under similar circumstances? how Ivanhoe, my chosen companion in all
quests of knightly enterprise? how--to come to modern times--Jack
Harkaway, mere schoolboy though he might be? Would not one and all
have welcomed such incident with a joyous shout, and in a trice have
scattered to the winds the worthless herd?

But, alas! upon my pale lips the joyous shout sank into an unheard
whisper, and the thing that became scattered to the wind was myself,
the first opening that occurred.

Sometimes, the blood boiling in my veins, I would turn, thinking to go
back and at all risk defying my tormentors, prove to myself I was no
coward. But before I had retraced my steps a dozen paces, I would see
in imagination the whole scene again before me: the laughing crowd,
the halting passers-by, the spiteful, mocking little faces every way I
turned; and so instead would creep on home, and climbing stealthily up
into my own room, cry my heart out in the dark upon my bed.

Until one blessed day, when a blessed Fairy, in the form of a small
kitten, lifted the spell that bound me, and set free my limbs.

I have always had a passionate affection for the dumb world, if it be
dumb. My first playmate, I remember, was a water rat. A stream ran
at the bottom of our garden; and sometimes, escaping the vigilant eye
of Mrs. Fursey, I would steal out with my supper and join him on the
banks. There, hidden behind the osiers, we would play at banquets,
he, it is true, doing most of the banqueting, and I the make-believe.
But it was a good game; added to which it was the only game I could
ever get him to play, though I tried. He was a one-ideaed rat.