If you have read of Tommy's boyhood you may remember the day it ended with his departure for the farm, and that he and Elspeth walked through Caddam to the cart that was to take him from her, and how, to comfort her, he swore that he loved her with his whole heart, and Grizel not at all, and that Grizel was in the wood and heard.

And how Elspeth had promised to wave to Tommy in the cart as long as it was visible, but broke down and went home sobbing, and how Grizel took her place and waved, pretending to be Elspeth, so that he might think she was bearing up bravely.

Tommy had not known what Grizel did for him that day, and when he heard it now for the first time from her own lips, he realized afresh what a glorious girl she was and had always been.
"You may try to rub that memory out of little Grizel's head," he declared, looking very proudly at her, "but you shall never rub it out of mine." It was by his wish that they went together to the spot where she had heard him say that he loved Elspeth only--"if you can find it," Tommy said, "after all these years"; and she smiled at his mannish words--she had found it so often since! There was the very clump of whin.
And here was the boy to match.

Oh, who by striving could make himself a boy again as Tommy could! I tell you he was always irresistible then.

What is genius?
It is the power to be a boy again at will.