was eager, but did not gush; he was a splendid listener, sympathetic,
reticent about himself. He evidently loved their father, and adored his
mother. He liked riding, rowing, and fencing better than games. He saved
moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but put them out of doors
in screws of paper sooner than kill them. In a word, he was amiable. She
went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer horribly if anybody hurt
him; but who would hurt him?

Jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of paper and
a pencil, writing his first "real poem" by the light of a candle because
there was not enough moon to see by, only enough to make the night seem
fluttery and as if engraved on silver. Just the night for Fleur to walk,
and turn her eyes, and lead on-over the hills and far away. And Jon,
deeply furrowed in his ingenuous brow, made marks on the paper and
rubbed them out and wrote them in again, and did all that was necessary
for the completion of a work of art; and he had a feeling such as the
winds of Spring must have, trying their first songs among the coming
blossom. Jon was one of those boys (not many) in whom a home-trained
love of beauty had survived school life. He had had to keep it to
himself, of course, so that not even the drawing-master knew of it; but
it was there, fastidious and clear within him. And his poem seemed to
him as lame and stilted as the night was winged. But he kept it, all the
same. It was a "beast," but better than nothing as an expression of the
inexpressible. And he thought with a sort of discomfiture: 'I shan't be
able to show it to Mother.' He slept terribly well, when he did sleep,
overwhelmed by novelty.