CHAPTER I.

"Thou art the sky, and thou art the nest as well."
--Tagore.


By the shimmer of blue under the beeches Roy knew that summer--"really
truly summer!"--had come back at last. And summer meant picnics and
strawberries and out-of-door lessons, and the lovely hot smell of
pine-needles in the pine-wood, and the lovelier cool smell of moss
cushions in the beech-wood--home of squirrels and birds and bluebells;
unfailing wonderland of discovery and adventure.

Roy was an imaginative creature, isolated a little by the fact of being
three and a half years older than Christine, and "miles older" than
Jerry and George, mere babies, for whom the magic word adventure held no
meaning at all.

Luckily, there was Tara, from the black-and-white house: Tara, who
shared his lessons and, in spite of the drawback of being a girl, had
long ago won her way into his private world of knight-errantry and
romance. Tara was eight years and five weeks old; quite a reasonable age
in the eyes of Roy, whose full name was Nevil Le Roy Sinclair, and who
would be nine in June. With the exception of grown-ups, who didn't
count, there was no one older than nine in his immediate neighbourhood.
Tara came nearest: but _she_ wouldn't be nine till next year; and by
that time, he would be ten. The point was, she couldn't catch him up if