IT is extraordinary, when you come to think of it, how very few days, out of all the thousands that have passed, lift their heads from the grey plain of the forgotten -- like bowlders in a level stretch of country. It is not alone the unimportant ones that are for-gotten; but, according to one's elders, many important ones have left no mark in the memory. It seems to me, as I think it over, that it was the days that affected the emotions that dwell with me, and I suppose all of us must be the same in this respect.
Among those which I am never to forget is the day when Aunt Cordelia came to visit us -- my mother's aunt, she was -- and when I discovered evil, and tried to understand what the use of it was.
Great-aunt Cordelia was, as I often and often had been told, not only much travelled, rich and handsome, but good also. She was, indeed, an important personage in her own city, and it seemed to be regarded as an evidence of unusual family fealty that she should go about, now and then, briefly visiting all of her kinfolk to see how they fared in the world. I ought to have looked forward to meeting her, but this, for some perverse reason, I did not do. I wished I might run away and hide somewhere till her visit was over. It annoyed me to have to clean up the play-room on her account, and to help polish the silver, and to comb out the fringe of the tea napkins. I liked to help in these tasks ordinarily, but to do it for the purpose of coming up to a visiting -- and probably, a con-descending -- goddess, somehow made me cross.
Among other hardships, I had to take care of my little sister Julie all day. I loved Julie. She had soft golden-brown curls fuzzing around on her head, and mischievous brown eyes -- warm, extra-human eyes. There was a place in the back of her neck, just below the point of her curls, which it was a privilege to kiss; and though she could not yet talk, she had a throaty, beauti-ful little exclamation, which cannot be spelled any more than a bird note, with which she greeted all the things she liked -- a flower, or a toy, or mother.
But loving Julie as she sat in mother's lap, and having to care for her all of a shining Saturday, were two quite dif-ferent things. As the hours wore along I became bored with looking at the golden curls of my baby sister; I had no inclination to kiss the "honey-spot" in the back of her neck; and when she fretted from heat and teething and my perfunctory care, I grew angry.
I knew mother was busy ****** cus-tards and cakes for Aunt Cordelia, and I longed to be in watching these pleas-ing operations. I thought -- but what does it matter what I thought? I was bad! I was so bad that I was glad I was bad. Perhaps it was nerves. May-be I really had taken care of the baby too long. But however that may be, for the first time in my life I enjoyed the consciousness of having a bad disposi-tion -- or perhaps I ought to say that I felt a fiendish satisfaction in the discov-ery that I had one.
Along in the middle of the afternoon three of the girls in the neighbourhood came over to play. They had their dolls, and they wanted to "keep house" in the "new part" of our home. We were living in a roomy and comfortable "addition," which had, oddly enough, been built before the building to which it was finally to serve as an annex. That is to say, it had been the addition be-fore there was anything to add it to.
By this time, however, the new house was getting a trifle old, as it waited for the completion of its rather dispropor-tionate splendours; splendours which represented the ambitions rather than the achievements of the family. It tow-ered, large, square, imposing, with hints of M. Mansard's grandiose architectu-ral ideas in its style, in the very centre of a village block of land. From the first, it exercised a sort of "I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls" effect upon me, and in a vague way, at the back of my mind, floated the idea that when we passed from our modest home into this commanding edifice, well-trained servants mysteriously would appear, beautiful gowns would be found await-ing my use in the closets, and father and mother would be able to take their ease, something after the fashion of the "landed gentry" of whom I had read in Scotch and English books. The ceil-ings of the new house were so high, the sweep of the stairs so dramatic, the size of the drawing-rooms so copious, that perhaps I hardly was to be blamed for expecting a transformation scene.
But until this new life was realised, the clean, bare rooms made the best of all possible play-rooms, and with the light streaming in through the trees, and falling, delicately tinged with green, upon the new floors, and with the scent of the new wood all about, it was a place of indefinable enchantment.
I was allowed to play there all I pleased -- except when I had Julie. There were unguarded windows and yawning stair-holes, and no steps as yet leading from the ground to the great opening where the carved front door was some time to be. Instead, there were planks, in-clined at a steep angle, beneath which lay the stones of which the foundation to the porch were to be made. Jagged pieces of yet unhewn sandstone they were, with cruel edges.
But to-day when the girls said, "Oh, come!" my newly discovered badness echoed their words. I wanted to go with them. So I went.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see father in the distance, but I wouldn't look at him for fear he would be magnetised into turning my way.
The girls had gone up, and I followed, with Julie in my arms. Did I hear father call to me to stop? He always said I did, but I think he was mistaken.
