THE GOLDEN AGE By Kenneth Grahame "'T IS OPPORTUNE TO LOOK BACK UPON OLD TIMES, AND CONTEMPLATE OUR FOREFATHERS. GREAT EXAMPLES GROW THIN, AND TO BE FETCHED FROM THE PASSED WORLD. SIMPLICITY FLIES AWAY, AND INIQUITY COMES AT LONG STRIDES UPON US. " SIR THOMAS BROWNE Contents: PROLOGUE--THE OLYMPIANS A HOLIDAY A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS SAWDUST AND SIN "YOUNG ADAM CUPID" THE BURGLARS A HARVESTING SNOWBOUND WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT THE ARGONAUTS THE ROMAN ROAD THE SECRET DRAWER "EXIT TYRANNUS" THE BLUE ROOM A FALLING OUT "LUSISTI SATIS" PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS Looking back to those days of old, ere the gate shut behind me, I cansee now that to children with a proper equipment of parents these thingswould have worn a different aspect. But to those whose nearest wereaunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind may be allowed. Theytreated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh, but after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise, theresult of a certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace convictionthat your child is merely animal. At a very early age I rememberrealising in a quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of thatstupidity, and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grewup in me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague senseof a ruling power, wilful and freakish, and prone to the practice ofvagaries--"just choosing so:" as, for instance, the giving of authorityover us to these hopeless and incapable creatures, when it might farmore reasonably have been given to ourselves over them. These elders, our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect, but only acertain blend of envy--of their good luck--and pity--for their inabilityto make use of it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features intheir character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them:which wasn't often) that, having absolute licence to indulge in thepleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabblein the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the mostuncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth and buygunpowder in the full eye of the sun--free to fire cannons and explodemines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things. Noirresistible Energy haled them to church o' Sundays; yet they went thereregularly of their own accord, though they betrayed no greater delightin the experience than ourselves. On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirelyvoid of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, andtheir habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearancesthey were blind. For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!)simply produced so many apples and cherries: or it didn't, when thefailures of Nature were not infrequently ascribed to us. They neverset foot within fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hidtherein. The mysterious sources--sources as of old Nile--that fed theduck-pond had no magic for them. They were unaware of Indians, norrecked they anything of bisons or of pirates (with pistols!), though thewhole place swarmed with such portents. They cared not about exploringfor robbers' caves, nor digging for hidden treasure. Perhaps, indeed, it was one of their best qualities that they spent the greater part oftheir time stuffily indoors. To be sure, there was an exception in the curate, who would receiveunblenching the information that the meadow beyond the orchard wasa prairie studded with herds of buffalo, which it was our delight, moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those whoops that announcethe scenting of blood. He neither laughed nor sneered, as the Olympianswould have done; but possessed of a serious idiosyncrasy, he wouldcontribute such lots of valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of thisparticular sort of big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature ageand eminent position could scarce have been attained without a practicalknowledge of the creature in its native lair. Then, too, he was alwaysready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band of maraudingIndians on the shortest possible notice: in brief, a distinctly ableman, with talents, so far as we could judge, immensely above themajority. I trust he is a bishop by this time, --he had all the necessaryqualifications, as we knew. These strange folk had visitors sometimes, --stiff and colourlessOlympians like themselves, equally without vital interests andintelligent pursuits: emerging out of the clouds, and passing away againto drag on an aimless existence somewhere out of our ken. Then bruteforce was pitilessly applied. We were captured, washed, and forced intoclean collars: silently submitting, as was our wont, with morecontempt than anger. Anon, with unctuous hair and faces stiffened ina conventional grin, we sat and listened to the usual platitudes. Howcould reasonable people spend their precious time so? That was ever ourwonder as we bounded forth at last--to the old clay-pit to make pots, orto hunt bears among the hazels. It was incessant matter for amazement how these Olympians would talkover our heads--during meals, for instance--of this or the other socialor political inanity, under the delusion that these pale phantasmsof reality were among the importances of life. We illuminati, eatingsilently, our heads full of plans and conspiracies, could have told themwhat real life was. We had just left it outside, and were all on fireto get back to it. Of course we didn't waste the revelation on them;the futility of imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated. One inthought and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one hostilefate, a power antagonistic ever, --a power we lived to evade, --we hadno confidants save ourselves. This strange anaemic order of beings wasfurther removed from us, in fact, than the kindly beasts who sharedour natural existence in the sun. The estrangement was fortified by anabiding sense of injustice, arising from the refusal of the Olympiansever to defend, retract, or admit themselves in the wrong, or to acceptsimilar concessions on our part. For instance, when I flung the cat outof an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and it didn'thurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's reflection, to own I waswrong, as a gentleman should. But was the matter allowed to end there?I trow not. Again, when Harold was locked up in his room all day, forassault and battery upon a neighbour's pig, --an action he would havescorned, being indeed on the friendliest terms with the porker inquestion, --there was no handsome expression of regret on the discoveryof the real culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much theimprisonment, --indeed he had very soon escaped by the window, withassistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time for hisrelease, --as the Olympian habit. A word would have set all right; but ofcourse that word was never spoken. Well! The Olympians are all past and gone. Somehow the sun does not seemto shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows of old time haveshrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A saddening doubt, a dullsuspicion, creeps over me. Et in Arcadia ego, --I certainly did onceinhabit Arcady. Can it be I too have become an Olympian? A HOLIDAY. The masterful wind was up and out, shouting and chasing, the lord ofthe morning. Poplars swayed and tossed with a roaring swish; dead leavessprang aloft, and whirled into space; and all the clear-swept heavenseemed to thrill with sound like a great harp. It was one of the first awakenings of the year. The earth stretchedherself, smiling in her sleep; and everything leapt and pulsed tothe stir of the giant's movement. With us it was a whole holiday;the occasion a birthday--it matters not whose. Some one of us had hadpresents, and pretty conventional speeches, and had glowed with thatsense of heroism which is no less sweet that nothing has been done todeserve it. But the holiday was for all, the rapture of awakening Naturefor all, the various outdoor joys of puddles and sun and hedge-breakingfor all. Colt-like I ran through the meadows, frisking happy heels inthe face of Nature laughing responsive. Above, the sky was bluest of theblue; wide pools left by the winter's floods flashed the colour back, true and brilliant; and the soft air thrilled with the germinating touchthat seemed to kindle something in my own small person as well as in therash primrose already lurking in sheltered haunts. Out into the brimmingsun-bathed world I sped, free of lessons, free of discipline andcorrection, for one day at least. My legs ran of themselves, and thoughI heard my name called faint and shrill behind, there was no stoppingfor me. It was only Harold, I concluded, and his legs, though shorterthan mine, were good for a longer spurt than this. Then I heard itcalled again, but this time more faintly, with a pathetic break in themiddle; and I pulled up short, recognising Charlotte's plaintive note. She panted up anon, and dropped on the turf beside me. Neither had anydesire for talk; the glow and the glory of existing on this perfectmorning were satisfaction full and sufficient. "Where's Harold;" I asked presently. "Oh, he's just playin' muffin-man, as usual, " said Charlotte withpetulance. "Fancy wanting to be a muffin-man on a whole holiday!" It was a strange craze, certainly; but Harold, who invented his owngames and played them without assistance, always stuck staunchly toa new fad, till he had worn it quite out. Just at present he was amuffin-man, and day and night he went through passages and up and downstaircases, ringing a noiseless bell and offering phantom muffins toinvisible wayfarers. It sounds a poor sort of sport; and yet--to passalong busy streets of your own building, for ever ringing an imaginarybell and offering airy muffins of your own make to a bustling throngingcrowd of your own creation--there were points about the game, itcannot be denied, though it seemed scarce in harmony with this radiantwind-swept morning! "And Edward, where is he?" I questioned again. "He's coming along by the road, " said Charlotte. "He'll be crouchingin the ditch when we get there, and he's going to be a grizzly bear andspring out on us, only you mustn't say I told you, 'cos it's to be asurprise. " "All right, " I said magnanimously. "Come on and let's be surprised. " ButI could not help feeling that on this day of days even a grizzly feltmisplaced and common. Sure enough an undeniable bear sprang out on us as we dropped into theroad; then ensued shrieks, growlings, revolver-shots, and unrecordedheroisms, till Edward condescended at last to roll over and die, bulkinglarge and grim, an unmitigated grizzly. It was an understood thing, thatwhoever took upon himself to be a bear must eventually die, sooner orlater, even if he were the eldest born; else, life would have been allstrife and carnage, and the Age of Acorns have displaced our hard-woncivilisation. This little affair concluded with satisfaction to allparties concerned, we rambled along the road, picking up the defaultingHarold by the way, muffinless now and in his right and social mind. "What would you do?" asked Charlotte presently, --the book of themoment always dominating her thoughts until it was sucked dry and castaside, --"what would you do if you saw two lions in the road, one on eachside, and you didn't know if they was loose or if they was chained up?" "Do?" shouted Edward, valiantly, "I should--I should--I should--" His boastful accents died away into a mumble: "Dunno what I should do. " "Shouldn't do anything, " I observed after consideration; and really itwould be difficult to arrive at a wiser conclusion. "If it came to DOING, " remarked Harold, reflectively, "the lions woulddo all the doing there was to do, wouldn't they?" "But if they was GOOD lions, " rejoined Charlotte, "they would do as theywould be done by. " "Ah, but how are you to know a good lion from a bad one?" said Edward. "The books don't tell you at all, and the lions ain't marked anydifferent. " "Why, there aren't any good lions, " said Harold, hastily. "Oh yes, there are, heaps and heaps, " contradicted Edward. "Nearly allthe lions in the story-books are good lions. There was Androcles' lion, and St. Jerome's lion, and--and--the Lion and the Unicorn--" "He beat the Unicorn, " observed Harold, dubiously, "all round the town. " "That PROVES he was a good lion, " cried Edwards triumphantly. "But thequestion is, how are you to tell 'em when you see 'em?" "_I_ should ask Martha, " said Harold of the simple creed. Edward snorted contemptuously, then turned to Charlotte. "Look here, " hesaid; "let's play at lions, anyhow, and I'll run on to that corner andbe a lion, --I'll be two lions, one on each side of the road, --andyou'll come along, and you won't know whether I'm chained up or not, andthat'll be the fun!" "No, thank you, " said Charlotte, firmly; "you'll be chained up tillI'm quite close to you, and then you'll be loose, and you'll tear me inpieces, and make my frock all dirty, and p'raps you'll hurt me as well. _I_ know your lions!" "No, I won't; I swear I won't, " protested Edward. "I'll be quite a newlion this time, --something you can't even imagine. " And he raced off tohis post. Charlotte hesitated; then she went timidly on, at each stepgrowing less Charlotte, the mummer of a minute, and more the anxiousPilgrim of all time. The lion's wrath waxed terrible at her approach;his roaring filled the startled air. I waited until they were boththoroughly absorbed, and then I slipped through the hedge out of thetrodden highway, into the vacant meadow spaces. It was not that I wasunsociable, nor that I knew Edward's lions to the point of satiety; butthe passion and the call of the divine morning were high in my blood. Earth to earth! That was the frank note, the joyous summons of the day;and they could not but jar and seem artificial, these human discussionsand pretences, when boon Nature, reticent no more, was singing thatfull-throated song of hers that thrills and claims control of everyfibre. The air was wine; the moist earth-smell, wine; the lark's song, the wafts from the cow-shed at top of the field, the pant and smoke ofa distant train, --all were wine, --or song, was it? or odour, thisunity they all blended into? I had no words then to describe it, thatearth-effluence of which I was so conscious; nor, indeed, have Ifound words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into thesquelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick;I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myselfsinging. The words were mere nonsense, --irresponsible babble; the tunewas an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: andyet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment theone thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected itwith scorn, Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognised andaccepted it without a flicker of dissent. All the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from wherehe swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide to-day, " heseemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of thestolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged a weary foothomeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for company. To-daywhy not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners andbluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you thebest and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one, thelord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and unprincipled, and obeyno law. " And for me, I was ready enough to fall in with the fellow'shumour; was not this a whole holiday? So we sheered off together, arm-in-arm, so to speak; and with fullest confidence I took the jigging, thwartwise course my chainless pilot laid for me. A whimsical comrade I found him, ere he had done with me. Was it injest, or with some serious purpose of his own, that he brought me plumpupon a pair of lovers, silent, face to face o'er a discreet unwinkingstile? As a rule this sort of thing struck me as the most pitifultomfoolery. Two calves rubbing noses through a gate were natural andright and within the order of things; but that human beings, withsalient interests and active pursuits beckoning them on from every side, could thus--! Well, it was a thing to hurry past, shamed of face, and think on no more. But this morning everything I met seemed to beaccounted for and set in tune by that same magical touch in the air;and it was with a certain surprise that I found myself regarding thesefatuous ones with kindliness instead of contempt, as I rambled by, unheeded of them. There was indeed some reconciling influence abroad, which could bring the like antics into harmony with bud and growth andthe frolic air. A puff on the right cheek from my wilful companion sent me off ata fresh angle, and presently I came in sight of the village church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth the vestrywindow projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for foothold, withlarceny--not to say sacrilege--in their every wriggle: a godless sightfor a supporter of the Establishment. Though the rest was hidden, I knewthe legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of BillSaunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, too, I could easily guess at that; it came from the Vicar's storeof biscuits, kept (as I knew) in a cupboard along with his officialtrappings. For a moment I hesitated; then I passed on my way. I protest I was noton Bill's side; but then, neither was I on the Vicar's, and there wassomething in this immoral morning which seemed to say that perhaps, after all, Bill had as much right to the biscuits as the Vicar, andwould certainly enjoy them better; and anyhow it was a disputable point, and no business of mine. Nature, who had accepted me for ally, caredlittle who had the world's biscuits, and assuredly was not going to letany friend of hers waste his time in playing policeman for Society. He was tugging at me anew, my insistent guide; and I felt sure, as Irambled off in his wake, that he had more holiday matter to show me. Andso, indeed, he had; and all of it was to the same lawless tune. Like ablack pirate flag on the blue ocean of air, a hawk hung ominous; then, plummet-wise, dropped to the hedgerow, whence there rose, thin andshrill, a piteous voice of squealing. By the time I got there a whisk of feathers on the turf--like scatteredplaybills--was all that remained to tell of the tragedy just enacted. Yet Nature smiled and sang on, pitiless, gay, impartial. To her, whotook no sides, there was every bit as much to be said for the hawkas for the chaffinch. Both were her children, and she would show nopreferences. Further on, a hedgehog lay dead athwart the path--nay, more than dead;decadent, distinctly; a sorry sight for one that had known the fellow inmore bustling circumstances. Nature might at least have paused to shedone tear over this rough jacketed little son of hers, for his wastedaims, his cancelled ambitions, his whole career of usefulness cutsuddenly short. But not a bit of it! Jubilant as ever, her song wentbubbling on, and "Death-in-Life, " and again, "Life-in-Death, " were itsalternate burdens. And looking round, and seeing the sheep-nibbled heelsof turnips that dotted the ground, their hearts eaten out of them infrost-bound days now over and done, I seemed to discern, faintly, asomething of the stern meaning in her valorous chant. My invisible companion was singing also, and seemed at times to bechuckling softly to himself, doubtless at thought of the strangenew lessons he was teaching me; perhaps, too, at a special bit ofwaggishness he had still in store. For when at last he grew weary ofsuch insignificant earthbound company, he deserted me at a certainspot I knew; then dropped, subsided, and slunk away into nothingness. I raised my eyes, and before me, grim and lichened, stood the ancientwhipping-post of the village; its sides fretted with the initials of ageneration that scorned its mute lesson, but still clipped by the stoutrusty shackles that had tethered the wrists of such of that generation'sancestors as had dared to mock at order and law. Had I been an infantSterne, here was a grand chance for sentimental output! As things were, I could only hurry homewards, my moral tail well between my legs, withan uneasy feeling, as I glanced back over my shoulder, that there wasmore in this chance than met the eye. And outside our gate I found Charlotte, alone and crying. Edward, itseemed, had persuaded her to hide, in the full expectation of being dulyfound and ecstatically pounced upon; then he had caught sight of thebutcher's cart, and, forgetting his obligations, had rushed off fora ride. Harold, it further appeared, greatly coveting tadpoles, andtop-heavy with the eagerness of possession, had fallen into the pond. This, in itself, was nothing; but on attempting to sneak in by theback-door, he had rendered up his duckweed-bedabbled person into thehands of an aunt, and had been promptly sent off to bed; and this, ona holiday, was very much. The moral of the whipping-post was workingitself out; and I was not in the least surprised when, on reachinghome, I was seized upon and accused of doing something I had never eventhought of. And my frame of mind was such, that I could only wish mostheartily that I had done it. A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE In our small lives that day was eventful when another uncle was to comedown from town, and submit his character and qualifications (albeitunconsciously) to our careful criticism. Previous uncles had beenweighed in the balance, and--alas!--found grievously wanting. There wasUncle Thomas--a failure from the first. Not that his disposition wasmalevolent, nor were his habits such as to unfit him for decent society;but his rooted conviction seemed to be that the reason of a child'sexistence was to serve as a butt for senseless adult jokes, --or what, from the accompanying guffaws of laughter, appeared to be intended forjokes. Now, we were anxious that he should have a perfectly fair trial;so in the tool-house, between breakfast and lessons, we discussedand examined all his witticisms, one by one, calmly, critically, dispassionately. It was no good; we could not discover any salt in them. And as only a genuine gift of humour could have saved Uncle Thomas, --forhe pretended to naught besides, --he was reluctantly writ down a hopelessimpostor. Uncle George--the youngest--was distinctly more promising. Heaccompanied us cheerily round the establishment, --suffered himself to beintroduced to each of the cows, held out the right hand of fellowshipto the pig, and even hinted that a pair of pink-eyed Himalayan rabbitsmight arrive--unexpectedly--from town some day. We were just consideringwhether in this fertile soil an apparently accidental remark on thesolid qualities of guinea-pigs or ferrets might haply blossom and bringforth fruit, when our governess appeared on the scene. Uncle George'smanner at once underwent a complete and contemptible change. Hisinterest in rational topics seemed, "like a fountain's sickening pulse, "to flag and ebb away; and though Miss Smedley's ostensible purpose wasto take Selina for her usual walk, I can vouch for it that Selina spenther morning ratting, along with the keeper's boy and me; while, if MissSmedley walked with any one, it would appear to have been with UncleGeorge. But despicable as his conduct had been, he underwent no hastycondemnation. The defection was discussed in all its bearings, but itseemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess some innatebadness of character and fondness for low company. We who from dailyexperience knew Miss Smedley like a book--were we not only toowell aware that she had neither accomplishments nor charms, nocharacteristic, in fact, but an inbred viciousness of temper anddisposition? True, she knew the dates of the English kings by heart; buthow could that profit Uncle George, who, having passed into the army, had ascended beyond the need of useful information? Our bows and arrows, on the other hand, had been freely placed at his disposal; and a soldiershould not have hesitated in his choice a moment. No: Uncle George hadfallen from grace, and was unanimously damned. And the non-arrivalof the Himalayan rabbits was only another nail in his coffin. Uncles, therefore, were just then a heavy and lifeless market, and there waslittle inclination to deal. Still it was agreed that Uncle William, whohad just returned from India, should have as fair a trial as the others;more especially as romantic possibilities might well be embodied in onewho had held the gorgeous East in fee. Selina had kicked my shins--like the girl she is!--during a scuffle inthe passage, and I was still rubbing them with one hand when I foundthat the uncle-on-approbation was half-heartedly shaking the other. Aflorid, elderly man, and unmistakably nervous, he dropped our grimypaws in succession, and, turning very red, with an awkward simulation ofheartiness, "Well, h' are y' all?" he said, "Glad to see me, eh?" As wecould hardly, in justice, be expected to have formed an opinion on himat that early stage, we could but look at each other in silence; whichscarce served to relieve the tension of the situation. Indeed, the cloudnever really lifted during his stay. In talking it over later, someone put forward the suggestion that he must at some time or other havecommitted a stupendous crime; but I could not bring myself to believethat the man, though evidently unhappy, was really guilty of anything;and I caught him once or twice looking at us with evident kindliness, though seeing himself observed, he blushed and turned away his head. When at last the atmosphere was clear of this depressing influence, wemet despondently in the potato-cellar--all of us, that is, but Harold, who had been told off to accompany his relative to the station; and thefeeling was unanimous, that, at an uncle, William could not be allowedto pass. Selina roundly declared him a beast, pointing out that he hadnot even got us a half-holiday; and, indeed, there seemed little to dobut to pass sentence. We were about to put it, when Harold appeared onthe scene; his red face, round eyes, and mysterious demeanour, hintingat awful portents. Speechless he stood a space: then, slowly drawing hishand from the pocket of his knickerbockers, he displayed on a dirtypalm one--two--three--four half-crowns! We could but gaze--tranced, breathless, mute; never had any of us seen, in the aggregate, so muchbullion before. Then Harold told his tale. "I took the old fellow to the station, " he said, "and as we went alongI told him all about the station-master's family, and how I had seenthe porter kissing our housemaid, and what a nice fellow he was, withno airs, or affectation about him, and anything I thought would be ofinterest; but he didn't seem to pay much attention, but walked alongpuffing his cigar, and once I thought--I'm not certain, but I THOUGHT--Iheard him say, 'Well, thank God, that's over!' When we got to thestation he stopped suddenly, and said, 'Hold on a minute!' Then heshoved these into my hand in a frightened sort of way; and said, 'Lookhere, youngster! These are for you and the other kids. Buy what youlike--make little beasts of yourselves--only don't tell the old people, mind! Now cut away home!' So I cut. " A solemn hush fell on the assembly, broken first by the small Charlotte. "I didn't know, " she observed dreamily, "that there were such good menanywhere in the world. I hope he'll die to-night, for then he'll gostraight to heaven!" But the repentant Selina bewailed herself withtears and sobs, refusing to be comforted; for that in her haste she hadcalled this white-souled relative a beast. "I'll tell you what we'll do, " said Edward, the master-mind, rising--ashe always did--to the situation: "We'll christen the piebald pig afterhim--the one that hasn't got a name yet. And that'll show we're sorryfor our mistake!" "I--I christened that pig this morning, " Harold guiltily confessed; "Ichristened it after the curate. I'm very sorry--but he came and bow'edto me last night, after you others had all been sent to bed early--andsomehow I felt I HAD to do it!" "Oh, but that doesn't count, " said Edward hastily; "because we weren'tall there. We'll take that christening off, and call it Uncle William. And you can save up the curate for the next litter!" And the motion being agreed to without a division, the House went intoCommittee of Supply. ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS "Let's pretend, " suggested Harold, "that we're Cavaliers and Roundheads;and YOU be a Roundhead!" "O bother, " I replied drowsily, "we pretended that yesterday; and it'snot my turn to be a Roundhead, anyhow. " The fact is, I was lazy, andthe call to arms fell on indifferent ears. We three younger ones werestretched at length in the orchard. The sun was hot, the season merryJune, and never (I thought) had there been such wealth and riot ofbuttercups throughout the lush grass. Green-and-gold was the dominantkey that day. Instead of active "pretence" with its shouts andperspiration, how much better--I held--to lie at ease and pretend toone's self, in green and golden fancies, slipping the husk and passing, a careless lounger, through a sleepy imaginary world all gold and green!But the persistent Harold was not to be fobbed of. "Well, then, " he began afresh, "let's pretend we're Knights of the RoundTable; and (with a rush) _I'll_ be Lancelot!" "I won't play unless I'm Lancelot, " I said. I didn't mean it really, butthe game of Knights always began with this particular contest. "O PLEASE, " implored Harold. "You know when Edward's here I never get achance of being Lancelot. I haven't been Lancelot for weeks!" Then I yielded gracefully. "All right, " I said. "I'll be Tristram. " "O, but you can't, " cried Harold again. "Charlotte has always been Tristram. She won't play unless she's allowedto be Tristram! Be somebody else this time. " Charlotte said nothing, but breathed hard, looking straight before her. The peerless hunter and harper was her special hero of romance, andrather than see the part in less appreciative hands, she would even havereturned sadly to the stuffy schoolroom. "I don't care, " I said: "I'll be anything. I'll be Sir Kay. Come on!" Then once more in this country's story the mail-clad knights pacedthrough the greenwood shaw, questing adventure, redressing wrong; andbandits, five to one, broke and fled discomfited to their caves. Onceagain were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled, and giants, in everycorner of the orchard, deprived of their already superfluous number ofheads; while Palamides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and SirBreuse Saunce Pite vanished in craven flight before the skilled spearthat was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight inCamelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shookwith thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters; and the firmamentrang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune of the day swungdoubtful--now on this side, now on that; till at last Lancelot, grimand great, thrusting through the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easytask), and bestrode her, threatening doom; while the Cornish knight, forgetting hard-won fame of old, cried piteously, "You're hurting me, I tell you! and you're tearing my frock!" Then it happed that Sir Kay, hurtling to the rescue, stopped short in his stride, catching sightsuddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet afar off; whilethe confused tramp of many horses, mingled with talk and laughter, wasborne to our ears. "What is it?" inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her curls;while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted nimbly to thehedge. I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of"Soldiers!" I was off to the hedge, Charlotte picking herself up andscurrying after. Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet flamed inthe eye, bits jingled and saddles squeaked delightfully; while the men, in a halo of dust, smoked their short clays like the heroes they were. In a swirl of intoxicating glory the troop clinked and clattered by, while we shouted and waved, jumping up and down, and the big jollyhorsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The momentthey were past we were through the hedge and after them. Soldiers werenot the common stuff of everyday life. There had been nothing like thissince the winter before last, when on a certain afternoon--bare ofleaf and monochrome in its hue of sodden fallow and frost-niptcopse--suddenly the hounds had burst through the fence with their mellowcry, and all the paddock was for the minute reverberant of thudding hoofand dotted with glancing red. But this was better, since it could onlymean that blows and bloodshed were in the air. "Is there going to be a battle?" panted Harold, hardly able to keep upfor excitement. "Of course there is, " I replied. "We're just in time. Come on!" Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet---- The pigs and poultry, with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little concerningthe peace that in these latter days lapped this sea-girt realm. In theschoolroom we were just now dallying with the Wars of the Roses; anddid not legends of the country-side inform us how Cavaliers had oncegalloped up and down these very lanes from their quarters in thevillage? Here, now, were soldiers unmistakable; and if their businesswas not fighting, what was it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followedhard on their tracks. "Won't Edward be sorry, " puffed Harold, "that he's begun that beastlyLatin?" It did, indeed, seem hard. Edward, the most martial spirit of us all, was drearily conjugating AMO (of all verbs) between four walls; whileSelina, who ever thrilled ecstatic to a red coat, was struggling withthe uncouth German tongue. "Age, " I reflected, "carries its penalties. " It was a grievous disappointment to us that the troop passed through thevillage unmolested. Every cottage, I pointed out to my companions, oughtto have been loopholed, and strongly held. But no opposition was offeredto the soldiers, who, indeed, conducted themselves with a recklessnessand a want of precaution that seemed simply criminal. At the last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered acrossme, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ordered her back. The small maiden, docile but exceedingly dolorous, dragged reluctantfeet homewards, heavy at heart that she was to behold no stout fellowsslain that day; but Harold and I held steadily on, expecting everyinstant to see the environing hedges crackle and spit forth the leadendeath. "Will they be Indians?" inquired my brother (meaning the enemy); "orRoundheads, or what?" I reflected. Harold always required direct, straightforward answers--notfaltering suppositions. "They won't be Indians, " I replied at last; "nor yet Roundheads. Therehaven't been any Roundheads seen about here for a long time. They'll beFrenchmen. " Harold's face fell. "All right, " he said; "Frenchmen'll do; but I didhope they'd be Indians. " "If they were going to be Indians, " I explained, "I--I don't think I'dgo on. Because when Indians take you prisoner they scalp you first, andthen burn you at a stake. But Frenchmen don't do that sort of thing. " "Are you quite sure?" asked Harold doubtfully. "Quite, " I replied. "Frenchmen only shut you up in a thing called theBastille; and then you get a file sent in to you in a loaf of bread, and saw the bars through, and slide down a rope, and they all fire atyou--but they don't hit you--and you run down to the seashore as hard asyou can, and swim off to a British frigate, and there you are!" Harold brightened up again. The programme was rather attractive. "If they try to take us prisoner, " he said, "we--we won't run, will we?" Meanwhile, the craven foe was a long time showing himself; and we werereaching strange outland country, uncivilised, wherein lions might beexpected to prowl at nightfall. I had a stitch in my side, and bothHarold's stockings had come down. Just as I was beginning to have gloomydoubts of the proverbial courage of Frenchmen, the officer calledout something, the men closed up, and, breaking into a trot, thetroops--already far ahead--vanished out of our sight. With a sinking atthe heart, I began to suspect we had been fooled. "Are they charging?" cried Harold, weary, but rallying gamely. "I think not, " I replied doubtfully. "When there's going to be a charge, the officer always makes a speech, and then they draw their swords andthe trumpets blow, and--but let's try a short cut. We may catch them upyet. " So we struck across the fields and into another road, and pounded downthat, and then over more fields, panting, down-hearted, yet hoping forthe best. The sun went in, and a thin drizzle began to fall; we weremuddy, breathless, almost dead beat; but we blundered on, till at lastwe struck a road more brutally, more callously unfamiliar than anyroad I ever looked upon. Not a hint nor a sign of friendly directionor assistance on the dogged white face of it. There was no longerany disguising it--we were hopelessly lost. The small rain continuedsteadily, the evening began to come on. Really there are moments when afellow is justified in crying; and I would have cried too, if Harold hadnot been there. That right-minded child regarded an elder brother as averitable god; and I could see that he felt himself as secure as if awhole Brigade of Guards hedged him round with protecting bayonets. But Idreaded sore lest he should begin again with his questions. As I gazed in dumb appeal on the face of unresponsive nature, the soundof nearing wheels sent a pulse of hope through my being; increasing torapture as I recognised in the approaching vehicle the familiar carriageof the old doctor. If ever a god emerged from a machine, it was whenthis heaven-sent friend, recognising us, stopped and jumped out with acheery hail. Harold rushed up to him at once. "Have you been there?" hecried. "Was it a jolly fight? who beat? were there many people killed?" The doctor appeared puzzled. I briefly explained the situation. "I see, " said the doctor, looking grave and twisting his face this wayand that. "Well, the fact is, there isn't going to be any battle to-day. It's been put off, on account of the change in the weather. You willhave due notice of the renewal of hostilities. And now you'd better jumpin and I'll drive you home. You've been running a fine rig! Why, youmight have both been taken and shot as spies!" This special danger had never even occurred to us. The thrill of itaccentuated the cosey homelike feeling of the cushions we nestledinto as we rolled homewards. The doctor beguiled the journey withblood-curdling narratives of personal adventure in the tented field, hehaving followed the profession of arms (so it seemed) in every quarterof the globe. Time, the destroyer of all things beautiful, subsequentlyrevealed the baselessness of these legends; but what of that? There arehigher things than truth; and we were almost reconciled, by the timewe were dropped at our gate, to the fact that the battle had beenpostponed. THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS. It was the day I was promoted to a tooth-brush. The girls, irrespectiveof age, had been thus distinguished some time before; why, we boys couldnever rightly understand, except that it was part and parcel of a systemof studied favouritism on behalf of creatures both physically inferiorand (as was shown by a fondness for tale-bearing) of weaker mentalfibre. It was not that we yearned after these strange instruments inthemselves; Edward, indeed, applied his to the scrubbing-out of hissquirrel's cage, and for personal use, when a superior eye was grimon him, borrowed Harold's or mine, indifferently; but the nimbus ofdistinction that clung to them--that we coveted exceedingly. What more, indeed, was there to ascend to, before the remote, but still possible, razor and strop? Perhaps the exaltation had mounted to my head; or nature and the perfectmorning joined to him at disaffection; anyhow, having breakfasted, and triumphantly repeated the collect I had broken down in the lastSunday--'twas one without rhythm or alliteration: a most objectionablecollect--having achieved thus much, the small natural man in merebelled, and I vowed, as I straddled and spat about the stable-yard infeeble imitation of the coachman, that lessons might go to the Inventorof them. It was only geography that morning, any way: and the practicalthing was worth any quantity of bookish theoretic; as for me, I wasgoing on my travels, and imports and exports, populations and capitals, might very well wait while I explored the breathing, coloured worldoutside. True, a fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule, have beencounted on with certainty. But just then Harold was very proud. The weekbefore he had "gone into tables, " and had been endowed with a new slate, having a miniature sponge attached, wherewith we washed the faces ofCharlotte's dolls, thereby producing an unhealthy pallor which struckterror into the child's heart, always timorous regarding epidemicvisitations. As to "tables, " nobody knew exactly what they were, least of all Harold; but it was a step over the heads of the rest, andtherefore a subject for self-adulation and--generally speaking--airs; sothat Harold, hugging his slate and his chains, was out of the questionnow. In such a matter, girls were worse than useless, as wanting thenecessary tenacity of will and contempt for self-constituted authority. So eventually I slipped through the hedge a solitary protestant, andissued forth on the lane what time the rest of the civilised world wassitting down to lessons. The scene was familiar enough; and yet, this morning, how differentit all seemed! The act, with its daring, tinted everything with new, strange hues; affecting the individual with a sort of bruised feelingjust below the pit of the stomach, that was intensified whenever histhoughts flew back to the ink-stained, smelly schoolroom. And couldthis be really me? or was I only contemplating, from the schoolroomaforesaid, some other jolly young mutineer, faring forth under thegenial sun? Anyhow, here was the friendly well, in its old place, halfway up the lane. Hither the yoke-shouldering village-folk were wont tocome to fill their clinking buckets; when the drippings made worms ofwet in the thick dust of the road. They had flat wooden crosses insideeach pail, which floated on the top and (we were instructed) served toprevent the water from slopping over. We used to wonder by what magicthis strange principle worked, and who first invented the crosses, andwhether he got a peerage for it. But indeed the well was a centre ofmystery, for a hornet's nest was somewhere hard by, and the very thoughtwas fearsome. Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them in theirfastnesses. But these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange, threestings from which--so 't was averred--would kill a horse, these wereof a different kidney, and their warning drone suggested prudence andretreat. At this time neither villagers nor hornets encroached on thestillness: lessons, apparently, pervaded all Nature. So, after dabblingawhile in the well--what boy has ever passed a bit of waterwithout messing in it?--I scrambled through the hedge, avoiding thehornet-haunted side, and struck into the silence of the copse. If the lane had been deserted, this was loneliness become personal. Heremystery lurked and peeped; here brambles caught and held with a purposeof their own, and saplings whipped the face with human spite. The copse, too, proved vaster in extent, more direfully drawn out, than one wouldever have guessed from its frontage on the lane: and I was really gladwhen at last the wood opened and sloped down to a streamlet brawlingforth into the sunlight. By this cheery companion I wandered along, conscious of little but that Nature, in providing store of water-rats, had thoughtfully furnished provender of right-sized stones. Rapids, also, there were, telling of canoes and portages--crinkling bays andinlets--caves for pirates and hidden treasures--the wise Dame hadforgotten nothing--till at last, after what lapse of time I know not, myfurther course, though not the stream's, was barred by some six feetof stout wire netting, stretched from side to side, just where a thickhedge, arching till it touched, forbade all further view. The excitement of the thing was becoming thrilling. A Black Flagmust surely be fluttering close by. Here was evidently a malignantcontrivance of the Pirates, designed to baffle our gun-boats when wedashed up-stream to shell them from their lair. A gun-boat, indeed, might well have hesitated, so stout was the netting, so close the hedge:but I spied where a rabbit was wont to pass, close down by the water'sedge; where a rabbit could go a boy could follow, albeit stomach-wiseand with one leg in the stream; so the passage was achieved, and I stoodinside, safe but breathless at the sight. Gone was the brambled waste, gone the flickering tangle of woodland. Instead, terrace after terrace of shaven sward, stone-edged, urn-cornered, stepped delicately down to where the stream, now tamed andeducated, passed from one to another marble basin, in which on occasiongleams of red hinted at gold-fish in among the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous in the brooding noonday sun: thedrowsing peacock squatted humped on the lawn, no fish leapt inthe pools, nor bird declared himself from the environing hedges. Self-confessed it was here, then, at last the Garden of Sleep! Two things, in those old days, I held in especial distrust: gamekeepersand gardeners. Seeing, however, no baleful apparitions of either nature, I pursued my way between rich flower-beds, in search of the necessaryPrincess. Conditions declared her presence patently as trumpets; withoutthis centre such surroundings could not exist. A pavilion, gold topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a special significance overclose-set shrubs. There, if anywhere, She should be enshrined. Instinct, and some knowledge of the habits of princesses, triumphed; for (indeed)there She was! In no tranced repose, however, but laughingly, strugglingto disengage her hand from the grasp of a grown-up man who occupied themarble bench with her. (As to age, I suppose now that the two swung inrespective scales that pivoted on twenty. But children heed no minordistinctions; to them, the inhabited world is composed of the two maindivisions: children and upgrown people; the latter being in no waysuperior to the former--only hopelessly different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up section. ) I paused, thinking it strangethey should prefer seclusion when there were fish to be caught, andbutterflies to hunt in the sun outside; and as I cogitated thus, thegrown-up man caught sight of me. "Hallo, sprat!" he said, with some abruptness, "where do you springfrom?" "I came up the stream, " I explained politely and comprehensively, "and Iwas only looking for the Princess. " "Then you are a water-baby, " he replied. "And what do you think of thePrincess, now you've found her?" "I think she is lovely, " I said (and doubtless I was right, having neverlearned to flatter). "But she's wide-awake, so I suppose somebody haskissed her!" This very natural deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter; butthe Princess, turning red and jumping up, declared that it was time forlunch. "Come along, then, " said the grown-up man; "and you too, Water-baby;come and have something solid. You must want it. " I accompanied them, without any feeling of false delicacy. The world, as known to me, was spread with food each several mid-day, and theparticular table one sat at seemed a matter of no importance. The palacewas very sumptuous and beautiful, just what a palace ought to be; andwe were met by a stately lady, rather more grownup than thePrincess--apparently her mother. My friend the Man was very kind, and introduced me as the Captain, saying I had just run down from Aldershot. I didn't know where Aldershotwas, but had no manner of doubt that he was perfectly right. As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is inthe higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek. The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in beautifulclothes--a lord, presumably--lifted me into a high carved chair, andstood behind it, brooding over me like a Providence. I endeavoured toexplain who I was and where I had come from, and to impress the companywith my own tooth-brush and Harold's tables; but either they werestupid--or is it a characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs atthe most ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, "Allright, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that's good enough forus. " The lord--a reserved sort of man, I thought--took no share in theconversation. After lunch I walked on the terrace with the Princess and my friend theMan, and was very proud. And I told him what I was going to be, and hetold me what he was going to be; and then I remarked, "I suppose youtwo are going to get married?" He only laughed, after the Fairy fashion. "Because if you aren't, " I added, "you really ought to": meaning onlythat a man who discovered a Princess, living in the right sort ofPalace like this, and didn't marry her there and then, was false to allrecognised tradition. They laughed again, and my friend suggested I should go down to the pondand look at the gold-fish, while they went for a stroll. I was sleepy, and assented; but before they left me, the grown-upman put two half-crowns in my hand, for the purpose, he explained, oftreating the other water-babies. I was so touched by this crowningmark of friendship that I nearly cried; and thought much more of hisgenerosity than of the fact that the Princess; ere she moved away, stooped down and kissed me. I watched them disappear down the path--how naturally arms seem togo round waists in Fairyland!--and then, my cheek on the cool marble, lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped into dreamland out of real andmagic world alike. When I woke, the sun had gone in, a chill wind setall the leaves a-whispering, and the peacock on the lawn was harshlycalling up the rain. A wild unreasoning panic possessed me, and I spedout of the garden like a guilty thing, wriggled through the rabbit-run, and threaded my doubtful way homewards, hounded by nameless terrors. Thehalf-crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch; but could Ihope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted wood? Itwas a dirty, weary little object that entered its home, at nightfall, bythe unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and only to be sent tealessto bed seemed infinite mercy to him. Officially tealess, that is; for, as was usual after such escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, comingdelicately by backstairs, stayed him with chunks of cold pudding andcondolence, till his small skin was tight as any drum. Then, natureasserting herself, I passed into the comforting kingdom of sleep, where, a golden carp of fattest build, I oared it in translucent waters witha new half-crown snug under right fin and left; and thrust up a nosethrough water-lily leaves to be kissed by a rose-flushed Princess. SAWDUST AND SIN A belt of rhododendrons grew close down to one side of our pond; andalong the edge of it many things flourished rankly. If you crept throughthe undergrowth and crouched by the water's rim, it was easy--if yourimagination were in healthy working order--to transport yourself in atrice to the heart of a tropical forest. Overhead the monkeys chattered, parrots flashed from bough to bough, strange large blossoms shone aroundyou, and the push and rustle of great beasts moving unseen thrilled youdeliciously. And if you lay down with your nose an inch or two from thewater, it was not long ere the old sense of proportion vanished cleanaway. The glittering insects that darted to and fro on its surfacebecame sea-monsters dire, the gnats that hung above them swelled toalbatrosses, and the pond itself stretched out into a vast inland sea, whereon a navy might ride secure, and whence at any moment the hairyscalp of a sea serpent might be seen to emerge. It is impossible, however, to play at tropical forests properly, whenhomely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes of seeing atiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (vide picture-books, passim)vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her old dimensions, when thesound of Charlotte's prattle somewhere hard by broke in on my primevalseclusion. Looking out from the bushes, I saw her trotting towards anopen space of lawn the other side the pond, chattering to herself in heraccustomed fashion, a doll tucked under either arm, and her brow knitwith care. Propping up her double burden against a friendly stump, shesat down in front of them, as full of worry and anxiety as a Chancelloron a Budget night. Her victims, who stared resignedly in front of them, were recognisableas Jerry and Rosa. Jerry hailed from far Japan: his hair was straightand black; his one garment cotton, of a simple blue; and his reputationwas distinctly bad. Jerome was his proper name, from his supposedlikeness to the holy man who hung in a print on the staircase; thougha shaven crown was the only thing in common 'twixt Western saint andEastern sinner. Rosa was typical British, from her flaxen poll to thestout calves she displayed so liberally, and in character she was of theblameless order of those who have not yet been found out. I suspected Jerry from the first; there was a latent devilry in hisslant eyes as he sat there moodily, and knowing what he was capable ofI scented trouble in store for Charlotte. Rosa I was not so sure about;she sat demurely and upright, and looked far away into the tree-topsin a visionary, world-forgetting sort of way; yet the prim purse of hermouth was somewhat overdone, and her eyes glittered unnaturally. "Now, I'm going to begin where I left off, " said Charlotte, regardlessof stops, and thumping the turf with her fist excitedly: "and you mustpay attention, 'cos this is a treat, to have a story told you beforeyou're put to bed. Well, so the White Rabbit scuttled off down thepassage and Alice hoped he'd come back 'cos he had a waistcoat on andher flamingo flew up a tree--but we haven't got to that part yet--youmust wait a minute, and--where had I got to?" Jerry only remained passive until Charlotte had got well under way, andthen began to heel over quietly in Rosa's direction. His head fell onher plump shoulder, causing her to start nervously. Charlotte seized and shook him with vigour, "O Jerry, " she criedpiteously, "if you're not going to be good, how ever shall I tell you mystory?" Jerry's face was injured innocence itself. "Blame if you like, Madam, "he seemed to say, "the eternal laws of gravitation, but not a helplesspuppet, who is also an orphan and a stranger in the land. " "Now we'll go on, " began Charlotte once more. "So she got into thegarden at last--I've left out a lot, but you won't care, I'll tell yousome other time--and they were all playing croquet, and that's where theflamingo comes in, and the Queen shouted out, 'Off with her head!'" At this point Jerry collapsed forward, suddenly and completely, hisbald pate between his knees. Charlotte was not very angry this time. Thesudden development of tragedy in the story had evidently been too muchfor the poor fellow. She straightened him out, wiped his nose, and, after trying him in various positions, to which he refused to adapthimself, she propped him against the shoulder of the (apparently)unconscious Rosa. Then my eyes were opened, and the full measure ofJerry's infamy became apparent. This, then, was what he had been playingup for. The fellow had designs. I resolved to keep him under closeobservation. "If you'd been in the garden, " went on Charlotte, reproachfully, "andflopped down like that when the Queen said 'Off with his head!' she'dhave offed with your head; but Alice wasn't that sort of girl at all. She just said, 'I'm not afraid of you, you're nothing but a pack ofcards'--oh, dear! I've got to the end already, and I hadn't begunhardly! I never can make my stories last out! Never mind, I'll tell youanother one. " Jerry didn't seem to care, now he had gained his end, whether thestories lasted out or not. He was nestling against Rosa's plump formwith a look of satisfaction that was simply idiotic; and one arm haddisappeared from view--was it round her waist? Rosa's natural blushseemed deeper than usual, her head inclined shyly--it must have beenround her waist. "If it wasn't so near your bedtime, " continued Charlotte, reflectively, "I'd tell you a nice story with a bogy in it. But you'd be frightened, and you'd dream of bogies all night. So I'll tell you one about a WhiteBear, only you mustn't scream when the bear says 'Wow, ' like I used to, 'cos he's a good bear really--" Here Rosa fell flat on her back in the deadest of faints. Her limbs wererigid, her eyes glassy; what had Jerry been doing? It must have beensomething very bad, for her to take on like that. I scrutinised himcarefully, while Charlotte ran to comfort the damsel. He appeared to bewhistling a tune and regarding the scenery. If I only possessed Jerry'scommand of feature, I thought to myself, half regretfully, I would neverbe found out in anything. "It's all your fault, Jerry, " said Charlotte, reproachfully, when thelady had been restored to consciousness: "Rosa's as good as gold, exceptwhen you make her wicked. I'd put you in the corner, only a stump hasn'tgot a corner--wonder why that is? Thought everything had corners. Nevermind, you'll have to sit with your face to the wall--SO. Now you cansulk if you like!" Jerry seemed to hesitate a moment between the bliss of indulgencein sulks with a sense of injury, and the imperious summons of beautywaiting to be wooed at his elbow; then, carried away by his passion, hefell sideways across Rosa's lap. One arm stuck stiffly upwards, as inpassionate protestation; his amorous countenance was full of entreaty. Rosa hesitated--wavered--and yielded, crushing his slight frame underthe weight of her full-bodied surrender. Charlotte had stood a good deal, but it was possible to abuse even herpatience. Snatching Jerry from his lawless embraces, she reversed himacross her knee, and then--the outrage offered to the whole superiorsex in Jerry's hapless person was too painful to witness; but thoughI turned my head away, the sound of brisk slaps continued to reach mytingling ears. When I looked again, Jerry was sitting up as before; hisgarment, somewhat crumpled, was restored to its original position; buthis pallid countenance was set hard. Knowing as I did, only toowell, what a volcano of passion and shame must be seething under thatimpassive exterior, for the moment I felt sorry for him. Rosa's face was still buried in her frock; it might have been shame, itmight have been grief for Jerry's sufferings. But the callous Japanesenever even looked her way. His heart was exceeding bitter within him. In merely following up his natural impulses he had run his head againstconvention, and learnt how hard a thing it was; and the sunshiny worldwas all black to him. Even Charlotte softened somewhat at the sight of his rigid misery. "Ifyou'll say you're sorry. Jerome, " she said, "I'll say I'm sorry, too. " Jerry only dropped his shoulders against the stump and stared out in thedirection of his dear native Japan, where love was no sin, and smackinghad not been introduced. Why had he ever left it? He would go backto-morrow--and yet there were obstacles: another grievance. Nature, in endowing Jerry with every grace of form and feature, along with asensitive soul, had somehow forgotten the gift of locomotion. There was a crackling in the bushes behind me, with sharp short pants asof a small steam-engine, and Rollo, the black retriever, just releasedfrom his chain by some friendly hand, burst through the underwood, seeking congenial company. I joyfully hailed him to stop and be apanther; but he sped away round the pond, upset Charlotte with aboisterous caress, and seizing Jerry by the middle, disappeared with himdown the drive. Charlotte raved, panting behind the swift-footed avengerof crime; Rosa lay dishevelled, bereft of consciousness; Jerry himselfspread helpless arms to heaven, and I almost thought I heard a cry formercy, a tardy promise of amendment; but it was too late. The Black Manhad got Jerry at last; and though the tear of sensibility might moistenthe eye, no one who really knew him could deny the justice of his fate. "YOUNG ADAM CUPID" NO one would have suspected Edward of being in love, but that afterbreakfast, with an over-acted carelessness, "Anybody who likes, " hesaid, "can feed my rabbits, " and he disappeared, with a jauntiness thatdeceived nobody, in the direction of the orchard. Now, kingdoms mighttotter and reel, and convulsions change the map of Europe; but the ironunwritten law prevailed, that each boy severely fed his own rabbits. There was good ground, then, for suspicion and alarm; and whilethe lettuce-leaves were being drawn through the wires, Harold and Iconferred seriously on the situation. It may be thought that the affair was none of our business; and indeedwe cared little as individuals. We were only concerned as members of acorporation, for each of whom the mental or physical ailment of one ofhis fellows might have far-reaching effects. It was thought best thatHarold, as least open to suspicion of motive, should be despatched toprobe and peer. His instructions were, to proceed by a report on thehealth of our rabbits in particular; to glide gently into a discussionon rabbits in general, their customs, practices, and vices; to passthence, by a natural transition, to the female sex, the inherent flawsin its composition, and the reasons for regarding it (speaking broadly)as dirt. He was especially to be very diplomatic, and then to return andreport progress. He departed on his mission gaily; but his absence wasshort, and his return, discomfited and in tears, seemed to betoken somewant of parts for diplomacy. He had found Edward, it appeared, pacingthe orchard, with the sort of set smile that mountebanks wear in theirprecarious antics, fixed painfully on his face, as with pins. Harold hadopened well, on the rabbit subject, but, with a fatal confusion betweenthe abstract and the concrete, had then gone on to remark that Edward'slop-eared doe, with her long hindlegs and contemptuous twitch of thenose, always reminded him of Sabina Larkin (a nine-year-old damsel, child of a neighbouring farmer): at which point Edward, it would seem, had turned upon and savagely maltreated him, twisting his arm andpunching him in the short ribs. So that Harold returned to therabbit-hutches preceded by long-drawn wails: anon wishing, with sobs, that he were a man, to kick his love-lorn brother: anon lamenting thatever he had been born. I was not big enough to stand up to Edward personally, so I had toconsole the sufferer by allowing him to grease the wheels of thedonkey-cart--a luscious treat that had been specially reserved for me, a week past, by the gardener's boy, for putting in a good word on hisbehalf with the new kitchen-maid. Harold was soon all smiles and grease;and I was not, on the whole, dissatisfied with the significant hint thathad been gained as to the fons at origo mali. Fortunately, means were at hand for resolving any doubts on the subject, since the morning was Sunday, and already the bells were ringing forchurch. Lest the connexion may not be evident at first sight, I shouldexplain that the gloomy period of church-time, with its enforcedinaction and its lack of real interest--passed, too, within sight of allthat the village held of fairest--was just the one when a young man'sfancies lightly turned to thoughts of love. For such trifling the restof the week afforded no leisure; but in church--well, there was reallynothing else to do! True, naughts-and-crosses might be indulged in onfly-leaves of prayer-books while the Litany dragged its slow lengthalong; but what balm or what solace could be found for the sermon?Naturally the eye, wandering here and there among the serried ranks, made bold, untrammelled choice among our fair fellow-supplicants. It wasin this way that, some months earlier, under the exceptional strain ofthe Athanasian Creed, my roving fancy had settled upon the baker's wifeas a fit object for a life-long devotion. Her riper charms had conquereda heart which none of her be-muslined, tittering juniors had been ableto subdue; and that she was already wedded had never occurred to meas any bar to my affection. Edward's general demeanour, then, duringmorning service, was safe to convict him; but there was also a specialtest for the particular case. It happened that we sat in a transept, and, the Larkins being behind us, Edward's only chance of feasting onSabina's charms was in the all-too fleeting interval when we swung roundeastwards. I was not mistaken. During the singing of the Benedictus theimpatient one made several false starts, and at last he slewed fairlyround before "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be" washalf finished. The evidence was conclusive: a court of law could havedesired no better. The fact being patent, the next thing was to grapple with it; and mymind was fully occupied during the sermon. There was really nothingunfair or unbrotherly in my attitude. A philosophic affection such asmine own, which clashed with nothing, was (I held) permissible; but thevolcanic passions in which Edward indulged about once a quarter werea serious interference with business. To make matters worse, next weekthere was a circus coming to the neighbourhood, to which we had all beenstrictly forbidden to go; and without Edward no visit in contempt of lawand orders could be successfully brought off. I had sounded him as tothe circus on our way to church, and he had replied briefly that thevery thought of a clown made him sick. Morbidity could no furthergo. But the sermon came to an end without any line of conduct havingsuggested itself; and I walked home in some depression, feeling sadlythat Venus was in the ascendant and in direful opposition, whileAuriga--the circus star--drooped declinant, perilously near the horizon. By the irony of fate, Aunt Eliza, of all people, turned out to be theDea ex machina: which thing fell out in this wise. It was that lady'sobnoxious practice to issue forth, of a Sunday afternoon, on a visit ofstate to such farmers and cottagers as dwelt at hand; on which occasionshe was wont to hale a reluctant boy along with her, from the mixedmotives of propriety and his soul's health. Much cudgelling of brains, I suppose, had on that particular day made me torpid and unwary. Anyhow, when a victim came to be sought for, I fell an easy prey, while theothers fled scatheless and whooping. Our first visit was to the Larkins. Here ceremonial might be viewed in its finest flower, and we conductedourselves, like Queen Elizabeth when she trod the measure, "high anddisposedly. " In the low, oak-panelled parlour, cake and currant winewere set forth, and after courtesies and compliments exchanged, AuntEliza, greatly condescending, talked the fashions with Mrs Larkin; whilethe farmer and I, perspiring with the unusual effort, exchanged remarkson the mutability of the weather and the steady fall in the price ofcorn. (Who would have thought, to hear us, that only two short days agowe had confronted each other on either side of a hedge, --I triumphant, provocative, derisive; he flushed, wroth, cracking his whip, andvolleying forth profanity? So powerful is all-subduing ceremony!) Sabinathe while, demurely seated with a Pilgrim's Progress on her knee, andapparently absorbed in a brightly coloured presentment of "ApollyonStraddling Right across the Way, " eyed me at times with shy interest;but repelled all Aunt Eliza's advances with a frigid politeness forwhich I could not sufficiently admire her. "It's surprising to me, " I heard my aunt remark presently, "how myeldest nephew, Edward, despises little girls. I heard him tell Charlottethe other day that he wished he could exchange her for a pairof Japanese guinea-pigs. It made the poor child cry. Boys are soheartless!" (I saw Sabina stiffen as she sat, and her tip-tilted nosetwitched scornfully. ) "Now this boy here--" (my soul descended into myvery boots. Could the woman have intercepted any of my amorous glancesat the baker's wife?) "Now this boy, " my aunt went on, "is more humanaltogether. Only yesterday he took his sister to the baker's shop, andspent his only penny buying her sweets. I thought it showed such a nicedisposition. I wish Edward were more like him!" I breathed again. It was unnecessary to explain my real motives for thatvisit to the baker's. Sabina's face softened, and her contemptuous nosedescended from its altitude of scorn; she gave me one shy glance ofkindness, and then concentrated her attention upon Mercy knocking at theWicket Gate. I felt awfully mean as regarded Edward; but what could Ido? I was in Gaza, gagged and bound; the Philistines hemmed me in. The same evening the storm burst, the bolt fell, and--to continue themetaphor--the atmosphere grew serene and clear once more. The eveningservice was shorter than usual, the vicar, as he ascended the pulpitsteps, having dropped two pages out of his sermon-case, --unperceived byany but ourselves, either at the moment or subsequently when the hiatuswas reached; so as we joyfully shuffled out I whispered Edward thatby racing home at top speed we should make time to assume our bows andarrows (laid aside for the day) and play at Indians and buffaloes withAunt Eliza's fowls--already strolling roostwards, regardless of theirdoom--before that sedately stepping lady could return. Edward hung atthe door, wavering; the suggestion had unhallowed charms. At that moment Sabina issued primly forth, and, seeing Edward, put outher tongue at him in the most exasperating manner conceivable; thenpassed on her way, her shoulders rigid, her dainty head held high. Aman can stand very much in the cause of love: poverty, aunts, rivals, barriers of every sort, --all these only serve to fan the flame. Butpersonal ridicule is a shaft that reaches the very vitals. Edward ledthe race home at a speed which one of Ballantyne's heroes might haveequalled but never surpassed; and that evening the Indians dispersedAunt Eliza's fowls over several square miles of country, so thatthe tale of them remaineth incomplete unto this day. Edward himself, cheering wildly, pursued the big Cochin-China cock till the bird sankgasping under the drawing-room window, whereat its mistress stoodpetrified; and after supper, in the shrubbery, smoked a half-consumedcigar he had picked up in the road, and declared to an awe-strickenaudience his final, his immitigable, resolve to go into the army. The crisis was past, and Edward was saved!. .. And yet. .. Sunt lachrymaererem. .. To me watching the cigar-stump alternately pale and glowagainst the dark background of laurel, a vision of a tip-tilted nose, of a small head poised scornfully, seemed to hover on the gatheringgloom--seemed to grow and fade and grow again, like the grin of theCheshire cat--pathetically, reproachfully even; and the charms of thebaker's wife slipped from my memory like snow-wreaths in thaw. Afterall, Sabina was nowise to blame: why should the child be punished?To-morrow I would give them the slip, and stroll round by her gardenpromiscuous-like, at a time when the farmer was safe in the rick-yard. If nothing came of it, there was no harm done; and if on thecontrary. .. ! THE BURGLARS It was much too fine a night to think of going to bed at once, and so, although the witching hour of nine P. M. Had struck, Edward and I werestill leaning out of the open window in our nightshirts, watching theplay of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planningschemes of fresh devilry for the sunshiny morrow. From below, strains ofthe jocund piano declared that the Olympians were enjoying themselvesin their listless, impotent way; for the new curate had been bidden todinner that night, and was at the moment unclerically proclaiming to allthe world that he feared no foe. His discordant vociferations doubtlessstarted a train of thought in Edward's mind, for the youth presentlyremarked, a propos of nothing that had been said before, "I believe thenew curate's rather gone on Aunt Maria. " I scouted the notion. "Why, she's quite old, " I said. (She must haveseen some five-and-twenty summers. ) "Of course she is, " replied Edward, scornfully. "It's not her, it's hermoney he's after, you bet!" "Didn't know she had any money, " I observed timidly. "Sure to have, " said my brother, with confidence. "Heaps and heaps. " Silence ensued, both our minds being busy with the new situation thuspresented, --mine, in wonderment at this flaw that so often declareditself in enviable natures of fullest endowment, --in a grown-up manand a good cricketer, for instance, even as this curate; Edward's(apparently), in the consideration of how such a state of things, supposing it existed, could be best turned to his own advantage. "Bobby Ferris told me, " began Edward in due course, "that there was afellow spooning his sister once--" "What's spooning?" I asked meekly. "Oh, _I_ dunno, " said Edward, indifferently. "It's--it's--it's just athing they do, you know. And he used to carry notes and messages andthings between 'em, and he got a shilling almost every time. " "What, from each of 'em?" I innocently inquired. Edward looked at me with scornful pity. "Girls never have any money, " hebriefly explained. "But she did his exercises and got him out of rows, and told stories for him when he needed it--and much better ones than hecould have made up for himself. Girls are useful in some ways. So hewas living in clover, when unfortunately they went and quarrelled aboutsomething. " "Don't see what that's got to do with it, " I said. "Nor don't I, " rejoined Edward. "But anyhow the notes and thingsstopped, and so did the shillings. Bobby was fairly cornered, for hehad bought two ferrets on tick, and promised to pay a shilling a week, thinking the shillings were going on for ever, the silly young ass. Sowhen the week was up, and he was being dunned for the shilling, he wentoff to the fellow and said, 'Your broken-hearted Bella implores you tomeet her at sundown, --by the hollow oak, as of old, be it only fora moment. Do not fail!' He got all that out of some rotten book, ofcourse. The fellow looked puzzled and said, -- "'What hollow oak? I don't know any hollow oak. ' "'Perhaps it was the Royal Oak?' said Bobby promptly, 'cos he saw hehad made a slip, through trusting too much to the rotten book; but thisdidn't seem to make the fellow any happier. " "Should think not, " I said, "the Royal Oak's an awful low sort of pub. " "I know, " said Edward. "Well, at last the fellow said, 'I think I knowwhat she means: the hollow tree in your father's paddock. It happens tobe an elm, but she wouldn't know the difference. All right: say I'll bethere. ' Bobby hung about a bit, for he hadn't got his money. 'She wascrying awfully, ' he said. Then he got his shilling. " "And wasn't the fellow riled, " I inquired, "when he got to the place andfound nothing?" "He found Bobby, " said Edward, indignantly. "Young Ferris was agentleman, every inch of him. He brought the fellow another message fromBella: 'I dare not leave the house. My cruel parents immure me closelyIf you only knew what I suffer. Your broken-hearted Bella. ' Out of thesame rotten book. This made the fellow a little suspicious, 'cos it wasthe old Ferrises who had been keen about the thing all through: thefellow, you see, had tin. " "But what's that got to--" I began again. "Oh, _I_ dunno, " said Edward, impatiently. "I'm telling you just whatBobby told me. He got suspicious, anyhow, but he couldn't exactly callBella's brother a liar, so Bobby escaped for the time. But when he wasin a hole next week, over a stiff French exercise, and tried the samesort of game on his sister, she was too sharp for him, and he got caughtout. Somehow women seem more mistrustful than men. They're so beastlysuspicious by nature, you know. " "_I_ know, " said I. "But did the two--the fellow and the sister--make itup afterwards?" "I don't remember about that, " replied Edward, indifferently; "but Bobbygot packed off to school a whole year earlier than his people meant tosend him, --which was just what he wanted. So you see it all came rightin the end!" I was trying to puzzle out the moral of this story--it was evidentlymeant to contain one somewhere--when a flood of golden lamplight mingledwith the moon rays on the lawn, and Aunt Maria and the new curatestrolled out on the grass below us, and took the direction of a gardenseat that was backed by a dense laurel shrubbery reaching round in ahalf-circle to the house. Edward mediated moodily. "If we only knew whatthey were talking about, " said he, "you'd soon see whether I was rightor not. Look here! Let's send the kid down by the porch to reconnoitre!" "Harold's asleep, " I said; "it seems rather a shame--" "Oh, rot!" said my brother; "he's the youngest, and he's got to do ashe's told!" So the luckless Harold was hauled out of bed and given hissailing-orders. He was naturally rather vexed at being stood up suddenlyon the cold floor, and the job had no particular interest for him; buthe was both staunch and well disciplined. The means of exit were simpleenough. A porch of iron trellis came up to within easy reach of thewindow, and was habitually used by all three of us, when modestlyanxious to avoid public notice. Harold climbed deftly down the porchlike a white rat, and his night gown glimmered a moment on the gravelwalk ere he was lost to sight in the darkness of the shrubbery. A briefinterval of silence ensued, broken suddenly by a sound of scuffle, andthen a shrill, long-drawn squeal, as of metallic surfaces in friction. Our scout had fallen into the hands of the enemy! Indolence alone had made us devolve the task of investigation on ouryounger brother. Now that danger had declared itself, there was nohesitation. In a second we were down the side of the porch, and crawlingCherokee-wise through the laurels to the back of the garden-seat. Piteous was the sight that greeted us. Aunt Maria was on the seat, ina white evening frock, looking--for an aunt--really quite nice. On thelawn stood an incensed curate, grasping our small brother by a largeear, which--judging from the row he was making--seemed on the pointof parting company with the head it adorned. The gruesome noise he wasemitting did not really affect us otherwise than aesthetically. Toone who has tried both, the wail of genuine physical anguish is easydistinguishable from the pumped-up ad misericordiam blubber. Harold'scould clearly be recognised as belonging to the latter class. "Now, youyoung--" (whelp, _I_ think it was, but Edward stoutly maintains it wasdevil), said the curate, sternly; "tell us what you mean by it!" "Well, leggo of my ear then!" shrilled Harold, "and I'll tell you thesolemn truth!" "Very well, " agreed the curate, releasing him; "now go ahead, and don'tlie more than you can help. " We abode the promised disclosure without the least misgiving; but evenwe had hardly given Harold due credit for his fertility of resource andpowers of imagination. "I had just finished saying my prayers, " began that young gentleman, slowly, "when I happened to look out of the window, and on the lawn Isaw a sight which froze the marrow in my veins! A burglar wasapproaching the house with snake-like tread! He had a scowl and a darklantern, and he was armed to the teeth!" We listened with interest. The style, though unlike Harold's nativenotes, seemed strangely familiar. "Go on, " said the curate, grimly. "Pausing in his stealthy career, " continued Harold, "he gave a lowwhistle. Instantly the signal was responded to, and from the adjacentshadows two more figures glided forth. The miscreants were both armed tothe teeth. " "Excellent, " said the curate; "proceed. " "The robber chief, " pursued Harold, warming to his work, "joinedhis nefarious comrades, and conversed with them in silent tones. Hisexpression was truly ferocious, and I ought to have said that he wasarmed to the t--" "There, never mind his teeth, " interrupted the curate, rudely; "there'stoo much jaw about you altogether. Hurry up and have done. " "I was in a frightful funk, " continued the narrator, warily guarding hisear with his hand, "but just then the drawing-room window opened, andyou and Aunt Maria came out--I mean emerged. The burglars vanishedsilently into the laurels, with horrid implications!" The curate looked slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained, andcertainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might have really seensomething. How was the poor man to know--though the chaste and loftydiction might have supplied a hint--that the whole yarn was a freeadaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by the knife-and-bootboy? "Why did you not alarm the house?" he asked. "'Cos I was afraid, " said Harold, sweetly, "that p'raps they mightn'tbelieve me!" "But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?" put in AuntMaria. Harold was hard pressed--by his own flesh and blood, too! At that moment Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off throughthe laurels. When some ten yards away he gave a low whistle. I repliedby another. The effect was magical. Aunt Maria started up with a shriek. Harold gave one startled glance around, and then fled like a hare, madestraight for the back door, burst in upon the servants at supper, andburied himself in the broad bosom of the cook, his special ally. Thecurate faced the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung herself onhim. "O Mr. Hodgitts!" I heard her cry, "you are brave! for my sake donot be rash!" He was not rash. When I peeped out a second later, thecoast was entirely clear. By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging; andEdward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off. Retreat was aneasy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg up on to the garden wall, whichled in its turn to the roof of an out-house, up which, at a dubiousangle, we could crawl to the window of the box-room. This overland routehad been revealed to us one day by the domestic cat, when hardpressed in the course of an otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhatunwillingly--was filling the title role; and it had proved distinctlyuseful on occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus somecuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing somethingsticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly cook, ere theclamour of the burglar-hunters had died away. The curate's undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, wasgenerally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight, and muchkudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however, when he hiddropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild curatorial jokeabout the moral courage required for taking the last piece ofbread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark dreamily, and as it wereto the universe at large, "Mr. Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, donot be rash!" Fortunately for me, the vicar was also a caller on that day; and it wasalways a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated friend in theopen. A HARVESTING The year was in its yellowing time, and the face of Nature a study inold gold. "A field or, semee, with garbs of the same:" it may be falseHeraldry--Nature's generally is--but it correctly blazons the displaythat Edward and I considered from the rickyard gate, Harold was noton in this scene, being stretched upon the couch of pain; the specialdisorder stomachic, as usual. The evening before, Edward, in a fit of unwonted amiability, had deignedto carve me out a turnip lantern, an art-and-craft he was peculiarlydeft in; and Harold, as the interior of the turnip flew out in scentedfragments under the hollowing knife, had eaten largely thereof:regarding all such jetsam as his special perquisite. Now he was dreeinghis weird, with such assistance as the chemist could afford. But Edwardand I, knowing that this particular field was to be carried to-day, were revelling in the privilege of riding in the empty waggons from therickyard back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot, to career it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys ofa stubble sea. It was the nearest approach to sailing that we inlandurchins might compass: and hence it ensued, that such stirring scenes asSir Richard Grenville on the Revenge, the smoke-wreathed Battle of theNile, and the Death of Nelson, had all been enacted in turn on thesedusty quarter decks, as they swayed and bumped afield. Another waggon had shot its load, and was jolting out through therickyard gate, as we swung ourselves in, shouting, over its tail. Edward was the first up, and, as I gained my feet, he clutched me in adeath-grapple. I was a privateersman, he proclaimed, and he the captainof the British frigate Terpsichore, of--I forget the precise numberof guns. Edward always collared the best parts to himself; but I washolding my own gallantly, when I suddenly discovered that the floor webattled on was swarming with earwigs. Shrieking, I hurled free of him, and rolled over the tail-board on to the stubble. Edward executed awar-dance of triumph on the deck of the retreating galleon; but I caredlittle for that. I knew HE knew that I wasn't afraid of him, but thatI was--and terribly--of earwigs, "those mortal bugs o' the field. " SoI let him disappear, shouting lustily for all hands to repel boarders, while I strolled inland, down the village. There was a touch of adventure in the expedition. This was not our ownvillage, but a foreign one, distant at least a mile. One felt thatsense of mingled distinction and insecurity which is familiar tothe traveller: distinction, in that folk turned the head to note youcuriously; insecurity, by reason of the ever-present possibility ofmissiles on the part of the more juvenile inhabitants, a class eternallyconservative. Elated with isolation, I went even more nose-in-air thanusual: and "even so, " I mused, "might Mungo Park have threaded thetrackless African forest and. .. " Here I plumped against a soft, butresisting body. Recalled to my senses by the shock, I fell back in the attitude everyboy under these circumstances instinctively adopts--both elbows well upover the ears. I found myself facing a tall elderly man, clean-shaven, clad in well-worn black--a clergyman evidently; and I noted at oncea far-away look in his eyes, as if they were used to another plane ofvision, and could not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenlyrecalled thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest: "I ask athousand pardons, sir, " he said; "I am really so very absent-minded. Itrust you will forgive me. " Now most boys would have suspected chaff under this courtly style ofaddress. I take infinite credit to myself for recognising at oncethe natural attitude of a man to whom his fellows were gentlemen all, neither Jew nor Gentile, clean nor unclean. Of course, I took the blameon myself; adding, that I was very absent-minded too, --which was indeedthe case. "I perceive, " he said pleasantly, "that we have something in common. I, an old man, dream dreams; you, a young one, see visions. Your lot isthe happier. And now--" his hand had been resting all this time on awicket-gate--"you are hot, it is easily seen; the day is advanced, Virgois the Zodiacal sign. Perhaps I may offer you some poor refreshment, ifyour engagements will permit. " My only engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I hadnot intended to keep it in any case; so I passed in, while he heldthe gate open politely, murmuring "Venit Hesperus ite, capellae: come, little kid!" and then apologising abjectly for a familiarity which (hesaid) was less his than the Roman poet's. A straight flagged walk led upto the cool-looking old house, and my host, lingering in his progress atthis rose-tree and that, forgot all about me at least twice, waking upand apologising humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I puttwo and two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor, eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend wasalready beginning to form; to myself an object of special awe, in thathe was alleged to have written a real book. "Heaps o' books, " Martha, my informant, said; but I knew the exact rate of discount applicable toMartha's statements. We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck meat once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None of yourfeminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and tidies! This man, it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout volumes in calf and vellumlined three sides; books sprawled or hunched themselves on chairs andtables; books diffused the pleasant odour of printers' ink and bindings;topping all, a faint aroma of tobacco cheered and heartened exceedingly, as under foreign skies the flap and rustle over the wayfarer's headof the Union Jack--the old flag of emancipation! And in one corner, book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano. This I hailed with a squeal of delight. "Want to strum?" inquired myfriend, as if it was the most natural wish in the world--his eyes werealready straying towards another corner, where bits of writing-tablepeeped out from under a sort of Alpine system of book and foolscap. "O, but may I?" I asked in doubt. "At home I'm not allowed to--onlybeastly exercises!" "Well, you can strum here, at all events, " he replied; and murmuringabsently, Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen, he made his way, mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible writing-able. Inten seconds he was out of sight and call. A great book open on his knee, another propped up in front, a score or so disposed within easy reach, he read and jotted with an absorption almost passionate. I might havebeen in Boeotia, for any consciousness he had of me. So with a lightheart I turned to and strummed. Those who painfully and with bleeding feet have scaled the crags ofmastery over musical instruments have yet their loss in this, --that thewild joy of strumming has become a vanished sense. Their happiness comesfrom the concord and the relative value of the notes they handle:the pure, absolute quality and nature of each note in itself are onlyappreciated by the strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them, and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell ofgreenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the gravecentaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight, and some thedeep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some red, and others willtell of an army with silken standards and march-music. And throughoutall the sequence of suggestion, up above the little white men leap andpeep, and strive against the imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewoodbox hums as it were full of hiving bees. Spent with the rapture, I paused a moment and caught my friend's eyeover the edge of a folio. "But as for these Germans, " he began abruptly, as if we had been in the middle of a discussion, "the scholarshipis there, I grant you; but the spark, the fine perception, the happyintuition, where is it? They get it all from us!" "They get nothing whatever from US, " I said decidedly: the word Germanonly suggesting Bands, to which Aunt Eliza was bitterly hostile. "You think not?" he rejoined, doubtfully, getting up and walking aboutthe room. "Well, I applaud such fairness and temperance in so young acritic. They are qualities--in youth--as rare as they are pleasing. Butjust look at Schrumpffius, for instance--how he struggles and wrestleswith a simple {GREEK gar} in this very passage here!" I peeped fearfully through the open door, half-dreading to see somesinuous and snark-like conflict in progress on the mat; but all wasstill. I saw no trouble at all in the passage, and I said so. "Precisely, " he cried, delighted. "To you, who possess the naturalscholar's faculty in so happy a degree, there is no difficulty atall. But to this Schrumpffius--" But here, luckily for me, in came thehousekeeper, a clean-looking woman of staid aspect. "Your tea is in the garden, " she said, as if she were correcting afaulty emendation. "I've put some cakes and things for the littlegentleman; and you'd better drink it before it gets cold. " He waved her off and continued his stride, brandishing an aorist over mydevoted head. The housekeeper waited unmoved till there fell a moment'sbreak in his descant; and then, "You'd better drink it before itgets cold, " she observed again, impassively. The wretched man cast adeprecating look at me. "Perhaps a little tea would be rather nice, " heobserved, feebly; and to my great relief he led the way into the garden. I looked about for the little gentleman, but, failing to discover him, Iconcluded he was absent-minded too, and attacked the "cakes and things"with no misgivings. After a most successful and most learned tea a something happened which, small as I was, never quite shook itself out of my memory. To us at parley in an arbour over the high road, there entered, slouching into view, a dingy tramp, satellited by a frowsy woman and apariah dog; and, catching sight of us, he set up his professional whine;and I looked at my friend with the heartiest compassion, for I knewwell from Martha--it was common talk--that at this time of day he wascertainly and surely penniless. Morn by morn he started forth withpockets lined; and each returning evening found him with never a sou. All this he proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteouslyand even shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last thegentleman of the road, realising the hopelessness of his case, set toand cursed him with gusto, vocabulary, and abandonment. He reviledhis eyes, his features, his limbs, his profession, his relatives andsurroundings; and then slouched off, still oozing malice and filth. Wewatched the party to a turn in the road, where the woman, plainly weary, came to a stop. Her lord, after some conventional expletives demanded ofhim by his position, relieved her of her bundle, and caused her to hangon his arm with a certain rough kindness of tone, and in action even adim approach to tenderness; and the dingy dog crept up for one lick ather hand. "See, " said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, "how thisstrange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in theunlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early morning?Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light thwartwise--and allis a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of this strangething underrun and link together the whole world. Yet it is not the oldimperious god of the fatal bow--{GREEK}not that--nor even the placidrespectable {GREEK}--but something still unnamed, perhaps moremysterious, more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, onemust stoop!" The dew was falling, the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly homewardsdown the road. Lonely spaces everywhere, above and around. Only Hesperushung in the sky, solitary, pure, ineffably far-drawn and remote; yetinfinitely heartening, somehow, in his valorous isolation. SNOWBOUND Twelfth-night had come and gone, and life next morning seemed a trifleflat and purposeless. But yester-eve and the mummers were here! They hadcome striding into the old kitchen, powdering the red brick floor withsnow from their barbaric bedizenments; and stamping, and crossing, anddeclaiming, till all was whirl and riot and shout. Harold was franklyafraid: unabashed, he buried himself in the cook's ample bosom. Edwardfeigned a manly superiority to illusion, and greeted these awfulapparitions familiarly, as Dick and Harry and Joe. As for me, I was toobig to run, too rapt to resist the magic and surprise. Whence camethese outlanders, breaking in on us with song and ordered masque anda terrible clashing of wooden swords? And after these, what strangevisitants might we not look for any quiet night, when the chestnutspopped in the ashes, and the old ghost stories drew the awe-strickencircle close? Old Merlin, perhaps, "all furred in black sheep-skins, and a russet gown, with a bow and arrows, and bearing wild geese in hishand!" Or stately Ogier the Dane, recalled from Faery, asking his wayto the land that once had need of him! Or even, on some white night, the Snow-Queen herself, with a chime of sleigh-bells and the patter ofreindeers' feet, with sudden halt at the door flung wide, while aloftthe Northern Lights went shaking attendant spears among the quiet stars! This morning, house-bound by the relentless, indefatigable snow, I wasfeeling the reaction Edward, on the contrary, being violently stagestruck on this his first introduction to the real Drama, was striding upand down the floor, proclaiming "Here be I, King Gearge the Third, " in astrong Berkshire accent. Harold, accustomed, as the youngest, to lonelyantics and to sports that asked no sympathy, was absorbed in "clubmen":a performance consisting in a measured progress round the roomarm-in-arm with an imaginary companion of reverend years, withoccasional halts at imaginary clubs, where--imaginary steps beingleisurely ascended--imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandalwas discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and--regrettable tosay--imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows how thegerm of this dreary pastime first found way into his small-boyishbeing. It was his own invention, and he was proportionately proud ofit. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I, crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of the innumerablesnow-flakes, wrapping our cheery little world in an uncanny uniform, ghastly in line and hue. Charlotte was sadly out of spirits. Having "countered" Miss Smedley atbreakfast, during some argument or other, by an apt quotation fromher favourite classic (the Fairy Book) she had been gently but firmlyinformed that no such things as fairies ever really existed. "Do youmean to say it's all lies?" asked Charlotte, bluntly. Miss Smedleydeprecated the use of any such unladylike words in any connection atall. "These stories had their origin, my dear, " she explained, "in amistaken anthropomorphism in the interpretation of nature. But though weare now too well informed to fall into similar errors, there are stillmany beautiful lessons to be learned from these myths--" "But how can you learn anything, " persisted Charlotte, "from whatdoesn't exist?" And she left the table defiant, howbeit depressed. "Don't you mind HER, " I said, consolingly; "how can she know anythingabout it? Why, she can't even throw a stone properly!" "Edward says they're all rot, too, " replied Charlotte, doubtfully. "Edward says everything's rot, " I explained, "now he thinks he's goinginto the Army. If a thing's in a book it MUST be true, so that settlesit!" Charlotte looked almost reassured. The room was quieter now, for Edwardhad got the dragon down and was boring holes in him with a purringsound Harold was ascending the steps of the Athenaeum with a jauntyair--suggestive rather of the Junior Carlton. Outside, the tallelm-tops were hardly to be seen through the feathery storm. "The sky'sa-falling, " quoted Charlotte, softly; "I must go and tell the king. "The quotation suggested a fairy story, and I offered to read toher, reaching out for the book. But the Wee Folk were under a cloud;sceptical hints had embittered the chalice. So I was fain to fetchArthur--second favourite with Charlotte for his dames riding errant, andan easy first with us boys for his spear-splintering crash of tourneyand hurtle against hopeless odds. Here again, however, I provedunfortunate, --what ill-luck made the book open at the sorrowful historyof Balin and Balan? "And he vanished anon, " I read: "and so he heardan horne blow, as it had been the death of a beast. 'That blast, ' saidBalin, 'is blowen for me, for I am the prize, and yet am I not dead. '"Charlotte began to cry: she knew the rest too well. I shut the book indespair. Harold emerged from behind the arm-chair. He was sucking histhumb (a thing which members of the Reform are seldom seen to do), and he stared wide-eyed at his tear stained sister. Edward put off hishistrionics, and rushed up to her as the consoler--a new part for him. "I know a jolly story, " he began. "Aunt Eliza told it me. It was whenshe was somewhere over in that beastly abroad"--(he had once spent ablack month of misery at Dinan)--"and there was a fellow there who hadgot two storks. And one stork died--it was the she-stork. " ("What didit die of?" put in Harold. ) "And the other stork was quite sorry, andmoped, and went on, and got very miserable. So they looked about andfound a duck, and introduced it to the stork. The duck was a drake, butthe stork didn't mind, and they loved each other and were as jollyas could be. By and by another duck came along, --a real she-duck thistime, --and when the drake saw her he fell in love, and left the stork, and went and proposed to the duck: for she was very beautiful. But thepoor stork who was left, he said nothing at all to anybody, but justpined and pined and pined away, till one morning he was found quitedead! But the ducks lived happily ever afterwards!" This was Edward's idea of a jolly story! Down again went the corners ofpoor Charlotte's mouth. Really Edward's stupid inability to see the realpoint in anything was TOO annoying! It was always so. Years before, itbeing necessary to prepare his youthful mind for a domestic event thatmight lead to awkward questionings at a time when there was littleleisure to invent appropriate answers, it was delicately inquired ofhim whether he would like to have a little brother, or perhaps a littlesister? He considered the matter carefully in all its bearings, andfinally declared for a Newfoundland pup. Any boy more "gleg at theuptak" would have met his parents half-way, and eased their burden. As it was, the matter had to be approached all over again from a freshstandpoint. And now, while Charlotte turned away sniffingly, with ahiccough that told of an overwrought soul, Edward, unconscious (like SirIsaac's Diamond) of the mischief he had done, wheeled round on Haroldwith a shout. "I want a live dragon, " he announced: "you've got to be my dragon!" "Leave me go, will you?" squealed Harold, struggling stoutly. "I'mplayin' at something else. How can I be a dragon and belong to all theclubs?" "But wouldn't you like to be a nice scaly dragon, all green, " saidEdward, trying persuasion, "with a curly tail and red eyes, andbreathing real smoke and fire?" Harold wavered an instant: Pall-Mall was still strong in him. The nexthe was grovelling on the floor. No saurian ever swung a tail so scalyand so curly as his. Clubland was a thousand years away. With horrificpants he emitted smokiest smoke and fiercest fire. "Now I want a Princess, " cried Edward, clutching Charlotte ecstatically;"and YOU can be the doctor, and heal me from the dragon's deadly wound. " Of all professions I held the sacred art of healing in worst horror andcontempt. Cataclysmal memories of purge and draught crowded thick on me, and with Charlotte--who courted no barren honours--I made a break forthe door. Edward did likewise, and the hostile forces clashed togetheron the mat, and for a brief space things were mixed and chaotic andArthurian. The silvery sound of the luncheon-bell restored an instantpeace, even in the teeth of clenched antagonisms like ours. The HolyGrail itself, "sliding athwart a sunbeam, " never so effectually stilleda riot of warring passions into sweet and quiet accord. WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT Edward was standing ginger-beer like a gentleman, happening, as the onethat had last passed under the dentist's hands, to be the capitalistof the flying hour. As in all well-regulated families, the usual tariffobtained in ours, --half-a-crown a tooth; one shilling only if themolar were a loose one. This one, unfortunately--in spite of Edward'sinterested affectation of agony--had been shaky undisguised; but theevent was good enough to run to ginger-beer. As financier, however, Edward had claimed exemption from any servile duties of procurement, and had swaggered about the garden while I fetched from the villagepost-office, and Harold stole a tumbler from the pantry. Ourpreparations complete, we were sprawling on the lawn; the staidest andmost self respecting of the rabbits had been let loose to grace thefeast, and was lopping demurely about the grass, selecting the juiciestplantains; while Selina, as the eldest lady present, was toying, in heraffected feminine way, with the first full tumbler, daintily fishing forbits of broken cork. "Hurry up, can't you?" growled our host; "what are you girls always sobeastly particular for?" "Martha says, " explained Harold (thirsty too, but still just), "thatif you swallow a bit of cork, it swells, and it swells, and it swellsinside you, till you--" "O bosh!" said Edward, draining the glass with a fine pretence ofindifference to consequences, but all the same (as I noticed) dodgingthe floating cork-fragments with skill and judgment. "O, it's all very well to say bosh, " replied Harold, nettled; "but everyone knows it's true but you. Why, when Uncle Thomas was here last, andthey got up a bottle of wine for him, he took just one tiny sip out ofhis glass, and then he said, 'Poo, my goodness, that's corked!' And hewouldn't touch it. And they had to get a fresh bottle up. The funny partwas, though, I looked in his glass afterwards, when it was brought outinto the passage, and there wasn't any cork in it at all! So I drank itall off, and it was very good!" "You'd better be careful, young man!" said his elder brother, regardinghim severely. "D' you remember that night when the Mummers were here, and they had mulled port, and you went round and emptied all the glassesafter they had gone away?" "Ow! I did feel funny that night, " chuckled Harold. "Thought the housewas comin' down, it jumped about so; and Martha had to carry me up tobed, 'cos the stairs was goin' all waggity!" We gazed searchingly at our graceless junior; but it was clear thathe viewed the matter in the light of a phenomenon rather than of adelinquency. A third bottle was by this time circling; and Selina, who had evidentlywaited for it to reach her, took a most unfairly long pull, and thenjumping up and shaking out her frock, announced that she was going for awalk. Then she fled like a hare; for it was the custom of our Family tomeet with physical coercion any independence of action in individuals. "She's off with those Vicarage girls again, " said Edward, regardingSelina's long black legs twinkling down the path. "She goes out withthem every day now; and as soon as ever they start, all their heads gotogether and they chatter, chatter, chatter the whole blessed time!I can't make out what they find to talk about. They never stop; it'sgabble, gabble, gabble right along, like a nest of young rooks!" "P'raps they talk about birds'-eggs, " I suggested sleepily (the sunwas hot, the turf soft, the ginger-beer potent); "and about ships, andbuffaloes, and desert islands; and why rabbits have white tails; andwhether they'd sooner have a schooner or a cutter; and what they'll bewhen they're men--at least, I mean there's lots of things to talk about, if you WANT to talk. " "Yes; but they don't talk about those sort of things at all, " persistedEdward. "How CAN they? They don't KNOW anything; they can't DOanything--except play the piano, and nobody would want to talk aboutTHAT; and they don't care about anything--anything sensible, I mean. Sowhat DO they talk about?" "I asked Martha once, " put in Harold; "and she said, 'Never YOU mind;young ladies has lots of things to talk about that young gentlemen can'tunderstand. '" "I don't believe it, " Edward growled. "Well, that's what she SAID, anyway, " rejoined Harold, indifferently. The subject did not seem to him of first-class importance, and it washindering the circulation of the ginger-beer. We heard the click of the front-gate. Through a gap in the hedge wecould see the party setting off down the road. Selina was in the middle:a Vicarage girl had her by either arm; their heads were together, asEdward had described; and the clack of their tongues came down thebreeze like the busy pipe of starlings on a bright March morning. "What DO they talk about, Charlotte?" I inquired, wishing to pacifyEdward. "You go out with them sometimes. " "I don't know, " said poor Charlotte, dolefully. "They make me walkbehind, 'cos they say I'm too little, and mustn't hear. And I DO want toso, " she added. "When any lady comes to see Aunt Eliza, " said Harold, "they both talkat once all the time. And yet each of 'em seems to hear what the otherone's saying. I can't make out how they do it. Grown-up people are soclever!" "The Curate's the funniest man, " I remarked. "He's always saying thingsthat have no sense in them at all, and then laughing at them as if theywere jokes. Yesterday, when they asked him if he'd have some more teahe said 'Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, ' andthen sniggered all over. I didn't see anything funny in that. And thensomebody asked him about his button-hole and he said ''Tis but a littlefaded flower, ' and exploded again. I thought it very stupid. " "O HIM, " said Edward contemptuously: "he can't help it, you know; it's asort of way he's got. But it's these girls I can't make out. If they'veanything really sensible to talk about, how is it nobody knows what itis? And if they haven't--and we know they CAN'T have, naturally--whydon't they shut up their jaw? This old rabbit here--HE doesn't want totalk. He's got something better to do. " And Edward aimed a ginger-beercork at the unruffled beast, who never budged. "O but rabbits DO talk, " interposed Harold. "I've watched them oftenin their hutch. They put their heads together and their noses go up anddown, just like Selina's and the Vicarage girls'. Only of course I can thear what they're saying. " "Well, if they do, " said Edward, unwillingly, "I'll bet they don't talksuch rot as those girls do!"--which was ungenerous, as well as unfair;for it had not yet transpired--nor has it to this day--WHAT Selina andher friends talked about. THE ARGONAUTS The advent of strangers, of whatever sort, into our circle, had alwaysbeen a matter of grave dubiety and suspicion; indeed, it was generallya signal for retreat into caves and fastnesses of the earth, intounthreaded copses or remote outlying cowsheds, whence we were only to beextricated by wily nursemaids, rendered familiar by experience with oursecret runs and refuges. It was not surprising therefore that the heroesof classic legend, when first we made their acquaintance, failed to winour entire sympathy at once. "Confidence, " says somebody, "is a plant ofslow growth;" and these stately dark-haired demi-gods, with nameshard to master and strange accoutrements, had to win a citadel alreadystrongly garrisoned with a more familiar soldiery. Their chill foreigngoddesses had no such direct appeal for us as the mocking maliciousfairies and witches of the North; we missed the pleasant alliance ofthe animal--the fox who spread the bushiest of tails to convey us tothe enchanted castle, the frog in the well, the raven who croaked advicefrom the tree; and--to Harold especially--it seemed entirely wrong thatthe hero should ever be other than the youngest brother of three. Thisbelief, indeed, in the special fortune that ever awaited the youngestbrother, as such, --the "Borough-English" of Faery, --had been of balefuleffect on Harold, producing a certain self-conceit and perkiness thatcalled for physical correction. But even in our admonishment we were onhis side; and as we distrustfully eyed these new arrivals, old Saturnhimself seemed something of a parvenu. Even strangers, however, wemay develop into sworn comrades; and these gay swordsmen, after all, were of the right stuff. Perseus, with his cap of darkness and hiswonderful sandals, was not long in winging his way to our hearts; Apolloknocked at Admetus' gate in something of the right fairy fashion; Psychebrought with her an orthodox palace of magic, as well as helpful birdsand friendly ants. Ulysses, with his captivating shifts and strategies, broke down the final barrier, and hence forth the band was adopted andadmitted into our freemasonry. I had been engaged in chasing FarmerLarkin's calves--his special pride--round the field, just to show theman we hadn't forgotten him, and was returning through thekitchen-garden with a conscience at peace with all men, when I happenedupon Edward, grubbing for worms in the dung-heap. Edward put his wormsinto his hat, and we strolled along together, discussing high matters ofstate. As we reached the tool-shed, strange noises arrested our steps;looking in, we perceived Harold, alone, rapt, absorbed, immersed in thespecial game of the moment. He was squatting in an old pig-trough thathad been brought in to be tinkered; and as he rhapsodised, anon he waveda shovel over his head, anon dug it into the ground with the action ofthose who would urge Canadian canoes. Edward strode in upon him. "What rot are you playing at now?" he demanded sternly. Harold flushed up, but stuck to his pig-trough like a man. "I'm Jason, " he replied, defiantly; "and this is the Argo. The otherfellows are here too, only you can't see them; and we're just goingthrough the Hellespont, so don't you come bothering. " And once more heplied the wine-dark sea. Edward kicked the pig-trough contemptuously. "Pretty sort of Argo you've got!" said he. Harold began to get annoyed. "I can't help it, " he replied. "It's thebest sort of Argo I can manage, and it's all right if you only pretendenough; but YOU never could pretend one bit. " Edward reflected. "Look here, " he said presently; "why shouldn't we gethold of Farmer Larkin's boat, and go right away up the river in a realArgo, and look for Medea, and the Golden Fleece, and everything? AndI'll tell you what, I don't mind your being Jason, as you thought of itfirst. " Harold tumbled out of the trough in the excess of his emotion. "But wearen't allowed to go on the water by ourselves, " he cried. "No, " said Edward, with fine scorn: "we aren't allowed; and Jason wasn'tallowed either, I daresay--but he WENT!" Harold's protest had been merely conventional: he only wanted to beconvinced by sound argument. The next question was, How about the girls?Selina was distinctly handy in a boat: the difficulty about her was, that if she disapproved of the expedition--and, morally considered, itwas not exactly a Pilgrim's Progress--she might go and tell; shehaving just reached that disagreeable age when one begins to develop aconscience. Charlotte, for her part, had a habit of day-dreams, and wasas likely as not to fall overboard in one of her rapt musings. To besure, she would dissolve in tears when she found herself left out; buteven that was better than a watery tomb. In fine, the public voice--andrightly, perhaps--was against the admission of the skirted animal: spitethe precedent of Atalanta, who was one of the original crew. "And now, " said Edward, "who's to ask Farmer Larkin? I can't; last timeI saw him he said when he caught me again he'd smack my head. YOU'LLhave to. " I hesitated, for good reasons. "You know those precious calves of his?"I began. Edward understood at once. "All right, " he said; "then we won't ask himat all. It doesn't much matter. He'd only be annoyed, and that would bea pity. Now let's set off. " We made our way down to the stream, and captured the farmer's boatwithout let or hindrance, the enemy being engaged in the hayfields. This"river, " so called, could never be discovered by us in any atlas; indeedour Argo could hardly turn in it without risk of shipwreck. But to us 'twas Orinoco, and the cities of the world dotted its shores. We put theArgo's head up stream, since that led away from the Larkin province;Harold was faithfully permitted to be Jason, and we shared the rest ofthe heroes among us. Then launching forth from Thessaly, we threadedthe Hellespont with shouts, breathlessly dodged the Clashing Rocks, andcoasted under the lee of the Siren-haunted isles. Lemnos was fringedwith meadow-sweet, dog-roses dotted the Mysian shore, and the cheerycall of the haymaking folk sounded along the coast of Thrace. After some hour or two's seafaring, the prow of the Argo embedded itselfin the mud of a landing-place, plashy with the tread of cows and givingon to a lane that led towards the smoke of human habitations. Edwardjumped ashore, alert for exploration, and strode off without waitingto see if we followed; but I lingered behind, having caught sight ofa moss-grown water-gate hard by, leading into a garden that fromthe brooding quiet lapping it round, appeared to portend magicalpossibilities. Indeed the very air within seemed stiller, as we circumspectly passedthrough the gate; and Harold hung back shamefaced, as if we werecrossing the threshold of some private chamber, and ghosts of old dayswere hustling past us. Flowers there were, everywhere; but they droopedand sprawled in an overgrowth hinting at indifference; the scent ofheliotrope possessed the place, as if actually hung in solid festoonsfrom tall untrimmed hedge to hedge. No basket-chairs, shawls, or novelsdotted the lawn with colour; and on the garden-front of the housebehind, the blinds were mostly drawn. A grey old sun-dial dominated thecentral sward, and we moved towards it instinctively, as the most humanthing visible. An antique motto ran round it, and with eyes and fingerswe struggled at the decipherment. "TIME: TRYETH: TROTHE:" spelt out Harold at last. "I wonder what thatmeans?" I could not enlighten him, nor meet his further questions as to theinner mechanism of the thing, and where you wound it up. I had seen these instruments before, of course, but had never fullyunderstood their manner of working. We were still puzzling our heads over the contrivance, when I becameaware that Medea herself was moving down the path from the house. Dark-haired, supple, of a figure lightly poised and swayed, but pale andlistless--I knew her at once, and having come out to find her, naturallyfelt no surprise at all. But Harold, who was trying to climb on the topof the sun-dial, having a cat-like fondness for the summit of things, started and fell prone, barking his chin and filling the pleasance withlamentation. Medea skimmed the ground swallow-like, and in a moment was on her kneescomforting him, --wiping the dirt out of his chin with her own daintyhandkerchief, --and vocal with soft murmur of consolation. "You needn't take on so about him, " I observed, politely. "He'll cry forjust one minute, and then he'll be all right. " My estimate was justified. At the end of his regulation time Haroldstopped crying suddenly, like a clock that had struck its hour; and witha serene and cheerful countenance wriggled out of Medea's embrace, andran for a stone to throw at an intrusive blackbird. "O you boys!" cried Medea, throwing wide her arms with abandonment. "Where have you dropped from? How dirty you are! I've been shut up herefor a thousand years, and all that time I've never seen any one under ahundred and fifty! Let's play at something, at once!" "Rounders is a good game, " I suggested. "Girls can play at rounders. Andwe could serve up to the sun-dial here. But you want a bat and a ball, and some more people. " She struck her hands together tragically. "I haven't a bat, " she cried, "or a ball, or more people, or anything sensible whatever. Never mind;let's play at hide-and-seek in the kitchen garden. And we'll race there, up to that walnut-tree; I haven't run for a century!" She was so easy a victor, nevertheless, that I began to doubt, as Ipanted behind, whether she had not exaggerated her age by a year or two. She flung herself into hide-and-seek with all the gusto and abandonmentof the true artist, and as she flitted away and reappeared, flushed andlaughing divinely, the pale witch-maiden seemed to fall away from her, and she moved rather as that other girl I had read about, snatched fromfields of daffodil to reign in shadow below, yet permitted once again tovisit earth, and light, and the frank, caressing air. Tired at last, we strolled back to the old sundial, and Harold, whonever relinquished a problem unsolved, began afresh, rubbing his fingeralong the faint incisions, "Time tryeth trothe. Please, I want to knowwhat that means. " Medea's face drooped low over the sun-dial, till it was almost hidden inher fingers. "That's what I'm here for, " she said presently, in quite achanged, low voice. "They shut me up here--they think I'll forget--butI never will--never, never! And he, too--but I don't know--it is solong--I don't know!" Her face was quite hidden now. There was silence again in the oldgarden. I felt clumsily helpless and awkward; beyond a vague idea ofkicking Harold, nothing remedial seemed to suggest itself. None of us had noticed the approach of another she-creature--one of theangular and rigid class--how different from our dear comrade! The yearsMedea had claimed might well have belonged to her; she wore mittens, too--a trick I detested in woman. "Lucy!" she said, sharply, in a tonewith AUNT writ large over it; and Medea started up guiltily. "You've been crying, " said the newcomer, grimly regarding her throughspectacles. "And pray who are these exceedingly dirty little boys?" "Friends of mine, aunt, " said Medea, promptly, with forced cheerfulness. "I--I've known them a long time. I asked them to come. " The aunt sniffed suspiciously. "You must come indoors, dear, " she said, "and lie down. The sun will give you a headache. And you little boys hadbetter run away home to your tea. Remember, you should not come to payvisits without your nursemaid. " Harold had been tugging nervously at my jacket for some time, and I onlywaited till Medea turned and kissed a white hand to us as she wasled away. Then I ran. We gained the boat in safety; and "What an olddragon!" said Harold. "Wasn't she a beast!" I replied. "Fancy the sun giving any one aheadache! But Medea was a real brick. Couldn't we carry her off?" "We could if Edward was here, " said Harold, confidently. The question was, What had become of that defaulting hero? We werenot left long in doubt. First, there came down the lane the shrill andwrathful clamour of a female tongue, then Edward, running his best, andthen an excited woman hard on his heel. Edward tumbled into the bottomof the boat, gasping, "Shove her off!" And shove her off we did, mightily, while the dame abused us from the bank in the self sameaccents in which Alfred hurled defiance at the marauding Dane. "That was just like a bit out of Westward Ho!" I remarked approvingly, as we sculled down the stream. "But what had you been doing to her?" "Hadn't been doing anything, " panted Edward, still breathless. "I wentup into the village and explored, and it was a very nice one, and thepeople were very polite. And there was a blacksmith's forge there, andthey were shoeing horses, and the hoofs fizzled and smoked, and smelt sojolly! I stayed there quite a long time. Then I got thirsty, so I askedthat old woman for some water, and while she was getting it her cat cameout of the cottage, and looked at me in a nasty sort of way, andsaid something I didn't like. So I went up to it just to--to teach itmanners, and somehow or other, next minute it was up an apple-tree, spitting, and I was running down the lane with that old thing after me. " Edward was so full of his personal injuries that there was nointeresting him in Medea at all. Moreover, the evening was closing in, and it was evident that this cutting-out expedition must be kept foranother day. As we neared home, it gradually occurred to us that perhapsthe greatest danger was yet to come; for the farmer must have missedhis boat ere now, and would probably be lying in wait for us near thelanding-place. There was no other spot admitting of debarcation onthe home side; if we got out on the other, and made for the bridge, we should certainly be seen and cut off. Then it was that I blessed mystars that our elder brother was with us that day, --he might be littlegood at pretending, but in grappling with the stern facts of life hehad no equal. Enjoining silence, he waited till we were but a littleway from the fated landing-place, and then brought us in to theopposite bank. We scrambled out noiselessly, and--the gathering darknessfavouring us--crouched behind a willow, while Edward pushed off theempty boat with his foot. The old Argo, borne down by the gentlecurrent, slid and grazed along the rushy bank; and when she cameopposite the suspected ambush, a stream of imprecation told us thatour precaution had not been wasted. We wondered, as we listened, whereFarmer Larkin, who was bucolically bred and reared, had acquired suchrange and wealth of vocabulary. Fully realising at last that his boatwas derelict, abandoned, at the mercy of wind and wave, --as well as outof his reach, --he strode away to the bridge, about a quarter of a milefurther down; and as soon as we heard his boots clumping on the planks, we nipped out, recovered the craft, pulled across, and made the faithfulvessel fast to her proper moorings. Edward was anxious to wait andexchange courtesies and compliments with the disappointed farmer, when he should confront us on the opposite bank; but wiser counselsprevailed. It was possible that the piracy was not yet laid at ourparticular door: Ulysses, I reminded him, had reason to regret a similaract of bravado, and--were he here--would certainly advise a timelyretreat. Edward held but a low opinion of me as a counsellor; but he hada very solid respect for Ulysses. THE ROMAN ROAD ALL the roads of our neighbourhood were cheerful and friendly, havingeach of them pleasant qualities of their own; but this one seemeddifferent from the others in its masterful suggestion of a seriouspurpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of the heart. Theothers tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the raptsurprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at youthrough gate or gap. A loiterer you had need to be, did you choose oneof them, --so many were the tiny hands thrust out to detain you, fromthis side and that. But this other was of a sterner sort, and even inits shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and fullfor the open downs, it seemed to declare its contempt for adventitioustrappings to catch the shallow-pated. When the sense of injustice ordisappointment was heavy on me, and things were very black within, ason this particular day, the road of character was my choice for thatsolitary ramble, when I turned my back for an afternoon on a world thathad unaccountably declared itself against me. "The Knights' Road, " we children had named it, from a sort of feelingthat, if from any quarter at all, it would be down this track wemight some day see Lancelot and his peers come pacing on their greatwar-horses, --supposing that any of the stout band still survived, innooks and unexplored places. Grown-up people sometimes spoke of it asthe "Pilgrims' Way"; but I didn't know much about pilgrims, --exceptWalter in the Horselberg story. Him I sometimes saw, breaking withhaggard eyes out of yonder copse, and calling to the pilgrims as theyhurried along on their desperate march to the Holy City, where peace andpardon were awaiting them. "All roads lead to Rome, " I had once heardsomebody say; and I had taken the remark very seriously, of course, and puzzled over it many days. There must have been some mistake, Iconcluded at last; but of one road at least I intuitively felt it tobe true. And my belief was clinched by something that fell from MissSmedley during a history lesson, about a strange road that ran rightdown the middle of England till it reached the coast, and then beganagain in France, just opposite, and so on undeviating, through cityand vineyard, right from the misty Highlands to the Eternal City. Uncorroborated, any statement of Miss Smedley's usually fell onincredulous ears; but here, with the road itself in evidence, sheseemed, once, in a way, to have strayed into truth. Rome! It was fascinating to think that it lay at the other end of thiswhite ribbon that rolled itself off from my feet over the distant downs. I was not quite so uninstructed as to imagine l could reach itthat afternoon; but some day, I thought, if things went on being asunpleasant as they were now, --some day, when Aunt Eliza had gone on avisit, --we would see. I tried to imagine what it would be like when I got there. The ColiseumI knew, of course, from a woodcut in the history-book: so to begin withI plumped that down in the middle. The rest had to be patched up fromthe little grey market-town where twice a year we went to have our haircut; hence, in the result, Vespasian's amphitheatre was approachedby muddy little streets, wherein the Red Lion and the Blue Boar, withSomebody's Entire along their front, and "Commercial Room" on theirwindows; the doctor's house, of substantial red-brick; and the facadeof the New Wesleyan Chapel, which we thought very fine, were the chiefarchitectural ornaments: while the Roman populace pottered about insmocks and corduroys, twisting the tails of Roman calves and invitingeach other to beer in musical Wessex. From Rome I drifted on to othercities, dimly heard of--Damascus, Brighton (Aunt Eliza's ideal), Athens, and Glasgow, whose glories the gardener sang; but there was a certainsameness in my conception of all of them: that Wesleyan chapel wouldkeep cropping up everywhere. It was easier to go a-building amongthose dream-cities where no limitations were imposed, and one was solearchitect, with a free hand. Down a delectable street of cloud-builtpalaces I was mentally pacing, when I happened upon the Artist. He was seated at work by the roadside, at a point whence the cool largespaces of the downs, juniper-studded, swept grandly westwards. Hisattributes proclaimed him of the artist tribe: besides, he woreknickerbockers like myself, --a garb confined, I was aware, to boys andartists. I knew I was not to bother him with questions, nor look overhis shoulder and breathe in his ear--they didn't like it, thisgenus irritabile; but there was nothing about staring in my code ofinstructions, the point having somehow been overlooked: so, squattingdown on the grass, I devoted myself to a passionate absorbing of everydetail. At the end of five minutes there was not a button on him that Icould not have passed an examination in; and the wearer himself of thathomespun suit was probably less familiar with its pattern and texturethan I was. Once he looked up, nodded, half held out his tobaccopouch, --mechanically, as it were, --then, returning it to his pocket, resumed his work, and I my mental photography. After another five minutes or so had passed he remarked, without lookingmy way: "Fine afternoon we're having: going far to-day?" "No, I'm not going any farther than this, " I replied; "I WAS thinking ofgoing on to Rome but I've put it off. " "Pleasant place, Rome, " he murmured; "you'll like it. " It was someminutes later that he added: "But I wouldn't go just now, if I wereyou, --too jolly hot. " "YOU haven't been to Rome, have you?" I inquired. "Rather, " he replied, briefly; "I live there. " This was too much, and my jaw dropped as I struggled to grasp the factthat I was sitting there talking to a fellow who lived in Rome. Speechwas out of the question: besides, I had other things to do. Ten solidminutes had I already spent in an examination of him as a mere strangerand artist; and now the whole thing had to be done over again, from thechanged point of view. So I began afresh, at the crown of his softhat, and worked down to his solid British shoes, this time investingeverything with the new Roman halo; and at last I managed to get out:"But you don't really live there, do you?" never doubting the fact, butwanting to hear it repeated. "Well, " he said, good-naturedly overlooking the slight rudeness of myquery, "I live there as much as l live anywhere, --about half the yearsometimes. I've got a sort of a shanty there. You must come and see itsome day. " "But do you live anywhere else as well?" I went on, feeling theforbidden tide of questions surging up within me. "O yes, all over the place, " was his vague reply. "And I've got adiggings somewhere off Piccadilly. " "Where's that?" I inquired. "Where's what?" said he. "Oh, Piccadilly! It's in London. " "Have you a large garden?" I asked; "and how many pigs have you got?" "I've no garden at all, " he replied, sadly, "and they don't allow me tokeep pigs, though I'd like to, awfully. It's very hard. " "But what do you do all day, then, " I cried, "and where do you go andplay, without any garden, or pigs, or things?" "When I want to play, " he said, gravely, "I have to go and play in thestreet; but it's poor fun, I grant you. There's a goat, though, not faroff, and sometimes I talk to him when I'm feeling lonely; but he's veryproud. " "Goats ARE proud, " I admitted. "There's one lives near here, and if yousay anything to him at all, he hits you in the wind with his head. Youknow what it feels like when a fellow hits you in the wind?" "I do, well, " he replied, in a tone of proper melancholy, and paintedon. "And have you been to any other places, " I began again, presently, "besides Rome and Piccy-what's-his-name?" "Heaps, " he said. "I'm a sort of Ulysses--seen men and cities, you know. In fact, about the only place I never got to was the Fortunate Island. " I began to like this man. He answered your questions briefly and to thepoint, and never tried to be funny. I felt I could be confidential withhim. "Wouldn't you like, " I inquired, "to find a city without any people init at all?" He looked puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand, " said he. "I mean, " I went on eagerly, "a city where you walk in at the gates, andthe shops are all full of beautiful things, and the houses furnished asgrand as can be, and there isn't anybody there whatever! And you go intothe shops, and take anything you want--chocolates and magic lanterns andinjirubber balls--and there's nothing to pay; and you choose your ownhouse and live there and do just as you like, and never go to bed unlessyou want to!" The artist laid down his brush. "That WOULD be a nice city, " he said. "Better than Rome. You can't do that sort of thing in Rome, --or inPiccadilly either. But I fear it's one of the places I've never beento. " "And you'd ask your friends, " I went on, warming to my subject, --"onlythose you really like, of course, --and they'd each have a house tothemselves, --there'd be lots of houses, --and no relations at all, unlessthey promised they'd be pleasant, and if they weren't they'd have togo. " "So you wouldn't have any relations?" said the artist. "Well, perhapsyou're right. We have tastes in common, I see. " "I'd have Harold, " I said, reflectively, "and Charlotte. They'd likeit awfully. The others are getting too old. Oh, and Martha--I'd haveMartha, to cook and wash up and do things. You'd like Martha. She's everso much nicer than Aunt Eliza. She's my idea of a real lady. " "Then I'm sure I should like her, " he replied, heartily, "and when Icome to--what do you call this city of yours? Nephelo--something, didyou say?" "I--I don't know, " I replied, timidly. "I'm afraid it hasn't got aname--yet. " The artist gazed out over the downs. "'The poet says, dear city ofCecrops;'" he said, softly, to himself, "'and wilt not thou say, dearcity of Zeus?' That's from Marcus Aurelius, " he went on, turning againto his work. "You don't know him, I suppose; you will some day. " "Who's he?" I inquired. "Oh, just another fellow who lived in Rome, " he replied, dabbing away. "O dear!" I cried, disconsolately. "What a lot of people seem to liveat Rome, and I've never even been there! But I think I'd like MY citybest. " "And so would I, " he replied with unction. "But Marcus Aureliuswouldn't, you know. " "Then we won't invite him, " I said, "will we?" "_I_ won't if you won't, " said he. And that point being settled, we weresilent for a while. "Do you know, " he said, presently, "I've met one or two fellows fromtime to time who have been to a city like yours, --perhaps it was thesame one. They won't talk much about it--only broken hints, now andthen; but they've been there sure enough. They don't seem to care aboutanything in particular--and every thing's the same to them, rough orsmooth; and sooner or later they slip off and disappear; and you neversee them again. Gone back, I suppose. " "Of course, " said I. "Don't see what they ever came away for; _I_wouldn't, --to be told you've broken things when you haven't, and stoppedhaving tea with the servants in the kitchen, and not allowed to have adog to sleep with you. But _I've_ known people, too, who've gone there. " The artist stared, but without incivility. "Well, there's Lancelot, " I went on. "The book says he died, but itnever seemed to read right, somehow. He just went away, like Arthur. AndCrusoe, when he got tired of wearing clothes and being respectable. Andall the nice men in the stones who don't marry the Princess, 'cos onlyone man ever gets married in a book, you know. They'll be there!" "And the men who never come off, " he said, "who try like the rest, butget knocked out, or somehow miss, --or break down or get bowled over inthe melee, --and get no Princess, nor even a second-class kingdom, --someof them'll be there, I hope?" "Yes, if you like, " I replied, not quite understanding him; "if they'refriends of yours, we'll ask 'em, of course. " "What a time we shall have!" said the artist, reflectively; "and howshocked old Marcus Aurelius will be!" The shadows had lengthened uncannily, a tide of golden haze was floodingthe grey-green surface of the downs, and the artist began to put histraps together, preparatory to a move. I felt very low; we would haveto part, it seemed, just as we were getting on so well together. Then hestood up, and he was very straight and tall, and the sunset was in hishair and beard as he stood there, high over me. He took my hand like anequal. "I've enjoyed our conversation very much, " he said. "That was aninteresting subject you started, and we haven't half exhausted it. Weshall meet again, I hope. " "Of course we shall, " I replied, surprised that there should be anydoubt about it. "In Rome, perhaps?" said he. "Yes, in Rome, " I answered, "or Piccy-the-other-place, or somewhere. " "Or else, " said he, "in that other city, --when we've found the waythere. And I'll look out for you, and you'll sing out as soon as you seeme. And we'll go down the street arm-in-arm, and into all the shops, andthen I'll choose my house, and you'll choose your house, and we'll livethere like princes and good fellows. " "Oh, but you'll stay in my house, won't you?" I cried; "wouldn't askeverybody; but I'll ask YOU. " He affected to consider a moment; then "Right!" he said: "I believe youmean it, and I WILL come and stay with you. I won't go to anybody else, if they ask me ever so much. And I'll stay quite a long time, too, and Iwon't be any trouble. " Upon this compact we parted, and I went down-heartedly from the man whounderstood me, back to the house where I never could do anything right. How was it that everything seemed natural and sensible to him, whichthese uncles, vicars, and other grown-up men took for the meresttomfoolery? Well, he would explain this, and many another thing, when wemet again. The Knights' Road! How it always brought consolation! Was hepossibly one of those vanished knights I had been looking for so long?Perhaps he would be in armour next time, --why not? He would look well inarmour, I thought. And I would take care to get there first, and see thesunlight flash and play on his helmet and shield, as he rode up the HighStreet of the Golden City. Meantime, there only remained the finding it, --an easy matter. THE SECRET DRAWER IT must surely have served as a boudoir for the ladies of old time, this little used, rarely entered chamber where the neglected old bureaustood. There was something very feminine in the faint hues of its fadedbrocades, in the rose and blue of such bits of china as yet remained, and in the delicate old-world fragrance of pot-pourri from the greatbowl--blue and white, with funny holes in its cover--that stood onthe bureau's flat top. Modern aunts disdained this out-of-the-way, back-water, upstairs room, preferring to do their accounts and grapplewith their correspondence in some central position more in the whirl ofthings, whence one eye could be kept on the carriage drive, while theother was alert for malingering servants and marauding children. Thoseaunts of a former generation--I sometimes felt--would have suited ourhabits better. But even by us children, to whom few places were privateor reserved, the room was visited but rarely. To be sure, there wasnothing particular in it that we coveted or required, --only a fewspindle-legged gilt-backed chairs; an old harp, on which, so thelegend ran, Aunt Eliza herself used once to play, in years remote, unchronicled; a corner-cupboard with a few pieces of china; and the oldbureau. But one other thing the room possessed, peculiar to itself; acertain sense of privacy, --a power of making the intruder feel that heWAS intruding, --perhaps even a faculty of hinting that some one mighthave been sitting on those chairs, writing at the bureau, or fingeringthe china, just a second before one entered. No such violent word as "haunted" could possibly apply to this pleasantold-fashioned chamber, which indeed we all rather liked; but there wasno doubt it was reserved and stand-offish, keeping itself to itself. Uncle Thomas was the first to draw my attention to the possibilities ofthe old bureau. He was pottering about the house one afternoon, havingordered me to keep at his heels for company, --he was a man who hated tobe left one minute alone, --when his eye fell on it. "H'm! Sheraton!" heremarked. (He had a smattering of most things, this uncle, especiallythe vocabularies. ) Then he let down the flap, and examined the emptypigeon-holes and dusty panelling. "Fine bit of inlay, " he went on:"good work, all of it. I know the sort. There's a secret drawer in theresomewhere. " Then, as I breathlessly drew near, he suddenly exclaimed:"By Jove, I do want to smoke!" and wheeling round he abruptly fled forthe garden, leaving me with the cup dashed from my lips. What a strangething, I mused, was this smoking, that takes a man suddenly, be he inthe court, the camp, or the grove, grips him like an Afreet, and whirlshim off to do its imperious behests! Would it be even so with myself, Iwondered, in those unknown grown-up years to come? But I had no time to waste in vain speculations. My whole being wasstill vibrating to those magic syllables, "secret drawer;" and thatparticular chord had been touched that never fails to thrill responsiveto such words as CAVE, TRAP-DOOR, SLIDING-PANEL, BULLION, INGOTS, orSPANISH DOLLARS. For, besides its own special bliss, who ever heard ofa secret drawer with nothing in it? And oh, I did want money so badly!I mentally ran over the list of demands which were pressing me the mostimperiously. First, there was the pipe I wanted to give George Jannaway. George, whowas Martha's young man, was a shepherd, and a great ally of mine; andthe last fair he was at, when he bought his sweetheart fairings, as aright-minded shepherd should, he had purchased a lovely snake expresslyfor me; one of the wooden sort, with joints, waggling deliciously in thehand; with yellow spots on a green ground, sticky and strong-smelling, as a fresh-painted snake ought to be; and with a red-flannel tongue, pasted cunningly into its jaws. I loved it much, and took it to bed withme every night, till what time its spinal cord was loosed and it fellapart, and went the way of all mortal joys. I thought it so nice ofGeorge to think of me at the fair, and that's why I wanted to give hima pipe. When the young year was chill and lambing-time was on, Georgeinhabited a little wooden house on wheels, far out on the wintry downs, and saw no faces but such as were sheepish and woolly and mute; ant whenhe and Martha were married, she was going to carry his dinner out to himevery day, two miles; and after it, perhaps he would smoke my pipe. Itseemed an idyllic sort of existence, for both the parties concerned;but a pipe of quality, a pipe fitted to be part of a life such asthis, could not be procured (so Martha informed me) for a less sum thaneighteen pence. And meantime--! Then there was the fourpence I owed Edward; not that he was bothering mefor it, but I knew he was in need of it himself, to pay back Selina, whowanted it to make up a sum of two shillings, to buy Harold an ironcladfor his approaching birthday, --H. M. S. Majestic, now lying uselesslycareened in the toyshop window, just when her country had such sore needof her. And then there was that boy in the village who had caught a youngsquirrel, and I had never yet possessed one, and he wanted a shillingfor it, but I knew that for ninepence in cash--but what was the good ofthese sorry, threadbare reflections? I had wants enough to exhaust anypossible find of bullion, even if it amounted to half a sovereign. My only hope now lay in the magic drawer, and here I was standing andletting the precious minutes slip by. Whether "findings" of this sortcould, morally speaking, be considered "keepings, " was a point that didnot occur to me. The room was very still as I approached the bureau, --possessed, itseemed to be, by a sort of hush of expectation. The faint odour oforris-root that floated forth as I let down the flap, seemed to identifyitself with the yellows and browns of the old wood, till hue and scentwere of one quality and interchangeable. Even so, ere this, the pot-pourri had mixed itself with the tints of theold brocade, and brocade and pot-pourri had long been one. With expectant fingers I explored the empty pigeon-holes and sounded thedepths of the softly-sliding drawers. No books that I knew of gave anygeneral recipe for a quest like this; but the glory, should I succeedunaided, would be all the greater. To him who is destined to arrive, the fates never fail to afford, on theway, their small encouragements; in less than two minutes, I had comeacross a rusty button-hook. This was truly magnificent. In the nurserythere existed, indeed, a general button-hook, common to either sex;but none of us possessed a private and special button-hook, to lend orrefuse as suited the high humour of the moment. I pocketed the treasurecarefully and proceeded. At the back of another drawer, three oldforeign stamps told me I was surely on the highroad to fortune. Following on these bracing incentives, came a dull blank period ofunrewarded search. In vain I removed all the drawers and felt over everyinch of the smooth surfaces, from front to back. Never a knob, springor projection met the thrilling finger-tips; unyielding the old bureaustood, stoutly guarding its secret, if secret it really had. I beganto grow weary and disheartened. This was not the first time that UncleThomas had proved shallow, uninformed, a guide into blind alleys wherethe echoes mocked you. Was it any good persisting longer? Was anythingany good whatever? In my mind I began to review past disappointments, and life seemed one long record of failure and of non-arrival. Disillusioned and depressed, I left my work and went to the window. The light was ebbing from the room, and outside seemed to be collectingitself on the horizon for its concentrated effort of sunset. Far downthe garden, Uncle Thomas was holding Edward in the air reversed, andsmacking him. Edward, gurgling hysterically, was striking blind fists inthe direction where he judged his uncle's stomach should rightly be; thecontents of his pockets--a motley show--were strewing the lawn. Somehow, though I had been put through a similar performance an hour or two ago, myself, it all seemed very far away and cut off from me. Westwards the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet bank; belowthem, to north and south, as far round as eye could reach, a narrowstreak of gold ran out and stretched away, straight along the horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was being blown, clear and thin; itsounded like the golden streak grown audible, while the gold seemedthe visible sound. It pricked my ebbing courage, this blended strain ofmusic and colour, and I turned for a last effort; and Fortune thereupon, as if half-ashamed of the unworthy game she had been playing with me, relented, opening her clenched fist. Hardly had I put my hand once moreto the obdurate wood, when with a sort of small sigh, almost a sob--asit were--of relief, the secret drawer sprang open. I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the failinglight. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my dispiriting search, toexpect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass layin fragments at my feet. No ingots or dollars were here, to crown me thelittle Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased itsgnat-song, the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonelyand still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down likecard-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and personal, anddominated by the depressing reaction. And yet, --as I looked again at the small collection that lay withinthat drawer of disillusions, some warmth crept back to my heart as Irecognised that a kindred spirit to my own had been at the making of it. Two tarnished gilt buttons, --naval, apparently, --a portrait of a monarchunknown to me, cut from some antique print and deftly coloured by handin just my own bold style of brush-work, --some foreign copper coins, thicker and clumsier of make than those I hoarded myself, --and a list ofbirds' eggs, with names of the places where they had been found. Also, aferret's muzzle, and a twist of tarry string, still faintly aromatic. Itwas a real boy's hoard, then, that I had happened upon. He too had foundout the secret drawer, this happy starred young person; and here he hadstowed away his treasures, one by one, and had cherished them secretlyawhile; and then--what? Well, one would never know now the reason whythese priceless possessions still lay here unreclaimed; but across thevoid stretch of years I seemed to touch hands a moment with my littlecomrade of seasons long since dead. I restored the drawer, with its contents, to the trusty bureau, andheard the spring click with a certain satisfaction. Some other boy, perhaps, would some day release that spring again. I trusted he would beequally appreciative. As I opened the door to go, I could hear from thenursery at the end of the passage shouts and yells, telling that thehunt was up. Bears, apparently, or bandits, were on the evening bill offare, judging by the character of the noises. In another minute I wouldbe in the thick of it, in all the warmth and light and laughter. Andyet--what a long way off it all seemed, both in space and time, to meyet lingering on the threshold of that old-world chamber! "EXIT TYRANNUS" The eventful day had arrived at last, the day which, when first named, had seemed--like all golden dates that promise anything definite--soimmeasurably remote. When it was first announced, a fortnight before, that Miss Smedley was really going, the resultant ecstasies had occupieda full week, during which we blindly revelled in the contemplation anddiscussion of her past tyrannies, crimes, malignities; in recalling toeach other this or that insult, dishonour, or physical assault, sullenlyendured at a time when deliverance was not even a small star on thehorizon; and in mapping out the golden days to come, with special newtroubles of their own, no doubt, since this is but a work-a-day world, but at least free from one familiar scourge. The time that remained hadbeen taken up by the planning of practical expressions of the popularsentiment. Under Edward's masterly direction, arrangements had been madefor a flag to be run up over the hen-house at the very moment when thefly, with Miss Smedley's boxes on top and the grim oppressor herselfinside, began to move off down the drive. Three brass cannons, set onthe brow of the sunk-fence, were to proclaim our deathless sentimentsin the ears of the retreating foe: the dogs were to wear ribbons, and later--but this depended on our powers of evasiveness anddissimulation--there might be a small bonfire, with a cracker or two, ifthe public funds could bear the unwonted strain. I was awakened by Harold digging me in the ribs, and "She's goingto-day!" was the morning hymn that scattered the clouds of sleep. Strange to say, it was with no corresponding jubilation of spiritsthat I slowly realised the momentous fact. Indeed, as I dressed, a dulldisagreeable feeling that I could not define grew within me--somethinglike a physical bruise. Harold was evidently feeling it too, for afterrepeating "She's going to-day!" in a tone more befitting the Litany, helooked hard in my face for direction as to how the situation was to betaken. But I crossly bade him look sharp and say his prayers and notbother me. What could this gloom portend, that on a day of days like thepresent seemed to hang my heavens with black? Down at last and out in the sun, we found Edward before us, swinging ona gate, and chanting a farm-yard ditty in which all the beasts appearin due order, jargoning in their several tongues, and every verse beginswith the couplet-- "Now, my lads, come with me, Out in the morning early!" The fateful exodus of the day had evidently slipped his memory entirely. I touched him on the shoulder. "She's going to-day!" I said. Edward'scarol subsided like a water-tap turned off. "So she is!" he replied, and got down at once off the gate: and we returned to the house withoutanother word. At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and uncalled-formanner. The right divine of governesses to govern wrong includes noright to cry. In thus usurping the prerogative of their victims, theyignore the rules of the ring, and hit below the belt. Charlotte wascrying, of course; but that counted for nothing. Charlotte even criedwhen the pigs' noses were ringed in due season; thereby evoking thecheery contempt of the operators, who asserted they liked it, anddoubtless knew. But when the cloud-compeller, her bolts laid aside, resorted to tears, mutinous humanity had a right to feel aggrieved, andplaced in a false and difficult position. What would the Romans havedone, supposing Hannibal had cried? History has not even considered thepossibility. Rules and precedents should be strictly observed on bothsides; when they are violated, the other party is justified in feelinginjured. There were no lessons that morning, naturally--another grievance! The fitness of things required that we should have struggled to the lastin a confused medley of moods and tenses, and parted for ever, flushedwith hatred, over the dismembered corpse of the multiplication table. But this thing was not to be; and I was free to stroll by myselfthrough the garden, and combat, as best I might, this growing feeling ofdepression. It was a wrong system altogether, I thought, this going ofpeople one had got used to. Things ought always to continue as they hadbeen. Change there must be, of course; pigs, for instance, came and wentwith disturbing frequency-- "Fired their ringing shot and passed, Hotly charged and sank at last, "-- but Nature had ordered it so, and in requital had provided for rapidsuccessors. Did you come to love a pig, and he was taken from you, griefwas quickly assuaged in the delight of selection from the new litter. But now, when it was no question of a peerless pig, but only of agoverness, Nature seemed helpless, and the future held no litter ofoblivion. Things might be better, or they might be worse, but they wouldnever be the same; and the innate conservatism of youth asks neitherpoverty nor riches, but only immunity from change. Edward slouched up alongside of me presently, with a hang-dog look onhim, as if he had been caught stealing jam. "What a lark it'll be whenshe's really gone!" he observed, with a swagger obviously assumed. "Grand fun!" I replied, dolorously; and conversation flagged. We reached the hen-house, and contemplated the banner of freedom lyingready to flaunt the breezes at the supreme moment. "Shall you run it up, " I asked, "when the fly starts, or--or wait alittle till it's out of sight?" Edward gazed around him dubiously. "We're going to have some rain, Ithink, " he said; "and--and it's a new flag. It would be a pity to spoilit. P'raps I won't run it up at all. " Harold came round the corner like a bison pursued by Indians. "I'vepolished up the cannons, " he cried, "and they look grand! Mayn't I load'em now?" "You leave 'em alone, " said Edward, severely, "or you'll be blowingyourself up" (consideration for others was not usually Edward's strongpoint). "Don't touch the gunpowder till you're told, or you'll get yourhead smacked. " Harold fell behind, limp, squashed, obedient. "She wants me to write toher, " he began, presently. "Says she doesn't mind the spelling, it I'llonly write. Fancy her saying that!" "Oh, shut up, will you?" said Edward, savagely; and once more we weresilent, with only our thoughts for sorry company. "Let's go off to the copse, " I suggested timidly, feeling that somethinghad to be done to relieve the tension, "and cut more new bows andarrows. " "She gave me a knife my last birthday, " said Edward, moodily, neverbudging. "It wasn't much of a knife--but I wish I hadn't lost it. " "When my legs used to ache, " I said, "she sat up half the night, rubbingstuff on them. I forgot all about that till this morning. " "There's the fly!" cried Harold suddenly. "I can hear it scrunching onthe gravel. " Then for the first time we turned and stared one another in the face. ***** The fly and its contents had finally disappeared through the gate: therumble of its wheels had died away; and no flag floated defiantly inthe sun, no cannons proclaimed the passing of a dynasty. From out thefrosted cake of our existence Fate had cut an irreplaceable segment;turn which way we would, the void was present. We sneaked off indifferent directions, mutually undesirous of company; and it seemedborne in upon me that I ought to go and dig my garden right over, fromend to end. It didn't actually want digging; on the other hand, noamount of digging could affect it, for good or for evil; so I workedsteadily, strenuously, under the hot sun, stifling thought in action. Atthe end of an hour or so, I was joined by Edward. "I've been chopping up wood, " he explained, in a guilty sort of way, though nobody had called on him to account for his doings. "What for?" I inquired, stupidly. "There's piles and piles of it choppedup already. " "I know, " said Edward; "but there's no harm in having a bit over. You never can tell what may happen. But what have you been doing allthis digging for?" "You said it was going to rain, " I explained, hastily; "so I thoughtI'd get the digging done before it came. Good gardeners always tell youthat's the right thing to do. " "It did look like rain at one time, " Edward admitted; "but it's passedoff now. Very queer weather we're having. I suppose that's why I've feltso funny all day. " "Yes, I suppose it's the weather, " I replied. "_I've_ been feeling funnytoo. " The weather had nothing to do with it, as we well knew. But we wouldboth have died rather than have admitted the real reason. THE BLUE ROOM That nature has her moments of sympathy with man has been noted oftenenough, --and generally as a new discovery; to us, who had never knownany other condition of things, it seemed entirely right and fitting thatthe wind sang and sobbed in the poplar tops, and in the lulls ofit, sudden spirts of rain spattered the already dusty roads, on thatblusterous March day when Edward and I awaited, on the station platform, the arrival of the new tutor. Needless to say, this arrangement had beenplanned by an aunt, from some fond idea that our shy, innocent youngnatures would unfold themselves during the walk from the station, andthat on the revelation of each other's more solid qualities that mustthen inevitably ensue, an enduring friendship springing from mutualrespect might be firmly based. A pretty dream, --nothing more. ForEdward, who foresaw that the brunt of tutorial oppression would haveto be borne by him, was sulky, monosyllabic, and determined to be asnegatively disagreeable as good manners would permit. It was thereforeevident that I would have to be spokesman and purveyor of hollowcivilities, and I was none the more amiable on that account; allcourtesies, welcomes, explanations, and other court-chamberlain kind ofbusiness, being my special aversion. There was much of the tempestuousMarch weather in the hearts of both of us, as we sullenly glowered alongthe carriage-windows of the slackening train. One is apt, however, to misjudge the special difficulties of asituation; and the reception proved, after all, an easy and informalmatter. In a trainful so uniformly bucolic, a tutor was readilyrecognisable; and his portmanteau had been consigned to theluggage-cart, and his person conveyed into the lane, before I haddischarged one of my carefully considered sentences. I breathed moreeasily, and, looking up at our new friend as we stepped out together, remembered that we had been counting on something altogether morearid, scholastic, and severe. A boyish eager face and a petulantpince-nez, --untidy hair, --a head of constant quick turns like a robin's, and a voice that kept breaking into alto, --these were all very strangeand new, but not in the least terrible. He proceeded jerkily through the village, with glances on this side andthat; and "Charming, " he broke out presently; "quite too charming anddelightful!" I had not counted on this sort of thing, and glanced for help to Edward, who, hands in pockets, looked grimly down his nose. He had taken hisline, and meant to stick to it. Meantime our friend had made an imaginary spy-glass out of his fist, and was squinting through it at something I could not perceive. "What anexquisite bit!" he burst out; "fifteenth century, --no, --yes, it is!" I began to feel puzzled, not to say alarmed. It reminded me of thebutcher in the Arabian Nights, whose common joints, displayed on theshop-front, took to a startled public the appearance of dismemberedhumanity. This man seemed to see the strangest things in our dull, familiar surroundings. "Ah!" he broke out again, as we jogged on between hedgerows: "andthat field now--backed by the downs--with the rain-cloud brooding overit, --that's all David Cox--every bit of it!" "That field belongs to Farmer Larkin, " I explained politely, for ofcourse he could not be expected to know. "I'll take you over to FarmerCox's to-morrow, if he's a friend of yours; but there's nothing to seethere. " Edward, who was hanging sullenly behind, made a face at me, as if tosay, "What sort of lunatic have we got here?" "It has the true pastoral character, this country of yours, " went on ourenthusiast: "with just that added touch in cottage and farmstead, relics of a bygone art, which makes our English landscape so divine, sounique!" Really this grasshopper was becoming a burden. These familiar fields andfarms, of which we knew every blade and stick, had done nothing thatI knew of to be bespattered with adjectives in this way. I had neverthought of them as divine, unique, or anything else. They were--well, they were just themselves, and there was an end of it. Despairingly Ijogged Edward in the ribs, as a sign to start rational conversation, buthe only grinned and continued obdurate. "You can see the house now, " I remarked, presently; "and that's Selina, chasing the donkey in the paddock, --or is it the donkey chasing Selina?I can't quite make out; but it's THEM, anyhow. " Needless to say, he exploded with a full charge of adjectives. "Exquisite!" he rapped out; "so mellow and harmonious! and so entirelyin keeping!" (I could see from Edward's face that he was thinking whoought to be in keeping. ) "Such possibilities of romance, now, in thoseold gables!" "If you mean the garrets, " I said, "there's a lot of old furniturein them; and one is generally full of apples; and the bats getin sometimes, under the eaves, and flop about till we go up withhair-brushes and things and drive 'em out; but there's nothing else inthem that I know of. " "Oh, but there must be more than bats, " he cried. "Don't tell me thereare no ghosts. I shall be deeply disappointed if there aren't anyghosts. " I did not think it worth while to reply, feeling really unequal to thissort of conversation; besides, we were nearing the house, when my taskwould be ended. Aunt Eliza met us at the door, and in the cross-fire ofadjectives that ensued--both of them talking at once, as grown-up folkhave a habit of doing--we two slipped round to the back of the house, and speedily put several solid acres between us and civilisation, forfear of being ordered in to tea in the drawing-room. By the time wereturned, our new importation had gone up to dress for dinner, so tillthe morrow at least we were free of him. Meanwhile the March wind, after dropping a while at sundown, had beensteadily increasing in volume; and although I fell asleep at my usualhour, about midnight I was wakened by the stress and cry of it. In thebright moonlight, wind-swung branches tossed and swayed eerily acrossthe blinds; there was rumbling in chimneys, whistling in keyholes, andeverywhere a clamour and a call. Sleep was out of the question, and, sitting up in bed, I looked round. Edward sat up too. "I was wonderingwhen you were going to wake, " he said. "It's no good trying to sleepthrough this. I vote we get up and do something. " "I'm game, " I replied. "Let's play at being in a ship at sea" (theplaint of the old house under the buffeting wind suggested this, naturally); "and we can be wrecked on an island, or left on a raft, whichever you choose; but I like an island best myself, because there'smore things on it. " Edward on reflection negatived the idea. "It would make too much noise, "he pointed out. "There's no fun playing at ships, unless you can make ajolly good row. " The door creaked, and a small figure in white slipped cautiously in. "Thought I heard you talking, " said Charlotte. "We don't like it; we'reafraid--Selina too. She'll be here in a minute. She's putting on her newdressing-gown she's so proud of. " His arms round his knees, Edward cogitated deeply until Selina appeared, barefooted, and looking slim and tall in the new dressing-gown. Then, "Look here, " he exclaimed; "now we're all together, I vote we go andexplore!" "You're always wanting to explore, " I said. "What on earth is there toexplore for in this house?" "Biscuits!" said the inspired Edward. "Hooray! Come on!" chimed in Harold, sitting up suddenly. He had beenawake all the time, but had been shamming asleep, lest he should befagged to do anything. It was indeed a fact, as Edward had remembered, that our thoughtlesselders occasionally left the biscuits out, a prize for the night-walkingadventurer with nerves of steel. Edward tumbled out of bed, and pulled a baggy old pair of knickerbockersover his bare shanks. Then he girt himself with a belt, into whichhe thrust, on the one side a large wooden pistol, on the other anold single-stick; and finally he donned a big slouch-hat--oncean uncle's--that we used for playing Guy Fawkes and Charles-the-Secondup-a-tree in. Whatever the audience, Edward, if possible, always dressedfor his parts with care and conscientiousness; while Harold and I, trueElizabethans, cared little about the mounting of the piece, so long asthe real dramatic heart of it beat sound. Our commander now enjoined on us a silence deep as the grave, remindingus that Aunt Eliza usually slept with an open door, past which we had tofile. "But we'll take the short cut through the Blue Room, " said the warySelina. "Of course, " said Edward, approvingly. "I forgot about that. Now then!You lead the way!" The Blue Room had in prehistoric times been added to by taking in asuperfluous passage, and so not only had the advantage of two doors, butenabled us to get to the head of the stairs without passing the chamberwherein our dragon-aunt lay couched. It was rarely occupied, except whena casual uncle came down for the night. We entered in noiseless file, the room being plunged in darkness, except for a bright strip ofmoonlight on the floor, across which we must pass for our exit. On thisour leading lady chose to pause, seizing the opportunity to study thehang of her new dressing-gown. Greatly satisfied thereat, she proceeded, after the feminine fashion, to peacock and to pose, pacing a minuetdown the moonlit patch with an imaginary partner. This was too much forEdward's histrionic instincts, and after a moment's pause he drew hissingle-stick, and with flourishes meet for the occasion, strode onto thestage. A struggle ensued on approved lines, at the end of which Selinawas stabbed slowly and with unction, and her corpse borne from thechamber by the ruthless cavalier. The rest of us rushed after in aclump, with capers and gesticulations of delight; the special charm ofthe performance lying in the necessity for its being carried out withthe dumbest of dumb shows. Once out on the dark landing, the noise of the storm without told usthat we had exaggerated the necessity for silence; so, grasping thetails of each other's nightgowns even as Alpine climbers ropethemselves together in perilous places, we fared stoutly down thestaircase-moraine, and across the grim glacier of the hall, to where afaint glimmer from the half-open door of the drawing-room beckoned tous like friendly hostel-lights. Entering, we found that our thriftlessseniors had left the sound red heart of a fire, easily coaxed into acheerful blaze; and biscuits--a plateful--smiled at us in an encouragingsort of way, together with the halves of a lemon, already once squeezedbut still suckable. The biscuits were righteously shared, the lemonsegments passed from mouth to mouth; and as we squatted round the fire, its genial warmth consoling our unclad limbs, we realised that so manynocturnal perils had not been braved in vain. "It's a funny thing, " said Edward, as we chatted, "how; I hate this roomin the daytime. It always means having your face washed, and your hairbrushed, and talking silly company talk. But to-night it's really quitejolly. Looks different, somehow. " "I never can make out, " I said, "what people come here to tea for. They can have their own tea at home if they like, --they're not poorpeople, --with jam and things, and drink out of their saucer, and sucktheir fingers and enjoy themselves; but they come here from a long wayoff, and sit up straight with their feet off the bars of their chairs, and have one cup, and talk the same sort of stuff every time. " Selina sniffed disdainfully. "You don't know anything about it, " shesaid. "In society you have to call on each other. It's the proper thingto do. " "Pooh! YOU'RE not in society, " said Edward, politely; "and, what's more, you never will be. " "Yes, I shall, some day, " retorted Selina; "but I shan't ask you to comeand see me, so there!" "Wouldn't come if you did, " growled Edward. "Well, you won't get the chance, " rejoined our sister, claiming herright of the last word. There was no heat about these little amenities, which made up--as we understood it--the art of polite conversation. "I don 't like society people, " put in Harold from the sofa, where hewas sprawling at full length, --a sight the daylight hours would haveblushed to witness. "There were some of 'em here this afternoon, whenyou two had gone off to the station. Oh, and I found a dead mouse on thelawn, and I wanted to skin it, but I wasn't sure I knew how, by myself;and they came out into the garden and patted my head, --I wish peoplewouldn't do that, --and one of 'em asked me to pick her a flower. Don'tknow why she couldn't pick it herself; but I said, 'All right, I will ifyou'll hold my mouse. ' But she screamed, and threw it away; and Augustus(the cat) got it, and ran away with it. I believe it was really hismouse all the time, 'cos he'd been looking about as if he had lostsomething, so I wasn't angry with HIM; but what did SHE want to throwaway my mouse for?" "You have to be careful with mice, " reflected Edward; "they're suchslippery things. Do you remember we were playing with a dead mouse onceon the piano, and the mouse was Robinson Crusoe, and the piano was theisland, and somehow Crusoe slipped down inside the island, into itsworks, and we couldn't get him out, though we tried rakes and all sortsof things, till the tuner came. And that wasn't till a week after, andthen--" Here Charlotte, who had been nodding solemnly, fell over into thefender; and we realised that the wind had dropped at last, and the housewas lapped in a great stillness. Our vacant beds seemed to be callingto us imperiously; and we were all glad when Edward gave the signalfor retreat. At the top of the staircase Harold unexpectedly turnedmutinous, insisting on his right to slide down the banisters in afree country. Circumstances did not allow of argument; I suggestedfrog's-marching instead, and frog's-marched he accordingly was, theprocession passing solemnly across the moonlit Blue Room, with Haroldhorizontal and limply submissive. Snug in bed at last, I was justslipping off into slumber when I heard Edward explode, with chuckle andsnort. "By Jove!" he said; "I forgot all about it. The new tutor's sleeping inthe Blue Room!" "Lucky he didn't wake up and catch us, " I grunted, drowsily; and both ofus, without another thought on the matter, sank into well-earned repose. Next morning we came down to breakfast braced to grapple with freshadversity, but were surprised to find our garrulous friend of theprevious day--he was late in making his appearance--strangely silent and(apparently) preoccupied. Having polished off our porridge, we ran outto feed the rabbits, explaining to them that a beast of a tutor wouldprevent their enjoying so much of our society as formerly. On returning to the house at the fated hour appointed for study, wewere thunderstruck to see the station-cart disappearing down thedrive, freighted with our new acquaintance. Aunt Eliza was brutallyuncommunicative; but she was overheard to remark casually that shethought the man must be a lunatic. In this theory we were only too readyto concur, dismissing thereafter the whole matter from our minds. Some weeks later it happened that Uncle Thomas, while paying us a flyingvisit, produced from his pocket a copy of the latest weekly, Psyche: aJournal of the Unseen; and proceeded laborously to rid himself ofmuch incomprehensible humour, apparently at our expense. We bore itpatiently, with the forced grin demanded by convention, anxious toget at the source of inspiration, which it presently appeared lay in aparagraph circumstantially describing our modest and humdrum habitation. "Case III. , " it began. "The following particulars were communicated bya young member of the Society, of undoubted probity and earnestness, and are a chronicle of actual and recent experience. " A fairly accuratedescription of the house followed, with details that were unmistakable;but to this there succeeded a flood of meaningless drivel aboutapparitions, nightly visitants, and the like, writ in a mannerbetokening a disordered mind, coupled with a feeble imagination. Thefellow was not even original. All the old material was there, --the stormat night, the haunted chamber, the white lady, the murder re-enacted, and so on, --already worn threadbare in many a Christmas Number. No onewas able to make head or tail of the stuff, or of its connexion withour quiet mansion; and yet Edward, who had always suspected the man, persisted in maintaining that our tutor of a brief span was, somehow orother, at the bottom of it. A FALLING OUT Harold told me the main facts of this episode some time later, --in bits, and with reluctance. It was not a recollection he cared to talk about. The crude blank misery of a moment is apt to leave a dull bruise whichis slow to depart, if it ever does so entirely; and Harold confessesto a twinge or two, still, at times, like the veteran who brings home abullet inside him from martial plains over sea. He knew he was a brute the moment he had done it; Selina had not meantto worry, only to comfort and assist. But his soul was one raw sorewithin him, when he found himself shut up in the schoolroom after hours, merely for insisting that 7 times 7 amounted to 47. The injustice of itseemed so flagrant. Why not 47 as much as 49? One number was no prettierthan the other to look at, and it was evidently only a matter ofarbitrary taste and preference, and, anyhow, it had always been 47 tohim, and would be to the end of time. So when Selina came in out of thesun, leaving the Trappers or the Far West behind her, and putting offthe glory of being an Apache squaw in order to hear him his tables andwin his release, Harold turned on her venomously, rejected her kindlyovertures, and ever drove his elbow into her sympathetic ribs, in hisdetermination to be left alone in the glory of sulks. The fit passeddirectly, his eyes were opened, and his soul sat in the dust as hesorrowfully began to cast about for some atonement heroic enough tosalve the wrong. Of course poor Selina looked for no sacrifice nor heroics whatever: shedidn't even want him to say he was sorry. If he would only make it up, she would have done the apologising part herself. But that was not aboy's way. Something solid, Harold felt, was due from him; and untilthat was achieved, making-up must not be thought of, in order that thefinal effect might not be spoilt. Accordingly, when his release came, and poor Selina hung about, trying to catch his eye, Harold, possessedby the demon of a distorted motive, avoided her steadily--though hewas bleeding inwardly at every minute of delay--and came to me instead. Needless to say, I approved his plan highly; it was so much morehigh-toned than just going and making-up tamely, which any one could do;and a girl who had been jobbed in the ribs by a hostile elbow couldnot be expected for a moment to overlook it, without the liniment of anoffering to soothe her injured feelings. "I know what she wants most, " said Harold. "She wants that set oftea-things in the toy-shop window, with the red and blue flowers on 'em;she's wanted it for months, 'cos her dolls are getting big enough tohave real afternoon tea; and she wants it so badly that she won't walkthat side of the street when we go into the town. But it costs fiveshillings!" Then we set to work seriously, and devoted the afternoon to arealisation of assets and the composition of a Budget that might havebeen dated without shame from Whitehall. The result worked out asfollows:-- s. D. By one uncle, unspent through having been lost for nearly a week--turned up at last in the straw of the dog-kennel . . . . 2 6 ---- Carry forward, 2 6 s. D. Brought forward, 2 6 By advance from me on security of next uncle, and failing that, to be called in at Christmas . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0 By shaken out of missionary-box with the help of a knife-blade. (They were our own pennies and a forced levy) . . . . . 0 4 By bet due from Edward, for walking across the field where Farmer Larkin's bull was, and Edward bet him twopence he wouldn't --called in with difficulty . . . . . . 0 2 By advance from Martha, on no security at all, only you mustn't tell your aunt . . . 1 0 ---- Total 5 0 and at last we breathed again. The rest promised to be easy. Selina had a tea-party at five on themorrow, with the chipped old wooden tea-things that had served hersuccessive dolls from babyhood. Harold would slip off directly afterdinner, going alone, so as not to arouse suspicion, as we were notallowed to go into the town by ourselves. It was nearly two miles to oursmall metropolis, but there would be plenty of time for him to go andreturn, even laden with the olive-branch neatly packed in shavings;besides, he might meet the butcher, who was his friend and would givehim a lift. Then, finally, at five, the rapture of the new tea-service, descended from the skies; and, retribution made, making-up at last, without loss of dignity. With the event before us, we thought it a smallthing that twenty-four hours more of alienation and pretended sulks mustbe kept up on Harold's part; but Selina, who naturally knew nothing ofthe treat in store for her, moped for the rest of the evening, and tooka very heavy heart to bed. When next day the hour for action arrived, Harold evaded Olympianattention with an easy modesty born of long practice, and made off forthe front gate. Selina, who had been keeping her eye upon him, thoughthe was going down to the pond to catch frogs, a joy they had plannedto share together, and made after him; but Harold, though he heard herfootsteps, continued sternly on his high mission, without even lookingback; and Selina was left to wander disconsolately among flower-bedsthat had lost--for her--all scent and colour. I saw it all, and althoughcold reason approved our line of action, instinct told me we werebrutes. Harold reached the town--so he recounted afterwards--in record time, having run most of the way for fear the tea-things, which hadreposed six months in the window, should be snapped up by some otherconscience-stricken lacerator of a sister's feelings; and it seemedhardly credible to find them still there, and their owner willing topart with them for the price marked on the ticket. He paid his moneydown at once, that there should be no drawing back from the bargain; andthen, as the things had to be taken out of the window and packed, andthe afternoon was yet young, he thought he might treat himself to ataste of urban joys and la vie de Boheme. Shops came first, of course, and he flattened his nose successively against the window with theindia-rubber balls in it, and the clock-work locomotive; and againstthe barber's window, with wigs on blocks, reminding him of uncles, and shaving-cream that looked so good to eat; and the grocer's window, displaying more currants than the whole British population couldpossibly consume without a special effort; and the window of thebank, wherein gold was thought so little of that it was dealt about inshovels. Next there was the market-place, with all its clamorous joys;and when a runaway calf came down the street like a cannon-ball, Haroldfelt that he had not lived in vain. The whole place was so brimful ofexcitement that he had quite forgotten the why and the wherefore of hisbeing there, when a sight of the church clock recalled him to his betterself, and sent him flying out of the town, as he realised he had onlyjust time enough left to get back in. If he were after his appointedhour, he would not only miss his high triumph, but probably would bedetected as a transgressor of bounds, --a crime before which a privateopinion on multiplication sank to nothingness. So he jogged along on hishomeward way, thinking of many things, and probably talking to himselfa good deal, as his habit was, and had covered nearly half the distance, when suddenly--a deadly sinking in the pit of his stomach--a paralysisof every limb--around him a world extinct of light and music--a blacksun and a reeling sky--he had forgotten the tea-things! It was useless, it was hopeless, all was over, and nothing could now bedone; nevertheless he turned and ran back wildly, blindly, chokingwith the big sobs that evoked neither pity nor comfort from a mercilessmocking world around; a stitch in his side, dust in his eyes, and blackdespair clutching at his heart. So he stumbled on, with leaden legs andbursting sides, till--as if Fate had not yet dealt him her last worstbuffet--on turning a corner in the road he almost ran under the wheelsof a dog-cart, in which, as it pulled up, was apparent the portly formof Farmer Larkin, the arch-enemy, whose ducks he had been shying stonesat that very morning! Had Harold been in his right and unclouded senses, he would havevanished through the hedge some seconds earlier, rather than pain thefarmer by any unpleasant reminiscences which his appearance might callup; but as things were, he could only stand and blubber hopelessly, caring, indeed, little now what further ill might befall him. The farmer, for his part, surveyed the desolate figure with someastonishment, calling out in no unfriendly accents, "Why, Master Harold!whatever be the matter? Baint runnin' away, be ee?" Then Harold, with the unnatural courage born of desperation, flunghimself on the step, and climbing into the cart, fell in the straw atthe bottom of it, sobbing out that he wanted to go back, go back! Thesituation had a vagueness; but the farmer, a man of action rather thanwords, swung his horse round smartly, and they were in the town againby the time Harold had recovered himself sufficiently to furnish somedetails. As they drove up to the shop, the woman was waiting at the doorwith the parcel; and hardly a minute seemed to have elapsed since theblack crisis, ere they were bowling along swiftly home, the preciousparcel hugged in a close embrace. And now the farmer came out in quite a new and unexpected light. Nevera word did he say of broken fences and hurdles, of trampled crops andharried flocks and herds. One would have thought the man had neverpossessed a head of live stock in his life. Instead, he was deeplyinterested in the whole dolorous quest of the tea-things, andsympathised with Harold on the disputed point in mathematics as if hehad been himself at the same stage of education. As they neared home, Harold found himself, to his surprise, sitting up and chatting to hisnew friend like man to man; and before he was dropped at a convenientgap in the garden hedge, he had promised that when Selina gave her firstpublic tea-party, little Miss Larkin should be invited to come andbring ha whole sawdust family along with her; and the farmer appearedas pleased and proud as if he hat been asked to a garden-party atMarlborough House. Really, those Olympians have certain good points, fardown in them. I shall have to leave off abusing them some day. At the hour of five, Selina, having spent the afternoon searching forHarold in all his accustomed haunts, sat down disconsolately to tea withher dolls, who ungenerously refused to wait beyond the appointed hour. The wooden tea-things seemed more chipped than usual; and the dollsthemselves had more of wax and sawdust, and less of human colour andintelligence about them, than she ever remembered before. It was thenthat Harold burst in, very dusty, his stockings at his heels, and thechannels ploughed by tears still showing on his grimy cheeks; and Selinawas at last permitted to know that he had been thinking of her eversince his ill-judged exhibition of temper, and that his sulks had notbeen the genuine article, nor had he gone frogging by himself. It wasa very happy hostess who dispensed hospitality that evening to aglassy-eyed stiff-kneed circle; and many a dollish gaucherie, that wouldhave been severely checked on ordinary occasions, was as much overlookedas if it had been a birthday. But Harold and I, in our stupid masculine way, thought all her happinesssprang from possession of the long-coveted tea-service. "LUSISTI SATIS" Among the many fatuous ideas that possessed the Olympian noddle, thisone was pre-eminent; that, being Olympians, they could talk quite freelyin our presence on subjects of the closest import to us, so long asnames, dates, and other landmarks were ignored. We were supposed tobe denied the faculty for putting two and two together; and, like themonkeys, who very sensibly refrain from speech lest they should be setto earn their livings, we were careful to conceal our capabilities fora simple syllogism. Thus we were rarely taken by surprise, and so wereconsidered by our disappointed elders to be apathetic and to lack thedivine capacity for wonder. Now the daily output of the letter-bag, with the mysterious discussionsthat ensued thereon, had speedily informed us that Uncle Thomas wasintrusted with a mission, --a mission, too, affecting ourselves. UncleThomas's missions were many and various; a self-important man, oneliking the business while protesting that he sank under the burden, hewas the missionary, so to speak, of our remote habitation. Thematching a ribbon, the running down to the stores, the interviewing acook, --these and similar duties lent constant colour and variety tohis vacant life in London and helped to keep down his figure. When thematter, however, had in our presence to be referred to with nods andpronouns, with significant hiatuses and interpolations in the Frenchtongue, then the red flag was flown, the storm-cone hoisted, and by astudious pretence of inattention we were not long in plucking out theheart of the mystery. To clinch our conclusion, we descended suddenly and together on Martha;proceeding, however, not by simple inquiry as to facts, --that wouldnever have done, --but by informing her that the air was full of schooland that we knew all about it, and then challenging denial. Martha wasa trusty soul, but a bad witness for the defence, and we soon had it allout of her. The word had gone forth, the school had been selected; thenecessary sheets were hemming even now; and Edward was the designatedand appointed victim. It had always been before us as an inevitable bourne, thisstrange unknown thing called school; and yet--perhaps I should sayconsequently--we had never seriously set ourselves to consider what itreally meant. But now that the grim spectre loomed imminent, stretchinglean hands for one of our flock, it behoved us to face the situation, to take soundings in this uncharted sea and find out whither we weredrifting. Unfortunately, the data in our possession were absolutelyinsufficient, and we knew not whither to turn for exact information. Uncle Thomas could have told us all about it, of course; he had beenthere himself, once, in the dim and misty past. But an unfortunateconviction, that Nature had intended him for a humourist, tainted allhis evidence, besides making it wearisome to hear. Again, of such amongour contemporaries as we had approached, the trumpets gave forthan uncertain sound. According to some, it meant larks, revels, emancipation, and a foretaste of the bliss of manhood. According toothers, --the majority, alas!--it was a private and peculiar Hades, thatcould give the original institution points and a beating. When Edwardwas observed to be swaggering round with a jaunty air and his cheststuck out, I knew that he was contemplating his future from the onepoint of view. When, on the contrary, he was subdued and unaggressive, and sought the society of his sisters, I recognised that the otheraspect was in the ascendant. "You can always run away, you know, " Iused to remark consolingly on these latter occasions; and Edward wouldbrighten up wonderfully at the suggestion, while Charlotte melted intotears before her vision of a brother with blistered feet and an emptybelly, passing nights of frost 'neath the lee of windy haystacks. It was to Edward, of course, that the situation was chiefly productiveof anxiety; and yet the ensuing change in my own circumstances andposition furnished me also with food for grave reflexion. Hitherto Ihad acted mostly to orders. Even when I had devised and counselled anyparticular devilry, it had been carried out on Edward's approbation, and--as eldest--at his special risk. Henceforward I began to be anxiousof the bugbear Responsibility, and to realise what a soul-throttlingthing it is. True, my new position would have its compensations. Edward had been masterful exceedingly, imperious, perhaps a littlenarrow; impassioned for hard facts, and with scant sympathy formake-believe. I should now be free and untrammelled; in the conceptionand carrying out of a scheme, I could accept and reject to betterartistic purpose. It would, moreover, be needless to be a Radical any more. Radical Inever was, really, by nature or by sympathy. The part had been thruston me one day, when Edward proposed to foist the House of Lords on oursmall Republic. The principles of the thing he set forth learnedly andwell, and it all sounded promising enough, till he went on to explainthat, for the present at least, he proposed to be the House of Lordshimself. We others were to be the Commons. There would be promotions, ofcourse, he added, dependent on service and on fitness, and open to bothsexes; and to me in especial he held out hopes of speedy advancement. But in its initial stages the thing wouldn't work properly unless hewere first and only Lord. Then I put my foot down promptly, and saidit was all rot, and I didn't see the good of any House of Lords at all. "Then you must be a low Radical!" said Edward, with fine contempt. Theinference seemed hardly necessary, but what could I do? I accepted thesituation, and said firmly, Yes, I was a low Radical. In this monstrouscharacter I had been obliged to masquerade ever since; but now I couldthrow it off, and look the world in the face again. And yet, did this and other gains really out-balance my losses?Henceforth I should, it was true, be leader and chief; but I should alsobe the buffer between the Olympians and my little clan. To Edwardthis had been nothing; he had withstood the impact of Olympus withoutflinching, like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved. But was I equal to thetask? And was there not rather a danger that for the sake of peace andquietness I might be tempted to compromise, compound, and make terms?sinking thus, by successive lapses, into the Blameless Prig? I don'tmean, of course, that I thought out my thoughts to the exact point hereset down. In those fortunate days of old one was free from the hardnecessity of transmuting the vague idea into the mechanical inadequatemedium of words. But the feeling was there, that I might not possess thequalities of character for so delicate a position. The unnatural halo round Edward got more pronounced, his own demeanourmore responsible and dignified, with the arrival of his new clothes. When his trunk and play-box were sent in, the approaching cleavagebetween our brother, who now belonged to the future, and ourselves, still claimed by the past, was accentuated indeed. His name was paintedon each of them, in large letters, and after their arrival their ownerused to disappear mysteriously, and be found eventually wandering roundhis luggage, murmuring to himself, "Edward----, " in a rapt, remote sortof way. It was a weakness, of course, and pointed to a soft spot inhis character; but those who can remember the sensation of first seeingtheir names in print will not think hardly of him. As the short days sped by and the grim event cast its shadow longer andlonger across our threshold, an unnatural politeness, a civility scarcecanny, began to pervade the air. In those latter hours Edward himselfwas frequently heard to say "Please, " and also "Would you mind fetchin'that ball?" while Harold and I would sometimes actually find ourselvestrying to anticipate his wishes. As for the girls, they simplygrovelled. The Olympians, too, in their uncouth way, by gift of carnaldelicacies and such-like indulgence, seemed anxious to demonstrate thatthey had hitherto misjudged this one of us. Altogether the situationgrew strained and false, and I think a general relief was felt when theend came. We all trooped down to the station, of course; it is only in lateryears that the farce of "seeing people off" is seen in its true colours. Edward was the life and soul of the party; and if his gaiety struck oneat times as being a trifle overdone, it was not a moment to be critical. As we tramped along, I promised him I would ask Farmer Larkin not tokill any more pigs till he came back for the holidays, and he said hewould send me a proper catapult, --the real lethal article, not a kid'splaything. Then suddenly, when we were about half-way down, one of thegirls fell a-snivelling. The happy few who dare to laugh at the woes of sea-sickness will perhapsremember how, on occasion, the sudden collapse of a fellow-voyagerbefore their very eyes has caused them hastily to revise theirself-confidence and resolve to walk more humbly for the future. Even soit was with Edward, who turned his head aside, feigning an interest inthe landscape. It was but for a moment; then he recollected the hat hewas wearing, --a hard bowler, the first of that sort he had ever owned. He took it off, examined it, and felt it over. Something about it seemedto give him strength, and he was a man once more. At the station, Edward's first care was to dispose his boxes on theplatform so that every one might see the labels and the letteringthereon. One did not go to school for the first time every day! Then heread both sides of his ticket carefully; shifted it to every one of hispockets in turn; and finally fell to chinking of his money, to keep hiscourage up. We were all dry of conversation by this time, and could onlystand round and stare in silence at the victim decked for the altar. And, as I looked at Edward, in new clothes of a manly cut, with a hardhat upon his head, a railway ticket in one pocket and money of his ownin the other, --money to spend as he liked and no questions asked!--Ibegan to feel dimly how great was the gulf already yawning betwixt us. Fortunately I was not old enough to realise, further, that here on thislittle platform the old order lay at its last gasp, and that Edwardmight come back to us, but it would not be the Edward of yore, nor couldthings ever be the same again. When the train steamed up at last, we all boarded it impetuously withthe view of selecting the one peerless carriage to which Edward mightbe intrusted with the greatest comfort and honour; and as each one foundthe ideal compartment at the same moment, and vociferously maintainedits merits, he stood some chance for a time of being left behind. Aporter settled the matter by heaving him through the nearest door; andas the train moved off, Edward's head was thrust out of the window, wearing on it an unmistakable first-quality grin that he had been savingup somewhere for the supreme moment. Very small and white his facelooked, on the long side of the retreating train. But the grin wasvisible, undeniable, stoutly maintained; till a curve swept him fromour sight, and he was borne away in the dying rumble, out of our placidbackwater, out into the busy world of rubs and knocks and competition, out into the New Life. When a crab has lost a leg, his gait is still more awkward than hiswont, till Time and healing Nature make him totus teres atque rotundusonce more. We straggled back from the station disjointedly; Harold, whowas very silent, sticking close to me, his last slender props whilethe girls in front, their heads together, were already reckoning upthe weeks to the holidays. Home at last, Harold suggested one or twooccupations of a spicy and contraband flavour, but though we did ourmanful best there was no knocking any interest out of them. Then Isuggested others, with the same want of success. Finally we foundourselves sitting silent on an upturned wheelbarrow, our chins on ourfists, staring haggardly into the raw new conditions of our changedlife, the ruins of a past behind our backs. And all the while Selina and Charlotte were busy stuffing Edward'srabbits with unwonted forage, bilious and green; polishing up the cageof his mice till the occupants raved and swore like householders inspring-time; and collecting materials for new bows and arrows, whips, boats, guns, and four-in-hand harness, against the return of Ulysses. Little did they dream that the hero, once back from Troy and all itsonsets, would scornfully condemn their clumsy but laborious armouryas rot and humbug and only fit for kids! This, with many another likeawakening, was mercifully hidden from them. Could the veil have beenlifted, and the girls permitted to see Edward as he would appear a shortthree months hence, ragged of attire and lawless of tongue, a scorner oftradition and an adept in strange new physical tortures, one whowould in the same half-hour dismember a doll and shatter a hallowedbelief, --in fine, a sort of swaggering Captain, fresh from the SpanishMain, --could they have had the least hint of this, well, then perhaps--. But which of us is of mental fibre to stand the test of a glimpse intofuturity? Let us only hope that, even with certain disillusionmentahead, the girls would have acted precisely as they did. And perhaps we have reason to be very grateful that, both as childrenand long afterwards, we are never allowed to guess how the absorbingpursuit of the moment will appear, not only to others, but to ourselves, a very short time hence. So we pass, with a gusto and a heartiness thatto an onlooker would seem almost pathetic, from one droll devotion toanother misshapen passion; and who shall care to play Rhadamanthus, toappraise the record, and to decide how much of it is solid achievement, and how much the merest child's play?