nk what she meant till
Jerrold told her she was the only kid that Eliot had ever looked at. The
big Hawtrey girl from Medlicote would have given her head to be in
Anne's shoes.

But Anne didn't care. Her love for Jerrold was sharp and exciting. She
brought tears to it and temper. It was mixed up with God and music and
the deaths of animals, and sunsets and all sorrowful and beautiful and
mysterious things. Thinking about her mother made her think about
Jerrold; but she never thought about Eliot at all when he wasn't there.

She would run away from Eliot any minute if she heard Jerrold calling.
It was Jerrold, Jerrold, all the time, said Aunt Adeline.

And when Eliot was busy with his microscope and Jerrold had turned from
her to Colin, there was Uncle Robert. He seemed to know the moments when
she wanted him. Then he would take her out riding with him over the
estate that stretched from Wyck across the valley of the Speed and
beyond it for miles over the hills. And he would show her the reaping
machines at work, and the great carthorses, and the prize bullocks in
their stalls at the Manor Farm. And Anne told him her secret, the secret
she had told to nobody but Jerrold.

"Some day," she said, "I shall have a farm, with horses and cows and
pigs and little calves."

"Shall you like that?"

"Yes," said Anne. "I would. Only it can't happen till Grandpapa's dead.
And I don't want him to die."

x

They were saying now that Colin was wonderful. He was only seven, yet he
could play the piano like a grown-up person, very fast and with loud
noises in the bass. And he could sing like an angel. When you heard him
you could hardly believe that he was a little boy who cried sometimes
and was afraid of ghosts. Two masters came out from Cheltenham twice a
week to teach him. Eliot said Colin would be a professional when he grew
up, but his mother said he should be nothing of the sort and Eliot
wasn't to go putting nonsense like that into his head. Still, she was
proud of Colin when his hands went pounding and flashing over the keys.
Anne had to give up practising because she did it so badly that it hurt
Colin to hear her.

He wasn't in the least conceited about his playing, not even when
Jerrold stood beside him and looked on and said, "Clever Col-Col. Isn't
he a wonderful kid? Look at him. Look at his little hands, all over the
place."

He didn't think playing was wonderful. He thought the things that
Jerrold did were w