CHAPTER XXIV.
DAFFODIL’S journey to Grachidichika was accomplished without the least suspicion being aroused, and she was established in the House of Parliament, henceforth her abode. The private fortune of Croässaquagha enabled the new sovereign to arrange for the maintenance of his Court, Army, and household on a scale slightly less penurious than that of his predecessor, and Croässaquagha was to have an attendant of her own. With the sanction of the Queen Raucacoäxine. Seventy Seven And A Half was, for this purpose, to be transferred to the Grachidichikan service, as Head (and only) Royal and Matrimonial Lady’s‐maid and also several other feminine officials—the limits of the Royal purse requiring this multiplication of her. It was too plain that her presence in the Palace of Grachidichika, to put her long obsolete departments in order before the arrival of the new Queen, was really requisite, for the bridal pair’s request for her being despatched thither at once to meet with any inquiry; and thus she was at hand to provide for Daffodil’s needs. Her betrothed, nominated for the important posts of Royal and Matrimonial Chief Valet, Royal and page: 357 Matrimonial Steward, Prime Minister, and Royal and Matrimonial Private Secretary, assisted her in this duty, which it was not difficult for them to perform unobserved at night or when Parliament was not sitting, and, if some of their visits to the Speaker had been remarked, their official positions would have suggested business for the State as the motive of their interviews. The mourning for King Grenoulcrawk and the funeral ceremonies, and then the continued course of marriage for King Brekekex and Queen Croässaquagha, caused adjournments of Parliament; and for this Daffodil was glad, as she was relieved from the uncomfortable expectation of the entrance of the member whose day it might be, and from the necessity of sitting rigidly motionless for hours, if he happened to come in an oratorical state of mind.
The new King and Queen visited Parliament in State, on their coming to reside in their Kingdom. Of course the Speaker had to stand, and it was remarked that he had never within any one’s memory done it so well before—a circumstance which created great confidence in the Prime Minister who had arranged him. After that occasion Their Majesties’ visits were made in the security of the night; and now and then the Queen herself with Seventy Seven And A Half would unfasten the Speaker and let Daffodil out into complete freedom until it was time for her to be sewn in again. If there was not leisure enough for this operation, Daffodil could throw off the Speaker’s robes and mantle and substitute for them one of Croässaquagha’s largest heather‐bells, which Seventy Seven And A Half would have ready for her. page: 358 It was not thought prudent for her to come within sight of the inhabited buildings, but she walked about the guggle‐gig grounds with her friends—or at times alone, for they could not always come—and she rested in conversation with them in the retired canals. The Regius Professor of Everything and the Head Royal Physician were permitted by Queen Raucacoäxine to transgress the rule of the inaccessibility of Grachidichika, providing they were supposed not to do so, and, in their secret visits, they would join the little party at night, and then the meetings in the Private Under‐Princess’s home seemed to be renewed.
The first moment Daffodil was with Their Majesties quite alone she had told them she had a secret for them that would give them more than all the wealth of Grachidichika’s vanished days of prosperity. She led them to poor Queen Chachareraroncaxa’s scarlet, or rather once scarlet, guggle‐gigs, and told the story of the waterings with the lighting‐water from the Ancient Royal Wardrobe, and the old Queen’s plan for the canal secretly fed by the unfathomed reservoir. A portion of Croässaquagha’s fortune was to have been expended in renovating the Palace and the Barracks, laying out the faded Royal Garden anew with coloured earth, and either restoring order to the Ancient Royal Wardrobe or (for Croässaquagha had a whim, in which Daffodil zealously encouraged her, for keeping it in its present half wild state) in enlarging the little Royal Wardrobe which had served for recent Queens of Grachidichika: it was instantly decided that the money should be spent on obtaining the wealth of the scarlet guggle‐ page: 359 gigs. Hundreds of workmen were set next day to digging a wide canal from a reservoir of brackish water of a common sort, which happened to be near the Ancient Royal Wardrobe’s lighting‐water reservoir, to the guggle‐gig grounds; the grounds were doubled in extent, and, when the great canal was made, it was intersected with a network of little canals making chequers all over them. People thought it an odd thing King Brekekex should want so much more produce of guggle‐gigs and guggle‐ooze when he possessed them already in such useless quantity, but they supposed it came somehow from his being a poet, and that explanation set curiosity at rest. When the workmen had finished all they had to do, and had left Grachidichika, came the carrying out of the secret part of the project. The three servants on whom Queen Chachareraroncaxa had thought she could rely were easily identified: they were native Grachidichikans of immense age who had never been outside the kingdom, and who possessed not only the hatred to Croäxaxica natural from their never having been there, but an added and unquenchable hatred from their having lived in days when their country still enjoyed a passable revenue from the sale of guggle‐gigs and having seen its decay when Croäxaxica had possessed itself of an ample supply of guggle‐gigs of its own growing. They were devoted to the Royal Family of Grachidichika, and the Royal Family, of course, whatever its pedigree and relationships, was considered of pure Grachidichikan blood, but they could never be got to enter into conversation with a Croäxaxican, or a Grachidichikan with Croäxaxican mixture in his veins, or a Grachi‐ page: 360 dichikan who consorted with Croäxaxicans—a patriotic virtue which limited them to each other for society. There was no risk of their letting out the secret accidentally, and nothing could have prevailed to make them do so intentionally. To these was entrusted the task of limiting the quantity of brackish water that could enter the canal, and making an unsuspected tunnel by which a full current from the lighting‐water reservoir could unceasingly mingle with it. Of course, for fear of discovery, they could only work by night; but this enabled King Brekekex, his Queen, and Daffodil to help in the digging and carrying sods and soil; and the operations, which fortunately were of small extent, were finished with speed and success. Happy indeed was their result for the Matrimonial Royal Family and the Kingdom of Grachidichika! The scarlet guggle‐gigs, the bluish violet guggle‐ooze, were found, not only a luxury such as Croäxaxica had never yet known, but cure or preventive for almost every disease, and, above all, potent in the creation of beauty: they fetched prices hitherto undreamed and the King of Grachidichika’s income was counted by millions of millions. The guggle‐gig growers of Croäxaxica tried to raise the scarlet variety: at first they thought all that was needed was to imitate King Brekekex in having small plots and numerous runnels of water, and when, to their surprise, that did not suffice, they tried cuttings from what were sent from Grachidichika for the table, and one wealthy grower even succeeded, by immense bribes, in getting some stolen roots from King Brekekex’s grounds: but nothing they could hit on would do, page: 361 and Grachidichika has never lost its wealth‐giving monopoly.
Queen Raucacoäxine was for a while uneasy at the immense accession to the revenue of the Grachidichikan King. True he was a son of hers and she was proud of him, but, although she had rejoiced when it was found that he would, far unlike poor Grenoulcrawk, have means to rival in Court splendours the most splendid of former Grachidichikan Kings, things wore a changed aspect to her patriotic heart when the increasing demand for his guggle‐gigs made him well‐nigh able to rival in Court splendours the present Croäxaxican King, her own Royal Husband. But, on its being agreed that the guggle‐gigs imported from Grachidichika should pay such heavy tolls to the Royal Treasury of Croäxaxica as made a very decided addition to its income, she felt that she could indulge in unmixed pleasure at her son’s good fortune.
Daffodil’s own position was made worse by the prosperity she had helped to bring to her Royal friends. What with increase of the Royal Household staffs, the introduction of separate persons for Court posts, the bringing up the Army to its full complement, and other such changes, the number of the inhabitants of Grachidichika became multiplied several times over: and this, it was found too late, caused the chance of some one seeing her in her walks at night, or passing the House of Parliament while she was stretching herself, to be now a serious risk. And Brekekex and Croässaquagha were hindered in their intercourse with her both by their engagements of State and of Royal hospitality and by their increasing page: 362 difficulty in escaping observation. Seventy Seven And A Half (or, as her title now was, the Head Royal and Matrimonial Lady’s‐maid) and the Royal and Matrimonial Chief Valet were able to provide for her requirements still, but as, although their importance was greatly raised, they now each presided over only one Department, they had not the same cover as formerly if they should be observed paying frequent visits to the Speaker, especially as no events of ceremonial moment were at present occurring in Grachidichika: they had to be chary of their coming, and usually to hasten away directly the time for a few formal sentences to the Speaker might be supposed to have elapsed. Excepting during the sitting of Parliament, Daffodil was very lonely. The sittings of Parliament, however, only added to her weariness. They had become greatly prolonged. The number of members had been trebled to bring it to the ancient Constitutional figure from which it had fallen off and to allow more people to have the honour of the position; it was therefore necessary that three members should divide a day between them instead of only one having it for his speech: this made some of the speeches shorter than they would have been, but there were now more of them, and she lost the respites she had had under the one member a day system. when sometimes a reticent or pre‐occupied member would speak but a few minutes and. having thus fulfilled his duty, go away, leaving the rest of the Parliamentary hours to pass undisturbed.
One night, when the two trusted attendants had succeeded in getting Daffodil safely into the Ancient Royal Wardrobe, whither no one might follow Queen page: 363 Croässaquagha without her special permission, the Queen was full of talk of her happiness and honours. “And Grachidichika,” she said, “is the true home for sensitive genius—of genius which declines to abase itself to effort, of genius which has itself for its own end. Grachidichika is secluded from agitation and demands no exertion.”
“But very much doing nothing feels such a waste of time,” said Daffodil pensively.
“Oh no, no waste of time for those like you and me,” exclaimed Croässaquagha, too happy herself to perceive her friend’s melancholy. “Not for us the vulgar ambition of results; not for us performance which the multitude can appreciate. And yet, dear, there is one outward manifestation which my genius is itself calling me to use. Yes, at last it has found its true vent—not in aught material, not in visible masterpieces such as your robuster imagination can fetter itself to produce and not faint of the clog‐such as in my earlier misconception of Art’s mission for me I wrested my gift to produce,—my genius’s vent, its vocation, its mission to the world, is Conversation.”
“Oh! You won’t have to come and say it to the Speaker?” said Daffodil, before she had had time to think.
“No, that cannot be,” replied Queen Croässaquagha commiseratingly. “My conversation is unofficial. I give Royal Familiar Conversation Evenings—two or three selected minds that can appreciate are invited, I pour out my soul in conversation, King Brekekex recites his poems, our guests sit entranced or burst into loud rapture and remarks at will—we have no page: 364 ceremonial etiquette on these evenings to limit their freedom of intercourse with us; they are not even forbidden to take notes as I speak. Poor dear, I wish you weren’t kept out of it. But stop—it’s horribly dangerous, but I think we could make out a form of courtesy for inviting the Speaker for once. You could be put in a dark corner and sit quite still. We’ll try it—Yes, to‐morrow.”
But, to her amazement, Daffodil burst out with “Oh no! No! no more sitting death‐still pretending to be the Speaker and being afraid every minute of being found out. I’ve too much of it already—too much! And oh the speeches, speeches, speeches!—I can’t listen to anybody more than those dreadful Members of Parliament I have to endure hour after hour already,” and, the girl’s self‐command having thus given way, she burst into a passion of tears and expatiated piteously on the hatefulness of the life she was leading.
Croässaquagha was distressed. “We thought it all so nice and comfortable for you,” she said. “And the position of Speaker is a most exalted one.”
“I oughtn’t to grumble, when there has been so much kindness,” was all Daffodil could rejoin. She had revealed her misery, and could not gainsay it.
King Brekekex came presently, and Daffodil choked down her tears and endeavoured to interest herself in the King’s poem on her tragical end, which he had brought to read to her. She found that she was described as having been condemned for bringing to Croäxaxica the weapon which had injured Brekekex’s foot. Brekekex answered her remonstrance against what she considered a misstatement of the page: 365 fact, that it had been decided by Queen Raucacoäxine that she was pardoned for her other High Treason, so it should be considered never to have taken place, and that the High Treason for which she had perished was to be that one which could not set a bad example to any one, because no one could ever follow it—namely, her importing the thing she called a pin which had nearly killed him. And it is thus that the crime of the strange being who became Dressmaker Plenipotentiary and the betrothed of the famous Brekekex, and perished the minute before his marriage to her successor, is to this day related in Croäxaxica.
In the midst of the argument, Daffodil’s assumed composure gave way—for no particular reason at the moment; but when one has cried too much one is some time before one is safe against crying more. Croässaquagha was forced to tell her husband the real source of this outburst of grief, although Daffodil had wished that nobody should be disappointed by hearing of her repinings in the position which had been provided for her safety. While Croässaquagha was relating, Daffodil sobbing, and Brekekex spreading out his hands and raising his eyes in dismay, the Regius Professor of Everything entered; so matters had to be explained to him too. Daffodil felt sadly ashamed of her discontent, and she saw that her friends could not help looking on her as somewhat unreasonable; but they pitied her nevertheless, and they knew that the danger of her being discovered was increasing, and was, indeed, becoming a source of anxiety for every one concerned in the conspiracy which had kept her alive after she had formally perished. They racked their brains for expedients page: 366 for her safe keeping, and she, refreshed by even the suggestion of something possibly to be done, regained her self‐possession and tried with them. But, alas! there could be no change of the place and mode of her concealment that would not certainly bring betrayal of their secret with all its terrifying consequences.
“If there were but another country besides Grachidichika and Croäxaxica,” sighed Brekekex despondingly.
“There is my own country,” said Daffodil, making them all smile at her patriotic simplicity in the comparison. However, it was admitted that what she called her country was somewhere that would have done for her, if she could by any means have been got back to it. And, as the idea seemed to afford some consolation to her, it was decided that the Regius Professor of Everything should undertake an exhaustive research into all the history and science that was ever written, and the topography of Grachidichika and Croäxaxica in the past and in the present, and the nature of things in general, in order to find out if there could ever be any chance of anyhow by which her getting somewhere outside those countries could be made in the least likely. The Regius Professor of Everything, who grew deeply animated over the prospect of these long and interesting researches, considered that it would not take him very many years to arrive at a conclusion whether there had ever been anything of the kind, and that that conclusion would make a starting‐point. At this announcement Their Matrimonial Majesties clapped their hands and praised the Professor; but page: 367 Daffodil could only try to smile, in her hopelessness.
The Regius Professor of Everything had come, by King Brekekex’s desire, with Daffodil’s famous pin. It had been entrusted to him for investigation, previous to its being consigned to the Royal Museum of Marvels, and Brekekex wished to examine it and have Daffodil’s explanation of it, that he might the better achieve the stirring description of it he meant to have in his new poem. There was much surprise when Daffodil showed that the tuft of moss round the head and the rust and green spores on the stem were no part of the construction of the implement, and, after a little labour of scraping and rubbing, produced the pin to them cleared and almost bright—in the state in which it is now preserved in the Royal Museum of Marvels, enclosed in a costly and exquisitely made sheath of plaited fish‐bones. She had her surprise too, for, chancing to take up the tuft out of which she had extracted the pin’s head, she found it was studded with little growing things looking like tiny beads of several colours, but soft like mushrooms to the touch. “They are of no consequence,” said the Professor of Everything, as she admired them. “We find various coloured sprouts on some of our plants, and, if they would last, they might be useful in jewellery, but they never come to the size of even the smallest toadstool, and they burst or shrink into nothing as soon as they have come to their full size. So we never notice them.” But Daffodil thought she would keep them and notice them; and, insignificant as they were, she found that the little things made her an interest page: 368 amid the monotony of what soon had to be, for safety’s sake, her almost unbroken imprisonment in the House of Parliament. Directly the Parliamentary sitting was over and the last Member gone, she would take her tuft of moss from the little pool she kept it in and look for the change in each little bead. They had a way of varying their colours which greatly attracted her; and sometimes one would have grown less than its neighbours, or would seem shrivelled, and then she fed its roots with drops of the nourishing yellow mud in which the decorative flowers of the Speaker’s canopy were embedded, and watched the nursling revive and spread. She had to be very tender in her handling, for sometimes, on a touch, two or three of them would break and run together in one, or would even wholly disappear: but this necessity for care, though sometimes vexatious, made her peculiar gardening all the more absorbing and her funny little treasures the more precious. So the fungi that were thought of so little consequence helped her to patience, and gave her the something to enliven her pent up life without which her mind might have grown too gloomy and weak for her to be able to resist the temptation which at times came upon her to rush out and reveal herself and end the long restraint. Of course she never would have seriously planned such an act—if no thought for her own life hindered such a plan, there was the betrayal of her preservers to consider.
But weeks went on, and Daffodil’s one interest threatened to fail her. The little beads had become big enough to touch each other, and then, though page: 369 she tried hard to keep them apart, they had grown into each other until there were only five. The five went on for a while still increasing in bulk, till they became like small toadstools, at first of all the bright colours the beads had shown, but soon only a silvery grey. And, before many days after that change, the silver was fading out of the grey, and the fungi began to shrivel. Evidently they were going to shrink into nothing, as the Regius Professor had said. All Daffodil’s efforts to renew their freshness failed, and she watched their decay in sadness, as if they had been live things about to die. At last a hope came into her heart. She waited till the quietest time of night, and ventured through the canals—swimming very slowly, not to be heard, and keeping only her nose and mouth above water—till she got into the guggle‐gig grounds. There she dipped the perforated bladder‐berry which was her own drinking cup into the precious violet guggle‐ooze till it was quite full. And now she had to go back by, instead of swimming in the canals, running on the paths, that the ooze might not be lost in the canal water; but she was fortunate enough to meet no one. No sooner was she safe back in the House of Parliament than she tried her experiment for restoring her beloved nurslings to health by the vigour‐giving guggle‐ooze water. She intended to try it only very gradually on one of the fungi to begin with, lest the ooze should not prove so suitable as she expected; but, in her eagerness, she did not wait long enough to recover from the exertion of the extreme speed at which she had had to run; her hand shook, and she spirted the ooze freely over all the five. There was page: 370 an instant sound of cracking and splitting—every one of the fungi had vanished; something like a little slime and dust lay for a moment where each had stood, then sank into the moss and left no trace. Daffodil positively screamed with grief and remorse. It felt as if they were friends she had killed.
Next morning early she was awakened from troubled slumbers by the sound of approaching voices and steps. She had barely time to arrange herself in the Speaker’s seat in stately stiffness, when a little crowd blocked the window and the door and a policeman entered and began to hunt about in every nook and corner, as if for some lost object. As soon as he went out, another came in and hunted about in the same way, and then another, and another. She heard the people outside telling each other that some one passing near the House of Parliament in the night had heard a fearful cry from within and had had to run away as fast as he could, lest anything should be going to happen; he had hastened this morning to give the information, and this inspection was the result. Fortunately for Daffodil, everything that could have betrayed her was hidden away in the hollows of the Speaker’s seat and footstool, except the bladder‐berry cup full of ooze. That was found lying where she had let it drop in her sorrowful disappointment, and was considered to show that some villain, probably from Croäxaxica, had been marauding in the guggle‐gig grounds and had carried his insolence so far as to try to use the House of Parliament as a temporary shelter. He had doubtless been alarmed by the august presence of the Speaker, and hence the cry page: 371 that had been heard. The drinking bladder was carried away in proof of this story, and Daffodil was still unsuspected. But the idea of strangers coming with nefarious purposes to the precious scarlet guggle‐gig grounds and harbouring in the House of Parliament, once set afoot, aroused a watchfulness which made it still more difficult than it had already become for her friends to approach her and for her to stir forth.
In spite of her serious anxiety during the inspection, Daffodil could not but feel a pang when she saw the tuft of moss upon which her nurslings had grown tossed into a corner as a thing of nought. It seemed to her a relic of the dear little companions of her seclusion, and, as soon as she was safely alone, she sought it where she had seen it fall. What was her surprise, as she gently smoothed it out, to find growing in the centre of it a tiny cup of five silvery grey petals! The broken fungi had not died; they had run together under the moss to reappear in this form. Daffodil could hardly refrain from a cry of delight which would have entailed another inspection of her abode. She had not killed her friends; and she had again something to pet and watch.
Next time the Head Royal and Matrimonial Valet got to her with provisions, she begged him for the future to let her always have with the supply what she had hitherto declined, a vase of guggle‐ooze. When she had obtained one, she began to feed her flower with the choice fluid—very, very, carefully, trying but one drop like a grain of sand the first time, and only watering amply when she had gradually become quite sure that it did good. page: 372 Under this treatment, the strange little plant throve and developed: ere long the petals doubled and formed an inner cup, the inner cup grew taller and the outer cup wider, and at last there was, in all but colour, the exact copy of what Daffodil had picked on the felled tree. Daffodil found a new joy in this resemblance, but she did not let it delude her into belief in the usefulness of her flower: something in its look and touch made her feel sure that the mysterious life of the elf‐cup was not in it. She set the moss in a bowl of guggle‐ooze, and thus amply nourished, the plant gained new vigour, the silvery grey hue took a faint blue tinge in the saucer petals and a faint pink in the cup petals; but after that there was no more change, she had to be content with admiring it as it was and watching anxiously against injuries or symptoms of disease. And, well as she still loved it, it was not so interesting now it was always alike.
There came a Parliamentary recess. Daffodil could breathe freely all day. But now she was moping and languid, and she came to think that even the Members of Parliament with their speeches were better than the long monotony of every day. She sat half asleep hour by hour, just rousing herself to take the necessary food or to see that her plant had guggle‐ooze enough, and she noticed nothing much. She did not see the beginning of a threatening sign in the soft grey petals; they were hardening ready to shrivel. But in a little while the mischief was more visible: it caught her eye one day as she replenished the bowl, and bitter were her self‐reproaches for not having been more page: 373 alert to detect the first traces of waning freshness. All her energy was now given to invigorate the plant and check the advance of decay; but whatever she could do seemed labour lost. The hardness passed off, the petals hung limp and full of wrinkles, the whole flower was well‐nigh dead. “Something must be done for you, my darling,” cried Daffodil in desperation, and, remembering the virtue of the guggle‐ooze and whence it was derived, she thought of something. She wrote an impassioned letter to Queen Croässaquagha, beseeching her to send her some of the lighting‐water of the Ancient Royal Wardrobe. This was an inconvenient request, for anything that could in the least awaken suspicion of other uses than that of light‐giving for this water might lead to the discovery of the secret of the scarlet guggle‐gigs and the ruin of the new born prosperity of Grachidichika: but Daffodil’s anxiety to preserve her plant’s life seemed so intense that Brekekex and Croässaquagha agreed that she could not be denied what she had persuaded herself would be a restorative for it, and, after much mental effort, they devised a scheme for sending her the lighting‐water unperceived by the Head Royal Valet who took it to her. They filled some mussel‐shells with the water and carefully closed their valves together with mud, then, laying them at the bottom of a basket, they placed above them some remarkably fine mussels, and sent them to her as a special present from the King and Queen. The Head Royal Valet naturally enjoyed himself upon a few, but the mussel‐shells at the bottom were smaller than those at the top, so he was not tempted to page: 374 prefer them, and they reached their destination untouched. Daffodil did not look on the present very gratefully; Their Matrimonial Majesties had not ventured to reveal their stratagem by letter, and she thought these mussels had been sent her as a sort of consolation for the withholding the lighting‐water, for which she rummaged in vain among them as well as among the other stores the Head Royal Valet left with her as usual. But, reflecting that so great a loss might come of any imprudence about the lighting‐water that the King and Queen of Grachidichika might well find a difficulty in sending it, she became ashamed of her cross feelings and began to eat the mussels, as a sort of apology. Soon she chanced upon one that was very tight closed, and muddy at the edges, and, when she had got it opened, there was the glitter of the shining water! She hastened to try her flower with a drop like a splash of dew, and to her delight the flower drank it and seemed at once to expand a little. She would not risk doing too much at once, but, with punctual care, she went on from time to time letting another drop trickle into each cup, and at last she could be sure that the petals were regaining their smooth fleshy texture and their opaline tints of silvery grey with the pale pink and the pale blue shining through. She continued to bestow daily some of the contents of her treasured shells of water on the plant after its recovery, lest there should be any relapse, and soon she found its colours deepening and flushing. And a strange hope began in her heart, and now she tended the flower with a trembling anxiety for what it might become for her. page: 375 The colours still deepened and flushed, and at last the upper petals were the brightest and clearest scarlet possible, and the lower petals the richest crimson. The elf‐cup was there in full life.
But what then? She tried to make it unclose the green vault over her from below, as the elf‐cup which had brought her to Croäxaxica had from above, but in vain. There was not the slightest sign of its possessing any power. The ceiling of the House of Parliament remained unshaken when she had, after effort on effort, clambered and swung herself aloft among the drooping water‐grasses to touch it with her talisman. It was the same with the Ancient Royal Wardrobe, where, by much urgency, she got her friends to let her venture once more to make her trial. It was the same when Brekekex and Croässaquagha, to whom she had tremblingly confided the priceless flower, tested its effect for her in one place after another. They had at last to send it back to her by the Head Royal and Matrimonial Lady’s‐maid, once Seventy Seven And A Half, with the discouraging message that it had no value but that which her defunct Plenipotentiaryship’s Pre‐eminence took in watching its growth had given it.
