“To me it seems that they will happen to-morrow,” said the Secret Friend.  “But then there is so little difference between yesterday and to-morrow.  How can you tell which is which?  Only clocks and calendars are silly enough to tread on the tail of a little space between sunrise and sunset and call it to-day.  How do you know which way up time is happening?”

“Because yesterday the sun set, and we went to bed,” said the youngest child.

“I think to-morrow is a little person in dark clothes watching and listening,” said the eldest child.  “And to-day is Cinderella, all shiny and beautiful until twelve o’clock strikes.”

“All yesterdays and all to-morrows are in this house listening,” said the Secret Friend.  “This is the place where time is without a name.  Here the beginning comes after the end.  To-morrow we shall be born.  Yesterday we died.  To-day was just a little passage built of twenty-four odd hours.  And now we will sing the Loud Song.”

They were on the rocky path now, and they sang the Loud Song.  Both that path and that song go on for ever, and the words of the song are like this: 

There is no house like our house
Even in Heaven. 
There is no family like our family
Even in Heaven. 
There is no Country like our Country
Even in Heaven. 
There is no sea like our sea
Even in Heaven.

Most families sing this song, more or less, but few could sing it so loudly as this family did.

The dog Trelawney ran after the shadows of the seagulls.

There is the track my feet have worn
By which my fate may find me: 
From that dim place where I was born
Those footprints run behind me. 
Uncertain was the trail I left,
For—­oh, the way was stormy;
But now this splendid sea has cleft
My journey from before me.

Three things the sea shall never end,
Three things shall mock its power: 
My singing soul, my Secret Friend,
And this my perfect hour.

And you shall seek me till you reach
The tangled tide advancing,
And you shall find upon the beach
The traces of my dancing,
And in the air the happy speech
Of Secret Friends romancing.

For some minutes some one had been knocking on the door.  The sound was like an intruder in the Secret World, beckoning insistently to Jay.  But she took no notice of it until a loud voice said:  “You need not think you are paddling in golden seas and inaccessible to your relations, because you are here, and I can see you through the window.”

After a moment’s confusion, Jay found that this was so, and she got up and let Kew in.