Sweethearts at Home

e fourteenth

m not sure which, for Mary Housemaid has b

the last bit, the water always rises and sweeps it all away. But Hugh John said to-day he knew a way, and that was to make the dam like a very blunt capital V with its nose pointing up stream! The book on engineering he had been digging into sai

up the "interstices" with smaller stones and rubble, as the book said-lo! the river rose again an

was at least on dry land. But there stood Hugh John waving his arms to keep

ped where it was put and done what it was told? Anyway, while we tried to get him a plank to crawl

ook good care that nobody saw him. He dared Toady Lion to come within half-a-mile. While he was away, we made great excavations and navigable channels. One of these was

here will be the ruins of the First and Second Torres Vedras. Digging people in future generations will wonder who made them,

t fluently. Only the curious thing about it is that none of us has the least idea what the others are talking about!

that is most difficult. It is founded on always putting a Z for an A, and so back through the alphabet. And so difficult to read is

ly, "Hinky-chinky-pin!" And stuck to it that it meant, "The enemy of the Nursery Commonwealth has arrived at Leith, burnt his ships, and is now marchi

s dried up all right alone in the Feudal Tower, Hugh John dressed himself, and signaled to me by waving his handkerchief three times,

. As I say, it takes a good deal of trouble, but it is a worthy summons-and

me to his Cave of Mysteries. This was a great favo

and Fuz says I can use his scouting-gla

-trees, some grass fields, then above and quite su

f in. Then you saw the cave. It was not much of a place for size, not like the self-contained villas they have in story-books. Only

ting the little lion of Arthur's Seat with her smoke, the blue firth beyond, little and narrow, the toy towe

h John lay watching me, his chin among the heather. But, more tha

y where each of the gamekeepers was, also the wood-fores

did he make a mistake. Then he would show me them, but often all I could see was

soe's Cave. Chesnay the gamekeeper was passing far below, a gun over his shoulder, and as the w

of an inner pocket, removed the wrapping of newspaper, leaned far over, and threw it

a moment. I had seen him glancing from side to side as if to watch for the fall of the bone. He knew it would come, and that even if the

ne arrived from. His business was to find it, and then-crunch-cr

knew all about such things, he did. There was hardly anything he could not tell you the true explanation of, or, if in doubt, you had only to wait a moment and he would make you up one on the

see Sir Toady and the Maid, little black dots moving to and fro along the green edge of the river. Hugh John had the glass on them in a minute,

fresh supply of ammunition. But war was over. Sir Toad

in his cheeks, clenches his fists, and laugh

be getting out boxes to stuff with beetles, and skirmishing for birds' eggs. He's all right in a wood, that Toadu

u do up here yo

" he answered. "

to yourself in the ho

o share mine with the Maid, who kicks like a young colt in

who made a cave on the Pic de Jaman. I showed it to

eminded him. But he swept on wi

is sad tranquil lore.' This isn't quite the Pic de Jaman, of course, but it is just as

He had a shelf covered in with wood and a lot of copy-books. Here was written all he had seen through the

anging seasons, the country people, the moor-birds, the ga

e said, "but it takes Obermann

ed a little

brary, all marked with father's scribblings, but I really couldn't understand much of it. Only this that I trans

ntain doe or the frightened scouring hare. I never liked to sit amid the storming of cataracts, nor on a little hill overlooking a boundless plain. Rather I chose a hiding-place well sheltered, a block of stone wetted lip deep with the brook which glided through the silence of the valley, or

I make you a partner of my solitude. It lasts just a little while. It is selfish, if yo

ed, "how sho

uld be thinking of such things. But when I told father, he j

book that he was to find it. For the soul, father says,

ooking out of the Cave's mouth towards the distant sapphire band of t

, ruffle the little high-lying solitary lakes, the eternal clatter of the waves, heard only by myself, m

wind, watching the oncoming mist, I become a part of the Peace of Things which is God. All reposes, yet all is in motion, and I become part of it-calm as that higher serenity, cool as t

king of at Hugh John's age. But, since father said he too had "passed that way," and si

. One day Hugh John (or I am greatly mistaken) will turn the leaves of another book, and then Senancour the au

to try and guide his thoughts into more cheerful paths (it is a pity w

observe people

at me in

wn two more thick copy-books. Everything Hugh Joh

uscript books; "why, these are stuffed fu

John the great secret

y flashed ov

ether!" he said, "a

!" I a

ly owed Hugh John somethin

is People and Things, and I was to write everythin