CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



going to the fishing not only without leave but 

 against orders bathing in the forbidden pool, where 

 the tailor was drowned drying powder before the 

 school-room fire, and blowing himself and two crack- 

 skulled cronies to the ceiling tying kettles to the 

 tails of dogs shooting an old woman's laying hen 

 galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps 

 climbing trees to the slenderest twig on which bird 

 could build, and up the tooth-of-time-indented sides 

 of old castles after wallflowers and starlings being 

 run away with in carts by colts against turnpike 

 gates buying bad ballads from young gipsy-girls, 

 who, on receiving a sixpence, give ever so many kisses 

 in return, saying, "Take your change out of that"; 

 on a borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail 

 a devil for galloping not only attending country- 

 races for a saddle and collar, but entering for and 

 winning the prize dancing like a devil in barns at 

 kirns seeing his blooming partner home over the 

 blooming heather, most perilous adventure of all in 

 which virgin-puberty can be involved fighting with 

 a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn beneath 

 a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen 

 blue and, to conclude "this strange eventful his- 

 tory," once brought home at one o'clock in the morn- 

 ing, God knows whence or by whom, and found by the 

 shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the 

 [25 ] 



