The Favored Child

The art of happiness is being content with what you have,' she would say, looking with apparent satisfaction out of the dusty windows at the garden, yellowing like an uncut hayfield in the October sunshine.

Don't be afraid of the future, little Julia. Take your present life and live it.

They were all wrong and the dreams and seeings were right. And there was nothing wrong with me. I felt my shoulders go back and my head come up, and I smiled at the doctor and promised to be prompt at his house in the morning; and as I smiled I sensed all the familiar strength - the strength which I named as the Lacey strength, Beatrice strength - come back to me, and I looked him in his pale blue eyes and thought to myself: you and I are enemies while you try to change me, for I will never change.

For a moment I felt the terror. The deep primeval terror of something one does not understand, something which is against nature or, at the least, against everything one has ever seen or known before.

The scene had been a nightmare, one of those insane nightmares where the most normal objects become infinitely menacing.

She poured me a cup of coffee and I drank it standing by the back door, looking out of the back garden. I felt it scald my tongue but it did not warm me. It was heavy with sugar but it did not taste sweet. I gave a little sigh. There are some days when nothing seems right.

Don't waste your courage on hating him. Keep yourself to yourself. And keep up your courage.

We are joint heirs,' I said in a sharp undertone. 'The land will always be partly mine.' Richard smiled, a smile like midsummer skies. 'I shan't regard it.' He said sweetly. 'And you don't know the law, my clever little cousin. If they commit you to an asylum, you are disinherited at once. Did you not know that, my dear? If you go on with your seeings and your dreamings, you will lose everything.

Funny sky,' he said, squinting up at the thick-bellied white clouds and the sun shining so hot on them but not breaking through. 'It feels as if there should be a storm,' I said 'but it was like this at haymaking and the weather never properly broke then.' 'If I was at sea I should run for a port,' Ralph said. He was looking towards the horizon where there was a yellow tinge to the sky over the top of the downs.