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 noncommittal. 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 common with all other

living things, they shared this enticing feeling—that Something

Wonderful was going to happen. To be without this feeling, of course,

is to be not alive; but, once alive, it cannot be escaped. At death it

asserts itself most strongly of all—Something Too Wonderful is going

to happen. For to die is quite different from being not alive.