r
and watched rabbits feeding in a glade, and almost got a squirrel. It
was play seasoned with plentiful disputing between me and young Garvell,
for each firmly insisted upon the leading roles, and only my wider
reading--I had read ten stories to his one--gave me the ascendency
over him. Also I scored over him by knowing how to find the eagle in a
bracken stem. And somehow--I don't remember what led to it at all--I and
Beatrice, two hot and ruffled creatures, crept in among the tall bracken
and hid from him. The great fronds rose above us, five feet or more, and
as I had learnt how to wriggle through that undergrowth with the minimum
of betrayal by tossing greenery above, I led the way. The ground under
bracken is beautifully clear and faintly scented in warm weather; the
stems come up black and then green; if you crawl flat, it is a tropical
forest in miniature. I led the way and Beatrice crawled behind, and then
as the green of the further glade opened before us, stopped. She crawled
up to me, her hot little face came close to mine; once more she looked
and breathed close to me, and suddenly she flung her arm about my neck
and dragged me to earth beside her, and kissed me and kissed me
again. We kissed, we embraced and kissed again, all without a word; we
desisted, we stared and hesitated--then in a suddenly damped mood and a
little perplexed at ourselves, crawled out, to be presently run down and
caught in the tamest way by Archie.

That comes back very clearly to me, and other vague memories--I know
old Hall and his gun, out shooting at jackdaws, came into our common
experiences, but I don't remember how; and then at last, abruptly, our
fight in the Warren stands out. The Warren, like most places in England
that have that name, was not particularly a warren, it was a long slope
of thorns and beeches through which a path ran, and made an alternative
route to the downhill carriage road between Bladesover and Ropedean. I
don't know how we three got there, but I have an uncertain fancy it was
connected with a visit paid by the governess to the Ropedean vicarage
people. But suddenly Archie and I, in discussing a game, fell into a
dispute for Beatrice. I had made him the fairest offer: I was to be a
Spanish nobleman, she was to be my wife, and he was to be a tribe of
Indians trying to carry her off. It seems to me a fairly attractive
offer to a boy to be a whole tribe of Indians with a chance of such a
booty. But Archie s