And, indeed, the horizon formed a circle about the children of which the watch-tower was the centre.
“We are in the middle of the earth! Ha! ha! ha!” George repeated.
“What a pity that the world is so big!” said Honey-Bee, “one might get lost and be separated from one’s friends.”
“How lucky that the world is so big! One can go in search of adventures. When I am grown up I mean to conquer the mountains that stand at the ends of the earth. That is where the moon rises; I shall seize her as she passes, and I will give her to you, Honey-Bee.”
“Yes,” said Honey-Bee, “give her to me and I will put her in my hair.”
Then they busied themselves searching for the places they knew as on a map.
“I recognise everything,” said Honey-Bee, who recognised nothing, “but what are those little square stones scattered over the hillside?”
“Houses,” George replied. “Those are houses. Don’t you recognise the capital of the Duchy of Clarides, little sister? After all, it is a great city; it has three streets, and one can drive through one of them. Don’t you remember that we passed through it last week when we went to the Hermitage?”
“That is the river. See the old stone bridge down there?”
“The bridge under which we fished for crayfish?”
“That’s the one; and in one of the niches stands the statue of the ‘Woman without a Head.’ One cannot see her from here because she is too small.”
“I remember. But why hasn’t she got a head?”
Without saying if this explanation was satisfactory, Honey-Bee gazed at the horizon.
“Little brother, little brother, just see what sparkles by the side of the blue mountains? It is the lake.”
They then remembered what the Duchess had told them of these beautiful and dangerous waters where the nixies dwell.
George was aghast. He stared at her with his mouth wide open.
“But the Duchess has forbidden us to go out alone, so how can we go to this lake which is at the end of the earth?”
“How can we go? I don’t know. It’s you who ought to know, for you are a man and you have a grammar-master.”
This piqued George who replied that one might be a man, and even a very brave man, and yet not know all the roads on earth. Whereupon Honey-Bee said drily with a little air of scorn which made him blush to his ears: