ked!--I
began to feel dimly how great was the gulf already yawning betwixt us.
Fortunately I was not old enough to realise, further, that here on this
little platform the old order lay at its last gasp, and that Edward
might come back to us, but it would not be the Edward of yore, nor could
things ever be the same again.

When the train steamed up at last, we all boarded it impetuously with
the view of selecting the one peerless carriage to which Edward might be
intrusted with the greatest comfort and honour; and as each one found
the ideal compartment at the same moment, and vociferously maintained
its merits, he stood some chance for a time of being left behind. A
porter settled the matter by heaving him through the nearest door; and
as the train moved off, Edward's head was thrust out of the window,
wearing on it an unmistakable first-quality grin that he had been saving
up somewhere for the supreme moment. Very small and white his face
looked, on the long side of the retreating train. But the grin was
visible, undeniable, stoutly maintained; till a curve swept him from our
sight, and he was borne away in the dying rumble, out of our placid
backwater, out into the busy world of rubs and knocks and competition,
out into the New Life.

[Illustration: '_Finally we found ourselves sitting silent on an
upturned wheelbarrow_']

When a crab has lost a leg, his gait is still more awkward than his
wont, till Time and healing Nature make him _totus teres atque rotundus_
once more. We straggled back from the station disjointedly; Harold, who
was very silent, sticking close to me, his last slender prop, while the
girls in front, their heads together, were already reckoning up the
weeks to the holidays. Home at last, Harold suggested one or two
occupations of a spicy and contraband flavour, but though we did our
manful best there was no knocking any interest out of them. Then I
suggested others, with the same want of success. Finally we found
ourselves sitting silent on an upturned wheelbarrow, our chins on our
fists, staring haggardly into the raw new conditions of our changed
life, the ruins of a past behind our backs.

And all the while Selina and Charlotte were busy stuffing Edward's
rabbits with unwonted forage, bilious and green; polishing up the cage
of his mice till the occupants raved and swore like householders in
spring-time; and collecting materials for new bows and arrows, whips,
boats, guns, and four-in-hand ha