may have been member of a Club for many a year without ever
exactly understanding the use and object of the other members,
until one enters, some Christmas day or other holiday, and,
surveying the deserted armchairs, the untenanted sofas, the
barren hat-pegs, realizes, with depression, that those other
fellows had their allotted functions, after all. Where was old
Jerry? Where were Eugenie, Rosa, Sophy, Esmeralda? We had long
drifted apart, it was true, we spoke but rarely; perhaps,
absorbed in new ambitions, new achievements, I had even come to
look down on these conservative, unprogressive members who were
so clearly content to remain simply what they were. And now that
their corners were unfilled, their chairs unoccupied--well, my
eyes were opened and I wanted 'em back!

However, it was no business of mine. If grievances were the
question, I hadn't a leg to stand upon. Though my catapults were
officially confiscated, I knew the drawer in which they were
incarcerated, and where the key of it was hidden, and I
could make life a burden, if I chose, to every living thing
within a square-mile radius, so long as the catapult was restored
to its drawer in due and decent time. But I wondered how the
others were taking it. The edict hit them more severely. They
should have my moral countenance at any rate, if not more, in any
protest or countermine they might be planning. And, indeed,
something seemed possible, from the dogged, sullen air with which
the two of them had trotted off in the direction of the
raspberry-canes. Certain spots always had their insensible
attraction for certain moods. In love, one sought the orchard.
Weary of discipline, sick of convention, impassioned for the
road, the mining camp, the land across the border, one made for