Sometimes, to aid his aspiration, he would take a bit of paper, make a hole in it, pass the end of the string through the hole, and send the messenger scudding along the line athwart the depth of the wind.

If it stuck by the way, he would get a telescope of Mr.
Lammie's, and therewith watch its struggles till it broke loose, then follow it careering up to the kite.

Away with each successive paper his imagination would fly, and a sense of air, and height, and freedom settled from his play into his very soul, a germ to sprout hereafter, and enrich the forms of his aspirations.

And all his after-memories of kite-flying were mingled with pictures of eastern magnificence, for from the airy height of the dragon his eyes always came down upon the enchanted pages of John Hewson's book.
Sometimes, again, he would throw down his book, and sitting up with his back against the stake, lift his bonny leddy from his side, and play as he had never played in Rothieden, playing to the dragon aloft, to keep him strong in his soaring, and fierce in his battling with the winds of heaven.

Then he fancied that the monster swooped and swept in arcs, and swayed curving to and fro, in rhythmic response to the music floating up through the wind.
What a full globated symbolism lay then around the heart of the boy in his book, his violin, his kite!.