as I had sometimes seen Tom Pinfold look when the fish
he had been holding out by the tail had been sniffed at by Anna, and
the kitchen door shut in his face. Would the stork also have gone away
thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long, compass-like
legs of his, and muttering to himself. And here, incidentally, I fell
a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the garden I had often
watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm, though no doubt
really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous and uncomfortable.
Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion? And where would the stork
have taken me to then? Possibly to Mrs. Fursey's: their cottage was the
nearest. But I felt sure Mrs. Fursey would not have taken me in; and
next to them, at the first house in the village, lived Mr. Chumdley,
the cobbler, who was lame, and who sat all day hammering boots with
very dirty hands, in a little cave half under the ground, his whole
appearance suggesting a poor-spirited ogre. I should have hated being
his little boy. Possibly nobody would have taken me in. I grew pensive,
thinking of myself as the rejected of all the village. What would the
stork have done with me, left on his hands, so to speak. The reflection
prompted a fresh question.

"Nurse, where did I come from?"

"Why, I've told you often. The stork brought you."

"Yes, I know. But where did the stork get me from?" Mrs. Fursey paused
for quite a long while before replying. Possibly she was reflecting
whether such answer might not make me unduly conceited. Eventually she
must have decided to run that risk; other opportunities could be relied
upon for neutralising the effect.

"Oh, from Heaven."

"But I thought Heaven was a place where you went to," I answered; "not
where you comed from." I know I said "comed," for I remember that at
this period my irregular verbs were a bewildering anxiety to my poor
mother. "Comed" and "goned," which I had worked out for myself, were
particular favourites of mine.

Mrs. Fursey passed over my grammar in dignified silence. She had
been pointedly requested not to trouble herself with that part of my
education, my mother holding that diverging opinions upon the same
subject only confused a child.

"You came from Heaven," repeated Mrs. Fursey, "and you'll go to
Heaven--if you're good."

"Do all little boys and girls come from Heaven?"

"So they say." Mrs. Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what
might