seldomer and seldomer as you get big, you know. It was just at first,
when one was very little and didn't know one's way about--just to help
babies not to be frightened. Timothy would tell you only he won't. Then
he comes only a little--just at special times like this was."

Bim told you this with a slightly bored air, as though it were silly of
you not to know, and really his air of certainty made an incredulous
challenge a difficult thing. On the present occasion Mr. Jack was just
there, in the middle of the crowd, smiling and friendly. He took Bim's
hand, and, "Of course," Bim said, "there didn't have to be any
'splaining. _He_ knew what I wanted." True or not, I like to think of
them, in the evening air, serenely safe and comfortable, and in any
case, it was surely strange that if, as one's common sense compels one
to suppose, Bim were all alone in that crowd, no one wondered or stopped
him nor asked him where his home was. At any rate, I have no opinions on
the subject. Bim says that, at once, they found themselves out of the
crowd in a quiet, little "dinky" street, as he called it, a street that,
in his description of it, answered to nothing that I can remember in
this part of the world. His account of it seems to present a dark,
rather narrow place, with overhanging roofs and swinging signs, and
nobody, he says, at all about, but a church with a bell, and outside one
shop a row of bright-coloured clothes hanging. At any rate, here Bim
found the place that he wanted. There was a little shop with steps down
into it and a tinkling bell which made a tremendous noise when you
pushed the old oak door. Inside there was every sort of thing. Bim lost
himself here in the ecstasy of his description, lacking also names for
many of the things that he saw. But there was a whole suit of shining
armour, and there were jewels, and old brass trays, and carpets, and a
crocodile, which Bim called a "crodocile." There was also a friendly old
man with a white beard, and over everything a lovely smell, which Bim