On me, as the youngest of the brothers, the nightly shock should have fallen lightly; for I was but newly emancipated from the shameful ordeal of going to bed for an hour in the afternoon, and I could very well remember, though I pretended I had forgotten, the sensations of that drowsy hour, when the birds sang so loudly outside the window and the sun thrust fingers of dusty gold through the crannies of the blind. I should therefore probably have been reconciled to the common lot, which spelt advancement to me, had I not newly discovered the joy of dreaming those dreams that men have written in books for the delight of the young. The Olympians were funny about books. They gave them to us, or at the least smiled graciously when other people gave them to us, but the moment rarely arrived when they could endure to see us reading, or spoiling our eyes as their dreadful phrase ran. And especially at nightfall, when the shadows crept in from the corners of the room and made the pages of the dullest book exciting, it was inviting an early bed-time to be detected in the act of reading. As sure as the frog was about to turn into a prince or the black enchantress had appeared with her embarrassing christening present, the book would be taken from my hands and I would be threatened with the compulsory wearing of old-maidish spectacles—an end that would make me an object of derision in the eyes of man. And even if I shut the book of my own accord, and sat nodding before the fire, working out the story in my own fashion with some one I knew very well to play the part of hero, some ruthless adult would accuse me of being “half asleep already,” and the veil of illusion would be torn beyond repair. In winter-time the bedroom would seem cold after the comfortable kingdom of the hearth-rug, and the smell of scented soap was a poor substitute for the friendly fragrance of burning logs. So we would undress as quickly as possible, and lie cuddled up in the chilly bed-clothes, holding our own cold feet in our hands as if they belonged to somebody else. But if it happened that one of us had a bad cold, and there was a fire in the bedroom, we would keep high festival, sitting in solemn palaver round the camp-fire, and toasting our pink toes like Arctic explorers, while the invalid lay in bed crowing over his black-currant tea or hot lemonade. It was pleasant, too, when natural weariness had driven us to our beds, to lie there and watch the firelight laughing on the walls; and the invalid, for the time being, was rather a popular person.