lead. These were
to mark the days that remained before Saturday week, and it was, Jeremy
maintained, a perfectly natural thing to do and didn't hurt the old
wall-paper which was dirty enough anyway, and Mother had said, long ago,
he should have a new one.

Meanwhile, impossible to describe what Jeremy felt about it. Each year
Cow Farm and Rafiel had grown more wonderful; this was now the fifth
that would welcome them there. At first the horizon had been limited
by physical incapacity, then the third year had been rainy, and the
fourth--ah, the fourth! There had been very little the matter with that!
But this would be better yet. For one thing, there had never been such
a summer as this year was providing--a little rain at night, a little
breeze at the hottest hour of the day--everything arranged on purpose
for Jeremy's comfort. And then, although he did not know it, this was to
be truly the wonderful summer for him, because after this he would be a
schoolboy and, as is well known, schoolboys believe in nothing save what
they can see with their own eyes and are told by other boys physically
stronger than themselves.

Five or six days before the great departure he began to worry himself
about his box. Two years ago he had been given a little imitation green
canvas luggage box exactly like his father's, except that this one was
light enough to carry in one's hand. Jeremy adored this box and would
have taken it out with him, had he been permitted, on all his walks, but
he had a way of filling it with heavy stones and then asking Miss Jones
to carry it for him; it had therefore been forbidden.

But he would, of course, take it with him to Cow Farm, and it should
contain all the things that he loved best. At first "all the things that
he loved best" had not seemed so very numerous. There would, first of
all, of course, be the Hottentot, a black and battered clown for whom
he had long ceased to feel any affection, but he was compelled by an
irritating sense of loyalty to include it in the party just as his
mother might include some tiresome old maid "because she had nowhere to
go to, poor thing." After the Hottentot there would be his paint-box,
after the paint-box a blue writing-case, after the writing-case
the family photographs (Father, Mother, Mary and Helen), after the
photographs a toy pistol, after the pistol Hamlet's ball (a worsted
affair rendered by now shapeless and incoherent), after the ball "Alice
in Wonderlan