| CHAPTER I. | THE BIRTHDAY |
| CHAPTER II. | THE FAMILY DOG |
| CHAPTER III. | CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME |
| CHAPTER IV. | MISS JONES |
| CHAPTER V. | THE SEA-CAPTAIN |
| CHAPTER VI. | FAMILY PRIDE |
| CHAPTER VII. | RELIGION |
| CHAPTER VIII. | TO COW FARM! |
| CHAPTER IX. | THE AWAKENING OF CHARLOTTE |
| CHAPTER X. | MARY |
| CHAPTER XI. | THE MERRY-GO-ROUND |
| CHAPTER XII. | HAMLET WAITS |
“It is due to him to say that he was an obedient boy and a boy whose word could be depended on...” Jackanapes
I
About thirty years ago there was at the top of the right-hand side of Orange Street, in Polchester, a large stone house. I say “was”; the shell of it is still there, and the people who now live in it are quite unaware, I suppose, that anything has happened to the inside of it, except that they are certainly assured that their furniture is vastly superior to the furniture of their predecessors. They have a gramophone, a pianola, and a lift to bring the plates from the kitchen into the dining-room, and a small motor garage at the back where the old pump used to be, and a very modern rock garden where once was the pond with the fountain that never worked. Let them cherish their satisfaction. No one grudges it to them. The Coles were, by modern standards, old-fashioned people, and the Stone House was an old-fashioned house.
Young Jeremy Cole was born there in the year 1884, very early in the morning of December 8th. He was still there very early in the morning of December 8th, 1892. He was sitting up in bed. The cuckoo clock had just struck five, and he was aware that he was, at this very moment, for the first time in his life, eight years old. He had gone to bed at eight o'clock on the preceding evening with the choking consciousness that he would awake in the morning a different creature. Although he had slept, there had permeated the texture of his dreams that same choking excitement, and now,