it was clear my father's confidence in his horsemanship
was justified.

As I turned round from the window I heard my mother's soft footstep in
the passage, and in another moment she had entered my room. She had her
walking things on, and a little basket in her hand, well known to me as
invariably containing jellies, puddings, or packets of tea for some of
the many invalids to whom my mother was as an angel of mercy. She
stopped only for two or three minutes, to tell me how thankful she was
to know I had felt sorry for my behaviour in the morning, and how
grieved to have to leave me at home when she would have liked me to have
been out riding with my father, or walking with her; and then, after
some further words of monition, she left me to my solitary hour's watch,
and I could see her taking her way down the drive, and turning off
through the wood, until the last flutter of her blue ribbons was lost in
the distance. Then I bethought me of seeing how much longer I had to
spend in my own room, and, looking at the clock-tower over the stables,
found it was scarcely more than three o'clock. I could not feel free
until a quarter to four, and the time began to feel very long and
wearisome.

In general, I was a boy of manifold resources, and every moment of my
leisure time seemed too short for the many purposes to which I would
willingly have applied it. But on this particular afternoon I seemed to
weary of everything. Even my last new book of fairy stories failed to
interest me. I felt as if, instead of fancying myself the hero of the
tale, I was perpetually being compared, by my own conscience, to the
unamiable characters--Cinderella's sisters, for instance, or the elder
of the two princes who lived in a country long ago and nowhere in
particular; elder brothers being in fairy tales, as all true
connoisseurs are aware, jealous, cruel, and sure to come to a bad end;
whilst the younger brothers are persecuted, forgiving, and finally
triumphant, marrying disenchanted princesses, and living happy ever
after. I threw aside my fairy book, and sought for some other means of
amusement in a repository of odds and ends, established in a corner of
the room by the housemaid, whose efforts to observe order in disorder
were most praiseworthy. There I was glad to discover a piece of
willow-bough stripped of its twigs, and in course of preparation for the
manufacture of a bow. Immediately I set myself to adjusting a piece of
string to it