eldest born; else, life would have been all strife and carnage,
and the Age of Acorns have displaced our hard-won civilisation.

This little affair concluded with satisfaction to all parties
concerned, we rambled along the road, picking up the defaulting

Harold by the way, muffinless now and in his right and social
mind.

"What would you do?" asked Charlotte presently,--the book of the
moment always dominating her thoughts until it was sucked dry and

cast aside,--"what would you do if you saw two lions in the road,
one on each side, and you didn't know if they was loose or if

they was chained up?"
"Do?" shouted Edward, valiantly, "I should--I should--I should--"

His boastful accents died away into a mumble: "Dunno what I
should do."

"Shouldn't do anything," I observed after consideration; and
really it would be difficult to arrive at a wiser conclusion.

"If it came to DOING," remarked Harold, reflectively, "the
lions would do all the doing there was to do, wouldn't they?"

"But if they was GOOD lions," rejoined Charlotte, "they would
do as they would be done by."

"Ah, but how are you to know a good lion from a bad one?" said
Edward. "The books don't tell you at all, and the lions ain't

marked any different."
"Why, there aren't any good lions," said Harold, hastily.

"Oh yes, there are, heaps and heaps," contradicted Edward.
"Nearly all the lions in the story-books are good lions. There

was Androcles' lion, and St. Jerome's lion, and--and--the Lion
and the Unicorn--"

"He beat the Unicorn," observed Harold, dubiously, "all round the
town."

"That PROVES he was a good lion," cried Edwards triumphantly.
"But the question is, how are you to tell 'em when you see 'em?"

"_I_ should ask Martha," said Harold of the simple creed.
Edward snorted contemptuously" target="_blank" title="ad.蔑视地；傲慢地">contemptuously, then turned to Charlotte. "Look

here," he said; "let's play at lions, anyhow, and I'll run on to
that corner and be a lion,--I'll be two lions, one on each side

of the road,--and you'll come along, and you won't know whether
I'm chained up or not, and that'll be the fun!"

"No, thank you," said Charlotte, firmly; "you'll be chained up
till I'm quite close to you, and then you'll be loose, and you'll

tear me in pieces, and make my frock all dirty, and p'raps you'll
hurt me as well. _I_ know your lions!"

"No, I won't; I swear I won't," protested Edward. "I'll be quite
a new lion this time,--something you can't even imagine." And he

raced off to his post. Charlotte hesitated; then she went
timidly on, at each step growing less Charlotte, the mummer of a

minute, and more the anxious Pilgrim of all time. The lion's
wrath waxed terrible at her approach; his roaring filled the

startled air. I waited until they were both thoroughly absorbed,
and then I slipped through the hedge out of the trodden highway,

into the vacantmeadow spaces. It was not that I was unsociable,
nor that I knew Edward's lions to the point of satiety; but the

passion and the call of the divine morning were high in my blood.
Earth to earth! That was the frank note, the joyous summons of

the day; and they could not but jar and seem artificial, these
human discussions and pretences, when boon Nature, reticent no

more, was singing that full-throated song of hers that thrills
and claims control of every fibre. The air was wine; the moist

earth-smell, wine; the lark's song, the wafts from the cow-shed
at top of the field, the pant and smoke of a distant train,--all

were wine,--or song, was it? or odour, this unity they all
blended into? I had no words then to describe it, that earth-

effluence of which I was so conscious; nor, indeed, have I found
words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the

squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a
stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I

somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,--
irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary,

unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a
genuineutterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting

and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it with
scorn, Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognised and

accepted it without a flicker of dissent.
All the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from

where he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide
to-day," he seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it

in the track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belatedtruant, you
have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale,

expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the
trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster,

relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the
best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one,

the lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and
unprincipled, and obey no law." And for me, I was ready enough

to fall in with the fellow's humour; was not this a whole
holiday? So we sheered off together, arm-in-arm, so to

speak; and with fullest confidence I took the jigging, thwartwise
course my chainless pilot laid for me.

A whimsical comrade I found him, ere he had done with me. Was it
in jest, or with some serious purpose of his own, that he brought

me plump upon a pair of lovers, silent, face to face o'er a
discreet unwinking stile? As a rule this sort of thing struck me

as the most pitifultomfoolery. Two calves rubbing noses through
a gate were natural and right and within the order of things; but

that human beings, with salient interests and active pursuits
beckoning them on from every side, could thus--! Well, it was a

thing to hurry past, shamed of face, and think on no more. But
this morning everything I met seemed to be accounted for and set

in tune by that same magical touch in the air; and it was with a
certain surprise that I found myself regarding these fatuous ones

with kindliness instead of contempt, as I rambled by, unheeded of
them. There was indeed some reconciling influence abroad, which

could bring the like antics into harmony with bud and growth and
the frolic air.

A puff on the right cheek from my wilful companion sent me off at
a fresh angle, and presently I came in sight of the village

church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth
the vestry window projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for

foothold, with larceny--not to say sacrilege--in their every
wriggle: a godless sight for a supporter of the Establishment.

Though the rest was hidden, I knew the legs well enough; they
were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless

bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, too, I could
easily guess at that; it came from the Vicar's store of biscuits,

kept (as I knew) in a cupboard along with his official trappings.
For a moment I hesitated; then I passed on my way. I protest I

was not on Bill's side; but then, neither was I on the Vicar's,
and there was something in this immoral morning which seemed to

say that perhaps, after all, Bill had as much right to the
biscuits as the Vicar, and would certainly enjoy them better; and

anyhow it was a disputable point, and no business of mine.
Nature, who had accepted me for ally, cared little who had the

world's biscuits, and assuredly was not going to let any
friend of hers waste his time in playing policeman for

Society.
He was tugging at me anew, my insistent guide; and I felt sure,

as I rambled off in his wake, that he had more holiday matter to
show me. And so, indeed, he had; and all of it was to the same

lawless tune. Like a black pirate flag on the blue ocean of air,
a hawk hung ominous; then, plummet-wise, dropped to the hedgerow,