I went and I did not return. I
did not know what was said between my mother and uncle; I saw him drive
away and leave me behind with unspeakable joy. For many subsequent days
I observed my mother's sorrowful eyes when she spoke to me. Her first
experiment, which promised so well, had failed. If she was disappointed,
I was sobered and much easier to manage from that time forth: I tried to
please my mother. Our old way of life went on its usual round. Again the
little Red House was happy. I resumed my play under the garden apple
tree or on the great rock in the corner of the orchard. That year I
mastered the alphabet, and I was given a slate and pencil for the
purpose of keeping me still when not saying my letters. The school days
of that period are memorable to me, chiefly from the recesses and the
noon intermission an hour long. It was in that hour I became intimate
with some little girls, and found that I liked them as well as boy
playmates. How we choose our favorite companions, no man is wise enough
to know; yet choice there certainly was, with no formality or effort.
How could it be otherwise? From the troop by the door or the roadside,
eating their dinner from basket or pail or playing games, some
predestined affinity drew away a boy and maid to the birchen bower,
where with one mind they set up mimic housekeeping and forbade the
entrance of strange children. There one cloak covered them both. Or they
rambled hand in hand through the woods, or waded in the shallow water of
Beaver brook down to the stone arch bridge where the confined streamlet
gurgled softly over the slimy pebbles, and the arch echoed to the sound
of their voices. What matter though pantalets and little breeches,
pulled up as high as they could be, were wet with jumping and splashing;
hot sun and warm blood would soon dry them. Wrinkles and limpness might
betray them when they returned to the mother's fold at night, but her
reproaches had no terror nor any restraint for happy children, who alone
know the secrets of their own pleasures and have no remembrance of
interference with them. With boy and boy there is a perfect equality; no
pretentions are allowed, except those of age. With maid and boy it is
different. With my companion, I wished to appear superior, to show her
things, even to attempt to explain them; and thus I myself learned to
observe natural objects and to love them. She was my teacher, although I
believed myself hers. She listened, sh