that flickered against the landscape. Michael ran off alone,
sliding as he went where the drouth had singed the close-cropped grass.
The rabbits ran to right and left of him, throwing distorted shadows on
the long slopes, and once a field-mouse skipped anxiously across his
path. On the rounded summit of the highest hill within reach he sat down
near a clump of tremulous harebells. The sky was on every side of him,
the largest sky ever imagined. Far away in front was the shining sea,
above whose nebulous horizon ships hung motionless. Up here was the
sound of summer airs, the faint lisp of wind in parched herbage, the
twitter of desolate birds, and in some unseen vale below the bleating of
a flock of sheep. Bumble-bees droned from flower to flower of the
harebells and a church clock struck the hour of four. The world was
opening her arms and calling to Michael. He felt up there in the silver
weather as the ugly duckling must have felt when he saw himself to be a
radiant swan. Michael almost believed, in this bewitching meditation,
that he was in a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Always in those tales
the people flew above the world whether in snow-time or in spring-time.
It was really like flying to sit up here. For the first time Michael
flung wide his arms to grasp the unattainable; and, as he presently
charged down the hill-side in answer to distant holloas from the picnic
party, he saw before him a flock of sheep manoeuvring before his
advance. Michael shouted and kept a swift course, remembering Don
Quixote and laughing when he saw the flock break into units and gallop
up the opposite slope.

"Tut-tut," clicked Nurse. "What a mess you do get yourself into, I'm
sure. Can't you sit down and enjoy yourself quietly?"

"Did you see me make those silly old sheep run away, Nanny?" Michael
asked.

"Yes, I did. And I should be ashamed to frighten poor animals so. You'll
get the policeman on your tracks."

"I shouldn't care," said Michael boastfully. "He wouldn't be able to
catch me."

"Wouldn't he?" said Nurse very knowingly, as she laid out the tea-cups
on a red rug.

"Oh, Michael," Stella begged, "don't make a policeman come after you."

Michael was intoxicated by the thought of his future. He could not
recognize the ability of any policeman to check his desires, and because
it was impossible to voice in any other way the impulses and ambitions
and hopes that were surging in his soul, he went on boasting.

"Ha