The Saliva Tree and other growths [antikvár]

The Saliva TreerJ ^ ^There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them.psalm xix'You know, I'm really much exercised about the Fourth Dimension,' said the fair-haired young man, with a suitable earnestness in his voice.'Um,' said his companion, staring up at the night sky.'It seems very much in evidence these days. Do you not think you catch a glimpse of it in the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley?''Um,' said his companion.They stood together on a low rise to the east of the sleepy East Anglian town of Cottersall, watching the stars, shivering a little in the chill February air. They are both young men in their early twenties. The one who is occupied with the Fourth Dimension is called Bruce Fox; he is tall and fair, and works as junior clerk in the Norwich firm of lawyers, Prendergast and Tout, The other, who has so far vouchsafed us only an um or two, although he is to figure largely as the hero of our account, is by name Gregory Rolles. He is tall and dark, with grey eyes set in his handsome and intelligent face. He and Fox have sworn to Think Large, thus distinguishing themselves, at least in their own minds, from all the rest of the occupants of Cottersall in these last years of the nineteenth century.'There's another!' exclaimed Gregory, breaking at last from the realm of monosyllables. He pointed a gloved finger up at the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer. A meteor streaked across the sky like a runaway flake of the Milky Way, and died in mid-air.