It was not until I was able to sit up that I got over this delusion. One evening it simply dawned on me that it really was Grandmother. I was so happy, and could not bear to be out of her arms. I kept stroking her face constantly and saying in amazement and delight, “Why, you’re not Mrs. Murphy, after all; you are Grandma.”
Typhoid fever patients were not dieted so strictly during convalescence in those days as they are now. I remember one day, long before I was able to sit up, and only a short time after the fever had left me, that my dinner consisted of fried sausages—rich, pungent, savoury, home made sausages, such as are never found in these degenerate days. It was the first day that I had felt hungry, and I ate ravenously. Of course, by all the rules of the game, those sausages should have killed me, and so cut short that “career” of which I am writing. But they did not. These things are fated. I am sure that nothing short of pre-destination saved me from the consequences of those sausages.
Two incidents of the following summer stand out in my memory, probably because they were so keenly and so understandably bitter. One day I heard Grandmother reading from a newspaper an item to the effect that the end of the world was to come the following Sunday. At that time I had a most absolute and piteous belief in everything that was “printed.” Whatever was in a newspaper must be true. I have lost this touching faith, I regret to say, and life is the poorer by the absence of many thrills of delight and horror.
* * *
From the time I heard that awesome prediction until Sunday was over I lived in an agony of terror and dread. The grown-up folk laughed at me, and refused to take my questions seriously. Now, I was almost as much afraid of being laughed at as of the Judgment Day. But all through the Saturday before that fateful Sunday I vexed Aunt Emily to distraction by repeatedly asking her if we should go to Sunday-school the next afternoon. Her assurance that of course we should go was a considerable comfort to me. If she really expected that there would be Sunday-school she could not believe that the next day would see the end of the world.
But then—it had been printed. That night was a time of intense wretchedness for me. Sleep was entirely out of the question. Might I not hear “the last trump” at any moment? I can laugh at it now—any one would laugh. But it was real torture to a credulous child, just as real as any mental agony in after life.
Sunday was even more interminable than Sundays usually were, then. But it came to an end at last, and as its “dark, descending sun” dimpled the purple sky-line of the Gulf, I drew a long breath of relief. The beautiful green world of blossom and sunshine had not been burned up; it was going to last for a while longer. But I never forgot the suffering of that Sunday.
Many years later I used the incident as the foundation of the chapter “The Judgment Sunday” in The Story Girl. But the children of King Orchard had the sustaining companionship of each other. I had trodden the wine-press alone.
The other incident was much more trifling. The “Martin Forbes” of The Story Girl had his prototype in an old man who visited at my grandfather’s for a week. Forbes was not his name, of course. He was, I believe, an amiable, respectable, and respected, old gentleman. But he won my undying hatred by calling me “Johnny” every time he spoke to me.
How I raged at him! It seemed to me a most deadly and unforgivable insult. My anger amused him hugely and incited him to persist in using the objectionable name. I could have torn that man in pieces had I had the power! When he went away I refused to shake hands with him, whereupon he laughed uproariously and said, “Oh, well, I won’t call you ‘Johnny’ any more. After this I’ll call you ‘Sammy,’ ” which was, of course, adding fuel to the fire.
For years I couldn’t hear that man’s name without a sense of hot anger. Fully five years afterward, when I was ten, I remember writing this in my diary: “Mr. James Forbes is dead. He is the brother of a horrid man in Summerside who called me ‘Johnny’.”
I never saw poor old Mr. Forbes again, so I never had to endure the indignity of being called “Sammy.” He is now dead himself, and I daresay the fact that he called me “Johnny” was not brought up in judgment against him. Yet he may have committed what might be considered far greater sins that yet would not inflict on any one a tithe of the humiliation which his teasing inflicted on a child’s sensitive mind.
That experience taught me one lesson, at least. I never tease a child. If I had any tendency to do so, I should certainly be prevented by the still keen recollection of what I suffered at Mr. Forbes’ hands. To him, it was merely the “fun” of teasing a “touchy” child. To me, it was the poison of asps.
III
The next summer, when I was six, I began to go to school. The Cavendish school-house was a white-washed, low-eaved building on the side of the road just outside our gate. To the west and south was a spruce grove, covering a sloping hill. That old spruce grove, with its sprinkling of maple, was a fairy realm of beauty and romance to my childish imagination. I shall always be thankful that my school was near a grove—a place with winding paths and treasure-trove of ferns and mosses and wood-flowers. It was a stronger and better educative influence in my life than the lessons learned at the desk in the school-house.
And there was a brook in it, too—a delightful brook, with a big, deep, clear spring—where we went for buckets of water, and no end of pools and nooks where the pupils put their bottles of milk to keep sweet and cold until dinner hour. Each pupil had his or her own particular place, and woe betide a lad or lass who usurped another’s prescriptive spot. I, alas, had no rights in the brook. Not for me was the pleasure of “scooting” down the winding path before school-time to put my bottle against a mossy log, where the sunlit water might dance and ripple against its creamy whiteness.
I had to go home to my dinner every day, and I was scandalously ungrateful for the privilege. Of course, I realize now that I was very fortunate in being able to go home every day for a good, warm dinner. But I could not see it in that light then. It was not half so interesting as taking lunch to school and eating it in sociable rings on the playground, or in groups under the trees. Great was my delight on those few stormy winter days when I had to take my dinner, too. I was “one of the crowd” then, not set apart in any lonely distinction of superior advantages.
Another thing that worried me with a sense of unlikeness was the fact that I was never allowed to go to school barefooted. All the other children went so, and I felt that this was a humiliating difference. At home I could run barefoot, but in school I must wear “buttoned boots.” Not long ago, a girl who went to school with me confessed that she had always envied me those “lovely buttoned boots.” Human nature always desirous of what it has not got! There was I, aching to go barefoot like my mates; there were they, resentfully thinking it was bliss to wear buttoned boots!
I do not think that the majority of grown-ups have any real conception of the tortures sensitive children suffer over any marked difference between themselves and the other denizens of their small world. I remember one winter I was sent to school wearing a new style of apron. I think still that it was rather ugly. Then I thought it was hideous. It was a long, sack-like garment, with sleeves. Those sleeves were the crowning indignity. Nobody in school had ever worn aprons with sleeves before. When I went to school one of the girls sneeringly remarked that they were baby aprons. This capped all! I could not bear to wear them, but wear them I had to. The humiliation never grew less. To the end of their existence, and they did wear horribly well, those “baby” aprons marked for me the extreme limit of human endurance.
I have no especial remembrance of my first day in school. Aunt Emily took me down to the school-house and gave me into the charge of some of the “big girls,” with whom I sat that day. But my second day—ah! I shall not forget it while life lasts. I was late and had to go in alone. Very shyly I slipped in and sat down beside a “big girl.” At once a wave of laughter rippled over the room. I had come in with my hat on.
As