hat the first day I went to school I walked round
and round the quadrangle in the luncheon-hour, and every boy who
passed stopped me and asked me my name and what my father was. When I
said he was an engineer every one of the boys replied, "Oh! the man
who drives the engine." The reiteration of this childish joke made me
hate them from the first, and afterwards I discovered that they were
equally unimaginative in everything they did. Sometimes I would stand
in the midst of them, and wonder what was the matter with me that I
should be so different from all the rest. When they teased me,
repeating the same questions over and over again, I cried easily,
like a girl, without quite knowing why, for their stupidities could
not hurt my reason; but when they bullied me I did not cry, because
the pain made me forget the sadness of my heart. Perhaps it was
because of this that they thought I was a little mad.

Grey day followed grey day, and I might in time have abandoned
all efforts to be faithful to my dreams, and achieved a kind of
beast-like submission that was all the authorities expected of
notorious dunces. I might have taught my senses to accept the
evil conditions of life in that unclean place; I might even have
succeeded in making myself one with the army of shadows that
thronged in the quadrangle and filled the air with meaningless
noise.

But one evening when I reached home I saw by the faces of the
grown-up people that something had upset their elaborate
precautions for an ordered life, and I discovered that my brother,
who had stayed at home with a cold, was ill in bed with the
measles. For a while the significance of the news escaped me;
then, with a sudden movement of my heart, which made me feel ill,
I realised that probably I would have to stay away from school
because of the infection. My feet tapped on the floor with joy,
though I tried to appear unconcerned. Then, as I nursed my sudden
hope of freedom, a little fearfully lest it should prove an
illusion, a new and enchanting idea came to me. I slipped from the
room, ran upstairs to my bedroom and, standing by the side of my
bed, tore open my waistcoat and shirt with clumsy, trembling
fingers. One, two, three, four, five! I counted the spots in a
triumphant voice, and then with a sudden revulsion sat down on the
bed to give the world an opportunity to settle back in its place.
I had the measles, and therefore I should not have to go back to
school! I shut