hining with excitement before
an unopened parcel.

One day Sabre protested. "But look here, Fargus. Look here, how are you
going to know when it comes? It might be anything. You don't know what
it is and--well, you won't know, will you?"

The little man said, "I believe I shall, Sabre. I've 'worked back' for
years, as far as ever my memory will carry, and everything has been so
exactly keyed that I'm convinced I'm in the way of my purpose. I believe
you can feel it if you've waited for it like that. I believe you're
asked 'Ready?' and I want to say, whatever it is, 'Aye, Ready!'"

Mysterious and awful suggestion, Sabre thought. To believe yourself at
any moment to be touched as by a finger and asked "Ready?" "Aye, Ready!"

Mysterious and awful intimacy with God!

IV

And then there were the Perches--"Young Perch and that everlasting old
mother of his", as Mabel called them.

Sabre always spoke of them as "Young Rod, Pole or Perch" and "Old Mrs.
Rod, Pole or Perth." This was out of what Mabel called his childish and
incomprehensible habit of giving nicknames,--High Jinks and Low Jinks
the outstanding and never-forgiven example of it. "Whatever's the joke
of it?" she demanded, when one day she found Sabre speaking of Major
Millet, another neighbour and a great friend of hers, as "Old Hopscotch
Millet."

"Whatever's the joke of it? He doesn't play hopscotch."

"No, but he bounds about," Sabre explained. "You know the way he bounds
about, Mabel. He's about ninety--"

"I'm sure he isn't, nor fifty."

"Well, anyway, he's past his first youth, but he's always bounding about
to show how agile he is. He's always calling out 'Ri--te _O_!' and
jumping to do a thing when there's no need to jump. Hopscotch. What can
you call him but Hopscotch?"

"But why call him _anything_?" Mabel said. "His name's Millet."

Her annoyance caused her voice to squeak. "Why call him _anything_?"

Sabre laughed. "Well, you know how a ridiculous thing like that comes
into your head and you can't get rid of it. You know the way."

Mabel declared she was sure she did not know the way. "They don't come
into _my_ head. Look at the Perches--not that I care what name you call
them. Rod, Pole or Perch! What's the sense of it? What does it _mean_?"

Sabre said it didn't mean anything. "You just get some one called Perch
and then you can't help thinking of that absurd thing rod, pole or
perch. It just comes."

"I call it childish and rude,