perfect security. Now it was raining with the
dreary mediocrity of winter, dripping from the balcony above on to the
sill below, trickling down the window-panes, lying in heavy puddles
about the road, a long monotonous grey soak. He sighed as he looked out
of the window at the piece of waste ground opposite, that was bordered
in front by a tumble-down fence and surrounded on the three other sides
by the backs of grey houses. A poor old woman was picking groundsel with
a melancholy persistence, and the torn umbrella which wavered above her
bent form made her look like a scarecrow. Presently round the corner a
boy appeared walking very jauntily. He had neither coat nor waistcoat
nor shoes nor stockings, his shirt was open in front, and a large piece
of it stuck out behind through his breeches; but he did not seem to
mind either the rain or his tattered clothes. He whistled as he walked
along, with one hand stuck in his braces and with the other banging the
wooden fence. He went by with tousled hair and dirty face, a glorious
figure of freedom in the rain, Michael envied him passionately, this
untrammelled fence-banging whistling spirit; and for a long time this
boy walked before Michael's aspirations, leading them to his own merry
tune. Michael would often think of this boy and wonder what he was doing
and saying. He made up his mind in the beeswaxed dining-room that it was
better to be a raggle-taggle wanderer than anything else. He watched the
boy disappear round the farther corner, and wished that he could
disappear in such company round corner after corner of the world beyond
the grey house-backs.

The climax of this wet morning's despair was reached when a
chimney-sweep came into sight, whooping and halloaing nearer and nearer.
Of the many itinerant terrors that haunted polite roads, Michael dreaded
sweeps most of all. So he hastily climbed down from the chair in the
window and sat under the dining-room table until the sound had passed,
shivering with apprehension lest it should stop by Number Sixty-four. It
went by, however, without pausing, and Michael breathed more freely, but
just as he was cautiously emerging from the table, there was an extra
loud postman's knock which drove him back in a panic, so that when
Nurse came fussing in to fetch him to wash his hands for dinner, he had
to invent a plausible excuse for such a refuge. As he could not find
one, he was told that for a punishment he could not be allowed to