Text 1. Novel 1, L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953

The last weeks of the Easter term were the happiest of my schooldays so far, and the holidays were irradiated by them. For the first time I felt that I was someone. But when I tried to explain my improved status to my mother she was puzzled. Success in work she would have understood (and happily I was able to report this also) or success in games (of this I could not boast, but I had hopes of the cricket season). But to be revered as a magician! She gave me a soft, indulgent smile and almost shook her head. In a way she was religious: she had brought me up to think about being good, and to say my prayers, which I always did, for our code permitted it as long as it was done in a perfunctory manner: soliciting divine aid did not count as sneaking. Perhaps she would have understood what it meant to me to be singled out among my fellows if I could have told her the whole story: but I had to edit and bowdlerize it to such a degree that very little of the original was left; and least of all the intoxicating transition from a trough of persecution to a pedestal of power. A few of the boys had been a little unkind, now they were all very kind.