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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Age, by Kenneth Grahame
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Age
+
+Author: Kenneth Grahame
+
+Illustrator: Maxfield Parrish
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2010 [EBook #32501]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN AGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE
+
+
+
+
+_COMPANION VOLUME TO THIS BOOK_
+
+DREAM DAYS
+
+BY
+
+KENNETH GRAHAME
+
+_PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH_
+
+[Illustration: '_Onto the garden wall, which led in its turn to the roof
+of an out-house_']
+
+
+
+
+'_The Golden Age_'
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE
+
+BY KENNETH GRAHAME
+
+ILLUSTRATED By MAXFIELD PARRISH
+
+
+ JOHN LANE.
+ THE BODLEY HEAD
+ LONDON AND NEW YORK
+ 1900
+
+
+
+
+ _Copyright, 1899_
+ BY JOHN LANE
+
+
+ _Copyright, 1904_
+ BY JOHN LANE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ PAGE
+ PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS 3
+ A HOLIDAY 13
+ A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE 29
+ ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS 39
+ THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS 53
+ SAWDUST AND SIN 67
+ 'YOUNG ADAM CUPID' 79
+ THE BURGLARS 93
+ A HARVESTING 107
+ SNOWBOUND 121
+ WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT 133
+ THE ARGONAUTS 143
+ THE ROMAN ROAD 161
+ THE SECRET DRAWER 179
+ 'EXIT TYRANNUS' 193
+ THE BLUE ROOM 205
+ A FALLING OUT 225
+ 'LUSISTI SATIS' 239
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE
+
+
+ The publication of this new edition of "The Golden
+ Age," the favourite amongst Mr. Kenneth Grahame's
+ favoured books, with the illustrations by Mr.
+ Maxfield Parrish reproduced in photogravure, was
+ accomplished through the kindness of the various
+ owners, who gave access to the originals in their
+ respective collections. The publisher begs
+ gratefully to acknowledge this courtesy, with
+ special thanks also to Mr. Frederick Keppel and
+ Mr. Fitzroy Carrington for their kind
+ co-operation.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ PAGE
+
+ 'Onto the garden wall, which led in
+ its turn to the roof of an out-house' _Frontispiece_
+
+ 'The Golden Age' _Title_
+
+ 'For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted,
+ wonderful!) simply' _Facing_ 6
+
+ 'Out into the brimming sun-bathed world I
+ sped' " 14
+
+ '"I took the old fellow to the station"' " 34
+
+ 'Once more were damsels rescued, dragons
+ disembowelled, and giants' " 42
+
+ 'Lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped
+ into dreamland' " 62
+
+ 'It was easy . . . to transport yourself in
+ a trice to the heart of a tropical forest' " 68
+
+ 'Who would have thought . . . that only two
+ short days ago we had confronted each
+ other on either side of a hedge' " 86
+
+ 'A great book open on his knee . . . a score or
+ so disposed within easy reach' " 114
+
+ 'But yester-eve and the mummers were here!' " 122
+
+ '"They make me walk behind, 'cos they say
+ I'm too little, and mustn't hear"' " 138
+
+ '"I'm Jason . . . and this is the Argo . . .
+ and we're just going through the Hellespont"' " 146
+
+ '"You haven't been to Rome, have you?"' " 166
+
+ 'I drew it out and carried it to the window,
+ to examine it in the failing light' " 188
+
+ 'At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a
+ most mean and uncalled-for manner' " 196
+
+ 'The procession passing solemnly across the
+ moon-lit Blue Room' " 218
+
+ '"Why, Master Harold! whatever be the matter?
+ Baint runnin' away, be ee?"' " 232
+
+ 'Finally we found ourselves sitting silent on
+ an upturned wheelbarrow' " 250
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS
+
+
+LOOKING back to those days of old, ere the gate shut to behind me, I can
+see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents these things
+would have worn a different aspect. But to those whose nearest were
+aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind may be allowed. They
+treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh,
+but after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise, the
+result of a certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace conviction
+that your child is merely animal. At a very early age I remember
+realising in a quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that
+stupidity, and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grew
+up in me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague sense
+of a ruling power, wilful, and freakish, and prone to the practice of
+vagaries--'just choosing so': as, for instance, the giving of authority
+over us to these hopeless and incapable creatures, when it might far
+more reasonably have been given to ourselves over them. These elders,
+our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect, but only a
+certain blend of envy--of their good luck--and pity--for their inability
+to make use of it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features in
+their character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them:
+which wasn't often) that, having absolute licence to indulge in the
+pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabble in
+the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the most
+uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth and buy
+gunpowder in the full eye of the sun--free to fire cannons and explode
+mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things. No
+irresistible Energy haled them to church o' Sundays; yet they went there
+regularly of their own accord, though they betrayed no greater delight
+in the experience than ourselves.
+
+On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirely
+void of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, and
+their habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearances they
+were blind. For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!)
+simply produced so many apples and cherries: or it didn't--when the
+failures of Nature were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never set
+foot within fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hid
+therein. The mysterious sources, sources as of old Nile, that fed the
+duck-pond had no magic for them. They were unaware of Indians, nor
+recked they anything of bisons or of pirates (with pistols!), though the
+whole place swarmed with such portents. They cared not to explore for
+robbers' caves, nor dig for hidden treasure. Perhaps, indeed, it was one
+of their best qualities that they spent the greater part of their time
+stuffily indoors.
+
+[Illustration: '_For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!)
+simply_']
+
+To be sure there was an exception in the curate, who would receive,
+unblenching, the information that the meadow beyond the orchard was a
+prairie studded with herds of buffalo, which it was our delight,
+moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those whoops that announce
+the scenting of blood. He neither laughed nor sneered, as the Olympians
+would have done; but, possessed of a serious idiosyncrasy, he would
+contribute such lots of valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of this
+particular sort of big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature age and
+eminent position could scarce have been attained without a practical
+knowledge of the creature in its native lair. Then, too, he was always
+ready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band of marauding
+Indians on the shortest possible notice: in brief, a distinctly able
+man, with talents, so far as we could judge, immensely above the
+majority. I trust he is a bishop by this time. He had all the necessary
+qualifications, as we knew.
+
+These strange folk had visitors sometimes--stiff and colourless
+Olympians like themselves, equally without vital interests and
+intelligent pursuits: emerging out of the clouds, and passing away again
+to drag on an aimless existence somewhere beyond our ken. Then
+brute force was pitilessly applied. We were captured, washed, and forced
+into clean collars: silently submitting as was our wont, with more
+contempt than anger. Anon, with unctuous hair and faces stiffened in a
+conventional grin, we sat and listened to the usual platitudes. How
+could reasonable people spend their precious time so? That was ever our
+wonder as we bounded forth at last: to the old clay-pit to make pots, or
+to hunt bears among the hazels.
+
+It was perennial matter for amazement how these Olympians would talk
+over our heads--during meals, for instance--of this or the other social
+or political inanity, under the delusion that these pale phantasms of
+reality were among the importances of life. We _illuminati_, eating
+silently, our heads full of plans and conspiracies, could have told them
+what real life was. We had just left it outside, and were all on fire to
+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 in
+thought and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one hostile
+fate, a power antagonistic ever--a power we lived to evade--we had no
+confidants save ourselves. This strange anæmic order of beings was
+further removed from us, in fact, than the kindly beasts who shared our
+natural existence in the sun. The estrangement was fortified by an
+abiding sense of injustice, arising from the refusal of the Olympians
+ever to defend, to retract, to admit themselves in the wrong, or to
+accept similar concessions on our part. For instance, when I flung the
+cat out of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and it
+didn't hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's reflection, to own I
+was wrong, 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,
+for assault and battery upon a neighbour's pig--an action he would have
+scorned: being indeed on the friendliest terms with the porker in
+question--there was no handsome expression of regret on the discovery of
+the real culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much the
+imprisonment--indeed, he had very soon escaped by the window, with
+assistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time for his
+release--as the Olympian habit. A word would have set all right; but of
+course that word was never spoken.
+
+Well! The Olympians are all past and gone. Somehow the sun does not seem
+to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows of old time have
+shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A saddening doubt, a dull
+suspicion, creeps over me. _Et in Arcadia ego_--I certainly did once
+inhabit Arcady. Can it be that I also have become an Olympian?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A HOLIDAY
+
+
+THE masterful wind was up and out, shouting and chasing, the lord of the
+morning. Poplars swayed and tossed with a roaring swish; dead leaves
+sprang aloft, and whirled into space; and all the clear-swept heaven
+seemed to thrill with sound like a great harp. It was one of the first
+awakenings of the year. The earth stretched herself, smiling in her
+sleep; and everything leapt and pulsed to the 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 had presents, and pretty
+conventional speeches, and had glowed with that sense of heroism which
+is no less sweet that nothing has been done to deserve it. But the
+holiday was for all, the rapture of awakening Nature for all, the
+various outdoor joys of puddles and sun and hedge-breaking for all.
+Colt-like I ran through the meadows, frisking happy heels in the face of
+Nature laughing responsive. Above, the sky was bluest of the blue; wide
+pools left by the winter's floods flashed the colour back, true and
+brilliant; and the soft air thrilled with the germinating touch that
+seems to kindle something in my own small person as well as in the rash
+primrose already lurking in sheltered haunts. Out into the brimming
+sun-bathed world I sped, free of lessons, free of discipline and
+correction, for one day at least. My legs ran of themselves, and though
+I heard my name called faint and shrill behind, there was no stopping
+for me. It was only Harold, I concluded, and his legs, though shorter
+than mine, were good for a longer spurt than this. Then I heard it
+called again, but this time more faintly, with a pathetic break in the
+middle; and I pulled up short, recognising Charlotte's plaintive note.
+
+[Illustration: '_Out into the brimming sun-bathed world I sped_']
+
+She panted up anon, and dropped on the turf beside me. Neither had any
+desire for talk; the glow and the glory of existing on this perfect
+morning were satisfaction full and sufficient.
+
+'Where's Harold?' I asked presently.
+
+'Oh, he's just playin' muffin-man, as usual,' said Charlotte with
+petulance. 'Fancy wanting to be a muffin-man on a whole holiday!'
+
+It was a strange craze, certainly; but Harold, who invented his own
+games and played them without assistance, always stuck staunchly to a
+new fad, till he had worn it quite out. Just at present he was a
+muffin-man, and day and night he went through passages and up and down
+staircases, ringing a noiseless bell and offering phantom muffins to
+invisible wayfarers. It sounds a poor sort of sport; and yet--to pass
+along busy streets of your own building, for ever ringing an imaginary
+bell and offering airy muffins of your own make to a bustling thronging
+crowd of your own creation--there were points about the game, it cannot
+be denied, though it seemed scarce in harmony with this radiant
+wind-swept morning!
+
+'And Edward, where is he?' I questioned again.
+
+'He's coming along by the road,' said Charlotte. 'He'll be crouching in
+the ditch when we get there, and he's going to be a grizzly bear and
+spring out on us, only you mustn't say I told you, 'cos it's to be a
+surprise.'
+
+'All right,' I said magnanimously. 'Come on and let's be surprised.' But
+I could not help feeling that on this day of days even a grizzly felt
+misplaced and common.
+
+Sure enough an undeniable bear sprang out on us as we dropped into the
+road; then ensued shrieks, growlings, revolver-shots, and unrecorded
+heroisms, till Edward condescended at last to roll over and die, bulking
+large and grim, an unmitigated grizzly. It was an understood thing, that
+whoever took upon himself to be a bear must eventually die, sooner or
+later, even if he were the eldest born; else, life would have been all
+strife and carnage, and the Age of Acorns have displaced our hard-won
+civilisation. This little affair concluded with satisfaction to all
+parties concerned, we rambled along the road, picking up the defaulting
+Harold by the way, muffinless now and in his right and social mind.
+
+'What would you do?' asked Charlotte presently--the book of the moment
+always dominating her thoughts until it was sucked dry and cast
+aside,--'What would you do if you saw two lions in the road, one on each
+side, 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, it
+would be difficult to arrive at a wiser conclusion.
+
+'If it came to _doing_,' remarked Harold reflectively, 'the lions would
+do all the doing there was to do, wouldn't they?'
+
+'But if they was _good_ lions,' rejoined Charlotte, 'they would do as
+they would 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 any
+different.'
+
+'Why, there aren't any good lions,' said Harold hastily.
+
+'O yes, there are, heaps and heaps,' contradicted Edward. 'Nearly all
+the lions in the story-books are good lions. There was Androcles' lion,
+and St. Jerome's lion, and--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 Edward triumphantly. 'But the
+question 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,' he
+said; 'let's play at lions, anyhow, and I'll run on to that corner and
+be a lion,--I'll be two lions, one on each side of the road,--and you'll
+come along, and you won't know whether I'm chained up or not, and
+that'll be the fun!'
+
+'No, thank you,' said Charlotte firmly; 'you'll be chained up till I'm
+quite close to you, and then you'll be loose, and you'll tear me in
+pieces, 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 new
+lion this time--something you can't even imagine.' And he raced off to
+his post. Charlotte hesitated--then she went timidly on, at each step
+growing less Charlotte, the mummer of a minute, and more the anxious
+Pilgrim of all time. The lion's wrath waxed terrible at her approach;
+his roaring filled the startled air. I waited until they were both
+thoroughly absorbed, and then I slipped through the hedge out of the
+trodden highway, into the vacant meadow spaces. It was not that I was
+unsociable, nor that I knew Edward's lions to the point of satiety; but
+the 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 discussions
+and pretences, when boon nature, reticent no more, was singing that
+full-throated song of hers that thrills and claims control of every
+fibre. 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 of
+a distant train--all were wine--or song, was it? or odour, this unity
+they all blent into? I had no words then to describe it, that
+earth-effluence of which I was so conscious; nor, indeed, have I found
+words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the
+squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I
+hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself
+singing. The words were mere nonsense--irresponsible babble; the tune
+was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and
+yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one
+thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it
+with scorn. Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognised and
+accepted it without a flicker of dissent.
+
+All the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from where
+he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. 'Take me for guide to-day,' he
+seemed to plead. 'Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of the
+stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged a weary foot
+homeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for company. To-day why
+not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I who whip round corners and
+bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the
+best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one, the
+lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and unprincipled, and obey
+no law.' And for me, I was ready enough to fall in with the fellow's
+humour; 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 in
+jest, or with some serious purpose of his own, that he brought me plump
+upon a pair of lovers, silent, face to face o'er a discreet unwinking
+stile? As a rule this sort of thing struck me as the most pitiful
+tomfoolery. Two calves rubbing noses through a gate were natural and
+right and within the order of things; but that human beings, with
+salient 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 be
+accounted 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 these
+fatuous 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 and
+the frolic air.
+
+A puff on the right cheek from my wilful companion sent me off at a
+fresh angle, and presently I came in sight of the village church,
+sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth the vestry window
+projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for foothold, with
+larceny--not to say sacrilege--in their every wriggle: a godless sight
+for a supporter of the Establishment. Though the rest was hidden, I knew
+the legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of Bill
+Saunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty,
+too, I could easily guess at that; it came from the Vicar's store of
+biscuits, kept (as I knew) in a cupboard along with his official
+trappings. For a moment I hesitated; then I passed on my way. I protest
+I was not on Bill's side; but then, neither was I on the Vicar's, and
+there was something in this immoral morning which seemed to say that
+perhaps, after all, Bill had as much right to the biscuits as the Vicar,
+and would certainly enjoy them better; and anyhow it was a disputable
+point, and no business of mine. Nature, who had accepted me for ally,
+cared little who had the world's biscuits, and assuredly was not going
+to let any 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 I
+rambled off in his wake, that he had more holiday matter to show me. And
+so, indeed, he had; and all of it was to the same lawless tune. Like a
+black pirate flag on the blue ocean of air, a hawk hung ominous; then,
+plummet-wise, dropped to the hedgerow, whence there rose, thin and
+shrill, a piteous voice of squealing. By the time I got there a whisk of
+feathers on the turf--like scattered playbills--was all that remained to
+tell of the tragedy just enacted. Yet Nature smiled and sang on,
+pitiless, gay, impartial. To her, who took no sides, there was every bit
+as much to be said for the hawk as for the chaffinch. Both were her
+children, and she would show no preferences.
+
+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 in
+more bustling circumstances. Nature might at least have paused to shed
+one tear over this rough-jacketed little son of hers, for his wasted
+aims, his cancelled ambitions, his whole career of usefulness cut
+suddenly short. But not a bit of it! Jubilant as ever, her song went
+bubbling on, and 'Death-in-Life'--and again, 'Life-in-Death,' were its
+alternate burdens. And looking round, and seeing the sheep-nibbled heels
+of turnips that dotted the ground, their hearts eaten out of them in
+frost-bound days now over and done, I seemed to discern, faintly, a
+something of the stern meaning in her valorous chant.
+
+My invisible companion was singing also, and seemed at times to be
+chuckling softly to himself,--doubtless at thought of the strange new
+lessons he was teaching me; perhaps, too, at a special bit of
+waggishness he had still in store. For when at last he grew weary of
+such insignificant earth-bound company, he deserted me at a certain spot
+I knew; then dropped, subsided, and slunk away into nothingness. I
+raised my eyes, and before me, grim and lichened, stood the ancient
+whipping-post of the village; its sides fretted with the initials of a
+generation that scorned its mute lesson, but still clipped by the stout
+rusty shackles that had tethered the wrists of such of that generation's
+ancestors as had dared to mock at order and law. Had I been an infant
+Sterne, here was a grand chance for sentimental output! As things were,
+I could only hurry homewards, my moral tail well between my legs, with
+an uneasy feeling, as I glanced back over my shoulder, that there was
+more in this chance than met the eye.
+
+And outside our gate I found Charlotte, alone and crying. Edward, it
+seemed, had persuaded her to hide, in the full expectation of being duly
+found and ecstatically pounced upon; then he had caught sight of the
+butcher's cart, and, forgetting his obligations, had rushed off for a
+ride. Harold, it further appeared, greatly coveting tadpoles, and
+top-heavy with the eagerness of possession, had fallen into the pond.
+This, in itself, was nothing; but on attempting to sneak in by the
+back-door, he had rendered up his duckweed-bedabbled person into the
+hands of an aunt, and had been promptly sent off to bed; and this, on a
+holiday, was very much. The moral of the whipping-post was working
+itself out; and I was not in the least surprised when, on reaching home,
+I was seized upon and accused of doing something I had never even
+thought of. And my frame of mind was such, that I could only wish most
+heartily that I had done it.
+
+
+
+
+A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE
+
+
+IN our small lives that day was eventful when another uncle was to come
+down from town, and submit his character and qualifications (albeit
+unconsciously) to our careful criticism. Earlier uncles had been weighed
+in the balance, and--alas!--found grievously wanting. There was Uncle
+Thomas--a failure from the first. Not that his disposition was
+malevolent, 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's
+existence was to serve as a butt for senseless adult jokes--or what,
+from the accompanying guffaws of laughter, appeared to be intended for
+jokes. Now, we were anxious that he should have a perfectly fair trial;
+so in the tool-house, between breakfast and lessons, we discussed and
+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--for
+he pretended to naught besides--he was reluctantly writ down a hopeless
+impostor.
+
+Uncle George--the youngest--was distinctly more promising. He
+accompanied us cheerily round the establishment--suffered himself to be
+introduced to each of the cows--held out the right hand of fellowship to
+the pig--and even hinted that a pair of pink-eyed Himalayan rabbits
+might arrive--unexpectedly--from town some day. We were just considering
+whether in this fertile soil an apparently accidental remark on the
+solid qualities of guinea-pigs or ferrets might haply blossom and bring
+forth fruit, when our governess appeared on the scene. Uncle George's
+manner at once underwent a complete and contemptible change. His
+interest in rational topics seemed, 'like a fountain's sickening pulse,'
+to flag and ebb away; and though Miss Smedley's ostensible purpose was
+to take Selina for her usual walk. I can vouch for it that Selina spent
+her morning ratting, along with the keeper's boy and me; while if Miss
+Smedley walked with any one, it would appear to have been with Uncle
+George.
+
+But, despicable as his conduct had been, he underwent no hasty
+condemnation. The defection was discussed in all its bearings, but it
+seemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess some innate
+badness of character and fondness for low company. We who from daily
+experience knew Miss Smedley like a book--were we not only too well
+aware that she had neither accomplishments nor charms--no
+characteristic, in fact, but an inbred viciousness of temper and
+disposition? True, she knew the dates of the English kings by heart; but
+how 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 soldier
+should not have hesitated in his choice a moment. No: Uncle George had
+fallen from grace, and was unanimously damned. And the non-arrival of
+the Himalayan rabbits was only another nail in his coffin. Uncles,
+therefore, were just then a heavy and lifeless market, and there was
+little inclination to deal. Still it was agreed that Uncle William, who
+had just returned from India, should have as fair a trial as the others;
+more especially as romantic possibilities might well be embodied in one
+who had held the gorgeous East in fee.
+
+Selina had kicked my shins--like the girl she is!--during a scuffle in
+the passage, and I was still rubbing them with one hand when I found
+that the uncle-on-approbation was half-heartedly shaking the other. A
+florid, elderly man, quite unmistakably nervous, he let drop one grimy
+paw after another, and, turning very red, with an awkward simulation of
+heartiness, 'Well, h' are y' all?' he said, 'Glad to see me, eh?' As we
+could hardly, in justice, be expected to have formed an opinion on him
+at that early stage, we could but look at each other in silence; which
+scarce served to relieve the tension of the situation. Indeed, the cloud
+never really lifted during his stay. In talking things over later, some
+one put forward the suggestion that he must at some time or other have
+committed a stupendous crime. But I could not bring myself to believe
+that 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 his depressing influence, we
+met 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 the
+feeling was unanimous, that, as an uncle, William could not be allowed
+to pass. Selina roundly declared him a beast, pointing out that he had
+not even got us a half-holiday; and, indeed, there seemed little to do
+but to pass sentence. We were about to put it to the vote, when Harold
+appeared on the scene; his red face, round eyes, and mysterious
+demeanour, hinting at awful portents. Speechless he stood a space:
+then, slowly drawing his hand from the pocket of his knickerbockers, he
+displayed on a dirty palm one--two--three--four half-crowns! We could
+but gaze--tranced, breathless, mute. Never had any of us seen, in the
+aggregate, so much bullion before. Then Harold told his tale.
+
+[Illustration: '"_I took the old fellow to the station_"']
+
+'I took the old fellow to the station,' he said, 'and as we went along I
+told him all about the stationmaster's family, and how I had seen the
+porter kissing our housemaid, and what a nice fellow he was, with no
+airs or affectation about him, and anything I thought would be of
+interest; but he didn't seem to pay much attention, but walked along
+puffing his cigar, and once I thought--I'm not certain, but I
+_thought_--I heard him say, "Well, thank God, that's over!" When we got
+to the station he stopped suddenly, and said, "Hold on a minute!" Then
+he shoved these into my hand in a frightened sort of way, and said,
+"Look here, youngster! These are for you and the other kids. Buy what
+you like--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 men
+anywhere in the world. I hope he'll die to-night, for then he'll go
+straight to heaven!' But the repentant Selina bewailed herself with
+tears and sobs, refusing to be comforted; for that in her haste she had
+called this white-souled relative a beast.
+
+'I'll tell you what we'll do,' said Edward, the master-mind, rising--as
+he always did--to the situation: 'We'll christen the piebald pig after
+him--the one that hasn't got a name yet. And that'll show we're sorry
+for our mistake!'
+
+'I--I christened that pig this morning,' Harold guiltily confessed; 'I
+christened it after the curate. I'm very sorry--but he came and bowled
+to me last night, after you others had all been sent to bed early--and
+somehow I felt I _had_ to do it!'
+
+'Oh, but that doesn't count,' said Edward hastily; 'because we weren't
+all 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 into
+Committee of Supply.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+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's
+not my turn to be a Roundhead, anyhow.' The fact is, I was lazy, and the
+call to arms fell on indifferent ears. We three younger ones were
+stretched at length in the orchard. The sun was hot, the season merry
+June, and never (I thought) had there been such wealth and riot of
+buttercups throughout the lush grass. Green-and-gold was the dominant
+key that day. Instead of active 'pretence' with its shouts and its
+perspiration, how much better--I held--to lie at ease and pretend to
+one'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 off.
+
+'Well then,' he began afresh, 'let's pretend we're Knights of the Round
+Table; and (with a rush) _I'll_ be Lancelot!'
+
+'I won't play unless I'm Lancelot,' I said. I didn't mean it really, but
+the game of Knights always began with this particular contest.
+
+'O _please_,' implored Harold. 'You know when Edward's here I never get
+a chance 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 allowed to 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, and
+rather than see the part in less appreciative hands, she would have gone
+back in tears 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 paced
+through the greenwood shaw, questing adventure, redressing wrong; and
+bandits, five to one, broke and fled discomfited to their caves. Once
+more were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled, and giants, in every
+corner of the orchard, deprived of their already superfluous number of
+heads; while Palomides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir
+Breuse Saunce Pité vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear
+that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight in
+Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shook
+with thunder of hooves, ash-staves flew in splinters, and the firmament
+rang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune of the day swung
+doubtful--now on this side, now on that; till at last Lancelot, grim and
+great, thrusting through the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easy
+task), 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 sight
+suddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet afar off; while
+the confused tramp of many horses, mingled with talk and laughter, was
+borne to the ears of his fellow-champions and himself.
+
+[Illustration: '_Once more were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled,
+and giants_']
+
+'What is it?' inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her curls;
+while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted nimbly to the
+boundary-hedge.
+
+I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of
+'Soldiers!' I was off to the hedge, Sir Tristram picking herself up and
+scurrying after us.
+
+Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet flamed in
+the 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 jolly
+horsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The moment
+they were past we were through the hedge and after them. Soldiers were
+not the common stuff of everyday life. There had been nothing like this
+since the winter before last, when on a certain afternoon--bare of leaf
+and monochromatic in its hue of sodden fallow and frost-nipt
+copse--suddenly the hounds had burst through the fence with their mellow
+cry, and all the paddock was for the minute reverberant of thudding hoof
+and dotted with glancing red. But this was better, since it could only
+mean that blows and bloodshed were in the air.
+
+'Is there going to be a battle?' panted Harold, hardly able to keep up
+for 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 concerning the
+peace that lapped in these latter days our seagirt realm. In the
+schoolroom we were just now dallying with the Wars of the Roses; and
+did not legends of the country-side inform us how cavaliers had once
+galloped up and down these very lanes from their quarters in the
+village? Here, now, were soldiers unmistakable; and if their business
+was not fighting, what was it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed
+hard in their tracks.
+
+'Won't Edward be sorry,' puffed Harold, 'that he's begun that beastly
+Latin?'
+
+It did, indeed, seem hard. Edward, the most martial spirit of us all,
+was drearily conjugating _amo_ (of all verbs!) between four walls; while
+Selina, who ever thrilled ecstatic to a red coat, was struggling with
+the uncouth German tongue. 'Age,' I reflected, 'carries its penalties.'
+
+It was a grievous disappointment to us that the troop passed through the
+village unmolested. Every cottage, I pointed out to my companions, ought
+to have been loopholed, and strongly held. But no opposition was offered
+to the soldiers: who, indeed, conducted themselves with a recklessness
+and a want of precaution that seemed simply criminal.
+
+At the last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered across
+me, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ordered her back. The small
+maiden, docile but exceedingly dolorous, dragged reluctant feet
+homewards, heavy at heart that she was to behold no stout fellows slain
+that day; but Harold and I held steadily on, expecting every instant to
+see the environing hedges crackle and spit forth the leaden death.
+
+'Will they be Indians?' asked my brother (meaning the enemy) 'or
+Roundheads, or what?'
+
+I reflected. Harold always required direct straightforward answers--not
+faltering suppositions.
+
+'They won't be Indians,' I replied at last; 'nor yet Roundheads. There
+haven't been any Roundheads seen about here for a long time. They'll be
+Frenchmen.'
+
+Harold's face fell. 'All right,' he said: 'Frenchmen'll do; but I did
+hope they'd be Indians.'
+
+'If they were going to be Indians,' I explained, 'I--I don't think I'd
+go on. Because when Indians take you prisoner they scalp you first, and
+then burn you at the 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 the
+Bastille; 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 at
+you--but they don't hit you--and you run down to the seashore as hard as
+you 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 were
+reaching strange outland country, uncivilised, wherein lions might be
+expected to prowl at nightfall. I had a stitch in my side, and both
+Harold's stockings had come down. Just as I was beginning to have gloomy
+doubts of the proverbial courage of Frenchmen, the officer called out
+something, the men closed up, and, breaking into a trot, the
+troops--already far ahead--vanished out of our sight. With a sinking at
+the heart, I began to suspect we had been fooled.
+
+'Are they charging?' cried Harold, very 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 and
+the trumpets blow, and----but let's try a short cut. We may catch them
+up yet.'
+
+So we struck across the fields and into another road, and pounded down
+that, and then over more fields, panting, down-hearted, yet hoping for
+the best. The sun went in, and a thin drizzle began to fall; we were
+muddy, breathless, almost dead-beat; but we blundered on, till at last
+we struck a road more brutally, more callously unfamiliar than any road
+I ever looked upon. Not a hint nor a sign of friendly direction or
+assistance on the dogged white face of it! There was no longer any
+disguising it: we were hopelessly lost. The small rain continued
+steadily, the evening began to come on. Really there are moments when a
+fellow is justified in crying; and I would have cried too, if Harold had
+not been there. That right-minded child regarded an elder brother as a
+veritable god; and I could see that he felt himself as secure as if a
+whole Brigade of Guards had hedged him round with protecting bayonets.
+But I dreaded sore lest he should begin again with his questions.
+
+As I gazed in dumb appeal on the face of unresponsive nature, the sound
+of nearing wheels sent a pulse of hope through my being: increasing to
+rapture as I recognised in the approaching vehicle the familiar carriage
+of the old doctor. If ever a god emerged from a machine, it was when
+this heaven-sent friend, recognising us, stopped and jumped out with a
+cheery hail. Harold rushed up to him at once. 'Have you been there?' he
+cried. '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 way
+and 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 will
+have due notice of the renewal of hostilities. And now you'd better jump
+in and I'll drive you home. You've been running a fine rig! Why, you
+might have both been taken and shot as spies!'
+
+This special danger had never even occurred to us. The thrill of it
+accentuated the cosy homelike feeling of the cushions we nestled into as
+we rolled homewards. The doctor beguiled the journey with blood-curdling
+narratives of personal adventure in the tented field, he having followed
+the profession of arms (so it seemed) in every quarter of the globe.
+Time, the destroyer of all things beautiful, subsequently revealed the
+baselessness of these legends; but what of that? There are higher things
+than truth; and we were almost reconciled, by the time we were put down
+at our gate, to the fact that the battle had been postponed.
+
+
+
+
+THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS
+
+
+IT was the day I was promoted to a toothbrush. The girls, irrespective
+of age, had been thus distinguished some time before; why, we boys could
+never rightly understand, except that it was part and parcel of a system
+of studied favouritism on behalf of creatures both physically inferior
+and (as was shown by a fondness for tale-bearing) of weaker mental fibre
+to us boys. It was not that we yearned after these strange instruments
+in themselves. Edward, indeed, applied his to the scrubbing-out of his
+squirrel's cage, and for personal use, when a superior eye was grim on
+him, borrowed Harold's or mine, indifferently. But the nimbus of
+distinction 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 perfect
+morning joined to hint at disaffection. Anyhow, having breakfasted, and
+triumphantly repeated the collect I had broken down in the last
+Sunday--'t was one without rhythm or alliteration: a most objectionable
+collect--having achieved thus much, the small natural man in me
+rebelled, and I vowed, as I straddled and spat about the stable-yard in
+feeble imitation of the coachman, that lessons might go to the Inventor
+of them. It was only geography that morning, any way: and the practical
+thing was worth any quantity of bookish theoric. As for me, I was going
+on my travels, and imports and exports, populations and capitals, might
+very well wait while I explored the breathing coloured world outside.
+
+True, a fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule, have been
+counted on with certainty. But just then Harold was very proud. The week
+before he had 'gone into tables,' and had been endowed with a new slate,
+having a miniature sponge attached wherewith we washed the faces of
+Charlotte's dolls, thereby producing an unhealthy pallor which struck
+terror into the child's heart, always timorous regarding epidemic
+visitations. As to 'tables,' nobody knew exactly what they were, least
+of all Harold; but it was a step over the heads of the rest, and
+therefore a subject for self-adulation and--generally speaking--airs; so
+that Harold, hugging his slate and his chains, was out of the question
+now. In such a matter, girls were worse than useless, as wanting the
+necessary tenacity of will and contempt for self-constituted authority.
+So eventually I slipped through the hedge a solitary protestant, and
+issued forth on the lane what time the rest of the civilised world was
+sitting down to lessons.
+
+The scene was familiar enough; and yet, this morning, how different it
+all seemed! The act, with its daring, tinted everything with new strange
+hues; affecting the individual with a sort of bruised feeling just below
+the pit of the stomach, that was intensified whenever his thoughts flew
+back to the ink-stained smelly schoolroom. And could this be really me?
+or was I only contemplating, from the schoolroom aforesaid, some other
+jolly young mutineer, faring forth under the genial sun? Anyhow, here
+was the friendly well, in its old place, half-way up the lane. Hither
+the yoke-shouldering village-folk were wont to come to fill their
+clinking buckets; when the drippings made worms of wet in the thick dust
+of the road. They had flat wooden crosses inside each pail, which
+floated on the top and (we were instructed) served to prevent the water
+from slopping over. We used to wonder by what magic this strange
+principle worked, and who first invented the crosses, and whether he got
+a peerage for it. But indeed the well was a centre of mystery, for a
+hornet's nest was somewhere hard by, and the very thought was fearsome.
+Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them in their fastnesses. But
+these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange, three stings from
+which--so 'twas averred--would kill a horse, these were of a different
+kidney, and their dreadful drone suggested prudence and retreat. At this
+time neither villagers nor hornets encroached on the stillness:
+lessons, apparently, pervaded all nature. So, after dabbling awhile in
+the well--what boy has ever passed a bit of water without messing in
+it?--I scrambled through the hedge, shunning the hornet-haunted side,
+and struck into the silence of the copse.
+
+If the lane had been deserted, this was loneliness become personal. Here
+mystery lurked and peeped; here brambles caught and held you with a
+purpose of their own; here saplings whipped your face with human spite.
+The copse, too, proved vaster in extent, more direfully drawn out, than
+one would ever have guessed from its frontage on the lane: and I was
+really glad when at last the wood opened and sloped down to a streamlet
+brawling forth 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
+and inlets--caves for pirates and hidden treasures--the wise Dame had
+forgotten nothing--till at last, after what lapse of time I know not,
+my further course, though not the stream's, was barred by some six feet
+of stout wire netting, stretched from side to side just where a thick
+hedge, arching till it touched, forbade all further view.
+
+The excitement of the thing was becoming thrilling. A Black Flag must
+surely be fluttering close by? Here was most plainly a malignant
+contrivance of the Pirates, designed to baffle our gun-boats when we
+dashed 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's
+edge; where a rabbit could go a boy could follow, howbeit stomach-wise
+and with one leg in the stream; so the passage was achieved, and I stood
+inside, 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
+and educated, passed from one to another marble basin, in which on
+occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish poised among the spreading
+water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous in the brooding
+noon-day sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped on the lawn, no fish
+leaped in the pools, no bird declared himself from the trim secluding
+hedges. Self-confessed it was here, then, at last, the Garden of Sleep!
+
+Two things, in those old days, I held in especial distrust: gamekeepers
+and gardeners. Seeing, however, no baleful apparitions of either
+quality, I pursued my way between rich flower-beds, in search of the
+necessary Princess. Conditions declared her presence patently as
+trumpets; without this centre such surroundings could not exist. A
+pavilion, gold-topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a
+special significance over close-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, struggling to disengage her hand from the
+grasp of a grown-up man who occupied the marble bench with her. (As to
+age, I suppose now that the two swung in respective scales that pivoted
+on twenty. But children heed no minor distinctions. To them, the
+inhabited world is composed of the two main divisions: children and
+upgrown people; the latter in no way superior to the former--only
+hopelessly different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up
+section.) I paused, thinking it strange they should prefer seclusion
+when there were fish to be caught, and butterflies to hunt in the sun
+outside; and as I cogitated thus, the grown-up man caught sight of me.
+
+'Hallo, sprat!' he said with some abruptness; 'Where do you spring
+from?'
+
+'I came up the stream,' I explained politely and comprehensively, 'and I
+was only looking for the Princess.'
+
+'Then you are a water-baby,' he replied. 'And what do you think of the
+Princess, now you've found her?'
+
+'I think she is lovely,' I said (and doubtless I was right, having
+never learned to flatter). 'But she's wide-awake, so I suppose somebody
+has kissed her!'
+
+This very natural deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter; but the
+Princess, turning red and jumping up, declared that it was time for
+lunch.
+
+'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 the
+particular table one sat at seemed a matter of no importance. The palace
+was very sumptuous and beautiful, just what a palace ought to be; and we
+were met by a stately lady, rather more grown-up than the
+Princess--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 Aldershot was, but I 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 in the higher gift of imagination that
+they are so sadly to seek.
+
+[Illustration: '_Lulled by the trickle of water, I slipped into
+dreamland_']
+
+The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in beautiful
+clothes--a lord presumably--lifted me into a high carved chair, and
+stood behind it, brooding over me like a Providence. I endeavoured to
+explain who I was and where I had come from, and to impress the company
+with my own toothbrush and Harold's tables; but either they were
+stupid--or is it a characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs at
+the most ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, 'All
+right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that's good enough for
+us.' The lord--a reserved sort of man, I thought--took no share in the
+conversation.
+
+After lunch I walked on the terrace with the Princess and my friend the
+Man, and was very proud. And I told him what I was going to be, and he
+told me what he was going to be; and then I remarked, 'I suppose you two
+are going to get married?' He only laughed, after the Fairy
+fashion. 'Because if you aren't,' I added, 'you really ought to':
+meaning only that a man who discovered a Princess, living in the right
+sort of Palace like this, and didn't marry her there and then, was false
+to all recognised tradition.
+
+They laughed again, and my friend suggested I should go down to the pond
+and look at the gold-fish, while they went for a stroll. I was sleepy,
+and assented; but before they left me, the grown-up man put two
+half-crowns in my hand, for the purpose, he explained, of treating the
+other water-babies. I was so touched by this crowning mark of friendship
+that I nearly cried; and I thought much more of his generosity 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 to go
+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 and
+magic world alike. When I woke, the sun had gone in, a chill wind set
+all the leaves a-whispering, and the peacock on the lawn was harshly
+calling up the rain. A wild unreasoning panic possessed me, and I sped
+out of the garden like a guilty thing, wriggled through the rabbit-run,
+and threaded my doubtful way homewards, hounded by nameless terrors. The
+half-crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch; but could I
+hope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted wood? It
+was a dirty, weary little object that entered its home, at nightfall, by
+the unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and only to be sent tealess
+to bed seemed infinite mercy to him. Officially tealess, that is; for,
+as was usual after such escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming
+delicately by backstairs, stayed him with chunks of cold pudding and
+condolence, till his small skin was tight as any drum. Then, nature
+asserting herself, I passed into the comforting kingdom of sleep, where,
+a golden carp of fattest build, I oared it in translucent waters with a
+new half-crown snug under right fin and left; and thrust up a nose
+through 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; and
+along the edge of it many things flourished rankly. If you crept through
+the undergrowth and crouched by the water's rim, it was easy--if your
+imagination were in healthy working order--to transport yourself in a
+trice to the heart of a tropical forest. Overhead the monkeys chattered,
+parrots flashed from bough to bough, strange large blossoms shone all
+round you, and the push and rustle of great beasts moving unseen
+thrilled you deliciously. And if you lay down with your nose an inch or
+two from the water, it was not long ere the old sense of proportion
+vanished clean away. The glittering insects that darted to and fro on
+its surface became sea-monsters dire, the gnats that hung above them
+swelled to albatrosses, and the pond itself stretched out into a vast
+inland sea, whereon a navy might ride secure, and whence at any moment
+the hairy scalp of a sea-serpent might be seen to emerge.
+
+[Illustration: '_It was easy . . . to transport yourself in a trice to
+the heart of a tropical forest_']
+
+It is impossible, however, to play at tropical forests properly, when
+homely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes of seeing a
+tiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (_vide_ picture-books,
+_passim_) vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her old dimensions, when
+the sound of Charlotte's prattle somewhere hard by broke in on my
+primæval seclusion. Looking out from the bushes, I saw her trotting
+towards an open space of lawn the other side the pond, chattering to
+herself in her accustomed fashion, a doll tucked under either arm, and
+her brow knit with care. Propping up her double burthen against a
+friendly stump, she sat down in front of them, as full of worry and
+anxiety as a Chancellor on a Budget night.
+
+Her victims, who stared resignedly in front of them, were recognisable
+as Jerry and Rosa. Jerry hailed from far Japan: his hair was straight
+and black, his one garment cotton of a simple blue; and his
+reputation was distinctly bad. Jerome was his proper name, from his
+supposed likeness to the holy man who hung in a print on the staircase;
+though a shaven crown was the only thing in common 'twixt Western saint
+and Eastern sinner. Rosa was typical British, from her flaxen poll to
+the stout calves she displayed so liberally; and in character she was of
+the blameless order of those who have not yet been found out.
+
+I suspected Jerry from the first. There was a latent devilry in his
+slant eyes as he sat there moodily; and knowing what he was capable of,
+I 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-tops in
+a visionary, world-forgetting sort of way; yet the prim purse of her
+mouth was somewhat overdone, and her eyes glittered unnaturally.
+
+'Now, I'm going to begin where I left off,' said Charlotte, regardless
+of stops, and thumping the turf with her fist excitedly: 'and you must
+pay attention, 'cos this is a treat, to have a story told you before
+you're put to bed. Well, so the White Rabbit scuttled off down the
+passage and Alice hoped he'd come back 'cos he had a waistcoat on and
+her flamingo flew up a tree--but we haven't got to that part yet, you
+must wait a minute, and--where had I got to?'
+
+Jerry only remained passive until Charlotte had got well under way, and
+then began to heel over quietly in Rosa's direction. His head fell on
+her plump shoulder, causing her to start nervously.
+
+Charlotte seized and shook him with vigour. 'O Jerry,' she cried
+piteously, 'if you're not going to be good, how ever shall I tell you my
+story?'
+
+Jerry's face was injured innocence itself. 'Blame if you like, Madam,'
+he seemed to say, 'the eternal laws of gravitation, but not a helpless
+puppet, who is also an orphan and a stranger in the land.'
+
+'Now we'll go on,' began Charlotte once more. 'So she got into the
+garden at last--I've left out a lot but you won't care, I'll tell you
+some other time--and they were all playing croquet, and that's where the
+flamingo comes in, and the Queen shouted out, "Off with her head!"'
+
+At this point Jerry collapsed forward, suddenly and completely, his bald
+pate between his knees. Charlotte was not very angry this time. The
+sudden development of tragedy in the story had evidently been too much
+for the poor fellow. She straightened him out, wiped his nose, and,
+after trying him in various positions, to which he refused to adapt
+himself, she propped him against the shoulder of the (apparently)
+unconscious Rosa. Then my eyes were opened, and the full measure of
+Jerry's infamy became apparent. This, then, was what he had been playing
+up for! The rascal had designs, had he? I resolved to keep him under
+close observation.
+
+'If you'd been in the garden,' went on Charlotte reproachfully, 'and
+flopped down like that when the Queen said "Off with his head!" she'd
+have 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 of
+cards"--O dear! I've got to the end already, and I hadn't begun hardly!
+I never can make my stories last out! Never mind, I'll tell you another
+one.'
+
+Jerry didn't seem to care, now he had gained his end, whether the
+stories lasted out or not. He was nestling against Rosa's plump form
+with a look of satisfaction that was simply idiotic; and one arm had
+disappeared from view--was it round her waist? Rosa's natural blush
+seemed deeper than usual, her head inclined shyly--it must have been
+round 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 White
+Bear, 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 were
+rigid, her eyes glassy. What had Jerry been doing? It must have been
+something very bad, for her to take on like that. I scrutinised him
+carefully, while Charlotte ran to comfort the damsel. He appeared to be
+whistling a tune and regarding the scenery. If I only possessed Jerry's
+command of feature, I thought to myself, half regretfully, I would never
+be found out in anything.
+
+'It's all your fault, Jerry,' said Charlotte reproachfully, when the
+lady had been restored to consciousness: 'Rosa's as good as gold except
+when you make her wicked. I'd put you in the corner, only a stump hasn't
+got a corner--wonder why that is? Thought everything had corners. Never
+mind, you'll have to sit with your face to the wall--so. Now you can
+sulk if you like!'
+
+Jerry seemed to hesitate a moment between the bliss of indulgence in
+sulks with a sense of injury, and the imperious summons of beauty
+waiting to be wooed at his elbow; then, over-mastered by his passion, he
+fell sideways across Rosa's lap. One arm stuck stiffly upwards, as in
+passionate protestation; his amorous countenance was full of entreaty.
+Rosa hesitated--wavered--yielded, crushing his slight frame under the
+weight of her full-bodied surrender.
+
+Charlotte had stood a good deal, but it was possible to abuse even her
+patience. Snatching Jerry from his lawless embraces, she reversed him
+across her knee, and then--the outrage offered to the whole superior sex
+in Jerry's hapless person was too painful to witness; but though I
+turned my head away the sound of brisk slaps continued to reach my
+tingling ears. When I dared to look again, Jerry was sitting up as
+before; his garment, somewhat crumpled, was restored to its original
+position; but his pallid countenance was set hard. Knowing as I did,
+only too well, what a volcano of passion and shame must be seething
+under that impassive exterior, for the moment I felt sorry for him.
+
+Rosa's face was still buried in her frock; it might have been shame, it
+might have been grief for Jerry's sufferings. But the callous Japanese
+never even looked her way. His heart was exceeding bitter within him. In
+merely following up his natural impulses he had run his head against
+convention, and learned how hard a thing it was; and the sunshiny world
+was all black to him. Even Charlotte softened somewhat at the sight of
+his rigid misery. 'If you'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 the
+direction of his dear native Japan, where love was no sin, and smacking
+had not been introduced. Why had he ever left it? He would go back
+to-morrow! And yet there were obstacles: another grievance. Nature, in
+endowing Jerry with every grace of form and feature, along with a
+sensitive soul, had somehow forgotten the gift of locomotion.
+
+There was a crackling in the bushes behind me, with sharp short pants as
+of a small steam-engine, and Rollo, the black retriever, just released
+from his chain by some friendly hand, burst through the underwood,
+seeking congenial company. I joyfully hailed him to stop and be a
+panther, but he sped away round the pond, upset Charlotte with a
+boisterous caress, and seizing Jerry by the middle, disappeared with him
+down the drive. Charlotte panting, raved behind the swift-footed avenger
+of crime; Rosa lay dishevelled, bereft of consciousness; Jerry himself
+spread helpless arms to heaven, and I almost thought I heard a cry for
+mercy, a tardy promise of amendment. But it was too late. The Black Man
+had got Jerry at last; and though the tear of sensibility might bedew an
+eye or two for his lost sake, no one who really knew him could deny the
+justice of his fate.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+'YOUNG ADAM CUPID'
+
+
+NOBODY would have suspected Edward of being in love, had it not been
+that after breakfast, with an overacted carelessness, 'Anybody who
+likes,' he said, 'can feed my rabbits,' and he disappeared, with a
+jauntiness that deceived nobody, in the direction of the orchard. Now
+kingdoms might totter and reel, and convulsions play skittles with the
+map of Europe; but the iron unwritten law prevailed, that each boy
+severely fed his own rabbits. There was good ground, then, for suspicion
+and alarm; and while the lettuce leaves were being drawn through the
+wires, Harold and I conferred seriously on the situation.
+
+It may be thought that the affair was none of our business; and indeed
+we cared little as individuals. We were only concerned as members of a
+corporation, for each of whom the mental or physical ailment of one of
+his fellows might have far-reaching effects. It was thought best that
+Harold, as least open to suspicion of motive, should be despatched to
+probe and peer. His instructions were, to proceed by a report on the
+health of our rabbits in particular; to glide gently into a discussion
+concerning rabbits in general, their customs, practices, and vices; and
+to pass thence, by a natural transition, to the female sex, the inherent
+flaws in its composition, and the reasons for regarding it (speaking
+broadly) as dirt. He was especially to be very diplomatic, and then to
+return and report progress. He departed on his mission gaily; but his
+absence was short, and his return, discomfited and in tears, seemed to
+betoken some want of parts for diplomacy. He had found Edward, it
+appeared, pacing the orchard, with the sort of set smile that
+mountebanks wear in their precarious antics, fixed painfully on his
+face, as with pins. Harold had opened well, on the rabbit subject, but,
+with a fatal confusion between the abstract and the concrete, had then
+gone on to remark that Edward's lop-eared doe, with her long hindlegs
+and contemptuous twitch of the nose, 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 and punching him in the short ribs. So
+that Harold returned to the rabbit-hutches preceded by long-drawn wails:
+anon wishing, with tears and sobs, that he were a man, to kick his
+love-lorn brother; anon lamenting that ever he had been born.
+
+I was not big enough to stand up to Edward personally, so I had to
+console the sufferer by allowing him to grease the wheels of the
+donkey-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 his
+behalf with the new kitchen-maid. Harold was soon all smiles and grease;
+and I was not, on the whole, dissatisfied with the significant hint that
+had been gained as to the _fons et 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 for
+church. Lest the connexion may not be evident at first sight, I should
+explain that the gloomy period of church-time, with its enforced
+inaction and its lack of real interest--passed, too, within sight of all
+that the village held of fairest--was just the one when a young man's
+fancies lightly turned to thoughts of love. The rest of the week
+afforded no leisure for such trifling; but in church--well, there was
+really nothing else to do! True, noughts-and-crosses might be indulged
+in on flyleaves of prayer-books while the Litany dragged its slow length
+along; 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 was
+in this way that, some months earlier, under the exceptional strain of
+the Athanasian Creed, my roving fancy had settled upon the baker's wife
+as a fit object for a life-long devotion. Her riper charms had conquered
+a heart which none of her be-muslined tittering juniors had been able to
+subdue; and that she was already wedded had never occurred to me as any
+bar to my affection. Edward's general demeanour, then, during morning
+service was safe to convict him; but there was also a special test for
+the particular case. It happened that we sat in a transept, and, the
+Larkins being behind us, Edward's only chance of feasting on Sabina's
+charms was in the all-too fleeting interval when we swung round
+eastwards. I was not mistaken. During the singing of the Benedictus the
+impatient one made several false starts, and at last he slewed fairly
+round before 'As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be' was
+half finished. The evidence was conclusive: a court of law could have
+desired no better.
+
+The fact being patent, the next thing was to grapple with it; and my
+mind was fully occupied during the sermon. There was really nothing
+unfair or unbrotherly in my attitude. A philosophic affection such as
+mine own, which clashed with nothing, was (I held) permissible; but the
+volcanic passions in which Edward indulged about once a quarter were a
+serious interference with business. To make matters worse, next week
+there was a circus coming to the neighbourhood, to which we had all been
+strictly forbidden to go; and without Edward no visit in contempt of law
+and orders could be successfully brought off. I had sounded him as to
+the circus on our way to church, and he had replied briefly that the
+very thought of a clown made him sick. Morbidity could no further go.
+But the sermon came to an end without any line of conduct having
+suggested itself; and I walked home in some depression, feeling sadly
+that Venus was in the ascendant and in direful opposition, while
+Auriga--the circus star--drooped declinant, perilously near the horizon.
+
+By the irony of fate, Aunt Eliza, of all people, turned out to be the
+_Dea ex machinâ_. The thing fell out in this wise. It was that lady's
+obnoxious practice to issue forth, of a Sunday afternoon, on a visit of
+state to such farmers and cottagers as dwelt at hand; on which occasion
+she was wont to hale a reluctant boy along with her, from the mixed
+motives 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 the
+others fled scatheless and whooping. Our first visit was to the Larkins.
+Here ceremonial might be viewed in its finest flower, and we conducted
+ourselves, like Queen Elizabeth when she trod the measure, 'high and
+disposedly.' In the low oak-panelled parlour cake and currant wine were
+set forth, and, after courtesies and compliments exchanged, Aunt Eliza,
+greatly condescending, talked the fashions with Mrs. Larkin; while the
+farmer and I, perspiring with the unusual effort, exchanged remarks on
+the mutability of the weather and the steady fall in the price of corn.
+(Who would have thought, to hear us, that only two short days ago we had
+confronted each other on either side of a hedge? I triumphant,
+provocative, derisive? He flushed, wroth, cracking his whip, and
+volleying forth profanity? So powerful is all-subduing ceremony!) Sabina
+the while, demurely seated with a _Pilgrim's Progress_ on her knee, and
+apparently absorbed in a brightly-coloured presentment of 'Apollyon
+Straddling Right across the Way,' eyed me at times with shy interest;
+but repelled all Aunt Eliza's advances with a frigid politeness for
+which I could not sufficiently admire her.
+
+[Illustration: '_Who would have thought . . . that only two short days
+ago we had confronted each other on either side of a hedge_']
+
+'It's surprising to me,' I heard my aunt remark presently, 'how my
+eldest nephew, Edward, despises little girls. I heard him tell Charlotte
+the other day that he wished he could exchange her for a pair of
+Japanese guinea-pigs. It made the poor child cry. Boys are so
+heartless!' (I saw Sabina stiffen as she sat, and her tip-tilted nose
+twitched scornfully.) 'Now this boy here----' (my soul descended into my
+very boots. Could the woman have intercepted any of my amorous glances
+at the baker's wife?) 'Now this boy,' my aunt went on, 'is more human
+altogether. Only yesterday he took his sister to the baker's shop, and
+spent his only penny buying her sweets. I thought it showed such a nice
+disposition. I wish Edward were more like him!'
+
+I breathed again. It was unnecessary to explain my real motives for that
+visit to the baker's. Sabina's face softened, and her contemptuous
+nose descended from its altitude of scorn; she gave me one shy glance of
+kindness, and then concentrated her attention upon Mercy knocking at the
+Wicket Gate. I felt awfully mean as regarded Edward; but what could I
+do? I was in Gaza, gagged and bound; the Philistines hemmed me in.
+
+The same evening the storm burst, the bolt fell, and--to continue the
+metaphor--the atmosphere grew serene and clear once more. The evening
+service was shorter than usual, the vicar, as he ascended the pulpit
+steps, having dropped two pages out of his sermon-case--unperceived by
+any but ourselves, either at the moment or subsequently when the hiatus
+was reached; so, as we joyfully shuffled out I whispered Edward that by
+racing home at top speed we should make time to assume our bows and
+arrows (laid aside for the day) and play at Indians and buffaloes with
+Aunt Eliza's fowls--already strolling roostwards, regardless of their
+doom--before that sedately stepping lady could return. Edward hung at
+the door, wavering; the suggestion had unhallowed charms. At that
+moment Sabina issued primly forth, and, seeing Edward, put out her
+tongue at him in the most exasperating manner conceivable; then passed
+on her way, her shoulders rigid, her dainty head held high. A man can
+stand very much in the cause of love: poverty, aunts, rivals, barriers
+of every sort, all these only serve to fan the flame. But personal
+ridicule is a shaft that reaches the very vitals. Edward led the race
+home at a speed which one of Ballantyne's heroes might have equalled but
+never surpassed; and that evening the Indians dispersed Aunt Eliza's
+fowls over several square miles of country, so that the tale of them
+remaineth incomplete unto this day. Edward himself, cheering wildly,
+pursued the big Cochin-China cock till the bird sank gasping under the
+drawing-room window, whereat its mistress stood petrified; and after
+supper, in the shrubbery, smoked a half-consumed cigar he had picked up
+in the road, and declared to an awe-stricken audience his final, his
+immitigable resolve to go into the army.
+
+The crisis was past, and Edward was saved! . . . And yet . . . _sunt
+lachrymæ rerum_ . . . to me watching the cigar-stump alternately pale
+and glow against the dark background of laurel, a vision of a tip-tilted
+nose, of a small head poised scornfully, seemed to hover on the
+gathering gloom--seemed to grow and fade and grow again, like the grin
+of the Cheshire cat--pathetically, reproachfully even; and the charms of
+the baker's wife slipped from my memory like snow-wreaths in thaw. After
+all, Sabina was nowise to blame: why should the child be punished?
+To-morrow I would give them the slip, and stroll round by her garden
+promiscuous-like, at a time when the farmer was safe in the rickyard. If
+nothing came of it, there was no harm done; and if on the contrary. . . !
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+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 were
+still leaning out of the open window in our nightshirts, watching the
+play of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planning
+schemes of fresh devilry for the sunshiny morrow. From below, strains of
+the jocund piano declared that the Olympians were enjoying themselves in
+their listless impotent way; for the new curate had been bidden to
+dinner that night, and was at the moment unclerically proclaiming to all
+the world that he feared no foe. His discordant vociferations doubtless
+started a train of thought in Edward's mind, for he presently remarked,
+_à propos_ of nothing whatever that had been said before, 'I believe the
+new curate's rather gone on Aunt Maria.'
+
+I scouted the notion; 'Why, she's quite old,' I said. (She must have
+seen some five-and-twenty summers.)
+
+'Of course she is,' replied Edward scornfully. 'It's not her, it's her
+money 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 thus
+presented: mine, in wonderment at this flaw that so often declared
+itself in enviable natures of fullest endowment,--in a grown-up man and
+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 a
+fellow spooning his sister once----'
+
+'What's spooning?' I asked meekly.
+
+'O _I_ dunno,' said Edward indifferently.
+
+'It's--it's--it's just a thing they do, you know. And he used to carry
+notes and messages and things 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,' he
+briefly 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 he
+could have made up for himself. Girls are useful in some ways. So he was
+living in clover, when unfortunately they went and quarrelled about
+something.'
+
+'Don't see what that's got to do with it,' I said.
+
+'Nor don't I,' rejoined Edward. 'But anyhow the notes and things
+stopped, and so did the shillings. Bobby was fairly cornered, for he had
+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. So
+when the week was up, and he was being dunned for the shilling, he went
+off to the fellow and said: "Your broken-hearted Bella implores you to
+meet her at sundown. By the hollow oak as of old, be it only for a
+moment. Do not fail!" He got all that out of some rotten book, of
+course. 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 he had
+made a slip, through trusting too much to the rotten book; but this
+didn'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 know
+what she means: the hollow tree in your father's paddock. It happens to
+be an elm, but she wouldn't know the difference. All right: say I'll be
+there." Bobby hung about a bit, for he hadn't got his money. "She was
+crying awfully," he said. Then he got his shilling.'
+
+'And wasn't the fellow riled,' I inquired, 'when he got to the place and
+found nothing?'
+
+'He found Bobby,' said Edward indignantly. 'Young Ferris was a
+gentleman, every inch of him. He brought the fellow another message from
+Bella: "I dare not leave the house. My cruel parents immure me closely.
+If you only knew what I suffer. Your broken-hearted Bella." Out of the
+same rotten book. This made the fellow a little suspicious, 'cos it was
+the old Ferrises who had been keen about the thing all through. The
+fellow, you see, had tin.'
+
+'But what's that got to----' I began again.
+
+'O _I_ dunno,' said Edward impatiently. 'I'm telling you just what Bobby
+told me. He got suspicious, anyhow, but he couldn't exactly call Bella's
+brother a liar, so Bobby escaped for the time. But when he was in a hole
+next week, over a stiff French exercise, and tried the same sort of game
+on his sister, she was too sharp for him, and he got caught out. Somehow
+women seem more mistrustful than men. They're so beastly suspicious by
+nature, you know.'
+
+'_I_ know,' said I. 'But did the two--the fellow and the sister--make it
+up afterwards?'
+
+'I don't remember about that,' replied Edward indifferently; 'but Bobby
+got packed off to school a whole year earlier than his people meant to
+send him. Which was just what he wanted. So you see it all came right in
+the end!'
+
+I was trying to puzzle out the moral of this story--it was evidently
+meant to contain one somewhere--when a flood of golden lamplight mingled
+with the moon-rays on the lawn, and Aunt Maria and the new curate
+strolled out on the grass below us, and took the direction of a
+garden-seat which was backed by a dense laurel shrubbery reaching round
+in a half-circle to the house. Edward meditated moodily. 'If we only
+knew what they were talking about,' said he, 'you'd soon see whether I
+was right or not. Look here! Let's send the kid down by the porch to
+reconnoitre!'
+
+'Harold's asleep,' I said; 'it seems rather a shame----'
+
+'O rot!' said my brother; 'he's the youngest, and he's got to do as he's
+told!'
+
+So the luckless Harold was hauled out of bed and given his
+sailing-orders. He was naturally rather vexed at being stood up suddenly
+on the cold floor, and the job had no particular interest for him; but
+he was both staunch and well disciplined. The means of exit were simple
+enough. A porch of iron trellis came up to within easy reach of the
+window, and was habitually used by all three of us, when modestly
+anxious to avoid public notice. Harold climbed deftly down the porch
+like a white rat, and his night-gown glimmered a moment on the gravel
+walk ere he was lost to sight in the darkness of the shrubbery. A brief
+interval of silence ensued; broken suddenly by a sound of scuffle, and
+then 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 our
+younger brother. Now that danger had declared itself, there was no
+hesitation. In a second we were down the side of the porch, and crawling
+Cherokee-wise through the laurels to the back of the garden-seat.
+Piteous was the sight that greeted us. Aunt Maria was on the seat, in a
+white evening frock, looking--for an aunt--really quite nice. On the
+lawn stood an incensed curate, grasping our small brother by a large
+ear, which--judging from the row he was making--seemed on the point of
+parting company with the head it completed and adorned. The gruesome
+noise he was emitting did not really affect us otherwise than
+æsthetically. To one who has tried both, the wail of genuine physical
+anguish is easily distinguishable from the pumped-up _ad misericordiam_
+blubber. Harold's could clearly be recognised as belonging to the latter
+class. 'Now you young--' (whelp, _I_ think it was, but Edward stoutly
+maintains it was devil), said the curate sternly; 'tell us what you mean
+by it!'
+
+'Well leggo of my ear then!' shrilled Harold, 'and I'll tell you the
+solemn truth!'
+
+'Very well,' agreed the curate, releasing him, 'now go ahead, and don't
+lie more than you can help.'
+
+We abode the promised disclosure without the least misgiving; but even
+we had hardly given Harold due credit for his fertility of resource and
+powers 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 I
+saw a sight which froze the marrow in my veins! A burglar was
+approaching the house with snake-like tread! He had a scowl and a dark
+lantern, and he was armed to the teeth!'
+
+We listened with interest. The style, though unlike Harold's native
+notes, seemed strangely familiar.
+
+'Go on,' said the curate grimly.
+
+'Pausing in his stealthly career,' continued Harold, 'he gave a low
+whistle. Instantly the signal was responded to, and from the adjacent
+shadows two more figures glided forth. The miscreants were both armed to
+the teeth.'
+
+'Excellent,' said the curate; 'proceed.'
+
+'The robber chief,' pursued Harold, warming to his work, 'joined his
+nefarious comrades, and conversed with them in silent tones. His
+expression was truly ferocious, and I ought to have said that he was
+armed to the t----'
+
+'There, never mind his teeth,' interrupted the curate rudely; 'there's
+too much jaw about you altogether. Hurry up and have done.'
+
+'I was in a frightful funk,' continued the narrator, warily guarding his
+ear with his hand, 'but just then the drawing-room window opened, and
+you and Aunt Maria came out--I mean emerged. The burglars vanished
+silently into the laurels, with horrid implications!'
+
+The curate looked slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained, and
+certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might really have seen
+something. How was the poor man to know--though the chaste and lofty
+diction might have supplied a hint--that the whole yarn was a free
+adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by the knife-and-boot
+boy?
+
+'Why did you not alarm the house?' he asked.
+
+''Cos I was afraid,' said Harold sweetly, 'that p'raps they mightn't
+believe me!'
+
+'But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?' put in Aunt
+Maria.
+
+Harold was hard pressed--by his own flesh and blood, too!
+
+At that moment Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off through
+the laurels. When some ten yards away he gave a low whistle. I replied
+with another. The effect was magical. Aunt Maria started up with a
+shriek. Harold gave one startled glance around, and then fled like a
+hare, made straight for the back-door, burst in upon the servants at
+supper, and buried himself in the broad bosom of the cook, his special
+ally. The curate faced the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung
+herself on him. 'O Mr. Hodgitts!' I heard her cry, 'you are brave! for
+my sake do not be rash!' He was not rash. When I peeped out a second
+later, the coast was entirely clear.
+
+By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging; and
+Edward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off. Retreat was an
+easy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg-up on to the garden wall, which
+led in its turn to the roof of an out-house, up which, at a dubious
+angle, we could crawl to the window of the box-room. This overland route
+had been revealed to us one day by the domestic cat, when hard pressed
+in the course of an otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhat
+unwillingly--was filling the title _rôle_; and it had proved distinctly
+useful on occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus some
+cuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing something
+sticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly cook, ere the
+clamour of the burglar-hunters had died away.
+
+The curate's undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was
+generally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight, and much
+kudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however, when he had
+dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild curatorial joke about
+the moral courage required for taking the last piece of
+bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark dreamily, and as it were
+to the universe at large: 'Mr. Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do
+not be rash!'
+
+Fortunately for me, the vicar also was a caller on that day; and it was
+always a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated friend in the
+open.
+
+
+
+
+A HARVESTING
+
+
+THE year was in its yellowing time, and the face of Nature a study in
+old gold. 'A field _or, semée_ with garbs of the same:' it may be false
+Heraldry--Nature's generally is--but it correctly blazons the display
+that Edward and I considered from the rickyard gate. Harold was not on
+in this scene, being stretched upon the couch of pain: the special
+disorder stomachic, as usual. The evening before, Edward, in a fit of
+unwonted amiability, had deigned to carve me out a turnip lantern, an
+art-and-craft he was peculiarly deft in; and Harold, as the interior of
+the turnip flew out in scented fragments under the hollowing knife, had
+eaten largely thereof: regarding all such jetsam as his special
+perquisite. Now he was dreeing his weird, with such assistance as the
+chemist could afford. But Edward and I, knowing that this particular
+field was to be carried to-day, were revelling in the privilege of
+riding in the empty waggons from the rickyard back to the sheaves,
+whence we returned toilfully on foot, to career it again over the
+billowy acres in these great galleys of a stubble sea. It was the
+nearest approach to sailing that we inland urchins might compass: and
+hence it ensued, that such stirring scenes as Sir Richard Grenville on
+the _Revenge_, the smoke-wreathed Battle of the Nile, and the Death of
+Nelson, had all been enacted in turn on these dusty quarter-decks, as
+they swayed and bumped afield.
+
+Another waggon had shot its load, and was jolting out through the
+rickyard 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 a
+death-grapple. I was a privateersman, he proclaimed, and he the captain
+of the British frigate _Terpsichore_, of--I forget the precise number of
+guns. Edward always collared the best parts to himself; but I was
+holding my own gallantly, when I suddenly discovered that the floor we
+battled on was swarming with earwigs. Shrieking, I hurled free of him,
+and rolled over the tail-board on to the stubble. Edward executed a
+war-dance of triumph on the deck of the retreating galleon; but I cared
+little for that. I knew _he_ knew that I wasn't afraid of him, but that
+I was--and terribly--of earwigs: 'those mortal bugs o' the field.' So I
+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 own
+village, but a foreign one, distant at least a mile. One felt that sense
+of mingled distinction and insecurity which is familiar to the
+traveller: distinction, in that folk turned the head to note you
+curiously; insecurity, by reason of the everpresent possibility of
+missiles on the part of the younger inhabitants, a class eternally
+Conservative. Elated with isolation, I went even more nose-in-air than
+usual: and 'even so,' I mused, 'might Mungo Park have threaded the
+trackless African forest and. . . .' Here I plumped against a soft, but
+resisting body.
+
+Recalled to my senses by the shock, I fell back in the attitude every
+boy under these circumstances instinctively adopts--both elbows well up
+over your ears. I found myself facing a tall elderly man, clean-shaven,
+clad in well-worn black--a clergyman evidently; and I noted at once a
+far-away look in his eyes, as if they were used to another plane of
+vision, and could not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenly
+recalled thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest. 'I ask a
+thousand pardons, sir,' he said; 'I am really so very absent-minded. I
+trust you will forgive me.'
+
+Now most boys would have suspected chaff under this courtly style of
+address. I take infinite credit to myself for recognising at once the
+natural attitude of a man to whom his fellows were gentlemen all,
+neither Jew nor Gentile, clean nor unclean. Of course, I took the blame
+on myself; adding, that I was very absent-minded too. Which was indeed
+the 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 is the
+happier. And now--' his hand had been resting all this time on a
+wicket-gate--'you are hot, it is easily seen;--the day is advanced,
+_Virgo_ is the Zodiacal sign. Perhaps I may offer you some poor
+refreshment, if your engagements will permit?'
+
+My only engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I had
+not intended to keep it in any case; so I passed in, while he held the
+gate open politely, murmuring, '_Venit Hesperus, ite capellæ_: come,
+little kid!' and then apologising abjectly for a familiarity which (he
+said) was less his than the Roman poet's. A straight flagged walk led up
+to the cool-looking old house, and my host, lingering in his progress at
+this rose-tree and that, forgot all about me at least twice, waking up
+and apologising humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I put
+two and two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor,
+eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend was
+already beginning to form; to myself an object of special awe, in that
+he was alleged to have written a real book. 'Heaps o' books,' Martha, my
+informant, said; but I knew the exact rate of discount applicable to
+Martha's statements.
+
+We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck me at
+once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None of your
+feminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and tidies! This man,
+it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout volumes in calf and vellum
+lined three sides; books sprawled or hunched themselves on chairs and
+tables; 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 head of
+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 my
+friend, as if it was the most natural wish in the world--his eyes were
+already straying towards another corner, where bits of writing-table
+peeped 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--only
+beastly exercises!'
+
+
+'Well, you can strum here, at all events,' he replied; and murmuring
+absently, '_Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen_,' he made his way,
+mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible writing-table. In
+ten 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 have
+been in Bœotia, for any consciousness he had of me. So with a light
+heart I turned to and strummed.
+
+Those who painfully and with bleeding feet have scaled the crags of
+mastery over musical instruments have yet their loss in this: that the
+wild joy of strumming has become a vanished sense. Their happiness
+comes from the concord and the relative value of the notes they handle:
+the pure, absolute quality and nature of each note in itself are only
+appreciated by the strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them,
+and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of
+greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the grave
+centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight, and some the
+deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some red, while others
+will tell of an army with silken standards and march-music. And
+throughout all the sequence of suggestion, up above the little white men
+leap and peep, and strive against the imprisoning wires; and all the big
+rosewood box hums as it were full of hiving bees.
+
+[Illustration: '_A great book open on his knee . . . a score or so
+disposed within easy reach_']
+
+Spent with the rapture, I paused a moment and caught my friend's eye
+over 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 scholarship is
+there, I grant you; but the spark, the fine perception, the happy
+intuition, where is it? They get it all from us!'
+
+'They get nothing whatever from _us_,' I said decidedly: the word German
+only suggesting Bands, to which Aunt Eliza was bitterly hostile.
+
+'You think not?' he rejoined doubtfully, getting up and walking about
+the room. 'Well, I applaud such fairness and temperance in so young a
+critic. They are qualities--in youth--as rare as they are pleasing. But
+just look at Schrumpffius, for instance--how he struggles and wrestles
+with a simple γἁρ in this very passage here!'
+
+I peeped fearfully through the open door, half dreading to see some
+sinuous and snark-like conflict in progress on the mat; but all was
+still. I saw no trouble at all in the passage, and I said so.
+
+'Precisely,' he cried, delighted. 'To you, who possess the natural
+scholar's faculty in so happy a degree, there is no difficulty at all.
+But to this Schrumpffius----' But here, luckily for me, in came the
+housekeeper, a clean-looking woman of staid aspect.
+
+'Your tea is in the garden,' she said severely, as if she were
+correcting a faulty emendation. 'I've put some cakes and things for the
+little gentleman; and you'd better drink it before it gets cold.'
+
+He waved her off and continued his stride, brandishing an aorist over my
+devoted head. The housekeeper waited unmoved till there fell a moment's
+break in his descant; and then, 'You'd better drink it before it gets
+cold,' she observed again, impassively. The wretched man cast a
+deprecating look at me. 'Perhaps a little tea would be rather nice,' he
+observed 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, I
+concluded 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 a pariah dog;
+and, catching sight of us, he set up his professional whine; and I
+looked at my friend with the heartiest compassion, for I knew well from
+Martha--it was common talk--that at this time of day he was certainly
+and surely penniless. Morn by morn he started forth with pockets lined;
+and each returning evening found him with never a sou. All this he
+proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteously and even
+shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last the gentleman of
+the road, realising the hopelessness of his case, set to and cursed him
+with gusto, vocabulary, and abandonment. He reviled his eyes, his
+features, his limbs, his profession, his relatives and surroundings; and
+then slouched off, still oozing malice and filth. We watched the party
+to a turn in the road, where the woman, plainly weary, came to a stop.
+Her lord, after some conventional expletives demanded of him by his
+position, relieved her of her bundle, and caused her to hang on his arm
+with a certain rough kindness of tone, and in action even a dim
+approach to tenderness; and the dingy dog crept up for one lick at her
+hand.
+
+'See,' said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, 'how this
+strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the
+unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early morning?
+Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light thwartwise--and all
+is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of this strange
+thing underrun and link together the whole world. Yet it is not the old
+imperious god of the fatal bow--ἑρωϛ αυἱκατε μἁχαν--not that--nor even
+the placid respectable στοργἡ--but something still unnamed, perhaps more
+mysterious, more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one
+must stoop!'
+
+The dew was falling, the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly homewards
+down the road. Lonely spaces everywhere, above and around. Only Hesperus
+hung in the sky, solitary, pure, ineffably far-drawn and remote; yet
+infinitely heartening, somehow, in his valorous isolation.
+
+
+
+
+SNOWBOUND
+
+
+TWELFTH-NIGHT had come and gone, and life next morning seemed a trifle
+flat and purposeless. But yester-eve, and the mummers were here! They
+had come striding into the old kitchen, powdering the red brick floor
+with snow from their barbaric bedizenments; and stamping, and crossing,
+and declaiming, till all was whirl and riot and shout. Harold was
+frankly afraid: unabashed, he buried himself in the cook's ample bosom.
+Edward feigned a manly superiority to illusion, and greeted these awful
+apparitions familiarly, as Dick and Harry and Joe. As for me, I was too
+big to run, too rapt to resist the magic and surprise. Whence came these
+outlanders, breaking in on us with song and ordered masque and a
+terrible clashing of wooden swords? And after these, what strange
+visitants might we not look for any quiet night, when the chestnuts
+popped in the ashes, and the old ghost stories drew the awe-stricken
+circle close? Old Merlin, perhaps, 'all furred in black sheep-skins, and
+a russet gown, with a bow and arrows, and bearing wild geese in his
+hand!' Or stately Ogier the Dane, recalled from Faëry, asking his way to
+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 of
+reindeer's feet, halting of a sudden at the door flung wide, while aloft
+the Northern Lights went shaking attendant spears among the quiet stars!
+
+[Illustration: '_But yester-eve and the mummers were here!_']
+
+This morning, house-bound by the relentless indefatigable snow, I was
+feeling the reaction. Edward, on the contrary, being violently
+stage-struck on this his first introduction to the real Drama, was
+striding up and down the floor, proclaiming 'Here be I, King Gearge the
+Third,' in a strong Berkshire accent. Harold, accustomed, as the
+youngest, to lonely antics and to sports that asked no sympathy, was
+absorbed in 'clubmen': a performance consisting in a measured
+progress round the room arm-in-arm with an imaginary companion of
+reverend years, with occasional halts at imaginary clubs,
+where--imaginary steps being leisurely ascended--imaginary papers were
+glanced at, imaginary scandal was discussed with elderly shakings of the
+head, and--regrettable to say--imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards.
+Heaven only knows how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way
+into his small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was
+proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile Charlotte and I, crouched in the
+window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of
+the innumerable snow-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 at
+breakfast, during some argument or other, by an apt quotation from her
+favourite classic (the _Fairy Book_), she had been gently but firmly
+informed that no such things as fairies ever really existed. 'Do you
+mean to say it's all lies?' asked Charlotte bluntly. Miss Smedley
+deprecated the use of any such unladylike words in any connexion at all.
+'These stories had their origin, my dear,' she explained, 'in a mistaken
+anthropomorphism in the interpretation of nature. But though we are now
+too well informed to fall into similar errors, there are still many
+beautiful lessons to be learned from these myths----'
+
+'But how can you learn anything,' persisted Charlotte, 'from what
+doesn't exist?' And she left the table defiant, howbeit depressed.
+
+'Don't you mind _her_,' I said consolingly; 'how can she know anything
+about 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 going
+into the Army. If a thing's in a book it _must_ be true, so that settles
+it!'
+
+Charlotte looked almost reassured. The room was quieter now, for Edward
+had got the dragon down and was boring holes in him with a purring
+sound; Harold was ascending the steps of the Athenæum with a jaunty
+air--suggestive rather of the Junior Carlton. Outside, the tall elm-tops
+were hardly to be seen through the feathery storm. 'The sky's
+a-falling,' quoted Charlotte softly; 'I must go and tell the king.' The
+quotation suggested a fairy story, and I offered to read to her,
+reaching out for the book. But the Wee Folk were under a cloud;
+sceptical hints had embittered the chalice. So I was fain to fetch
+_Arthur_--second favourite with Charlotte for his dames riding errant,
+and an easy first with us boys for his spear-splintering crash of
+tourney and hurtle against hopeless odds. Here again, however, I proved
+unfortunate; what ill-luck made the book open at the sorrowful history
+of Balin and Balan? 'And he vanished anon,' I read: 'and so he heard an
+horne blow, as it had been the death of a beast. "That blast," said
+Balin, "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 in
+despair. Harold emerged from behind the arm-chair. He was sucking his
+thumb (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 his
+histrionics, 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 when
+she was somewhere over in that beastly abroad'--(he had once spent a
+black month of misery at Dinan)--'and there was a fellow there who had
+got two storks. And one stork died--it was the she-stork.'--('What did
+it die of?' put in Harold.)--'And the other stork was quite sorry, and
+moped, and went on, and got very miserable. So they looked about and
+found a duck, and introduced it to the stork. The duck was a drake, but
+the stork didn't mind, and they loved each other and were as jolly as
+could be. By and by another duck came along--a real she-duck this
+time--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 the
+poor stork who was left, he said nothing at all to anybody, but just
+pined and pined and pined away, till one morning he was found quite
+dead! But the ducks lived happily ever afterwards!'
+
+This was Edward's idea of a jolly story! Down again went the corners of
+poor Charlotte's mouth. Really Edward's stupid inability to see the real
+point in anything was _too_ annoying! It was always so. Years before, it
+being necessary to prepare his youthful mind for a domestic event that
+might lead to awkward questionings at a time when there was little
+leisure to invent appropriate answers, it was delicately inquired of him
+whether he would like to have a little brother, or perhaps a little
+sister? He considered the matter carefully in all its bearings, and
+finally declared for a Newfoundland pup. Any boy more 'gleg at the
+uptak' 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 fresh
+standpoint. And now, while Charlotte turned away sniffingly, with a
+hiccup that told of an overwrought soul, Edward, unconscious (like Sir
+Isaac's Diamond) of the mischief he had done, wheeled round on Harold
+with 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'm
+playin' at something else. How can I be a dragon and belong to all the
+clubs?'
+
+'But wouldn't you like to be a nice scaly dragon, all green,' said
+Edward, trying persuasion, 'with a curly tail and red eyes, and
+breathing real smoke and fire?'
+
+Harold wavered an instant: Pall-Mall was still strong in him. The next
+he was grovelling on the floor. No saurian ever swung a tail so scaly
+and so curly as his. Clubland was a thousand years away. With horrific
+pants 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 and
+contempt. Cataclysmal memories of purge and draught crowded thick on me,
+and with Charlotte--who courted no barren honours--I made a break for
+the door. Edward did likewise, and the hostile forces clashed together
+on the mat, and for a brief space things were mixed and chaotic and
+Arthurian. The silvery sound of the luncheon-bell restored an instant
+peace, even in the teeth of clenched antagonisms like ours. The Holy
+Grail itself, 'sliding athwart a sunbeam,' never so effectually stilled
+a riot of warring passions into sweet and quiet accord.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT
+
+
+EDWARD was standing ginger-beer like a gentleman, happening, as the one
+that had last passed under the dentist's hands, to be the capitalist of
+the flying hour. As in all well-regulated families, the usual tariff
+obtained in ours: half-a-crown a tooth; one shilling only if the molar
+were a loose one. This one, unfortunately--in spite of Edward's
+interested affectation of agony--had been shakiness undisguised; but the
+event 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 village
+post-office, and Harold stole a tumbler from the pantry. Our
+preparations complete, we were sprawling on the lawn; the staidest and
+most self-respecting of the rabbits had been let loose to grace the
+feast, and was lopping demurely about the grass, selecting the juiciest
+plantains; while Selina, as the eldest lady present, was toying, in her
+affected feminine way, with the first full tumbler, daintily fishing for
+bits of broken cork.
+
+'Hurry up, can't you?' growled our host; 'what are you girls always so
+beastly particular for?'
+
+'Martha says,' explained Harold (thirsty too, but still just), 'that if
+you swallow a bit of cork, it swells, and it swells, and it swells
+inside you, till you----'
+
+'O bosh!' said Edward, draining the glass with a fine pretence of
+indifference to consequences, but all the same (as I noticed) dodging
+the floating cork-fragments with skill and judgment.
+
+'O, it's all very well to say bosh,' replied Harold nettled: 'but every
+one knows it's true but you. Why, when Uncle Thomas was here last, and
+they got up a bottle of wine for him, he took just one tiny sip out of
+his glass, and then he said, "Poo, my goodness, that's corked!" And he
+wouldn't touch it. And they had to get a fresh bottle up. The funny part
+was, though, I looked in his glass afterwards, when it was brought out
+into the passage, and there wasn't any cork in it at all! So I drank it
+all off, and it was very good!'
+
+'You'd better be careful, young man!' said his elder brother, regarding
+him severely: 'D'you remember that night when the Mummers were here, and
+they had mulled port, and you went round and emptied all the glasses
+after they had gone away?'
+
+'Ow! I did feel funny that night,' chuckled Harold. 'Thought the house
+was comin' down, it jumped about so: and Martha had to carry me up to
+bed, 'cos the stairs was goin' all waggity!'
+
+We gazed searchingly at our graceless junior; but it was clear that he
+viewed the matter in the light of a phenomenon rather than of a
+delinquency.
+
+A third bottle was by this time circling; and Selina, who had evidently
+waited for it to reach her, took a most unfairly long pull, and then,
+jumping up and shaking out her frock, announced that she was going for a
+walk. Then she fled like a hare; for it was the custom of our Family to
+meet with physical coercion any independence of action in individuals.
+
+'She's off with those Vicarage girls again,' said Edward, regarding
+Selina's long black legs twinkling down the path. 'She goes out with
+them every day now; and as soon as ever they start, all their heads go
+together and they chatter, chatter, chatter the whole blessèd time! I
+can't make out what they find to talk about. They never stop; it's
+gabble, gabble, gabble right along, like a nest of young rooks!'
+
+'P'raps they talk about birds'-eggs,' I suggested sleepily (the sun was
+hot, the turf soft, the ginger-beer potent); 'and about ships, and
+buffaloes, and desert islands; and why rabbits have white tails; and
+whether they'd sooner have a schooner or a cutter; and what they'll be
+when 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,' persisted
+Edward. 'How can they? They don't _know_ anything; they can't _do_
+anything--except play the piano, and nobody would want to talk about
+_that_; and they don't care about anything--anything sensible, I mean.
+So what _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't
+understand."'
+
+'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 was
+hindering the circulation of the ginger-beer.
+
+We heard the click of the front-gate. Through a gap in the hedge we
+could 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, as
+Edward had described; and the clack of their tongues came down the
+breeze like the busy pipe of starlings on a bright March morning.
+
+'What _do_ they talk about, Charlotte?' I inquired, wishing to pacify
+Edward. 'You go out with them sometimes.'
+
+[Illustration: '"_They make me walk behind, 'cos they say I'm too
+little, and mustn't hear_"']
+
+'I don't know,' said poor Charlotte dolefully. 'They make me walk
+behind, 'cos they say I'm too little, and mustn't hear. And I _do_ want
+to so,' she added.
+
+'When any lady comes to see Aunt Eliza,' said Harold, 'they both talk at
+once all the time. And yet each of 'em seems to hear what the other
+one's saying. I can't make out how they do it. Grown-up people are so
+clever!'
+
+'The Curate's the funniest man,' I remarked. 'He's always saying things
+that have no sense in them at all, and then laughing at them as if they
+were jokes. Yesterday, when they asked him if he'd have some more tea,
+he said, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," and then
+sniggered all over. I didn't see anything funny in that. And then
+somebody asked him about his button-hole, and he said, "'Tis but a
+little faded flower," and exploded again. I thought it very stupid.'
+
+'O _him_,' said Edward contemptuously: 'he can't help it, you know; it's
+a sort of way he's got. But it's these girls I can't make out. If
+they've anything really sensible to talk about, how is it nobody knows
+what it is? And if they haven't--and we know they _can't_ have,
+naturally--why don't they shut up their jaw? This old rabbit here--_he_
+doesn't want to talk. He's got something better to do.' And Edward aimed
+a ginger-beer cork at the unruffled beast, who never budged.
+
+'O but rabbits _do_ talk,' interposed Harold. 'I've watched them often
+in their hutch. They put their heads together and their noses go up and
+down, just like Selina's and the Vicarage girls'. Only of course I can't
+hear what they're saying.'
+
+'Well, if they do,' said Edward unwillingly, 'I'll bet they don't talk
+such 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 and
+her friends talked about.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE ARGONAUTS
+
+
+THE advent of strangers, of whatever sort, into our circle had always
+been a matter of grave dubiety and suspicion. Indeed, it was generally a
+signal for retreat into caves and fastnesses of the earth, into
+unthreaded copses or remote outlying cowsheds, whence we were only to be
+extricated by wily nursemaids, rendered familiar by experience with our
+secret runs and refuges. It was not surprising, therefore, that the
+heroes of classic legend, when first we made their acquaintance, failed
+to win our entire sympathy at once. 'Confidence,' says somebody, 'is a
+plant of slow growth'; and these stately dark-haired demi-gods, with
+names hard to master and strange accoutrements, had to win a citadel
+already strongly garrisoned with a more familiar soldiery. Their chill
+foreign goddesses had no such direct appeal for us as the mocking
+malicious fairies and witches of the North. We missed the pleasant
+alliance of the animal--the fox who spread the bushiest of tails to
+convey us to the enchanted castle, the frog in the well, the raven who
+croaked advice from the tree; and--to Harold especially--it seemed
+entirely wrong that the hero should ever be other than the youngest
+brother of three. This belief, indeed, in the special fortune that ever
+awaited the youngest brother, as such,--the 'Borough-English' of
+Faëry,--had been of baleful effect on Harold, producing a certain
+self-conceit and perkiness that called for physical correction. But even
+in our admonishment we were on his side; and as we distrustfully eyed
+these new arrivals, old Saturn himself seemed something of a _parvenu_.
+
+Even strangers, however, if they be good fellows at heart, may develop
+into sworn comrades; and these gay swordsmen, after all, were of the
+right stuff. Perseus, with his cap of darkness and his wonderful
+sandals, was not long in winging his way to our hearts. Apollo knocked
+at Admetus' gate in something of the right fairy fashion. Psyche
+brought with her an orthodox palace of magic, as well as helpful birds
+and friendly ants. Ulysses, with his captivating shifts and strategies,
+broke down the final barrier, and henceforth the band was adopted and
+admitted into our freemasonry.
+
+I had been engaged in chasing Farmer Larkin's calves--his special
+pride--round the field, just to show the man we hadn't forgotten him,
+and was returning through the kitchen-garden with a conscience at peace
+with all men, when I happened upon Edward, grubbing for worms in the
+dung-heap. Edward put his worms into his hat, and we strolled along
+together, discussing high matters of state. As we reached the tool-shed,
+strange noises arrested our steps; looking in, we perceived Harold,
+alone, rapt, absorbed, immersed in the special game of the moment. He
+was squatting in an old pig-trough that had been brought in to be
+tinkered; and as he rhapsodised, anon he waved a shovel over his head,
+anon dug it into the ground with the action of those who would urge
+Canadian canoes. Edward strode in upon him.
+
+[Illustration: '"_I'm Jason . . . and this is the Argo . . . and we're
+just going through the Hellespont_"']
+
+'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 other fellows are here
+too, only you can't see them; and we're just going through the
+Hellespont, so don't you come bothering.' And once more he plied 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 retorted. 'It's the
+best sort of Argo I can manage, and it's all right if you only pretend
+enough. But _you_ never could pretend one bit.'
+
+Edward reflected. 'Look here,' he said presently. 'Why shouldn't we get
+hold of Farmer Larkin's boat, and go right away up the river in a real
+Argo, and look for Medea, and the Golden Fleece, and everything? And
+I'll tell you what, I don't mind your being Jason, as you thought of it
+first.'
+
+Harold tumbled out of the trough in the excess of his emotion. 'But
+we aren't allowed to go on the water by ourselves,' he cried.
+
+'No,' said Edward, with fine scorn: 'we aren't allowed; and Jason wasn't
+allowed either, I daresay. But he _went_!'
+
+Harold's protest had been merely conventional: he only wanted to be
+convinced 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, it
+was not exactly a Pilgrim's Progress--she might go and tell; she having
+just reached that disagreeable age when one begins to develop a
+conscience. Charlotte, for her part, had a habit of day-dreams, and was
+as likely as not to fall overboard in one of her rapt musings. To be
+sure, she would dissolve in tears when she found herself left out; but
+even that was better than a watery tomb. In fine, the public voice--and
+rightly, perhaps--was against the admission of the skirted animal:
+despite the precedent of Atalanta, who was one of the original crew.
+
+'And now,' said Edward, 'who's to ask Farmer Larkin? _I_ can't; last
+time I saw him he said when he caught me again he'd smack my head.
+_You'll_ have 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 him
+at all. It doesn't much matter. He'd only be annoyed, and that would be
+a pity. Now let's set off.'
+
+We made our way down to the stream, and captured the farmer's boat
+without let or hindrance, the enemy being engaged in the hay-fields.
+This 'river,' so called, could never be discovered by us in any atlas;
+indeed our 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 the Argo's head upstream, since that led away from the Larkin
+province; Harold was faithfully permitted to be Jason, and we shared the
+rest of the heroes among us. Then, quitting Thessaly, we threaded the
+Hellespont with shouts, breathlessly dodged the Clashing Rocks, and
+coasted under the lee of the Siren-haunted isles. Lemnos was fringed
+with meadow-sweet, dog-roses dotted the Mysian shore, and the cheery
+call of the haymaking folk sounded along the coast of Thrace.
+
+After some hour or two's seafaring, the prow of the Argo embedded itself
+in the mud of a landing-place, plashy with the tread of cows and giving
+on to a lane that led towards the smoke of human habitations. Edward
+jumped ashore, alert for exploration, and strode off without waiting to
+see if we followed; but I lingered behind, having caught sight of a
+moss-grown water-gate hard by, leading into a garden that, from the
+brooding quiet lapping it round, appeared to portend magical
+possibilities.
+
+Indeed the very air within seemed stiller, as we circumspectly passed
+through the gate; and Harold hung back shamefaced, as if we were
+crossing the threshold of some private chamber, and ghosts of old days
+were hustling past us. Flowers there were, everywhere; but they drooped
+and sprawled in an overgrowth hinting at indifference; the scent of
+heliotrope possessed the place as if actually hung in solid festoons
+from tall untrimmed hedge to hedge. No basket-chairs, shawls, or novels
+dotted the lawn with colour, and on the garden-front of the house
+behind, the blinds were mostly drawn. A grey old sun-dial dominated the
+central sward, and we moved towards it instinctively, as the most human
+thing in sight. An antick motto ran round it, and with eyes and fingers
+we struggled at the decipherment.
+
+TIME: TRYETH: TROTHE: spelt out Harold at last. 'I wonder what that
+means?'
+
+I could not enlighten him, nor meet his further questions as to the
+inner mechanism of the thing, and where you wound it up. I had seen
+these instruments before, of course; but had never fully understood
+their manner of working.
+
+We were still puzzling our heads over the contrivance, when I became
+aware that Medea herself was moving down the path from the house.
+Dark-haired, supple, of a figure lightly poised and swayed, but pale and
+listless--I knew her at once, and having come out to find her, naturally
+felt no surprise at all. But Harold, who was trying to climb on to the
+top of the sun-dial, having a cat-like fondness for the summit of
+things, started and fell prone, barking his chin and filling the
+pleasance with lamentation.
+
+Medea skimmed the ground swallow-like, and in a moment was on her knees
+comforting him, wiping the dirt out of his chin with her own dainty
+handkerchief, and vocal with soft murmur of consolation.
+
+'You needn't take on so about him,' I observed politely. 'He'll cry for
+just one minute, and then he'll be all right.'
+
+My estimate was justified. At the end of his regulation time Harold
+stopped crying suddenly, like a clock that had struck its hour; and with
+a serene and cheerful countenance wriggled out of Medea's embrace, and
+ran 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 here
+for a thousand years, and all that time I've never seen any one under a
+hundred and fifty! Let's play at something, at once!'
+
+'Rounders is a good game,' I suggested. 'Girls can play at rounders. And
+we 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 I
+panted 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 abandonment
+of the true artist; and as she flitted away and reappeared, flushed and
+laughing divinely, the pale witch-maiden seemed to fall away from her,
+and she moved rather as that other girl I had read about, snatched from
+fields of daffodil to reign in shadow below, yet permitted now and
+again to revisit earth and light and the frank, caressing air.
+
+Tired at last, we strolled back to the old sun-dial, and Harold, who
+never relinquished a problem unsolved, began afresh, rubbing his finger
+along the faint incisions. '_Time tryeth trothe_. Please, I want to know
+what that means?'
+
+Medea's face drooped low over the sun-dial, till it was almost hidden in
+her fingers. 'That's what I'm here for,' she said presently in quite a
+changed, low voice. 'They shut me up here--they think I'll forget--but I
+never will--never, never! And he, too--but I don't know--it is so
+long--I don't know!'
+
+Her face was quite hidden now. There was silence again in the old
+garden. I felt clumsily helpless and awkward. Beyond a vague idea of
+kicking Harold, nothing remedial seemed to suggest itself.
+
+None of us had noticed the approach of another she-creature--one of the
+angular and rigid class--how different from our dear comrade! The years
+Medea had claimed might well have belonged to her; she wore mittens,
+too--a trick I detested in woman. 'Lucy!' she said sharply, in a tone
+with _aunt_ writ large over it; and Medea started up guiltily.
+
+'You've been crying,' said the newcomer, grimly regarding her through
+spectacles. '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 had
+better run away home to your tea. Remember, you should not come to pay
+visits without your nursemaid.'
+
+Harold had been tugging nervously at my jacket for some time, and I only
+waited till Medea turned and kissed a white hand to us as she was led
+away. Then I ran. We gained the boat in safety; and 'What an old
+dragon!' said Harold.
+
+'Wasn't she a beast!' I replied. 'Fancy the sun giving any one a
+headache! 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 were not
+left long in doubt. First, there came down the lane the shrill and
+wrathful clamour of a female tongue; then Edward, running his best; and
+then an excited woman hard on his heel. Edward tumbled into the bottom
+of the boat, gasping 'Shove her off!' And shove her off we did,
+mightily, while the dame abused us from the bank in the self-same
+accents 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 went
+up into the village and explored, and it was a very nice one, and the
+people were very polite. And there was a blacksmith's forge there, and
+they were shoeing horses, and the hoofs fizzled and smoked, and smelt
+so jolly! I stayed there quite a long time. Then I got thirsty, so I
+asked that old woman for some water, and while she was getting it her
+cat came out of the cottage, and looked at me in a nasty sort of way,
+and said something I didn't like. So I went up to it just to--to teach
+it manners, 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 no
+interesting him in Medea at all. Moreover, the evening was closing in,
+and it was evident that this cutting-out expedition must be kept for
+another day. As we neared home, it gradually occurred to us that perhaps
+the greatest danger was yet to come, for the farmer must have missed his
+boat ere now, and would probably be lying in wait for us near the
+landing-place. There was no other spot admitting of debarcation on the
+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 my
+stars that our elder brother was with us that day. He might be little
+good at pretending, but in grappling with the stern facts of life he had
+no equal. Enjoining silence, he waited till we were but a little way
+from the fated landing-place, and then brought us in to the opposite
+bank. We scrambled out noiselessly and--the gathering darkness favouring
+us--crouched behind a willow, while Edward pushed off the empty boat
+with his foot. The old Argo, borne down by the gentle current, slid and
+grazed along the rushy bank; and when she came opposite the suspected
+ambush, a stream of imprecation told us that our precaution had not been
+wasted. We wondered, as we listened, where Farmer Larkin, who was
+bucolically bred and reared, had acquired such range and wealth of
+vocabulary. Fully realising at last that his boat was derelict,
+abandoned, at the mercy of wind and wave--as well as out of his
+reach--he strode away to the bridge, about a quarter of a mile further
+down; and as soon as we heard his boots clumping on the planks we nipped
+out, recovered the craft, pulled across, and made the faithful vessel
+fast to her proper moorings. Edward was anxious to wait and exchange
+courtesies and compliments with the disappointed farmer, when he should
+confront us on the opposite bank; but wiser counsels prevailed. It was
+possible that the piracy was not yet laid at our particular door:
+Ulysses, I reminded him, had reason to regret a similar act of bravado,
+and--were he here--would certainly advise a timely retreat. Edward held
+but a low opinion of me as a counsellor; but he had a very solid respect
+for Ulysses.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMAN ROAD
+
+
+ALL the roads of our neighbourhood were cheerful and friendly, having
+each of them pleasant qualities of their own; but this one seemed
+different from the others in its masterful suggestion of a serious
+purpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of the heart. The
+others tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt
+surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, the
+splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at you
+through gate or gap. A loiterer you had need to be, did you choose one
+of them; so many were the tiny hands thrust out to detain you, from this
+side and that. But this one was of a sterner sort, and even in its
+shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and full for
+the open downs, it seemed to declare its contempt for adventitious
+trappings to catch the shallow-pated. When the sense of injustice or
+disappointment was heavy on me, and things were very black within, as on
+this particular day, the road of character was my choice for that
+solitary ramble when I turned my back for an afternoon on a world that
+had unaccountably declared itself against me.
+
+'The Knights' Road' we children had named it, from a sort of feeling
+that, if from any quarter at all, it would be down this track we might
+some day see Lancelot and his peers come pacing on their great
+war-horses; supposing that any of the stout band still survived, in
+nooks and unexplored places. Grown-up people sometimes spoke of it as
+the 'Pilgrims' Way'; but I didn't know much about pilgrims--except
+Walter in the Horselberg story. Him I sometimes saw, breaking with
+haggard eyes out of yonder copse, and calling to the pilgrims as they
+hurried along on their desperate march to the Holy City, where peace and
+pardon were awaiting them. 'All roads lead to Rome,' I had once heard
+somebody say; and I had taken the remark very seriously, of course, and
+puzzled over it many days. There must have been some mistake, I
+concluded at last; but of one road at least I intuitively felt it to be
+true. And my belief was clinched by something that fell from Miss
+Smedley during a history-lesson, about a strange road that ran right
+down the middle of England till it reached the coast, and then began
+again in France, just opposite, and so on undeviating, through city and
+vineyard, right from the misty Highlands to the Eternal City.
+Uncorroborated, any statement of Miss Smedley's usually fell on
+incredulous ears; but here, with the road itself in evidence, she
+seemed, once in a way, to have strayed into truth.
+
+Rome! It was fascinating to think that it lay at the other end of this
+white ribbon that rolled itself off from my feet over the distant downs.
+I was not quite so uninstructed as to imagine I could reach it that
+afternoon; but some day, I thought, if things went on being as
+unpleasant as they were now--some day, when Aunt Eliza had gone on a
+visit,--some day, we would see.
+
+I tried to imagine what it would be like when I got there. The Coliseum
+I knew, of course, from a woodcut in the history-book: so to begin with
+I plumped that down in the middle. The rest had to be patched up from
+the little grey market-town where twice a year we went to have our hair
+cut; hence, in the result, Vespasian's amphitheatre was approached by
+muddy little streets, wherein the Red Lion and the Blue Boar, with
+Somebody's Entire along their front, and 'Commercial Room' on their
+windows; the doctor's house, of substantial red-brick; and the façade of
+the New Wesleyan chapel, which we thought very fine, were the chief
+architectural ornaments: while the Roman populace pottered about in
+smocks and corduroys, twisting the tails of Roman calves and inviting
+each other to beer in musical Wessex. From Rome I drifted on to other
+cities, faintly heard of--Damascus, Brighton (Aunt Eliza's ideal),
+Athens, and Glasgow, whose glories the gardener sang; but there was a
+certain sameness in my conception of all of them: that Wesleyan chapel
+would keep cropping up everywhere. It was easier to go a-building among
+those dream-cities where no limitations were imposed, and one was sole
+architect, with a free hand. Down a delectable street of cloud-built
+palaces I was mentally pacing, when I happened upon the Artist.
+
+He was seated at work by the roadside, at a point whence the cool large
+spaces of the downs, juniper-studded, swept grandly westwards. His
+attributes proclaimed him of the artist tribe: besides, he wore
+knickerbockers like myself,--a garb confined, I was aware, to boys and
+artists. I knew I was not to bother him with questions, nor look over
+his shoulder and breathe in his ear--they didn't like it, this _genus
+irritabile_. But there was nothing about staring in my code of
+instructions, the point having somehow been overlooked: so, squatting
+down on the grass, I devoted myself to the passionate absorbing of every
+detail. At the end of five minutes there was not a button on him that I
+could not have passed an examination in; and the wearer himself of that
+homespun suit was probably less familiar with its pattern and texture
+than I was. Once he looked up, nodded, half held out his tobacco pouch,
+mechanically as it were, then, returning it to his pocket, resumed his
+work, and I my mental photography.
+
+[Illustration: '"_You haven't been to Rome, have you?_"']
+
+After another five minutes or so had passed, he remarked, without
+looking my way: 'Fine afternoon we're having: going far to-day?'
+
+'No, I'm not going any farther than this,' I replied; 'I _was_ thinking
+of going on to Rome: but I've put it off.'
+
+'Pleasant place, Rome,' he murmured: 'you'll like it.' It was some
+minutes later that he added: 'But I wouldn't go just now, if I were you:
+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 fact
+that I was sitting there talking to a fellow who lived in Rome. Speech
+was out of the question: besides I had other things to do. Ten solid
+minutes had I already spent in an examination of him as a mere stranger
+and artist; and now the whole thing had to be done over again, from
+the changed point of view. So I began afresh, at the crown of his soft
+hat, and worked down to his solid British shoes, this time investing
+everything 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, but
+wanting to hear it repeated.
+
+'Well,' he said, good-naturedly overlooking the slight rudeness of my
+query, 'I live there as much as I live anywhere. About half the year
+sometimes. I've got a sort of a shanty there. You must come and see it
+some day.'
+
+'But do you live anywhere else as well?' I went on, feeling the
+forbidden tide of questions surging up within me.
+
+'O yes, all over the place,' was his vague reply. 'And I've got a
+diggings somewhere off Piccadilly.'
+
+'Where's that?' I inquired.
+
+'Where's what?' said he. 'O, 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 to
+keep 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 and
+play, without any garden, or pigs, or things?'
+
+'When I want to play,' he said gravely, 'I have to go and play in the
+street; but it's poor fun, I grant you. There's a goat, though, not far
+off, and sometimes I talk to him when I'm feeling lonely; but he's very
+proud.'
+
+'Goats _are_ proud,' I admitted. 'There's one lives near here, and if
+you say anything to him at all, he hits you in the wind with his head.
+You know what it feels like when a fellow hits you in the wind?'
+
+'I do, well,' he replied, in a tone of proper melancholy, and painted
+on.
+
+'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 the
+point, and never tried to be funny. I felt I could be confidential with
+him.
+
+'Wouldn't you like,' I inquired, 'to find a city without any people in
+it 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, and
+the shops are all full of beautiful things, and the houses furnished as
+grand as can be, and there isn't anybody there whatever! And you go into
+the shops, and take anything you want--chocolates and magic-lanterns and
+injirubber balls--and there's nothing to pay; and you choose your own
+house and live there and do just as you like, and never go to bed unless
+you 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 in
+Piccadilly either. But I fear it's one of the places I've never been
+to.'
+
+'And you'd ask your friends,' I went on, warming to my subject; 'only
+those you really like, of course; and they'd each have a house to
+themselves--there'd be lots of houses,--and there wouldn't be any
+relations at all, unless they promised they'd be pleasant; and if they
+weren't they'd have to go.'
+
+'So you wouldn't have any relations?' said the artist. 'Well, perhaps
+you're right. We have tastes in common, I see.'
+
+'I'd have Harold,' I said reflectively, 'and Charlotte. They'd like it
+awfully. The others are getting too old. O, and Martha--I'd have Martha
+to cook and wash up and do things. You'd like Martha. She's ever so 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 I come
+to--what do you call this city of yours? Nephelo--something, did you
+say?'
+
+'I--I don't know, 'I replied timidly. 'I'm afraid it hasn't got a
+name--yet.'
+
+The artist gazed out over the downs. '"The poet says, dear city of
+Cecrops,"' he said softly to himself, '"and wilt not thou say, dear
+city of Zeus?" That's from Marcus Aurelius,' he went on, turning again
+to his work. 'You don't know him, I suppose; you will some day.'
+
+'Who's he?' I inquired.
+
+'O, just another fellow who lived in Rome,' he replied, dabbing away.
+
+'O dear!' I cried disconsolately. 'What a lot of people seem to live at
+Rome, and I've never even been there! But I think I'd like _my_ city
+best.'
+
+'And so would I,' he replied with unction. 'But Marcus Aurelius
+wouldn'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 were
+silent for a while.
+
+'Do you know,' he said presently, 'I've met one or two fellows from time
+to time, who have been to a city like yours--perhaps it was the same
+one. They won't talk much about it--only broken hints, now and then; but
+they've been there sure enough. They don't seem to care about anything
+in particular--and everything's the same to them, rough or smooth; and
+sooner or later they slip off and disappear; and you never see 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 stopped
+having tea with the servants in the kitchen, and not allowed to have a
+dog 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 it
+never seemed to read right, somehow. He just went away, like Arthur. And
+Crusoe, when he got tired of wearing clothes and being respectable. And
+all the nice men in the stories who don't marry the Princess, 'cos only
+one 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, but
+get knocked out, or somehow miss--or break down or get bowled over in
+the mêlée--and get no Princess, nor even a second-class kingdom--some
+of them'll be there, I hope?'
+
+'Yes, if you like,' I replied, not quite understanding him; 'if they're
+friends of yours, we'll ask 'em, of course.'
+
+'What a time we shall have!' said the artist reflectively; 'and how
+shocked old Marcus Aurelius will be!'
+
+The shadows had lengthened uncannily, a tide of golden haze was flooding
+the grey-green surface of the downs, and the artist began to put his
+traps together, preparatory to a move. I felt very low: we would have to
+part, it seemed, just as we were getting on so well together. Then he
+stood up, and he was very straight and tall, and the sunset was in his
+hair and beard as he stood there, high over me. He took my hand like an
+equal. 'I've enjoyed our conversation very much,' he said. 'That was an
+interesting subject you started, and we haven't half exhausted it. We
+shall meet again, I hope?'
+
+'Of course we shall,' I replied, surprised that there should be any
+doubt 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 way there.
+And I'll look out for you, and you'll sing out as soon as you see me.
+And we'll go down the street arm-in-arm, and into all the shops, and
+then I'll choose my house, and you'll choose your house, and we'll live
+there like princes and good fellows.'
+
+'O, but you'll stay in my house, won't you?' I cried; 'I wouldn't ask
+everybody; but I'll ask _you_.'
+
+He affected to consider a moment; then 'Right!' he said: 'I believe you
+mean 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 I won't be any trouble.'
+
+Upon this compact we parted, and I went down-heartedly from the man who
+understood me, back to the house where I never could do anything right.
+How was it that everything seemed natural and sensible to him, which
+these uncles, vicars, and other grown-up men took for the merest
+tomfoolery? Well, he would explain this, and many another thing, when we
+met again. The Knights' Road! How it always brought consolation! Was he
+possibly 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 in
+armour, I thought. And I would take care to get there first, and see the
+sunlight flash and play on his helmet and shield, as he rode up the High
+Street of the Golden City.
+
+Meantime, there only remained the finding it. An easy matter.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+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 bureau
+stood. There was something very feminine in the faint hues of its faded
+brocades, 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 great
+bowl,--blue and white, with funny holes in its cover,--that stood on the
+bureau's flat top. Modern aunts disdained this out-of-the-way,
+backwater, upstairs room, preferring to do their accounts and grapple
+with their correspondence in some central position more in the whirl of
+things, whence one eye could be kept on the carriage-drive, while the
+other was alert for malingering servants and marauding children. Those
+aunts of a former generation--I sometimes felt--would have suited our
+habits better. But even by us children, to whom few places were private
+or reserved, the room was visited but rarely. To be sure, there was
+nothing particular in it that we coveted or required. Only a few
+spindle-legged, gilt-backed chairs,--an old harp on which, so the legend
+ran, Aunt Eliza herself used once to play, in years remote,
+unchronicled; a corner-cupboard with a few pieces of china; and the old
+bureau. But one other thing the room possessed, peculiar to itself; a
+certain sense of privacy--a power of making the intruder feel that he
+_was_ intruding--perhaps even a faculty of hinting that some one might
+have been sitting on those chairs, writing at the bureau, or fingering
+the china, just a second before one entered. No such violent word as
+'haunted' could possibly apply to this pleasant old-fashioned chamber,
+which indeed we all rather liked; but there was no doubt it was reserved
+and stand-offish, keeping itself to itself.
+
+Uncle Thomas was the first to draw my attention to the possibilities of
+the old bureau. He was pottering about the house one afternoon, having
+ordered me to keep at his heels for company--he was a man who hated to
+be left one minute alone,--when his eye fell on it. 'H'm! Sheraton!' he
+remarked. (He had a smattering of most things, this uncle, especially
+the vocabularies.) Then he let down the flap, and examined the empty
+pigeon-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 there
+somewhere.' Then as I breathlessly drew near, he suddenly exclaimed: 'By
+Jove, I do want to smoke!' And, wheeling round, he abruptly fled for the
+garden, leaving me with the cup dashed from my lips. What a strange
+thing, I mused, was this smoking, that takes a man suddenly, be he in
+the court, the camp, or the grove, grips him like an Afreet, and whirls
+him off to do its imperious behests! Would it be even so with myself, I
+wondered, in those unknown grown-up years to come?
+
+But I had no time to waste in vain speculations. My whole being was
+still vibrating to those magic syllables 'secret drawer'; and that
+particular chord had been touched that never fails to thrill responsive
+to such words as _cave_, _trap-door_, _sliding-panel_, _bullion_,
+_ingots_, or _Spanish dollars_. For, besides its own special bliss, who
+ever heard of a secret drawer with nothing in it? And O I did want money
+so badly! I mentally ran over the list of demands which were pressing me
+the most imperiously.
+
+First, there was the pipe I wanted to give George Jannaway. George, who
+was Martha's young man, was a shepherd, and a great ally of mine; and
+the last fair he was at, when he bought his sweetheart fairings, as a
+right-minded shepherd should, he had purchased a lovely snake expressly
+for me; one of the wooden sort, with joints, waggling deliciously in the
+hand; 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 with
+me every night, till what time its spinal cord was loosed and it fell
+apart, and went the way of all mortal joys. _I_ thought it very nice of
+George to think of me at the fair, and that's why I wanted to give him a
+pipe. When the young year was chill and lambing-time was on, George
+inhabited 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; and when
+he and Martha were married, she was going to carry his dinner out to him
+every day, two miles; and after it, perhaps he would smoke my pipe. It
+seemed 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 as this,
+could not be procured (so Martha informed me) for a smaller sum than
+eighteenpence. And meantime----!
+
+Then there was the fourpence I owed Edward; not that he was bothering me
+for it, but I knew he was in need of it himself, to pay back Selina, who
+wanted it to make up a sum of two shillings, to buy Harold an ironclad
+for his approaching birthday,--H.M.S. _Majestic_, now lying uselessly
+careened in the toyshop window, just when her country had such sore need
+of her. And then there was that boy in the village who had caught a
+young squirrel, and I had never yet possessed one, and he wanted a
+shilling for it, but I knew that for ninepence in cash--but what was the
+good of these sorry threadbare reflections? I had wants enough to
+exhaust any possible 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 and letting the precious minutes slip by! Whether 'findings' of
+this sort could, morally speaking, be considered 'keepings,' was a point
+that did not occur to me.
+
+The room was very still as I approached the bureau; possessed, it seemed
+to be, by a sort of hush of expectation. The faint odour of orris-root
+that floated forth as I let down the flap, seemed to identify itself
+with the yellows and browns of the old wood, till hue and scent were of
+one quality and interchangeable. Even so, ere this, the pot-pourri had
+mixed itself with the tints of the old brocade, and brocade and
+pot-pourri had long been one. With expectant fingers I explored the
+empty pigeon-holes and sounded the depths of the softly-sliding
+drawers. No books that I knew of gave any general recipe for a quest
+like this; but the glory, should I succeed unaided, would be all the
+greater.
+
+To him who is destined to arrive, the fates never fail to afford, on the
+way, their small encouragements. In less than two minutes, I had come
+across a rusty button-hook. This was truly magnificent. In the nursery
+there existed, indeed, a general button-hook, common to either sex; but
+none of us possessed a private and special button-hook, to lend or to
+refuse as suited the high humour of the moment. I pocketed the treasure
+carefully, and proceeded. At the back of another drawer, three old
+foreign stamps told me I was surely on the highroad to fortune.
+
+Following on these bracing incentives, came a dull blank period of
+unrewarded search. In vain I removed all the drawers and felt over every
+inch of the smooth surfaces, from front to back. Never a knob, spring or
+projection met the thrilling finger-tips; unyielding the old bureau
+stood, stoutly guarding its secret, if secret it really had. I began to
+grow weary and disheartened. This was not the first time that Uncle
+Thomas had proved shallow, uninformed, a guide into blind alleys where
+the echoes mocked you. Was it any good persisting longer? Was anything
+any 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 seemed outside to be collecting
+itself on the horizon for its concentrated effort of sunset. Far down
+the garden, Uncle Thomas was holding Edward in the air reversed, and
+smacking him. Edward, gurgling hysterically, was striking blind fists in
+the direction where he judged his uncle's stomach should rightly be; the
+contents of his pockets--a motley show--were strewing the lawn. Somehow,
+though I had been put through a similar performance myself an hour or
+two ago, it all seemed very far away and cut off from me.
+
+Westwards the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet bank;
+below them, to north and south, as far round as eye could reach, a
+narrow streak of gold ran out and stretched away, straight along the
+horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was blowing, clear and thin; it
+sounded like the golden streak grown audible, while the gold seemed the
+visible sound. It pricked my ebbing courage, this blended strain of
+music and colour. 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 more
+to the obdurate wood, when with a sort of small sigh, almost a sob--as
+it were--of relief, the secret drawer sprang open.
+
+I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the failing
+light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my dispiriting search, to
+expect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass lay
+in shivers at my feet. No ingots nor dollars were here, to crown me the
+little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its
+gnat-song, the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely
+and still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down like
+so many card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and
+personal, and dominated by the depressing reaction.
+
+[Illustration: '_I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine
+it in the failing light_']
+
+And yet,--as I looked again at the small collection that lay within that
+drawer of disillusions, some warmth crept back to my heart as I
+recognised that a kindred spirit to my own had been at the making of it.
+Two tarnished gilt buttons--naval, apparently--a portrait of a monarch
+unknown to me, cut from some antique print and deftly coloured by hand
+in 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 of
+birds'-eggs, with names of the places where they had been found. Also, a
+ferret's muzzle, and a twist of tarry string, still faintly aromatic! It
+was a real boy's hoard, then, that I had happened upon. He too had found
+out the secret drawer, this happy-starred young person; and here he had
+stowed away his treasures, one by one, and had cherished them
+secretly awhile, and then--what? Well, one would never know now the
+reason why these priceless possessions still lay here unreclaimed; but
+across the void stretch of years I seemed to touch hands a moment with
+my little comrade of seasons--how many seasons?--long since dead.
+
+I restored the drawer, with its contents, to the trusty bureau, and
+heard the spring click with a certain satisfaction. Some other boy,
+perhaps, would some day release that spring again. I trusted he would be
+equally appreciative. As I opened the door to go, I could hear, from the
+nursery at the end of the passage, shouts and yells, telling that the
+hunt was up. Bears, apparently, or bandits, were on the evening bill of
+fare, judging by the character of the noises. In another minute I would
+be in the thick of it, in all the warmth and light and laughter. And
+yet--what a long way off it all seemed, both in space and time, to me
+yet 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--so
+immeasurably remote. When it was first announced, a fortnight before,
+that Miss Smedley was really going, the resultant ecstasies had occupied
+a full week, during which we blindly revelled in the contemplation and
+discussion of her past tyrannies, crimes, malignities; in recalling to
+each other this or that insult, dishonour, or physical assault, sullenly
+endured at a time when deliverance was not even a small star on the
+horizon: and in mapping out the shining days to come, with special new
+troubles 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 had been taken up by the planning of practical expressions of
+the popular sentiment. Under Edward's masterly direction, arrangements
+had been made for a flag to be run up over the hen-house at the very
+moment when the fly, with Miss Smedley's boxes on top and the grim
+oppressor herself inside, began to move off down the drive. Three brass
+cannons, set on the brow of the sunk-fence, were to proclaim our
+deathless sentiments in the ears of the retreating foe; the dogs were to
+wear ribbons; and later--but this depended on our powers of evasiveness
+and dissimulation--there might be a small bonfire, with a cracker or two
+if the public funds could bear the unwonted strain.
+
+I was awakened by Harold digging me in the ribs, and 'She's going
+to-day!' was the morning hymn that scattered the clouds of sleep.
+Strange to say, it was with no corresponding jubilation of spirits that
+I slowly realised the momentous fact. Indeed, as I dressed, a dull
+disagreeable feeling that I could not define grew up in me--something
+like a physical bruise. Harold was evidently feeling it too, for after
+repeating 'She's going to-day!' in a tone more befitting the Litany, he
+looked hard in my face for direction as to how the situation was to be
+taken. But I crossly bade him look sharp and say his prayers and not
+bother me. What could this gloom portend, that on a day of days like the
+present seemed to hang my heavens with black?
+
+Down at last and out in the sun, we found Edward before us, swinging on
+a gate and chanting a farm-yard ditty in which all the beasts appear in
+due order, jargoning in their several tongues, and every verse begins
+with 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's
+carol 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 without
+another word.
+
+[Illustration: '_At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and
+uncalled-for manner_']
+
+At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and uncalled-for
+manner. The right divine of governesses to govern wrong includes no
+right to cry. In thus usurping the prerogative of their victims they
+ignore the rules of the ring, and hit below the belt. Charlotte was
+crying, of course; but that counted for nothing. Charlotte even cried
+when the pigs' noses were ringed in due season; thereby evoking the
+cheery contempt of the operators, who asserted they liked it, and
+doubtless knew. But when the cloud-compeller, her bolts laid aside,
+resorted to tears, mutinous humanity had a right to feel aggrieved, and
+think itself placed in a false and difficult position. What would the
+Romans have done, supposing Hannibal had cried? History has not even
+considered the possibility. Rules and precedents should be strictly
+observed on both sides. When they are violated, the other party is
+justified in feeling injured.
+
+There were no lessons that morning, naturally--another grievance! The
+fitness of things required that we should have struggled to the last in
+a confused medley of moods and tenses, and parted for ever, flushed with
+hatred, over the dismembered corpse of the multiplication-table.
+But this thing was not to be; and I was free to stroll by myself through
+the garden, and combat, as best I might, this growing feeling of
+depression. It was a wrong system altogether, I thought, this going of
+people one had got used to. Things ought always to continue as they had
+been. Change there must be, of course; pigs, for instance, came and went
+with 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 rapid
+successors. Did you come to love a pig, and he was taken from you, grief
+was 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 a
+governess, Nature seemed helpless, and the future held no litter of
+oblivion. Things might be better, or they might be worse, but they would
+never be the same; and the innate conservatism of youth asks neither
+poverty nor riches, but only immunity from change.
+
+Edward slouched up alongside of me presently, with a hangdog look on
+him, as if he had been caught stealing jam. 'What a lark it'll be when
+she'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 lying
+ready to flaunt the breezes at the supreme moment.
+
+'Shall you run it up,' I asked, 'when the fly starts, or--or wait a
+little till it's out of sight?'
+
+Edward gazed round him dubiously. 'We're going to have some rain, I
+think,' he said; 'and--and it's a new flag. It would be a pity to spoil
+it. P'raps I won't run it up at all.'
+
+Harold came round the corner like a bison pursued by Indians. 'I've
+polished 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 blowing
+yourself up' (consideration for others was not usually Edward's strong
+point). 'Don't touch the gunpowder till you're told, or you'll get your
+head smacked.'
+
+Harold fell behind, limp, squashed, obedient. 'She wants me to write to
+her,' he began presently. 'Says she doesn't mind the spelling, if I'll
+only write. Fancy her saying that!'
+
+'O, shut up, will you?' said Edward savagely; and once more we were
+silent, with only our thoughts for sorry company.
+
+'Let's go off to the copse,' I suggested timidly, feeling that something
+had to be done to relieve the tension, 'and cut more new bows and
+arrows.'
+
+'She gave me a knife my last birthday,' said Edward moodily, never
+budging. '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, rubbing
+stuff on them. I forgot all about that till this morning.'
+
+'There's the fly!' cried Harold suddenly. 'I can hear it scrunching on
+the gravel.'
+
+Then for the first time we turned and stared each other in the face.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The fly and its contents had finally disappeared through the gate, the
+rumble of its wheels had died away. Yet no flag floated defiantly in the
+sun, no cannons proclaimed the passing of a dynasty. From out the
+frosted cake of our existence Fate had cut an irreplaceable segment:
+turn which way we would, the void was present. We sneaked off in
+different directions, mutually undesirous of company; and it seemed
+borne in upon me that I ought to go and dig my garden right over, from
+end to end. It didn't actually want digging; on the other hand no amount
+of digging could affect it, for good or for evil; so I worked steadily,
+strenuously, under the hot sun, stifling thought in action. At the 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 chopped
+up 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 all this
+digging for?'
+
+'You said it was going to rain,' I explained hastily. 'So I thought I'd
+get the digging done before it came. Good gardeners always tell you
+that's the right thing to do.'
+
+'It did look like rain at one time,' Edward admitted; 'but it's passed
+off now. Very queer weather we're having. I suppose that's why I've felt
+so funny all day.'
+
+'Yes, I suppose it's the weather,' I replied. '_I've_ been feeling funny
+too.'
+
+The weather had nothing to do with it, as we well knew. But we would
+both have died rather than admit the real reason.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE BLUE ROOM
+
+
+THAT nature has her moments of sympathy with man has been noted often
+enough,--and generally as a new discovery. To us, who had never known
+any other condition of things, it seemed entirely right and fitting that
+the wind sang and sobbed in the poplar tops, and, in the lulls of it,
+sudden spirts of rain spattered the already dusty roads, on that
+blusterous March day when Edward and I awaited, on the station platform,
+the arrival of the new tutor. Needless to say, this arrangement had been
+planned by an aunt, from some fond idea that our shy, innocent young
+natures would unfold themselves during the walk from the station, and
+that, on the revelation of each other's more solid qualities that must
+inevitably ensue, an enduring friendship, springing from mutual respect,
+might be firmly based. A pretty dream,--nothing more. For Edward, who
+foresaw that the brunt of tutorial oppression would have to be borne by
+him, was sulky, monosyllabic, and determined to be as negatively
+disagreeable as good manners would permit. It was therefore evident that
+I would have to be spokesman and purveyor of hollow civilities, and I
+was none the more amiable on that account; all courtesies, welcomes,
+explanations, and other court-chamberlain kind of business, being my
+special aversion. There was much of the tempestuous March weather in the
+hearts of both of us, as we sullenly glowered along the carriage-windows
+of the slackening train.
+
+One is apt, however, to misjudge the special difficulties of a
+situation; and the reception proved, after all, an easy and informal
+matter. In a trainful so uniformly bucolic, a tutor was readily
+recognisable; and his portmanteau had been consigned to the
+luggage-cart, and his person conveyed into the lane, before I had
+discharged one of my carefully considered sentences. I breathed more
+easily, and looking up at our new friend as we stepped out together,
+remembered that we had been counting on something altogether more arid,
+scholastic, and severe. A boyish eager face and a petulant
+_pince-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 strange
+and new, but not in the least terrible.
+
+He proceeded jerkily through the village, with glances on this side and
+that; and 'Charming,' he broke out presently; 'quite too charming and
+delightful!'
+
+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 his
+line, 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 an
+exquisite bit!' he burst out. 'Fifteenth century--no--yes it is!'
+
+I began to feel puzzled, not to say alarmed. It reminded me of the
+butcher in the _Arabian Nights_, whose common joints, displayed on the
+shop-front, took to a startled public the appearance of dismembered
+humanity. This man seemed to see the strangest things in our dull,
+familiar surroundings.
+
+'Ah!' he broke out again, as we jogged on between hedgerows: 'and that
+field now--backed by the downs--with the rain-cloud brooding over
+it,--that's all David Cox--every bit of it!'
+
+'That field belongs to Farmer Larkin,' I explained politely; for of
+course he could not be expected to know. 'I'll take you over to Farmer
+Cox's to-morrow, if he's a friend of yours; but there's nothing to see
+there.'
+
+Edward, who was hanging sullenly behind, made a face at me, as if to
+say, 'What sort of lunatic have we got here?'
+
+'It has the true pastoral character, this country of yours,' went on our
+enthusiast: 'with just that added touch in cottage and farmstead, relics
+of a bygone art, which makes our English landscape so divine, so
+unique!'
+
+Really this grasshopper was becoming a burden! These familiar fields and
+farms, of which we knew every blade and stick, had done nothing that I
+knew of to be bespattered with adjectives in this way. I had never
+thought of them as divine, unique, or anything else. They were--well,
+they were just themselves, and there was an end of it. Despairingly I
+jogged Edward in the ribs, as a sign to start rational conversation, but
+he 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 entirely
+in keeping!' (I could see from Edward's face that he was thinking who
+ought to be in keeping.) 'Such possibilities of romance, now, in those
+old gables!'
+
+'If you mean the garrets,' I said, 'there's a lot of old furniture in
+them; and one is generally full of apples; and the bats get in
+sometimes, under the eaves, and flop about till we go up with
+hair-brushes and things and drive 'em out; but there's nothing else in
+them that I know of.'
+
+'O, but there must be more than bats,' he cried. 'Don't tell me there
+are no ghosts. I shall be deeply disappointed if there aren't any
+ghosts.'
+
+I did not think it worth while to reply, feeling really unequal to this
+sort of conversation. Besides, we were nearing the house, when my task
+would be ended. Aunt Eliza met us at the door, and in the cross-fire of
+adjectives that ensued--both of them talking at once, as grown-up folk
+have a habit of doing--we two slipped round to the back of the house,
+and speedily put several broad acres between us and civilisation, for
+fear of being ordered in to tea in the drawing-room. By the time we
+returned, our new importation had gone up to dress for dinner, so till
+the morrow at least we were free of him.
+
+Meanwhile the March wind, after dropping a while at sundown, had been
+steadily increasing in volume; and although I fell asleep at my usual
+hour, about midnight I was wakened by the stress and the cry of it. In
+the bright moonlight, wind-swung branches tossed and swayed eerily
+across the blinds; there was rumbling in chimneys, whistling in
+keyholes, and everywhere 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 wondering when you were going to wake,' he said. 'It's no good
+trying to sleep through this. _I_ vote we get up and do something.'
+
+'I'm game,' I replied. 'Let's play at being in a ship at sea' (the
+plaint 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's
+more 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 a
+jolly 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're
+afraid--Selina too! She'll be here in a minute. She's putting on her new
+dressing-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 and
+explore!'
+
+'You're always wanting to explore,' I said. 'What on earth is there to
+explore for in this house?'
+
+'Biscuits!' said the inspired Edward.
+
+'Hooray! Come on!' chimed in Harold, sitting up suddenly. He had been
+awake all the time, but had been shamming asleep, lest he should be
+fagged to do anything.
+
+It was indeed a fact, as Edward had remembered, that our thoughtless
+elders occasionally left the biscuits out, a prize for the night-walking
+adventurer with nerves of steel.
+
+Edward tumbled out of bed, and pulled a baggy old pair of knickerbockers
+over his bare shanks. Then he girt himself with a belt, into which he
+thrust, on the one side a large wooden pistol, on the other an old
+single-stick; and finally he donned a big slouch-hat--once an
+uncle's--that we used for playing Guy Fawkes and
+Charles-the-Second-up-a-tree in. Whatever the audience, Edward, if
+possible, always dressed for his parts with care and conscientiousness;
+while Harold and I, true Elizabethans, cared little about the mounting
+of the piece, so long as the real dramatic heart of it beat sound.
+
+Our commander now enjoined on us a silence deep as the grave, reminding
+us that Aunt Eliza usually slept with an open door, past which we had to
+file.
+
+'But we'll take the short cut through the Blue Room,' said the wary
+Selina.
+
+'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 a
+superfluous passage, and so not only had the advantage of two doors, but
+also enabled us to get to the head of the stairs without passing the
+chamber wherein our dragon-aunt lay couched. It was rarely occupied,
+except when a casual uncle came down for the night. We entered in
+noiseless file, the room being plunged in darkness, except for a bright
+strip of moonlight on the floor, across which we must pass for our exit.
+On this our leading lady chose to pause, seizing the opportunity to
+study the hang of her new dressing-gown. Greatly satisfied thereat, she
+proceeded, after the feminine fashion, to peacock and to pose, pacing a
+minuet down the moonlit patch with an imaginary partner. This was too
+much for Edward's histrionic instincts, and after a moment's pause he
+drew his single-stick, and, with flourishes meet for the occasion,
+strode on to the stage. A struggle ensued on approved lines, at the end
+of which Selina was stabbed slowly and with unction, and her corpse
+borne from the chamber by the ruthless cavalier. The rest of us rushed
+after in a clump, with capers and gesticulations of delight; the special
+charm of the performance lying in the necessity for its being carried
+out with the dumbest of dumb shows.
+
+Once out on the dark landing, the noise of the storm without told us
+that we had exaggerated the necessity for silence; so, grasping the
+tails of each other's nightgowns, even as Alpine climbers rope
+themselves together in perilous places, we fared stoutly down the
+staircase-moraine, and across the grim glacier of the hall, to where a
+faint glimmer from the half-open door of the drawing-room beckoned to us
+like friendly hostel-lights. Entering, we found that our thriftless
+seniors had left the sound red heart of a fire, easily coaxed into a
+cheerful blaze; and biscuits--a plateful--smiled at us in an encouraging
+sort of way, together with the halves of a lemon, already squeezed, but
+still suckable. The biscuits were righteously shared, the lemon segments
+passed from mouth to mouth; and as we squatted round the fire, its
+genial warmth consoling our unclad limbs, we realised that so many
+nocturnal perils had not been braved in vain.
+
+'It's a funny thing,' said Edward, as we chatted, 'how I hate this room
+in the daytime. It always means having your face washed, and your hair
+brushed, and talking silly company talk. But to-night it's really quite
+jolly. 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 poor
+people--with jam and things, and drink out of their saucer, and suck
+their fingers and enjoy themselves; but they come here from a long way
+off, 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,' she
+said. 'In society you have to call on each other. It's the proper thing
+to 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 come
+and see me, so there!'
+
+'Wouldn't come if you did,' growled Edward.
+
+'Well you won't get the chance,' rejoined our sister, claiming her right
+of the last word. There was no heat about these little amenities, which
+made up--as understood by us--the art of polite conversation.
+
+'I don't like society people,' put in Harold from the sofa, where he was
+sprawling at full length--a sight the daylight hours would have blushed
+to witness. 'There were some of 'em here this afternoon, when you two
+had gone off to the station. O, and I found a dead mouse on the lawn,
+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 people
+wouldn't do that--and one of 'em asked me to pick her a flower. Don't
+know why she couldn't pick it herself; but I said, "All right, I will if
+you'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 his
+mouse all the time, 'cos he'd been looking about as if he had lost
+something, so I wasn't angry with _him_. But what did _she_ want to
+throw away my mouse for?'
+
+[Illustration: '_The procession passing solemnly across the moon-lit
+Blue Room_']
+
+'You have to be careful with mice,' reflected Edward; 'they're such
+slippery things. Do you remember we were playing with a dead mouse once
+on the piano, and the mouse was Robinson Crusoe, and the piano was the
+island, and somehow Crusoe slipped down inside the island, into its
+works, and we couldn't get him out, though we tried rakes and all sorts
+of things, till the tuner came. And that wasn't till a week after, and
+then----'
+
+Here Charlotte, who had been nodding solemnly, fell over into the
+fender; and we realised that the wind had dropped at last, and the house
+was lapped in a great stillness. Our vacant beds seemed to be calling to
+us imperiously; and we were all glad when Edward gave the signal for
+retreat. At the top of the staircase Harold unexpectedly turned
+mutinous, insisting on his right to slide down the banisters in a free
+country. Circumstances did not allow of argument; I suggested
+frog's-marching instead, and accordingly frog's-marched he was, the
+procession passing solemnly across the moon-lit Blue Room, with Harold
+horizontal and limply submissive. Snug in bed at last, I was just
+slipping off into slumber when I heard Edward explode, with chuckle
+and snort.
+
+'By Jove!' he said; 'I forgot all about it. The new tutor's sleeping in
+the Blue Room!'
+
+'Lucky he didn't wake up and catch us,' I grunted drowsily; and, without
+another thought on the matter, we both sank into well-earned repose.
+
+Next morning, coming down to breakfast braced to grapple with fresh
+adversity, we were surprised to find our garrulous friend of the
+previous day--he was late in making his appearance--strangely silent and
+(apparently) pre-occupied. Having polished off our porridge, we ran out
+to feed the rabbits, explaining to them that a beast of a tutor would
+prevent their enjoying so much of our society as formerly.
+
+On returning to the house at the fated hour appointed for study, we were
+thunderstruck to see the station-cart disappearing down the drive,
+freighted with our new acquaintance. Aunt Eliza was brutally
+uncommunicative; but she was overheard to remark casually that she
+thought the man must be a lunatic. In this theory we were only too ready
+to concur, dismissing thereafter the whole matter from our minds.
+
+Some weeks later it happened that Uncle Thomas, while paying us a flying
+visit, produced from his pocket a copy of the latest weekly, _Psyche: a
+Journal of the Unseen_; and proceeded laboriously to rid himself of much
+incomprehensible humour, apparently at our expense. We bore it
+patiently, with the forced grin demanded by convention, anxious to get
+at the source of inspiration, which it presently appeared lay in a
+paragraph circumstantially describing our modest and humdrum habitation.
+'Case III.,' it began. 'The following particulars were communicated by a
+young member of the Society, of undoubted probity and earnestness, and
+are a chronicle of actual and recent experience.' A fairly accurate
+description of the house followed, with details that were unmistakable;
+but to this there succeeded a flood of meaningless drivel about
+apparitions, nightly visitants, and the like, writ in a manner
+betokening a disordered mind, coupled with a feeble imagination. The
+fellow was not even original. All the old material was there--the storm
+at night, the haunted chamber, the white lady, the murder re-enacted,
+and so on--already worn threadbare in many a Christmas Number. No one
+was able to make head or tail of the stuff, or of its connexion with our
+quiet mansion; and yet Edward, who had always suspected the fellow,
+persisted in maintaining that our tutor of a brief span was, somehow or
+other, at the bottom of it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+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 which
+is slow to depart, if it ever do so entirely; and Harold confesses to a
+twinge or two, still, at times, like the veteran who brings home a
+bullet inside him from martial plains over sea.
+
+He knew he was a brute the moment he had done it. Selina had not meant
+to worry, only to comfort and assist. But his soul was one raw sore
+within 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 it
+seemed so flagrant. Why not 47 as much as 49! One number was no prettier
+than the other to look at, and it was evidently only a matter of
+arbitrary taste and preference, and, anyhow, it had always been 47 to
+him, and would be to the end of time. So when Selina came in out of the
+sun, leaving the Trappers of the Far West behind her, and putting off
+the glory of being an Apache squaw in order to hear him his tables and
+win his release, Harold turned on her venomously, rejected her kindly
+overtures, and even drove his elbow into her sympathetic ribs, in his
+determination to be left alone in the glory of sulks. The fit passed
+directly, his eyes were opened, and his soul sat in the dust as he
+sorrowfully began to cast about for some atonement heroic enough to
+salve the wrong.
+
+Of course poor Selina looked for no sacrifice nor heroics whatever; she
+didn'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 a
+boy's way. Something solid, Harold felt, was due from him; and until
+that was achieved, making-up must not be thought of, in order that the
+final effect might not be spoilt. Accordingly, when his release came,
+and Selina hung about trying to catch his eye, Harold, possessed by the
+demon of a distorted motive, avoided her steadily--though he was
+bleeding inwardly at every minute of delay--and came to me instead.
+Needless to say, I warmly approved his plan. It was so much more
+high-toned than just going and making-up tamely, which any one could do;
+and a girl who had been jabbed in the ribs by a hostile elbow could not
+be expected for a moment to overlook it, without the liniment of an
+offering to soothe her injured feelings.
+
+'I know what she wants most,' said Harold. 'She wants that set of
+tea-things in the toyshop window, with the red and blue flowers on 'em;
+she's wanted it for months, 'cos her dolls are getting big enough to
+have real afternoon tea; and she wants it so badly that she won't walk
+that side of the street when we go into the town. But it costs five
+shillings!'
+
+Then we set to work seriously, and devoted the afternoon to a
+realisation of assets and the composition of a Budget that might have
+been dated without shame from Whitehall. The result worked out as
+follows:--
+
+ _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
+
+ 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 the
+morrow, with the chipped old wooden tea-things that had served her
+successive dolls from babyhood. Harold would slip off directly after
+dinner, going alone, so as not to arouse suspicion, as we were not
+allowed to go into the town by ourselves. It was nearly two miles to our
+small metropolis, but there would be plenty of time for him to go and
+return, even laden with the olive-branch neatly packed in shavings.
+Besides, he might meet the butcher, who was his friend and would give
+him 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 small
+thing that twenty-four hours more of alienation and pretended sulks must
+be kept up on Harold's part; but Selina, who naturally knew nothing of
+the treat in store for her, moped for the rest of the evening, and took
+a very heavy heart to bed.
+
+Next day when the hour for action arrived, Harold evaded Olympian
+attention with an easy modesty born of long practice, and made off for
+the front gate. Selina, who had been keeping her eye upon him, thought
+he was going down to the pond to catch frogs, a joy they had planned to
+share together, and made after him. But Harold, though he heard her
+footsteps, continued sternly on his high mission, without even looking
+back; and Selina was left to wander disconsolately among flower-beds
+that had lost--for her--all scent and colour. I saw it all, and,
+although cold reason approved our line of action, instinct told me we
+were brutes.
+
+Harold reached the town--so he recounted afterwards--in record time,
+having run most of the way for fear the tea-things, which had reposed
+six months in the window, should be snapped up by some other
+conscience-stricken lacerator of a sister's feelings; and it seemed
+hardly credible to find them still there, and their owner willing to
+part with them for the price marked on the ticket. He paid his money
+down at once, that there should be no drawing back from the bargain; and
+then, as the things had to be taken out of the window and packed, and
+the afternoon was yet young, he thought he might treat himself to a
+taste of urban joys and the _vie de Bohême_. Shops came first, of
+course, and he flattened his nose successively against the window with
+the indiarubber balls in it, and the clock-work locomotive; and against
+the 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 could
+possibly consume without a special effort; and the window of the bank,
+wherein gold was thought so little of that it was dealt about in
+shovels. Next there was the market-place, with all its clamorous joys;
+and when a runaway calf came down the street like a cannon-ball, Harold
+felt that he had not lived in vain. The whole place was so brimful of
+excitement that he had quite forgotten the why and the wherefore of his
+being there, when a sight of the church clock recalled him to his better
+self, and sent him flying out of the town, as he realised he had only
+just time enough left to get back in. If he were after his appointed
+hour, he would not only miss his high triumph, but probably would be
+detected as a transgressor of bounds--a crime before which a private
+opinion on multiplication sank to nothingness. So he jogged along on his
+homeward way, thinking of many things, and probably talking to himself a
+good deal, as his habit was. He had covered nearly half the distance,
+when suddenly--a deadly sinking in the pit of his stomach--a paralysis
+of every limb--around him a world extinct of light and music--a black
+sun and a reeling sky--he had forgotten the tea-things!
+
+[Illustration: '"_Why, Master Harold! whatever be the matter? Baint
+runnin' away, be ee?_"']
+
+It was useless, it was hopeless, all was over and nothing could now be
+done. Nevertheless he turned and ran back wildly, blindly, choking with
+the big sobs that evoked neither pity nor comfort from a merciless
+mocking world around; a stitch in his side, dust in his eyes, and black
+despair clutching at his heart. So he stumbled on, with leaden legs and
+bursting sides, till--as if Fate had not yet dealt him her last worst
+buffet of all--on turning a corner in the road he almost ran under the
+wheels of a dog-cart, in which, as it pulled up, was apparent the portly
+form of Farmer Larkin, the arch-enemy, at whose ducks he had been shying
+stones that very morning!
+
+Had Harold been in his right and unclouded senses, he would have
+vanished through the hedge some seconds earlier, rather than pain the
+farmer by any unpleasant reminiscences which his appearance might
+recall; but, as things were, he could only stand and blubber hopelessly,
+caring, indeed, little now what further misery might befall him. The
+farmer, for his part, surveyed the desolate figure with some
+astonishment, 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, flung
+himself on the step, and, climbing into the cart, fell in the straw at
+the bottom of it, sobbing out that he wanted to go back, go back! The
+situation had a vagueness; but the farmer, a man of action rather than
+of words, swung his horse round smartly, and they were in the town again
+by the time Harold had recovered himself sufficiently to furnish
+details. As they drove up to the shop, the woman was waiting at the door
+with the parcel; and hardly a minute seemed to have elapsed since the
+black crisis, ere they were bowling along swiftly home, the precious
+parcel hugged in a close embrace.
+
+And now the farmer came out in quite a new and unexpected light. Never
+a word did he say of broken fences and hurdles, of trampled crops and
+harried flocks and herds. One would have thought the man had never
+possessed a head of live stock in his life. Instead, he was deeply
+interested in the whole dolorous quest of the tea-things, and
+sympathised with Harold on the disputed point in mathematics as if he
+had been himself at the same stage of education. As they neared home,
+Harold found himself, to his surprise, sitting up and chatting to his
+new friend like man to man; and before he was set down at a convenient
+gap in the garden hedge, he had promised that when Selina gave her first
+public tea-party, little Miss Larkin should be invited to come and bring
+her whole sawdust family along with her; and the farmer appeared as
+pleased and proud as if he had won a gold medal at the Agricultural
+Show, and really, when I heard the story, it began to dawn upon me that
+those Olympians must have certain good points, far down in them, and
+that I should have to leave off abusing them some day.
+
+At the hour of five, Selina, having spent the afternoon searching for
+Harold in all his accustomed haunts, sat down disconsolately to tea with
+her dolls, who ungenerously refused to wait beyond the appointed hour.
+The wooden tea-things seemed more chipped than usual; and the dolls
+themselves had more of wax and sawdust, and less of human colour and
+intelligence about them, than she ever remembered before. It was then
+that Harold burst in, very dusty, his stockings at his heels, and the
+channels ploughed by tears still showing on his grimy cheeks; and Selina
+was at last permitted to know that he had been thinking of her ever
+since his ill-judged exhibition of temper, and that his sulks had not
+been the genuine article, nor had he gone frogging by himself. It was a
+very happy hostess who dispensed hospitality that evening to a
+glassy-eyed stiff-kneed circle; and many a dollish _gaucherie_, that
+would have been severely checked on ordinary occasions, was as much
+overlooked as if it had been a birthday.
+
+But Harold and I, in what I was afterwards given to understand was our
+stupid masculine way, thought all her happiness sprang from possession
+of the long-coveted tea-service.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+'LUSISTI SATIS'
+
+
+AMONG the many fatuous ideas that possessed the Olympian noddle, this
+one was pre-eminent; that, being Olympians, they could talk quite freely
+in our presence on subjects of the closest import to us, so long as
+names, dates, and other landmarks were ignored. We were supposed to be
+denied the faculty for putting two and two together, and like the
+monkeys, who very sensibly refrain from speech lest they should be set
+to earn their livings, we were careful to conceal our capabilities for a
+simple syllogism. Thus we were rarely taken by surprise, and so were
+considered by our disappointed elders to be apathetic and to lack the
+divine capacity for wonder.
+
+Now the daily output of the letter-bag, with the mysterious discussions
+that ensued thereon, had speedily informed us that Uncle Thomas was
+intrusted with a mission--a mission, too, affecting ourselves. Uncle
+Thomas's missions were many and various. A self-important man, one
+liking the business while protesting that he sank under the burden, he
+was the missionary, so to speak, of our remote habitation. The matching
+a ribbon, the running down to the stores, the interviewing a cook--these
+and similar duties lent constant colour and variety to his vacant life
+in London, and helped to keep down his figure. When the matter, however,
+had in our presence to be referred to with nods and pronouns, with
+significant hiatuses and interpolations in the French tongue, then the
+red flag was flown, the storm-cone hoisted, and by a studious pretence
+of inattention we were not long in plucking out the heart of the
+mystery.
+
+To clinch our conclusion, we descended suddenly and together on Martha;
+proceeding, however, not by simple inquiry as to facts--that would never
+have done; but by informing her that the air was full of school and that
+we knew all about it, and then challenging denial. Martha was a trusty
+soul, but a bad witness for the defence, and we soon had it all out of
+her. The word had gone forth, the school had been selected; the
+necessary sheets were hemming even now, and Edward was the designated
+and appointed victim.
+
+It had always been before us as an inevitable bourne, this strange
+unknown thing called school; and yet--perhaps I should say
+consequently--we had never seriously set ourselves to consider what it
+really meant. But now that the grim spectre loomed imminent, stretching
+lean 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 were
+drifting. Unfortunately the data in our possession were absolutely
+insufficient, and we knew not whither to turn for exact information.
+Uncle Thomas could have told us all about it, of course; he had been
+there himself, once, in the dim and misty past. But an unfortunate
+conviction, that nature had intended him for a humorist, tainted all his
+evidence, besides making it wearisome to hear. Again, of such among our
+contemporaries as we had approached, the trumpets gave forth an
+uncertain sound. According to some it meant larks, revels, emancipation,
+and a foretaste of the bliss of manhood. According to others--the
+majority, alas!--it was a private and peculiar Hades, that could give
+the original institution points and a beating. When Edward was observed
+to be swaggering round with a jaunty air and his chest stuck out, I knew
+that he was contemplating his future from the one point of view. When,
+on the contrary, he was subdued and unaggressive, and sought the society
+of his sisters, I recognised that the other aspect was in the ascendant.
+'You can always run away, you know,' I used to remark consolingly on
+these latter occasions; and Edward would brighten up wonderfully at the
+suggestion, while Charlotte melted into tears before her vision of a
+brother with blistered feet and an empty belly, passing nights of frost
+'neath the lee of windy haystacks.
+
+It was to Edward, of course, that the situation was chiefly productive
+of anxiety; and yet the ensuing change in my own circumstances and
+position furnished me also with food for grave reflexion. Hitherto I had
+acted mostly to orders. Even when I had devised and counselled any
+particular devilry, it had been carried out on Edward's approbation,
+and--as eldest--at his special risk. Henceforward I began to be anxious
+of the bugbear Responsibility, and to realise what a soul-throttling
+thing it is. True, my new position would have its compensations. Edward
+had been masterful exceedingly, imperious, perhaps a little narrow;
+impassioned for hard facts, and with scant sympathy for make-believe. I
+should now be free and untrammelled; in the conception and the carrying
+out of a scheme, I could accept and reject to better artistic purpose.
+
+It would, moreover, be needless to be a Radical any more. Radical I
+never was, really, by nature or by sympathy. The part had been thrust on
+me one day, when Edward proposed to foist the House of Lords on our
+small republic. The principles of the thing he set forth learnedly and
+well, and it all sounded promising enough, till he went on to explain
+that, for the present at least, he proposed to be the House of Lords
+himself. We others were to be the Commons. There would be promotions, of
+course, he added, dependent on service and on fitness, and open to both
+sexes; and to me in especial he held out hopes of speedy advancement.
+But in its initial stages the thing wouldn't work properly unless he
+were first and only Lord. Then I put my foot down promptly, and said it
+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. The
+inference seemed hardly necessary, but what could I do? I accepted the
+situation, and said firmly, Yes, I was a low Radical. In this monstrous
+character I had been obliged to masquerade ever since; but now I could
+throw it off, and look the world in the face again.
+
+And yet, did this and other gains really outbalance my losses?
+Henceforth I should, it was true, be leader and chief; but I should
+also be the buffer between the Olympians and my little clan. To Edward
+this had been nothing; he had withstood the impact of Olympus without
+flinching, like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved. But was I equal to the
+task? And was there not rather a danger that for the sake of peace and
+quietness I might be tempted to compromise, compound, and make terms?
+sinking thus, by successive lapses, into the Blameless Prig? I don't
+mean, of course, that I thought out my thoughts to the exact point here
+set down. In those fortunate days of old one was free from the hard
+necessity of transmuting the vague idea into the mechanical inadequate
+medium of words. But the feeling was there, that I might not possess the
+qualities of character for so delicate a position.
+
+The unnatural halo round Edward got more pronounced, his own demeanour
+more responsible and dignified, with the arrival of his new clothes.
+When his trunk and play-box were sent in, the approaching cleavage
+between our brother, who now belonged to the future, and ourselves,
+still claimed by the past, was accentuated indeed. His name was painted
+on each of them, in large letters, and after their arrival their owner
+used to disappear mysteriously, and be found eventually wandering round
+his luggage, murmuring to himself, 'Edward ----,' in a rapt remote sort
+of way. It was a weakness, of course, and pointed to a soft spot in his
+character; but those who can remember the sensation of first seeing
+their names in print will not think hardly of him.
+
+As the short days sped by and the grim event cast its shadow longer and
+longer across our threshold, an unnatural politeness, a civility scarce
+canny, began to pervade the air. In those latter hours Edward himself
+was frequently heard to say 'Please,' and also 'Would you mind fetchin'
+that ball?' while Harold and I would sometimes actually find ourselves
+trying to anticipate his wishes. As for the girls, they simply
+grovelled. The Olympians, too, in their uncouth way, by gift of carnal
+delicacies and such-like indulgence, seemed anxious to demonstrate that
+they had hitherto misjudged this one of us. Altogether the situation
+grew strained and false, and I think a general relief was felt when the
+end came.
+
+We all trooped down to the station, of course; it is only in later years
+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 one
+at 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 to
+kill any more pigs till he came back for the holidays, and he said he
+would send me a proper catapult,--the real lethal article, not a kid's
+plaything. Then suddenly, when we were about half-way down, one of the
+girls fell a-snivelling.
+
+The happy few who dare to laugh at the woes of sea-sickness will perhaps
+remember how, on occasion, the sudden collapse of a fellow-voyager
+before their very eyes has caused them hastily to revise their
+self-confidence and resolve to walk more humbly for the future. Even so
+it was with Edward, who turned his head aside, feigning an interest in
+the landscape. It was but for a moment; then he recollected the hat he
+was 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 seemed
+to give him strength, and he was a man once more.
+
+At the station, Edward's first care was to dispose his boxes on the
+platform so that every one might see the labels and the lettering
+thereon. One did not go to school for the first time every day! Then he
+read both sides of his ticket carefully; shifted it to every one of his
+pockets in turn; and finally fell to chinking of his money, to keep his
+courage up. We were all dry of conversation by this time, and could only
+stand 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 hard
+hat upon his head, a railway ticket in one pocket and money of his own
+in the other--money to spend as he liked and no questions asked!--I
+began to feel dimly how great was the gulf already yawning betwixt us.
+Fortunately I was not old enough to realise, further, that here on this
+little platform the old order lay at its last gasp, and that Edward
+might come back to us, but it would not be the Edward of yore, nor could
+things ever be the same again.
+
+When the train steamed up at last, we all boarded it impetuously with
+the view of selecting the one peerless carriage to which Edward might be
+intrusted with the greatest comfort and honour; and as each one found
+the ideal compartment at the same moment, and vociferously maintained
+its merits, he stood some chance for a time of being left behind. A
+porter settled the matter by heaving him through the nearest door; and
+as 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 saving
+up somewhere for the supreme moment. Very small and white his face
+looked, on the long side of the retreating train. But the grin was
+visible, undeniable, stoutly maintained; till a curve swept him from our
+sight, and he was borne away in the dying rumble, out of our placid
+backwater, out into the busy world of rubs and knocks and competition,
+out into the New Life.
+
+[Illustration: '_Finally we found ourselves sitting silent on an
+upturned wheelbarrow_']
+
+When a crab has lost a leg, his gait is still more awkward than his
+wont, till Time and healing Nature make him _totus teres atque rotundus_
+once more. We straggled back from the station disjointedly; Harold, who
+was very silent, sticking close to me, his last slender prop, while the
+girls in front, their heads together, were already reckoning up the
+weeks to the holidays. Home at last, Harold suggested one or two
+occupations of a spicy and contraband flavour, but though we did our
+manful best there was no knocking any interest out of them. Then I
+suggested others, with the same want of success. Finally we found
+ourselves sitting silent on an upturned wheelbarrow, our chins on our
+fists, staring haggardly into the raw new conditions of our changed
+life, the ruins of a past behind our backs.
+
+And all the while Selina and Charlotte were busy stuffing Edward's
+rabbits with unwonted forage, bilious and green; polishing up the cage
+of his mice till the occupants raved and swore like householders in
+spring-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 its onsets, would scornfully condemn their clumsy but laborious
+armoury as rot and humbug and only fit for kids! This, with many another
+like awakening, was mercifully hidden from them. Could the veil have
+been lifted, and the girls permitted to see Edward as he would appear a
+short three months hence, ragged of attire and lawless of tongue, a
+scorner of tradition and an adept in strange new physical tortures, one
+who would in the same half-hour dismember a doll and shatter a hallowed
+belief,--in fine, a sort of swaggering Captain, fresh from the Spanish
+Main,--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 into futurity? Let us only hope that, even with certain
+disillusionment ahead, the girls would have acted precisely as they did.
+
+And perhaps we have reason to be very grateful that, both as children
+and long afterwards, we are never allowed to guess how the absorbing
+pursuit 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 that to
+an onlooker would seem almost pathetic, from one droll devotion to
+another misshapen passion; and who shall dare to play Rhadamanthus, to
+appraise the record, and to decide how much of it is solid achievement,
+and how much the merest child's play?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY KENNETH GRAHAME
+
+
+DREAM DAYS
+
+ THE OUTLOOK.--'Nobody with a sense of what is rare
+ and humorous and true can afford to miss this
+ volume.'
+
+ LITERATURE.--'In "Dream Days" we are conscious of
+ the same magic touch which charmed us in "The
+ Golden Age." There is magic in all the sketches,
+ but it is perhaps in "Its Walls were as of
+ Jasper"--the beautiful title of a beautiful
+ story--that Mr. Grahame stands confessed as a
+ veritable wizard.'
+
+ THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.--'Happy Mr. Grahame, who can
+ weave romances so well.'
+
+ THE WORLD.--'Could only have been written by a
+ poet full of happy imaginings, quaint conceits,
+ and a certain winsome waywardness which has a
+ charm of its own. . . . The closing chapter is
+ full of a tenderness and reticent pathos far
+ above anything the author has yet achieved. It
+ is certainly a book to be read, for it would be
+ a pity to miss the many exquisite passages it
+ contains.'
+
+ THE DAILY MAIL.--'Mr. Grahame's book will bring
+ youth and joy into many a jaded heart.'
+
+
+THE HEADSWOMAN
+
+ THE BOOKMAN.--'Mr. Grahame's cleverness does not
+ forsake him when he attempts satire. "The
+ Headswoman" is a pretty bit of foolery.'
+
+ THE LITERARY WORLD.--'A delightful little tale
+ with a tinge of satire in it. For gracefulness of
+ style and charm in the telling of a story it is in
+ the front rank, and that is saying a great deal.'
+
+ MR. W. L. COURTNEY IN DAILY TELEGRAPH.--'Well, we
+ are more than a trifle dull, _nous autres_; and we
+ should be grateful to Mr. Kenneth Grahame for
+ throwing in a story or two of his own as often as
+ he can. Happy Mr. Grahame, who can weave romances
+ so well.'
+
+ THE DUNDEE ADVERTISER.--'Humour is not dead
+ amongst us, for Kenneth Grahame's witty little
+ romance of "The Headswoman" brims over with it.'
+
+ THE SCOTSMAN.--'Mr. Grahame has written a most
+ charming book, which cannot fail to delight all
+ who were once children.'
+
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE
+
+ MR. I. ZANGWILL IN PALL MALL MAGAZINE.--'No more
+ enjoyable interpretation of the child's mind has
+ been accorded us since Stevenson's "Child's Garden
+ of Verses."
+
+ MR. A. C. SWINBURNE IN THE DAILY CHRONICLE
+ SAYS,--'The art of writing adequately and
+ acceptively about children is among the rarest and
+ most precious of all arts. . . . "The Golden Age" is
+ one of the few books which are well-nigh too
+ praiseworthy for praise.'
+
+ THE NATIONAL OBSERVER.--'If there is a man or
+ woman living who cannot read this book with
+ delight, to him or her we offer our pity and
+ compassion.'
+
+ PROFESSOR J. SULLY.--'Quite lately more than one
+ serious attempt has been made to give childhood
+ its due in fiction. A notable instance is Mr.
+ Kenneth Grahame's pictures from child-life.'
+
+
+PAGAN PAPERS
+
+ THE ACADEMY.--'Rarely does one meet with an author
+ whose wit is so apt, whose touches of sentiment
+ are so genuine. His paper on tobacco is good
+ reading, though one remembers Calverley and the
+ Arcadian mixture; the eulogy on the loafer is
+ second only to Mr. Stevenson's praise of "The
+ Idler." There is too a distinct flavour of poetry
+ in much of Mr. Grahame's works. One could have
+ wished "White Poppies" had been written in verse,
+ were not the prose of it so delicate and
+ adequate.'
+
+ THE DAILY CHRONICLE.--'Mr. Kenneth Grahame's
+ accomplishment is astounding. . . . His style is
+ a delight, so high is its vitality, so cool its
+ colours, so nimble and various its rhythms. He has
+ read and assimilated Browne Burton. He has a
+ pretty poetic fancy and is apt at a quaint
+ analogy. Many forms of beauty--existent and
+ non-existent--he loves with a deep and
+ discriminating love.'
+
+
+
+
+P.J. BILLINGHURST'S FABLE-BOOKS
+
+
+A HUNDRED FABLES OF ÆSOP
+
+ With 101 full-page illustrations by PERCY J.
+ BILLINGHURST, and a fifteen-page introduction
+ including two new and original fables by KENNETH
+ GRAHAME.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+A HUNDRED FABLES OF LA FONTAINE
+
+With 101 full-page illustrations by PERCY J. BILLINGHURST.
+
+ In _La Fontaine's Fables_, Mr. Billinghurst's
+ delightful animals pose and strut and swagger in
+ the same powerful and moral-mending manner that
+ they did in his Æsop.--KENNETH GRAHAME in _Daily
+ Mail_.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF ANIMALS
+
+With 102 full-page illustrations by PERCY J. BILLINGHURST.
+
+ It is a treasure-house of natural history
+ anecdotes, sumptuously illustrated in black and
+ white, and serves both to arouse and stimulate
+ interest in the subject in children of a
+ knowledgeable age.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Repeated chapter titles were removed. Obvious punctuation errors
+repaired.
+
+Page 97, "supicious" changed to "suspicious" (beastly suspicious by)
+
+Page 102, "frighful" changed to "frightful" (a frightful funk)
+
+Page 144, "Faery" changed to "Faëry" (English' of Faëry)
+
+Page 227, "jobbed" changed to "jabbed" (who had been jobbed)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Age, by Kenneth Grahame
+
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