could and did, involuntarily, retire to bed at six, while less
happily placed children were deprived of their natural rest until eight
or nine o'clock, had always been held up to me as an astounding piece of
luck. Some little boys had not a bed at all; for the which, in my more
riotous moments, I envied them. Again, that at the first sign of a cold
it became my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed gruel and sup
off brimstone and treacle--a compound named with deliberate intent to
deceive the innocent, the treacle, so far as taste is concerned, being
wickedly subordinated to the brimstone--was another example of Fortune's
favouritism: other little boys were so astoundingly unlucky as to be
left alone when they felt ill. If further proof were needed to convince
that I had been signalled out by Providence as its especial protege,
there remained always the circumstance that I possessed Mrs. Fursey
for my nurse. The suggestion that I was not altogether the luckiest of
children was a new departure.

The good dame evidently perceived her error, and made haste to correct
it.

"Oh, you! You are lucky enough," she replied; "I was thinking of your
poor mother."

"Isn't mamma lucky?"

"Well, she hasn't been too lucky since you came."

"Wasn't it lucky, her having me?"

"I can't say it was, at that particular time."

"Didn't she want me?"

Mrs. Fursey was one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion
that the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of
perpetual apology for its existence.

"Well, I daresay she could have done without you," was the answer.

I can see the picture plainly still. I am sitting on a low chair before
the nursery fire, one knee supported in my locked hands, meanwhile Mrs.
Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity against her thimble.
At that moment knocked at my small soul for the first time the problem
of life.

Suddenly, without moving, I said:

"Then why did she take me in?"

The rasping click of the needle on the thimble ceased abruptly.

"Took you in! What's the child talking about? Who's took you in?"

"Why, mamma. If she didn't want me, why did she take me in?"

But even while, with heart full of dignified resentment, I propounded
this, as I proudly felt, logically unanswerable question, I was glad
that she had. The vision of my being refused at the bedroom window
presented itself to my imagination. I saw the stork, perplexed and
annoyed, looking