“that I have been a student at what is called a university. May I ask, did you have those among the gnomes?”
“We gnomes did most of our learning day by day, as we lived,” said Glogo. “We learned not merely from our elders, but from all things in nature, the spirits of the trees and the plants.”
“All trees and plants have spirits, then?”
“All living things have spirits. How else can they act? How can they grow?”
“Are you able to exchange ideas with all these spirits?”
“All living things exchange ideas, even though they may not know it.”
“Tell me about the spirit of this fern, for example.” Rodney touched one close by his hand.
“The spirit of the fern is like that of a woman,” said Glogo. “It is gentle, modest, and humble, but also very strong—nothing discourages it. You have thoughtlessly bent and hurt one; it will suffer in silence, but when you are gone it will bravely go on with its task of making beauty. The little girl will understand the spirit of the fern, which hangs curtains all over the forest, and cannot rest until it has made the place pretty and homelike.”
“That is a very nice way to say it,” said Elizabeth. “I think I would understand the spirits of both the ferns and the flowers.”
“I suppose,” said Rodney, “that one has to be very old indeed in order to know the spirit of one of these redwoods.”
“A tree like that speaks of a great victory won. Millions of pounds of matter have been taken out of the earth with careful choice, and dissolved in water, lifted to those tremendous heights, and built into a tower which takes care of itself, and is safe against the blind forces of wind and fire. The spirit which builds that tree is strong and serene; it knows its power. It is in fact a great system, in which many spirits work in harmony. It is music which our Mother Nature has played for a hundred million years; and there has come only one voice to disturb it.”
“I know what you mean,” said Rodney. “There was a wise old man among us who said that God had protected the redwoods against everything but fools.”
“I am glad to hear of such a man,” replied Glogo. “It makes it easier for me to talk to you.”
“Our wise old man added that only the state could protect the trees against the fools; and to some extent that is being done.”
“I fear it is too late for my people,” said Glogo, and appeared to sink back into that mournfulness which had caused his case to be diagnosed as neurasthenia.
“We are going to find out about it,” said Rodney, with the quick cheerfulness that has to be learned by those who attend mental patients. “But first let me explain that it is the hour when we big people are accustomed to have lunch. How is it with you, Glogo?”
“We gnomes do not have regular hours for eating. We take our fern seed when and where we find it.”
“I wonder if you would be willing to try some of the kinds of food we have brought with us?”
Elizabeth began to unpack the lunch basket. She spread a paper tablecloth, and laid out four folded paper napkins. She took out the box of sandwiches, each wrapped in a piece of oiled paper. There were stuffed eggs, and a bottle of olives, and a little box of nuts, some lettuce and tomatoes, several ripe bananas, a bottle of milk, and the two thermos bottles. It was doubtless more food than the two gnomes had ever seen piled together in their many years of life. Bobo’s quick bright eyes moved from one object to another.
First they must “wet their whistles,” said Rodney; and a difficulty arose at once, for the cups which they had with them were not of gnome size. “I will fix that,” said Bobo, eager to taste all these strange foods of the big people. Forgetting his hurts, he ran into the forest, and came back with two gleaming tiger lilies. He twisted out the stamens and pistils, and wiped the cups clean of the golden pollen. Then into each of them Elizabeth poured some lemonade out of the thermos bottle, and watched the faces of the two gnomes while they tasted it.
“It is cold as the mountain snows!” exclaimed Bobo.
Not even neurasthenia could hold out against such a surprise. “Is it a spirit?” asked Glogo.
“It might be,” answered Rodney. “I have learned from you that there are all sorts of spirits. Here is a different kind,” he added, as he poured out the coffee. “Be careful now, for this is a mischievous spirit, and he will bite your tongue if he can.”
Of course the butler in the home of a lumber king would see to it that the thermos bottle contained good coffee, and the right amount of cream and sugar. Bobo was loud in his cries of delight, and Rodney explained that it was the spirit of the sun which the big people had learned to pen up in a bottle and take into their stomachs.
He told them how the lemons had come from Southern California, and the sugar from Louisiana, and the coffee from Brazil, and the butter from Denmark. All this was not so easy to understand, for the little forest creatures did not know that the earth was so big, and while they had learned that there were oceans, they did not understand how ships could sail upon them. When you were trying to help an old gnome to be happy, it was a mistake to speak of ships, and have to tell him that many of them were made out of murdered trees.
Elizabeth gave each of them a small piece of sandwich; and Rodney had to explain how wheat was grown and ground, and how butter and cheese were made from the milk of cows. Glogo took all this with quiet dignity; but Bobo was full of curiosity and fun, and nibbled his bread and his butter and his cheese, each one separately. A banana had to be cut into small slices, so that he could get comfortable bites out of it; then Rodney had to tell him about the strange kind of forests in which these plants grew, so different from the giant redwoods. Yet they were very old plants too; their ancestors had been on earth for millions of years, and had furnished food for all sorts of people. Some of them were small people, said Rodney, known as pygmies, but they were much bigger than gnomes, and Rodney did not think that Bobo would like to have a pygmy lady for a wife. Besides, she would speak Portuguese, or Indian, or some other language he wouldn’t understand.
“By the way,” said Rodney to Glogo, “I have been meaning to ask you, how does it happen that your people speak English?”
“English?” said the old gnome. “What is that?”
“That is the name of the language you speak.”
“What a strange idea!” commented Glogo. “I had in mind to ask you how you came to speak Gnomic.” And so that was that.
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