possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually took
no responsibility.

"And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?" Mrs. Fursey's reply to this
was decidedly more emphatic.

"Of course I did. Where do you think I came from?"

At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my
eyes. Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew should
be going there--for so I was always assured; now, connected as it
appeared to be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm
disappeared.

But this was not all. Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a
fresh grief. I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that my
fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls. With a child's
egoism I seized only upon my own particular case.

"Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?" I asked. "Weren't they
fond of me up there?"

The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's bosom,
for she answered more sympathetically than usual.

"Oh, they liked you well enough, I daresay. I like you, but I like to
get rid of you sometimes." There could be no doubt as to this last. Even
at the time, I often doubted whether that six o'clock bedtime was not
occasionally half-past five.

The answer comforted me not. It remained clear that I was not wanted
either in Heaven nor upon the earth. God did not want me. He was glad
to get rid of me. My mother did not want me. She could have done without
me. Nobody wanted me. Why was I here?

And then, as the sudden opening and shutting of the door of a dark room,
came into my childish brain the feeling that Something, somewhere, must
have need of me, or I could not be, Something I felt I belonged to and
that belonged to me, Something that was as much a part of me as I of It.
The feeling came back to me more than once during my childhood, though I
could never put it into words. Years later the son of the Portuguese Jew
explained to me my thought. But all that I myself could have told was
that in that moment I knew for the first time that I lived, that I was
I.

The next instant all was dark again, and I once more a puzzled little
boy, sitting by a nursery fire, asking of a village dame questions
concerning life.

Suddenly a new thought came to me, or rather the recollection of an old.

"Nurse, why haven't we got a husband?"

Mrs. Fursey left off her sewing, and stared at me.

"What maggot has the child got into its head