Then what was before her eyes was not the son coming
marching home again but an old woman peering for him round the
window curtain and trying not to look uplifted. The newspaper
reports would be about the son, but my mother's comment was 'She's
a proud woman this night.'
We read many books together when I was a boy, 'Robinson Crusoe'
being the first (and the second), and the 'Arabian Nights' should
have been the next, for we got it out of the library (a penny for
three days), but on discovering that they were nights when we had
paid for knights we sent that volume packing, and I have curled my
lips at it ever since. 'The Pilgrim's Progress' we had in the
house (it was as common a possession as a dresser-head), and so
enamoured of it was I that I turned our garden into sloughs of
Despond, with pea-sticks to represent Christian on his travels and
a buffet-stool for his burden, but when I dragged my mother out to
see my handiwork she was scared, and I felt for days, with a
certain elation, that I had been a dark character. Besides reading
every book we could hire or borrow I also bought one now and again,
and while buying (it was the occupation of weeks) I read, standing
at the counter, most of the other books in the shop, which is
perhaps the most exquisite way of reading. And I took in a
magazine called 'Sunshine,' the most delicious periodical, I am
sure, of any day.
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