9

Rud returned to Camford at the end of the Long Vacation very nearly if not quite a grown man. In every life cycle there are phases of swift development alternating with intervals of comparative unchangeableness; there comes a time when the child almost suddenly becomes a boy and again at adolescence when puerility falls off in a few amazing days, like a cloak suddenly abandoned. So now in a brief tale of weeks, Rud had passed from the phase of dreaming youthfulness and begun to assemble himself for a purposeful attack on life. He spent the last two days of the holiday at home, and his mother saw with unspoken satisfaction the change wrought by that six pounds ten of hers in his voice and eye and bearing. Where he had been defensive and irritable he was now tranquil and resolute.

"All that fresh air has done him a lot of good," said his father.

But she felt that it was more than fresh air had happened to him. What it was she could not imagine. His development followed laws of its own. She knew exactly how Aunt Julia would account for it, and she knew quite certainly that Aunt Julia would be wrong.

So she said nothing about it to Aunt Julia.