reliable John-James, whom he adored. Did he want a boat made? John-James
would do it with those big hands which looked so clumsy and were so
sure and careful. Had he broken the rope reins with which he and Jacka's
John-Willy played at horses? John-James would mend them. All of kindness
and consideration to be found for him in that house he extracted from
John-James. One thing only he could not get even from him, and that was
a return of his deep devotion. This was not because of any bitter
feeling in the elder boy's heart. Ishmael had done him no harm, and he
bore him no grudge; neither, since he was not an admirer of his elder
brother Archelaus, did he take up his cause. It simply was that
John-James was not made for the emotions. He knew nothing about them and
they made him uncomfortable. For a long while Ishmael failed to discover
this. He flung himself upon John-James, and felt him satisfactorily
solid and worried no more on the matter. But when, in the natural course
of development, his mind began to feel pain as well as discomfort at the
chill which met him from his family, he turned to his sure support for
help in this also, he found a blank. John-James would take him fishing,
save his pastry for him, stand between him and harshness, but he would
not, because he could not, give him love to live on. If he had one
outward-flowing sensation it was towards his sister Vassilissa. Ishmael
was just the "lil' un" and a trouble because the cause of trouble, but
Vassie was something so infinitely quicker, cleverer, more elusive than
himself that she stood to John-James for what of beauty was interwoven
with the very everyday stuff of his life. She, like Ishmael, was at the
intensely personal period, though with her it took objective form in
dress and pleasures rather than in the subjective wonderings of her
youngest brother. As to John-James, he hardly entered into the fabric of
her existence. Life to her was the cat-like attempt to get as much
comfort as possible regardless of others. The only emotion Ishmael
obtained out of Cloom came from Katie Jacka, and that was rather