Over the fireplace, so placed that in that light I hadn’t noticed it before, was a mirror.

The ferocious desolation of the plain had purged me, spirit from body. I was all thought and consciousness, observation, analysis and emotion. I had forgotten that there is an outside of me as well as an inside. Importunate mirror. I saw again the narrow curve-in from the forehead at the top of my nose, the smallness of my mouth which is inclined to look prim, the tiny pimples on my forehead which first came with that eruption of pimples in early adolescence and never since disappeared as the others—after agonizing years—did. Little things which stand out only to me, who knows them so well. Things I always have and always will dislike and find alien about my own appearance. For I have an appearance again. That importunate mirror. I am back in civilization.

I slept in the cellar among the faggots. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I was given a blanket to lie on and two blankets and a rug to put over me. And a cushion under my head. Naturally, there wasn’t even a candle—anything of that sort might have sent all the fuel up in disastrously premature flames. But it wasn’t really cold and though it was dark I wasn’t alone. The wagoner snored beside me.

During an early breakfast I was hired.

This was thanks to the wagoner’s kind efforts. He pretended that he had known me for a long time, and would personally vouch for my honesty and efficiency.

“O.K., sonny, you’re hired,” said the merchant.

I knew that after that I must work very well and hard, it would be disgusting to let him down.

When the wagoner had been bade good-bye and had left for his home again, I was given a short warm woollen cloak and a pair of mittens and sent out with a tall boy who had just arrived. My job would be to deliver faggots to the merchant’s patrons, taking it to the addresses of people who had already ordered it. The tall boy, who also does this, would take me round with him the next days to familiarize me with the streets.

His name is Jode, he has red hair in nearly as uncouth a crop as mine, and the woman was as a matter of course bright and coy with him. He is nineteen, a year older than I am and about five years older than I am pretending to be.

We went out together into the snowy streets, I slithering and sliding in panic under my load of faggots because Jode had gaily pushed me, and I was glad that my jerkin reached to below the joining of my thighs. It sums Jode up to say that he is the sort of boy who makes jeering remarks about the smallness of the other boys’ genitals.