More than ever I lived in the world of my own imagination.

Every day and a good part of every night—for I rarely fell asleep till one or two o'clock—I was thinking, worrying, brooding, planning, dreaming. I too would sail to the Indies and the lands of hidden gold, gleaning fame which would help me to bear Aunt Jael's taunts with silent scorn, and wealth which I could fling in her face as clanging and triumphant rejoinder to "I pay for the child's music." I would succour the oppressed Indians, free the slaves, overthrow the Inquisition, and bring each and all into the Brethren fold; baldly unaware that these things belonged to centuries past. To right the wrong was important; the all-important was that I should do it. But was it possible to a girl? Could even a grown woman do such things? Sailors were always men, shipwrecked mariners were always men, adventurers were always men. Bright deeds were the monopoly of breaches. It was not fair.

I would think of Mrs. Cheese's friend, poor old Robinson Crewjoe. I invented many desert islands of my own on which I was duly shipwrecked, was for ever drawing new maps of them, showing streams, creeks, bays and hills, position of my principal residence, summer bower, landing-spot of savages, position of wreck, etc., etc. I devised walks, expeditions, explorations; I varied my menu with a feminine skill unknown to old Robinson; and always, as befitted our morally-minded race, I would do good in my islands. I would justify my joy by works. I would convert the savages, and build a Meeting Room of clay and wattles. I would raid their Great God Benamuckee in his mountain fastness, burn him with ceremonial state, and thus atone for my own memorable blasphemy. But the chief joy, alas, of my twenty years' sojourning was never so much in what I did as in announcing to the world that I had done it; not in the good I wrought, but in the praise I should earn. Those twenty years of playing the shipwrecked sea-woman must be lit up by the glare of fame with which I should burst upon the world when at last some well-timed passing schooner restored me to the world. Horrible thought: suppose I, died there? It was not, for the moment, the idea of death that chilled me—for He chills everywhere—but the thought of the glory I should lose by dying before my adventures had astonished the world. And the sex trouble again. Would trousers (if I wore them) however masculine, however bifurcative, enable me to build huts, to shoot, fish, hunt and to fight savages as well as a man? My inability to do these manly things, however, deterred me little in my dreams. The castle-in-the-air-builder may build beyond her bricks.

At this time Uncle Simeon was naturally my most frequent actor. I fashioned a dozen different things I should discover about him and his attic, and a dozen different ways I should discover them. Sweetest of all were visions of revenge. He was a papist in disguise; I had him handed over to a kind of Protestant Holy Office, set up for his own peculiar benefit, of which I was Grand Inquisitress; I was not stingy with my bolts and nuts and prongs and screws; my soul spared not for his crying. A great pitched battle between Aunt Jael and Uncle Simeon was my piÈce de rÉsistance. Their hatred for each other was the fiery basis of the vision, my hatred for both of them the fuel. He would swish and she would bang. I let both of them be hurt, while I grudged to each of them the joy of hurting. If anybody won the battle it would be Aunt Jael; for my hatred of her was comparatively a mild thing, a healthy human thing, just as she was a healthy, cruel, humanly bad old woman, a mere wild beast in comparison to this Greeber reptile. I preferred a long long struggle of evenly matched sneers, retorts, cuts and blows, which went on hour after hour until both were bleeding, bruised and utterly exhausted: grimmest of drawn battles. Then I would step in as lofty mediator with the blessed aureole of peace-maker about my head, the pain and weakening of both my enemies for reward. (The same dream the Third Napoleon dreamt a few years later with Austria and Prussia in the rÔles of Uncle Simeon and Aunt Jael: rudely shattered, was it not, by that swift Sadowa? But the Saviour of Society could not work his dream figures at will.)

In most of my picturings either I was alone, or dealing with enemies, some of whom, like Eternity, got the better of me, and others, like Uncle Simeon and Aunt Jael, over whom I triumphed. I shared no castle with a friend. A friend! Aunt Martha, Albert, Uncle Simeon?—I saw no one else. No visitor ever came to the house.

I was astonished therefore when the portents announced one. One afternoon I heard a noise of shifting in one of the unoccupied bedrooms. I looked in, and saw all the disarray of cleaning, with Aunt Martha and the charwoman, Miss Woe, getting the room into order. Was it merely an autumn spring-cleaning, or was somebody coming to stay? I peeped in again next morning. There were clean sheets, the bed was turned down, there was water in the ewer. Grandmother or Aunt Jael? No; I heard from Tawborough every week. Prolonged visit of Mr. Nicodemus Shufflebottom? No: it would wring Uncle Simeon's heart to revive the possibility of that nightmare breakfast of egg and bacon Aunt Martha had dared to put before him. After the day's walk, I looked in at the bedroom again on my way down to tea. Oh mystery, there was a long black trunk, studded with brass nails and bearing in new white paint the superscription: R.P.G. A small cap and overcoat thrown on the bed revealed the age and sex of the new comer. I went down to the dining-room, and found him seated at the tea-table.

"Master Robert," said Uncle Simeon; introducing us in the honeyed voice he used before you knew him, "this is Mary. You may come forward, little one. This is Master Robert."

Handshake was followed by the furtive silence during which children stare at each other while vainly pretending to look elsewhere. Master Robert being the shyer, pretended more than he stared: I, being even more curious than shy, stared more than I pretended. I saw a healthy boy's face with big brown eyes, a head of chestnut coloured hair and a brown velvet suit, the last very impressive. I guessed he was about my own age, though he was taller and bigger. All through tea I stared at him with merest snatches of polite pretence. This was the first time I had ever sat at the same table with any boy, except Albert. The latter did not appear to share his father's obsequious delight in the new-comer, over whom Uncle Simeon sat fawning.

I know now that he was a handsome little boy, but doubt if I thought so then. If I did, I was too jealous to admit it to myself. I felt I was an odd drab little object by the side of this healthy, well-dressed and superior being, as far above me as I above Susan Durgles. His rich velvet suit, my old grey merino; his laughing, tan-coloured face and brown happy eyes; my pinched white face and cat-green eyes: he was something better and richer and finer and happier than I was, and I did not like him. Little girls, they say, are never never jealous of little boys' good looks, and the only people whose looks they envy are the other little girls with whom they are competing for the favour of the good-looking little boys. It may be so. I was pitiably ignorant of the proper sentiments. My world was divided not into sexes but into two classes divided far more deeply: myself and other people. The second class was mostly cruel and unkind, so every new-comer was suspect. Master Robert's fine poise, his colour, his health, the curve of his mouth, the velvet suit (I could not take my eyes from it, what wealth, what prestige, it betokened!) were all against him, and more so the favour with which he was regarded by Uncle Simeon. He was shy; I could stare him out easily. I fell to wondering who he was and why he was here.

Robert Grove was the younger brother of Aunt Martha's old pupil (who had died some years back) and the orphan heir to a fine house and estate the other side of Tiverton. Nearly all his relatives were dead except a bachelor uncle, Vivian Grove, Esquire, with whom he lived at the latter's house near Exeter. Uncle Vivian was travelling abroad for a few months and had put Robert here in his absence. Aunt Martha was known to and respected by Mr. Grove as the old governess of his elder nephew, though if he had known the kind of house she lived in now he would have hardly sent Master Robert there with so light a heart. The arrangements must have been made through friends or by correspondence, as Mr. Grove never entered our house and Aunt Martha never went away to see him.

Robert did lessons with Albert and me, and the three of us went our walks together. Uncle Simeon fawned on the new-comer and was by comparison sharper than ever with me; until, seeing that Robert did not like this, he pretended to treat me better. He did not want to offend Robert, who might write to his Uncle Vivian, and ask to be sent somewhere else. To make sure of keeping Robert's board money, he had to curb somewhat his dislike for me. Greed vanquished spite, or rather, while profit was a thing it must be his present endeavour to retain, spite would wait. For greed's sake he fawned sickeningly upon the boy; a few kicks in dark corners and pinches as he passed me on the stairs sufficed for the present as tribute to spite. Albert and Robert were on bad terms from the start; Albert disliked him as I did, for his better clothes and superior ways, and more bitterly, "for sneaking up to father." Robert despised Albert. Albert tried to win my alliance against him by treating me better. I accepted his advances while knowing their motive and value.

Master Robert and I had not much to say to each other. Despite my jealousy, I could see how much better and kinder-faced he was than Albert, but I could not like him, as he was "in" with Uncle Simeon. The very fact that his face was good made me despise him the more for liking Uncle Simeon; I felt he was a traitor. He could not be "very much of it" or he would show much more plainly than he did what he thought of Uncle Simeon's treatment of me. This I could see upset him, but he was too cowardly to say so. On the other hand, he knew nothing of the sly slaps and dark-corner kicks with which his dear friend favoured me. Jealousy was kept alive by the better treatment he got in the way of food and everything else, which he seemed to take for granted. Yet if the facts of the case were against him, instinct spoke on the other side. I knew that any one whose eyes looked at you in the same kind way as my Grandmother's must, like her, be kind and good. I argued that he was horrid, I felt that he was kind. I was as sure he did not treat me well as I was that I would like it if he did. Once he made friendly advances. I shied off; toady to a toady of Uncle Simeon's? Never! When I had rebuffed him, I began to reproach him with not making further efforts at friendliness. If he really wanted to, he would try again. If I had been a jolly little girl with fine clothes, curly hair and dark bright eyes, he would be trying all day long. Why were these allurements denied me, why had I no single attractive quality?

Now if ever in all recorded history there was a little girl ignorant of the bare existence of boy and girl sentiment and of all the normal notions that ordinary books, playmates and surroundings give to children, I was that little girl. Yet here at my first contact with a presentable young male of the human species, I was a-sighing for charms to lure him.

This struggle over the pros and cons of Master Robert raged within. We had little to say to each other. Uncle Simeon never left us alone together; watched us and made a careful third when Albert and Aunt Martha were not about. The first time we spoke to each other alone must have been two or three weeks after he came. Aunt and Uncle were both going out.

"Albert," he said, "don't you leave your cousin and Robert alone. Entertain them, you know, while one is out, you—ha ha!—are the master of the house."

As soon as Albert, leaning out of the window, had seen his father safely round the corner, he went out too, for communion I suppose with his unsaved friends.

"No sneaky tricks, mind!" he said to me, and looked the same injunction at Robert.

"Why does he talk like that?" said the latter, as soon as he was gone. We looked at each other. "Do—do you really like him?"

The implied tribute flattered me. I flung my new ally to the dogs.

"Not very much," I said.

"At all?"

"No, not at all—really."

"And—Mr. Greeber, do you like him?"

"Do you think I do? You know all right. Do you?"

"No." He paused. "You don't like it here at all, do you?"

"Why?"

"Because you don't look as though you liked it": awkwardly.

"I know I don't look as though I liked it," I snapped. "I know I don't look anything nice! We can't all look lovely. You don't look like I do, so what does it matter to you? You haven't much to abide. You don't get it all day long." Starving for sympathy I pushed it away.

"No—o. I know. But I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" I would hold out in the grim fortress of my loneliness, or I would taunt him to say something so plain, to attack so boldly, that he would force me to give in. I was holding out for a more complete surrender.

"Why?"

"Oh well, I don't know, because—I mean—I think—I like you. You are not really like he said you were. I never thought it."

I pounced. "He said I was? What about him? What did he say? Tell me."

Aunt Martha came in and cut us short.

That night in bed, in my usual Think I found how much happier I was. I placed him high; excelling Miss Glory Clinker, equalling Brother Briggs and much nicer looking, nearing the Stranger, and falling short of my Grandmother only. That was my complete catalogue of friendly people. Yet why did he never take my part? Why had he not made it clearer to Uncle Simeon that he disliked him as he had told me he did, and disliked him most of all for ill-treating me? Over and above all, how could he sit at meals gorging himself on dainties and look calmly across the table at me with never enough to eat?

Since his arrival food had improved, but not for me. The contrast was the more marked. At breakfast for instance, Robert began with porridge, of course with sugar and milk, then he had an egg, usually poached on a piece of buttered toast; or a rasher of bacon with lovely bread fried in the fat, and laver; or perhaps mackerel done in butter. Then he had as many slices of bread and butter as he wanted, spread with some of Aunt Martha's home-made jam, whortleberry, raspberry or black currant (by what he was allowed to eat I gauged the mighty sum Uncle Vivian must be paying for board: I had no idea of money values but the sum must be vast, infinite). Uncle Simeon had much the same, less the jam. Albert was not only docked the jam, but his egg was merely boiled instead of poached and served on toast, or if it were bacon he had no laver and a much smaller piece of bread fried in the fat. There was a heavy drop to Aunt Martha, who had porridge, and bread and butter with jam. I came last of all with porridge and jamless bread and butter; very often not even the latter because of punishments or "mortifyings." Note the careful grading. Robert got the most: there was a purse behind him. Uncle Simeon's lavishness here was dictated by meanness: "If I feed the boy well, he stays; if he stays he pays." For himself he was torn as always between meanness and greed. He compromised shrewdly by foregoing his jam, which he did not care for overmuch. Meanness alone governed Albert's ration, so the King's son got less than the King. Aunt Martha received what her husband chose to allow her, as a good wife should. Spite as well as meanness apportioned to me, Hagar, least of all; though if my bigger portion of porridge were counted against her jam, Aunt Martha really fared no better than I did; and thin and pale she looked. Robert riled me most. It was natural for Uncle Simeon to be mean, greedy, vile. In Robert I felt it was wrong; like Methodies, he knew better. Kind brown eyes were all very well, but a poor set-off to a greedy little belly. One morning therefore when in the middle of breakfast, just as he was beginning his poached egg, Robert said he felt sick, I neither felt sorry nor pretended to. Justice at last! I hoped he would be very, very sick. Uncle Simeon followed him out, fawning.

"Look here child, eat this," said Aunt Martha passing me Robert's poached egg, "'twill do you good." Kindly but fearfully: her usual struggle. She declined to share it with me, so I accepted. I was just munching the last delicious yellow mouthful, when Robert came back, looking still pale, but better. He saw what had happened, and flushed crimson. He saw what I thought of him and flushed deeper.

That afternoon, when I was in my bedroom putting on my hat, there was a timid knocking. He walked in. I hardened my heart.

"I'm sorry about breakfast, Mary," he faltered. I knew his heart was beating fast.

"Breakfast? What do you mean, Master Robert?"

"You know. The egg. I'm sorry—"

"Of course you are. Sorry I ate it."

He flushed. I developed a meticulous interest in a pincushion.

"No; sorry to see you eating it so hungrily. You know that's what I meant. Now I know it's all lies when he says eggs are bad for you and that you don't like them and you refuse them when he offers them and that you mustn't eat much of anything. It's all a lie, because he doesn't want you to eat things, because he hates you or because he's mean. I always thought it funny you never had nice things. I asked him three times and he said you were always taking medicine, and the doctor said you must eat very little and always very plain. You must have thought me horrid."

"I did. I'm sorry. Oh, the liar, the mean wretch, he dare tell you all that? Look here, we've begun now, haven't we, so I'm going to tell you what I know of him; everything. First you must answer a question. Do you just not like Uncle, or do you really hate him, hate him like this?" I clenched my fists and ground my teeth together.

"Yes, now I do; he's never done anything to me, but I've liked him a bit less every day I've been here. Now I hate him, like you do."

"Well, I'll tell you, he's a mean, cruel, wicked man. He beats and cuffs and pinches me when you're not looking. He canes me till I bleed. He starves me so as to make as much money as he can out of what my Grandmother pays him. The first morning I came I said No, when he offered me one miserable spoonful of his egg. I've never touched one since, and he's told you all this about my not liking eggs at all. I do take medicine, but it's because I'm ill and don't get enough to eat. He's mean and he hates me, that's why he starves me: one as much as the other. He's nice to you because you're rich and important and have friends and relations. Do they pay a lot of money for you?"

"I don't know."

"They must do or you wouldn't get so much to eat. Oh, the beast, he's always talking as though he was so good and then he starves me and gives me sneakish blows in the dark. He praises the Lord with his lips and he's got the devil in his heart. He flatters with his tongue, but his inward part is very wickedness—"

I stopped short, fancying I heard a noise outside, and looked out into the passage. There he was, skulking as usual, making pretence to rummage in a cupboard just outside the door.

"What are you doing, Uncle?" I asked weakly, very weakly.

"What are you doing, one asks."

"I just—opened the door...."

"Ah," he said, slipping away.

"Has he heard?" asked Robert fearfully.

"Every word. I don't care. He knows the truth now; he can't treat me worse than he has done. I hate him. Everything is hateful. All the world is against me always; 'tis all beating and starving and meanness and misery; and nobody loves me. I wish I'd never been born, I do, I do." I broke down and sat on the bed, sobbing bitterly.

"Don't, Mary," huskily, "everybody doesn't hate you, I don't." He sat beside me and put his arm on my shoulder.

That was the beginning of happiness.

I cried more than ever, but they were other tears.

"Don't cry, Mary, don't cry, please. I like you. Tell me you know I do. I'm going to do something, I'm going to help you somehow. I'll never touch another egg unless you do too, and if he stops mine, I'll write to Uncle Vivian and tell him why. I shall ask Uncle Vivian to let me go somewhere else as soon as I can; but you must get away first, you must ask your Grandmother to have you back with her right away. Mary dear, don't cry."

He was on the border line himself. He screwed a dirty little handkerchief into his eyes. The other arm was still on my shoulder. He was crying too. Then I comforted him, and found it a joy greater even than being comforted.

"We must go now," I said, getting up. "Come on, Master Robert," smiling; smiling being a thing I achieved perhaps once a year.

"No, and don't say Robert either. Say Robbie. Uncle Vivian and all the people I like call me that."

There were two pairs of red eyes at the tea table that night, and one pair of steel blue ones which observed them. From that moment, the political situation of No. 1 the Quay was entirely transformed. In the field of domestic economy there was a more striking change still. Next morning, I almost reeled when a boiled egg was set before me, though as the porridge was cut down by nearly half, my Uncle spiced his defeat with triumph. Openly he treated me no worse, though he gave me a savage kick in the hall that night. I knew he was saving up for something dreadful. Once the mood of passion and defiance had passed away, I was more afraid of him than ever. He hated Robbie now, while striving not to show it. Robbie showed his feelings sometimes and was openly surly. The short-lived Albert-Mary entente collapsed once for all, shattered by the Mary-Robert alliance.

The new friendship caused a veritable revolution in all my ideas. Now, whenever I was brooding or thinking away in my usual bitter fashion, I would say to myself, "Think of it, quickly, quickly," and I would feel again his hand on my shoulder; he would comfort me and I him. I re-lived it over and over again. It was the first purely happy vision I had ever conjured up. To Robbie it meant much less. I decided he was a nice little boy, kind and decent-hearted; he had been sorry to see me unhappy and he had been glad to comfort me. It was an impulse; not more. He liked me, he pitied me, but the whole thing meant very little to him.

One day a letter came from his Uncle Vivian.

He came to me joyfully. "Hurrah! Hurrah! I shall be going away soon. I'm ever so glad."

"In every way?" with a sneer; hungrily.

He flushed crimson, as we do when any one surprises us in thoughtless egotism; when another lays bare to us a selfishness we were too selfish to have seen. Or else it was the cruel injustice of what I said, or both: the good reason and the bad.

"You know I didn't mean that. When I get to Uncle Vivian I'll tell him to write to your Grandmother and tell her all about it and have you taken away. She'd listen to my uncle. But wait, you must get away from here before that. It would be dreadful if you were here alone for a bit between my going and the time you'd be able to get away, if we waited for Uncle Vivian to write—"

"He'd kill me if he dared. Can't you write to Uncle Vivian now, so that he could write to my Grandmother at once? I can't write. Uncle Simeon reads all my letters to her."

"A letter of mine mightn't reach Uncle Vivian. The last time he wrote to me was from Paris in France; he said he was going further south for Christmas, that's somewhere much further away, and said I need not write again as he would be back for the New Year. We're quite near Christmas now, so it's too late. I'll tell you my plan. Now, the day I go away, Mr. Greeber is sure to be at the railway station to see me off. The minute we've left the house you must be dressed and ready to run away and walk back to Tawborough; your Grandmother couldn't be angry if you told her all about him. Then Uncle Vivian will write as soon as I see him, and you won't have been alone with Mr. Greeber in the house for a minute."

"'Tisn't Grandmother, 'tis Aunt Jael. And suppose only Uncle Simeon goes with you to the station to see you off. What about Albert and Aunt Martha? Besides, he'll make me come too. He'd do it to please you, knowing you'd like it, though out of spite he'd want me not to, because he knows I'd like to. It all depends whether he wants to be nice to you more than to be nasty to me. Nice to you, I think, most of the two, because he can be nasty enough to me the second you're gone."

"You could say you felt sick."

"That's a lie. Besides, that might make him want to make me come all the more, if he thought it would pain me or make me feel worse to come. I don't tell lies, if he does. Unless of course, I really felt sick. I could take something and make myself sick, and then 'twould be true. But then Aunt Martha would say she'd stay with me while the rest of you went to the railway station. No, the best thing is to pretend very much I'd like to come, which of course I would, and then he won't let me. You might pretend to quarrel with me the last day; that would help. The real trouble is Aunt Jael; she'd get into a frightful rage and send me back; and when I came back, 'twould be a hundred times worse. He'd kill me."

"You said your Aunt Jael hated Mr. Greeber. If she knew he'd like it, are you sure she'd send you back; when she knew too that you'd run away for fear of your life? I'm sure she wouldn't do that."

"You don't know her. No, my plan is this: to write a letter somehow to Grandmother, who'd talk to Aunt Jael and sort of prepare her for my running away. I'll write it in bed tonight, it's the only place I can where he's not watching me; and we'll post it tomorrow afternoon, sometime on the walk when Albert isn't looking. I'll tell my Grandmother about the canings, and how he half starves me. Aunt Jael hates him so much that I think there's a chance. Then I needn't run away at all. Grandmother would come to fetch me herself."

The letter was duly written that night. I jumped out of bed and hid it in the bottom of my chest of drawers, in a far corner of the drawer between two white cotton Chemises. It would be safe there till the next afternoon. After dinner next day I came up to put on my hat and to get the letter. I put my hand in the corner underneath the Chemises. The letter was not there! I pulled the top chemise right out. There the letter was after all, but at the other end of the chemise. It had been moved. The garment was only eighteen or twenty inches long, but I remembered perfectly I had put the letter at the outside-end of the drawer and now it was right at the other end of the chemise, near the middle of the drawer. Yet there was my handwriting, there was the envelope: no one had tampered with it. It must be my over-suspicious mind. Aunt Martha had been tidying my clothes, or putting the clean washing away and so had moved the letter without seeing anything.... We posted it that afternoon. In a couple of days came my Grandmother's reply.

The first sentence made my heart sick. "Your uncle writes me—tells me he has destroyed an untruthful letter, full of untruthful complaints that you had written me without his knowledge—how grieved he and your Aunt Martha are—how they do everything to make you happy—your Aunt Jael is grievously annoyed—your loving Grandmother is disappointed—Always come to me, my dear, for help, but don't give way to discontent so easily. Reflect always what your dear mother had to put up with. Take up thy cross and walk!"

This letter Uncle Simeon never asked to see, but he had had one for himself from my Grandmother by the same post. He said nothing, but looked at me from time to time with malicious triumph, meaning "Revenge is near; it will be sweet. Wait till this fine young friend of yours is out of the way. One has a whip, you remember, ha, ha, one has a whip!"

A few days later Robbie had a letter from his Uncle Vivian announcing his return to England for December 30th and arranging for Robbie to leave Torribridge on New Year's Eve, now only three weeks away.

New Year's Eve then was the day, and though I did eventually fly from Torribridge to Tawborough within a few hours of the time we fixed, it befell very differently from anything we had planned or foreseen.

Heaven was dark; yet the clouds at last had begun to break. For always, eternally, I could re-make the moments that had been, and live and cry and laugh and love it over again.

I pretended his arm was round me each night as I fell asleep.