“What search, my boy?”

“For the source of everything,” said Armine, lowering his voice and looking into his muddy hole.

“But that is above, not below,” said Mary.

“Yes,” said Armine reverently; “but I think God put life and the beginning of growing into the earth, and I want to find it.”

“Isn’t it Truth?” said Babie.  “Mr. Acton said Truth was at the bottom of a well.  I won’t look at the kobolds if they keep one from seeing Truth.”

“But I must get my ring and all my jewels from them,” put in Elfie.

“Should you know Truth?” asked Mr. Ogilvie.  “What do you think she is like?”

“So beautiful!” said Babie, clasping her fingers with earnestness.  “All white and clear like crystal, with such blue, sweet, open eyes.  And she has an anchor.”

“That’s Hope?” said Armine.

“Oh!  Hope and Truth go hand in hand,” said Babie; “and Hope will be all robed in green like the young corn-fields in the spring.”

“Ah, Babie, that emerald Hope and crystal Truth are not down in the earth, earthy,” said Mary again.

“Nay, perhaps Armine has got hold of a reality,” said Mr. Ogilvie.  “They are to be found above by working below.”

“Talking paradox to Armine?” said the cheerful voice of the young mother.  “My dear sprites, do you know that it is past eight!  How wet you are!  Good night, and mind you don’t go upstairs in those boots.”

“It is quite comfortable to hear anything so commonplace,” said Mary, when the children had run away, to the sound of its reiteration after full interchange of good nights.  “Those imps make one feel quite eerie.”

“Has Armine been talking in that curious fashion of his,” said Carey, as they began to pace the walks.  “I am afraid his thinker is too big-—as the child says in Miss Tytler’s book.  This morning over his parsing he asked me-—’Mother, which is realest, what we touch or what we feel?’ knitting his brows fearfully when I did not catch his meaning, and going on-—’I mean is that fly as real as King David?’ and then as I was more puzzled he went on—-’You see we only need just see that fly now with our outermost senses, and he will only live a little while, and nobody cares or will think of him any more, but everybody always does think, and feel, and care a great deal about King David.’  I told him, as the best answer I could make on the spur of the moment, that David was alive in Heaven, but he pondered in and broke out—-’No, that’s not it!  David was a real man, but it is just the same about Perseus and Siegfried, and lots of people that never were men, only just thoughts.  Ain’t thoughts realer than things, mother?’”

“But much worse for him, I should say,” exclaimed Mary.

“I thought of Pisistratus Caxton, and wrote to Mr. Ogilvie.  It is a great pity, but I am afraid he ought not to dwell on such things till his body is grown up to his mind.”