now you'd better jump
in and I'll drive you home. You've been running a fine rig! Why, you
might have both been taken and shot as spies!'

This special danger had never even occurred to us. The thrill of it
accentuated the cosy homelike feeling of the cushions we nestled into as
we rolled homewards. The doctor beguiled the journey with blood-curdling
narratives of personal adventure in the tented field, he having followed
the profession of arms (so it seemed) in every quarter of the globe.
Time, the destroyer of all things beautiful, subsequently revealed the
baselessness of these legends; but what of that? There are higher things
than truth; and we were almost reconciled, by the time we were put down
at our gate, to the fact that the battle had been postponed.

THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS

IT was the day I was promoted to a toothbrush. The girls, irrespective
of age, had been thus distinguished some time before; why, we boys could
never rightly understand, except that it was part and parcel of a system
of studied favouritism on behalf of creatures both physically inferior
and (as was shown by a fondness for tale-bearing) of weaker mental fibre
to us boys. It was not that we yearned after these strange instruments
in themselves. Edward, indeed, applied his to the scrubbing-out of his
squirrel's cage, and for personal use, when a superior eye was grim on
him, borrowed Harold's or mine, indifferently. But the nimbus of
distinction that clung to them--that we coveted exceedingly. What more,
indeed, was there to ascend to, before the remote, but still possible,
razor and strop?

Perhaps the exaltation had mounted to my head; or nature and the perfect
morning joined to hint at disaffection. Anyhow, having breakfasted, and
triumphantly repeated the collect I had broken down in the last
Sunday--'t was one without rhythm or alliteration: a most objectionable
collect--having achieved thus much, the small natural man in me
rebelled, and I vowed, as I straddled and spat about the stable-yard in
feeble imitation of the coachman, that lessons might go to the Inventor
of them. It was only geography that morning, any way: and the practical
thing was worth any quantity of bookish theoric. As for me, I was going
on my travels, and imports and exports, populations and capitals, might
very well wait while I explored the breathing coloured world outside.

True, a fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule, have been