And it was on all-fours that I went all eagerness
across great patches of rose-pattern, till I had butted my way through a
door left ajar, and found in a cardboard box of bright tinsel and
flowers two little wax babes in the wood lying.
I think they gave me my first sense of color, except, perhaps, the
rose-carpet which came earlier, and they remained for quite a long time
the most beautiful thing I knew. It is strange that I cannot remember
what became of them, for I am sure I neither broke nor lost them,--perhaps
it was done for me: Arthur came afterward, the tomb of many of my early
joys, and the maker of so many new ones. He, dearest, is the one, the only
one, who has seen the tears that belong truly to you: and he blesses me
with such wonderful patience when I speak your name, allowing that perhaps
I know better than he. And after the wax babies I had him for my third
birthday.
LETTER LXX.
Beloved: I think that small children see very much as animals must do:
just the parts of things which have a direct influence on their lives, and
no memory outside that. I remember the kindness or frowns of faces in
early days far more than the faces themselves: and it is quite a distinct
and later memory that I have of standing within a doorway and watching my
mother pass downstairs unconscious of my being there,--and _then_, for the
first time, studying her features and seeing in them a certain solitude
and distance which I had never before noticed:--I suppose because I had
never before thought of looking at her when she was not concerned with me.
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