I was a delicate boy in those days, and used often to be sent off to the sanatorium with bad throats and other ailments.  It was a little, old-fashioned house in Mortlake, and the matron of it had been an old servant of our own.  She was the only person there whom I regarded with real affection, and to go to the sanatorium was like heaven.  One had a comfortable room, and dear Louisa used to embrace and kiss me stealthily, provide little treats for me, take me out walks.  I have spent many hours happily in the little walled garden there, with its big box trees, or gazing from a window into the street, watching the grocer over the way set out his shop-window.

Of incidents, tragic or comic, I remember but few.  I saw a stupid boy vigorously caned with a sickening extremity of horror.  I recollect a “school licking” being given to an ill-conditioned boy for a nasty piece of bullying.  The boys ranged themselves down the big schoolroom, and the culprit had to run the gauntlet.  I can see his ugly, tear-stained face coming slowly along among a shower of blows.  I joined in with a will, I remember, though I hardly knew what he had done.  I remember a few afternoons spent at the houses of friendly masters; but otherwise it was all a drab starved sort of level, a life lived by a rule, with no friendships, no adventures; I marked off the days before the holidays on a little calendar, simply bent on hiding what I was or thought or felt from everyone, with a fortitude that was not in the least stoical.  What I was afraid of I hardly know; my aim was to be absolutely inoffensive and ordinary, to do what everyone else did, to avoid any sort of notice.  I was a strange mixture of indifference and sensitiveness.  I did not in the least care how I was regarded, I had no ambitions of any kind, did not want to be liked, or to succeed, or to make an impression; while I was very sensitive to the slightest comment or ridicule.  It seems strange to me now that I should have hated the life with such an intensity of repugnance, for no harm or ill-usage ever befell me; but if that was life, well, I did not like it!  I trusted no one; I neither wanted nor gave confidences.  The term was just a dreary interlude in home life, to be lived through with such indifference as one could muster.

I spent two years there; and remember my final departure with my brother.  I never wanted to see or hear of anyone there again—­ masters, servants, or boys.  It was a case of good-bye for ever, and thank God!  And I remember with what savage glee and delicious anticipation I saw the last of the high-walled house, with its roofs and wings, its great gate-posts and splendid cedars.  I could laugh at its dim terrors on regaining my freedom; but I had not the least spark of gratitude or loyalty; such kindnesses as I received I had taken dumbly, never thinking that they arose out of any affection or interest, but treating them as the unaccountable choice of my elders;—­we stopped for an instant at the little sanatorium—­that had been a happy place at least—­and I was tearfully hugged to Louisa’s ample bosom, Louisa alone being a little sorry that I should be so glad to get away.