Suddenly Archie felt that he could preserve his secret no longer. As on the day in church when he wanted his mother to share with him the pleasure of that glorious comedian, the man with the wagging beard, so now he wanted her to share with him the secret joy of Martin's presence.
"Mummy, I want to tell you about Martin," he said. "You know whom I mean: Martin, my brother."
"Archie, who has been telling you about Martin?" she asked.
Archie laughed.
"Why, Martin, of course. It's too lovely. Once he called me out loud, and he writes for me. He's written for me three times, once at home and twice here. I knew he was particularly here, the moment we got here. And last time he told me about what he had hidden under the pine-tree, and I found it. Don't you want to see it? I hid it away in the paper in my portmanteau. Oh, and what is a test? He said it was a test."
"A test? A test is a proof."
Archie laughed again.
"That makes sense," he said. "Now shall I show you the test? I kept it all together with what he wrote to me about it first."
He came back in a moment with his precious possession.
"Look, that's what he wrote on the paper of my letter to Miss Bampton," he said. "He said there was a circle cut on the pine-tree, and I found it, and I dug as he told me, and found this. Look! Isn't it lovely, and that's Martin's photograph, isn't it?"
It was impossible to question the validity of this evidence, and, indeed, Lady Davidstow had no desire to do so. For herself, she believed implicitly in the fact of life everlasting, without which the whole creation
