*
Somehow my playmate had vanished, or is out of the story,
as the sagas say, but I was sent into the village on an
errand; and, taking a book of fairy tales, went down alone
through a fir-wood, reading as I walked. How often since
then has it befallen me to be happy even so; but that was
the first time: the shock of that pleasure I have never
since forgot, and if my mind serves me to the last, I never
shall; for it was then I knew I loved reading.
*
The remainder of my childish recollections are all of the
matter that was read to me, and not of any manner in the
words. If these pleased me, it was unconsciously; I
listened for news of the great vacant world upon whose
edge I stood; I listened for delightful plots that I might
re-enact in play, and romantic scenes and circumstances
that I might call up before me, with closed eyes, when I
was tired of Scotland, and home, and that weary prison of
the sick-chamber in which I lay so long in durance.
*
I rose and lifted a corner of the blind. Over the black
belt of the garden I saw the long line of Queen Street,
with here and there a lighted window. How often before had
my nurse lifted me out of bed and pointed them out to me,
while we wondered together if, there also, there were
children that could not sleep, and if these lighted oblongs
were signs of those that waited like us for the morning.
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