"Oh, Golly! No go!"

"Try! I used to at your age."

"Did you? Mother says 'try' too; but I'm so rotten. Have you any of
yours for me to see?"

"My dear," Holly murmured, "I've been married nineteen years. I only
wrote verses when I wanted to be."

"Oh!" said Jon, and turned over on his face: the one cheek she could see
was a charming colour. Was Jon "touched in the wind," then, as Val would
have called it? Already? But, if so, all the better, he would take no
notice of young Fleur. Besides, on Monday he would begin his farming.
And she smiled. Was it Burns who followed the plough, or only Piers
Plowman? Nearly every young man and most young women seemed to be poets
now, judging from the number of their books she had read out in South
Africa, importing them from Hatchus and Bumphards; and quite good--oh!
quite; much better than she had been herself! But then poetry had only
really come in since her day--with motor-cars. Another long talk after
dinner over a wood fire in the low hall, and there seemed little left to
know about Jon except anything of real importance. Holly parted from him
at his bedroom door, having seen twice over that he had everything, with
the conviction that she would love him, and Val would like him. He
was eager, but did not gush; he was a splendid listener, sympathetic,
reticent about himself. He evidently loved their father, and adored his
mother. He liked riding, rowing, and fencing better than games. He saved
moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but put them out of doors
in screws of paper sooner than kill them. In a word, he was amiable. She
went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer horribly if anybody hurt
him; but who would hurt him?

Jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of paper and
a pencil, writing his first "real poem" by the light of a candle because
there was not enough moon to see by, only enough to make the night seem
fluttery and as if engraved on silver. Just the night for Fleur to walk,
and turn her eyes, and lead on-over the hills and far away. And Jon,
deeply furrowed in his ingenuous brow, made marks on the paper and
rubbed them out and wrote them in again, and did all that was necessary
for the completion of a work of art; and he had a feeling such as the
winds of Spring must have, trying their first songs among the coming
blossom. Jon was one of those boys (not many) in whom a home-trained
love of beauty had survived school life. He ha