e would pore over this work for hours, forgetting
everything under a spell of chivalry. He read the tale seriously and
thought it the saddest tale ever known. He wept over the knight's
adventures, and big teardrops would spatter the page. He had not yet
encountered much more than mild teazing at the Kindergarten, that with
the unreasonableness of Nurse and his mother's absence made up the sum
of the incomprehensible crosses which he had to bear. But even these
were enough to make him sympathize with Don Quixote. He perceived that
here was a man intent upon something--he could not understand exactly
what--thwarted always by other people, thwarted and jeered at and even
physically maltreated. Yet he was a man whose room was full of dragons
and fairies, whose counterpane was the adventurous field of little
knights-at-arms, whose curtains were ruffled by dwarfs, whose cupboards
held enchanters. Michael loved the tall thin knight and envied Sancho
Panza.

When whooping-cough was over, and Michael went back to Kindergarten,
Nurse decided that he should sleep by himself in the room next to the
night-nursery. She never explained to Michael her reasons for this step,
and he supposed it to be because lately he had always woken up when she
came to bed. This was not his fault, because Nurse always bumped into
his cot as she came, into the room, shaking it so violently that no one
could have stayed asleep. She used to look at him in a funny way with
angry staring eyes, and when he sometimes spoke she would blow
cheese-scented breath at him and turn away and bump into the washstand.

Everything in this new room was by Michael anticipated with dread. He
would go to bed at half-past six: he would settle down in the wide white
bed that stretched a long way on either side of him: the gas would be
turned down: the door would be left ajar: Nurse's footsteps would
gradually die away and he would be left alone.

The night was divided into two portions of equal horror. First of all he
had to concentrate on closing his mouth when asleep, because Annie had
told him a tale about a woman who slept with her mouth open, the result
of which bad habit was that one night a mouse ran down it and choked
her. Then he had to explore cautiously with his feet the ice-cold end of
the bed, in case he should touch a nest of mice--another likely
occurrence vouched for by Annie. Then outside, various sounds would
frighten him. A dog would howl in the distance: