rough Lower Speed, Upper Speed,
and up the fields to Wyck Manor. Then up the stairs to the schoolroom,
pursued by their mother's cries.

"Oh Col-Col, my little Col-Col! What have you done to him, Eliot?"

Eliot bore it like a lamb.

Only after they had left Colin in the schoolroom, he turned on Jerrold.

"Some day," he said, "Col-Col will be a perfect nuisance. Then you and
Anne'll have to pay for it."

"Why me and Anne?"

"Because you'll both be fools enough to keep on giving in to him."

"I suppose," said Jerrold bitterly, "you think you're clever."

Adeline came out and overheard him and made a scene in the gallery
before Pinkney, the footman, who was bringing in the schoolroom tea. She
said Eliot was clever enough and old enough to know better. They were
all old enough. And Jerrold said it was his fault, not Eliot's, and Anne
said it was hers, too. And Adeline declared that it was all their faults
and she would have to speak to their father. She kept it up long after
Eliot and Jerrold had retreated to the bathroom. If it had been anybody
but her little Col-Col. She wouldn't _have_ him dragged about the
country till he dropped.

She added that Col-Col was her favourite.

xi

It was the last week of the holidays. Rain had come with the west wind.
The hills were drawn back behind thick sheets of glassy rain. Shining
spears of rain dashed themselves against the west windows. Jets of rain
rose up, whirling and spraying, from the terrace. Rain ran before the
wind in a silver scud along the flagged path under the south front.

The wind made hard, thudding noises as if it pounded invisible bodies in
the air. It screamed high above the drumming and hissing of the rain.

It excited the children.

From three o'clock till tea-time the sponge fight stormed up and down
the passages. The house was filled with the sound of thudding feet and
shrill laughter.

Adeline lay on the sofa in the library. Eliot was with her there.

She was amused, but a little plaintive when they rushed in to her.

"It's perfectly awful the noise you children are making. I'm tired out
with it."

Jerrold flung himself on her. "Tired? What must _we_ be?"

But he wasn't tired. His madness still worked in him. It sought some
supreme expression.

"What can we play at next?" said Anne.

"What can we play at next?" said Colin.

"Something quiet, for goodness sake," said his mother.

They were very quiet, Jerrold and Anne and Colin,