So the
little girl was Somebody; and yet for all that, strange to say, the
first thing she did was to cry. I told you it was a strange country.
As she grew up, everybody about her did his best to convince her
that she was Somebody; and the girl herself was so easily persuaded
of it that she quite forgot that anybody had ever told her so, and
took it for a fundamental, innate, primary, first-born, self-
evident, necessary, and incontrovertible idea and principle that SHE
WAS SOMEBODY. And far be it from me to deny it. I will even go so
far as to assert that in this odd country there was a huge number of
Somebodies. Indeed, it was one of its oddities that every boy and
girl in it, was rather too ready to think he or she was Somebody;
and the worst of it was that the princess never thought of there
being more than one Somebody--and that was herself.
Far away to the north in the same country, on the side of a bleak
hill, where a horse-chestnut or a sycamore was never seen, where
were no meadows rich with buttercups, only steep, rough, breezy
slopes, covered with dry prickly furze and its flowers of red gold,
or moister, softer broom with its flowers of yellow gold, and great
sweeps of purple heather, mixed with bilberries, and crowberries,
and cranberries--no, I am all wrong: there was nothing out yet but a
few furze-blossoms; the rest were all waiting behind their doors
till they were called; and no full, slow-gliding river with
meadow-sweet along its oozy banks, only a little brook here and
there, that dashed past without a moment to say, "How do you
do?"--there (would you believe it?) while the same cloud that was
dropping down golden rain all about the queen's new baby was dashing
huge fierce handfuls of hail upon the hills, with such force that
they flew spinning off the rocks and stones, went burrowing in the
sheep's wool, stung the cheeks and chin of the shepherd with their
sharp spiteful little blows, and made his dog wink and whine as they
bounded off his hard wise head, and long sagacious nose; only, when
they dropped plump down the chimney, and fell hissing in the little
fire, they caught it then, for the clever little fire soon sent them
up the chimney again, a good deal swollen, and harmless enough for a
while, there (what do you think?) among the hailstones, and the
heather, and the cold mountain air, another little girl was born,
whom the shepherd her father, and the shepherdess her mother, and a
good many of her kindred too, thought Somebody.
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