“Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?” he said, quite loud. And there was no one but himself to give the answer.
“If I could only get back into the city,” he said. “But that hateful nurse has pulled it all down and locked up the nursery. So I can’t even build it again. Oh, what shall I do?”
And with that he began to cry. For now he felt quite sure that the dream wasn’t a dream—that he really had got into the magic city, had promised to stand by Lucy, and had been false to his promise and to her.
He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and also—rather painfully—with Mr. Noah, whom he still held. “What shall I do?” he sobbed.
And a very very teeny tiny voice said:
“Put me down.”
“Eh?” said Philip.
“Put me down,” said the voice again. It was such a teeny tiny voice that he could only just hear it. It was unlikely, of course, that the voice could have been Mr. Noah’s; but then whose else could it be? On the bare chance that it might have been Mr. Noah who spoke—more unlikely things had happened before, as you know—Philip set the little wooden figure down on the chess-table. It stood there, wooden as ever.
“Put who down?” Philip asked. And then, before his eyes, the little wooden figure grew alive, stooped to pick up the yellow disc of wood on which Noah’s Ark people stand, rolled it up like a mat, put it under his arm and began to walk towards the side of the table where Philip stood.
He knelt down to bring his ears nearer the little live moving thing.
“What did you say?” he asked, for he fancied that Mr. Noah had again spoken.
“I said, what’s the matter?” said the little voice.
“It’s Lucy. She’s lost and it’s my fault. And I can only just hear you. It hurts my ears hearing you,” complained Philip.
“There’s an ear-trumpet in a box on the middle of the cabinet,” he could just hear the teeny tiny voice say; “it belonged to a great-aunt. Get it out and listen through it.”
Philip got it out. It was an odd curly thing, and at first he could not be sure which end he ought to put to his ear. But he tried both ends, and on the second trial he heard quite a loud, strong, big voice say:
“That’s better.”
“Then it wasn’t a dream last night,” said Philip.
“Of course it wasn’t,” said Mr. Noah.
“Then where is Lucy?”
“In the city, of course. Where you left her.”
“But she can’t be,” said Philip desperately. “The city’s all pulled down and gone forever.”
“The city you built in this room is pulled down,” said Mr. Noah, “but the city you went to wasn’t in this room. Now I put it to you—how could it be?”
“But it was,” said Philip, “or else how could I have got into it.”
“It’s a little difficult, I own,” said Mr. Noah. “But, you see, you built those cities in two worlds. It’s pulled down in this world. But in the other world it’s going on.”
“I don’t understand,” said Philip.
“I thought you wouldn’t,” said Mr. Noah; “but it’s true, for all that. Everything people make in that world goes on forever.”
“But how was it that I got in?”
“Because you belong to both worlds. And you built the cities. So they were yours.”
“But Lucy got in.”
“She built up a corner of your city that the nurse had knocked down.”
“But you,” said Philip, more and more bewildered. “You’re here. So you can’t be there.”
“But I am there,” said Mr. Noah.
“But you’re here. And you’re alive here. What made you come alive?”
“Your tears,” said Mr. Noah. “Tears are very strong magic. No, don’t begin to cry again. What’s the matter?”
“I want to get back into the city.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“I don’t care.”
“You were glad enough to get away,” said Mr. Noah.
“I know: that’s the worst of it,” said Philip. “Oh, isn’t there any way to get back? If I climbed in at the nursery windows and got the bricks and built it all up and—”
“Quite unnecessary, I assure you. There are a thousand doors to that city.”
“I wish I could find one,” said Philip; “but, I say, I thought time was all different there. How is it Lucy is lost all this time if time doesn’t count?”
“It does count, now,” said Mr. Noah; “you made it count when you ran away and left Lucy. That set the clocks of the city to the time of this world.”
“I don’t understand,” said Philip; “but it doesn’t matter. Show me the door and I’ll go back and find Lucy.”
“Build something and go through it,” said Mr. Noah. “That’s all. Your tears are dry on me now. Goodbye.” And he laid down his yellow mat, stepped on to it and was just a little wooden figure again.
Philip dropped the ear-trumpet and looked at Mr. Noah.
“I don’t understand,” he said. But this at least he understood. That Helen would come back when she got that telegram, and that before she came he must go into the other world and find the lost Lucy.
“But oh,” he said, “suppose I don’t find her. I wish I hadn’t built those cities so big! And time will go on. And, perhaps, when Helen comes back she’ll find me lost too—as well as Lucy.”
But he dried his eyes and told himself that this was not how heroes behaved. He must build again. Whichever way you looked at it there was no time to be lost. And besides the nurse might occur at any moment.
He looked round for building materials. There was the chess-table. It had long narrow legs set round it, rather like arches. Something might be done with it, with books and candlesticks and Japanese vases.
Something was done. Philip built with earnest care, but also
