The Ship of Stars | Page 6

not be
sure whether she took his side or her grandfather's.
That night he had a very queer dream.
His grandmother had lost her lace-pillow, and after searching for some
time, he found it lying out in the square. But the pins and bobbins were
darting to and fro on their own account, at an incredible rate, and the
lace as they made it turned into a singing beanstalk, and rose and threw
out branches all over the sky. Very soon he found himself climbing
among those branches, up and up until he came to a Palace, which was
really the Assize Hall, with a flight of steps before it and a cannon on
either side of the steps. Within sat a giant, asleep, with his head on the
table and his face hidden; but his neck bulged at the back just like the
bandmaster's during a cornet solo. A harp stood on the table. Taffy
caught this up, and was stealing downstairs with it, but at the third stair
the harp--which had Honoria's head and face--began to cough, and
wound up with a whoop! This woke the giant--he turned out to be
Honoria's grandfather--who came roaring after him. Glancing down
below as he ran, Taffy saw his mother and the bandmaster far below
with axes, hacking at the foot of the beanstalk. He tried to call out and
prevent them, but they kept smiting. And the worst of it was, that down
below, too, his father was climbing into a pulpit, quite as if nothing was
happening. The pulpit grew and became a tower, and his father kept
calling, "Be a tower! Be a tower, like me!"
But Taffy couldn't for the life of him see how to manage it. The
beanstalk began to totter; he felt himself falling, and leapt for the
tower. . . . And awoke in his bed shuddering, and, for the first time in
his life, afraid of the dark. He would have called for his mother, but just
then down by the turret clock in Fore Street the buglers began to sound
the "Last Post," and he hugged himself and felt that the world he knew

was still about him, companionable and kind.
Twice the buglers repeated their call, in more distant streets, each time
more faintly; and the last flying notes carried him into sleep again.
CHAPTER III.
PASSENGERS BY JOBY'S VAN.
At breakfast next morning he saw by his parents' faces that something
unusual had happened. Nothing was said to him about it, whatever it
might be. But once or twice after this, coming into the parlour suddenly,
he found his father and mother talking low and earnestly together; and
now and then they would go up to his grandmother's room and talk.
In some way he divined that there was a question of leaving home. But
the summer passed and these private talks became fewer. Toward
August, however, they began again; and by-and-by his mother told him.
They were going to a parish on the North Coast, right away across the
Duchy, where his father had been presented to a living. The place had
an odd name--Nannizabuloe.
"And it is lonely," said Humility, "the most of it sea-sand, so far as I
can hear."
It was by the sea, then. How would they get there?
"Oh, Joby's van will take us most of the way."
Of all the vans which came and went in the Fore Street, none could
compare for romance with Joby's. People called it the Wreck Ashore;
but its real name, "Vital Spark, J. Job, Proprietor," was painted on its
orange-coloured sides in letters of vivid blue, a blue not often seen
except on ship's boats. It disappeared every Tuesday and Saturday over
the hill and into a mysterious country, from which it emerged on
Mondays and Fridays with a fine flavour of the sea renewed upon it and
upon Joby. No other driver wore a blue guernsey, or rings in his ears, as
Joby did. No other van had the same mode of progressing down the

street in a series of short tacks, or brought such a crust of brine on its
panes, or such a mixture of mud and fine sand on its wheels, or mingled
scraps of dry sea-weed with the straw on its floor.
"Will there be ships?" Taffy asked.
"I dare say we shall see a few, out in the distance. It's a poor, outlandish
place. It hasn't even a proper church."
"If there's no church, father can get into a boat and preach; just like the
Sea of Galilee, you know."
"Your father is too good a man to mimic the Scriptures in any such way.
There is a church, I believe, though it's a tumble-down one. Nobody
has preached in it for