Wet Magic
sure to say the spell somehow or other. I assure you that this is true; and then you will go home with the speed of an eel."
They felt, somehow, in their bones that this was true, and it consoled them a little. Things which you feel in your bones are most convincing.
"But Mother," said Mavis.
"You don't seem to know much about magic," said Maia pityingly: "the first principle of magic is that time spent in other worlds doesn't count in your own home. No, I see you don't understand. In your home it's still the same time as it was when you dived into the well in the cave."
"But that's hours ago," said Bernard; and she answered:
"I know. But your time is not like our time at all."
"What's the difference?"
"I can't explain," said the Princess. "You can't compare them any more than you can compare a starlight and a starfish. They're quite, quite different. But the really important thing is that your Mother won't be anxious. So now why not enjoy yourselves?"
And all this time the other Princess had been holding up the jar which was the source of all the rivers in all the world.
"Won't she be very tired?" asked Reuben.
"Yes, but suppose all the rivers dried up—and she had to know how people were suffering—that would be something much harder to bear than tiredness. Look in the pool and see what she is doing for the world."
They looked, and it was like a colored cinematograph; and the pictures melted into one another like the old dissolving views that children used to love so before cinematographs were thought of.
They saw the Red Indians building their wigwams by the great rivers—and the beavers building their dams across the little rivers; they saw brown men setting their fish traps by the Nile, and brown girls sending out little golden-lighted love-ships on the
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