"My last question was not so silly after all," I remarked. "I think the sunshine of life is frequently extinguished by a too great absorption in the cares of the domestic hearth. See, for instance, those numerous cases where the energy of the spring-fever expends itself upon the exigencies of the spring-cleaning." "I hate a spring-cleaning," exclaimed Frank: "it always means that everything is put back into something else's place, and you can never find anything you want till you've left off wanting it." "But you find all the things you wanted the spring before last," I added, "and have now forgotten that you ever possessed, and have no longer any use for." "And all your books seem to have played General Post," continued Frank; "Volume One has changed places with Volume Six, and the dictionary is where the Bible ought to be, and the cookery book is among the poems." "I never keep a Bible in a bookcase," remarked Annabel; "it somehow doesn't seem reverent to do so." I could not let this pass. "Yes, you do: you keep one in that bookcase in your bedroom. I've seen it there." "Oh! a bookcase in a bedroom is quite a different thing from an ordinary library bookcase, Reggie; in fact I never keep any but religious books in my bedroom bookcase. One doesn't, somehow." "I cannot see," I argued, "why a hanging bookcase in a bedroom--forming, mark you, a companion ornament to the medicine-chest on the other side of the wardrobe--is a more reverent resting-place for a Bible than is the shelf of a well-stocked library. Why should clothes and drugs exhale a more holy atmosphere than secular literature?" But no arguments ever shook Annabel. "I can't explain why it's different, but it is different, Reggie; and if you don't see it, you ought to. And I'm sure the sun does put it out, Arthur, because I've seen it do it." Whereupon Arthur proceeded to expound at some length the reason why it was scientifically impossible for sunlight to put out firelight; whilst Frank and I took the opportunity of stepping out-of-doors into the garden. "I see what you mean about things being so much more than they actually are, Sir Reginald," began the boy as soon as we were out of earshot of the effects--or rather the non-effects--of sun upon fire; "it never struck me quite like that before, but it makes everything most awfully interesting when you look at it in that way." "I know it does. And it is not only the most interesting way--it is also the truest way--of looking at things. You see, when you realise how much is involved in even the smallest happenings--how much romance and excitement and general thrilliness--it turns everything into the most glorious adventure." Frank nodded his approval of these sentiments. "I know, and adventures are such splendid things, aren't they? But I say, it's most awfully decent of you to have ideas like this, and to be so keen on adventures and things of that kind!"