Page:Solo (1924).pdf/27

 the Moonlight Sonata to the angry Boers—on a vast organ with pipes that stretched like a golden bridge to heaven.

Paul and Gritty sometimes played "ship" among the impressive boxes which Gritty's mother forbade her to mention by name. Once Gritty had occasion to write the word, and she spelt it "coughin." In a small showroom were even more mysterious boxes, shiny and trimmed with metal. They had arrived ready-made from Halifax, wrapped in blue tissue paper which Gritty and Paul tore off and soaked in their school bottles, for it was a point of taste at school to have "coloured water" with which to wash one's slate, just as it was a point of respectability to have a slice of cake and an apple to top off one's sandwich luncheons on stormy days.

On his fifth birthday Paul had commenced school, for, although it was a Thursday and the middle of a term, Aunt Verona had had no choice but to fulfil a promise that he should be allowed to attend "when he got five." As Aunt Verona never appeared in public, it had fallen to the lot of Mr. Silva to escort Paul to Miss Ranston with an explanatory note.

His clean face and jaunty person were offensive to the big boys who played leap-frog in the angle of the school steps, and on the second day their sense of injury expressed itself in a concerted attack. He found himself enclosed in a ring of howling red Indians. Before his eyes were dancing legs and visions of lifelong humiliation; but he was armed with presence of mind and an umbrella. Deliberately he selected the ringleader and administered a jab with the umbrella point which in the confusion went to his assailant's eye and pierced it.

"Serves you right," Paul piped, as the others, scared at the sight of blood, fell back. That is what he said,