Chapter I: The New World

F ROM a world of daisies as big as moons and of mountainous
green hillocks Michael Fane came by some unrealized method of
transport to the thin red house, that as yet for his mind could
not claim an individual existence amid the uniformity of a long
line of fellows. His arrival coincided with a confusion of
furniture, with the tramp of men backwards and forwards from a
cavernous vehicle very dry and dusty. He found himself
continually being lifted out of the way of washstands and
skeleton chests of drawers. He was invited to sit down and keep
quiet, and almost in the same breath to walk about and avoid
hindrance. Finally, Nurse led him up many resonant stairs to
the night-nursery which at present consisted of two square cots
that with japanned iron bars stood gauntly in a wilderness of
oilcloth surrounded by four walls patterned with a prolific
vegetation. Michael was dumped down upon a grey pillow and
invited to see how well his sister Stella was behaving. Nurse’s
observation was true enough: Stella was rosily asleep in an
undulation of blankets, and Michael, threatened by many
whispers and bony finger-shakes, was not at all inclined to
wake her up. Nurse retired in an aura of importance, and
Michael set out to establish an intimacy with the various iron
bars of his cage. For a grown-up person these would certainly
have seemed much more alike than even the houses of Carlington
Road, West Kensington: for Michael each bar possessed a
personality. Minute scratches unnoticed by the heedless adult
world lent variety of expression: slight irregularities
infused certain groups with an air of deliberate consultation.
From the four corners royal bars, crowned with brass,
dominated their subjects. Passions, intrigues, rumours,
ambitions, revenges were perceived by Michael to be seething
below the rigid exterior of these iron bars: even military
operations were sometimes discernible. This cot was guarded by
a romantic population, with one or two of whose units Michael
could willingly have dispensed: one bar in particular, set
very much askew, seemed sly and malignant. Michael disliked
being looked at by anybody or anything, and this bar had a
persistent inquisitiveness which already worried him. ‘Why
does he look at me?’ Michael would presently ask, and ‘Nobody
wants to look at such an ugly little boy,’ Nurse would
presently reply. So one more intolerable question would
overshadow his peace of mind.

Meanwhile, far below, the tramp of men continued, until suddenly an immense roar filled the room. Some of the bars shivered and clinked, and Michael’s heart nearly stopped. The roar died away only to be succeeded by another roar from the opposite direction. Stella woke up crying. Michael was too deeply frightened so to soothe himself, as he sat clutching the pointed ears of the grey pillow. Stella, feeling that the fretful tears of a sudden awakening were insufficient, set up a bellow of dismay. Michael was motionless, only aware of a gigantic heart that shook him horribly. At last the footsteps of Nurse could be heard, and over them, the quick ‘tut-tut-tuts’ that voiced her irritation.

“You naughty boy, to wake up your little sister.”

“What was that noise?” asked Michael.

“Your own noise,” said Nurse sharply.

“It wasn’t. It was lions.”

“And if it _was_ lions, what next?” said Nurse. “Lions will
always come, when little boys are naughty. Lions don’t like
naughty boys.”

“Michael doesn’t like lions.”

He took refuge in the impersonal speech of earlier days, and with a grave obstinacy of demeanour resisted the unreasonableness of his nurse.

“What was that noise, Nanny? Do tell me.”

“Why a train, of course. There’s a molly-coddle. Tut-tut!”

“A train like we rode in from down in the country?”

“Yes, a train like we rode in from down in the country!” Nurse mimicked him in an outrageous falsetto.

“Not lions at all?”

“Not if you’re a good boy.”

“Nor bears—nor tigers—nor wolverines?”

The last was a dreadful importation of fancy from some zoological gift-book.

“Now that’s enough,” Nurse decided.

“Nor laughing hyenas?”

“Am I to speak to you again? As if there wasn’t enough to do without children why-why-whying morning, noon and night.”

Michael recognized finality of argument. The mention of morning, noon and night with their dreary suggestion of the infinite and unattainable plunged him into silence. Nurse, gratified by her victory and relieved to find that Stella was crooning happy mysteries to a rag doll, announced that she was prepared in return for the very best behaviour to push the two cots against the window. This done, she left the children to their first survey of London airs, to silent wonder amid the cheeping of countless sparrows.

Stella sat blinking at the light and the sailing clouds. She
soon began to chant her saga. Primitive and immemorial sounds
flowed from that dewy mouth; melodies and harmonies, akin to
the day itself, voiced the progress of the clouds; and while
she told her incommunicable delight

there was actually no one to say ‘Stella, will you stop that
’umming?’ Michael could not compete with his sister in her
interpretation of the clouds’ courses. He had, indeed, tried
once or twice; but Stella either stopped abruptly, leaving him
to lag for a while with a lame tune of his own, or else she
would burst into tears. Michael preferred an inspiration more
immediately visual to Stella’s incomprehensibly boundless
observations. Michael would enjoy holding in his hand a bunch
of blue cornflowers; Stella would tear them to pieces, not
irritably, but absently in a seclusion of spacious visions. On
this occasion Michael paid no attention to Stella’s salutation
of light; he was merely thankful she showed no sign of wishing
to be amused by ‘peep-bo,’ or by the pulling of curious faces.
Both these diversions were dangerous to Michael’s peace of
mind, because at some period of the entertainment he was bound,
with disastrous results, to cross the line between Stella’s joy
and Stella’s fear. Michael turned to look out of the window,
finding the details of the view enthralling. He marked first of
all the long row of poplar trees already fresh and vivid with
young May’s golden green. Those trees, waving with their
youthfulness in the wind, extended as far as could be observed
on either side. Three in every garden were planted close to the
farthest wall. How beautiful they looked, and how the sparrows
hopped from branch to branch. Michael let his eyes rove along
the pleasant green line whose slightness and evenness caressed
the vision, as velvet might have caressed a hand running
lightly over the surface. Suddenly, with a sharp emotion of
shame, Michael perceived that the middle tree opposite his own
window was different from the rest. It was not the same shape;
it carried little blobs such as hang from tablecloths and
curtains; it scarcely showed a complete leaf. Here was a
subject for speculation indeed; and the more Michael looked at
the other trees, the more he grew ashamed for the
loiterer. This problem would worry him interminably: he would
return to it often and often. But the exquisite pleasure he
had taken in the trim and equable row was gone; for as soon as
the eye caressed it, there was this intolerably naked tree to
affront all regularity.

After the trees, Michael examined the trellis that extended along the top of a stuccoed wall without interruption on either side. This trellis was a curiosity, for if he looked at it very hard, the lozenges of space came out from their frame and moved about in a blur—an odd business presumably inexplicable for evermore like everything else. Beyond the trellis was the railway; and while Michael was looking a signal shot down, a distant roar drew near, and a real train rumbled past which, beheld from Michael’s window, looked like a toy train loaded with dolls, one of whom wore a red tam-o’-shanter. Michael longed to be sitting once again in that moving wonderland and to be looking out of the window, himself wearing just such another red tam-o’-shanter. Beyond the railway was surely a very extraordinary place indeed, with mountains of coal everywhere and black figures roaming about; and beyond this, far far away, was a very low line of houses with a church steeple against an enormous sky.

“Dinner-time! Tut-tut,” said Nurse, suddenly bustling into the room to interrupt Stella’s saga and Michael’s growing dread of being left alone in that wilderness beyond the railway lines.

“Could I be left there?” he asked.

“Left where?”

“There.” He pointed to the coal-yard.

“Don’t point!” said Nurse.

“What is that place?”

“The place where coal comes from.”

“Could I be left there?” he persisted.

“Not unless one of the coalmen came over the wall and
carried you off and left you there, which he will do unless
you’re a good boy.”

Michael caught his breath.

“Can coalmen climb?” he asked, choking at the thought.

“Climb like kittens,” said Nurse.

A new bogey had been created, black and hairy with yellow cat’s eyes and horrid prehensile arms.

Michael and Stella were now lifted out of the cots and dumped on to the cold oilcloth and marched into the adjacent bathroom, where their faces and hands were sponged with a new sponge that was not only rough in itself, but also had something that scratched buried in one of the pores. During this operation, Nurse blew violent breaths through her tightly closed lips. When it was over, Stella was lifted up into Nurse’s arms; Michael was commanded to walk downstairs in front and not to let go of the banisters; then down they went, down and down and down—past three doors opening into furniture-heaped rooms, past a door with upper panels of coloured glass in a design of red and amber sparrows upon a crude blue vegetation—a beautiful door, Michael thought, as he went by. Down and down and down into the hall which was strewn with bits of straw and shavings and had another glass-panelled door very gaudy. Here the floor was patterned with terra-cotta, yellow, black and slate-blue tiles. Two more doors were passed, and a third door was reached, opening apparently on a box into which light was let through windows of such glass as is seen round the bottom of bird-cages. This final staircase was even in the fullest daylight very dim and eerie, and was permeated always with a smell of burnt grease and damp cloths. Half-way down Michael shrunk back against Nurse’s petticoats, for in front of him yawned a terrible cavern exuding chill.

“What’s that?” he gasped.

“Bless the boy, he’ll have me over!” cried Nurse.

“Oh, Nanny, what is it—that hole? Michael doesn’t like that hole.”

“There’s a milksop. Tut-tut! Frightened by a coal-cellar! Get on with you, do.”

Michael, holding tightly to the banisters, achieved the ground and was hustled into the twilight of the morning-room. Stella was fitted into her high chair; the circular tray was brought over from behind and thumped into its place with a click: Michael was lifted up and thumped down into another high chair and pushed close up to the table so that his knees were chafed by the sharp edge and his thighs pinched by a loose strand of cane. Nurse, blowing as usual through closed lips, cut up his meat, and dinner was carried through in an atmosphere of greens and fat and warm, milk-and-water and threats of Gregory-powder, if every bit were not eaten.

Presently the tramping of furniture-men was renewed and the morning-room, was made darker still by the arrival of a second van which pulled up at right angles to the first. In the course of dinner, Cook entered. She was a fat masculine creature who always kept her arms folded beneath a coarse and spotted apron; and after Cook came Annie the housemaid, tall and thin and anæmic. These two watched the children eating, while they gossiped with Nurse.

“Isn’t Mrs. Fane coming at all, then?” enquired Cook.

“For a few minutes—for a few minutes,” said Nurse quickly, and Michael would not have been so very suspicious had he not observed the nodding of her head long after there was any need to nod it.

“Is mother going to stay with us?” he asked.

“Stay? Stay? Of course she’ll stay. Stay for ever,” asserted Nurse in her bustling voice.

“Funny not to be here when the furniture came,” said Cook.

“Yes, wasn’t it?” echoed Annie. “It _was_ funny. That’s what I
thought. How funny, I thought.”

“Not that I suppose things will be what you might call properly arranged just yet?” Cook speculated.

“Everything arranged. Everything arranged,” Nurse snapped. “Nothing to arrange. Nothing to arrange.”

And as if to stifle for ever any ability in Michael to ask questions, she proceeded to cram his mouth with a dessert-spoonful of rice pudding from her own plate, jarring his teeth with the spoon when she withdrew it.

Then Michael’s lovely mother in vivid rose silk came into the room, and Cook squeezed herself backwards through the door very humbly and so quietly that Annie found herself alone before she realized the fact; so that in order to cover her confusion and assist her retreat she was compelled to snatch away Michael’s plate of rice pudding before he had finished the last few clotted grains. Michael was grateful to Annie for this, and he regarded her from that moment as an ally. Thenceforth he would often seek her out in what she called ‘her’ pantry, there to nibble biscuits, while Annie dried cups and swung them from brass hooks.

“How cosy you all look,” said mother. “Darling Stella, are you enjoying your rice pudding? And, darling Michael,” she added, “I hope you’re being very good.”

“Oh, yes,” said Nurse, “Good! Yes. He’s very good. Oh, yes. Tut-tut! Tut-tut!”

After this exhalation of approval Nurse blew several breaths, leaned over him, pulled down his blue and white sailor-top, and elevated his chin with the back of her hand.

“There’s no need to bother about the drawing-room or the dining-room or my bedroom or, in fact, any of the rooms except the night-nursery and the day-nursery. You’re quite straight in here. I shall be back by the end of June.”

Nurse shook her head very violently at this, and Michael felt
tears of apprehension welling up into his eyes. Mrs. Fane
paused a moment doubtfully; then she waved beautiful slim
gloves and glided from the room. Michael listened to delicate
footsteps on the stairs, and the tinkle of small ornaments. A
bleak silence followed the banging of the front door.

“She’s gone away. I know she’s gone away,” he moaned.

“Who’s She?” demanded Nurse. “She’s the cat’s mother.”

“Mother! Mother!” he wailed. “She always goes away from Michael.”

“And no wonder,” said Nurse. “Dear, dear! Yes—tut-tut!—but goodness gracious, she won’t be gone long. She’ll be back in June.”

“What’s June?” Michael asked.

“If you ask any more silly questions you’ll go to bed, young man; but if you’re a good boy, I’ll tell you a story.”

“A real story? A nice long story?” asked Michael.

“I’ll tell you a story about Jack o’ my Nory
And now my story’s begun.
I’ll tell you another about Jack and his brother
And now my story’s done.”

Nurse twiddled her thumbs with a complacent look, as she smacked her palate upon the final line.

“That isn’t a story,” said Michael sullenly. “When will mother be back?”

“In June. That’s enough,” said Nurse.

Michael went to sleep that night, trying to materialize this
mysterious June. It came to mean a distant warmth of orange
light towards which he waited very slowly. He lay awake
thinking of June in the luminousness of a night-light shielded
from his direct vision by a basin. His hands were muffled in
fingerless gloves to prevent thumb-sucking. Suddenly upon the
quiet came a blaze of light. Had he reached June? His sleepy
eyelids uncurled to the scented vision of his beautiful mother.
But it was only gaslight playing and
fluttering over the figure of anæmic Annie taking hairpin
after hairpin from her hair. Yet there was a certain interest
in watching Annie undress. Her actions were less familiar than
those of Nurse. Her lips were softer to kiss. Then the vision
of June, rising and falling with Annie’s breath, recurred from
distances unattainable, faded again into the blackness of the
night, and after a while came back dazzling and golden. It was
morning, and in a chirping of sparrows and depth of quiet
sunlight Michael began to wonder why he was sleeping beside
Annie in a big bed. It was an experience that stood for a long
time in his memory as the first adventure of his life.

The adventure of Annie was a solitary occasion. By the
following night the regular night-nursery was ready for
occupation, and the pea-green vegetation of the walls was
hidden by various furniture. Nurse’s bed flanked by the two
cots occupied much of its space. Round the fire was a nursery
fender on which hung perpetually various cloths and clothes and
blankets and sheers which, as it was summer at the time, might
all have been dried much more easily out of doors. Pictures
were hung upon the wall—pictures that with the progress of time
became delightfully intimate experiences. They were mostly
framed chromolithographs saved from the Christmas numbers of
illustrated papers. There was Cherry Ripe—a delicious and
demure girl in a white dress with a pink sash, for whom Michael
began to feel a romantic affection. There was the picture of a
little girl eating a slice of bread-and-butter on a doorstep,
watched by a fox terrier and underneath inscribed ‘Give me a
piece, please.’ Michael did not know whether to feel more sorry
for the little girl or the dog; some sort of compassion, he
thought, was demanded. It was a problem picture insoluble over
many years of speculation. The night-nursery seemed always full
of Nurse’s clothes. Her petticoats were usually chequered or
uniform
red, preternaturally bright in contrast with the blackness of
the exterior apparel. The latter of heavy serge or similar
material was often sown with jet bugles which scratched
Michael’s face when he played ‘Hide-Oh’ among the folds of
such obvious concealment. Apart from these petticoats and
skirts, the most individual possession of Nurse’s wardrobe was
a moon-shaped bustle of faded crimson which Michael loved to
swing from the bedpost whence out of use it was suspended.
There was also in a top drawer, generally unattainable, a
collection of caps threaded with many different velvet ribbons
and often coquettish with lace flowers. Michael was glad when
Nurse put on her best cap, a proceeding which took place just
before tea. Her morning cap was so skimpy as scarcely to hide
the unpleasant smoothness of her thin hair. In the amber
summer afternoons or blue spring twilights, Nurse looked
comparatively beautiful under the ample lace, with a softer
apron and a face whose wrinkles were smoothed out by the
consciousness of leisure and the pleasant brown teapot.
Mostly, Michael was inclined to compare her with a monkey, so
squab was her nose, so long her upper lip, and such a
multitude of deep furrows twisted up her countenance. That
Nurse was ever young, Michael could not bring himself to
believe, and daguerreotypes framed in tin-foil which she
produced as evidence of youth from a square box inlaid with
mother-o’-pearl, never convinced him as a chromolithograph
might have convinced him. At the same time the stories of her
childhood, which Nurse was sometimes persuaded to tell, were
very enthralling; moreover, by the fact of her obvious
antiquity, they had the dimness and mystery of old
fairy-tales.

On the whole Michael was happy in his pea-green nursery. He was
well guarded by the iron soldiers of his cot. He liked the
warmth and the smallness of the room; he liked to be able to
climb from his cot on to

Nurse’s bed, from Nurse’s bed into Stella’s cot, and with this
expanse of safe territory he felt sorry for the chilly and
desolate and dangerous floor. Michael also liked the
day-nursery. To begin with, it possessed a curious and romantic
shape due to its nearness to the roof. The ceiling sloped on
either side of the window almost to the floor. It was not a
room that was square and obvious, for round the corner from the
door was a fairly large alcove which was not destined to lose
its romance for many years. The staircase that led up to the
day-nursery was light and cheerful owing to the skylight in the
roof. Yet this skylight Michael could have wished away. It was
a vulnerable spot which made the day-nursery just a little
uneasy at dusk—this and the cistern cupboard with its dark
boomings and hammerings and clankings and utter
inexplicableness. However, the day-nursery was a bright room,
with a cosy atmosphere of its own. The pleasantest meal of the
day was taken there, and in a black cupboard lived the golden
syrup and the heraldic mugs and the dumpy teapot and the
accessories of tea. What a much pleasanter cupboard this was
than the smaller one in the night-nursery which revealed, when
opened, slim and ugly ipecacuanha, loathsome Gregory-powder
with wooden cap and squat cork, wicked envelopes of grey
powders and slippery bottles of castor-oil. There, too, was the
liver-coloured liquorice-powder, the vile rhubarb and the
deceitful senna. In fact, apart from a bag of jaded acid-drops,
there were only two pleasant inmates of this cupboard—the
silvery and lucent syrup of squills and a round box of honey
and borax. There were no pills because Nurse objected to pills.
She was always telling Michael as he listened, sick at heart,
to the stirring-up of the Gregory-powder with a muffled spoon,
so different from the light-hearted tinkle and quick fizz of
magnesia, to be thankful he was not on the verge of taking a
pill. That she represented as something worthy of a struggle.
Michael imagined the taking of a pill to be equivalent to
swallowing a large painted ball full of a combination of all
the nastiest medicines in the world. Even the omnipotent,
omniscient Nanny could not take a pill.

There were other jolly cupboards in the day-nursery—one in particular pasted over with ‘scraps’ and varnished—a work of art that was always being added to for a treat. There was a patchwork hearthrug very comfortable to lie upon beside the cat and her two black kittens. There was Nanny’s work-table in the window, gay with coloured silks and wools. There was a piano locked up until Michael’s first lesson, but nevertheless wonderful on account of the smooth curve of the lid that allowed one moment’s delicious balance and then an equally delicious slide on to the floor.

Certainly the day-nursery was the best room in the tall thin house, just as the morning-room was the worst. The morning-room was odious. In it were eaten breakfast and dinner, both nasty meals. Near it was the coal-cellar and the area-door with its grinning errand boys. The windows afforded foothold to strange cats that stared abominably with yellow eyes. Tramps and sweeps walked past the area-railings or looked in evilly. Horrid gipsies smirked through the window, and pedlars often tapped. The morning-room was utterly abominable, fit only for the boiled mutton and caper sauce and suet puddings that loaded its table.

The kitchen, although it was next to the morning-room, was a
far pleasanter resort. So far as any ground-floor now could be
considered safe, the kitchen was safe. It looked out upon its
own fortified basement whose perforated iron staircase had a
spiked door at the top, which could be securely shut. The
kitchen contained a large number of objects of natural
interest, among which was a shallow cupboard that included upon
an attainable shelf jars of currants,
sultanas, and rice much more edible in the raw state than
cooked. There was the electric-bell case, recording with
mysterious discs a far-off summons. There was the drawer in
the kitchen table that contained, besides knives and forks, a
rolling-pin, a tin-opener, a corkscrew, skewers and, most
exciting of all, a club-shaped cage for whipping eggs. There
was also a deep drawer in the dresser which held many
revelations of the private history of Annie and Cook. Michael
could easily have spent days in the kitchen without exhausting
its treasures, and as for Cook, gross though she was and
heavily though she smelt of onions and beer, her tales were
infinitely superior to anything ever known in the way of
narration.

Towards the end of June, Mrs. Fane came back. Her arrival was
heralded by the purchase of several pots of marguerites and
calceolarias—the latter to Michael a very objectionable flower
because, detecting in it some resemblance to his dearly loved
snapdragons, he pressed open the mouth of a flower and, finding
inside a small insect, had to drop the whole pot in a shudder.
This brought the punishment of not being allowed to watch from
the steps for his mother’s cab rounding the corner into
Carlington Road, and made calceolarias for ever hateful.
However, Mrs. Fane arrived in the richness of a midsummer
twilight, and Michael forgot all about calceolarias in his
happiness. All day long for many golden days he pattered up and
down the house and in and out of all the rooms at his mother’s
heels. He held coils of picture-wire and hooks and hammers and
nails and balls of wool and reels of silk and strands of
art-muslin and spiders of cotton-wool and Japanese fans and
plumes of pampas grass and all the petty utilities and beauties
of house arrangement. By the end of July every room was finally
arranged, and Michael and Stella with their mother, accompanied
by Nurse and Annie, went down to the seaside to spend two
wonderful months. Michael was often allowed
to sit up an extra half-hour and even when he went to bed his
mother would come to hear him say his prayers. She would sit
by him, her lovely face flushed by the rose-red August sunsets
that floated in through the open window on a sound of
sea-waves. As it grew darker and, over the noise of happy
people walking about in the cool evening, a distant band
played music, his mother would lean over and kiss him good
night. He would be loath to let her go, and just as she was
closing the door quietly he would call her back and whisper
‘One more kiss,’ and because that good-night kiss was the most
enchanting moment in his day, he would whisper as he held her
to him very close, ‘Only one more, but much, much, much the
longest kiss in all the world.’

They were indeed two very wonderful months. In the morning
Michael would sit beside his mother at breakfast, and for a
great treat he would be given the segment she so cleverly cut
off from the tip of her egg. And for another treat, he would be
allowed to turn the finished egg upside down and present it to
her as a second untouched, for which she would be very grateful
and by whose sudden collapse before the tapping of the spoon,
she would be just as tremendously surprized. After the egg
would always come two delicious triangles of toast, each
balancing a single strawberry from the pot of strawberry jam.
After breakfast, Michael would walk round the heap of clinkers
in the middle of the parched seaside garden while his mother
read her letters, and very soon they would set out together to
the beach, where in time they would meet Nurse and Stella with
the perambulator and the camp-stools and the bag of greengages
or William-pears. Sand castles were made and boats were sailed
or rather were floated upside down in pools, and just as the
morning was getting too good to last, they would have to go
home to dinner, joining on to the procession of people
returning up the cliffs. Michael would
be armed with a spade, a boat with very wet sails, and
sometimes with a pail full of sea-water and diminutive fish
that died one by one in the course of the afternoon heat.
After dinner Mrs. Fane would lie down for a while, and Michael
would lie down for a great treat beside her and keep
breathless and still, watching the shadows of light made by
the bellying of the blind in the breeze. Bluebottles would
drone, and once to his bodeful apprehension a large spider
migrated to another corner of the ceiling. But he managed to
restrain himself from waking his mother.

One afternoon Michael was astonished to see on the round table by the bed the large photograph in a silver frame of a man in knee-breeches with a sword—a prince evidently by his splendid dress and handsome face. He speculated during his mother’s sleep upon this portrait, and the moment Annie had left the cup of tea which she brought in to wake his mother Michael asked who the man was.

“A friend of mine,” said Mrs. Fane.

“A prince?”

“No, not a prince.”

“He looks like a prince,” said Michael sceptically.

“Does he, darling?”

“I think he does look like a prince. Is he good?”

“Very good.”

“What’s wrote on it?” Michael asked. “Oh, mother, when will I read writing?”

“When you’re older.”

“I wish I was older now. I want to read writing. What’s wrote on it?”

“Always,” his mother told him.

“Always?”

“Yes.”

“Always what? Always good?”

“No, just plain ‘always,’” said Mrs. Fane.

“What a funny writing. Who wrote it?”

“The man in the picture.”

“Why?”

“To please mother.”

“Shall I write ‘always’ when I can write?” he asked.

“Of course, darling.”

“But what is that man for?”

“He’s an old friend of mother’s.”

“I like him,” said Michael confidently.

“Do you, darling?” said his mother, and then suddenly she kissed him.

That evening when Michael’s prayers were concluded and he was lying very still in his bed, he waited for his mother’s tale.

“Once upon a time,” she began, “there was a very large and enormous forest——”

“No, don’t tell about a forest,” Michael interrupted. “Tell about that man in the picture.”

Mrs. Fane was staring out of the window, and after a moment’s hesitation she turned round.

“Because there _are_ fairy-tales without a prince,” said
Michael apologetically.

“Well, once upon a time,” said his mother, “there lived in an old old country house three sisters whose mother had died when they were quite small.”

“Why did she die?”

“She was ill.”

Michael sighed sympathetically.

“These three sisters,” his mother went on, “lived with their father, an old clergyman.”

“Was he kind to them?”

“According to his own ideas he was very kind. But the youngest
sister always wanted to have her own way and one day when she
was feeling very cross because her father had told her she was
to go and stay with an aunt, who should come riding along a
lane but——”

“That man,” interrupted Michael, greatly excited.

“A rider on horseback. And he said good morning, and she said good morning, though she had no business to.”

“Why hadn’t she?”

“Because it isn’t right for girls to speak to riders on horseback without being introduced. But the rider was very handsome and brave and after that they met very often, and then one day he said, ‘Won’t you ride away with me?’ and she rode away with him and never saw her father or her sisters or the old house any more.”

Mrs. Fane had turned her face to the sunset again.

“Is that all?” Michael asked.

“That’s all.”

“Was they happy ever afterwards?”

“Very happy—too happy.”

“Are they happy now?”

“Very happy—too happy.”

“Did they live in a castle?”

“Sometimes, and sometimes they lived in a beautiful ship and went sailing away to the most beautiful cities in the world.”

“Can’t Michael go with you?” he asked.

“Darling boy, it’s a fairy-tale.”

“Is it?” he said doubtfully.

The two wonderful months were over. One long day of packing up
was the end of them, and when they got back to London there was
more packing up, after a few days of which Mrs. Fane took
Michael in her arms and kissed him good-bye and told him to be
very good. Michael tried not to cry; but the tears were forced
out by a huge lump in his throat when he saw a cab at the door,
pointing the other way from London. He could not bear the
heaped-up luggage and Nurse’s promises of sitting up late that
evening for a great treat. He did not want to sit up late, and
when his mother whispered there was a surprize for him in the
drawing-room, he did not care at all for a surprize. But
nothing could make the minutes stay still. He was allowed to
watch the cab going down the road, but he had no heart to wave
his handkerchief in farewell, and when presently he went back
with Nurse into the thin red house and was triumphantly led
into the drawing-room, he was not raised to any particular
happiness by the lancer’s uniform, displayed on a large square
of cardboard. He suffered himself to be dressed up and to have
the scarlet breast-plate strapped around him and the plumed
helmet to be pushed over his nose and the sabre-tache to be
entangled with his legs; but there was no spirit of hope and
adventure flaming in his breast—only an empty feeling and a
desire to look out of the night-nursery window at the trains
going by with happy people inside.