garden like a guilty thing, wriggled through the rabbit-run,
and threaded my doubtful way homewards, hounded by nameless terrors. The
half-crowns happily remained solid and real to the touch; but could I
hope to bear such treasure safely through the brigand-haunted wood? It
was a dirty, weary little object that entered its home, at nightfall, by
the unassuming aid of the scullery-window: and only to be sent tealess
to bed seemed infinite mercy to him. Officially tealess, that is; for,
as was usual after such escapades, a sympathetic housemaid, coming
delicately by backstairs, stayed him with chunks of cold pudding and
condolence, till his small skin was tight as any drum. Then, nature
asserting herself, I passed into the comforting kingdom of sleep, where,
a golden carp of fattest build, I oared it in translucent waters with a
new half-crown snug under right fin and left; and thrust up a nose
through water-lily leaves to be kissed by a rose-flushed Princess.

SAWDUST AND SIN

A BELT of rhododendrons grew close down to one side of our pond; and
along the edge of it many things flourished rankly. If you crept through
the undergrowth and crouched by the water's rim, it was easy--if your
imagination were in healthy working order--to transport yourself in a
trice to the heart of a tropical forest. Overhead the monkeys chattered,
parrots flashed from bough to bough, strange large blossoms shone all
round you, and the push and rustle of great beasts moving unseen
thrilled you deliciously. And if you lay down with your nose an inch or
two from the water, it was not long ere the old sense of proportion
vanished clean away. The glittering insects that darted to and fro on
its surface became sea-monsters dire, the gnats that hung above them
swelled to albatrosses, and the pond itself stretched out into a vast
inland sea, whereon a navy might ride secure, and whence at any moment
the hairy scalp of a sea-serpent might be seen to emerge.

[Illustration: '_It was easy . . . to transport yourself in a trice to
the heart of a tropical forest_']

It is impossible, however, to play at tropical forests properly, when
homely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes of seeing a
tiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (_vide_ picture-books,
_passim_) vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her old dimensions, when
the sound of Charlotte's prattle somewhere hard by broke in on my
primaeval seclusion. Looking out from th