With the last evidences of our feast effaced from view, we little ones trod on each other's heels in our flight up-stairs, and staid Agnes went outside, by the way, to induce her mooning sister to go to bed. She simulated the necessary surprise and delight on beholding my mother, and after a few more words upon the heavenly spheres, the three entered the house, now cast, as Agnes fondly believed, into complete darkness.
My mother carelessly explaining why she had decided at the last minute not to sleep in town, turned the handle of the drawing-room door. The tapers, forgotten in the fray, blazed away in all their fatal admission, though the gas of the chandelier had been duly extinguished. The result was that soon the heavenly spheres were round about us instead of on high. Agnes and Pauline rapidly were made to see stars elsewhere than in the sky. When they lay prone and prostrate, not sure that their members were whole, up offended majesty came to us, shivering in our night-dresses. What did it all mean? she wanted to know. Empty bottles heaped up in the pantry corner, a ham vanished, tin boxes empty of their layers of biscuits, knives, plates, glasses, in tell-tale disarray, a broken pane in the pantry window.
We had had our fun, and now came the bad quarter of the hour, when we were expected to pay the bill in beaten flesh. How our ears tingled, our cheeks pained, our heads ached, and our arms smarted! You see it was a very long account, and it took a good deal of blows to make it up. But even the most infuriated creditor is appeased in the long-run, when the gathering in of his dues implies the excessive expenditure of nerve and muscle as such a scene as that of our castigation. The strongest woman cannot beat a half-dozen of children throughout an entire night, and my mother retired, pleased to regard her life in danger by a consequent fit of nervous exhaustion and blood to the head.
All this hilarity does not imply the total absence of sadness in those bright days. I had lived and suffered too long in solitude not to have reserved a private corner for unuttered griefs, into which no regard of sister or stranger could ever penetrate. It is extraordinary the art with which a circle of children can make one chosen by mutual consent feel in all things, at every moment of the day, an intruder. The two elder than I were sworn friends, the three younger likewise; both groups united as allies. I stood between them, an outsider. I shared their games, it is true, as I shared their meals; but when they had any secrets to impart, I was left out in the cold. I daresay now, on looking back, that had my sullen pride permitted a frank and genial effort, I might easily enough have broken down this barrier. But I was morbidly sensitive, and these young barbarians were very rough and hard. Not ill-natured, but most untender.