of us sobbed so piteously standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place, but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment till we weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and man-hood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then - when it was so long from one Midsummer to another? - what he felt when his schoolfellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays when he didn't know how to amuse himself and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that `half,' although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh- pooh the griefs of our children.
`Miss Maggie, you're to come down this minute,' said Kezia, entering the room hurriedly. `Lawks! what have you been a-doing? I niver see such a fright.'
`Don't, Kezia,' said Maggie, angrily. `Go away!'
`But I tell you, you're to come down, Miss, this minute: your mother says so,' said Kezia, going up to Maggie and taking her by the hand to raise her from the floor.
`Get away, Kezia, I don't want any dinner,' said Maggie, resisting Kezia's arm, `I shan't come.'
`O well, I can't stay: I've got to wait at dinner,' said Kezia, going out again.
`Maggie, you little silly,' said Tom, peeping into the room ten minutes after, `why don't you come and have your dinner? There's lots o' goodies, and my mother says you're to come. What are you crying for, you little spooney?'
O it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned: if he had been crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried too. And there was the dinner, so nice; and she was so hungry. It was very bitter.
But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not inclined to cry, and did not feel that Maggie's grief spoiled his prospect of the sweets; but he went and put his head near her, and said in a lower, comforting tone,
`Won't you come, then, Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit o' pudding when I've had mine?... and a custard and things?'
`Ye-e-es,' said Maggie, beginning to feel life a little more tolerable.
`Very well,' said Tom, going away. But he turned again at the door and said, `But you'd better come, you know. There's the dessert - nuts, you know - and cowslip wine.'
Maggie's tears had ceased, and she looked reflective as Tom left her. His good nature had taken off the keenest edge of her suffering, and nuts with cowslip wine began to assert their legitimate influence.
Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks and slowly she made her way downstairs. Then she stood leaning with one shoulder against the frame of the dining parlour door, peeping in when it was ajar. She saw Tom and Lucy with an empty chair between them, and there were the custards on a side table - it was too much. She slipped in and went towards the empty chair. But she had no sooner sat down than she repented and wished herself back again.