they are Nevil's and they are
the only youngsters I am likely to know well. But I'm a greedy person.
I had Nevil, Renata, the kiddies--and that delightfully odd Patricia,
and it wasn't enough for me. They were all as good as could be to me,
but I wanted to be more than an extra in someone's life, so I must
needs encumber myself with a troublesome little boy who's even more
greedy than myself, apparently."

Christopher sat with his curly head on his hands trying not to give in
to the smile that was struggling to express some undefined sense of
content which had sprung to life.

"You are a bad, silly boy to be jealous," said Aymer, watching him,
half laughing, half affectionately, "you ought to have known for
yourself, if they had been enough for me, you wouldn't be here at
all."

CHAPTER V

Two events wrote themselves indelibly on Christopher's memory in
connection with this first visit to Marden, while the one great matter
that began there and influenced his whole after life merged itself
into a general hazy sense of happiness and companionship. For it is
given to few of us even when we have reached years of discretion to
recognise those moments in our lives which are of real, supreme, and
eternal importance: moments when the great doors of experience open
slowly on silent hinges and we pass in, unconscious even that we have
crossed the threshold. But all that happens to our familiar selves,
that touches our well-known emotions, and rubs or eases the worn
grooves of existence, is heavily underscored in our recollection, and
not infrequently we take for mile-stones on the way what were but
pebbles on the road.

The two events which Christopher carried in his memory were, however,
not unimportant, for both bore on his relationship with the man who
was moulding his life. The one episode turned Vespasian's bald
statements into real emotional facts, and the other was the first
serious collision between the far-off disastrous tutelage of Marley
Sartin and the new laws of existence as propounded by Aymer Aston.

Christopher's education made vast strides during that winter. The
season proved an unusually mild one. He was out the greater part of
each day with Patricia, enduring with remarkable fortitude her
alternate contempt and despair over his ignorance of such everyday
matters as horses, guns, dogs, desert island games, and such like.
When she laughed at him for not being able to ride he shut his teeth
hard