Awakening To Let | Page 7

Buglers, which had been among his birthday presents,
cooperated with his grief in a sort of conversion, and instead of seeking
adventures in person and risking his own life, he began to play
imaginative 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. He altered them to suit his genius, and fought them all
over the floor in his day nursery, so that nobody could come in, for
fearing of disturbing Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, or treading
on an army of Austrians. Because of the sound of the word he was
passionately addicted to the Austrians, and finding there were so few
battles in which they were successful he had to invent them in his
games. His favourite generals were Prince Eugene, the Archduke
Charles and Wallenstein. Tilly and Mack ("music-hall turns" he heard
his father call them one day, whatever that might mean) one really
could not love very much, 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 through May and half
of June, till his father killed it by bringing home to him Tom Sawyer

and Huckleberry Finn. When he read those books something happened
in him, and he went out of doors again in passionate quest of a river.
There being none on the premises at Robin Hill, he had to make one
out of the pond, which fortunately had water lilies, dragonflies, gnats,
bullrushes, and three small willow trees. On this pond, after his father
and Garratt had ascertained by sounding that it had a reliable bottom
and was nowhere more than two feet deep, he was allowed a little
collapsible canoe, in which he spent hours and hours paddling, and
lying down out of sight of Indian Joe and other enemies. On the shore
of the pond, too, he built himself a wigwam about four feet square, of
old biscuit tins, roofed in by boughs. In this he would make little fires,
and cook the birds he had not shot with his gun, hunting in the coppice
and fields, or the fish he did not catch in the pond because there were
none. This occupied the rest of June and that July, when his father and
mother were away in Ireland. He led a lonely life of "make believe"
during those five weeks of summer weather, with gun, wigwam, water
and canoe; and, however hard his active little brain tried to keep the
sense of beauty away, she did creep in on him for a second now and
then, perching on the wing of a dragon-fly, glistening on the water lilies,
or brushing his eyes with her blue as he Jay on his back in ambush.
"Auntie" June, who had been left in charge, had a "grown-up" in the
house, with a cough and a large piece of putty which he was making
into a face; so she hardly ever came down to see him in the pond. Once,
however, she brought with her two other "grown-ups." Little Jon, who
happened to have painted his naked self bright blue and yellow in
stripes out of his father's water-colour box, and put some duck's
feathers in his hair, saw them coming, and--ambushed himself among
the willows. As he had foreseen, they came at once to his wigwam and
knelt down to look inside, so that with a blood-curdling yell he was
able to take the scalps of "Auntie" June and the woman "grown-up" in
an almost complete manner before they kissed him. The names of the
two grown-ups were "Auntie" Holly and "Uncle" Val, who had a brown
face and a little limp, and laughed at him terribly. He took a fancy to
"Auntie" Holly, who seemed to be a sister too; but they both went away
the same afternoon and he did not see them again. Three days before
his father and mother were to come home "Auntie" June also went off
in a great hurry, taking the "grown-up" who coughed and his piece of

putty; and Mademoiselle said: "Poor man, he was veree ill. I forbid you
to go into his room, Jon." Little Jon, who rarely did things merely
because he was told not to, refrained from going, though he was bored
and lonely. In truth the day of the pond was past, and he was filled to
the brim of his soul with restlessness and the want of