about me, and my dreamer's
courage trembled and vanished.

When I woke from sleep the morning after my good fortune, I did not
at first realise the extent of my happiness; I only knew that deep in
my heart I was conscious of some great cause for joy. Then my eyes,
still dim with sleep, discovered that I was in my brother's bedroom,
and in a flash the joyful truth was revealed to me. I sat up and
hastily examined my body to make sure that the rash had not
disappeared, and then my spirit sang a song of thanksgiving of which
the refrain was, "I have the measles!" I lay back in bed and enjoyed
the exquisite luxury of thinking of the evils that I had escaped. For
once my morbid sense of atmosphere was a desirable possession and
helpful to my happiness. It was delightful to pull the bedclothes
over my shoulders and conceive the feelings of a small boy who should
ride to town in a jolting train, walk through a hundred kinds of dirt
and a hundred disgusting smells to win to prison at last, where he
should perform meaningless tasks in the distressing society of five
hundred mocking apes. It was pleasant to see the morning sun and feel
no sickness in my stomach, no sense of depression in my tired brain.
Across the room my brother gurgled and choked in his sleep, and in
some subtle way contributed to my ecstasy of tranquillity. I was no
longer concerned for the duration of my happiness. I felt that this
peace that I had desired so long must surely last for ever.

To the grown-up folk who came to see us during the day--the
doctor, certain germ-proof unmarried aunts, truculently maternal,
and the family itself--my brother's case was far more interesting
than mine because he had caught the measles really badly. I just
had them comfortably; enough to be infectious, but not enough to
feel ill, so I was left in pleasant solitude while the women
competed for the honour of smoothing my brother's pillow and
tiptoeing in a fidgeting manner round his bed. I lay on my back
and looked with placid interest at the cracks in the ceiling. They
were like the main roads in a map, and I amused myself by building
little houses beside them--houses full of books and warm
hearthrugs, and with a nice pond lively with tadpoles in the
garden of each. From the windows of the houses you could watch all
the traffic that went along the road, men and women and horses,
and best of all, the boys going to school in the morning--boys who
had not done their homew