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It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid. It may be contended, rather, that this (somewhat minor bard) in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor.

—R. L. S.

Now that his first Aventure was an accomplished fact, and that he was writing it out for the Meeting, Paul carried about with him a kind of secret joy. At last he had found an audience, and an audience is unquestionably a very profound need of ever human heart. Nixie was helping him to expression

'I'll write them such an Aventure out of that Wind - Vision,' he exclaimed, 'that they'll fairly shiver with delight. And if they shiver, why shouldn't all the children in the world shiver too?'

He no longer made the mistake of thinking trivial; if he could find an audience of children a about the world, children known or unknown, to whom he could show his little gallery of pictures what could be more reasonable or delightful? What could be more useful and worth doing than to show the adventuring mind some meaning in all the beauty that filled his heart? And the Wind-Vision might be a small—a very small, beginning. It might be the first of a series of modern fairy tales. The idea thrilled him with pleasure. 'A safety-valve at last!' he cried. 'An audience that won't laugh!'

For, in reality, there was also a queer motherly quality in him which he had always tried more or less successfully to hide, and of which, perhaps, he was secretly half ashamed—a feeling that made him long to give of his strength and sympathy to all that was helpless, weary, immature.

He went about the house like a new man, for in proportion as he allowed his imagination to use its wings, life became extraordinarily alive. He sang, and the world sang with him. Everything turned up little smiling faces to him, whispering fairy contributions to his tale.

'The more I give out, the more I get in,' he laughed. 'I declare it's quite wonderful,' as though he had really discovered a new truth all for himself. New forces began to course through his veins like fire. As in a great cistern tapped for the first time, this new outlet produced other little cross-currents everywhere throughout his being. Paul began to find a new confidence. Another stone had shifted in the fabric of his soul. He moved one stage nearer to the final pattern that it had been intended from the beginning of time he should assume.

A world within a world began to grow up in the old grey house under the hill, one consisting of Nixie and her troupe, with Paul trailing heavily in the rear, very eager; and the other, of the grownup members of the household, with Mile. Fleury belonging to neither, yet in a sense belonging to both. The cats and animals again were in the former—an inner division of it, so that it was like a series of Chinese boxes, each fitting within the next in size.

And this admission of Paul into the innermost circle produced a change in the household, as well as in himself. After all, the children had not betrayed him; they had only divined his secret and put him right with himself. But this was everything; and who is there with a vestige of youth in his spirit that will not understand the cause of his mysterious exhilaration?

Outwardly, of course, no definite change was visible in the doings of the little household. The children said little; they made no direct reference to his conversion; but the change, though not easily described, was felt by all. Paul recognised it in every fibre of his being. Every one, he noticed, understood by some strange freemasonry that he had been initiated, for every one, he fancied, treated him a little differently. It was natural that the children should give signs of increased admiration and affection for their huge new member, but there was no obvious reason why his sister, and the servants, and the very animals into the bargain should regard him with a strain of something that hesitated between tolerance and tenderness.

If truth were told, they probably did nothing of the sort; it was his own point of view that had changed. His imagination was responsible for the rest; yet he felt as though he had been caught into the heart of a great conspiracy, and the silent, unobtrusive way every one played his, her, or its part contrived to make him think it was all very real indeed.

The cats, furry and tender magicians that they are, perhaps interpreted the change more skilfully and easily than any one else. Without the least fuss or ceremony they made him instantly free of their world, and the way their protection and encouragement were extended to him in a hundred gentle ways gave him an extraordinarily vivid impression that they, too, had their plans and conferences just as much as the children had. They made everything seem alive and intelligent, from the bushes where they hunted to the furniture where they slept. They brought the whole world, animate and inanimate, into his scheme of existence. Everything had life, though not the same degree of life. It was all very subtle and wonderful. He, and the children, and the cats, all had imagination according to their kind and degree, and all equally used it to make the world haunted and splendid. Formerly, for instance, he had often surprised Mrs. Tompkyns going about in the passages on secret business of her own, perhaps not altogether good, yet looking up with an assumption of innocence that made it quite impossible to chide or interfere. (It was, of course, only an assumption of innocence. A cat's eyes are too intent and purposeful for genuine innocence; they are a mask, a concealment of a thousand plans.) But now, when he met her, she at once stopped and sent her; tail aloft by way of signal, and came to rub against his legs. Her eyes smiled—that pregnant, significant smile of the feline, shown by mere blinking of the lids—and she walked slowly by his side with arched back, as an invitation that he might—nay, that he; should—accompany her.

On her great, dark journeys he might not of course yet go, but on the smaller, less important expeditions he was welcome, and she showed it plainly every time they met. He was led politely to numerous cupboards, corners, attics, and cellars, whose existence he had not hitherto suspected. There were wonderful and terrible places among the book-shelves and under massive pieces of furniture which she showed to him when no one was about; and she further taught him how to sit and stare for long periods until out of vacancy there issued a series of fascinating figures and scenes of strange loveliness. And he, laughing, obeyed. All this, and much else besides, they taught him cleverly.

Some of them, too, came to visit him in his own quarters. They came into his study, and into his bedroom, and one of them—that black, thick-haired fellow called Smoke—the one with the ghostly eyes and very furry trousers—even took to tapping at his door late at night (by standing on tip-toe he could just reach the knob), and thus established the right to sleep on the sofa or even to curl up on the foot of the bed.

And all that the kittens, the puppies, and the out-of-door animals did to teach him as an equal is better left untold, since this is a story and not a work on natural history.

Mlle. Fleury, the little French governess, alone seemed curiously out of the picture. She made difficulties here and there, though not insuperable ones. The fact was, he saw, that she was not properly in either of the two worlds. She wanted to be in both at once, but, from the very nature of her position, succeeded in getting into neither; and to fall between two worlds is far more perplexing than to fall between two stools. Paul made allowances for her just as he might have made allowances for an over-trained animal that had learned too many human-taught tricks to make its presence quite acceptable to its own four-footed circle. The charming little person—he, at least, always thought her voice and her manners and her grace charming after a life where these were unknown—had to! justify herself to the grown-up world where his sister belonged, as well as to the world of the children whom she taught. And, consequently, she was often compelled to scold when, perhaps, her soul cried out that she should bless.

His heart always hammered, if ever so slightly, when he made his way, as he now did more and more frequently, to the schoolroom or the nursery. Schoolroom-tea became a pleasure of almost irresistible attractions, and when it was over and the governess was legitimately out of the way, Nixie sometimes had a trick of announcing a Regular Meeting to which Paul was called upon to read out his latest 'Aventure.'

'Hulloa! Having tea, are you?' he exclaimed, looking in at the door one afternoon shortly after the wind episode. This feigned surprise, which deceived nobody, he felt was admirable. It was exactly the way Mrs. Tompkyns did it.

'Come in, Uncle Paul. Do stay. You must stay,' came the chorus, while Mile. Fleury half smiled, half frowned at him across the table. 'Here's just the stodgy kind of cake you like, with jam and honey!'

'Well,' he said hesitatingly, as though he scorned such things, while Mademoiselle poured out a cup, and the children piled up a plate for him. He stayed, as it were, by chance, and a minute later was as earnestly engaged with the cake and tea as if he had come with that special purpose.

'It's all very well done,' was his secret thought. 'It's exactly the way Mrs. Tompkyns manages all her most important affairs.'

'Nous avons rèunion aprés,' Jonah informed the governess presently with a very grave face. The young woman glanced interrogatively at Paul.

'Oui, oui,' he said in his Canadian French, 'c'est vrai. Réunion régulaire.'

'Mais qu'elle idée, donc!'

'Il est le président,' said Toby indignantly, pointing with a jam sandwich.

'Voila vous êtes!' he exclaimed. 'There you are! Je suis le président!' and he helped himself to more cake as though by accident.

For five seconds Mile. Fleury kept her face. Then, in spite of herself, her lips parted and a row of white teeth appeared.

'Meester Reevairs, you spoil them,' she said, 'and I approve it not. Mais, voyons donc! Quelles manierés!' she added as Sambo and Pouf passed from Toby's lap on to the table and began to sniff at the water cress. . . . 'Non, ça c'est trop fort!' She leaned across to smack them back into propriety.

'Abominable,' Paul cried,' abominable tout a fait.'

'Alwaze when you come such things 'appen.'

'Pas mon faute,' he said, helping to catch Pouf.

'They are deeficult enough without that you make them more,' she said.

'Uncle Paul doesn't know his genders,' cried Jonah; 'hooray!'

'Ma faute,' he corrected himself, pronouncing it 'fote.'

Then Toby, struggling with Smoke, whose nose she was trying to force into a saucer of milk which he did not want, upset the saucer all over her dress and the table, splashing one and all. Jonah sprang up and knocked his chair over backwards in the excitement. Mrs. Tompkyns, wakening from her sleep upon the piano stool, leaped on to the notes of the open keyboard with a horrible crash. A pandemonium reigned, all talking, laughing, shouting at once, and the governess scolding. Then Paul trod on a kitten's tail under the table and extraordinary shrieks were heard, whereupon Jonah, stooping to discover their cause, bumped his head and began to cry. Moving forward to comfort him, Paul's sleeve caught in the spout of the teapot and it fell with a clatter among the cups and plates, sending the sugar-tongs spinning into the air, and knocking the milk-jug sideways so that a white sea flooded the whole tray and splashed up with white spots on to Paul's cheeks.

The cumulative effect of these disasters reached a culminating point, and a sudden hush fell upon the room. The children looked a trifle scared. Paul, with milk drops trickling down his nose, blushed and looked solemn. Very guilty and awkward he felt. Mile. Fleury in fluent, rattling French explained her view of the situation, at first, however, without effect. At such moments mere sound and fury are vain; subtle, latent influences of the personality alone can calm a panic, and these the little person did not, of course, possess.

To Paul the whole picture appeared in very vivid detail. With the simplicity of the child and the larger vision of the man he perceived how closely tears and laughter moved before them; and it really pained him to see her confused and rather helpless amid all the debris. She was pretty, slim, and graceful; futile anger did not sit well upon her.

There she stood, little more than a girl herself, staring at him for a moment speechless, the dainty ruffles of her neat grey dress sticking up about her pretty throat, he thought, like the bristles of an enraged kitten. The hair, too, by her ears and neck suddenly seemed to project untidily and increased the effect. The sunlight from the window behind her spread through it, making it cloud-like.

'C'est tout mon—ma fote,' he said, stretching out both hands impulsively, 'tout!' in his villainous Quebec French. 'Scold me first, please.'

There was milk on his left eyebrow, and a crumb of cake in his beard as well. The governess stared at him, her eyes still blazing ominously. Her lips quivered. Then, fortunately, she laughed; no one really could have done otherwise. And that laugh saved the situation. The children, who had been standing motionless as statues awaiting their doom, sprang again into life. In a trice the milk had been moped up, the tongs replaced, and the tea-pot put to bed under its ornamented cosy.

'I forgeeve—this time,' she said. 'But you are vairy troublesome.'

In future, none the less, she forgave always; her hostility, never quite sure of itself, vanished from that moment.

'Blue Summer'ouse,' whispered Jonah in his ear, 'and bring your Wind-Vision to read to us at the Meeting.'

'But not too much Wind-Vision, please, Meester Reevairs,' she said, overhearing the whisper. 'They think of nothing else.'

Paul stared at her. The thought in his mind was that she ought to come too, only he knew the children would not approve.

'Then I must moderate their enthusiasm,' he said gravely at last.

Mlle. Fleury laughed in his face. 'You are worst of ze lot, I know—worst of all. Your Aventures and plays trouble all their lesson-time.'

'It is my education,' he said, as Jonah tugged at his coat from behind to get him out of the room. 'You educate them; they educate me; I improve slowly. Voilà!'

'But vairy slowly, n'est-ce pas? And you make up all such expériences like ze Wind-Vision to fill their minds.'

Nixie had told him that all their aventures filtered through to her, and that she kept a special cahier in her own room, where she wrote them all out in her own language. 'Another soul, perhaps, looking about for a safety-valve,' he thought swiftly.

'But, Mademoiselle, why not translate them into French? That's a good idea, and excellent practice for them.'

'Per'aps,' she laughed, 'per'aps we do that. C'est une idee au moins.'

She wanted so much, it was clear, to come into their happy little world of imagination and adventure. He realised suddenly how lonely her life might be in such a household.

'You write them, and I will correct them for you,' he said.

'Come on, do come on, Uncle,' cried the voices urgently from the door. The children were already in the passage. The little governess looked rather wistfully after them, and on a sudden impulse Paul did a thing he had never before done in his life. He took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, but so boyishly, and with such simple politeness and sincerity that there was hardly more in the act than if Jonah had done the same to Nixie in an aventure of another sort.

'Au revoir then,' he said laughingly; 'chacun a son devoir, don't they? And now I go to do mine.'

His sentence was somewhat mixed. He just had time to notice the pretty blush of confusion that spread over her face, and to hear her laugh. 'You are weecked children—vairy weecked—and you, Meester Reevairs, the biggest of all,' when Nixie and Jonah had him by the hand and they were off out of the house to their Meeting in the Blue Summer-house.

Thus Mile. Fleury ceased to be a difficulty in the household so far as his proceedings with the children were concerned. On the contrary, she became a helpful force, and often acted as a sort of sentry, or outpost, between one world and the other. Herself, she never came into their own private region, but hovered only along the borders of it. For though little over twenty years of age, she was French, and she understood exactly how much interest she might allow herself to take in the Society without endangering her own position,—or theirs—or his. She knew that she could not enter their world freely and still maintain authority in the other; but, meanwhile, she managed Paul precisely as though he were one of her own charges, and saw to it that he did nothing which could really be injurious to the responsibilities for which she was answerable.

Thus Paul, thundering along with his belated youth, enjoyed himself more and more, while he enjoyed, also learned, marked, and read.