A few minutes
more or less were of no great importance to me, for it was very early,
so I finished the border quite neatly, and took the fork indoors.
I put it in a corner of the hall where the light was growing stronger
and making familiar objects clear. In a house like ours and amongst
people like us, furniture was not chopped and changed and decorated as
it is now. The place had looked like this ever since I could remember,
and it would look like this tomorrow morning, though my eyes would not
see it. I stood stupidly by the hall table where my father's gloves lay
neatly one upon the other beside his hat. I took them up, almost
mechanically, and separated them, and laid them together again finger to
finger, and thumb to thumb, and held them with a stupid sort of feeling,
as if I could never put them down and go away.
What would my father's face be like when he took them up this very
morning to go out and look for me? and when--oh when!--should I see his
face again?
I began to feel what one is apt to learn too late, that in childhood one
takes the happiness of home for granted, and kicks against the pricks of
its grievances, not having felt the far harder buffetings of the world.
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