A Christmas Child: A Sketch of a Boy-Life

"Ses," said Ted, gravely still, but with a certain light in his eyes which encouraged Mr. Brand to continue his questions.

"And what more? Were you wishing you were as big as I am?"

Ted hesitated.

"I'd rather fly," he said. "But Percy says nobody can fly. I'd like to be big if I could get up very high."

"How high?" said Mr. Brand. "Up to the top of the mountain out there?"

"Is the mountain as high as the clouds?" asked Ted.

"Yes," said Mr. Brand; "when you're up at the very top, you can look down on the clouds."

Ted looked rather puzzled.

"I'll tell you what," the gentleman went on, amused by the expression of the child's face, "I'll tell you what – as I'm so big, supposing I take you to the top of the mountain – we'll go this very afternoon. I'll take a jug of cold water and a loaf of bread, and leave it with you there so that you'll have something to eat, and then you can stay there quite comfortable by yourself and find out all you want to know. You'd like that, wouldn't you? to be all by yourself on the top of the mountain?"

He looked at Ted in a rather queer way as he said it. The truth was that Mr. Brand, who though so big was not very old, was carried away by the fun (to him) of watching the puzzled look on the child's face, and forgot that what to him was a mere passing joke might be very different to the tender little four-years-old boy.

Ted's face grew rather white, he edged away a little from this strange gentleman, whom he could not make out, but who was so big that Ted felt it impossible to doubt his being able to do anything he wished.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he repeated, quite gravely, and glancing at Ted with slightly knitted brows which made the boy suddenly think of some of the "ogre" stories he had heard.

"No," said Ted bluntly. But he was afraid to say more. Ogres didn't like to be contradicted, and perhaps —perhaps this strange man really thought he would like it, and really meant to please him. Any way, it would never do to answer rudely, though Ted's face grew still paler, when his glance fell on the mountain peak clearly to be seen out of the window from where he stood, and a little shiver ran through him when he thought that perhaps he would have to go, whether he liked it or not. He edged away still farther, but it was no use. Mr. Brand had put his arm round him, and there was no getting away, when suddenly a noise outside the window caught the gentleman's attention and he started up. It was his dog barking loudly, and Mr. Brand, fearing he might have got into some mischief, stepped out through the glass door to see. Ted was on the alert, and before any one in the room had noticed him he was off.

Where should he go to? He dared not hide in the garden, for there he might be seen, especially as Mr. Brand was running about after his dog; he would not go up to the nursery, for nurse would ask him why he had not stayed downstairs; he did not even wish to find Percy, for though he could not have explained why, he felt that it would be impossible for him to tell any one of the strange terror that Mr. Brand's joke had awakened. He felt ashamed of it, afraid too that if, as he vaguely thought might be the case, the offer had been made in real earnest and with a wish to please him, his dislike to it would be ungrateful and unkind. Indeed poor Ted was more troubled than he ever remembered to have been in his whole little life – he could think of nothing for it but to hide till all danger was past.