The Rovers Secret | Page 5

boy might choose to express. Here was a
glorious chance, the opportunity of a lifetime! The boy's first thought
was for ginger-bread, but before the thought had time to clothe itself in
words the vision of a drum and trumpet flashed across his mind. He
was about to express a wish for these martial instruments, and a real
sword, when it occurred to him that the fairies were quite equal to the
task of providing gifts of infinitely greater value and splendour than
even these coveted articles. And then that unfortunate boy completely
lost his head; his brain became muddled with the endless variety of
things which he found he required; and he took so long a time to make
up his mind that, when, in desperation, he finally did so, the
unwelcome discovery was made that his fairy friend, disgusted at the
delay and vacillation, had vanished without bestowing upon him so
much as even one poor ginger-bread elephant. It was that boy's first and
last opportunity, and he lost it. He never again met a fairy, though he
wandered through the forest, day after day, week after week, and year
after year, until he became an old man, dying at last in a state of abject
poverty.
The moral of this story was obvious even to my juvenile mind. It
plainly pointed to the necessity for being prepared to take the fullest
advantage of every opportunity, whenever it might present itself; and I
was resolved that, if ever I encountered a fairy, he should find me fully
prepared to tax his generosity to its utmost limit. And, forthwith, I

began to ask myself what was the most desirable thing at all likely to be
within a fairy's power of bestowal. At this point I, for the first time,
began to realise the difficulties of the situation in which the unhappy
boy of the story found himself. I thought of several things; but none of
them came quite up to my idea of a gift such as would do full honour
and justice to a fairy's power of giving; the utmost I could imagine was
a real ship full of real sailors, wherein I might roam the seas and
perform wonderful voyages like Sindbad; and, in my efforts to achieve
a still higher flight of imagination, I found myself so completely at a
loss that I was fain to turn to Mary for counsel. Accordingly, as I was
being escorted by that damsel upstairs to bed one night, I broached the
subject by saying:
"Mary, supposing you were to meet a fairy, what would you ask him to
give you?"
"Lor'! Master Lionel, I dun know," she replied. "That's a question I
shouldn't like to answer just off-hand; I should want to think it over a
good bit. I should read a lot of books, and find out what was the best
thing as was to be had."
"What sort of books?" I asked.
"Oh! any sort," was the reply; "books such as them down-stairs in your
pa's lib'ry; them's downright beautiful books--your pa's--full of all sorts
of wonderful things such as you never heard tell of."
This reply afforded me food for a considerable amount of profound
reflection before I went to sleep that night; the result of which was that
on the following morning, as soon as I had taken my breakfast, I
descended to the "lib'ry," opened the doors of one of the book-cases,
and dragged down upon my curly pate the most bulky volume I could
reach. With the expenditure of a considerable amount of labour I
conveyed it to the nursery, and, flinging it and myself upon the floor,
opened it hap-hazard, feeling sure that, in a book of such imposing
dimensions, I should find something valuable wherever I might open it.
It was an English work of some kind, I remember; but, alas for my
aspirations! it might almost as well have been Greek. I was equal, just

then, to the mastery of words of two syllables, but no more; and the
result was that, though I occasionally caught a glimpse of the meaning
of a sentence here and there, the subject matter of the book, as a whole,
remained a profound mystery to me. My want of knowledge was at
once made most painfully apparent to myself; I discovered that I had a
very great deal to learn before the treasures of wisdom by which I was
surrounded could be made available; and I forthwith bent all my
energies to the task of perfecting myself in the art of reading as a first
and indispensable step.
CHAPTER TWO.
MY MOTHER'S PORTRAIT.
Actuated by what was to me so powerful an incentive, my progress
toward proficiency as a reader was rapid; and, in a comparatively