The Extra Day | Page 6

to a point, that is: something in them failed. "He's
trying," was their opinion of them; and it was the trying that they
watched and listened to so eagerly. The results were unsatisfying, the
effect incomplete; the climax of sensation they expected never came.
Daddy, though they could not put this into words, possessed fancy only;
imagination was not his. Fancy, however, is the seed of imagination, as

imagination is the blossom of wonder. His stories prepared the soil in
them at any rate. They felt him digging all round them.
He began forthwith:
"Once, very long ago--"
"How long?"
"So long ago that the chalk cliffs of England still lay beneath the sea--"
"Was Aunt Emily alive then?"
"Or Weeden?"
"Oh, much longer ago than that," he comforted them; "so long, in fact,
that neither your Aunt Emily nor Weeden were even thought of--there
lived a man who--"
"Where? What country, please?"
"There lived a man in England--"
"But you said England was beneath the sea with the chalk cliffs."
"There lived a man in a very small, queer little island called Ingland,
spelt 'Ing,' not 'Eng,' who--"
"It wasn't our England, then?"
"On a tiny little island called Ingland, who was very lonely because he
was the only human being on it--"
"Weren't there animals and things too?"
"And the only animals who lived on it with him were a squirrel who
lived in the only tree, a rabbit who lived in the only hole, and a small
grey mouse who made its nest in the pocket of his other coat."

"Were they friendly? Did he love them awfully?"
"At first he was very polite to them only, because he was a civil servant
of his Government; but after a bit they became so friendly that he loved
them even better than himself, and went to tea with the rabbit in its hole,
and climbed the tree to share a nut-breakfast with the squirrel,
and--and--"
"He doesn't know what to do with the mouse," a loud whisper, meant to
be inaudible, broke in upon the fatal hesitation.
"And went out for walks with the mouse when the ground was damp
and the mouse complained of chilly feet. In the pocket of his coat, all
snug and warm, it stood on its hind legs and peered out upon the world
with its pointed nose just above the pocket flap--"
"Then he liked the mouse best?"
"What sort of coat was it? An overcoat or just an ordinary one that
smelt? Was that the only pocket in it?"
"It was made of the best leaves from the squirrel's tree, and from the
rabbit's last year's fur, and the mouse had fastened the edges together
neatly with the sharpest of its own discarded whiskers. And so they
walked about the tiny island and enjoyed the view together--"
"The mouse couldn't have seen much!"
"Until, one day, the mouse declared the ground was ALWAYS wet and
was getting wetter and wetter. And the man got frightened."
"Ugh! It's going to get awful in a minute!" And the children nestled
closer. The voice sank lower. It became mysterious.
"And the wetter it got the more the man got frightened; for the island
was dreadfully tiny and--"
"Why, please, did it get wetter and wetter?"

"THAT," continued the man who earned his living in His Majesty's
Stationery Office by day, and by night justified his existence offering
the raw material of epics unto little children, "that was the
extraordinary part of it. For no one could discover. The man stroked his
beard and looked about him, the squirrel shook its bushy tail, the rabbit
lifted its upper lip and thrust its teeth out, and the mouse jerked its head
from side to side until its whiskers grew longer and sharper than
ever--but none of them could discover why the island got wetter and
wetter and wetter--"
"Perhaps it just rained like here."
"For the sky was always blue, it never rained, and there was so little
dew at night that no one even mentioned it. Yet the tiny island got
wetter every day, till it finally got so wet that the very floor of the
man's hut turned spongy and splashed every time the man went to look
out of the window at the view. And at last he got so frightened that he
stayed indoors altogether, put on both his coats at once, and told stories
to the mouse and squirrel about a country that was always dry--"
"Didn't the rabbit know anything?"
"For all this time the rabbit was too terrified to come out of its hole at
all. The increasing size of its front teeth added to its uneasiness, for
they thrust out so far that they hid the view and made the island