Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/36

24 I got up, turned away, and began to descend the hill. He passed me a few fields farther on without even a nod.

I never talked with him any more. A week or so after, the term ended, and then, of course, he left.

Those holidays began badly. I went out to Raymond to see Mary the first Monday. When I got to the farm I found it shut up, and, after I had tried at every door to find if there was anyone inside, went away sadly, feeling very lonely. I only walked out that way once again in the holidays. It was still shut up. I did not try to discover if there was anyone inside.

Still, these midsummer holidays were, on the whole, by far the happiest time I had ever spent. I was on the river almost every moment that I could be, sculling about in a whiff I got from one of the boat-owners of the town, with a £5 note sent to me by Colonel James at the end of July. I bathed a great deal, I see myself swimming down the red-brown river between the thickly-wooded banks on either side: down past 'the snag,' to where the river grows shallower and the sunlight filters through into the water-grasses. Can see myself dive, and go with large arm-strides over the pebbly weedy bottom: now rolling over a luxuriant wavy head of soft green, now turning to face the current; and all in the fairy light of flowing water that the sun shines upon. Again, can see myself driving my light boat down the twilight stream, or, resting on my oars, drifting slowly with soft harmonious-moving thoughts.

  next midsummer holidays, to which I had looked forward eagerly, were a disappointment. The weather was bad, chill, windy, and rainy. I forsook my boating at last: took to long walks over the wet fields, with sadness through all my thoughts. In the end, dreams became almost nightly, fantastic dreams, never quite nightmares, although the shadow of nightmare