"I want to go home!"

How many times in my life, I wonder, have these words come rushing up
from the very bottom of my heart, tumbling everything out of the way,
never listening to reason, never stopping for thought? How many times
since that dreary afternoon in the great, big drawing-room at
grandmamma's? And, oh dear me! what miserable heartache comes before
that fearful want! Oh, grown-up people, don't you know how sour
everything tastes, and how yellow everything looks, and how sick
everything makes one, when one wants to go home?

So it was that one wretched day. How well I remember it all! The large,
large drawing-room so full of cushions, couches, easy-chairs, little
tables covered with funny knick-knacks, marble-slabs and more
knick-knacks, beautiful fire-screens, large mirrors, soft fur lying
about on the floor, and many-coloured antimacassars on the chairs. By
and by, all these wonders had happy memories pinned on to them, of
uproarious games with merry little play-fellows. Now, I was all alone,
and very lonely, in it all. True, there was grandmamma nodding in her
easy-chair, in the firelight, on one side, and there was Uncle Hugh
reading the "Times" by the same light on the other. But what were either
of them to the little tired stranger on the low stool between them? Once
grandmamma's eyes had opened just to look at me, and say, "Making pretty
pictures of the red coals, my dearie?"

And Uncle Hugh had answered, "Yes, to be sure; dreaming of the King of
Salamanders!"

And they went to sleep again or went on reading, and the little company
smile faded away from my face, and I went back to those very real dreams