very long ago, you understand--when I was quite a little girl before I
knew the wonderful things the wind and the flowers and the stars tell
me."

Cheiron did not ask the cause of this hate; he reserved the question for
a future time, and encouraged her to tell him of her discoveries in
wonderland.

Some trees had strange personalities, she said. You could never guess
the other side of their heads, until you knew them very well. But all
had good in them, and it was wisest never even to see the bad.

"I always find if you are afraid of things they become real and hurt
you, but if you are sure they are kind and true they turn gentle and
love you. I am hardly ever afraid of anything now--only I do not like a
thunderstorm. It seems as if God were really angry then, and were not
considering sufficiently just whom He meant to hit."

Justice to her appeared to hold chief place among the virtues.

"Do you stay here all the year round?" asked Cheiron, presently, "or do
you sometimes have a trip to the seaside?"

"I have never been away since I first came--I would love to see the
sea," and her eyes became dreary. "I can just remember long ago with my
mother, we went once--she and I alone--" then she turned to her old
companion and looked up in his face.

"Had you a mother? Of course you had, but I mean one that you knew?"

The late Mrs. Carlyon had not meant anything much to her son in her
lifetime, and was now a far-off memory of forty years ago, so Cheiron
answered truthfully upon the subject, and Halcyone looked grave.

"When we have been friends for a long time I will tell you of my
beautiful mother--and I could let you share my memory of her
perhaps--but not to-day," she said.

And then she was silent for a while as they walked on. But when they
were turning back towards the orchard house she suddenly began to laugh,
glancing at the old gentleman with eyes full of merriment.

"It is funny," she said, "I don't even know your name! I would like to
call you Cheiron--but you have a real name, of course."

"It is Arnold Carlyon, and I come from Cornwall," the old gentleman
said, "but you are welcome to call me Cheiron, if you like."

Halcyone thanked him prettily.

"I wish you had his body--don't you? How we could gallop about, could we
not? But I can imagine you have, easily. I always can see things I
imagine, and sometimes they become realities then."

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Cheiron. "What would my four l