They talked normally while eating and drinking. If things were said
that skirted a mystery, no one tried to find its name or label it. It
was just hiding. Let it hide! To find it was to lose the mystery, and
life without mystery was unthinkable.
"That's bells," said Tim, "it's church this morning"; but he did not
sigh, there was no sinking of the heart, it seemed. He spoke as if it
was an adventure he looked forward to. "I've decided what I'm going to
be," he went on--"an engineer, but a mining engineer. Finding things
in the earth, valuable things like coal and gold." Why he said it was
not clear exactly; it had no apparent connection with church bells. He
just thought of life as a whole, perhaps, and what he meant to do with
it. He looked forward across the years to come. He distinctly knew
himself alive.
"I shall put sixpence in, I think," observed Judy presently. "It's a
lot. And I shall wear my blue hat with the pheasant's feather--"
"Pheasants feather," repeated Tim in a single word, amused as usual by
a curious sound.
"And a wild rose _here_," she added, pointing to the place on her
dress, though nobody felt interested enough to look.
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