Part 6 (1/2)

When the children arrived home, however, early in May, and Cuthbert told Marian all about them, she said at first that she wouldn't believe in them, because Cuthbert hadn't believed in Mr Jugg. But Cuthbert had grown wiser and less conceited, and he told Marian that he had changed his mind. So Marian believed in them, and her daddy was rather pleased, because there were more things under the earth, he said, than most people imagined.

Not a twig that learned to climb In the babyhood of time,

Not a bud that broke the air In the days before men were,

Not a bird that tossed in flight Ere the first man walked upright,

Nor a bee with craftier cell Than a Roman citadel,

But, with all its pride and pain, Into dust crept back again.

Oh, what wisdom there must be Hidden in the earth and me!

UNCLE JOE'S STORY

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bella at Eden]

IV

UNCLE JOE'S STORY

Marian's mummy used to read the Bible to her, so that she knew all about Adam and Eve; but she never knew that Eve had a little daughter until Uncle Joe told her this story. Next to her mummy and daddy, Marian loved Uncle Joe better than anybody in the whole world. He lived in a little house tucked into a sort of dimple on the side of Fairbarrow Down, and a man called Mr Parker lived with him and helped to keep the place tidy.

Uncle Joe had been a soldier in a lot of queer countries a long way off; and when Marian and Cuthbert asked him what he had fought for, he generally used to tell them that it was for lost causes. In between wars he had done lots of other things, such as trying to find out what caused diseases, or whether plants that grew in some places could be made to grow in others. Mr Parker had been a soldier too--a soldier of misfortune, he used to say--and he had saved Uncle Joe's life three times, and Uncle Joe had saved his life twice.

Uncle Joe's face was yellowish brown, because he had been in the sun so much and had fever; but Mr Parker's face was red, and one of his eyes was made of gla.s.s. Mr Parker used to call himself a lone, lorn orphan, though he was much fatter than Uncle Joe, and afterward he used to spit and say that it was rough weather in the Baltic.

It was about a fortnight after Cuthbert and Doris had come back from the Arctic Circle that Uncle Joe told Marian this story, while they were sitting under one of his apple-trees. Some of the apple-petals had begun to drop, leaving the tiny, weeny, baby apples behind them, and the only really ripe apples in Uncle Joe's garden were the two apples in Marian's cheeks.

”But those aren't real apples,” said Marian.

”Well, it all depends,” said Uncle Joe, ”on what you mean by real.”

”You see,” said Mr Parker, who had just come out to mow the lawn, ”there's more kinds of apples than a few. There's eating apples and cooking apples and pineapples and crab-apples; and there's oak-apples and Adam's apples and the apples what you sees in little girls' cheeks.”

”Kissing apples,” said Uncle Joe. ”They're one of the most important kinds.”

He began to fill his pipe.

”And now that I come to think of it,” he said, ”they're one of the oldest kinds too.”

”As old as Mr Jugg,” asked Marian, ”or the little ice-men?”

”Well,” said Uncle Joe, ”I don't know about that. But they're certainly as old as Eve's little girl,” and then he began to tell Marian all about her.

”I'm not quite sure,” he said, ”what her name was. It might have been Gretchen or Olga, or it might have been Seraphine or Marie-Louise, but I rather think that it was Bella. Of course you remember what happened in the Garden of Eden, and how Adam and Eve had to leave it, not because the good Lord G.o.d wanted to turn them out, but because He knew that they could never be happy there any more. Every hour that they stayed they would have become more and more miserable; and if they had come back it would have broken their hearts, so He had to put two angels to guard the gate. You see, He had wanted them to be sort of grown-up babies in the loveliest nursery ever imagined, and to be able to go there and play games with them whenever He was tired of ruling the universe. But when once they had heard about growing up, and choosing for themselves, and things of that sort, they could never have been babies any more, and it would have been cruel to keep them in the nursery.