And Toby, her small round face still shining like an onion skin, had a different but equally effective method of showing him that he belonged to their world in spite of his clumsy pretence. She gave him lessons in Natural History. One afternoon when a brightly-coloured creature darted across the page of his book, and he referred to it as a ‘beetle,’ she very smartly rebuked him. ‘Not beetle, but beetie, _that_ one,’ she corrected him. He thought at first this was merely a child’s abbreviation, but she went on to instruct him fully, and he discovered that the ordinary coleopterist has a great deal yet to learn in the proper classification of his species. ‘There are beetles, and beedles, and beeties,’ she explained standing by his chair on the lawn, and twiddling with his watch-chain. ‘Beeties are all bright-coloured and little and very pretty—like ladybirds.’ ‘And beedles?’ ‘Oh, b-e-e-e-d-d-dles,’ pronouncing the word heavily and slowly, ‘are the stupid fat ones in the road that always get run over. They’re always sleepy, you see, but quite nice, oh, quite nice;’ she hastened to add lest Paul should dislike them from her description. ‘And all the rest are beetles, I suppose, just ordinary beetles?’ he asked. ‘Beetles,’ she said, with the calmness of superior knowledge, ‘are fast, black things that scuttle about kitchens. Horrid and crawly! _Now_ you know them all!’ She ran off with a burst of laughter upon that face of polished onion skin, and left her uncle to reflect deeply upon this new world of beetles. The lesson was instructive and symbolic, though the choice of subject was not as poetic as might have been. With this new classification as a starting-point, the child, no doubt, had erected a vast superstructure of wonder, fun, beauty, and—why not?—truth! For children, he mused, are ever the true idealists. In their games of make-believe they create the world anew—in six minutes. They scorn measurements, and deal directly with the eternal principles behind things. With a little mud on the end of a stick they trace the course of the angels, and with the wooden-blocks of their building-boxes they erect the towering palaces of a universe that shall never pass away. Yet what they did, surely he also did! His world of imagination was identical with theirs of make-believe. Was, then, the difference between them one of expression merely?... Toby came thundering up and fell upon him from nowhere. ‘Uncle Paul,’ she said rather breathlessly. ‘Yes, dear,’ he made answer, still thinking upon beedles and beeties. ‘On the path down there by the rosydandrums there’s a beedle now—a big one with horns—if you’d like to see it.’ ‘Oh! By the rhododendrons, you mean?’ ‘Yes, by the rosydandrums,’ she repeated. ‘Only we must be quick or he’ll get home before we come.’ He was far more keen to see that “beedle” than she was. Yet for the immediate safety of his soul he refused.