in a dirty-white apron, and a lovely smell of whitewash. His father also
took him riding in Richmond Park, on his pony, Mouse, so-called because
it was so-coloured.

Little Jon had been born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was rather
curly and large. He had never heard his father or his mother speak in an
angry voice, either to each other, himself, or anybody else; the groom,
Bob, Cook, Jane, Bella and the other servants, even "Da," who alone
restrained him in his courses, had special voices when they talked to
him. He was therefore of opinion that the world was a place of perfect
and perpetual gentility and freedom.

A child of 1901, he had come to consciousness when his country, just
over that bad attack of scarlet fever, the Boer War, was preparing for
the Liberal revival of 1906. Coercion was unpopular, parents had exalted
notions of giving their offspring a good time. They spoiled their rods,
spared their children, and anticipated the results with enthusiasm. In
choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had
already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight,
whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely.
What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little
prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon
could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played
second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his
mother's heart he knew not yet. As for "Auntie" June, his half-sister
(but so old that she had grown out of the relationship) she loved him,
of course, but was too sudden. His devoted "Da," too, had a Spartan
touch. His bath was cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged
to be sorry for himself. As to the vexed question of his education,
little Jon shared the theory of those who considered that children