do.â
Janet winced.
âThose funny animalsâdarling.â She paused. âThere was an accident, you know. At the big Station up on the downs. Thatâs why there are so many of these queerâthings about. They get born like that. Itâs very sad!â
âWhy? I think itâs exciting! Lots of new kinds of things being born all the time. I have to find names for them. Sometimes I think of lovely names.â
He wriggled off his chair.
âIâve finished. Pleaseâcan I go now? My friend is waiting for me in the garden.â
His father nodded. Gertrude said softly.
âAll children are the same. They always invent a âfriendâ to play with.â
âAt five, perhaps. Not when theyâre thirteen,â said Janet bitterly.
âTry not to mind, dear,â said Gertrude gently.
âHow can I help it?â
âYou may be looking at it all the wrong way.â
Down at the bottom of the garden, where it was cool under the trees, Alan found his friend waiting.
He was stroking a rabbit who was not quite a rabbit but something rather different.
âDo you like him, Alan?â
âOh yes. What shall we call him?â
âItâs for you to say.â
âIs it really? I shall call himâI shall call himâForteor. Is that a good name?â
âAll your names are good names.â
âHave you got a name yourself?â
âI have a great many names.â
âIs one of them God?â
âYes.â
âI thought it was! You donât really live in that stone house in the village with the long thing sticking up, do you?â
âI live in many places ⦠But sometimes, in the cool of the evening, I walk in a gardenâwith a friend and talk about the New Worldââ
Â
Jenny by the Sky
Come down to me, Jenny, come down from the hill
Come down to me here where I wait
Come down to my arms, to my lips, my desire
Come down all my hunger to sate
But Jenny walks lonely, her head in the air,
She walks on the hill top, the wind in her hair,
She will not come down to me, loud though I cry
She walks with the wind, upturned face to the sky â¦
In the cool of the evening I walked in the glade,
And there I met God ⦠and I was not afraid.
Together we walked in the depths of the wood
And together we looked at the things we had made
Together we lookedâand we saw they were good â¦
God made the World and the stars set on high
The Galaxies rushing, none knows where or why.
God fashioned the Cosmos, the Universe wide,
And the hills and the valleys, the birds in the wood
God made them and loved them, and saw they were good â¦
And Iâhave made Jenny! To walk on the hill.
She will not come down to me loud though I cry;
She walks there for ever, her face to the sky,
She will not come down though I call her,
She will not come down to my greed,
She is as I dreamed her ⦠and made her
Of my loving and longing and need â¦
With my mind and my heart I made Jenny,
I made her of love and desire,
I made her to walk on the hill top
In loneliness, beauty and fire â¦
In the cool of the evening I walked in the wood
And God walked beside me â¦
We both understood.
Promotion in the Highest
They were walking down the hill from the little stone church on the hillside.
It was very early in the morning, the hour just before dawn. There was no one about to see them as they went through the village, though one or two sleepers sighed and stirred in their sleep. The only human being who saw them that morning was Jacob Narracott, as he grunted and sat up in the ditch. He had collapsed there soon after he came out of the Bel and Dragon last night.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes, not quite believing what he saw. He staggered to his feet and shambled off in the direction of his cottage, made uneasy by the trick his eyes had played him. At the crossroads he met George Palk, the