sat in the wicker chair,
reached its climax. He stood there, his legs apart, looking upon the
darkening world and felt that he could do anything--anything...

At any rate, there was one thing that he could do, disobey the Jampot.

"I'm not coming," he said, "till I choose."

"You wicked boy!" she cried, her temper rising with the evening chills,
her desire for a cup of hot tea, and an aching longing for a comfortable
chair. "When everyone's been so good to you to-day and the things you've
been given and all--why, it's a wicked shame."

The Jampot, who was a woman happily without imagination, saw a naughty
small boy spoiled and needing the slipper.

A rook, taking a last look at the world before retiring to rest,
watching from his leafless bough, saw a mortal spirit defying the
universe, and sympathised with it.

"I shall tell your mother," said the Jampot. "Now come, Master Jeremy,
be a good boy."

"Oh, don't bother, Nurse," he answered impatiently. "You're such a
fuss."

She realised in that moment that he was suddenly beyond her power, that
he would never be within it again. She had nursed him for eight years,
she had loved him in her own way; she, dull perhaps in the ways of
the world, but wise in the ways of nurses, ways that are built up of
surrender and surrender, gave him, then and there, to the larger life...

"You may behave as you like, Master Jeremy," she said. "It won't be for
long that I'll have the dealing with you, praise be. You'll be going to
school next September, and then we'll see what'll happen to your wicked
pride."

"School!" he turned upon her, his eyes wide and staring.

"School!" he stared at them all.

The world tumbled from him. In his soul was a confusion of triumph and
dismay, of excitement and loneliness, of the sudden falling from him of
all old standards, old horizons, of pride and humility... How little
now was the Village to him. He looked at them to see whether they could
understand. They could not.

Very quietly he followed them home. His birthday had achieved its
climax...

CHAPTER II. THE FAMILY DOG

I

That winter of Jeremy's eighth birthday was famous for its snow.
Glebeshire has never yielded to the wishes of its children in the matter
of snowy Christmases, and Polchester has the reputation of muggy warmth
and foggy mists, but here was a year when traditions were fulfilled
in the most reckless manner, and all the 1892 babies were treated to a
pres