would be found. It was. The books were dummies. The fourth wall was all
heavily curtained window. And turned toward it was a large chair with a
mahogany reading-stand attached, on which a yellowish and folded copy
of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the day Timothy first failed to come
down, as if in preparation for the War, seemed waiting for him still.
In a corner stood a large globe of that world never visited by Timothy,
deeply convinced of the unreality of everything but England, and
permanently upset by the sea, on which he had been very sick one Sunday
afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure boat off the pier at Brighton, with
Juley and Hester, Swithin and Hatty Chessman; all due to Swithin, who
was always taking things into his head, and who, thank goodness, had
been sick too. Soames knew all about it, having heard the tale fifty
times at least from one or other of them. He went up to the globe,
and gave it a spin; it emitted a faint creak and moved about an inch,
bringing into his purview a daddy-long-legs which had died on it in
latitude 44.

'Mausoleum!' he thought. 'George was right!' And he went out and up
the stairs. On the half-landing he stopped before the case of stuffed
humming-birds which had delighted his childhood. They looked not a day
older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass. If the case were opened
the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he
suspected. It wouldn't be worth putting that into the sale! And suddenly
he was caught by a memory of Aunt Ann--dear old Aunt Ann--holding him
by the hand in front of that case and saying: "Look, Soamey! Aren't they
bright and pretty, dear little humming-birds!" Soames remembered his
own answer: "They don't hum, Auntie." He must have been six, in a black
velveteen suit with a light-blue collar-he remembered that suit well!
Aunt Ann with her ringlets, and her spidery kind hands, and her grave
old aquiline smile--a fine old lady, Aunt Ann! He moved on up to