“A straight flagged walk led up to the cool-looking old house, and my host, lingering in his progress at this rose-tree and that, forgot all about me at least twice” 112 “Meanwhile Charlotte and I crouched in the window-seat,...” 124 “‘She’s off with those vicarage girls again,’ said Edward” 136 “We put the Argo’s head upstream, since that led away from the Larkin province” 148 “Then he stood up, and he was very straight and tall, and the sunset was in his hair and beard as he stood there, high over me” 174 “Westward the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet bank; below them, to north and south, as far round as the eye could reach, a narrow streak of gold ran out ... I turned for a last effort” 186 “‘I’ve been chopping up wood,’ he explained, in a guilty sort of way” 200 “We entered in noiseless file, the room being plunged in darkness, except for a bright strip of moonlight on the floor” 214 “Shops came first, of course,...” 230 “... Selina and Charlotte were busy stuffing Edward’s rabbits with unwonted forage, bilious and green” 250 PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS LOOKING back to those days of old, ere the gate shut to behind me, I can see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents these things would have worn a different aspect. But to those whose nearest were aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind may be allowed. They treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh, but after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise, the result of a certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace conviction that your child is merely animal. At a very early age I remember realising in a quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that stupidity, and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grew up in me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague sense of a ruling power, wilful, and freakish, and prone to the practice of vagaries—‘just choosing so’: as, for instance, the giving of authority over us to these hopeless and incapable creatures, when it might far more reasonably have been given to ourselves over them. These elders, our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect, but only a certain blend of envy—of their good luck—and pity—for their inability to make use of it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features in their character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them: which wasn’t often) that, having absolute licence to indulge in the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in