Baint runnin' away, be ee?"' " 232

'Finally we found ourselves sitting silent on
an upturned wheelbarrow' " 250

PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS

LOOKING back to those days of old, ere the gate shut to behind me, I can
see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents these things
would have worn a different aspect. But to those whose nearest were
aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind may be allowed. They
treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh,
but after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise, the
result of a certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace conviction
that your child is merely animal. At a very early age I remember
realising in a quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that
stupidity, and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grew
up in me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague sense
of a ruling power, wilful, and freakish, and prone to the practice of
vagaries--'just choosing so': as, for instance, the giving of authority
over us to these hopeless and incapable creatures, when it might far
more reasonably have been given to ourselves over them. These elders,
our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect, but only a
certain blend of envy--of their good luck--and pity--for their inability
to make use of it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features in
their character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them:
which wasn't often) that, having absolute licence to indulge in the
pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabble in
the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the most
uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth and buy
gunpowder in the full eye of the sun--free to fire cannons and explode
mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things. No
irresistible Energy haled them to church o' Sundays; yet they went there
regularly of their own accord, though they betrayed no greater delight
in the experience than ourselves.

On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be entirely
void of interests, even as their movements were confined and slow, and
their habits stereotyped and senseless. To anything but appearances they
were blind. For them the orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!)
simply produced so many apples and cherries