"How long will it be befo' I can climb up by myself?" I asked.
"When you grow up. You're nothin' but a kid."
"An' when'll I grow up if I keep on fast?"
"Oh, in ten or fifteen years, I reckon."
"Shan't I be big enough to climb up befo' then?"
"Look here, you shut up! I'm tired answerin' questions," shouted my elder brother, and grasping his hand I trotted in a depressed silence back to our little home.
CHAPTER III
A PAIR OF RED SHOES
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.