No one, looking at his childish face, would have guessed the grave suspicions and wild hazards that walked in the desperate loneliness of his imagination. It was the key to existence that he sought. He had arrived at that crisis of soul and body, when every child is driven out, a John the Baptist, into the wilderness of conjecture, there to live on the locusts and wild honey of hearsay, till he finds the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

As they neared the suburbs, a stream of bicyclists—city clerks riding out with their sweethearts—met, engulfed and gave them passage. After all, it was a merry, laughing world! Above the tinkling of bells, evening birds were calling. All these people, how did they live? Where did they come from? Had they, too, slept and been awakened questioning, because a girl had touched them?

Down the road he saw his aunt’s cottage. Riska would be there by the gate, sitting behind her table spread with cakes, mineral-waters and glasses. He recalled all the things he had heard said of her, things to which he had paid no attention—that she was a born flirt and that her mother was teaching her to catch men. As they came up, she lifted her soft eyes and let them rest on him with contemptuous affection. Why did she do that? Why did she always seem to despise and tolerate men and boys? A bicyclist, who had ridden past, turned his head, caught sight of her and came back slowly. Peter felt that it was not thirst, but Riska’s prettiness that had recalled him. He felt angry with Riska—unreasonably angry, for she had said and done nothing.

“We’re late,” he told her; “we can’t stop.”

She nodded. She didn’t care. Her whole attitude seemed to tell Peter that he wasn’t worth wasting time on. Just as the pedals had begun to turn, Glory came out and stood in the porch. She waved to him and shouted something. He called to her that they were in a hurry. Further down the road, he turned his head; her eyes followed him.

It was nearly dark when they reached Topbury. Lamps stood like marigold splashes on the dusk in a quivering line along the Terrace. In the garden he found his parents, sitting close together beneath the mulberry-tree like lovers. They drew apart as Kay ran up to them.

“You’re late, children.” It was his mother talking. “We were getting nervous.”

He kissed her; for a moment, the old sense of security returned.

“It’s time Kay was in bed.”

She crossed the gravel path with her arm about the little girl, and disappeared up the white stone steps to the house.

Far away, as of old, like waves about the foot of a cliff, the roar of London threatened. It seemed to be telling him that he would not be always sheltered—that one day he would have to launch out, steering in search of the unknown future by himself. It was not the boldness, but the loneliness of the adventure that now impressed him.

“Father.”

“Yes.” The voice came to him out of the darkness. “What does it feel like to become a man?”

“Feel like, Peter! I don’t understand.”

“To have to—to have to fight for oneself?”

His father leant out and touched him. “Have you begun to think of that already? Fight for yourself! You won’t have to do that for a long while yet.”

“But——.” Peter allowed himself to be drawn into the arms of the man who had always stood between him and the world. “But when the time comes, I don’t want to fail like——,” he was going to have said like Uncle Waffles, but he said instead, “like some people.” And then, after a pause, “I feel so unprepared.”

“We’ve all felt that way, sonny. Somehow we get the strength. You’ll get it.”

Peter sighed contentedly. He was again in the nest with the creeper-covered walls about him. The strained note had gone out of his voice when he spoke now. “There’s so much to learn. It seems so strange to think that one day I’ll have to grow up, like you, and marry, and earn money, and have little boys and girls.”

His father laughed huskily. “Very strange! Strange even to me, Peter—and I’ve done it: And, d’you know, there are times when even a man looks back and is surprised that he’s grown up. He feels just what you’re feeling—the wonder of it. It seems only the other day that I was as small as you are; and only the other day that I was frightened of life and what it meant. Are you frightened?”

For answer Peter stood up. “Not so much frightened as puzzled.”

His father rose and led him out from beneath the leaves, which crowded above their heads. He pointed up past the roofs of houses. “We couldn’t see them under there,” he said. “Every night they come to their places and stand, shining. Some one sends them. Some one sent you and me, Peter. We don’t know why. There are people who sit always under trees and never look up. They’ll tell you that there aren’t any stars overhead. We’re not like that. We know that whoever is careful enough to hang lamps on the clouds, is careful enough to watch over us. So we needn’t be afraid of living, need we, old chap?”

Peter pressed his father’s hand. “I’ll try to remember.”

That night, when the house was all silent, he crept out of bed. Leaning from the open window, he looked down on London, stretching for miles and miles, with its huddled roofs spread over its huddled personalities. Why were things as they were? If some one lit lamps in the heavens and followed each life with care, why did four women, who loved children, sit forever with their arms empty, while one sang of the sweet fields of Eden; and why did Uncle Waffles——-? The questions were unanswerable and endless. And then, in defiant contrast, there came bounding into his memory the courageous figure of the Faun Man, with his cavalier attitudes and strong determination to make of life a laughing affair. The night quickened; the ghostly feet of a little breeze tiptoed across the tree-tops, causing their leaves to rustle. From the far distance, the throb of belated traffic reached him like the beat of a muffled drum. He heard London marching to the martial music of struggle; his heart was stirred. Life was a fight—well, what of it? When his time came, he must be ready. He looked again at the stars, remembering what his father had said. One need not be frightened. And then he looked away into the blackness; somewhere over there the houses ended and the wide peace of the country commenced. Somewhere over there was Cherry.

He waited impatiently for his next half-holiday, when he would be free to tricycle out. When he went, she was not in the Haunted Wood; nor the next time, nor the next. He wanted to ask the Faun Man, but postponed through shyness; he was afraid his secret would be guessed. He was always hoping and hoping that he would find her behind the green wall of leaves, where the little river ran. One afternoon, when tea was ended and Kay and Harry had gone out, he asked, “Does the girl who broke your pictures never come here now?”

The Faun Man looked up sharply and stared, trying to guess behind the question.

“I wasn’t very decent to you that day, was I? And I was beastly to her.”

“I think she was sorry,” said Peter softly. “I wish you’d let her——. Does she never come here now?”

The Faun Man leant forward across the table, with his face between his long brown hands. “Did you like her, Peter?”

“Yes.”

“Very much?”

Peter lowered his eyes. “Very much.”

When he dared to glance up, he found that the Faun Man wasn’t laughing. He reached out his hand to Peter. “You’re young,” he said. “Fifteen, isn’t it? Well, she’s a year older. It’s dangerous to like a girl very much—especially a little wild thing like Cherry. I’m a man and I know, because I, too, like some one very much; and it doesn’t always make me happy. You’ll like heaps of girls, Peter, before you find the right one.” He felt that Peter’s hand had grown smaller in his own and was withdrawing. “You think it isn’t true?” he questioned. “You think it wasn’t kind of me to say that? And you want to see her?” Peter gazed out of the cottage window to where sunlight fell aslant the Haunted Wood. Why should he want to see her more than anyone in the world? But he did. And he knew that because he was so young, most people would consider his desire absurd. But the Faun Man, who found so much to laugh at, was regarding him seriously. “And you want to see her?”

Peter whispered, “Yes.”

The Faun Man’s eyes filmed over in that curious way they had. He said: “I want you to trust me. There are reasons why you can’t see her. I’ve sent her away because I think that it’s best. I can’t tell you why or where I’ve sent her; or what right I have to send her. But I want you to know that I don’t smile at you for liking her. It doesn’t matter how old or young we are; when love comes, it always hurts. And it seems just as serious whether it comes late or early. But some day I’ll let you see her. To you at fifteen, some day seems very far from now. But if you wait, and still think you care for her, I’ll let you see her when the time comes. I don’t think we ought to speak of this again till then. We’ll keep it a secret which we never discuss; but we’ll each remember. Is that a bargain?”

Peter had no other choice than to accept. They shook hands.

Shortly after this Kay and Peter went away to a farm in North Wales for their summer holidays. Their first intention on their return was to visit the Faun Man and Harry. On going to the stable, they found that the tricycle was no longer there. Their father was very mysterious and unconcerned when they told him; evidently he knew what had happened. “All right,” he said, “just wait a day or two. You’ll see—it’ll come back.”

And one morning it did come back, ridden by a man with a face all smudges, who presented a bill for payment. It had entirely transformed itself, like a widow-lady who had been brisked up by an unexpected offer of marriage. From a sober, old-fashioned tricycle it had taken on an appearance almost modern and festive. Its handle-bars had been replated; its framework re-enameled; its tall wheels cut down; its solid tires removed and replaced by pneumatics. It sparkled in the sun, as though defying butcher-boys to jeer at it. The man, with the face all smudges, wheeled it through the stable into the garden; he left it beneath the mulberry-tree, and there the children, on arriving home from school, found it.

“Why, it’s a new tricycle!”

Peter looked it over, “No, it isn’t, Kitten Kay. It’s the old one altered.”

Their mother, hearing their shouts, came out into the garden, nearly as excited herself. They had visions of spinning out to the Happy Cottage at the breakneck speed of eight miles an hour. While they clambered on to it, examined it and spotted new improvements in the way of a lamp and saddles, she explained to them how it had happened. “It’s your father’s doing. He meant it as a surprise. He thought the old tires made it too heavy, so——.”

Kay interrupted. “Oh, Peter, do let’s take it out on to the Terrace and try it.”

As they wheeled it down the gravel path between the geranium beds, they chattered of how they would surprise Harry. But Harry was fated never to see it. On the Terrace, when they had mounted, while their mother watched them from the window, they found that everything was not well. The man with the face all smudges had been wise in demanding his money before his handiwork was tested. He had cut the wheels so low that, where the road was uneven, the pedals bumped against the ground. Life had, indeed, become serious for Peter; through his father’s well-intentioned kindness, his means of communication between reality and fairyland had been annihilated. For a time it looked as though so small an accident as the indiscreet remodeling of a tricycle had lost for him forever the new friendships formed at the Happy Cottage.

But one evening a dinner was given by Mr. Barrington to a famous man whose work he was anxious to publish. Kay and Peter were allowed to see him after dessert.

The moment Peter’s head appeared round the door the famous man rose up and shouted, “Hulloa, young ‘un, so at last I’ve found you! Where the dickens have you been hiding?”

Mr. Barrington lay back in his chair, his arms hanging limp on either side, the image of amazement. He heard his son explaining: “It was the tandem trike. Father wanted to be kind to us and——. Well, after he’d had it improved, it wouldn’t work. And so, you see, there was no way of getting to you.”

The Faun Man spread out his long legs, laughing uproariously; until the appearance of the children, he’d been most scrupulously conventional and polite. “But, Peter, an immortal friendship like ours cut short by a tandem trike! You little donkey, why didn’t you write?”

Kay rose up in her brother’s defence. “He isn’t a little donkey. We were all to be pretence people, don’t you remember? We didn’t know your address.”

The Faun Man stroked his chin and lengthened his face. “If you’d left me alone much longer,” he said, “you wouldn’t have found me; I’m moving into London.”

Then their parents began to ask questions; the story of Friday Lane and the mouth-organ boy came out.

That evening, after Lorenzo Arran had said good-by, he turned back to his host, just as the door was closing.

“Oh, I say! One minute, Barrington. That matter we were discussing yesterday—let’s consider it settled.”

Barrington watched the tall, lean figure go striding down the Terrace. He was so taken up with watching, that he didn’t know that Nan had stolen up behind him until she touched his hand. He turned; his mouth was crooked with amusement. “Did you hear that? He agrees—I’m to publish for him. And it’s Peter’s doing. One never knows where that boy won’t turn up.”

And Peter, snuggled cosily in bed, was wondering whether, now that he’d found the Faun Man, he’d refind Cherry. He reflected that when life could play such tricks on you, a lifetime of it wouldn’t be half bad. He was no longer frightened to remember that, whether he liked it or not, he must grow up.