precisely afraid. If God were a bit like other people I knew He would
say, "What an odd child!" and I liked to have people say that. Still,
there was sunlight in the hall, and lots of sunlight, not just long
and dusty shreds of sunlight, and I felt more comfortable when I was
back in the hall.


2--_Reading_

I lay flat upon my stomach, having found that posture most conformable
to the practice of reading, and I considered the cover of this slim,
green book; the name of John Charteris, stamped thereon in fat-bellied
letters of gold, meant less to me than it was destined to signify
thereafter.

A deal of puzzling matter I found in this book, but in my memory,
always, one fantastic passage clung as a burr to sheep's wool. That
fable, too, meant less to me than it was destined to signify
thereafter, when the author of it was used to declare that he had,
unwittingly, written it about me. Then I read again this

_Fable of the Foolish Prince_

"As to all earlier happenings I choose in this place to be silent.
Anterior adventures he had known of the right princely sort. But
concerning his traffic with Schamir, the chief talisman, and how
through its aid he won to the Sun's Sister for a little while; and
concerning his dealings with the handsome Troll-wife (in which affair
the cat he bribed with butter and the elm-tree he had decked with
ribbons helped him); and with that beautiful and dire Thuringian woman