Helen was quite happy. She divided her love between the boy she loved and the man she was going to marry, and she believed that they were both as happy as she was. The man, whose name was Peter Graham, was happy enough; the boy, who was Philip, was amused—for she kept him so—but under the amusement he was miserable.
And the wedding-day came and went. And Philip travelled on a very hot afternoon by strange trains and a strange carriage to a strange house, where he was welcomed by a strange nurse and—Lucy.
“You won’t mind going to stay at Peter’s beautiful house without me, will you, dear?” Helen had asked. “Everyone will be kind to you, and you’ll have Lucy to play with.”
And Philip said he didn’t mind. What else could he say, without being naughty and making Helen cry again?
Lucy was not a bit like the Sugar-Bread child. She had fair hair, it is true, and it was plaited in two braids, but they were very long and straight; she herself was long and lean and had a freckled face and bright, jolly eyes.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, meeting him on the steps of the most beautiful house he had ever seen; “we can play all sort of things now that you can’t play when you’re only one. I’m an only child,” she added, with a sort of melancholy pride. Then she laughed. “ ‘Only’ rhymes with ‘lonely,’ doesn’t it?” she said.
“I don’t know,” said Philip, with deliberate falseness, for he knew quite well.
He said no more.
Lucy tried two or three other beginnings of conversation, but Philip contradicted everything she said.
“I’m afraid he’s very very stupid,” she said to her nurse, an extremely trained nurse, who firmly agreed with her. And when her aunt came to see her next day, Lucy said that the little new boy was stupid, and disagreeable as well as stupid, and Philip confirmed this opinion of his behaviour to such a degree that the aunt, who was young and affectionate, had Lucy’s clothes packed at once and carried her off for a few days’ visit.
So Philip and the nurse were left at the Grange. There was nobody else in the house but servants. And now Philip began to know what loneliness meant. The letters and the picture postcards which his sister sent every day from the odd towns on the continent of Europe, which she visited on her honeymoon, did not cheer the boy. They merely exasperated him, reminding him of the time when she was all his own, and was too near to him to need to send him postcards and letters.
The extremely trained nurse, who wore a grey uniform and white cap and apron, disapproved of Philip to the depths of her well-disciplined nature. “Cantankerous little pig,” she called him to herself.
To the housekeeper she said, “He is an unusually difficult and disagreeable child. I should imagine that his education has been much neglected. He wants a tight hand.”
She did not use a tight hand to him, however. She treated him with an indifference more annoying than tyranny. He had immense liberty of a desolate, empty sort. The great house was his to go to and fro in. But he was not allowed to touch anything in it. The garden was his—to wander through, but he must not pluck flowers or fruit. He had no lessons, it is true; but, then, he had no games either. There was a nursery, but he was not imprisoned in it—was not even encouraged to spend his time there. He was sent out for walks, and alone, for the park was large and safe. And the nursery was the room of all that great house that attracted him most, for it was full of toys of the most fascinating kind. A rocking-horse as big as a pony, the finest dolls’ house you ever saw, boxes of tea-things, boxes of bricks—both the wooden and the terra-cotta sorts—puzzle maps, dominoes, chessmen, draughts, every kind of toy or game that you have ever had or ever wished to have.
And Pip was not allowed to play with any of them.
“You mustn’t touch anything, if you please,” the nurse said, with that icy politeness which goes with a uniform. “The toys are Miss Lucy’s. No; I couldn’t be responsible for giving you permission to play with them. No; I couldn’t think of troubling Miss Lucy by writing to ask her if you may play with them. No; I couldn’t take upon myself to give you Miss Lucy’s address.”
For Philip’s boredom and his desire had humbled him even to the asking for this.
For two whole days he lived at the Grange, hating it and everyone in it; for the servants took their cue from the nurse, and the child felt that in the whole house he had not a friend. Somehow he had got the idea firmly in his head that this was a time when Helen was not to be bothered about anything; so he wrote to her that he was quite well, thank you, and the park was very pretty and Lucy had lots of nice toys. He felt very brave and noble, and like a martyr. And he set his teeth to bear it all. It was like spending a few days at the dentist’s.
And then suddenly everything changed. The nurse got a telegram. A brother who had been thought to be drowned at sea had abruptly come home. She must go to see him. “If it costs me the situation,” she said to the housekeeper, who answered:
“Oh, well—go, then. I’ll be responsible for the boy—sulky little brat.”
And the nurse went. In a happy bustle she packed her boxes and went. At the last moment Philip, on the doorstep watching her climb into the dogcart,
