ot
sufficiently interesting to invent tales about, and he resented Nurse's
incredulous attitude and wrinkled obstinate face. Indeed, Michael began
to resent Nurse altogether, and so far as he was able he avoided her.
His scheme of things was logical: he had already a philosophy, and his
conception of the wonder inherent in everything was evidently not
unique, because the pictures in Don Quixote proved conclusively that
what Michael thought, other people besides himself thought. He might be
old-fashioned, as Nurse assured him he was; but if to be old-fashioned
was to live in the world of Don Quixote, he certainly preferred it to
the world in which Nanny lived. That seemed to him a circumscribed and
close existence for which he had no sympathy. It was a world of poking
about in medicine-cupboards, of blind unreasonableness, of stupidity and
malice and blank ugliness. He would sit watching Nanny nibbling with her
front teeth the capers of the caper sauce, and he would hate her. She
interfered with him, with his day-dreams and toys and meals; and the
only time when he wanted her presence was in the middle of the night,
when she was either drinking her glass of ale in the kitchen or snoring
heavily in the next room. Michael's only ambition was to live in his own
world. This he would have shared with his mother, but her visits were
now so rare that it was unwise to rely on her presence for happiness. He
was learning to do without her: Nurse he had never yet learnt to endure.
She charged ferociously into his fancies, shattering them with her fussy
interference, just as she would snatch away his clay pipe, when the most
perfect bubble was trembling on the edge of the bowl.

"Time for tea," she would mutter. "Time for bed," she would chatter.
Always it was time for something unpleasant.

Mrs. Frith, on the other hand, was a person whose attractions grew with
longer friendship, as Nurse's decreased even from the small quantity she
originally possessed. As Michael month by month grew older, Mrs. Frith
expanded towards him. She found him an attentive, even a breathless
listener to her rollicking tales. Her life Michael plainly perceived to
have been crammed with exciting adventures. In earliest youth she had
been forced by cunning to outwit a brutal father with the frightening
habit of coming home in the evening and taking off his belt to her and
her brothers and her sisters. The house in which she lived had been full
of hiding-pl