'What are you drawing, Tommy?'

'Haggans and Hoons,' said a dreamy voice, the voice of one absorbed.

'I forget'--said Nelly gravely--'which are the good ones?'

'The Hoons are good. The Haggans are awfully wicked!' said the child,
slashing away at his drawing with bold vindictive strokes.

'Are you drawing a Haggan, Tommy?'

'Yes.'

He held up a monster, half griffin, half crocodile, for her to see, and
she heartily admired it.

'Where do the Haggans live, Tommy?'

'In Jupe,' said the child, again drawing busily.

'You mean Jupiter?'

'I _don't_!' said Tommy reproachfully, 'I said Jupe, and I mean Jupe.
Perhaps'--he conceded, courteously--'I may have got the idea from that
other place. But it's quite different. You do believe it's quite
different--don't you?'

'Certainly,' said Nelly.

'I'm glad of that--because--well, because I can't be friends with people
that say it isn't different. You do see that, don't you?'

Nelly assured him she perfectly understood, and then Tommy rolled over
on his back, and staring at the sky, began to talk in mysterious tones
of 'Jupe,' and the beings that lived in it, Haggans, and Hoons, lions
and bears, and white mice. His voice grew dreamier and dreamier. Nelly
thought he was asleep, and she suddenly found herself looking at the
little figure on the grass with a passionate hunger. If such a living
creature belonged to her--to call her its very own--to cling to her with
its dear chubby hands!

She bent forward, her eyes wet, above the unconscious Tommy. But a step
on the road startled her, and raising her head she saw 'Old Father
Time,' with scythe on shoulder, leaning on the little gate which led
from the strip of garden to the road, and looking at her with the
expression which implied a sarcastic view of things in general, and
especially of 'gentlefolk.' But he was favourably inclined to Mrs.
Sarratt, and when Nelly invited him in, he obeyed her, and grounding his
scythe, as though it had been a gun, he stood leaning upon it,
indulgently listening while she congratulated him on a strange incident
which, as she knew from Hester, had lately occurred to him.

A fortnight before, the old man had received a letter from the captain
of his son's company in France sympathetically announcing to him the
death in hospital of his eldest son, from severe wounds received in a
raid, and assuring him he might feel complete confidence 'that
everything that could be done for your po