Well, we must be jolly old-fashioned then,’ said Bessie. ‘Because we not only believe in the Faraway Tree and love our funny friends there, but we go to see them too – and we visit the lands at the top of the Tree as well!
They saw the flicker of bats overhead. They smelt the drifting scent of honeysuckle, and the delicious smell of wild thyme crushed under their bodies. A reed-warbler sang a beautiful little song in the reeds below, and then another answered.
The point is not that I don’t recognise bad people when I see them – I grant you I may quite well be taken in by them – the point is that I know a good person when I see one.
A clown needn’t be the same out of the ring as he has to be when he’s in it. If you look at photographs of clowns when they’re just being ordinary men, they’ve got quite sad faces.
I expect when we grow up, we shall think like them – but let’s hope we remember what it was like to think in the way children do, and understand the boys and the girls that are growing up when we’re men and women.
To wish undone something you have done, to wish you could look back on kindness to someone you love, instead of on unkindness – that is a very terrible thing.
I get over a hundred letters a day from all over the world, from children and parents, and it’s a wonder I ever have time to write books, let alone speak!
