The boys had a way of plunging out into the road in front of the school-villa when afternoon school was over; it was a pleasant rural road lined with high hedges and shadowed by elm--trees.
Here, especially towards the summer twilight, they used to linger and play vague games, swooping and whirling in the declining sunshine, and I was glad to join these bat-like sports. But my company, though not avoided, was not greatly sought for. I think that something of my curious history was known, and that I was, not unkindly but instinctively, avoided, as an animal of a different species, not allied to the herd. The conventionality of little boys is constant; the colour of their traditions is uniform. At the same time, although I made no friends, I found no enemies. In class, except in my extraordinary aptitude for geography, which was looked upon as incomprehensible and almost uncanny, I was rather behind than in front of the others. I, therefore, awakened no jealousies, and, intent on my own dreams, I think my little shadowy presence escaped the notice of most of my schoolfellows.
By the side of the road I have mentioned, between the school and my home, there was a large horse-pond. The hedge folded around three sides of it, while ancient pollard elms bent over it, and chequered with their foliage in it the reflection of the sky. The roadside edge of this pond was my favourite station; it consisted of a hard clay which could be moulded into fairly tenacious forms. Here I created a maritime empire--islands, a seaboard with harbours, light-houses, fortifications. My geographical imitativeness had its full swing. Sometimes, while I was creating, a cart would be driven roughly into the pond, and a horse would drink deep of my ocean, his hooves trampling my archipelagoes and shattering my ports with what was worse than a typhoon. But I immediately set to work, as soon as the cart was gone and the mud had settled, to tidy up my coastline again and to scoop out anew my harbours.
My pleasure in this sport was endless, and what I was able to see, in my mind's eye, was not the edge of a morass of mud, but a splendid line of coast, and gulfs of the type of Tor Bay. I do not recollect a sharper double humiliation than when old Sam Lamble, the blacksmith, who was one of the 'saints', being asked by my Father whether he had met me, replied 'Yes, I zeed 'un up-long, making mud pies in the ro-ad!' What a position for one who had been received into communion 'as an adult'! What a blot on the scutcheon of a would-be Columbus! 'Mud-pies', indeed!
Yet I had an appreciator. One afternoon, as I was busy on my geographical operations, a good-looking middle-aged lady, with a soft pink cheek and a sparkling hazel eye, paused and asked me if my name was not what it was. I had seen her before; a stranger to our parts, with a voice without a trace in it of the Devonshire drawl. I knew, dimly, that she came sometimes to the meeting, that she was lodging at Upton with some friends of ours who accepted paying guests in an old house that was simply a basket of roses. She was Miss Brightwen, and I now conversed with her for the first time.
Her interest in my harbours and islands was marked; she did not smile; she asked questions about my peninsulas which were intelligent and pertinent. I was even persuaded at last to leave my creations and to walk with her towards the village. I was pleased with her voice, her refinements, her dress, which was more delicate, and her manners, which were more easy, than what Iwas accustomed to, We had some very pleasant conversation, and when we parted I had the satisfaction of feeling that our intercourse had been both agreeable to me and instructive to her.
I told her that I should be glad to tell her more on a future occasion; she thanked me very gravely, and then she laughed a little. I confess I did not see that there was anything to laugh at. We parted on warm terms of mutual esteem, but I little thought that this sympathetic Quakerish lady was to become my mother.
