ave owned this if you had seen him scampering through the
greenwood on his quiet New Forest pony, or setting snares for the
rabbits that _would_ get into the garden and eat the precious lettuces
and parsley. Also he fished in the little streams that run through that
lovely land, and shot with a bow and arrows. And he was a very good
shot too.

Besides this he collected stamps and birds' eggs and picture post-cards,
and kept guinea-pigs and bantams, and climbed trees and tore his clothes
in twenty different ways. And once he fought the grocer's boy and got
licked and didn't cry, and made friends with the grocer's boy
afterwards, and got him to show him all he knew about fighting, so you
see he was really not a mug. He was ten years old and he had enjoyed
every moment of his ten years, even the sleeping ones, because he always
dreamed jolly dreams, though he could not always remember what they
were.

I tell you all this so that you may understand why he said what he did
when his mother broke the news to him.

He was sitting by the stream that ran along the end of the garden,
making bricks of the clay that the stream's banks were made of. He dried
them in the sun, and then baked them under the kitchen stove. (It is
quite a good way to make bricks--you might try it sometimes.) His mother
came out, looking just as usual, in her pink cotton gown and her pink
sunbonnet; and she had a letter in her hand.

'Hullo, boy of my heart,' she said, 'very busy?'

'Yes,' said Quentin importantly, not looking up, and going on with his
work. 'I'm making stones to build Stonehenge with. You'll show me how to
build it, won't you, mother.'

'Yes, dear,' she said absently. 'Yes, if I can.'

'Of course you can,' he said, 'you can do everything.'

She sat down on a tuft of grass near him.

'Quentin dear,' she said, and something in her voice made him look up
suddenly.

'Oh, mother, what is it?' he asked.

'Daddy's been wounded,' she said; 'he's all right now, dear--don't be
frightened. Only I've got to go out to him. I shall meet him in Egypt.
And you must go to school in Salisbury, a very nice school, dear, till I
come back.'

'Can't I come too?' he asked.

And when he understood that he could not he went on with the bricks in
silence, with his mouth shut very tight.

After a moment he said, 'Salisbury? Then I shall see Stonehenge?'

'Yes,' said his mother, pleased that he took the news so calmly, 'you
will be sure to see St