the child Tara,
with her wild-flower face and the flickering star in her heart--a
creature born out of time into an unromantic world; hands clasped round
her upraised knees, her wide eyes gazing past the bluebells and the
beech-leaves at some fanciful inner vision of it all; lost in it, as Roy
was lost in contemplation of his Mother's face....

And this unorthodox fashion of imbibing knowledge in the very lap of the
Earth Mother, was Lilamani Sinclair's impracticable idea of 'giving
lessons'! Shades of Aunt Jane! Of governess and copy-books and rulers!

Happily for all three, Lady Roscoe never desecrated their paradise in
the flesh. She was aware that her very regrettable sister-in-law had
'queer notions' and had flatly refused to engage a governess of high
qualifications chosen by herself; but the half was not told her. It
never is told to those who condemn on principle what they cannot
understand. At their coming all the little private gateways into the
delectable Garden of Intimacy shut with a gentle, decisive click. So it
was with Jane Roscoe, as worthy and unlikeable a woman as ever organised
a household to perfection and alienated every member of her family.

The trouble was that she could not rest satisfied with this achievement.
She was afflicted with a vehement desire--she called it a sense of
duty--to organise the homes of her less capable relations. If they
resented, they were written down ungrateful. And Nevil's ingratitude had
become a byword. For Nevil Sinclair was that unaccountable,
uncomfortable thing--an artist; which is to say he was no true Sinclair,
but the son of his mother whose name he bore. No one, not even Jane, had
succeeded in organising him--nor ever would.

So Lilamani carried on, unmolested, her miniature attempt at the forest
school of an earlier day. Her simple programme included a good deal more
than tales of heroism and adventure. This morning there had been
rhythmical exercises, a lively interlude of 'sums without slates' and
their poems--a great moment for Roy. Only by a superhuman effort he had
kept his treasure locked inside him for two whole days. And his mother's
surprise was genuine: not the acted surprise of grown-ups, that was so
patent and so irritating and made them look so silly. The smile in her
eyes as she listened had sent a warm tingly feeling all through him, as
if the spring sunshine itself ran in his veins. Naturally he could not
express it so; but he felt it so.