nquired. "I experience
a difficulty in following your interesting observation."

"Hi-hi-hi!" repeated the boy. "I am Pegasus; I do not understand your
language. I will find Bellerophon, and send him to you."

He retired a few paces, and gravely removed his tail, then came back,
beaming with cheerfulness, every inch a boy.

"What was it you wanted, Guardian?" he cried. "I was a horse then, you
see, so I really couldn't; please excuse me!"

"I wanted a hockey-stick, sir!" said the Colonel, with some severity.
"And it is my opinion that two-legged horses would better keep their
wits about them.

"A game of hockey, Raymond," here he turned to his brother, "will warm
your blood, and bring back your wits. 'Polo,' they call it nowadays;
parcel of fools! It's my belief that nine-tenths of the human race
to-day don't know what they are talking about. Don't understand their
own language, sir! Polo, indeed! Ha! here are the sticks. Now we shall
see about this 'old fellow' business!"

Indeed, it was a marvellous thing to see the agility of the Colonel in
his favourite sport. He swept here and there, he made the most
astonishing hits, he hooked the ball from under the very noses of the
amazed and delighted boys. Raymond Ferrers, too, after watching the
sport for a few minutes, yielded to the spirit of the hour, and was soon
cutting away with the best of them.

A pleasant sight was Jimmy's Pond, indeed! The pond itself was a thing
of beauty, a disk of crystal dropped down in a hollow of dark woods;
dropped into the middle of this again, a tiny islet, with a group of
slender firs, lovely to behold. And dotted here and there on the shining
gray-silver of the ice, these happy players, young and old, darted
hither and thither, filled with the joy of the hour and the pleasure of
each other's presence.

It might have been interesting, could one have stood invisible on the
bank, to hear the fragments of talk, as the different groups swept by in
the chase. They seemed to drop naturally into couples, without any
special prearrangement. First came the two brothers, intent on the
ball, bent on keeping it ahead of them, and unconscious of anything
else.

"Now, sir!" the Colonel would cry. "Let me see you beat that! Hi! There
she--no! she doesn't! Ha! ha! Beat you that time, sir!

"'Poor old Raymound,
Fell into a hay-mound!'

"Do you remember that, sir? Only rhyme I ever made in my life; proud as
a peacock I wa