Harry's Holiday/Chapter I
HARRY'S HOLIDAY.
CHAPTER I.
“How I should like to be Robinson Crusoe!” said Harry, who sometimes talked to himself, especially when he felt discontented.
“I doubt it,” said his father, who, passing by just then, happened to overhear him.
This made Harry lift his head from his hand, on which he had been resting it, as idle people do, and he began to wonder what else he might have said loud enough to be heard; for he knew he had been thinking a great many things which he should not at all like to tell his papa. There was one sentence in particular which he was very uneasy about; for he was sadly afraid he had muttered it loud, and, even in his present discontented mood, he knew it to be untrue, unkind, and ungrateful.
“I should not so much mind if he did hear that,” thought he, referring to something in which he believed himself to be really ill used. “I wonder whether he was there before I said I should like to be Robinson Crusoe!— I didn’t hear any body.”
After questioning himself a little more to no purpose, his thoughts turned to the old subject.—“Yes, I should like to be Robinson Crusoe,” thought he; papa may doubt it, but I know it. I dare say I know what I should like myself; but he knows nothing about it; he does not want to be anybody else, I dare say, because he can do as he likes; and what’s the reason I may not? It's doing as one likes is the thing; it is so disagreeable to be obliged to do every thing just to a minute, and to be forced to go when that bell rings, let one be doing what one will; as if I go to my lessons as well without that! How would papa like it himself, I wonder?” Harry might have recollected that his father was always one of the first to go when the bell rung; but he did not recollect it; nor did he consider how lately his grumbling soliloquy had been overheard, but began talking to himself again as he did before. “I only wish,” said he, “I could have my own way for one week; oh, if I could be as Robinson Crusoe was, and they could see me! they’d envy me. They might keep their chairs, and their tables, and their beds, and their carpets! Why, if I were going to be like him, I would not have a thing that is in this house;—I know how to do without those things.”
His imagination then landed him, as if at one leap, on the desert island, where, he thought, he immediately saw a bread-fruit-tree, and some oysters, and that he presently found a convenient sharp stone to open them with. He fancied himself, besides, just within sight of a snug cave to live in, when the bell rung, which made poor Harry start as if in his sleep. It is wonderful how truly miserable discontented people often make themselves; for poor Harry felt nearly as wretched, only in a different way, as he would have done in Robinson’s cave that night; however, he was but a little boy, and he did not know how very often little boys are mistaken.
He now felt reminded of his hard lot, in being obliged to obey every summons, and slowly paced towards the room in which the family assembled. But as he drew near, he began to think of what he had said, and of what his father might have heard, and he felt very uneasy lest it should be brought against him, as a serious charge, the moment he entered. The door being partly open, he looked in, and saw his papa standing with his back to the fire, but not looking at all angry he thought. However, he resolved not to venture in alone, but to wait till the others should come, that he might not be so much noticed. So when his brothers and sisters went in, he followed last of all, his heart beating so loud that he was afraid some of them would hear it. He was greatly relieved, however, to see his papa stroking puss, who laid before the fire with her kitten, and looking very good-natured.
Soon after his papa and mamma had a long conversation on the strength of parental affection in animals, and Harry began to think that all was safe, when suddenly his father said—"Harry, what was that I heard you read the other day about the bear that was shot on the ice with her young ones?" Poor Harry had been too much alarmed, by the sound of the first part of this question to answer without some agitation; however, he repeated the anecdote as well as he could, and it all passed off. Now it really happened that his father had just then quite forgotten what he had overheard, so that Harry's fright was only the effect of his own guilty conscience: nevertheless he determined, for the future, not to talk aloud to himself, unless, indeed, like Robinson Crusoe, he could be certain of being alone.