Yes, I never get tired of arches.  They are noble when shaped of solid marble blocks, each carefully beveled for its position.  They are beautiful when constructed with the large thin tiles the Romans were so fond of using.  I noticed some arches built in this way in the wall of one of the grand houses just going up on the bank of the river.  They were over the capstones of the windows,—­to take off the pressure from them, no doubt, for now and then a capstone will crack under the weight of the superincumbent mass.  How close they fit, and how striking the effect of their long radiations!”

The company listened very well up to this point.  When he began the strain of thoughts which follows, a curious look went round The Teacups.

What a strange underground life is that which is led by the organisms we call trees!  These great fluttering masses of leaves, stems, boughs, trunks, are not the real trees.  They live underground, and what we see are nothing more nor less than their tails.

The Mistress dropped her teaspoon.  Number Five looked at the Doctor, whose face was very still and sober.  The two Annexes giggled, or came very near it.

Yes, a tree is an underground creature, with its tail in the air.  All its intelligence is in its roots.  All the senses it has are in its roots.  Think what sagacity it shows in its search after food and drink!  Somehow or other, the rootlets, which are its tentacles, find out that there is a brook at a moderate distance from the trunk of the tree, and they make for it with all their might.  They find every crack in the rocks where there are a few grains of the nourishing substance they care for, and insinuate themselves into its deepest recesses.  When spring and summer come, they let their tails grow, and delight in whisking them about in the wind, or letting them be whisked about by it; for these tails are poor passive things, with very little will of their own, and bend in whatever direction the wind chooses to make them.  The leaves make a deal of noise whispering.  I have sometimes thought I could understand them, as they talk with each other, and that they seemed to think they made the wind as they wagged forward and back.  Remember what I say.  The next time you see a tree waving in the wind, recollect that it is the tail of a great underground, many-armed, polypus-like creature, which is as proud of its caudal appendage, especially in summer-time, as a peacock of his gorgeous expanse of plumage.

Do you think there is anything so very odd about this idea?  Once get it well into your heads, and you will find it renders the landscape wonderfully interesting.  There are as many kinds of tree-tails as there are of tails to dogs and other quadrupeds.  Study them as Daddy Gilpin studied them in his “Forest Scenery,” but don’t forget that they are only the appendage of the underground vegetable polypus, the true organism to which they belong.

He paused at this point, and we all drew long breaths, wondering what was coming next.  There was no denying it, the “cracked Teacup” was clinking a little false,—­so it seemed to the company.  Yet, after all, the fancy was not delirious,—­the mind could follow it well enough; let him go on.