At ten years old, neither wounded pride nor the worse hurt of always feeling a something unexplained about himself that did not fit in with his surroundings, was proof against hot pastry, and Manuel went away with it, though slowly, to a spot he knew of beside the mill-leat. There a robin was building her nest in the alders, and there, too, if he lay very still, with shut eyes, he could imagine all sorts of wonderful things that the brook was saying. How he was really not the son of these people at all, but of some wonderful prince, who would come upon a coal-black charger, like the one in the old fairy-book, and take him away, away from this discordant house where he felt such a very lonely little boy. . . . In the kitchen, Senath, about to resume her work, saw that the jonquil had dropped from his jersey to the floor, where it lay shining, a fallen star. Senath stood staring at it for a minute. For one flash, bewildering and disconcerting, like the sudden intrusion of last night's dream into the affairs of to-day, she saw herself again--that self she never thought of as being the precursor of the present Senath, but as a totally different person altogether, whom, try as she would, she could not connect up. She had long ago given up trying, busy with her man and the boys. The two younger were little trouble enough beyond the ordinary vexatiousness of childhood, but there was something about Manuel which was different, and which often annoyed Sam, who liked to brag about his eldest boy, and tried always to make him out as exactly like himself. But she was conscious that the Senath of long ago would have understood. Now, as she stared at the jonquil, it seemed to her that that Senath was she herself again, though she had grown to despise the dreaming, fanciful creature of her muffled memory--perhaps there had been something fierce and great about her, that the present Senath could never capture again. The moment passed, and she let the flower lie where it was, and presently, when Sam, the successful husband, came in ruddy and clamorous for his tea, his heavy boot trampled it, all discoloured, into a crack of the stone flags. The little boys came tumbling in, too, also clamorous, after the way of men-folk. "Where's Manuel?" demanded Sam. Both little shrill voices were obsequious with the information that he had gone towards the leat. "Day-dreamen, I'll be bound," said Sam, his mouth full of hot split. "Eh, well, so were you, missus, at one time of day. Life'll soon knock et out of him, like et has of you. And you'm all the better wi'out et, arn't 'ee, lass?"