I, who have had a hard fight to keep my thoughts free and my limbs
unrestrained and who have not retired from the fight without deep wounds
of which I am reminded when the weather changes, I have, of my own free
will, brought him to the institution for maiming human beings. I, who at
times have soared to peaks that were my own, because the other birds
dared not follow me, have myself brought him to the place where wings
are clipped for flying respectably, with the flock.
"There was nothing else to be done," says the mother of my little boy.
"Really?" I reply, bitterly. "Was there nothing else to be done? But
suppose that I had put by some money, so that I could have saved Messrs.
Petersen and Nielsen and Froeken Hansen their trouble and employed my day
in myself opening out lands for that little traveller whom I myself have
brought into the land? Suppose that I had looked round the world for
people with small boys who think as I do and that we had taken upon us
to bring up these young animals so that they kept sight of horns and
tails and fairy-tales?"
"Yes," she says.
"Small boys have a bad time of it, you know."
"They had a worse time of it in the old days."
"That is a poor comfort. And it can become worse again. The world is
full of parents and teachers who shake their foolish heads and turn up
their old eyes and cross their flat chests with horror at the depravity
of youth: children are so disobedient, so naughty, so self-willed and
talk so disrespectfully to their elders! . . . And what do we do, we who
know better?"
"We do what we can."
But I walk about the room, more and more indignant and ashamed of the
pitiful part which I am playing:
"Do you remember, a little while ago, he came to me and said that he
longed so for the country and asked if we couldn't go there for a
little? There were horses and cows and green fields to be read in his
eyes. Well, I couldn't leave my work. And I couldn't afford it. So I
treated him to a shabby and high-class sermon about the tailor to whom I
owed money. Don't you understand that I let my little boy do _my_ work,
that I let him pay _my_ debt? . . ." I bend down over her and say
earnestly, "You must know; do please tell me--God help me, I do not
know--if I ought not rather to have paid my debt to the boy and cheated
the other?"
"You know quite well," she says.
She says it in such a way and looks at me with two such sensible eyes
and is so strong and so true that I suddenly think things look quite
well for our little boy; and I become restful and cheerful like herself:
"Let Petersen and Nielsen and Hansen look out!" I say. "My little boy,
for what I care, may take from them all the English and geography and
history that he can. But they shall throw no dust in his eyes. I shall
keep him awake and we shall have great fun and find them out."
"And I shall help him with his English and geography and history," says
she.