so easily pleased. They knew, for
instance, that their splendid Earth was turning with them, for they
felt the swerve of her, sharing from their roots upwards her gigantic
curve through space; they knew the sun was part of them, because they
felt it drawing their sweet-flavoured food up all their dainty length
till it glowed in health upon their small, flushed faces; also they
knew that streams of water made a tumbling fuss and sent them messages
of laughter, because they caught the little rumble of it through miles
of trembling ground. And some among them--though these were prophets
and poets but half believed, and looked upon as partly mad and partly
wonderful--affirmed that they felt the sea itself far leagues away,
bending their heads this way and that for hours at a stretch, according
to the thundering vibrations that the tide sent through the soil from
distant shores.
But all, from the tallest spread-head to the smallest button-face--all
knew the pleasure of the uncertain winds; all knew the game of holding
flying things just a moment longer, by fascinating them, by drowsing
them into sleepiness, by nipping their probosces, or by puffing perfume
into their nostrils while they caught their feet with the pressure of a
hundred yellow rods....
Enormous periods passed away. A cloud that for a man's "ten minutes"
hid the sun, wearied them so that they simply closed their eyes and
went to sleep. Showers of rain they loved, because it washed and cooled
them, and they felt the huge satisfaction of the earth beneath them as
it drank: the sweet sensation of wet soil that sponged their roots, the
pleasant gush that sluiced their bodies and carried off the irritating
dust. They also felt the heavier tumbling of the swollen streams in all
directions. The drops from overhanging trees came down and played with
them, bringing another set of perfumes altogether. A summer shower was,
of course, "a month" to them, a day of rain like weeks of holiday by
the sea.... But, most of all, they enjoyed the rough-and-tumble
nonsense of the violent weather, when they were tied together by the
ropes of running wind; for these were visiting days--all manner of
strangers dropped in upon them from distant walks in life, and they
never knew whether the next would be a fir-cone or one of those
careless, irresponsible travellers, a bit of thistle-down....
Yet, for all their steadiness, they knew incessant change--the variety
of a daisy's existence was proverbial. Nor was the surprise of being
walked upon too alarming--it did not come to all--for they knew a way
of bending beneath enormous pressure so that nothing broke, while
sometimes it brought a queer, delicious pleasure, as when the bare feet
of some flying child passed lightly over them, leaving wild laughter
upon a group of them. They knew, indeed, a thousand joys, proudest of
all, however, that the big Earth loved them so that she carried
millions of them everywhere she went.
And all, without exception, communicated their knowledge by the
movements, attitudes, and gestures they assumed; and since each stood
close to each, the enjoyment spread quickly till the entire lawn felt
one undivided sensation by itself. Anything passing across it at such a
moment, whether insect, bird, loose leaf or even human being, would be
aware of this, and thus, for a fleeting second, share another world.
Poets, it is said, have received their sweetest inspirations upon a
daisied lawn in the flush of spring. Nor is it always a sight of prey
that makes the swallows dart so suddenly sideways and away, but some
chance message of joy or warning intercepted from the hosts of flowers
in the soil.
And from this region of the flower-life comes, of course, the legend
that fairies have emotions that last for ever, with eternal youth, and
with loves that do not pass away to die. This, too, they understood.
Because the measurement of existence is a mightier business than with
over-developed humans-in-a-hurry. For knowledge comes chiefly through
the eye, and the eye can perceive only six times in a second--things
that happen more quickly or more slowly than six times a second are
invisible. No man can see the movement of a growing daisy, just as no
man can distinguish the separate beats of a sparrow's wing: one is too
slow, and the other is too quick. But the daisy is practically all eye.
It is aware of most delightful things. In its short life of months it
lives through an eternity of unhurrying perceptions and of big
sensations. Its youth, its loves, its pleasures are--to it--quite
endless....
"I can see the old sun moving," she murmured, "but you will love me for
ever, won't you?"
"Even till it sinks behind the hills," he answered, "I shall not
change."
"So long we have been friends already," she went on. "Do you remember
when we first met each other, and you looked into my opening eyes?"
He sighed with joy as he thought of the long, long stretch of time.
"That was in our first reckless youth," he answered, catching the gold
of passionate remembrance from an amber fly that hovered for an instant
and was gone. "I remember well. You were half hidden by a drop of
hanging dew, but I discovered you! That lilac bud across the world was
just beginning to open." And, helped by the wind, he bent his shining
head, taller than hers by the sixtieth part of an inch, towards the
lilac trees beside the gravel path.
"So long ago as that!" she murmured, happy with the exquisite belief in
him. "But you will never change or leave me--promise, oh, promise that!"
His stalk grew nearer to her own. He leaned protectively towards her
eager face.
"Until that bud shall open fully to the light and smell its sweetest,"
he replied--the gesture of his petals told it plainly--"so long shall
you and I enjoy our happy love."
It was an eternity to them.
"And longer still," she pleaded.
"And longer still," he whispered in the wind. "Even until the blossom
falls."
Ah, it was good to be alive with such an age of happiness before them!
He felt the tears in her voice, however; he knew there was something
that she longed to tell.
"What is your sadness?" he asked softly, "and why do you put such
questions to me now? What is your little trouble?"
A moment's hesitation, a moment's hanging of the graceful head the
width of a petal's top nearer to his shoulder--and then she told him.
"I was in darkness for a time," she faltered, "but it was a long, long
time. It seemed that something came between us. I lost your face. I
felt afraid."
And his laughter--for just then a puff of wind passed by and shook his
sides for him--ran across many feet of lawn.
"It was a Bumble Bee," he comforted her. "It came between us for a bit,
its shadow fell upon you, nothing more! Such things will happen; we
must be prepared for them. It was nothing in myself that dimmed your
world."
"Another time I will be braver, then," she told him, "and even in the
darkness I shall know you close, ah, very close to me...."
For a long, long stretch of time, then, they stood joyfully together
and watched the lilac growing. They also saw the movement of the sun
across the sky. An eternity passed over them.... The vast disc of the
sun went slowly gliding....
But all the enormous things that happened in their lives cannot be
told. Lives crammed with a succession of such grand and palpitating
adventures lie beyond the reach of clumsy words. The sweetness
sometimes was intolerable, and then they shared it with the entire lawn
and so obtained relief--yet merely in order to begin again. The humming
of the rising Spring continued with the thunderous droning of the
turning Earth. Never uncared for, part of everything, full of the big,
rich life that brims the world in May--ah, almost fuller than they
could hold sometimes--they passed with existence along to their
appointed end.
"We began so long ago, I simply can't remember it," she sighed.
Yet the sun they watched had not left half a degree behind him since
they met.
"There was no beginning," he reproved her, smiling, "and there will
never be any end."
And the wind spread their happiness like perfume everywhere until the
whole white lawn of daisies lay singing their rapture to the
sunshine....
The minute underworld of grass and stalks seemed of a sudden to grow
large; yet, till now, they had not realised it as "large"--but simply
natural. A beetle, big and broad as a Newfoundland dog, went lumbering
past them, brushing its polished back against their trembling necks;
yet, till now, they had not thought of it as "big"--but simply normal.
Its footsteps made a grating sound like the gardener's nailed boots
upon the gravel paths. It was strange and startling. Something was
different, something was changing. They realised dimly that there was
another world somewhere, a world they had left behind long, long ago,
forgotten. Something was slipping from them, as sleep slips from the
skin and the eyes in the early morning when the bath comes "pinging"
upon the floor. What did it mean?
Big and little, far and near, above, below, inside and outside--all
were mixed together in a falling rush.
They themselves were changing.
They looked up. They saw an enormous thing rising behind them with vast
caverns of square outline opening in its sides--a house. They saw huge,
towering shapes whose tops were in the clouds--the familiar lime trees.
Big and tiny were inextricably mixed together.
And that was wrong. For either the forest of grass was as big as
themselves--in which case they still were daisies; or else it was tiny
and far below them--in which case they were hurrying humans again.
There was an odd confusion...while consciousness swung home to its
appointed centre and Adventure brought them back towards the old,
familiar starting-place again.
There came an ominous and portentous sound that rushed towards them
through the air, and through the solid ground as well. They heard it,
and grew pale with terror. Across the entire lawn it rumbled nearer,
growing in volume awfully. The very earth seemed breaking into bits
about them. And then they knew.
It was the End of the World that their prophets had long foretold.
It crashed upon them before they had time to think. The roar was
appalling. The whole lawn trembled. The daisies bowed their little
faces in a crowd. They had no time even to close their innocent eyes.
Before a quarter of their sweet and happy life was known, the End swept
them from the world, unsung and unlamented. Two of them who had planned
Eternity together fell side by side before one terrible stroke....
"I do believe--" said Judy, brushing her tumbled hair out of her eyes.
"Not possible!" exclaimed Uncle Felix, sitting up and stretching
himself like a dog. "It's a thing I never do, _never_, _NEVER!_ I think
my stupid watch has stopped again...."
They stared at each other with suspiciously sleepy eyes.
"Promise," she whispered presently, "promise never to tell the others!"
"I promise faithfully," he answered. "But we'd better get up, or we
shall have our heads cut off like--all the other daisies."
He pulled her to her feet--out of the way of the heavy mowing machine
which Weeden was pushing with a whirring, droning noise across the lawn.