well.

The new book, of course, was "The Wandering Child." I wonder whether
any of you read it now? Your fathers and mothers thought a great deal
of that slim volume, but it would make little stir in an age in which
all the authors are trying who can say "damn" loudest. It is but a
reverie about a child who is lost, and his parents' search for him in
terror of what may have befallen. But they find him in a wood singing
joyfully to himself because he is free; and he fears to be caged
again, so runs farther from them into the wood, and is running still,
singing to himself because he is free, free, free. That is really all,
but T. Sandys knew how to tell it. The moment he conceived the idea
(we have seen him speaking of it to the doctor), he knew that it was
the idea for him. He forgot at once that he did not really care for
children. He said reverently to himself, "I can pull it off," and, as
was always the way with him, the better he pulled it off the more he
seemed to love them.

"It is myself who is writing at last, Grizel," he said, as he read it
to her.

She thought (and you can guess whether she was right) that it was the
book he loved rather than the children. She thought (and you can guess
again) that it was not his ideas about children that had got into the
book, but hers. But she did not say so; she said it was the sweetest
of his books to her.

I have heard of another reading he gave. This was after the
publication of the book. He had gone into Corp's house one Sunday, and
Gavinia was there reading the work to her lord and master, while
little Corp disported on the floor. She read as if all the words meant
the same thing, and it was more than Tommy could endure. He read for
her, and his eyes grew moist as he read, for it was the most exquisite
of his chapters about the lost child. You would have said that no one
loved children quite so much as T. Sandys. But little Corp would not
keep quiet, and suddenly Tommy jumped up and boxed his ears. He then
proceeded with the reading, while Gavinia glowered and Corp senior
scratched his head.

On the way home he saw what had happened, and laughed at the humour of
it, then grew depressed, then laughed recklessly. "Is it Sentimental
Tommy still?" he said to himself, with a groan. Seldom a week passed
without his being reminded in some such sudden way that it was
Sentimental Tommy still. "But she shall never know!" he vowed, and he
continued to be half a hero.

His