I should have been up already. A matron had come in and told me to make myself smart. I was to go and see my grandmother. I was supposed to put on trousers. Grey flannel trousers. Goodbye, knees! Goodbye, shins and calves! I should have been happy before, I had so longed to touch my own grey flannel, to look hard at it and to say with manly pride: ‘Herringbone.’ I should have been a happy one to say: ‘Farewell, corduroy.’ Not now. Oh, my objects! But what, I thought, what if Grandfather was right, what if James Henry was a little villain, a bully in plug form, who, given the opportunity, should shove me in his pocket and pinch and bite me?

I was to be ready, to be dressed, combed, my hair parted, my teeth picked at, and to be up on the upright corridor. But I sat there, plug in lap, trousers folded beside me. I was to visit Grandmother, the old lady of the mantelpiece. And later, I thought, later on, I’d go to the Sitting Room and I’d sit on Victoria Hollest who no doubt would be wondering where Margaret was and so, a real person, both of them. I’m so sorry. And just for a while, I’d sit with Lucy; she’d be safe now, wouldn’t she, I’d tell her not to worry any more, now that Alice Higgs was a doorknob once again. (Oh, Alice Higgs, I am so sorry, what a thing to have done. What sort of person am I after all?) But to lose Lucy!

I picked up the trousers. What should happen, I wondered, when I put them on?

I supposed I should start growing whiskers very like, just after wearing my trousers, perhaps the moment grey flannel touched Clod-skin. That then I could do mutton chops and sideboards, that I could be bearded and hirsute in a suit, like so many of the city Iremongers that allow themselves to be so hairy that their faces look like a house overgrown with ivy. Shall I hairy me? Shall I grow so beardsome that my own furriness will be a fence between me and the world? Shall I be so long and thick of hair that for Lucy Pennant to kiss me again she, like the prince in Sleeping Beauty before her, should have to hack at me with a scythe because finding me in a room all she’d see at first was a forest of beard? There was but one way to find out.

I trousered me.

I pulled them on, like cutting off my own legs.

All the world, I thought, will be in grey flannel for you now. I had dragged it over, put out the nursery with it. How did I feel? Superior? Old? Wise? Heavier? Stronger? Did I find myself upright and forthright and big of birthright, broad of chest, and much impressed?