Some children were playing round the fire, and they welcomed me and made much of me.

It was a new sensation to me, and I stayed there.

I thought the place a palace at the time.
"'I might have gone on thinking so if it had not been that, passing through the village one day, I happened to catch sight of a room behind a shop.

There was a carpet on the floor, and a rug before the fire.

I had never known till then that there were such luxuries in the world.