ilent, said rather suddenly: "I say, this is
wonderful! There's no fat on it at all. Gull's flight and sheep-bells--"

"Gull's flight and sheep-bells! You're a poet, my dear!"

Jon sighed.

"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 to 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 nowadays, 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
s