SO it came to pass that, as Jack Ferrers was strolling about the garden with Hugh after dinner, talking about old times, and pausing at every other step to greet some favourite shrub or stick or stone, it came to pass that he heard steps at the gate, and, turning, saw the Messrs. Merryweather, holding themselves very straight, and looking very sheepish. They had compromised with Bell on skating dress, instead of the detested “good clothes,” and Gerald carried several pairs of skates in his hand. They fumbled with the latch a moment, during which Jack felt extremely young, and was conscious of redness creeping up to his ears. But then, they were quite as red, he reflected; and, after all, as Hilda said, he was two years older than these boys, and if they really were all she made them out to be why

So it was a very different-looking Jack who advanced to meet the embarrassed boys at the gate. It was perhaps the first time in his young life that Gerald had been embarrassed, and he found the sensation unpleasant.

Before any of them could speak, however, a joyous whoop was heard from another quarter. Hugh had been investigating an old nest, and had just caught sight of the friends from Pumpkin House. He came running now, his face alight with welcome.

“Oh, Jerry! How do you do? How do you do, Phil? I am very well, thank you! Do you know my Jack? Because he has come home; and he is almost the dearest person in the world. And he has grown up his own beanstalk, he says, and that is what makes him so tall. And he has brought me the most beautiful soldiers that ever were, and we are going to have battles, even the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones! Hurrah!”

“Hurrah it is!” said Jack. “How d’ye do?” And he held out his hand cordially enough. “Awfully good of you to bring the skates! Come in, won’t you, and see my father and my uncle?”

“Didn’t know whether you liked Acmés or Clubs,” said Gerald, “so I brought both. Clubs are the best, we all think.”

“So do I! These are just right, I think. Awfully good of you, I’m sure! You ought to see the things they wear in Germany; like the old ones Uncle Tom has hanging up in that trophy in the hall.”

Chatting cheerfully, they moved on towards the house, taking note of one another as they went. Jack found the tones of the boys’ voices very clear and good, free from any nasal quality; Phil and Gerald decided that there must be a good deal of muscle in those long, lean arms, and that it would not be so easy to “lick” the stranger as they had thought on first seeing him.

On Phil’s remarking that his sisters and the “kids” had gone across the fields to the pond, there to await the rest of the party, Jack said he would be ready in three minutes, and ushered them into the library, where the two reunited brothers were peacefully smoking together. The Colonel received the boys most cordially, and, while Jack hurried away to put on jersey and knickerbockers, presented them to “My brother Raymond. Jack’s father, young gentlemen! I trust you and my nephew Jack will be friends. The young should be friendly, eh, Raymond? My brother Raymond, boys, is a man of genius. He is probably studying the lines of a fiddle at this moment, an imaginary fiddle, you understand, and I doubt if he is aware of your presence, or of one word I have been saying.”

“Not quite so bad as that, Tom!” said Mr. Ferrers, holding out his hand to the boys, with the peculiarly sweet smile that won all hearts to him at the first glance, “not quite so bad as that. I am delighted to see you, young gentlemen. I have already heard a good deal about your cheerful circle here. I am, it is true, somewhat absent-minded, ”

“Absent-minded! Jupiter Capitolinus! When it comes to a man putting sugar and cream on his mutton-chop at breakfast, ”

“How do you know that I do not prefer it so, Tom? We have many curious customs in Virginia, you know. It wasn’t bad, really!”

“Not bad!” snorted the Colonel. “Five-year-old mutton, hung a fortnight, and broiled by Elizabeth Beadle; and this man treats it as a pudding, and then says it was not bad! Elizabeth Beadle wept when Giuseppe told her about it; shed tears, sir! Said there was no pleasure in feeding you.”

“Poor Elizabeth!” said Raymond Ferrers, laughing. “Dear, good soul! I must go and ask her to make me some molasses cookies with scalloped edges. Will that pacify her, Tom? Where is the boy?”

“Raymond, do not try me further than I can bear!” said his brother, with marked ferocity. “Ask for the boy every five minutes, my dear brother! a shorter interval than that is beyond my powers of endurance, which have their limits. The boy, sir, if you persist in applying that epithet to a young giraffe who has already scraped more paint off my lintels than I can supply in six months, well, I will make it three, if you specially desire it, is putting on his togs, to go skating with these young fellows. And what is more, Raymond, I know two old fellows who are going to be asses enough to put on their togs and go skating with the youngsters. Come along, sir! Jimmy’s Pond, Ray! Come along!”

A pleasant sight was Jimmy’s Pond an hour later, when all the party had assembled. Hildegarde came in regal state, escorted by Colonel Ferrers and his brother, one walking on either side, while the three tall lads strode along before, now thoroughly at ease with each other, and Hugh capered and curveted in the rear. The child had a horse’s tail fastened to his belt behind, and was Pegasus on Helicon, oblivious of all things earthly.

They found Bell and Gertrude awaiting them, their cheeks already glowing from a preliminary tour of the pond. In the distance Willy and Kitty could be seen tugging each other valiantly along, falling and scrambling down and up. Bell was looking her best, in her trim suit of brown velveteen, with the pretty little mink cap. Hildegarde thought her more like a snow-apple than ever, and hoped Jack saw how pretty and sweet she was. Air-castles are pleasant building, and our Hildegarde had one well under way already; a castle whose walls should rise to the sound of music, and in which two happy people should play, play, play, all day and every day.

Hildegarde herself, in dark blue corduroy trimmed with chinchilla, was very good to look at, and more than one pair of eyes followed her as she swept along in graceful curves, holding Hugh’s hands in hers.

“A very lovely young creature, Tom!” said Raymond Ferrers, as he stood a while, after fastening his skates. “Not so beautiful as her mother. I find Mildred more beautiful than ever, Tom.”

“You were always near-sighted, Raymond, you will allow me to observe!” cried the Colonel, ruffling instantly. “I admire Mrs. Grahame beyond any woman of her age that lives. She is a noble woman, sir! an admirable creature! But to say that she compares in looks with a blooming creature like that, a princess, by Jove! A young Diana, the very sight of whom makes a man young again. By the way, Raymond,” he added, after a pause, in an altered voice. “I don’t know, my dear fellow, whether you have noticed any a resemblance, any look of eh?”

“Yes, indeed, my dear Tom; I noticed it instantly. Sweet Hester! This might be her younger sister. Yes! yes! Tempo passato, eh, brother? We are old fellows, but we once were young.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” cried the Colonel, throwing off his mood with sudden violence. “Speak for yourself, sir! If a man chooses to spend his days hunched over a table, making fiddles, I don’t say how things may turn out with him; but for myself, here, Young Sir! bring me a hockey-stick, will you?”

Hugh, prancing by in full career, paused, and surveyed his guardian with dreamy eyes.

“Hi-hi-hi!” he replied, with a creditable attempt at a whinny.

The Colonel stiffened to “attention.”

“What did I understand you to remark, sir?” he inquired. “I experience a difficulty in following your interesting observation.”

“Hi-hi-hi!” repeated the boy. “I am Pegasus; I do not understand your language. I will find Bellerophon, and send him to you.”

He retired a few paces, and gravely removed his tail, then came back, beaming with cheerfulness, every inch a boy.

“What was it you wanted, Guardian?” he cried. “I was a horse then, you see, so I really couldn’t; please excuse me!”

“I wanted a hockey-stick, sir!” said the Colonel, with some severity. “And it is my opinion that two-legged horses would better keep their wits about them.

“A game of hockey, Raymond,” here he turned to his brother, “will warm your blood, and bring back your wits. ‘Polo,’ they call it nowadays; parcel of fools! It’s my belief that nine-tenths of the human race to-day don’t know what they are talking about. Don’t understand their own language, sir! Polo, indeed! Ha! here are the sticks. Now we shall see about this ‘old fellow’ business!”

Indeed, it was a marvellous thing to see the agility of the Colonel in his favourite sport. He swept here and there, he made the most astonishing hits, he hooked the ball from under the very noses of the amazed and delighted boys. Raymond Ferrers, too, after watching the sport for a few minutes, yielded to the spirit of the hour, and was soon cutting away with the best of them.

A pleasant sight was Jimmy’s Pond, indeed! The pond itself was a thing of beauty, a disk of crystal dropped down in a hollow of dark woods; dropped into the middle of this again, a tiny islet, with a group of slender firs, lovely to behold. And dotted here and there on the shining gray-silver of the ice, these happy players, young and old, darted hither and thither, filled with the joy of the hour and the pleasure of each other’s presence.

It might have been interesting, could one have stood invisible on the bank, to hear the fragments of talk, as the different groups swept by in the chase. They seemed to drop naturally into couples, without any special prearrangement. First came the two brothers, intent on the ball, bent on keeping it ahead of them, and unconscious of anything else.

“Now, sir!” the Colonel would cry. “Let me see you beat that! Hi! There she no! she doesn’t! Ha! ha! Beat you that time, sir!

“’Poor old Raymound,
Fell into a hay-mound!’

“Do you remember that, sir? Only rhyme I ever made in my life; proud as a peacock I was of it, sir! And what was the scurrilous verse you made about me?”

“’Tommy, Tommy Tantrum,
Crowing like a bantrum!’”

said his brother, laughing.

“I always call them ‘bantrums,’ always shall. Aha! Where are you now, boy? Off she goes!”

Next came Gertrude and Phil, swinging easily along together.

“So glad he is really nice, because he looks so, and it would be so horrid if he were horrid, wouldn’t it, Phil? And Bell says he plays oh, wonderfully, you know.”

“Playing isn’t everything in the world, Toots! But he does seem to be a good fellow enough. Told us a lot, coming over here, about the way he lived over in Germany. I say! I’d like to go there! Two or three duels every day; great sport, it must be!”

Now it was Willy and Kitty, skating away sturdily, with short, energetic strokes, and holding each other up bravely.

“So he asked me if I would swap with him for another hard one, and I said yes, if it was hard enough; for this Mexican one, you see, was very hard indeed. He said it was.

“So I said all right, hand it over. Well, it was just the end of recess, and he handed it over, all scrumpled up, in a kind of hurry, and I crammed it into my pocket without looking. And when I came to look at it after school, it was a mean old three-cent ‘Norji.’ So I knocked him down, and it just happened that one of his old teeth was loose, and it came out. I was glad of it, and so were all the fellows, for he meant to cheat, you see; that’s why I had the black marks.”

Now come Jack and Bell, she a little out of breath, being unused to skating with a giraffe; he all unconscious, discoursing high themes.

“Yes, a good many people play it short, with a kind of choppiness. I hate to hear a violin chop. But J gives it with a long, smooth crescendo that seems to carry you straight out of the room, you know, out into the open air, and up among tree-tops. Do you ever feel that way? You seem to feel the air blowing all about you, and hear all the voices that are shut up in the trees and flowers, and can’t get out generally. You know what I mean, I am sure!”

“Yes,” says Bell, softly. “But they are all answering to the violin, don’t you think? They would not speak to the piano in that way.”

“Depends upon who plays it,” says gallant Jack. And Hildegarde, close behind, hears, and stumbles a little, and catches Gerald’s hand, laughing.

“Take them both!” says Gerald. “Take, incidentally, my heart with them; unless its size and its lacerated condition would make the burden unwelcome, Hilda?”

“I doubt if I should notice,” says Hildegarde. “Yes, I will take both hands, Jerry; let us try the outer edge, now. There! that is a delightful swing! You do skate very well, my child.”

“Ah! you should see Roger skate!” cried loyal Gerald; and is rewarded by seeing a very pretty blush deepen in his companion’s bright cheek.

“Good old Codger! I wish he were here, skating with you, Hilda!”

“Thank you!” says Hilda. “I am sorry to incommode you, Gerald. I can skate perfectly well alone, thank you. There! Don’t be absurd, Jerry! You’ll get out of step if you don’t take care. Do you think we could do a figure of eight together? Let’s try!”

Last of all, alone, yet in a world peopled with fantastic joys, came little Hugh. He had his tail on again, and he was skating with a high-stepping gait, rather more suggestive of trotting than was compatible with safety. He murmured to himself as he went, and his talk was far from hockey or any delights of skating.

“Yonder, dear Bellerophon! look yonder, far down below this fleecy cloud that I am just going to plunge into! Now wait till I get through it, and you will see. The cloud is all full of monsters, whales, and crocodiles, and hairy mammoths; and we have to plunge through them, and they claw after us and try to catch us. But I switch my tail, dear Bellerophon” (here he switched the tail vigorously), “and that frightens them, so that they crawl back into their holes, the ugly things. But down on the earth there, do you see three little spires of smoke, right by the mouth of that black hole? That is the Chimaera, Bellerophon! We have come all the way, and now we are going to have the most terrible fight that any one ever had, Samson or Hercules or any one else. Aha! now is the time, you see, for me to say ‘Aha’ among the trumpets; that is why I made you bring your trumpet along. My neck is clothed with thunder, and I am pawing in the valley. See me paw!”

Alas, for the winged steed! Pawing in the valley is a dangerous pastime on smooth ice, and unsustained by hind legs. Pegasus, his head high in air, looking forward to battle and glory, paid little attention to things at his feet. His skate caught in a crack, and, checked in full speed, he came heavily to the ground, and lay motionless.

Hildegarde and Gerald heard the crash, and were at his side in a moment, raising him. The little fellow was stunned, and there was an ugly cut on his forehead.

“Hugh, dear!” cried Hildegarde. “Is it very bad, little boy? You are all right now; Jerry and I are here, and you will be feeling better in a moment.”

She took the child’s head in her lap, and stanched the blood with her handkerchief, rubbing his temples gently, while Gerald chafed his hands. Presently Hugh opened his eyes. At first his look was vacant, but soon the light came back into the blue eyes, and he tried to smile.

“I pawed too hard!” he whispered. “Beloved, it wasn’t the right valley to paw in.”

Hildegarde and Gerald exchanged glances.

“He’s a little out!” murmured Gerald. “We’d better get him home as quick as we can. Phil and I will carry him.”

By this time the others, looking back, had seen that something was wrong, and came hurrying back. Colonel Ferrers turned very white when he saw Hugh lying motionless, his head pillowed on Hildegarde’s lap, and the red stain on his temple.

“My little boy!” he gasped. “Jack, where are you? The child! The child is hurt!” Jack was already bending over Hugh; indeed, the anxious group pressed so close that Hildegarde motioned them to back.

“I don’t think he is much hurt,” she said, looking up at the Colonel, and speaking as cheerfully as she could. “He spoke to me just now, Colonel Ferrers. He was stunned by the fall. I don’t think the cut amounts to anything, really.”

“No,” said Jack, who had been examining the cut, “this isn’t anything, Uncle Tom. It’s the shock that is the trouble, and he’ll be over that in a minute. You’re better already, aren’t you, old chap?”

Hugh opened his eyes again, but slowly, as if it were an effort.

“How do you do?” he said, politely. “Yes, I am better, thank you, but not quite well yet. You did not seem to understand what I said, so I thought I would wait till I could speak better.”

Seeing Jack look bewildered, Gerald whispered, “He was talking nonsense. He takes you for me now; it was to me he was talking.”

“I was not talking nonsense!” said Hugh, clearly. “I said I had been pawing in the valley, and that this was not the right valley to paw in. It wasn’t! My Beloved will understand what I mean, if she uses her mind.”

“He was a horse!” cried the Colonel. “Astonishing thing, that nobody can understand that child, when he is speaking perfectly rationally. He was a horse, I tell you! Whinnied at me, sir, when I asked him to get me a hockey-stick. Try it again, Boy! Let’s hear you once more, eh?”

Hugh smiled, but could not do more than shake his head.

“Thank you for explaining, Guardian!” he said. “I was Pegasus, you see, and Bellerophon and I were just going to plunge down through the clouds and kill the Chimaera; but I forgot where I was for a minute, and began to paw in the valley, and say ‘Aha!’ and, of course, the cloud broke through, and down we went. I hope dear Bellerophon isn’t hurt.”

“Bellerophon is all right!” said Jack. “Right as a trivet. He says he thinks you’d better go home, old man; he thinks it will be better Chimaera-hunting to-morrow, anyhow.”

“Yes! yes!” cried the Colonel, making a brave effort to enter into the child’s idea.

“Go back to the stable, Boy, I mean Dobbin, or whatever your name is, and and have some hay!”

But Hugh’s brow contracted.

“Pegasus didn’t eat hay!” he murmured, still leaning against Hildegarde’s shoulder.

“No, dear,” said the girl. “The Colonel did not mean hay; he meant asphodels and amaranth and moly.”

“That sounds better,” said Hugh.

“I say,” whispered Gerald, who was beginning to recover from his alarm, “you know, I suppose, that asphodel is a kind of pigweed?”

“Hush! Yes! There is no need of the child’s knowing it yet. How shall we get him home, Jack?”

“But I will walk home!” cried Hugh, hearing the last words. “I will perhaps trot home, only slowly.”

He tried to rise, but sank back again.

“It appears as if there were wheels in my head,” he murmured. “They go round too fast.”

“Of course they do,” said Jack, in the most matter-of-fact way. “I’m going to harness myself into them, and take you home that way. Put him up on my back, will you, Merryweather? So! there we are!”

Delighted to find himself in the once familiar position, Hugh looked up to smile at the anxious Colonel, who stood wiping his brow, and wishing for once that he were twenty and a giraffe.

“I’m all right now, Guardian!” he said. “All right, Beloved! My Jack is an ostrich again, and I am not Pegasus any more just now. I am only Hugh. Good-bye! Good hunting!”

“Only Hugh!” repeated Colonel Ferrers, gazing after the two, as they went across the field, Jack walking steadily, with long, even steps, very different from his usual hop-skip-and-jump method of progression.

“Only Hugh! Only the greater part of the world eh? what are you saying, Hilda, my dear?”

“Only that we will go home together, dear Colonel Ferrers!” said Hildegarde, who had already taken off her skates. “We will go back together, and the others can follow whenever they are ready. We shall find him comfortable already, with Mrs. Beadle tucking him up in bed, and talking about chicken broth and wine jelly, neither of which he will need in the least. Come, dear sir!”

“I will come!” said the Colonel. “You are a good child, Hilda! I I am rather shaken, I believe. I will come with pleasure, my love! Be good enough to take my arm!”