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Blackwood, Algernon, 1869-1951

"The Extra Day"

Maria sat blocked
and motionless against the landscape; and the round world dozed. Yes--
but the music of the world was humming. The bees droned by, there was
a whisper among the unruffled leaves.
Tim tapped him sharply on the knee. The man shuffled, then looked over
the top of his illustrated paper with an air of shocked surprise.
"Eh, Tim," he asked. "Where we all come from, did you say?"
"Everything, not only us," was the clean reply.
"That's it," Judy supported him.
"Now, then," Maria added quietly, as if she had done all the work.
Uncle Felix laid down his entertaining pictures of public men in
misfit-clothing furiously hitting tiny balls over as much uncultivated
land as possible--and sighed. Their violent attitudes had given him a
delightful sensation of repose. They were the men who governed
England, and this savage hitting was proof of their surplus energy. He
resigned himself, but with an air.
"Well," he said vaguely, "I suppose--it all just--began somehow--of
itself." And he stole a sideways glance at a picture of a stage Beauty
attired like a female Guy Fawkes.
"It was created in six days, of course, us last," said Tim, regarding
him with patient dignity.


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