CHAPTER IX.
YOUNG JOHN SCARLETT I That fatal September--the September that was to see young John take his adventurous way to his first private school--surely, steadily approached.
Mrs.Scarlett, an emotional and sentimental little woman, vibrating and taut like a telegraph wire, told herself repeatedly that she would make no sign.

The preparations proceeded, the date--September 23rd--was constantly evoked, a dreadful ghost, by the careless, light-hearted family.

Mr.Scarlett made no sign.
From the hour of John's birth--nearly ten years ago--Mrs.Scarlett had never known a day when she had not been compelled to control her sentimental affections.

From the first John had been an adorable baby, from the first he had followed his father in the rejection of all sentiment as un-English, and even if larger questions are involved, unpatriotic, but also from the first he had hinted, in surprising, furtive, agitating moments, at poetry, imagination, hidden, romantic secrets.

Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to hint at anything--hints were not at all in their line, and of imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver thimble--they were good, sturdy, honest children, with healthy stomachs and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their class and generation were bent upon doing.