The matron carried Kit to the sick-room and put him to bed.
After quieting the child a bit she left him, taking away the candle.
Now the sick-room was on the ground floor, and Kit lay still a very
short while. Then he got out of bed, groped for his clothes, managed
to dress himself, and, opening the window, escaped on to the quiet
lawn. Then he turned his face south-west, towards home and the sea--
and ran.
How could he tell where they lay? God knows. Ask the swallow how
she can tell, when in autumn the warm south is a fire in her brain.
I believe that the sea's breath was in the face of this child of
seven, and its scent in his nostrils, and its voice in his ears,
calling, summoning all the way. I only know that he ran straight
towards his home, a hundred miles off, and that next morning they
found his canary waistcoat and snuff-coloured coat in a ditch, two
miles from the Orphanage, due south-west.
Of his adventures on the road the story is equally silent, as I
warned you. But the small figure comes into view again, a week
later, on the hillside of the coombe above his home. And when he saw
the sea and the white beach glittering beneath him, he did not stop,
even for a moment, but reeled down the hill. The child was just a
living skeleton; he had neither hat, coat, nor waistcoat; one foot
only was shod, the other had worn through the stocking, and ugly red
blisters showed on the sole as he ran.
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