A/N: This is just a brief interlude between plot points...I had fun writing it and I hope you enjoy it, too!
Thank you SO much for all your reviews! Keep them coming, please! I especially appreciated the comments about schooling, and know that your solution was whatI had come up with (I wrote this before I saw the review):-) I wasn't thinking Charles Sr. would want to send his son to public school, but rather a boarding school (hence the 'most of the raising until he's five' comment). I don't think a private tutor would have hit him right off the bat, after all, he went to boarding school in the Kay novel.
The Diary of Charles William de Chagny, Age 6
There's something the matter with me. Papa thinks I don't know about it, but I do, because I picked the lock and got into his room and saw the mirror. I'm not supposed to pick locks, or take apart things. Grandfather said I once took apart his pocket watch, but he wouldn't let me put it back together. I said I bet I could have, and he agreed with me. I don't look at all like Grandfather or Papa. I don't look like anyone I know. I think that's why I don't go to school. There are people who come to the house and teach me, but I'd like to go to the big school with the other children. I think it would be fun to read Latin and do algebra problems with the other students. Everyone I know is grown up, except for my cousins, and they don't like to play with me. I don't know if it's because I am a boy or because I am ugly. I don't think it matters.
Papa says I am very smart. I think he says this because sometimes he can't answer my questions, and neither can Grandfather. Once, I asked him a long question about God, and he had to get Father Dupree, and Father Dupree couldn't answer it either. He said it isn't right to question God, but I know it's because I confused him. Sometimes I confuse Papa, like when I made his sheet music disappear. He looked everywhere for it, but I had to make it come back before supper, otherwise I would have been in a lot of trouble.
Papa usually laughs when I do my magic tricks, but Grandfather gets very serious and says that I should be working more with learning the Bible than how to make things disappear. Once, I said I think the house has a ghost in it, and he got as white as a ghost and told me I shouldn't say things like that. I thought Papa would laugh, but he just told me not to bother Grandfather about ghosts. So I told him we should build the house I drew out, and he laughed at that, but my teacher said it was entirely possible, so I just don't think we have the money. Our house is too big anyway for just two people and the maid. I had a mother, and she lived here, too, but now she lives someplace else and doesn't come around. No one told me that, but I overheard Papa talking to Grandfather. It isn't nice to eavesdrop, Papa told me that after I asked him about something the maid was telling her friend (entirely inappropriate for a little boy to know, Charles!), but I have to know what's going on somehow!