live, wholesome, normal boy; keen for the society of other boys and
liking to dance, to run, to jump, to climb, even to fight. The other,
Edgar the Dreamer, fond of solitude and silence and darkness, for they
aided him to wander far away from the everyday world to one of make
believe created by himself and filled with beings to whom real people
were but as empty shadows; but a world that the death and burial of his
beautiful and adored young mother and the impression made upon him by
those scenes, had tinged with an eternal sadness which hung over it as a
veil.

The life of Edgar the Dreamer was filled with the subtle charm of
mystery. It was a secret life. The world in which he moved was a secret
world--an invisible world, to whose invisible door he alone held the
key. Edgar the Dreamer was himself an invisible person, for the only
outward difference between him and his twin brother, Edgar Goodfellow,
lay in a certain quiet, listless air and the solemn look in his big,
dark grey eyes which his playmates--bored and intolerant--took as
indications that "Edgar was in one of his moods," and his
foster-father--eyeing him keenly and with marked displeasure--as an
equally unmistakable indication that he was "hatching mischief."

There were times when in the midst of the liveliest company this
so-called "mood" would possess the child. He would fall silent; his
mouth would become pensive, his dark grey eyes would seem to be
impenetrably veiled; his chin would drop upon his hand; he would seem
utterly forgetful of his surroundings. The familiar Edgar--Edgar
Goodfellow--would have given place to Edgar the Dreamer, who though
apparently of the company, would really have slipped through that
invisible portal and wandered far afield with the playmates of his
fancy.