For when a child's heart is all
right, it is not likely he will want to keep anything from his
parents. But the story of the evening was too solemn for Curdie to
come out with all at once. He must wait until they had had their
porridge, and the affairs of this world were over for the day.
But when they were seated on the grassy bank of the brook that went
so sweetly blundering over the great stones of its rocky channel,
for the whole meadow lay on the top of a huge rock, then he felt
that the right hour had come for sharing with them the wonderful
things that had come to him. It was perhaps the loveliest of all
hours in the year. The summer was young and soft, and this was the
warmest evening they had yet had - dusky, dark even below, while
above, the stars were bright and large and sharp in the blackest
blue sky. The night came close around them, clasping them in one
universal arm of love, and although it neither spoke nor smiled,
seemed all eye and ear, seemed to see and hear and know everything
they said and did. It is a way the night has sometimes, and there
is a reason for it. The only sound was that of the brook, for
there was no wind, and no trees for it to make its music upon if
there had been, for the cottage was high up on the mountain, on a
great shoulder of stone where trees would not grow.
There, to the accompaniment of the water, as it hurried down to the
valley and the sea, talking busily of a thousand true things which
it could not understand, Curdie told his tale, outside and in, to
his father and mother.
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