st. It was a problem,
but Boase was less worried by it than the young father.

"Children often seem to have a natural affinity for the false instead of
the true," he said, "and they grow out of it when they begin to see more
plainly. The great thing is not to frighten him so that he doesn't dare
admit it when he's lied."

Ishmael accepted the Parson's advice thankfully; besides having a
distaste for the idea of corporal punishment, he could hardly have borne
to hurt the eager, bright creature who always hung about him so
confidingly when in the mood, but who had no compunction in not going
near him for days, except to say good-morning and good-night, when in
one of his elusive fits.

Vassie, who had no children of her own, adored her little nephew, and
was very proud of him, so one way and another it was not remarkable that
Nicky was in a fair way to be spoilt. Already he was too much aware of
his own charm, of the fact that to these kind but rather stupid people,
whom it was so easy to deceive, he was wonderful. He seemed to be a
clean-natured boy, but what he did and did not know it would have been
hard to say, as, added to a certain secretiveness which in different
ways both Phoebe and Ishmael possessed, there was in him a strain of
elusiveness; you could not coerce him to a definiteness he did not wish
any more than you could catch a butterfly by stabbing at it in air with
a needle.

Ishmael would sometimes observe him quietly when the boy was unaware of
scrutiny, and always the mere sight of the round close-cropped head, the
delicious idle busyness of childhood, the air at once of import and
carelessness it holds, disarmed and captured him. It seemed to him to be
his own younger self he was watching, and the pathos of unconscious
youth, slipping, slipping, imperceptibly but swiftly, struck at his
heart. How little while ago it seemed since he had been like Nicky,
intent on profound plans, busy in a small but vivid sphere which
focussed in self, which swayed and expanded and grew incredibly bright
or dark beyond hope at such slight happenings! Looking back on his own
childhood, drawing on it for greater comprehension of his Nicky, he
never could connect it up with his present self, it always seemed to him
a different Ishmael that he saw, who had nothing to do with the one he
knew nowadays. He saw his own figure, small and alive, as he might have
looked at some quite other person into whose nature he had been gif