pillows.  He saved the juice from his French plums, bottled it in an empty medicine bottle, and provisioned the raft with the rum that it became; also with pemmican made out of little saved-up bits of chicken sat on and dried at the fire; and with lime juice against scurvy, extracted from the peel of his oranges and a little economised juice.  He made a North Pole one morning from the whole of his bedclothes except the bolster, and reached it in a birch-bark canoe (in private life the fender), after a terrible encounter with a polar bear fashioned from the bolster and four skittles dressed up in “Da’s” nightgown.  After that, his father, seeking to steady his imagination, brought him Ivanboe, Bevis, a book about King Arthur, and Tom Brown’s Schooldays.  He read the first, and for three days built, defended and stormed Front de Boeuf’s castle, taking every part in the piece except those of Rebecca and Rowena; with piercing cries of:  “En avant, de Bracy!” and similar utterances.  After reading the book about King Arthur he became almost exclusively Sir Lamorac de Galis, because, though there was very little about him, he preferred his name to that of any other knight; and he rode his old rocking-horse to death, armed with a long bamboo.  Bevis he found tame; besides, it required woods and animals, of which he had none in his nursery, except his two cats, Fitz and Puck Forsyte, who permitted no liberties.  For Tom Brown he was as yet too young.  There was relief in the house when, after the fourth week, he was permitted to go down and out.

The month being March the trees were exceptionally like the masts of ships, and for little Jon that was a wonderful Spring, extremely hard on his knees, suits, and the patience of “Da,” who had the washing and reparation of his clothes.  Every morning the moment his breakfast was over, he could be viewed by his mother and father, whose windows looked out that way, coming from the study, crossing the terrace, climbing the old oak tree, his face resolute and his hair bright.  He began the day thus because there was not time to go far afield before his lessons.  The old tree’s variety never staled; it had mainmast, foremast, top-gallant mast, and he could always come down by the halyards—­or ropes of the swing.  After his lessons, completed by eleven, he would go to the kitchen for a thin piece of cheese, a biscuit and two French plums—­provision enough for a jolly-boat at least—­and eat it in some imaginative way; then, armed to the teeth with gun, pistols, and sword, he would begin the serious climbing of the morning, encountering by the way innumerable slavers, Indians, pirates, leopards, and bears.  He was seldom seen at that hour of the day without a cutlass in his teeth (like Dick Needham) amid the rapid explosion of copper caps.  And many were the gardeners he brought down with yellow peas shot out of his little gun.  He lived a life of the most violent action.

“Jon,” said his father to his mother, under the oak tree, “is terrible.  I’m afraid he’s going to turn out a sailor, or something hopeless.  Do you see any sign of his appreciating beauty?”