self on the grass by her side. A little wind
swept up the downland to them, making the brown benets nod in a
friendly fashion. The purple scabious, too, nodded cheerfully.
Patricia picked one and began stroking it with her fingers.
Christopher lay on his back and whistled again softly, watching a
lark, as he had watched one five years ago, when a small boy, by the
side of the Great Road.

"Christopher, how did you do it?" demanded Patricia abruptly.

"Do what?"

"Stop me."

"I didn't. You stopped yourself."

"I never have before."

"Then you ought to have. You see you can, if you only will think."

"I _can't_ think."

"But you did," he insisted, with some reason.

"Because you made me. I'd have been much angrier with anyone else--it
was like--like--holding on to a rock, when the water was sucking one
away."

"Bosh," said Christopher, sitting upright suddenly.

"Look here, Patricia, it was only that I made you take time to think:
no one, even you (he put in rudely enough), could be silly enough to
make such a little idiot of yourself if you _thought_ a moment.
Everyone seems to take it for granted you'll go on being--stupid--or
else they are afraid to stop you, and I--well I won't have it,
Patricia, that's all. You must jolly well learn to stop."

His boyish words were rougher than his voice, just as his real feeling
in the matter was deeper than his expression of it, and secretly he
was a little proud of his achievement and felt a subtle proprietorship
over his companion that was not displeasing.

Patricia slipped her arm in his and leant her golden head against
him.

"Christopher, I want to tell you all I can remember about it. I don't
know what anyone else has told you."

"All right, fire away," returned Christopher resignedly.

"The only thing I can remember at all about my father is seeing him
get into rages like that with my mother. I can remember him quite
well, at all sorts of times; he was very big and fair, and splendid,
but always everything I remember ends in that. And I can remember
getting in a rage when I was quite little and seeing my mother turn
white, and she jumped up and ran out of the room crying out to Renata.
My father was killed hunting when I was six years old and mother died
when I was nine years old. Renata was married then, you know, so I
came to live with her and Nevil. But always I remembered when I was
naughty like that, my mother used to look frightened and go away an