'They have reports to write too, to their lumber-kings,' he said, his face solemn as a gong—using a phrase culled heaven knows where. 'So will you please see that they don't make blots either.'
'But how did you know there were such things as lumber-kings?' Paul asked, surprised.
'I didn't know. They knew,' with a jerk of his head toward the struggling puppies, who hated the elevation of the table and the proximity of Paul's bearded face. 'They said you told them.'
There was no trace of a smile in his eyes; nothing but the earnest expression of the child taking part in the ponderous make-believe of the grown-up. Paul felt that by this simple expedient his reports and the safety they represented had been reduced in a single moment to the level of a paltry pretence.
He blushed. 'Well, tell them to run after their tails more, and think less,' he said.
'All right, Uncle Paul,' and the boy was gone, grave as any judge.
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.
Nixie it was, however, who penetrated furthest into the fortress. She came with a fearless audacity that fairly made him tremble. She had only to approach for him to become aware how poorly his suit of armour fitted.
But she was so gentle and polite about it that she was harder to withstand than all the others put together. She was slim and insinuating in body, mind and soul. Often, before he realised what she was talking about, her slender little fingers were between the cracks of his breast-plate. For instance, after leaving Toby and her "beedle," he strolled down to the pinewood and stood upon the rustic bridge watching the play of sunlight and shadow, when suddenly, out of the very water it seemed, up rose a veritable water-sprite—hatless and stockingless—Nixie, the ubiquitous.
She scrambled lightly along the steep bank to his side, and leaned over the railing with him, staring at their reflections in the stream.
'I declare you startled me, child!' Paul exclaimed.
Her eyes met his in the running reflection beneath them. Of course, it may have been merely the trick of the glancing water, but to him it seemed that her expression was elfin and mischievous.
'Did I—really ', Uncle Paul?' she said after a long silence, and without looking up. But woven through the simple words, as sunlight is woven through clearing mist, he divined all the other meanings of the child's subtle and curious personality. It amounted to this—she at once invited, nay included, him in her own particular tree and water world: included him because he belonged there with her, and she simply couldn't help herself. There was no favour about it one way or the other.
The compliment—the temptation—was overwhelming. Paul shivered a little, actually shivered, as he stood beside her in the sunshine. For several minutes they leaned there in silence, gazing at the flowing water.
'The woods are very busy—this evening,' she said at length.
'I'm sure they are,' he answered, before he quite realised what he was saying. Then he pulled himself together with an effort.
'But does Mile. Fleury know, and approve—?' he asked a little stiffly, glancing down at her bare legs and splashed white frock.
'Oh, no,' she laughed wickedly, 'but then Mile, only understands what she sees with her eyes! She is much too mixed-up and educated to know all this kind of thing! 'She made a gesture to include the woods about them. 'Her sort of knowledge is so stuffing, you know.'
'Rather,' he exclaimed. 'I would far sooner know the trees themselves than know their Latin names.'
It slipped out in spite of himself. The next minute he could have bitten his tongue off. But Nixie took no advantage of him. She let his words pass as something taken for granted.
'I mean—it's better to learn useful things while you can,' he said hurriedly, blushing in his confusion like a child.
Nixie peered steadily down into the water for several minutes before she said anything more.
'Either she's found me out and knows everything,' thought Paul; 'or she hasn't found me out and knows nothing.' But which it was, for the life of him, he couldn't be certain.
'Oh,' she cried suddenly, looking up into his face, her eyes, to Paul's utter amazement, wet with tears, 'Oh! how Daddy must have loved you!'
And, before he could think of a word to say, she was gone! Gone into the woods with a fluttering as of white wings.
'So apparently I am not too mixed-up and educated for their exquisite little world,' he reflected, as soon as the emotion caused by her last words had subsided a little; 'and the things I know are not of the "stuffing "kind!'
It all made him think a good deal—this attitude the children adopted towards his attitude, this unhesitating acceptance of him in spite of all his pretence. But he still valiantly maintained his studied aloofness of manner, and never allowed himself to overstep the danger line. He never forgot himself when he played