Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/23

 He put his eye to the peephole. When he turned away from the door, he stumbled blindly to his bed, and buried his face in the pillows and cried himself to sleep.

Years afterward, when experience had discovered to him his own personality, he saw in that small incident the little gist and prologue of his life.

  the gray of the Christmas morning, he woke to his disillusionment; but he woke also to the thought that he must not tell Frankie; and he woke, in fact, no longer an infant, but an elder brother, desperately sophisticated and, beside Frankie's enthusiasm, even blasé. Thereafter, his make-believes were conscious always; and he began to play with his imagination for a game.

Being exiled from the nursery to escape the scarlet fever, he was on a visit to an aunt who lived at the other end of the town; and on an eventful morning, he woke, alone in his cot, to hear his two cousins whispering together within their high spindle palisade on the opposite side of the room. He opened one sleepy eye to see that they were playing "Mammoth Cave," a game which he had taught them. (It required that you cover yourself with the bed-clothes, turn flat on your face, and wriggle down through the 