till live there, the Boy is allowed to go to bed late, and there
he sits and fills his mind.

"And what," said this deponent one evening, "about taking His Nibs with
me?" (There was some sea to be crossed.) Most certainly not! Well--!
still--! Would he be all right? But as he got to hear about this it was
hardly so certainly not as it seemed. There are times when he can
concentrate on a subject with awful pertinacity, though the occasions
are infrequent. This was one, however. He went. I knew he would
go--when he heard about it.

A day came when we were at the railway station, and he was to cross the
sea for the first time. He was quite collected. His quiet eye
enumerated the baggage in one careless side-glance which detected there
was a strap undone and that a walking-stick was missing. In all that
crowded tumult converging on the stroke of the hour his seemed to be
the only apart and impassive face, and I began to think he was
indifferent; he merely looked at the cover of one magazine, and then
turned to the window and observed the world leaping past with the
detachment of a small immortal who was watching man's fleeting affairs.
Nothing to do with him.

Once he caught my intent eye--for I thought he was a trifle pale--and
then he passed a radiant wink, and one of his dangling legs began to
swing as though that were the sole limb to be joyful. An hour later,
his face still to the glass, he was shaking with internal mirth. I
asked him to let me share it with him. "Did you see that old man at the
station when the train was starting?" he whispered. "He couldn't find
the carriage where his things were--he was running up and down without
a hat. Perhaps he was left behind." What do man's misfortune's matter
to the gods who live for ever?

* * * * *

Through sections of the quayside sheds he caught sight of near funnels,
businesslike with smoke, and a row of ports. It was then I had to tell
him there was plenty of time. "Two funnels," I heard him say in
surprise, and there is no doubt at that moment some of the importance
of the occasion was reflected on myself. That extra funnel told him, I
hope, I was doing this business in no meagre spirit. None of your
single-funnel ships for our affairs. At the quay end of the gangway he
stopped me, interrupting the whole concourse to do so. "Where's that
other bag?" he demanded severely. I was annoyed--like the people who
were following us