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Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what might possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually took no responsibility. "And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?" Mrs. Fursey's reply to this was decidedly more emphatic. "Of course I did. Where do you think I came from?" At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my eyes.
Fursey's well-meant exhortations, whatever they may have been, fell upon deaf ears. Here was I face to face with yet another problem. This life into which I had fallen: it was understandable! One went away, leaving the pleasant places that one knew, never to return to them. One left one's labour and one's play to enter upon a new existence in a strange land.
I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that my fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls. With a child's egoism I seized only upon my own particular case. "Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?" I asked. "Weren't they fond of me up there?" The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's bosom, for she answered more sympathetically than usual.
Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew should be going there for so I was always assured; now, connected as it appeared to be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm disappeared. But this was not all. Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a fresh grief.
Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity against her thimble. At that moment knocked at my small soul for the first time the problem of life. Suddenly, without moving, I said: "Then why did she take me in?" The rasping click of the needle on the thimble ceased abruptly. "Took you in! What's the child talking about? Who's took you in?" "Why, mamma.
"Oh, nurse and I were discussing things, you know," I answered, "and she said you could have done without me." Somehow, I did not mind repeating the words now; clearly it could have been but Mrs. Fursey's fun. My mother drew me closer to her. "And what made her think that?" "Well, you see," I replied, "I came at a very awkward time, didn't I; when you had a lot of other troubles."
"And I must confess," added the knobbly Mrs. Fursey, with a sigh, "it does look as though there must be some truth in the saying, after all." "Then ain't I a lucky little boy?" I asked. For hitherto it had been Mrs. Fursey's method to impress upon me my exceptional good fortune.
And here, incidentally, I fell a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the garden I had often watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm, though no doubt really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous and uncomfortable. Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion? And where would the stork have taken me to then? Possibly to Mrs. Fursey's: their cottage was the nearest.
"What maggot has the child got into its head now?" was her observation; "who hasn't got a husband?" "Why, mamma." "Don't talk nonsense, Master Paul; you know your mamma has got a husband." "No, she ain't." "And don't contradict. Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives in London." "What's the good of him!" Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.
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