ed a snileybob.'
And when they skipped and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob
going down the little boy's 'red lane,' his eyes would twinkle. Emerging
from the fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into
the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick
walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon avoided this,
which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.
Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait
which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at
the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since
yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when 'his little sweet'
had got over the upset which had followed on her eating a tomato at
lunch--her little arrangements were very delicate. Now that Jolly had
gone to school--his first term--Holly was with him nearly all day long,
and he missed her badly. He felt that pain too, which often bothered him
now, a little dragging at his left side. He looked back up the hill.
Really, poor young Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house;
he would have done very well for himself if he had lived! And where was
he now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of his
tragic love affair. Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused in the
general? Who could say? That dog was getting his legs muddy! And he
moved towards the coppice. There had been the most delightful lot of
bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little patches of
sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun. He passed the
cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and pursued a path into
the thick of the saplings, making for one of the bluebell plots.
Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a low growl. Old Jolyon
stirred him with his foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where
there was no room to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of
his woolly back. Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's
stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old
Jolyon also felt something move along his spine. And then the path
turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting. Her
face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned. Powers
above! The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman