ther wars, about which he had been reading of late in a big
History of Europe which had been his grandfather's. He altered them to
suit his genius, and fought them all over the floor in his day nursery,
so that nobody could come in, for fearing of disturbing Gustavus
Adolphus, King of Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians. Because
of the sound of the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians,
and finding there were so few battles in which they were successful
he had to invent them in his games. His favourite generals were
Prince Eugene, the Archduke Charles and Wallenstein. Tilly and Mack
("music-hall turns" he heard his father call them one day, whatever that
might mean) one really could not love very much, Austrian though they
were. For euphonic reasons, too, he doted on Turenne.

This phase, which caused his parents anxiety, because it kept him
indoors when he ought to have been out, lasted through May and half of
June, till his father killed it by bringing home to him Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn. When he read those books something happened in him,
and he went out of doors again in passionate quest of a river. There
being none on the premises at Robin Hill, he had to make one out of
the pond, which fortunately had water lilies, dragonflies, gnats,
bullrushes, and three small willow trees. On this pond, after his father
and Garratt had ascertained by sounding that it had a reliable bottom
and was nowhere more than two feet deep, he was allowed a little
collapsible canoe, in which he spent hours and hours paddling, and lying
down out of sight of Indian Joe and other enemies. On the shore of the
pond, too, he built himself a wigwam about four feet square, of old
biscuit tins, roofed in by boughs. In this he would make little fires,
and cook the birds he had not shot with his gun, hunting in the coppice
and fields, or the fish he did not catch in the pond because there were
none. This occupied the rest of June and that July, when his father
and mother were away in Ireland. He led a lonely life of "make believe"
during those five weeks of summer weather, with gun, wigwam, water and
canoe; and, however hard his active little brain tried to keep the
sense of beauty away, she did creep in on him for a second now and then,
perching on the wing of a dragon-fly, glistening on the water lilies, or
brushing his eyes with her blue as he Jay on his back in ambush.

"Auntie" June, who had been left in charge, had