h delighted talk. Jeremy said nothing. But Uncle Samuel
understood.

"Glad you like it," he said, and left the room.

"Aren't you pleased?" said Helen.

Jeremy still said nothing.

"Sausages. Sausages!" cried Mary, as Gladys, grinning, entered with a
dish of a lovely and pleasant smell. But Jeremy did not turn. He simply
stood there--staring.

III

It is of the essence of birthdays that they cannot maintain throughout
a long day the glorious character of their early dawning. In Polchester
thirty years ago there were no cinematographs, no theatre save for
an occasional amateur performance at the Assembly Rooms and, once and
again, a magic-lantern show. On this particular day, moreover, Mr. and
Mrs. Cole were immensely busied with preparations for some parochial
tea. Miss Trefusis had calls to make, and, of course, Uncle Samuel was
invisible. The Birthday then suddenly became no longer a birthday but
an ordinary day--with an extraordinary standard. This is why so many
birthdays end in tears.

But Jeremy, as was usual with him, took everything quietly. He might cry
aloud about such an affair as the conquest of the wicker chair because
that did not deeply matter to him, but about the real things he was
silent. The village was one of the real things; during all the morning
he remained shut up in his soul with it, the wide world closed off from
them by many muffled doors. How had Uncle Samuel known that he had deep
in his own inside, so deep that he had not mentioned it even to himself,
wanted something just like this? Thirty years ago there were none of the
presents that there are for children now--no wonderful railways that
run round the nursery from Monte Carlo to Paris with all the stations
marked; no dolls that are so like fashionable women that you are given a
manicure set with them to keep their nails tidy; no miniature motor-cars
that run of themselves and go for miles round the floor without being
wound up. Jeremy knew none of these things, and was the happier that he
did not. To such a boy such a village was a miracle.... It had not come
from Germany, as Aunt Amy said, but from heaven. But it was even more
of Uncle Samuel than the village that he was thinking. When they
started--Helen, Mary and he in charge of the Jampot--upon their
afternoon walk, he was still asking himself the same questions. How had
Uncle Samuel known so exactly? Had it been a great trouble to bring from
so far away? Had Uncle S