Part 11 (1/2)

'There's too much sadness. Come on! Let's go somewhere else.'

But Jimbo held her tight. 'Let's have a try. Listen, you silly, can't you!'

They stood for several minutes, listening together, while the brightness of their near approach seemed to change the woman's face a little. She looked up and listened as though aware of something near her.

'She's praying for others as well as herself,' explained Jimbo.

'Ca vaut la peine alors,' said Monkey. And they drew cautiously nearer.... But, soon desisting, the children were far away, hovering about the mountains. They had no steadiness as yet.

'Starlight,' Jimbo was singing to himself, 'runs along my mind.'

'You're all up-jumbled,' Monkey interrupted him with a laugh, turning repeated somersaults till she looked like a catherine wheel of brightness.

'... the pattern of my verse or story...' continued Jimbo half aloud, '... a little ball of tangled glory....'

'You must unwind!' cried Monkey. 'Look out, it's the sun! It'll melt us into dew!'

But it was not the sun. Out there beyond them, towards the purple woods still sleeping, appeared a draught of starbeams like a broad, deep river of gold. The rays, coming from all corners of the sky, wove a pattern like a network.

'Jimbo!' gasped the girl, 'it's like a fis.h.i.+ng-net. We've never noticed it before.'

'It _is_ a net,' he answered, standing still as a stone, though he had not thought of it himself until she said so. He instantly dressed himself, as he always translated _il se dressait_ in his funny Franco- English. _Deja_ and _comme ca_, too, appeared everywhere. 'It is a net like that. I saw it already before, once.'

'Monkey,' he added, 'do you know what it really is? Oh, I say!'

'Of course I do.' She waited nevertheless for him to tell her, and he was too gallant just then in his proud excitement for personal exultation.

'It's the Star Cave--it's Daddy's Star Cave. He said it was up here ”where the Boudry forests dip below the cliffs towards the Areuse.”

...' He remembered the very words.

His sister forgot to turn her usual somersaults. Wonder caught them both. 'A pair of eyes, then, or a puddle! Quick!' she cried in a delighted whisper. She looked about her everywhere at once, making confused and rus.h.i.+ng little movements of helplessness. 'Quick, quick!'

'No,' said Jimbo, with a man's calm decision, 'it's when they _can't_ find eyes or puddles that they go in there. Don't interfere.'

She admitted her mistake. This was no time to press a petty advantage.

'I'll shut my eyes while you sponge up the puddles with a wedge of moss,' she began. But her brother cut her short. He was very sure of himself. He was leader beyond all question.

'You follow me,' he commanded firmly, 'and you'll get in somehow.

We'll get all sticky with it. Then we'll come out again and help those crying people like Tante Jeanne and....' A list of names poured out.

'They'll think us wonderful---'

'We shall be wonderful,' whispered Monkey, obeying, yet peeping with one big brown eye.

The cataract of starbeams rushed past them in a flood of gold.

They moved towards an opening in the trees where the limestone cliffs ran into rugged shapes with pinnacles and towers. They found the entrance in the rocks. Water dripped over it, making little splashes.

The lime had run into hanging pillars and a fringe of pointed fingers.

Past this the river of starlight poured its brilliant golden stream.

Its soft brightness shone yellow as a shower of primrose dust.