And always I shall have Shoes: in toy deserts I shall have black strong snug-buttoned ones.
I looked at them in this toy-desert and straightway I wasn’t afraid.
It has been often like that.
So I love my Shoes.
[An eerie quality]
To-morrow
WHEN I was Ten years old I played marbles ‘for keeps,’ smoked little pieces of rattan buggywhip in the hay-scented barn and slid ‘belly-buster’ down long winter hills on my sled. And I hammered and sawed ruinously with grownup tools, whistling happily. And I played with dolls absorbedly for hours on end.
I was not boyish and not girlish.
I was not childish except for an oddly hungry child-heart.