od together in the shelter of the dell. The green bank at the
entrance hid the road and the world, and now, as in spring, they could
see nothing but snow-white ramparts and the evergreen foliage of the
firs. Only from time to time would a beech leaf flutter in from the
woods above, to comment on the waning year, and the warmth and radiance
of the sun would vanish behind a passing cloud.

About the greatcoat he did not tell them, for he could not have spoken
of it without tears.

III

Mr. Ansell, a provincial draper of moderate prosperity, ought by rights
to have been classed not with the cow, but with those phenomena that are
not really there. But his son, with pardonable illogicality, excepted
him. He never suspected that his father might be the subjective product
of a diseased imagination. From his earliest years he had taken him for
granted, as a most undeniable and lovable fact. To be born one thing and
grow up another--Ansell had accomplished this without weakening one
of the ties that bound him to his home. The rooms above the shop still
seemed as comfortable, the garden behind it as gracious, as they
had seemed fifteen years before, when he would sit behind Miss
Appleblossom's central throne, and she, like some allegorical figure,
would send the change and receipted bills spinning away from her in
little boxwood balls. At first the young man had attributed these happy
relations to his own tact. But in time he perceived that the tact was
all on the side of his father. Mr. Ansell was not merely a man of some
education; he had what no education can bring--the power of detecting
what is important. Like many fathers, he had spared no expense over his
boy,--he had borrowed money to start him at a rapacious and fashionable
private school; he had sent him to tutors; he had sent him to Cambridge.
But he knew that all this was not the important thing. The important
thing was freedom. The boy must use his education as he chose, and if he
paid his father back it would certainly not be in his own coin. So when
Stewart said, "At Cambridge, can I read for the Moral Science Tripos?"
Mr. Ansell had only replied, "This philosophy--do you say that it lies
behind everything?"

"Yes, I think so. It tries to discover what is good and true."

"Then, my boy, you had better read as much of it as you can."

And a year later: "I'd like to take up this philosophy seriously, but I
don't feel justified."

"Why not?"

"Because it