. He had gone to bed at eight
o'clock on the preceding evening with the choking consciousness that he
would awake in the morning a different creature. Although he had
slept, there had permeated the texture of his dreams that same choking
excitement, and now, wide awake, as though he had asked the cuckoo to
call him in order that he might not be late for the great occasion,
he stared into the black distance of his bedroom and reflected, with a
beating heart, upon the great event. He was eight years old, and he had
as much right now to the nursery arm-chair with a hole in it as Helen
had.

That was his first definite realisation of approaching triumph.
Throughout the whole of his seventh year he had fought with Helen, who
was most unjustly a year older than he and persistently proud of that
injustice, as to his right to use the wicker arm-chair whensoever it
pleased him. So destructive of the general peace of the house had
these incessant battles been, so unavailing the suggestions of elderly
relations that gentlemen always yielded to ladies, that a compromise had
been arrived at. When Jeremy was eight he should have equal rights with
Helen. Well and good. Jeremy had yielded to that. It was the only decent
chair in the nursery. Into the place where the wicker, yielding to
rude and impulsive pressure, had fallen away, one's body might be
most happily fitted. It was of exactly the right height; it made the
handsomest creaking noises when one rocked in it--and, in any case,
Helen was only a girl.

But the sense of his triumph had not yet fully descended upon him. As he
sat up in bed, yawning, with a tickle in the middle of his back and his
throat very dry; he was disappointingly aware that he was still the same
Jeremy of yesterday. He did not know what it was exactly that he had
expected, but he did not feel at present that confident proud glory for
which he had been prepared. Perhaps it was too early.

He turned round, curled his head into his arm, and with a half-muttered,
half-dreamt statement about the wicker chair, he was once again asleep.

II

He awoke to the customary sound of the bath water running into the bath.
His room was flooded with sunshine, and old Jampot, the nurse (her name
was Mrs. Preston and her shape was Jampot), was saying as usual:
"Now, Master Jeremy, eight o'clock; no lying in bed--out--you
get--bath--ready."

He stared at her, blinking.

"You should say 'Many Happy Returns of the