never hear it, so that I used to be blamed for wilfully hiding myself,
when I had simply been away in fairyland, or lying trembling beneath
some friendly cabbage-leaf as a giant went by.

I was between seven and eight years of age when I first came across
some children's allegories of a religious kind, and a very little
later came "Pilgrim's Progress," and Milton's "Paradise Lost."
Thenceforth my busy fancies carried me ever into the fascinating world
where boy-soldiers kept some outpost for their absent Prince, bearing
a shield with his sign of a red cross on it; where devils shaped as
dragons came swooping down on the pilgrim, but were driven away
defeated after hard struggle; where angels came and talked with little
children, and gave them some talisman which warned them of coming
danger, and lost its light if they were leaving the right path. What a
dull, tire-some world it was that I had to live in, I used to think to
myself, when I was told to be a good child, and not to lose my temper,
and to be tidy, and not mess my pinafore at dinner. How much easier to
be a Christian if one could have a red-cross shield and a white
banner, and have a real devil to fight with, and a beautiful Divine
Prince to smile at you when the battle was over. How much more
exciting to struggle with a winged and clawed dragon, that you knew
meant mischief, than to look after your temper, that you never
remembered you ought to keep until you had lost it. If I had been Eve
in the garden, that old serpent would never have got the better of me;
but how was a little girl to know that she might not pick out the
rosiest, prettiest apple from a tree that had no serpent to show it
was a forbidden one? And as I grew older the dreams and fancies grew
less fantastic, but more tinged with real enthusiasm. I read tales of
the early Christian martyrs, and passionately regretted I was born so
late when no suffering for religion was practicable; I would spend