Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/167

 how one's early teaching flashes back upon one at times afterwards. Aunt Agatha always said that nothing ever mattered so much as one's first twelve years, and I believe she was right. Try as you will, you will never get away from the training of them, and the things you were taught to believe, in those early days, you will always cherish a kind of sneaking belief for somewhere in the back of your mind, long after reason tells you they were only ignorant survivals of the middle ages. It is sometimes quite wonderful how Aunt Agatha's well-remembered common-sense maxims come back to me just as if they were spoken in my ear, and keep me from making a fool of myself. I found them most sustaining that first dreadful night in the Indian Mofussil. We had retired to our rooms early that first evening under Berengaria's roof, as I was naturally supposed to be fairly well tired out after my long journey. It was quite true that I was tired, but I was not sleepy. There's a great difference. I had that tiresome alert sort of feeling one sometimes gets after a long journey when one reaches a strange place, and although one really is just tired out, one knows beforehand that sleep won't come. With me that night it was doubtless partly the journey and partly the strange place, but above all it was that room. I looked round it uneasily as Ermyntrude busied herself making things ready for the night. That room was forty feet long by thirty-four feet wide—I know because Ermyntrude and I measured it next day with a tape—and it had eighteen doors.