endous intellect had been
completely gutted by fire and soaked in water. The boy Rupert, then aged
two years and a fortnight, exercised a fiercely dominant influence upon
the ground charts, plans, etc., for the new palatial residence which was
soon to rear its mighty pillars and porticos not so very far from the
ivy-grown cottage which in the past had on several occasions sheltered
the wistful personality of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The inherent passion for beauty thus crystallized in the mellowing
virility of the boy's finely wrought temperament went far toward
satisfying his deep-rooted and well-nigh insatiable yearning for city
splendour.

In the strange juxtaposition to his unequalled comprehension of national
political problems was a surprising streak of frank insouciance and
happy-hearted boyishness, which frequently expressed itself in the open
defiance of authority in the shape of his great-aunt Maud, his slightly
dropsical mother (nee Sheila Soddle) and his two resident cousins,
Alexander Chaffinch and Dorothy Bonk, who at moments were entirely
unable even to bend the finely tempered steel of his inflexible will,
therefore on the one occasion when his decisive plans were unexpectedly
frustrated an impression was photographed with extraordinary bas-relief
upon his mind of the omnipotence of his quite infirm Grandfather
Soddle--and of power as a concrete argument. The incident being the
removal of a half-sucked tin soldier from his hand by the subtle device
of striking his knuckles sharply with the fire tongs. Then and always
the boy insisted that this method of reprimand justified his apparent
submission; the emptiness of his hand and the smarting of his knuckles
indubitably marking probably the only occasion in his life when all his
strategical points abruptly turned inward. Contrary to the suppositions
of impartial psychologists, far from breeding the slightest resentment
against old Mr. Soddle, this occurrence inspired an active dislike to
great-aunt Maud who had indulged in her ever-irritating laugh at his
expense. He expressed his natural anger by filling her handkerchief-case
with bacon fat, and other boyish revenges of a like nature.

A child whose soaring entity had been nourished and over tended in such
an exotic forcing house of accumulated endeavour and democratic
emancipation must indubitably have been the first to realise that the
austerity of his massive intellect was within measurable distance of