r the floor in his day nursery, so that
nobody could come in, for fearing of disturbing Gustavus Adolphus, King
of Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians. Because of the sound of
the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians, and finding there
were so few battles in which they were successful he had to invent them
in his games. His favourite generals were Prince Eugene, the Archduke
Charles and Wallenstein. Tilly and Mack ("music-hall turns" he heard his
father call them one day, whatever that might mean) one really could not
love very much, Austrian though they were. For euphonic reasons, too, he
doted on Turenne.

This phase, which caused his parents anxiety, because it kept him indoors
when he ought to have been out, lasted through May and half of June, till
his father killed it by bringing home to him Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry
Finn. When he read those books something happened in him, and he went
out of doors again in passionate quest of a river. There being none on
the premises at Robin Hill, he had to make one out of the pond, which
fortunately had water lilies, dragonflies, gnats, bullrushes, and three
small willow trees. On this pond, after his father and Garratt had
ascertained by sounding that it had a reliable bottom and was nowhere
more than two feet deep, he was allowed a little collapsible canoe, in
which he spent hours and hours paddling, and lying down out of sight of
Indian Joe and other enemies. On the shore of the pond, too, he built
himself a wigwam about four feet square, of old biscuit tins, roofed in
by boughs. In this he would make little fires, and cook the birds he had
not shot with his gun, hunting in the coppice and fields, or the fish he
did not catch in the pond because there were none. This occupied the
rest of June and that July, when his father and mother were away in
Ireland. He led a lonely life of "make believe" during those five weeks
of summer weather, with gun, wigwam, water and canoe; and, however hard
his active little brain tried to keep the sense of beauty away, she did
creep in on him for a second now and then, perching on the wing of a
dragon-fly, glistening on the water lilies, or brushing his eyes with her
blue as he Jay on his back in ambush.

"Auntie" June, who had been left in charge, had a "grown-up" in the
house, with a cough and a large piece of putty which he was making into a
face; so she hardly ever came down to see him in the pond. Once, how