"I CAN'T see why I shouldn't use my own common sense," said Dick Crozier to himself one fine morning, as he sauntered along the lane. "What else was it given to me for, I should like to know?"
It was a holiday, and Dick had a mind to enjoy himself. Now it happened that Dick's idea of enjoyment on this particular morning did not quite agree with his father's. Before leaving home, Mr. Crozier had given him particular injunctions not to extend his walk beyond the common, and not to go near the river.
"Another time," said he, "I shall have leisure to teach you how to manage a boat. Then I shall not be afraid to trust you; but until then I would rather you kept away."
Dick ventured to argue the point. "Another time," he mightn't have a holiday. His parents had only recently removed into the neighbourhood; and he felt pretty certain that his father would put him to school as soon as ever they got settled in the new place.
"No time like the present," said Dick to himself, as he tried to shake his father's determination. "To-day is my own; no knowing whose to-morrow may be."
But when a wise father has really made up his mind, his determination is not to be shaken.
"You must be content to let me judge what is best for the present," said Mr. Crozier. "When you are older, you will see that I was right."
So Dick had to submit—outwardly, at any rate; and as soon as he had watched his father disappear round the corner towards the railway, away he walked in the opposite direction, grumbling to himself as he went.
It was not a morning for grumbling. The time of year was the end of March. The wind, having made the discovery that all its roar and bluster could not stop the trees and flowers from coming out to meet the spring, had gone to sleep, and left them to enjoy the sunshine till the April showers came on. Birds were singing blithely on the boughs, and even a few humble-bees were to be seen riding through the air with an important buzz, as if they felt that they had got things their own way at last; whilst their working relatives flew hither and thither in quest of honey, with a sharp-toned hum that plainly said—"We must be busy."
Dick heard them, and stopped grumbling. It was too bad to be in an ill-humour whilst everything else—from the kingcups in the hedge to the larks in the sky—was so full of enjoyment. It was not even as if all the ill-humour in the world could alter what his father had said. So he just gave one or two cuts at the hedge with the stick in his hand as a final protest, and began to whistle. A few minutes later he was climbing along a grassy bank, holding by the wooden palings at the top.