PART I

Argument:—­Everychild encounters the giant fear and sets forth on A strange journey.

CHAPTER I

THE TWO STRANGERS

It did not seem a very pleasant room.  To be sure, there were a great many nice things in it.  There was rose-colored paper on the wall, and the woodwork was of ivory, with gilt lines.  There were pictures of ships on the ocean and of high trees and of the sun going down behind a hill, and there was one of an old mill with nobody at all in sight.  And there was one picture with dogs in it.

There was a soft rug, also of rose-color, and a fine clock, shaped like a state capitol, on the mantel.  There was a silver gong in the clock which made beautiful music.  There was a nice reading table with books on it, and a lamp.  The lamp had a shade made up of queerly-shaped bits of material like onyx, and a fringe of rose-colored beads.  Yet for all this, it did not seem a pleasant room.  You could feel that something was wrong.  You know, there are always so many things in a room which you cannot see.

A lady and a gentleman sat at the reading-table, one on either side.  It seemed they hadn’t a word to say to each other.  They did not even look at each other.  The lady turned the pages of a magazine without seeing a single thing.  The gentleman sat staring straight before him, and after a long time he stretched himself and said:  “Ho—­hum!” And then he began to frown and to stare at an oak chair over against the wall.

You might have supposed he had a grudge against the chair; and it seemed that the chair might be crying out to him in its own language:  “I am not merely a chair.  Look at me!  I was a limb on a mighty oak.  I was a child of the sun and the rain and the earth.  I used to sing and dance.  Oh, do not look at me like that!” But the gentleman knew nothing of all this.

Both the lady and the gentleman were thinking of nothing but themselves and they continued to do this even when a door opened and their son entered the room.

Their son’s name was Everychild; and because he is to be the most important person in this story I should like to tell you as much about him as I can.  But really, there is very little I can tell.  His mother often said that he was a peculiar child.  It was almost impossible to tell what his thoughts were, or his dreams, or how much he loved this person or that, or what he desired most.

It was difficult for him to get into the room.  He was carrying something which he could not manage very well.  But no one offered to help him.  Presently he had got quite into the room, leaving the door open.

The thing he carried was a kite, and he was holding it high to keep it free of the ground.  The tail had got caught in the string and there was a rent in the blue paper.