--so I go away and think of what I like, and other
places----"

"Nonsense!" interrupted his father briskly; "winter's a capital time for
boys. What in the world d'ye mean, I wonder?"

He lifted the child on to his knee and stroked his hair, as though he
were patting the flank of a horse. Jimbo took no notice of the
interruption or of the caress, but went on saying what he had to say,
though with eyes a little more clouded.

"Winter's like going into a long black tunnel, you see. It's downhill to
Christmas, of course, and then uphill all the way to the summer
holidays. But the uphill part's so slow that----"

"Tut, tut!" laughed the Colonel in spite of himself; "you mustn't have
such thoughts. Those are a baby's notions. They're silly, silly, silly."

"Do you _really_ think so, father?" continued the boy, as if politeness
demanded some recognition of his father's remarks, but otherwise anxious
only to say what was in his mind. "You wouldn't think them silly if you
really knew. But, of course, there's no one to tell you in the stable,
so you _can't_ know. You've never seen the funny big people rushing past
you and laughing through their long hair when the wind blows so loud.
_I_ know several of them almost to speak to, but you hear only wind. And
the other things with tiny legs that skate up and down the slippery
moonbeams, without ever tumbling off--they aren't silly a bit, only they
don't like dogs and noise. And I've seen the furniture"--he pronounced
it furchinur--"dancing about in the day-nursery when it thought it was
alone, and I've heard it talking at night. I know the big cupboard's
voice quite well. It's just like a drum, only rougher...."

The Colonel shook his head and frowned severely, staring hard at his
son. But though their eyes met, the boy hardly saw him. Far away at the
other end of the dark Tunnel of the Months he saw the white summer
sunshine lying over gardens full of nodding flowers. Butterflies were
flitting across meadows yellow with buttercups, and he saw the
fascinating rings upon the lawn where the Fairy People held their dances
in the moonlight; he heard the wind call to him as it ran on along by
the hedgerows, and saw the gentle pressure of its swift feet upon the
standing hay; streams were murmuring under shady trees; birds were
singing; and there were echoes of sweeter music still that he could not
understand, but loved all the more perhaps on that account....

"Yes," announced the C