ention with an easy modesty born of long practice, and made off for
the front gate. Selina, who had been keeping her eye upon him, thought
he was going down to the pond to catch frogs, a joy they had planned to
share together, and made after him. But Harold, though he heard her
footsteps, continued sternly on his high mission, without even looking
back; and Selina was left to wander disconsolately among flower-beds
that had lost--for her--all scent and colour. I saw it all, and,
although cold reason approved our line of action, instinct told me we
were brutes.

Harold reached the town--so he recounted afterwards--in record time,
having run most of the way for fear the tea-things, which had reposed
six months in the window, should be snapped up by some other
conscience-stricken lacerator of a sister's feelings; and it seemed
hardly credible to find them still there, and their owner willing to
part with them for the price marked on the ticket. He paid his money
down at once, that there should be no drawing back from the bargain; and
then, as the things had to be taken out of the window and packed, and
the afternoon was yet young, he thought he might treat himself to a
taste of urban joys and the _vie de Boheme_. Shops came first, of
course, and he flattened his nose successively against the window with
the indiarubber balls in it, and the clock-work locomotive; and against
the barber's window, with wigs on blocks, reminding him of uncles, and
shaving-cream that looked so good to eat; and the grocer's window,
displaying more currants than the whole British population could
possibly consume without a special effort; and the window of the bank,
wherein gold was thought so little of that it was dealt about in
shovels. Next there was the market-place, with all its clamorous joys;
and when a runaway calf came down the street like a cannon-ball, Harold
felt that he had not lived in vain. The whole place was so brimful of
excitement that he had quite forgotten the why and the wherefore of his
being there, when a sight of the church clock recalled him to his better
self, and sent him flying out of the town, as he realised he had only
just time enough left to get back in. If he were after his appointed
hour, he would not only miss his high triumph, but probably would be
detected as a transgressor of bounds--a crime before which a private
opinion on multiplication sank to nothingness. So he jogged along on his
homeward way, thinking