And yet, though he had become such “pals” with her, and though he missed her society at his now lonely meals to an almost ridiculous extent, Radmore would have been much taken aback had an angel from heaven told him that the real reason he had sought to get in touch with Old Place was because Enid Crofton had already settled down at Beechfield.

CHAPTER III

After Timmy Tosswill had been to the village shop and done his mother’s errand, he wandered on, his dog, Flick, at his heels, debating within himself what he should do next.

Like most children who lead an abnormal, because a lonely, childhood, he was in some ways very mature, in other ways still very babyish.  He was at once secretive and—­whenever anything touched his heart—­emotionally expansive.  To the indifferent observer Timmy appeared to be an exceptionally intelligent, naughty, rather spoilt little boy, too apt to take every advantage of a certain physical delicacy.  This was also the view taken of him by his half-brothers, and by two out of his three step-sisters.  But the three who really loved him, his mother, his nurse, and his eldest half-sister, Betty, were convinced that the child was either possessed of a curious, uncanny gift of—­was it second sight?—­as his old nurse entirely and his mother half, believed, or, as Dr. O’Farrell asserted, some abnormal development of his subconscious self.  All three were ruefully aware that Timmy was often—­well, his mother called it “sly,” his sister called it “fanciful,” his nurse by the good old nursery term, “deceitful.”

It was this unlovable attribute of his which made it so difficult to know whether Timmy believed in the positive assertions occasionally made by him concerning his intimate acquaintance with the world of the unseen.  That he could sometimes visualise what was coming to pass, especially if it was of an unpleasant, disturbing nature, was, so his mother considered, an undeniable fact.  But sometimes the gift lay in abeyance for weeks, even for months.  That had been the case, as Mrs. Tosswill had told Dr. O’Farrell, for a long time now—­to be precise, since March, when, to the dismay of those about him he had predicted an accident in the hunting field which actually took place.

Timmy walked on up the steep bit of road which led to the upper part of the beautiful old village which was, like many an English village, shaped somewhat like a horseshoe—­and then suddenly he stopped and gazed intently into a walled stable-yard of which the big gates were wide open.

Beechfield was Timmy Tosswill’s world in little.  He was passionately interested in all that concerned its inhabitants, and was a familiar and constant, though not always a welcome visitor to every cottage.  Most of the older village men and women had a certain grudging affection for the odd little boy.  They were all well aware of, and believed in, the gift which made him, as the nurse had once explained to a crony of hers, “see things which are not there,” though not one of them would have cared to mention it to him.