The seasons seemed always to come suddenly. He would wake up, bright and alert, on a glorious morning of sunshine, with an endless prospect of sunny days before him; fires were things of the past, and the garden was no more a sealed place, wherein he must not run for fear of splashing his little white legs with mud. In just the same way there seemed no intermediate time between the summer, with its glorious abundance of roses and its long, hot afternoons, and the time when the roses were gone, and he was curled up like a little comfortable animal on the hearthrug before the parlour fire. That was the time, too, for going to bed in the dark, when the dreadful hour crept inexorably on; when he must leave the warmth and brightness of the lower room and climb with reluctant feet into a colder atmosphere, where grim shadows lurked on the landing, and the pale moon grinned in at him through an uncurtained window, like a queer face all on one side. The church grew, quite naturally, from its mystic qualities, to be his chief delight. Everything about it was wonderful, from the long flight of stone steps which led up to the organ-loft where his father played, to the great brown wooden bird, with its beak open, and with outstretched wings, which stood on a carved pillar before the altar. Its seats were a never-failing source of delight to the shy child--places in which one could hide, secure from every one, and look up at the great roof, and at the sunlight slanting in through the windows. But perhaps it was best of all to sit up in the organ-loft, as he sometimes did with his father; to draw a huge hassock close up against the old-fashioned wooden partition, and sit there and look down, unseen and unsuspected, at the people below. Comethup always stood up at the proper places on those occasions, and sat down when the people rustled into their seats; he tried, too, to murmur something which sounded a little like the responses which rumbled up from below. His world widened out a little as the placid years flowed on. The garden of the roses no longer bounded his horizon; the gate ceased to be a barrier which must not be passed. The spirit of adventure was strong in Comethup one summer afternoon, when his father was sleeping peacefully on the hard horsehair sofa in the parlour, and the little maid who waited upon them was busied in the kitchen. The garden had been all explored; on such a day as this, when the air was heavy and still, the very scent of the roses hung heavily. Poor Comethup was a little tired of roses--a little tired even of that wonderful garden, every corner of which, every stick and stone, he knew by heart. And then, just as he clung to the iron railings of the gate, and looked out disconsolately into the quiet street, there came a playmate.