diluted with a faint twilight, in
the Brown Borough. The air was vague, making it not so much an
impossibility to decipher the features of people approaching as a
surprise to find it possible. A few rather premature bar row-flares
adapted Scripture to modern conditions by hiding their light under tin
substitutes for bushels, in the hope of protecting such valuables as
cat's meat and bananas from aerial outrage. Kew pranced over prostrate
children, and curved about the pavement to avoid artificially vivacious
passers-by, who emerged from the public-houses.

Nana lived in a little alley which was like a fiord of peace running in
from the shrill storm of the Brown Borough. Here little cottages shrank
together, passive resisters of the twentieth century. Low crooked windows
blinked through a mask of dirty creepers. Each little front garden
contained a shrub, and was guarded by a low railing, although there would
have been no room for a trespasser in addition to the shrub. Nana's
house, at the end of the alley, looked along it to the far turmoil of the
mother-street.

Kew insulted the gate, as usual, by stepping over it, and knocked at the
door. He held his breath, so that he might more keenly hear the first
whisperings of the floor upstairs, which would show that Nana was astir.

A gardenful of cats came and told him that his hopes were vain. Cats only
exist, I think, for the chastening of man. They never come to me except
to tell me the worst, and to crush me with quiet sarcasm should my
optimism survive their warning.

But before the cats had finished speaking, there was a most un-Nana-like
sound of bounding within, and Jay appeared. She threw herself out of the
darkness of the door on to the twilit Kew.

The cats were ashamed to be seen watching this almost canine display, and
went away.

"I didn't know you weren't in France," said Jay to Kew.

"I didn't know you weren't in Heaven," said Kew to Jay. "What's all this
about golden seas and aeroplanes snarling around?"

"Oh, snarling.... That's just what they do," said Jay. "Let's pretend I
said that."

It seemed as if childhood turned its face to them again after a thousand
years. These roaring months of War run like a sea between us and our
peaceful beginnings, so that a catchword flashed across out of our past
is as beautiful and as incredible as the light in a dream.

When they were little they used to bargain for expressive words. Their
childhood was full