Joanna however, was afraid of jumping. She always felt terrified of a jump beforehand; and afterwards, practise as she might, it jarred her painfully. Often when her companions had leapt unhesitatingly one after another from the rather high back garden wall at Collessie Street into the stony land beyond, she had to stay behind for long minutes. To have sat on the wall and scrambled down with a twist would have been easy enough. But this the child would not do. And she always jumped in the end, though no one looked on and she was sick with fear. Once indeed of her own accord she set herself a jump that was mere foolhardiness. There was a legend in the nursery that cousin Gerald had jumped from the parlour window across the area at the back of the house – a considerable feat even for a young man – and the time came when Joanna got it into her head that she must do it too. It was weeks before she could bring herself to the point, and often she would stand by the window looking at the forbidding stone drop, some six feet wide and twelve deep, which separated the house from the sloping green below. Then one day, in the middle of the Latin lesson at school – a lesson through which Joanna habitually dreamed – it came to her that she would do it that evening.

When she got home she went straight to the parlour. It was empty; and she opened the window and quaking climbed out upon the sill. Suppose she managed the jump, but did not land high enough on the slope? That would mean over-balancing into the awful area, and suppose she slipped on leaving the sill? She had a prickling agony all over the front of her body. She was lost if she jumped. Yet she knew she would have no peace till she did. She shut her eyes, opened them again, leaned back for impetus. “If I am killed it can’t be helped!” was the thought that flashed through her mind like a solution. Why had she not thought of that before? And springing with all her strength she landed on her hands and knees well up on the grass.

It had been easy as easy, she told herself when she picked herself up. But she was shaking all over as she went up the dark kitchen stair. And she never attempted it again.

II