There was one thing which more than any other had power to rouse whatever demon of Temper lurked far down under the sweetness of Little Yeogh Wough's nature; and that was Croquet.

It is no wonder that a well-known judge said a year or two ago in his court that from personal experience he knew croquet to be more trying to the temper than anything else in the world. And the objectionable game was at the root of a good deal of trouble that arose at this time between the Boy and me.

He never could bear to be beaten at anything. This feeling has been his driving power in all his life. Even Old Nurse knew of it, for one day when I had said to her that he never told a lie, she answered me:

"No. That's true; he don't tell no lies. But that isn't from loving the truth. It's only because 'e won't be beaten at it. 'E's that full of pride and vanity, he don't know what to do with himself. All these children is full of pride and vanity. When they goes out, if you please, they don't want to go where other people goes, so when we're in the country we 'ides behind a bush so as we can't see nobody and nobody can't see us, and when we're up 'ere in London we goes down back streets where there's nobody else goes but dustmen and cats. And it's all Master Roland's teaching of 'em. He've been making Miss Clare think she's an artist now, and you ought to see our Macademy up on the nursery walls. She've been in a temper all this day because I won't sit with nothing on for 'er to make a picture of Venus rising from the sea."

Meanwhile, Little Yeogh Wough played croquet desperately on the lawn between the banks of marguerites.

(Dear marguerites! I remember how, whenever he was near them, they all took on a Frenchy gaiety and distinction that lent a new charm to their English prettiness and purity.)

He was not allowed to play with his little sister and brother, because he thought too much of himself and too little of them. He was then told off to play with any friends of the family who happened to be on a visit at the house, and the end of this usually was that when in the evening he came to say good night and made his unfailing appeal: "Come and see me in bed, mother," I answered him severely: "No, Roland. You behaved too badly at croquet to-day."

He stood and looked at me wistfully. He always did this when I rebuked him. He never asked questions in words, but only with his big brown eyes.

"I happened to be upstairs at the open nursery window and I saw you and heard you," I went on. "You were most rude to Mr. ——. If you ever play croquet with him again you will have the goodness to remember that he is a married man of fifty-five and not another boy of fourteen, like yourself, and you will treat him with respect."

"But he got my ball at the beginning of the game and put it through all the hoops and I couldn't get it back!"

"Don't make excuses. Leave those to weak characters. An excuse is always worse than the thing it tries to cover up. You lost your temper and forgot your manners, and you will not play croquet again for a fortnight."

This meant a fortnight of proud, dignified unhappiness. And it was while this fit of quiet bitterness was still on him that he did a dreadful thing.

One day, when I came home after having been out two or three hours, I found an ominous grimness in the atmosphere of the house, and everybody I met seemed to have a longer upper lip than usual.

"What's the matter?" I asked Miss Torry, who had a horror-stricken look.

"It's Roland. He has been up in the nursery and knocked his sister down and trampled on her. It's a wonder that he hasn't broken any of her ribs."

And I had been out buying pretty clothes in order the better to live up to this boy's ideal of me!

I found him sitting in the dining-room, waiting for his tea, which he always had with us.

"Roland, is it true that you have been upstairs and knocked your sister down and trampled upon her?"

"Yes, mother, it's quite true." His eyes met mine unflinchingly.

"And you have done this unmanly thing ... you, my boy, that I worship so much!"

"Yes." He answered me very low, but very steadily. "She made me angry because she hadn't got any imagination. I asked her to imagine the nursery door was red and she said she couldn't because it was white. That made me so angry that I couldn't help knocking her down."

"You little coward!" I said to him very quietly. "You little coward!"

I saw his eyes flinch then and fill with tears and his face grow first very red and then deadly white, while his mouth began to quiver and twitch.

And I went out in search of a cane.

That was the last whipping he ever had; and the last occasion on which he could ever be accused of acting unchivalrously towards any feminine person.

"Little Yeogh Wough, why do you do these things and lower my grand ideas of you?" I asked him when I went to see him in bed the next night. "And, apart from that, why do you put it into the power of Old Nurse and other people to say that I am a fool for worshipping you as I do? You are not kind to me when you do that. You see, I know in spite of everything that you are good and great; but they don't know because they are blind, and so they think me wrong and believe you to be a brutal little coward. Why do you give them the chance?"

"It's Clare. She aggravates me. She precipitates."

"Precipitates?" I looked at him wonderingly.

"Yes. She always rushes headlong at the wrong thing. Yesterday afternoon I was beginning to tell Nurse that there was something wrong with my eiderdown, and I'd just got out the first syllable ei when Clare broke in: 'Oh, yes, Roland, I knew there was something wrong with your eye. I saw it directly you came in.' That was what began to get my temper up. Then I said something sharp to her and she answered me back. She said that when she grew up she'd take a cottage on Dartmoor to receive me in when I came out of the convict prison. What do you think of that for a girl of eleven?"

"Rather bright. And in any case she is a girl and you are bound to honour girls and women all the days of your life. A sister should be a very holy and lovely thing to a brother, Little Yeogh Wough, as you will know some day."

Now that he has grown big and is a soldier, he has in very deed come to know this, as is shown by something he said in a letter which he sent to his sister from the Front only a few days ago:

"My dear Bystander,

"I wonder what makes you a Bystander?

"I don't know; but I do know that I haven't got the stuff in me of which Bystanders are made. I must be the Principal Player or nothing. I know, too, that a Bystander knows more and understands more than a Principal Player. I often think that if anyone wanted a concise description of myself I should do better to send them to you than to anyone else. It is no longer a case of 'dear little sister and baby brother,' as it used to be once when I said my prayers; but for a boy the milestones are whiter and more evident than for a girl. The Public School and Osborne and Oxford are landmarks which you have nothing equivalent to set against.

"And yet this big brother ... autocratic, meteoric, inconsiderate ... who writes to you often as if you were the Stores, sees more and knows more and thinks more than even Bystanders give him credit for. The three years between us were once a very great deal of difference, but that time has passed. Let it rather be, as I once wrote on a photograph for you, Frater sorori; amicus amico. Someone remarked to me the other day: 'All your family are such dears ... all of them.'

"Yes."

Looking back again, I remember that it was in the time of the coming out of the almond blossom that Little Yeogh Wough tried for a scholarship at Winchester and failed, as he had known beforehand that he would fail, because never once in his life had he succeeded in getting anything at the first time of trying for it. And it was not very long afterwards that he came out triumphantly in an even harder examination and so won his way into another great Public School.

He signalised his triumph by asking that evening with quite unusual boldness and assurance: "Father, can I have the first hot water in the bath?"

And his father, who usually defended that first hot water as a tigress defends her cubs, answered him with almost boisterous goodwill:

"Certainly, my boy, certainly. Tell the cook to pile on the coal and make it hotter than ever." And this was the dear, delightful man who, if he saw a light in the bathroom window when he was coming home in the evening, would take to running along the street like a creature possessed, and if asked what was the matter, would reply distractedly as he ran:

"Somebody's in the bathroom! Somebody's having a bath ... taking all the hot water! I must get home and stop it. I must get home and stop it."