And I suppose I bother about the country partly because I must have something big to be interested in, something bigger than myself."
"But you are big, yourself," said John, with hero-worship in his eyes, and not a twinkle.
Mr. Magnate said hastily, "No, no, only a humble instrument in the service of a very big thing."
"What thing do you mean?" asked John.
"Our great Empire, of course, boy."
We were arriving at our destination. Mr. Magnate rose and took his hat from the rack. "Well, young man," he said, "we have had an interesting talk. Come along on Saturday afternoon about 2.30, and we'll get the chauffeur to give you a quarter of an hour's spin in the Rolls."
"Thank you, sir!" said John. "And may I see Mrs. Magnate's necklace? I love jewels."
"Certainly you shall," Mr. Magnate answered.
When I had met John again outside the station, his only comment on the journey was his characteristic laugh.
DURING the six months which followed this incident, John became increasingly independent of his elders. The parents knew that he was well able to look after himself, so they left him almost entirely to his own devices. They seldom questioned him about his doings, for anything like prying was repugnant to them both; and there seemed to be no mystery about John's movements. He was continuing his study of man and man's world. Sometimes he would volunteer an account of some incident in his day's adventure; sometimes he would draw upon his store of data to illus trate a point in discussion.
Though his tastes remained in some respects puerile, it was clear from his conversation that in other respects he was very rapidly developing. He would still spend days at a stretch in making mechanical toys, such as electric boats. His electric railway system spread its ramifications all over the garden in a maze of lines, tunnels, viaducts, glass-roofed stations. He won many a competition in flying home-made model aeroplanes. In all these activities he seemed at heart a typical schoolboy, though abnormally skilful and original. But the actual time spent in this way was really not great. The only boyish occupation which seemed to fill a large proportion of his time was sailing. He had made himself a minute but seaworthy canoe, fitted both with sail and an old motor-bicycle engine. In this he spent many hours exploring the estuary and the sea-coast, and studying the sea-birds, for which he had a surprising passion. This interest, which at times seemed almost obsessive, he explained apologetically by saying, "They do their simple jobs with so much more style than man shows in his complicated job. Watch a gannet in flight, or a curlew probing the mud for food. Man, I suppose, is about as clever along his own line as the earliest birds were at flight. He's a sort of archiopteryx of the spirit."
Even the most childish activities which sometimes gripped John were apt to be illuminated in this manner by the more mature side of his nature. His delight in Comic Cuts, for instance, was half spontaneous, half a relish of his own silliness in liking the stuff.
At no time of his life did John outgrow his childhood interests. Even in his last phase he was always capable of sheer schoolboy mischief and make-believe. But already this side of his nature was being subordinated to the mature side. We knew, for instance, that he was already forming opinions about the proper aims of the individual, about social policy, about international affairs. We knew also that he was reading a great deal of physics, biology, psychology, astronomy; and that philosophical problems were now seriously occupying him.
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