The Crucible of Character
and had worked himself up into a satisfying passion of revolt by the time he stole home by way of the coach-house.
He went in through the back door. He dared to do this in the face of tradition in order that he might pass through the kitchen, off which opened the pantry. It was in the pantry, he knew, that the chocolate was kept.
To the boy this same pantry had always seemed a place of mysterious twilight, enchanted and fragrant as it was with the odour of strange spices and the haunting perfumes of many kinds of fruit. In it, he knew, were kept raisins and currants, and bottles of vanilla, and orange peel, and wine biscuits, and angel food, and sponge cake, and everything, in fact, that would go to make it a place of paradisal mystery to the heart of the average small boy. At the end of the pantry, too, was a high, small window with a wide ledge, on which custards were always put to cool and jellies were left to form in the moulds. There was also a row of spice-boxes, all duly labelled and ranged beside canisters of tea and sugar and coffee. What was on the
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