The boy looked down again at the alarum clock he had been
trying to mend, and turned the handle. It was too tightly wound to go.
A stopped clock has the sulkiest face in the world. He stared at it;
the handle clicked beneath the pressure of his hand. "It must come
from somewhere," he added with decision, half to himself.
"From the East, of course," advanced Judy, and tried to draw her Uncle
by putting some buttercups against his cheek and mentioning loudly
that he liked butter.
Then, since neither sound nor movement issued from the man in the
wicker-chair, the children continued the discussion among themselves,
but _at_ the man, knowing that sooner or later he must become involved
in it. Judy's answer, moreover, so far as it went, was excellent. The
sun rose in the East, and the wind most frequently mentioned came also
from that quarter. Easter, when everything rose again, was connected
with the same point of the compass. The East was enormously far away
with a kind of fairyland remoteness. The dragon-rugs in Daddy's study
and the twisted weapons in the hall were "Easty" too. According to
Tim, it was a "golden, yellow, crimson-sort-of, mysterious, blazing
hole of a place" of which no adequate picture had ever been shown to
them.
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