this, as I proudly felt, logically unanswerable question, I was glad
that she had. The vision of my being refused at the bedroom window
presented itself to my imagination. I saw the stork, perplexed and
annoyed, looking as I had sometimes seen Tom Pinfold look when the
fish he had been holding out by the tail had been sniffed at by Anna,
and the kitchen door shut in his face. Would the stork also have gone
away thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long,
compass-like legs of his, and muttering to himself. And here,
incidentally, I fell a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the
garden I had often watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm,
though no doubt really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous
and uncomfortable. Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion? And
where would the stork have taken me to then? Possibly to Mrs.
Fursey's: their cottage was the nearest. But I felt sure Mrs. Fursey
would not have taken me in; and next to them, at the first house in
the village, lived Mr. Chumdley, the cobbler, who was lame, and who
sat all day hammering boots with very dirty hands, in a little cave
half under the ground, his whole appearance suggesting a poor-spirited
ogre. I should have hated being his little boy. Possibly nobody
would have taken me in. I grew pensive, thinking of myself as the
rejected of all the village. What would the stork have done with me,
left on his hands, so to speak. The reflection prompted a fresh
question.

"Nurse, where did I come from?"

"Why, I've told you often. The stork brought you."

"Yes, I know. But where did the stork get me from?" Mrs. Fursey
paused for quite a long while before replying. Possibly she was