I awoke the next morning a changed creature from the one who had fallen asleep in my trundle-bed. In a single hour I had awakened to the sharp sense of contrast, to the knowledge that all ways of life were not confined to the sordid circle in which I lived. Outside the poverty, the ugliness, the narrow streets, rose the spiked wall of the enchanted garden; and when I shut my eyes tight, I could see still the half-bared elms arching against the sunset, and the old house beyond, with its stuccoed wings and its grave white columns, which looked down on the magnolias and laburnums just emerging from the twilight on the lower terrace. In the midst of this garden I saw always the little girl patiently building her houses of moss and stones, and it seemed to me that I could hardly live through the days until I grew strong enough to leap the barriers and play beside her in the bower of box. "Ma," I asked, measuring myself against the red and white cloth on the table, "does it look to you as if I were growin' up?" The air was strong with the odour of frying bacon, and when my mother turned to answer me, she held a smoking skillet extended like a votive offering in her right hand. She was busy preparing breakfast for Mrs. Cudlip, whose husband's funeral we had attended the day before, and as usual when any charitable mission was under way, her manner to my father and myself had taken a biting edge. "Don't talk foolishness, Benjy," she replied, stopping to push back a loosened wiry lock of hair; "it's time to think about growin' up when you ain't been but two years in breeches. Here, if you're through breakfast, I want you to step with this plate of muffins to Mrs. Cudlip. Tell her I sent 'em an' that I hope she is bearin' up." "That you sent 'em an' that you hope she is bearin' up," I repeated. "That's it now. Don't forget what I told you befo' you're there. Thomas, have you buttered that batch of muffins?" My father handed me the plate, which was neatly covered with a red-bordered napkin. "Did you tell me to lay a slice of middlin' along side of 'em, Susan?" he humbly enquired. Without replying to him in words, my mother seized the plate from me, and lifting the napkin, removed the offending piece of bacon, which she replaced in the dish. "I thought even you, Thomas, would have had mo' feelin' than to send middlin' to a widow the day arter she has buried her husband--even a one-legged one! Middlin' indeed! One egg an' that soft boiled, will be as near a solid as she'll touch for a week. Keep along, Benjy, an' be sure to say just what I told you." I did my errand quickly, and returning, asked eagerly if I might go out all by myself an' play for an hour. "I'll stay close in the churchyard if you'll lemme go," I entreated. "Run along then for a little while, but if you go out of the churchyard, you'll get a whippin'," replied my mother.