All this hilarity does not imply the total absence of sadness in those bright days. I had lived and suffered too long in solitude not to have reserved a private corner for unuttered griefs, into which no regard of sister or stranger could ever penetrate. It is extraordinary the art with which a circle of children can make one chosen by mutual consent feel in all things, at every moment of the day, an intruder. The two elder than I were sworn friends, the three younger likewise; both groups united as allies. I stood between them, an outsider. I shared their games, it is true, as I shared their meals; but when they had any secrets to impart, I was left out in the cold. I daresay now, on looking back, that had my sullen pride permitted a frank and genial effort, I might easily enough have broken down this barrier. But I was morbidly sensitive, and these young barbarians were very rough and hard. Not ill-natured, but most untender.
 
I wonder if any other child has been so ruthlessly stabbed by home glances as I. The tale of the Ugly Duckling is, I believe, as common as all the essential legends of human grief and human joy. My dislike of large families is born of the conviction that every large family holds a victim. Amid so many, there is always one isolated creature who weeps in frozen secrecy, while the others shout with laughter. The unshared gaiety of the group is a fresh provocation of repulsion on both sides, and not all the good-will of maturity can serve to bridge that first sharp division of infancy. The heart that has been broken with pain in childhood is never sound again, whatever the sequel the years may offer. To escape the blighting influence of cynicism and harshness is as much as one may hope for; but the muffled apprehension of ache, the rooted mistrust bred by early injustice, can never be effaced.

I cannot now remember the cause of all those dreadful hours, of all those bitter, bitter tears, nor do I desire to recall them. But I still see myself many and many a day creeping under the bed that none might see me cry, and there sobbing as if the veins of my throat should burst. Always, I have no doubt, for some [Pg 232]foolish or inadequate cause: a hostile look in response to some spontaneous offer of affection, a disagreeable word when a tender one trembled on my lips, some fresh proof of my isolation, a rough gesture that thrust me out of the home circle as an intruder, and a scornful laugh in front of me as the merry band wandered off among the rocks and left me forlorn in the garden. A robuster and less sensitive nature would have laughed down all these small troubles, and have scampered into their midst imperious and importunate. A healthier child, with sensibilities less on the edge of the skin, not cursed with what the French call an ombrageux temper, would have broken through this unconscious hostility, and have captured her place on the domestic hearth—would probably not have been aware of an unfriendly atmosphere.

But this same morbid sensitiveness, mark of my unblessed race, has been the unsleeping element of martyrdom in my whole existence. "Meet the world with a smile," said a wise and genial friend of mine, "and it will give you back a smile." But how can one smile with every nerve torn in the dumb anguish of anticipated pain and slight? How can one smile burdened by the edged sensibilities and nervousness of sex and race, inwardly distraught and forced to face the world, unsupported by fortune, family, or friends, with a brave front? It is already much not to cry. But I shed all my tears in childhood, and left my sadness behind me. When the bigger troubles and tragedies came, as they speedily did, I found sustainment and wisdom in arming myself with courage and gaiety, and so I faced the road. I had then, as ever since, plenty of pleasure to temper unhappiness, plenty of bright rays to guide me through the obscurities of sentiment and suffering. An unfailing beam of humour then and now shed its smile athwart the dim bleak forest of emotions through which destiny bade me cut my way.

One dark moment of peculiar bitterness now makes me smile. I record it as proof of the tiny mole-hills of childhood that constitute mountains. It shows the kind of booby I was, and have ever been, but none the less instructs upon the nature of infant miseries.

We were walking along the road one afternoon with Miss Kitty. A public vehicle tore down the hill led by four horses, three white and one brown. We were four: I the eldest, and my three pretty step-sisters. Birdie shouted—
 
"Oh, look at t............