we broke into a gallop for home. The noisy bells burst into a
farewell peal--

Yes, that was undoubtedly the usual bell for school-room tea. And high
time too, I thought, as I tumbled out of the bath, which was beginning
to feel very hard to the projecting portions of my frame-work. As I
trotted downstairs, hungrier even than usual, farewells floated up from
the front door, and I heard the departing voices of our angular elderly
visitors as they made their way down the walk. Man was still catching
it, apparently--Man was getting it hot. And much Man cared! The seas
were his, and their islands; he had his frigates for the taking, his
pirates and their hoards for an unregarded cutlass-stroke or two; and
there were Princesses in plenty waiting for him somewhere--Princesses of
the right sort.

THE RELUCTANT DRAGON

Footprints in the snow have been unfailing provokers of sentiment ever
since snow was first a white wonder in this drab-coloured world of ours.
In a poetry-book presented to one of us by an aunt, there was a poem by
one Wordsworth in which they stood out strongly with a picture all to
themselves, too--but we didn't think very highly either of the poem or
the sentiment. Footprints in the sand, now, were quite another
matter, and we grasped Crusoe's attitude of mind much more easily than
Wordsworth's. Excitement and mystery, curiosity and suspense--these were
the only sentiments that tracks, whether in sand or in snow, were able
to arouse in us.

We had awakened early that winter morning, puzzled at first by the added
light that filled the room. Then, when the truth at last fully dawned
on us and we knew that snow-balling was no longer a wistful dream, but
a solid certainty waiting for us outside, it was a mere brute fight
for the necessary clothes, and the lacing of boots seemed a clumsy
invention, and the buttoning of coats an unduly tedious form of
fastening, with all that snow going to waste at our very door.

When dinner-time came we had to be dragged in by the scruff of our
necks. The short armistice over, the combat was resumed; but presently
Charlotte and I, a little weary of contests and of missiles that
ran shudderingly down inside one's clothes, forsook the trampled
battle-field of the lawn and went exploring the blank virgin spaces of
the white world that lay beyond. It stretched away unbroken on every
side of us, this mysterious soft garment under which our familiar world
had so suddenly