The Kingdom Round the Corner—A Novel

BOOKS BY MR. DAWSON

NOVELS

The Kingdom Round the Corner
The Garden Without Walls
Slaves of Freedom
The Raft
Last Chance River
The Road To Avalon

SHORTER STORIES

The Little House—Illustrations by Stella Langdale
The Seventh Christmas—Illustrations by Edmund Dulac
The Unknown Country—Illustrations by W.C. Rice

WAR BOOKS

Carry On: Letters in War-Time
The Glory of the Trenches
Out To Win: the Story of America in France
Living Bayonets: a Record of the Last Push
The Test of Scarlet: a Romance of Reality

POEMS

Florence on a Certain Night
The Worker and Other Poems

"I'm sorry," Tabs apologized. "I didn't mean anything unkind."(Page 33)

The Kingdom Round the Corner—A Novel

By CONINGSBY DAWSON

Illustrated by W.D. Stevens

NEW YORK
Cosmopolitan Book Corporation
M C M X X I
Copyright, 1921, by Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, New York.—All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including that of the Scandinavian
Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

An Altered World

CHAPTER II

Retrievers of Youth

CHAPTER III

All Sorts of Kingdoms

CHAPTER IV

The Complications of Maisie

CHAPTER V

The Air of Conquest

CHAPTER VI

Trampled Roses

CHAPTER VII

Some People Find Their Kingdoms

CHAPTER VIII

Round the Corner

The Illustrations by

W.D. Stevens

"I'm sorry," Tabs apologized. "I didn't mean anything unkind." (Page 33)

Tabs extended his hand. Braithwaite made no motion to take it.

"Mrs. Lockwood, why can't you let Adair alone?"

"I was afraid you had left"

The Kingdom Round the Corner

CHAPTER THE FIRST

AN ALTERED WORLD

I

It was on a blustering March morning in 1919 that Tabs regained his freedom. His last five months had been spent among doctors, having sundry bullets extracted from his legs. He walked with a limp which was not too perceptible unless he grew tired. His emotions were similar to those of a man newly released from gaol: he felt dazed, vaguely happy and a little lost. He felt dazed because he hadn't remembered that the world was so wide and so complicated. He felt lost because he was discovering that this wasn't the same old world that he had left in 1914. It hadn't paid him the compliment of marking time during his absence; it had marched impolitely forward. He would have to hurry to overtake it. What made him feel most lost at the moment was the fact that he had only just realized how his bravest years had been escaping. The reason for this realization was Terry. He had been accustomed to think of himself as in the first flush of

manhood, with all life's conquests still lying ahead; it was therefore a little disconcerting to be told, as a matter of course, that he had only four more years to go till he was forty. "I'll be there at the station to meet you," Terry had written him. And then, she had added laughingly, "Father orders me to say that he only gives his permission because you're such an old friend and nearly middle-aged."

Middle-aged! He, Tabs, middle-aged! The thought was appalling. It was a slander so almost true as to be incapable of disproving. He had to-day, to-morrow, and the next day; after that people would have the right to say of him that he was middle-aged. That was the real sacrifice that he had made in the war—he had given to it the last of his youth. And he had not been aware of this until he had received that letter.

Now that he was aware of it, he rebelled against the sacrifice. He refused to be robbed. He would not allow himself to become middle-aged. Why, he hadn't begun to live yet.