"Look in the dictionary" when you found a scrumptious new
word and wanted to hear all about it. The dictionary, indeed! Roy
privately regarded it as one of the many mean evasions to which
grown-ups were addicted.

His ripe experience on the subject was gleaned partly from neighbouring
families, partly from infrequent visits to "Aunt Jane"--whom he hated
with a deep unreasoned hate--and "Uncle George," who had a kind, stupid
face, but anyhow tried to be funny and made futile bids for favour with
pen-knives and half-crowns. Possibly it was these uncongenial visits
that quickened in him very early the consciousness that his own
beautiful home was, in some special way, different from other boys'
homes, and his mother--in a still more special way--different from other
boys' mothers....

And that proud conviction was no mere myth born of his young adoration.
In all the County, perhaps in all the Kingdom, there could be found no
mother in the least like Lilamani Sinclair, descendant of Rajput chiefs
and wife of an English Baronet, who, in the face of formidable barriers,
had dared to accept all risks and follow the promptings of his heart.
One of these days there would dawn on Roy the knowledge that he was the
child of a unique romance, of a mutual love and courage that had run the
gauntlet of prejudices and antagonisms, of fightings without and fears
within; yet, in the end, had triumphed as they triumph who will not
admit defeat. All this initial blending of ecstasy and pain, of
spiritual striving and mastery, had gone to the making of Roy, who in
the fulness of time would realise--perhaps with pride, perhaps with
secret trouble and misgiving--the high and complex heritage that was
his.

* * * * *

Meanwhile he only knew that he was fearfully happy, especially in summer
time; that his father--who had smiling eyes and loved messing with
paints like a boy--was kinder than anyone else's, so long as you didn't
tell bad fibs or meddle with his brushes; that his idolised mother, in
her soft coloured silks and saris, her bangles and silver shoes, was the
"very most beautiful" being in the whole world. And Roy's response to
the appeal of beauty was abnormally quick and keen. It could hardly be
otherwise with the son of these two. He loved, with a fervour beyond his
years, the clear pale oval of his mother's face; the coils of her dark
hair, seen always through a film of softest muslin--moon-yellow