“With Honoria.” He was about to say more, but checked himself. “I left her at the top of the avenue,” he explained. CHAPTER XII. TAFFY’S CHILDHOOD COMES TO AN END. The summer passed. There was a talk in the early part of it that the Bishop would be coming, next spring, to consecrate the restored church and hold a confirmation service. Taffy and Honoria were to be confirmed, and early in August Mr. Raymond began to set apart an hour each day for preparing them. In a week or two the boy’s head was full of religion. He spent much of his time in the church, watching the carpenter at work upon the new seats; his mind ran on the story of Samuel, and he wished his mother had followed Hannah’s example and dedicated him to God; he had a suspicion that God would be angry with her for not doing so. He did not observe that, as the autumn crept on, a shadow gathered on Humility’s face. One Sunday the old Squire did not come to church; and again on the next Wednesday, at the harvest festival, Honoria sat alone in the Tredinnis pew. The shadow was on his mother’s face as he chatted about this on their way home to the Parsonage; but the boy did not perceive it. He loved his parents, but their lives lay outside his own, and their sayings and doings passed him like a vain show. He walked in the separate world of childhood, and it seemed an enormous world yet, though a few weeks were to bring him abruptly to the end of it. But just before he came to the precipice he was given a glimpse of the real world--and of a world beyond that, far more splendid and romantic than any region of his dreams. The children had no lessons during Christmas, or for three weeks after. On the last morning before the holidays George brought a letter for Mr. Raymond, who read it, considered for a while, and laid it among his papers. “It’s an invitation,” George announced in a whisper. “I wonder if he’ll let you come.” “Where?” whispered Taffy. “Up to Plymouth--to the Pantomime.” “What’s that?” “Oh--clowns, and girls dressed up like boys, and policemen on slides, and that sort of thing.” Taffy sat bewildered. He vaguely remembered Plymouth as a mass of roofs seen from the train, as it drew up for a minute or two on a high bridge. Someone in the railway carriage had talked of an engine called _Brutus_, which (it appeared) had lately run away and crashed into the cloak-room at the end of the platform. He still thought of railway engines as big, blundering animals, with wills of their own, and of Plymouth as a town rendered insecure by their vagaries; but the idea that its roofs covered girls dressed up like boys and policemen on slides was new to him, and pleasant on the whole, though daunting. “Will you give my thanks to Sir Harry,” said Mr. Raymond, after lessons, “and tell him that Taffy may go.”