The Magic City Part 12

'Set you down and get your breath,' he said kindly.

'Why, it's _you_!' said Philip.

'Course it is. Who should I be if I wasn't me? That's poetry.'

'But how did you get here?'

'Ah!' said the man going on with his bread and cheese, while he talked quite in the friendliest way, 'that's telling.'

'Well, tell then,' said Philip impatiently. But he sat down.

'Well, you say it's me. Who be it? Give it a name.'

'You're old Perrin,' said Pip; 'I mean, of course, I beg your pardon, you're Mr. Perrin, the carpenter.'

'And what does carpenters do?'

'Carp, I suppose,' said Philip. 'That means they make things, doesn't it?'

'That's it,' said the man encouragingly; 'what sort of things now might old Perrin have made for you?'

'You made my wheelbarrow, I know,' said Philip, 'and my bricks.'

'Ah!' said Mr. Perrin, 'now you've got it. I made your bricks, seasoned oak, and true to the thousandth of an inch, they was. And that's how I got here. So now you know.'

'But what are you doing here?' said Philip, wriggling restlessly on the fallen column.

'Waiting for you. Them as knows sent me out to meet you, and give you a hint of what's expected of you.'

'Well. What _is_?' said Philip. 'I mean I think it's very kind of you.

What _is_ expected?'

'Plenty of time,' said the carpenter, 'plenty. Nothing ain't expected of you till towards sundown.'

'I do think it was most awfully kind of you,' said Philip, who had now thought this over.

'You was kind to old Perrin once,' said that person.

'Was I?' said Philip, much surprised.

'Yes; when my little girl was ailing you brought her a lot of pears off your own tree. Not one of 'em you didn't 'ave yourself that year, Miss Helen told me. And you brought back our kitten--the sandy and white one with black spots--when it strayed. So I was quite willing to come and meet you when so told. And knowing something of young gentlemen's p.e.c.k.e.rs, owing to being in business once next door to a boys' school, I made so bold as to bring you a snack.'

He reached a hand down behind the fallen pillar on which they sat and brought up a basket.

'Here,' he said. And Philip, raising the lid, was delighted to find that he was hungry. It was a pleasant basketful. Meat pasties, red hairy gooseberries, a stone bottle of ginger-beer, a blue mug with Philip on it in gold letters, a slice of soda cake and two farthing sugar-sticks.

'I'm sure I've seen that basket before,' said the boy as he ate.

'Like enough. It's the one you brought them pears down in.'

'Now look here,' said Philip, through his seventh bite of pasty, 'you _must_ tell me how you got here. And tell me where you've got to. You've simply no idea how muddling it all is to me. Do tell me _everything_.

Where are we, I mean, and why? And what I've got to do. And why? And when? Tell me every single thing.' And he took the eighth bite.

'You really don't know, sir?'

'No,' said Philip, contemplating the ninth or last bite but one. It was a large pasty.

'Well then. Here goes. But I was always a poor speaker, and so considered even by friends at cricket dinners and what not.'

'But I don't want you to speak,' said Philip; 'just tell me.'

'Well, then. How did I get here? I got here through having made them bricks what you built this tumble-down old ancient place with.'

'_I_ built?'

'Yes, with them bricks I made you. I understand as this was the first building you ever put up. That's why it's first on the road to where you want to get to!'

Philip looked round at the Stonehenge building and saw that it was indeed built of enormous oak bricks.

'Of course,' he said, 'only I've grown smaller.'

'Or they've grown bigger,' said Mr. Perrin; 'it's the same thing. You see it's like this. All the cities and things you ever built is in this country. I don't know how it's managed, no more'n what you do. But so it is. And as you made 'em, you've the right to come to them--if you can get there. And you have got there. It isn't every one has the luck, I'm told. Well, then, you made the cities, but you made 'em out of what other folks had made, things like bricks and chessmen and books and candlesticks and dominoes and bra.s.s basins and every sort of kind of thing. An' all the people who helped to make all them things you used to build with, they're all here too. D'you see? _Making's_ the thing. If it was no more than the lad that turned the handle of the grindstone to sharp the knife that carved a bit of a cabinet or what not, or a child that picked a teazle to finish a bit of the cloth that's glued on to the bottom of a chessman--they're all here. They're what's called the population of your cities.'

'I see. They've got small, like I have,' said Philip.

'Or the cities has got big,' said the carpenter; 'it comes to the same thing. I wish you wouldn't interrupt, Master Philip. You put me out.'

'I won't again,' said Philip. 'Only do tell me just one thing. How can you be here and at Amblehurst too?'

'We come here,' said the carpenter slowly, 'when we're asleep.'

'Oh!' said Philip, deeply disappointed; 'it's just a dream then?'

'Not it. We come here when we're too sound asleep to dream. You go through the dreams and come out on the other side where everything's real. That's _here_.'

'Go on,' said Philip.

'I dunno where I was. You do put me out so.'

'Pop you something or other,' said Philip.

'Population. Yes. Well, all those people as made the things you made the cities of, they live in the cities and they've made the insides to the houses.'

'What do they do?'

'Oh, they just live here. And they buy and sell and plant gardens and work and play like everybody does in other cities. And when they go to sleep they go slap through their dreams and into the other world, and work and play there, see? That's how it goes on. There's a lot more, but that's enough for one time. You get on with your gooseberries.'

'But they aren't all real people, are they? There's Mr. Noah?'