In Chapters 7 through 9 it is Mrs. Tuck and the boys who explain the spring to Winnie, not Angus Tuck. They relate how, many years ago, as they were passing through the area looking for a place to settle, they stopped to quench their thirst at the spring, and, except for the cat, "everyone took a drink, even the horse". They noticed that the water "tasted - sort of strange", but thought no more about it, and proceeded on. After a time, they became aware that they seemed to be unaffected by injury; accidents did not seem to hurt them a bit. Also, although the cat eventually died at a ripe old age, the rest of them did not seem to be aging. The Tucks traced their inexplicable longevity to the spring, and at first "went sort of crazy" at the thought that they would apparently live forever. After thinking about it more deeply, however, they realized the drawbacks of being "stop(ped) right where (they were)", and decided that it would "be very bad if everyone knowed about that spring". To this day, the Tucks do not understand "how (the spring) works, or even why". Angus Tuck "thinks it's something left over from...some other plan for the way the world should be...some plan that didn't work out too good...and so everything was changed...except that the spring was passed over, somehow or other" (Chapter 7).
No comments:
Post a Comment