Paul Kelver | Page 7

boys had not a bed at all; for the which, in my more riotous
moments, I envied them. Again, that at the first sign of a cold it became
my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed gruel and sup off
brimstone and treacle--a compound named with deliberate intent to

deceive the innocent, the treacle, so far as taste is concerned, being
wickedly subordinated to the brimstone--was another example of
Fortune's favouritism: other little boys were so astoundingly unlucky as
to be left alone when they felt ill. If further proof were needed to
convince that I had been signalled out by Providence as its especial
protege, there remained always the circumstance that I possessed Mrs.
Fursey for my nurse. The suggestion that I was not altogether the
luckiest of children was a new departure.
The good dame evidently perceived her error, and made haste to correct
it.
"Oh, you! You are lucky enough," she replied; "I was thinking of your
poor mother."
"Isn't mamma lucky?"
"Well, she hasn't been too lucky since you came."
"Wasn't it lucky, her having me?"
"I can't say it was, at that particular time."
"Didn't she want me?"
Mrs. Fursey was one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion
that the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of
perpetual apology for its existence.
"Well, I daresay she could have done without you," was the answer.
I can see the picture plainly still. I am sitting on a low chair before the
nursery fire, one knee supported in my locked hands, meanwhile Mrs.
Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity against her thimble.
At that moment knocked at my small soul for the first time the problem
of life.
Suddenly, without moving, I said:

"Then why did she take me in?"
The rasping click of the needle on the thimble ceased abruptly.
"Took you in! What's the child talking about? Who's took you in?"
"Why, mamma. If she didn't want me, why did she take me in?"
But even while, with heart full of dignified resentment, I propounded
this, as I proudly felt, logically unanswerable question, I was glad that
she had. The vision of my being refused at the bedroom window
presented itself to my imagination. I saw the stork, perplexed and
annoyed, looking as I had sometimes seen Tom Pinfold look when the
fish he had been holding out by the tail had been sniffed at by Anna,
and the kitchen door shut in his face. Would the stork also have gone
away thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long,
compass-like legs of his, and muttering to himself. And here,
incidentally, I fell a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the
garden I had often watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm,
though no doubt really safe enough, had always appeared to me
nervous and uncomfortable. Had I wriggled and squirmed in like
fashion? And where would the stork have taken me to then? Possibly to
Mrs. Fursey's: their cottage was the nearest. But I felt sure Mrs. Fursey
would not have taken me in; and next to them, at the first house in the
village, lived Mr. Chumdley, the cobbler, who was lame, and who sat
all day hammering boots with very dirty hands, in a little cave half
under the ground, his whole appearance suggesting a poor-spirited ogre.
I should have hated being his little boy. Possibly nobody would have
taken me in. I grew pensive, thinking of myself as the rejected of all the
village. What would the stork have done with me, left on his hands, so
to speak. The reflection prompted a fresh question.
"Nurse, where did I come from?"
"Why, I've told you often. The stork brought you."
"Yes, I know. But where did the stork get me from?" Mrs. Fursey
paused for quite a long while before replying. Possibly she was

reflecting whether such answer might not make me unduly conceited.
Eventually she must have decided to run that risk; other opportunities
could be relied upon for neutralising the effect.
"Oh, from Heaven."
"But I thought Heaven was a place where you went to," I answered;
"not where you comed from." I know I said "comed," for I remember
that at this period my irregular verbs were a bewildering anxiety to my
poor mother. "Comed" and "goned," which I had worked out for myself,
were particular favourites of mine.
Mrs. Fursey passed over my grammar in dignified silence. She had
been pointedly requested not to trouble herself with that part of my
education, my mother holding that diverging opinions upon the same
subject only confused a child.
"You came from Heaven," repeated Mrs. Fursey, "and you'll go to
Heaven--if you're good."
"Do all little boys and girls come from Heaven?"
"So they say."