My eyes were always the timidest things about me: and to shut my eyes
tight against the dark was the only way I had of meeting the solitude of
the first hour of bed when Nan-nan had left me, and before I could get
to sleep.
I have an idea that one listens better with one's eyes shut, and that this
and other things are a remnant of our primitive existence when perhaps the
ears of our arboreal ancestors kept a lookout while the rest of their
senses slept. I think, also, that the instinct I found in myself, and have
since in other children, to conceal a wound is a similar survival. At one
time, I suppose, in the human herd the damaged were quickly put out of
existence; and it was the self-preservation instinct which gave me so keen
a wish to get into hiding when one day I cut my finger badly--something
more than a mere scratch, which I would have cried over and had bandaged
quite in the correct way. I remember I sat in a corner and pretended to be
nursing a rag doll which I had knotted round my hand, till Nan-nan
noticed, perhaps, that I looked white, and found blood flowing into my
lap. And I can recall still the overcoming comfort which fell upon me as I
let resolution go, and sobbed in her arms full of pity for myself and
scolding the "naughty knife" that had done the deed. The rest of that day
is lost to me.
Yet it is not only occasions of happiness and pain which impress
themselves.
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