t
the impenetrable and fearful yellowness of the air. Suddenly he heard
the cry, 'Remember, remember the Fifth of November, and gunpowder,
treason and plot,' and, almost before he had time to realize it was the
dreaded Guy Fawkes, a band of loud-voiced boys with blackened faces came
surging down the area steps and held close to the window a nodding Guy.
Michael shrieked with fear and ran from the room, only to be told by
Nurse that she'd never heard such old-fashioned nonsense in all her
life.

During that November the fogs were very bad and, as an epidemic term had
compelled the Misses Marrow to close their school, Michael brooded at
home in the gaslit rooms that shone dully in the street of footsteps.
The long morning would drag its length out, and dinner would find no
appetite in Michael. Stella seemed not to care to play and would mope
with round eyes saddened by this eternal gloom. Dusk was merely marked
by the drawing down of the blinds at the clock's hour without regard to
the transit from day to night. Michael used to wonder if it were
possible that this fog would last for ever, if for ever he would live in
Carlington Road in this yellow twilight, if his mother had forgotten
there ever was such a person as Michael Fane. But, at any rate, he would
have to grow up. He could not always be the same size. That was a
consolation. It was jolly to dream of being grown-up, to plan one's
behaviour and think of freedom. The emancipation of being grown-up
seemed to Michael to be a magnificent prospect. To begin with it was no
longer possible to be naughty. He realized, indeed, that crimes were a
temptation to some grown-ups, that people of a certain class committed
murders and burglaries, but as he felt no inclination to do either, he
looked forward to a life of unbroken virtue.

So far as he could ascertain, grown-up people were exempt from even the
necessity to distinguish between good and evil. If Michael examined the
Commandments one by one, this became obvious. _Thou shalt have none
other gods than me_. Why should one want to have? One was enough. The
Children of Israel must be different from Michael. He could not
understand such peculiar people. _Make not to thyself any graven image_.
The only difficulty about this commandment was its length for learning.
Otherwise it did not seem to bear on present-day life. _Thou shalt not
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain_. This was another vague
injunction. Who wanted to