CHAPTER III.
After Timmy Tosswill had been to the village shop and done his mother's errand, he wandered on, his dog, Flick, at his heels, debating within himself what he should do next.
Like most children who lead an abnormal, because a lonely, childhood, he was in some ways very mature, in other ways still very babyish.

He was at once secretive and--whenever anything touched his heart--emotionally expansive.

To the indifferent observer Timmy appeared to be an exceptionally intelligent, naughty, rather spoilt little boy, too apt to take every advantage of a certain physical delicacy.

This was also the view taken of him by his half-brothers, and by two out of his three step-sisters.

But the three who really loved him, his mother, his nurse, and his eldest half-sister, Betty, were convinced that the child was either possessed of a curious, uncanny gift of--was it second sight ?--as his old nurse entirely and his mother half, believed, or, as Dr.
O'Farrell asserted, some abnormal development of his subconscious self.
All three were ruefully aware that Timmy was often--well, his mother called it "sly," his sister called it "fanciful," his nurse by the good old nursery term, "deceitful." It was this unlovable attribute of his which made it so difficult to know whether Timmy believed in the positive assertions occasionally made by him concerning his intimate acquaintance with the world of the unseen.
That he could sometimes visualise what was coming to pass, especially if it was of an unpleasant, disturbing nature, was, so his mother considered, an undeniable fact.