the nursery bathroom, where the tap was already running.

Fifteen minutes later, dressed, but hatless and still barefoot, he was
racing over the vast dew-drenched lawn, leaving a trail of grey-green
smudges on its silvered surface, chanting the opening lines of Shelley's
'Cloud' to breakfast-hunting birds.




CHAPTER II.


"Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,...
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day;
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing."
--WORDSWORTH.


The blue rug under Roy's beech-tree was splashed with freckles of
sunshine; freckles that were never still, because a fussy little wind
kept swaying the top-most branches, where the youngest beech-leaves
flickered, like golden-green butterflies bewitched by some malicious
fairy, so that they could never fly into the sky till summer was over,
and all the leaf butterflies in the world would be free to scamper with
the wind.

That was Roy's foolish fancy as he lay full length, to the obvious
detriment of his moral backbone--chin cupped in the hollow of his hands.