The Waterbabies: Chapter 3.
He'd find his way out in the end, and sure enough, at last he saw light below him, and shinned down expecting to see Mr. Grimes and the house maid, and the familiar room. Instead, when his feet touched the bars of the grate, and peeped out from the fire place, he found himself somewhere quite different - quite different from anything he had ever seen.
The room was all dressed in white, white window curtains, white bed curtains, white furniture, and white walls, with just a few lines of pink here and there. Under the snow-white coverlet, upon the snow-white pillow, lay a girl. As he looked around the room he saw a small hideous person standing near him all covered in soot from his rough hair to his toes.
It had ragged clothes and grinning teeth. What could such a monster be doing here! Tom was about to dash at it and drive it out when poor Tom! - he understood that the monster was himself. There he stood, reflected in the mirror. He had never seen the whole of himself before.
He tried to scramble back up the chimney but in his haste he knocked over the poker and it made such a clatter in the grate that the girl woke up. When she saw Tom crouching there she gave a piercing scream and an old nurse ran in still wearing her night cap. She rushed at Tom fearing he was up to no good and grabbed his jacket but he wriggled free and was out of the room and out of the window in a moment.
Many workers from the house grounds gave chase and all the while ran with his little feet bare. But when he got to the woods he found it was a different sort of place from what he had fancied. He pushed into a thick cover of rhodedendrons and found himself at once caught in a trap.
The bough laid hold of his legs and arms, poked him in his face and his stomach, made him shut his eyes tight. I must get out of this thought Tom, and there he was out on the great grass moors which the country folk called Harthover Fell.
So Tom went on and on he hardly knew why but he liked the great wide strange place, and the cool fresh bracing air. But he went more and more slowly as he got higher up the hill; for now the ground grew very bad indeed.
Instead of soft springy heather he met great patches of limestone rock, with deep cracks between the stones and ledges filled with fern; so he had to hop from stone to stone, and now and then he slipped in between and hurt his bare little toes: but still he would go up he could not tell why.
