authority, had to be
obeyed, and the boy had no theory which could account for their
inconsequent behaviour; they were amiable or ill-humoured, just or
unjust; he never attempted to criticise or condemn them by a moral
standard; he simply accepted them as they were, and kept as much as
possible out of the way of those who manifested sharpness or
indifference. With children of his own age it was in many ways the
same, though there seemed to the boy to be more hope of influencing
their behaviour; threats, anger, promises, compliance could be applied;
but of the affection that simply desired to please the object of its
love, the boy knew nothing. Once or twice he went away from home on a
visit, and because he wept on his departure, he was supposed to have a
tender and emotional nature; but it was not tenderness, at least not
tenderness for others, that made him weep. It was partly the terror of
the unknown and the unfamiliar; it was partly the interruption to the
even tenor of his life and the customary engagements of his day; and in
this respect the boy had what may be called a middle-aged temperament,
an intense dislike of any interference with his own ways; he had no
enterprise, none of the high-hearted enjoyment of novelty, unless he
was surrounded by a bulwark of familiar personalities; but partly, too,
his love was all given to inanimate things; and as he drove out of the
gate on one of these visits, the thought that the larches of the copse
should be putting out their rosy buds, the rhododendrons thrusting out
their gummy, spiky cases, the stream passing slowly through its deep
pools, the bee-hive in the little birch avenue beginning to wake to
life, and that he should not be there to go his accustomed rounds, and
explore all the minute events of his dear domain--it was this that
brought out the tears afresh, with a bitter, uncomforted sense of loss
and bereavement.

So the early years passed for the boy, in a dream full to the brim of
small wonders and fragrant mysteries. How pleasant it was to sink to
sleep on summer evenings with the imagination of voyaging all night in
a little boat or carriage; how delightful to wake, with the morning sun
streaming in at the window, to hear the casement ivy tap on the pane,
and to rehearse in the mind all the tiny pleasures of the long day!
His short lessons were easy enough for the boy; he was quick and acute,
and had a good memory; but he took not the smallest interest i