nurslings, left the very day after his birthday in floods of tears “to be married”— of all things —“to a man.” Little Jon,from whom it had been kept, was inconsolable for an afternoon. It ought not to have been kept from him! Two large boxes ofsoldiers and some artillery, together with The Young Buglers, which had been among his birthday presents, cooperated withhis grief in a sort of conversion, and instead of seeking adventures in person and risking his own life, he began to playimaginative games, in which he risked the lives of countless tin soldiers, marbles, stones and beans. Of these forms of“chair a canon” he made collections, and, using them alternately, fought the Peninsular, the Seven Years, the Thirty Years,and other wars, about which he had been reading of late in a big History of Europe which had been his grandfather’s. Healtered them to suit his genius, and fought them all over the floor in his day nursery, so that nobody could come in, forfearing of disturbing Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians. Because of the sound of theword he was passionately addicted to the Austrians, and finding there were so few battles in which they were successful hehad to invent them in his games. His favourite generals were Prince Eugene, the Archduke Charles and Wallenstein. Tilly andMack (“music-hall turns” he heard his father call them one day, whatever that might mean) one really could not love verymuch, Austrian though they were. For euphonic reasons, too, he doted on Turenne.

This phase, which caused his parents anxiety, because it kept him indoors when he ought to have been out, lasted throughMay and half of June, till his father killed it by bringing home to him Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. When he read thosebooks something happened in him, and he went out of doors again in passionate quest of a river. There being none on thepremises at Robin Hill, he had to make one out of the pond, which fortunately had water lilies, dragonflies, gnats,