er exactly understanding the
use and object of the other members, until one enters, some Christmas
day or other holiday, and, surveying the deserted armchairs, the
untenanted sofas, the barren hat-pegs, realizes, with depression, that
those other fellows had their allotted functions, after all. Where
was old Jerry? Where were Eugenie, Rosa, Sophy, Esmeralda? We had long
drifted apart, it was true, we spoke but rarely; perhaps, absorbed in
new ambitions, new achievements, I had even come to look down on these
conservative, unprogressive members who were so clearly content to
remain simply what they were. And now that their corners were unfilled,
their chairs unoccupied--well, my eyes were opened and I wanted 'em
back!

However, it was no business of mine. If grievances were the question,
I hadn't a leg to stand upon. Though my catapults were officially
confiscated, I knew the drawer in which they were incarcerated, and
where the key of it was hidden, and I could make life a burden, if I
chose, to every living thing within a square-mile radius, so long as
the catapult was restored to its drawer in due and decent time. But
I wondered how the others were taking it. The edict hit them more
severely. They should have my moral countenance at any rate, if not
more, in any protest or countermine they might be planning. And, indeed,
something seemed possible, from the dogged, sullen air with which the
two of them had trotted off in the direction of the raspberry-canes.
Certain spots always had their insensible attraction for certain
moods. In love, one sought the orchard. Weary of discipline, sick of
convention, impassioned for the road, the mining-camp, the land across
the border, one made for the big meadow. Mutinous, sulky, charged
with plots and conspiracies, one always got behind the shelter of the
raspberry-canes.

*****

"You can come too if you like," said Harold, in a subdued sort of way,
as soon as he was aware that I was sitting up in bed watching him. "We
didn't think you'd care, 'cos you've got to catapults. But we're goin'
to do what we've settled to do, so it's no good sayin' we hadn't ought
and that sort of thing, 'cos we're goin' to!"

The day had passed in an ominous peacefulness. Charlotte and Harold had
kept out of my way, as well as out of everybody else's, in a purposeful
manner that ought to have bred suspicion. In the evening we had read
books, or fitfully drawn ships and battles on fly-leaves, apart,