I said it was near." "Oh! I see.

Uncle Alfred could just go in the train ?" "Yes, of course." "Oh! I see.

P'r'aps he will." But, for the most part, Bim, realising that Lucy "didn't want to be bothered," pursued his life alone.

Through all the turmoil and disorder of that tempestuous nursery he gravely went his way, at one moment fighting lions and tigers, at another being nurse on her afternoon out (this was a truly astonishing adventure composed of scraps flung to him from nurse's conversational table and including many incidents that were far indeed from any nurse's experience), or again, he would be his mother giving a party, and, in the course of this, a great deal of food would be eaten, his favourite dishes, treacle pudding and cottage pie, being always included.
With the exception of his enthusiasm for Lucy he was no sentimentalist.
He hated being kissed, he did not care very greatly for Roger and Dorothy and Robert, and regarded them as nothing but nuisances when they interfered with his games or compelled him to join in theirs.
And now this is the story of his Odyssey.
II It happened on a wet April afternoon.

The morning had been fine, a golden morning with the scent in the air of the showers that had fallen during the night.