The Family sometimes said that Jay was an idealist, but it did not really think so.  The Family sometimes said that she was rather mad, but it did not know how mad she was, or it would have sent her away to live in a doctor’s establishment at Margate.  It never realised that it had only come in contact with about one-fifth of its young relation, and that the other four-fifths were shut away from it.  Shut away in a shining bubble world with only room in it for one—­for One, and a shining bubble Story.

I do not know how universal an experience a Secret Story and a Secret Friend may be.  Perhaps this wonder is a commonplace to you, only you are more reticent about it than Jay or I. But to me, even after twenty years’ intimacy with what I can only describe as a supplementary life that I cannot describe, it still seems so very wonderful that I cannot believe I share it with every man and woman in the street.

The great advantage of a Secret Story over other stories is that you cannot put it into print.  So I can only show you the initial letter, and you may if you choose look upon it as an imaginary hieroglyphic.  Or you may not.

Just this, that a bubble world can contain a round and russet horizon of high woods which you can attain, and from the horizon a long view of an unending sea.  You can run down across the dappled fields, you can run down into the cove and stroke the sea and hear the intimate minor singing of it.  And when you feel as strong as the morning, you can shout and run against the wind, against the flying sand that never blows above your knees.  And when you feel as tired as the night, you can climb slowly up the cliff path and go into the House, the House you know much better than any house your ordinary eyes have seen, and there you will find your Secret Friends.  The best part about Secret Friends is that they will never weary you by knowing you.  You share their House, your passing hand helps to polish the base of that wooden figure that ends the banisters, you know the childish delight of that wide short chimney in the big turret room, a chimney so wide and so short that you can stand inside the great crooked fireplace and whisper to the birds that look down from the edge of the chimney only a yard or two above you.  You know how comfy those big beds are, you sit at the long clothless table in the brown dining-room.  With all these things you are intimate, and yet you pass through the place as a ghost, your bubble enchantment encloses you, your Secret Friends have no knowledge of you, their story runs without you.  Your unnecessary identity is tactfully ignored, and you know the heaven of being dispassionate and detached among things you love.

All these things can a bubble world contain.  You have to get inside things to find out how limitless they are.  And I think if you don’t believe it all, it is none the less true for that, because in that case you are the sort of person who believes a thing less the truer it is.