bad drains. Paul could only shrink, and marvel. As though in a trance he still saw a waxen face surrounded by lilies; still felt the tightness of chest and the nameless awe; and with a terrible, child's accuracy of perception he retained the impression of freckles—five or six—brown, brown, brown, left stranded on a tiny white nose by the ebbing of life.
In those days he was an ardent Christian; a defender of the faith. He dwelt in Abram's bosom; he went nightly "to Jesus"; he won Sunday-school "mottoes" and celluloid buttons; he lived through the week in the ecstatic anticipation of the Sabbath; he believed in and communed with the heavenly hosts. And that waxen face, incongruously befreckled, hovered over him night and day, being especially present when he was in the attic thieving lumps of sugar from the box which had been sent to Aunt Verona in return for Sunlight Soap wrappers, or when he was pouring purloined milk into the batter of Gritty's mud-cakes. How often, before doing perfectly legitimate things—things a little boy must do every day—did he hesitate in painful embarrassment at the thought of a little girl angel looking on!
Romantic love for Leila had been so completely diffused in the wonderment which Paul continued to experience after she had been taken up to God, that it ceased to exist as a separate emotion, and gradually he made the discovery that girls bored him. He decided that when he grew up he would marry Miss Todd, and thus dismissed the whole issue of sex from his mind—always with an exception in favour of Gritty Kestrell, who was a tomboy. Gritty was two months older than himself and could climb trees and skate figure eights and run races with any boy in Hale's Turning. She had the added advantages of being able to do up sore fingers and hold her own with
