Bitter it is to stumble out of an opalescent dream into the cold
daylight; cruel to lose in a second a sea-voyage, an island, and a
castle that was to be practically your own; but cruellest and bitterest
of all to know, in addition to your loss, that the fingers of an angry
aunt have you tight by the scruff of your neck. My beautiful book was
gone too--ravished from my grasp by the dressy lady, who joined in the
outburst of denunciation as heartily as if she had been a relative--and
naught was left me but to blubber dismally, awakened of a sudden to the
harshness of real things and the unnumbered hostilities of the actual
world. I cared little for their reproaches, their abuse; but I sorrowed
heartily for my lost ship, my vanished island, my uneaten dinner, and
for the knowledge that, if I wanted any angels to play with, I must
henceforth put up with the anaemic, night-gowned nonentities that
hovered over the bed of the Sunday-school child in the pages of the
Sabbath Improver.
I was led ignominiously out of the house, in a pulpy, watery state,
while the butler handled his swing doors with a stony, impassive
countenance, intended for the deception of the very elect, though it did
not deceive me. I knew well enough that next time he was off duty, and
strolled around our way, we should meet in our kitchen as man to man,
and I would punch him and ask him riddles, and he would teach me tricks
with corks and bits of string. So his unsympathetic manner did not add
to my depression.
I maintained a diplomatic blubber long after we had been packed into
our pony-carriage and the lodge-gate had clicked behind us, because it
served as a sort of armour-plating against heckling and argument and
abuse, and I was thinking hard and wanted to be let alone. And the
thoughts that I was thinking were two.
First I thought, “I've got ahead of Charlotte THIS time!”
And next I thought, “When I've grown up big, and have money of my own,
and a full-sized walking-stick, I will set out early one morning, and
never stop till I get to that little walled town.” There ought to be no
real difficulty in the task. It only meant asking here and asking there,
and people were very obliging, and I could describe every stick and
stone of it.
As for the island which I had never even seen, that was not so easy.
Yet I felt confident that somehow, at some time, sooner or later, I was
destined to arrive.