Then, one day, he began a story about a poor little outcast boy in a slum.  At first he did not care for it.  His soaring spirit disdained boys in slums.  It had its being on higher planes.  But he read on, and, reading on, grew interested, until interest was intensified into absorption For the outcast boy in the slums, you must know, was really the kidnapped child of a prince and a princess, and after the most romantic adventures was enfolded in his parents’ arms, married a duke’s beauteous daughter, whom in his poverty he had worshipped from afar, and drove away with his bride in a coach-and-six.

To little Paul Kegworthy the clotted nonsense was a revelation from on high.  He was that outcast boy.  The memorable pronouncement of the goddess received confirmation in some kind of holy writ.  The Vision Splendid, hitherto confused, crystallized into focus.  He realized vividly how he differed in feature and form and intellect and character from the low crowd with whom he was associated.  His unpopularity was derived from envy.  His manifest superiority was gall to their base natures.  Yes, he had got to the heart of the mystery.  Mrs. Button was not his mother.  For reasons unknown he had been kidnapped.  Aware of his high lineage, she hated him and beat him and despitefully used him.  She never gushed, it is true, over her offspring; but the little Buttons flourished under genuine motherment.  They, inconsiderable brats, were her veritable children.  Whereas he, Paul-it was as plain as daylight.  Somewhere far away in the great world, an august and griefstricken pair, at that very moment, were mourning the loss of their only son.  There they were, in their marble palace, surrounded by flunkeys all crimson and gold (men servants were always “gorgeously apparelled flunkeys” in Paul’s books), sitting at a table loaded with pineapples on golden dishes, and eating out their hearts with longing.  He could hear their talk.

“If only our beloved son were with us,” said the princess, wiping away a tear.

“We must be patient, my sweet Highness,” replied the prince, with lofty resignation stamped on his noble brow.  “Let us trust to Heaven to remove the cankerworm that is gnawing our vitals.”

Paul felt very sorry for them, and he, too, wiped away a tear.

For many years he remembered that day.  He was alone in his brickfield on a gusty March morning-the Easter holidays had released him from school-squatting by his hole under the lee of a mass of earth and rubbish.  It was a mean expanse, blackened by soot and defiled by refuse.  Here and there bramble and stunted gorse struggled for an existence; but the flora mainly consisted in bits of old boots and foul raiment protruding grotesquely from the soil, half-buried cans, rusty bits of iron, and broken bottles.  On one side the backs of grimy little houses, their yards full of fluttering drab underwear’ marked the edge of the hopeless town which rose above them in forbidding