“Oh, I really think I ought to stay.” “Now what nonsense. Saxby will be furiously disappointed. You must. Come along, Michael, be a brave chap and tell your mother she’s got to go out; and here’s something to square our account.” He pressed a little gold coin into Michael’s unwilling hand. “Would you mind very much, if I went?” his mother asked. “No,” said Michael tonelessly. The room was swimming round him in sickening waves of disappointment. “Of course he won’t,” decided Mr. Prescott boisterously. While he was being undressed, Nurse asked what he was holding. Michael showed the half-sovereign. “Spoiling children,” muttered Nanny. “That’s for your money-box.” Michael did not care what it was for. He was listening for his mother’s step. She came in, while he lay round-eyed in his cot, and leaned over to kiss him. He held her to him passionately; then he buried his face in the bedclothes and, while she rustled away from him, sobbed soundlessly for a long while. In the morning he watched her go away until the warm summer-time and felt abandoned as he walked through the wintry rooms, where lately he and his mother had sat by the fire. As for the ten-shilling piece, he thought no more about it. Soon afterwards he fell ill with whooping-cough, he and Stella together, and the days dragged unendurably in the stuffy nursery away from school. Chapter III: _Fears and Fantasies_ D URING whooping-cough Michael was sometimes allowed to sit in a room called the library, which was next to his mother’s bedroom on the first floor and was therefore a dearly loved resort. Here he discovered the large volume of Don Quixote illustrated by Doré that influenced his whole life. He would pore over this work for hours, forgetting everything under a spell of chivalry. He read the tale seriously and thought it the saddest tale ever known. He wept over the knight’s adventures, and big teardrops would spatter the page. He had not yet encountered much more than mild teazing at the Kindergarten, that with the unreasonableness of Nurse and his mother’s absence made up the sum of the incomprehensible crosses which he had to bear. But even these were enough to make him sympathize with Don Quixote. He perceived that here was a man intent upon something—he could not understand exactly what—thwarted always by other people, thwarted and jeered at and even physically maltreated. Yet he was a man whose room was full of dragons and fairies, whose counterpane was the adventurous field of little knights-at-arms, whose curtains were ruffled by dwarfs, whose cupboards held enchanters. Michael loved the tall thin knight and envied Sancho Panza.