I shall tell him so."

And his mother had answered with her dignified unruffled sweetness--that
made her so beautifully different from ordinary people, who got red and
excited and made foolish faces: "He will not agree. He shares my
believing that children are in love with life. It is their first love.
Pity to crush it too soon; putting their minds in tight boxes with no
chink for Nature to creep in. If they first find knowledge by their
young life-love, afterwards, they will perhaps give up their life-love
to gain it."

Roy could not follow all that; but the music of the words, matched with
the music of his mother's voice, convinced him that her victory over
horrid interfering Aunt Jane was complete. And it was comforting to know
that his father agreed about not putting their minds in tight boxes. For
Aunt Jane's drastic prescription alarmed him. Of course school would
have to come some day; but his was not the temperament that hankers for
it at an early age. As to a moral backbone--whatever sort of an
affliction that might be--if it meant growing up ugly and
'disagreeable,' like Aunt Jane or the Aunt Jane cousins, he fervently
hoped he would never have one--or Tara either....

But on this particular morning he feared no manner of bogey--not even
school or a moral backbone--because the bluebells were alight under his
beeches--hundreds and hundreds of them--and 'really truly' summer had
come back at last!

Roy knew it the moment he sprang out of bed and stood barefoot on the
warm patch of carpet near the window, stretching his slim shapely body,
instinctively responsive to the sun's caress. No less instinctive was
his profound conviction that nothing possibly could go wrong on a day
like this.

In the first place it meant lessons under their favourite tree. In the
second, it was history and poetry day; and Roy's delight in both made
them hardly seem lessons at all. He thought it very clever of his
mother, having them together. The depth of her wisdom he did not yet
discern. She allowed them within reason, to choose their own poems: and
Roy, exploring her bookcase, had lighted on Shelley's 'Cloud'--the
musical flow of words, the more entrancing because only half understood.
He had straightway learnt the first three verses for a surprise. He
crooned them now, his head flung back a little, his gaze intent on a
gossamer film that floated just above the pine tops--'still as a
brooding dove.'...

Standing there, in fu