n them,
except the interest of making a situation go smoothly; the only
interest was in the thought of the unmolested lonely play that was to
follow. He cared little for games, though they had a certain bitter
excitement, the desire of emulation, the joy of triumph about them. He
loved best an aimless wending from haunt to haunt, an accumulation of
small treasures in places unknown to others; and most of all the rich
sense of observation of a hundred curious and delicate things; the
nests of birds in the shrubbery, the glossy cones of the young pines,
the green, uncurling fingers of the bracken, the fresh green
sword-grass that grew beneath the firs; he did not care to know the
nature or the reasons of these things; it was enough simply to see
them, to explore them with restless fingers, to recognise their scents,
hues, and savours, with the sharp and unblunted perceptions of
childhood.

Then came the intellectual awakening. Hugh's mother, who had an
extraordinary gift for improvisation, began to tell the children
stories in the nursery evenings; and these tales of giants and fairies
grew to have an extreme fascination for the child; not that he peopled
his own world with them, as some imaginative children do; the boy's
perceptions were too definite for that; such beings belonged to a
different region; he had no idea that they existed, or had ever
existed. They belonged to the story world, which was associated in his
mind with bright fires and toys put away, when he nestled as close as
he could to his mother's knee, with her hand in both his own, exploring
every ring and every finger, till he could recall, many years after,
each turn and curve, and even each finger-nail of those dear hands.
And then at last came the supremest joy of all; the children used to be
summoned down to their mother's room, and she began to read aloud
_Ivanhoe_ to them; and then indeed a new world, a world that had really
existed, sprang to light.

Hugh used to wonder afterwards how much he had really understood of
what was read; but the whole thing seemed absolutely alive to him; his
pictorial fancy came into play, and the details of woods and heaths
that he knew so well began to serve him in good stead; and then the
child, who had before thought of reading as merely a tiresome art that
he was forced to practise, found that it was the key that admitted him
into this wonderful world. It did not indeed destroy his relish for
the outer wor