Chapter 5

One day, not long after this, Bee and George, without being seen, climbed up the stairs of the Keep which rises in the middle of the castle. On reaching the platform they shouted loudly and clapped their hands. The view stretched over rolling downs, cultivated and cut up into small green and brown squares. On the horizon they could see hills and woods-blue in the distance.
“Little sister,” cried George, “little sister, look at the whole earth.”

“It is very big,” said Bee.
“My professor,” said George, “had taught me that it was big, but as Gertrude our governess says, seeing is believing.”
They walked round the platform.
“Here is a marvellous thing, little brother,” said Bee. “The castle is in the middle of the whole earth, and we, who are on the Keep, which is in middle of the castle, are now in the middle of the whole world. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
And really the skyline was around the children like a circle of which the Keep was the centre.
“We are in the middle of the world. Ha! Ha! Ha!” George repeated.
Then both began to think.
“What a pity it is that the world is so big!” said Bee. “You can lose yourself in it and be separated from your friends.”
George shrugged his shoulders.
“How nice it is that the world is so big! You can look for adventures in it. Bee, when I am grown up I mean to conquer those mountains which are right at the end of the earth. It is there that the moon rises. I will catch it as I go along and give it to you, my Bee."
“That's it,” said Bee; “you will give it to me and I will set it in my hair.”
Then they began to look for the places they knew as if on a map.
“I know perfectly where we are,” said Bee (who knew nothing of the sort), “but I cannot guess what all those little square stones sown on the side of the hill are.”
“Houses!” answered George; “those are houses! Don't you recognise, little sister, the capital, of the Duchy of the Clarides? It is quite a big town; it has three streets, of which one is paved. We passed through it last week to go to the Hermitage. Don't you remember it?”
“And that winding stream?”
“That's the river. Look at the old stone bridge over there.”
“The bridge under which we fished for lobsters?”
“The very one, which has in the recess the statue of the 'Headless Woman,' but you cannot see her from here because she is too small.”
“I remember. Why has she no head?”
“Probably because she has lost it.”
Without saying whether the explanation satisfied her, Bee kept her eyes fixed on the distance.
“Little brother, little brother, do you see what is shining near the blue mountains? It is the lake.”
“It's the lake!”
They now remembered what the Duchess had told them of the lovely and dangerous waters, where the Sylphs had their manor.
“Let us go there,” said Bee.
This decision overwhelmed George, who gaped and said:
“The Duchess has forbidden us to go out alone, and how can we get to this lake, which is at the end of the world?”
“How to get there I really don't know, but you ought to, who are a man and have a grammar master.”
George was stung, and answered that it is possible to be a man, and even a fine man, without knowing all the roads in the world. Bee gave him a mincing, disdainful look, made him blush to the tips of his ears, and said to him primly:
“I am not the one who promised to conquer the blue mountains and to unhook the moon. I do not know the road to the lake, but I will find it; you see!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” said George, trying to laugh.
“You laugh like a booby, sir.”
“Bee, boobies neither laugh nor cry.”
“If they did they would laugh like you. I will go to the lake alone. And while I discover the lovely waters where the Sylphs live, you can stay at the castle all by yourself like a little girl. I will leave you my tapestry frame and my doll. Please take great care of them, George; please take great care of them.”
George had pride. He felt the shame which Bee put upon him. With his head down, darkly, be cried in a muffled voice:
“All right! We will go to the lake!”

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