Hugh Walpole

“ Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to hint at anything—hints were not at all in their line, and of imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver thimble—they were good, sturdy, honest children, with healthy stomachs and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their class and generation were bent upon doing. Mrs. Scarlett was fond of them, of course, and because she was a sentimental woman she was sometimes quite needlessly emotional about them, but John—no. John was of another world. ”

“ How independent and strong now, on the very edge of the world of school! It perturbed him, therefore, that at this moment of crisis this old dream should recur, and it perturbed him the more, as he lay in bed next morning and thought it over, that it should have seemed to him at the time no dream at all, but simply a natural and actual occurrence. ”

“ Reginald Scarlett, K.C., would see his son off at the station; there was a special breakfast. Young John had more money in his pocket than he had ever dreamed that he would possess. Moreover, the day was glittering after a night of rain; a blue haze was over the Square, the fountain in the garden kicked the air with ecstasy, and its falling waters hummed in the heart of the garden trees. ”

“ Could it be that both worlds were real? Even now, at his tender years, that old business of connecting the Dream and the Business was at his throat.
"Teal Tea! Tea!" Frantic screams from May. "There's some new jam, and, John, mother says she wants you to try on some underclothes afterwards. Those others didn't do, she said...."
There came then the disastrous hour—an hour that John was never, in all his afterlife, to forget. On a wild stormy evening he found himself in the nursery. A week remained now—to-day fortnight he would be in another world, an alarming, fierce, tremendous world. ”

“ His mouth would close, his eyes disappear, all light and colour would die from his face, and it was as though he said: "Well, if you are stupid enough to persist in this thing you can compel me, of course—you are physically stronger than I—but you will only get me like this quite dead and useless, and a lot of good may it do you!" ”

“ I want you to grow up a fine man to help people. You'll say your prayers, dear, won't you?"
"Yes, Mother."
"I've put that new prayer-book at the top of the play-box where you can easily get it."
"Yes, Mother."
"Good night, darling. God bless you."
She put her arms round him. He kissed her and felt that she was crying.
"It'll be great fun, Mother," he said, struggling to say the right thing. "It'll be all right, Mother. Wasn't the play lovely? I don't know how that man can do it every night, do you? I'll write every Sunday, I expect. All the boys do, Tom says." ”

“ And then he would shake himself. "It was only a silly old dream. He wasn't real a bit. I'm not a rotten kid now that thinks fairies and all that true."
He was bothered, too, by the affectionate sentiment (still disguised, but ever, as the days proceeded, more thinly) of his mother and sisters. The girls, May and Clare, adored young John. His elder brother was away with a school friend. John, therefore, was left to feminine attention, and very tiresome he found it. May and Clare, girls of no imagination, saw only the drama that they might extract for themselves out of the affair. ”

“ They did not really believe these things—they knew that their brother, Tom, had always had a most pleasant time, and John was precisely the type of boy who would prosper at school, but they indulged, just for this fortnight, their romantic sentiment, never alluded in speech to school and its terrors, but by their pitying avoidance of the subject filled the atmosphere with their agitation. They were working things for John—May, handkerchiefs, and Clare, a comforter ”

“ He knew that she wanted to take his hand, and was determined that she should not, holding it very hot and tightly clenched under the bedclothes.
"You'll sleep, dear, won't you, because you've got a hard day in front of you?" ”