I’m reading another Elizabeth Goudge novel, The Heart of the Family, which is perhaps even better than Pilgrim’s Inn. At any rate I think that for various and often obscure personal reasons it may mean more to me. I’m not sure I’ll say very much about it here, just because there is too much to say, or not say. Perhaps I’ll only quote from it.
Among many passages I would mark if I weren’t reading a library copy is this one. Robin, who I think is two years old, has frequent temper tantrums. The “her” in the passage is his four-year-old sister, Meg. It may be implausible that Meg would have understood this, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
If it had been suggested to her that Robin went berserk with rage against the unfamiliar encagement of his spirit within the frustrations of human life, much as a convict who has known the freedom of the world will lose his reason and beat his body against the walls of his cell, she would have shaken her head in bewilderment. And if someone had wondered aloud if he wept because he knew he would never get out until he was an old man, she would have been equally bewildered. Yet she knew it was that.
There is a story in my family that I had such tantrums when I was a child. If the story is true, then I rather think the cause was much as described here. The passage continues:
And she knew that once she had dried his tears the only way to comfort him was to put his boots on, take him out of doors, and let him run to the edge of the world.
Light On Dark Water 
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