did not matter if one of the younger Noahs should be lazy and wish to
stay at home beneath the flowering trees of the orchard. She would not
be allowed... He was as God.. . He was as God... The butcher should
go (if he was not stuck to his shop), and even some of his cows might
go.... He was as God...

He heard Mary's voice in his ear.

"And after that they all ate chocolates with white cream and red cream,
and they sucked it off pins, and there were hard bits and soft bits, and
the Princess (she was a frog now. You remember, don't you, Jeremy? The
witch turned her) hotted the oven like cook has, with black doors, and
hotted it and hotted it, but suddenly there was a noise--"

And, on the other side, the Jampot's voice: "You naughty boy, stoppin'
'ere for everyone to see, just because it's your birthday, which I wish
there wasn't no birthdays, nor there wouldn't be if I had my way."

Jeremy turned from Mr. Thompson's window, a scornful smile on his face:

"I'm bigger'n you, Nurse," he said. "If I said out loud, 'I won't go,' I
wouldn't go, and no one could make me."

"Well, come along, then," said Nurse.

"Don't be so stupid, Jerry," said Helen calmly. "If a policeman came and
said you had to go home you'd have to go."

"No I wouldn't," said Jeremy.

"Then they'd put you in prison."

"They could."

"They'd hang you, perhaps."

"They could," replied Jeremy.

Farther than this argument cannot go, so Helen shrugged her shoulders
and said: "You are silly."

And they all moved forward.

He found then that this new sense or God-like power detracted a little
from the excitements of the Market Place, although the flower-stall was
dazzling with flowers; there was a new kind of pig that lifted its tail
and lowered it again on the toy stall, and the apple-woman was as fat as
ever and had thick clumps of yellow bananas hanging most richly around
her head. They ascended the High Street and reached the Close. It was
half-past three, and the Cathedral bells had begun to ring for evensong.
All the houses in the Close were painted with a pale yellow light;
across the long green Cathedral lawn thin black shadows like the fingers
of giants pointed to the Cathedral door. All was so silent here that the
bells danced against the houses and back again, the echoes lingering in
the high elms and mingling with the placid cooing of the rooks.

"There's Mrs. Sampson," said Jeremy. "Aunt Amy says she's a wicked
woman. Do you th