exploits. It was so pretty that,
contrary to his rule, he repeated it. I had held out my arms to him, and
first he shook his head, and then after a long pause (to frighten me),
he nodded it.

But no sooner was he in my arms than I seemed to see Mary and her
husband and Irene bearing down upon my chambers to take him from me, and
acting under an impulse I whipped him into the perambulator and was off
with it without a license down the back staircase. To the Kensington
Gardens we went; it may have been Manitoba we started for, but we
arrived at the Kensington Gardens, and it had all been so unpremeditated
and smartly carried out that I remember clapping my hand to my head in
the street, to make sure that I was wearing a hat.

I watched David to see what he thought of it, and he had not yet made
up his mind. Strange to say, I no longer felt shy. I was grown
suddenly indifferent to public comment, and my elation increased when
I discovered that I was being pursued. They drew a cordon round me near
Margot Meredith's tree, but I broke through it by a strategic movement
to the south, and was next heard of in the Baby's Walk. They held both
ends of this passage, and then thought to close on me, but I slipped
through their fingers by doubling up Bunting's Thumb into Picnic Street.
Cowering at St. Govor's Well, we saw them rush distractedly up the Hump,
and when they had crossed to the Round Pond we paraded gaily in the
Broad Walk, not feeling the tiniest bit sorry for anybody.

Here, however, it gradually came into David's eyes that, after all, I
was a strange man, and they opened wider and wider, until they were the
size of my medals, and then, with the deliberation that distinguishes
his smile, he slowly prepared to howl. I saw all his forces gathering
in his face, and I had nothing to oppose to them; it was an unarmed man
against a regiment.

Even then I did not chide him. He could not know that it was I who had
dropped the letter.

I think I must have stepped over a grateful fairy at that moment, for
who else could have reminded me so opportunely of my famous manipulation
of the eyebrows, forgotten since I was in the fifth form? I alone of
boys had been able to elevate and lower my eyebrows separately; when
the one was climbing my forehead the other descended it, like the two
buckets in the well.

Most diffidently did I call this accomplishment to my aid now, and
immediately David checked his forces and considered my