I.

HOME SICKNESS.

“I want to go home!”

How many times in my life, I wonder, have these words come rushing up from the very bottom of my heart, tumbling everything out of the way, never listening to reason, never stopping for thought?  How many times since that dreary afternoon in the great, big drawing-room at grandmamma’s?  And, oh dear me! what miserable heartache comes before that fearful want!  Oh, grown-up people, don’t you know how sour everything tastes, and how yellow everything looks, and how sick everything makes one, when one wants to go home?

So it was that one wretched day.  How well I remember it all!  The large, large drawing-room so full of cushions, couches, easy-chairs, little tables covered with funny knick-knacks, marble-slabs and more knick-knacks, beautiful fire-screens, large mirrors, soft fur lying about on the floor, and many-coloured antimacassars on the chairs.  By and by, all these wonders had happy memories pinned on to them, of uproarious games with merry little play-fellows.  Now, I was all alone, and very lonely, in it all.  True, there was grandmamma nodding in her easy-chair, in the firelight, on one side, and there was Uncle Hugh reading the “Times” by the same light on the other.  But what were either of them to the little tired stranger on the low stool between them?  Once grandmamma’s eyes had opened just to look at me, and say, “Making pretty pictures of the red coals, my dearie?”

And Uncle Hugh had answered, “Yes, to be sure; dreaming of the King of Salamanders!”

And they went to sleep again or went on reading, and the little company smile faded away from my face, and I went back to those very real dreams of the nursery at home, and baby there, and little brother, and papa and mamma, and the long time ago, hours and hours ago! when I said good-bye, and Bobbie kissed his hand out of window, and the carriage took me off—­a happy little woman, really going in the puff-puff!  Oh, how could I ever have felt so happy then and be so miserable now?  Had I ever thought that I was coming away from them all, with nobody at all but Jane, the new nursemaid, to take care of me?  Had I ever thought how quite alone I should be, never able to find my way in this great, big house, sure to get lost in some of the passages?  And how could I ever go to sleep without Bobbie close by, and wouldn’t Bobbie cry for me at home?  And oh, nurse wouldn’t be there to tuck me up, and perhaps grandmamma wouldn’t like the candle left!  And who would give me my good-night kiss like,—­like,—­oh, oh, like——­But it would come, that great big sob, it wasn’t any use to choke it back!  And, when it had come, of course, it was all over with me, and there was nothing for it but to cry out just as if I was not in that grand drawing-room—­

“I want to go home!  I want, oh, I do want mamma!”