The Extra Day | Page 3

called a
"tweaky" nose, though whether he meant that it was beak-like or
merely twitched, he never stated; it was just "tweaky," and Judy took it
as a compliment. One could easily imagine her shining little face
peeping over the edge of a nest, the rest of her sitting warmly upon half
a dozen smooth, pink eggs. Her legs certainly seemed stuck into her
like pencils, as with a robin or a seagull. She adored everything that
had wings and flew; she was of the air; it was her element.
Maria's passions were unknown. Though suspected of being universal,
since she manifested no deliberate likes or dislikes, approving all things
with a kind of majestic and indifferent omnipotence, they remained
quiescent and undeclared. She probably just loved the universe. She felt
at home in it. To Maria the entire universe belonged, because she sat
still and with absolute conviction--claimed it.

CHAPTER II
FANCY--SEED OF WONDER
The country house, so ancient that it seemed part of the landscape,
settled down secretively into the wintry darkness and watched the night
with eyes of yellow flame. The thick December gloom hid it securely
from attack. Nothing could find it out. Though crumbling in places, the
mass of it was solid as a fortress, for the old oak beams had resisted
Time so long that the tired years had resigned themselves to siege
instead of assault, and the protective hills and woods rendered it
impregnable against the centuries. The beleaguered inhabitants felt safe.
It was a delightful, cosy feeling, yet excitement and surprise were in it
too. Anything might happen, and at any moment.
This, at any rate, was how Judy and Tim felt the personality of the old
Mill House, calling it Daddy's Castle. Maria expressed no opinion. She
felt and knew too much to say a word. She was habitually non-

committal. She shared the being of the ancient building, as the building
shared the landscape out of which it grew so naturally. Having been
born last, her inheritance of coming Time exceeded that of Tim and
Judy, and she lived as though thoroughly aware of her prerogative. In
quiet silence she claimed everything as her very own.
The Mill House, like Maria, never moved; it existed comfortably; it
seemed independent of busy, hurrying Time. So thickly covered was it
with ivy and various creepers that the trees on the lawn wondered why
it did not grow bigger like themselves. They remembered the time
when they looked up to it, whereas now they looked over it easily, and
even their lower branches stroked the stone tiles on the roof, patched
with moss and lichen like their own great trunks. They had come to
regard it as an elderly animal asleep, for its chimneys looked like horns,
it possessed a capacious mouth that both swallowed and disgorged, and
its eyes were as numerous as those of the forest to which they
themselves properly belonged. And so they accepted the old Mill
House as a thing of drowsy but persistent life; they protected and
caressed it; they liked it exactly where it was; and if it moved they
would have known an undeniable shock.
They watched it now, this dark December evening, as one by one its
gleaming eyes shone bright and yellow through the mist, then one by
one let down their dark green lids. "It's going to sleep," they thought.
"It's going to dream. Its life, like ours, is all inside. It sleeps the winter
through as we do. All is well. Good-night, old house of grey! We'll also
go to sleep."
Unable to see into the brain of the sleepy monster, the trees resigned
themselves to dream again, tucking the earth closely against their roots
and withdrawing into the cloak of misty darkness. Like most other
things in winter they also stayed indoors, leading an interior life of dim
magnificence behind their warm, thick bark. Presently, when they were
ready, something would happen, something they were preparing at their
leisure, something so exquisite that all who saw it would dance and
sing for gladness. They also believed in a Wonderful Stranger who was
coming into their slow, steady lives. They fell to dreaming of the

surprising pageant they would blazon forth upon the world a little later.
And while they dreamed, the wind of night passed moaning through
their leafless branches, and Time flew noiselessly above the turning
Earth.
Meanwhile, inside the old Mill House, the servants lit the lamps and
drew the blinds and curtains. Behind the closing eyelids, however, like
dream-chambers within a busy skull, there were rooms of various
shapes and kinds, and in one of these on the ground-floor, called
Daddy's Study, the three children stood, expectant and a little shy,
waiting for something desirable to happen. In