initial commit of ebook 2437HEADmain

9 files changed, 23237 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/2437-0.txt b/2437-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7662671
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2437-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7525 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, They and I, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: They and I
+
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 31, 2013  [eBook #2437]
+[This file was first posted on February 11, 2000]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEY AND I***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1909 Bernhard Tauchnitz edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                                THEY AND I
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    BY
+
+                             JEROME K. JEROME
+
+                                AUTHOR OF
+           “THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW,” “THREE MEN ON
+                     THE BUMMEL,” “PAUL KELVER,” ETC.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                           _COPYRIGHT EDITION_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 LEIPZIG
+
+                            BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
+
+                                  1909.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+“IT is not a large house,” I said.  “We don’t want a large house.  Two
+spare bedrooms, and the little three-cornered place you see marked there
+on the plan, next to the bathroom, and which will just do for a bachelor,
+will be all we shall require—at all events, for the present.  Later on,
+if I ever get rich, we can throw out a wing.  The kitchen I shall have to
+break to your mother gently.  Whatever the original architect could have
+been thinking of—”
+
+“Never mind the kitchen,” said Dick: “what about the billiard-room?”
+
+The way children nowadays will interrupt a parent is nothing short of a
+national disgrace.  I also wish Dick would not sit on the table, swinging
+his legs.  It is not respectful.  “Why, when I was a boy,” as I said to
+him, “I should as soon have thought of sitting on a table, interrupting
+my father—”
+
+“What’s this thing in the middle of the hall, that looks like a grating?”
+demanded Robina.
+
+“She means the stairs,” explained Dick.
+
+“Then why don’t they look like stairs?” commented Robina.
+
+“They do,” replied Dick, “to people with sense.”
+
+“They don’t,” persisted Robina, “they look like a grating.”  Robina, with
+the plan spread out across her knee, was sitting balanced on the arm of
+an easy-chair.  Really, I hardly see the use of buying chairs for these
+people.  Nobody seems to know what they are for—except it be one or
+another of the dogs.  Perches are all they want.
+
+“If we threw the drawing-room into the hall and could do away with the
+stairs,” thought Robina, “we should be able to give a dance now and
+then.”
+
+“Perhaps,” I suggested, “you would like to clear out the house
+altogether, leaving nothing but the four bare walls.  That would give us
+still more room, that would.  For just living in, we could fix up a shed
+in the garden; or—”
+
+“I’m talking seriously,” said Robina: “what’s the good of a drawing-room?
+One only wants it to show the sort of people into that one wishes hadn’t
+come.  They’d sit about, looking miserable, just as well anywhere else.
+If we could only get rid of the stairs—”
+
+“Oh, of course! we could get rid of the stairs,” I agreed.  “It would be
+a bit awkward at first, when we wanted to go to bed.  But I daresay we
+should get used to it.  We could have a ladder and climb up to our rooms
+through the windows.  Or we might adopt the Norwegian method and have the
+stairs outside.”
+
+“I wish you would be sensible,” said Robin.
+
+“I am trying to be,” I explained; “and I am also trying to put a little
+sense into you.  At present you are crazy about dancing.  If you had your
+way, you would turn the house into a dancing-saloon with primitive
+sleeping-accommodation attached.  It will last six months, your dancing
+craze.  Then you will want the house transformed into a swimming-bath, or
+a skating-rink, or cleared out for hockey.  My idea may be conventional.
+I don’t expect you to sympathise with it.  My notion is just an ordinary
+Christian house, not a gymnasium.  There are going to be bedrooms in this
+house, and there’s going to be a staircase leading to them.  It may
+strike you as sordid, but there is also going to be a kitchen: though why
+when building the house they should have put the kitchen—
+
+“Don’t forget the billiard-room,” said Dick.
+
+“If you thought more of your future career and less about billiards,”
+Robin pointed out to him, “perhaps you’d get through your Little-go in
+the course of the next few years.  If Pa only had sense—I mean if he
+wasn’t so absurdly indulgent wherever you are concerned, he would not
+have a billiard-table in the house.”
+
+“You talk like that,” retorted Dick, “merely because you can’t play.”
+
+“I can beat you, anyhow,” retorted Robin.
+
+“Once,” admitted Dick—“once in six weeks.”
+
+“Twice,” corrected Robin.
+
+“You don’t play,” Dick explained to her; “you just whack round and trust
+to Providence.”
+
+“I don’t whack round,” said Robin; “I always aim at something.  When you
+try and it doesn’t come off, you say it’s ‘hard luck;’ and when I try and
+it does come off, you say it’s fluking.  So like a man.”
+
+“You both of you,” I said, “attach too much importance to the score.
+When you try for a cannon off the white and hit it on the wrong side and
+send it into a pocket, and your own ball travels on and makes a losing
+hazard off the red, instead of being vexed with yourselves—”
+
+“If you get a really good table, governor,” said Dick, “I’ll teach you
+billiards.”
+
+I do believe Dick really thinks he can play.  It is the same with golf.
+Beginners are invariably lucky.  “I think I shall like it,” they tell
+you; “I seem to have the game in me, if you understand.”
+
+‘There is a friend of mine, an old sea-captain.  He is the sort of man
+that when the three balls are lying in a straight line, tucked up under
+the cushion, looks pleased; because then he knows he can make a cannon
+and leave the red just where he wants it.  An Irish youngster named
+Malooney, a college chum of Dick’s, was staying with us; and the
+afternoon being wet, the Captain said he would explain it to Malooney,
+how a young man might practise billiards without any danger of cutting
+the cloth.  He taught him how to hold the cue, and he told him how to
+make a bridge.  Malooney was grateful, and worked for about an hour.  He
+did not show much promise.  He is a powerfully built young man, and he
+didn’t seem able to get it into his head that he wasn’t playing cricket.
+Whenever he hit a little low the result was generally lost ball.  To save
+time—and damage to furniture—Dick and I fielded for him.  Dick stood at
+long-stop, and I was short slip.  It was dangerous work, however, and
+when Dick had caught him out twice running, we agreed that we had won,
+and took him in to tea.  In the evening—none of the rest of us being keen
+to try our luck a second time—the Captain said, that just for the joke of
+the thing he would give Malooney eighty-five and play him a hundred up.
+To confess the truth, I find no particular fun myself in playing
+billiards with the Captain.  The game consists, as far as I am concerned,
+in walking round the table, throwing him back the balls, and saying
+“Good!”  By the time my turn comes I don’t seem to care what happens:
+everything seems against me.  He is a kind old gentleman and he means
+well, but the tone in which he says “Hard lines!” whenever I miss an easy
+stroke irritates me.  I feel I’d like to throw the balls at his head and
+fling the table out of window.  I suppose it is that I am in a fretful
+state of mind, but the mere way in which he chalks his cue aggravates me.
+He carries his own chalk in his waistcoat pocket—as if our chalk wasn’t
+good enough for him—and when he has finished chalking, he smooths the tip
+round with his finger and thumb and taps the cue against the table.  “Oh!
+go on with the game,” I want to say to him; “don’t be so full of tricks.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The Captain led off with a miss in baulk.  Malooney gripped his cue, drew
+in a deep breath, and let fly.  The result was ten: a cannon and all
+three balls in the same pocket.  As a matter of fact he made the cannon
+twice; but the second time, as we explained to him, of course did not
+count.
+
+“Good beginning!” said the Captain.
+
+Malooney seemed pleased with himself, and took off his coat.
+
+Malooney’s ball missed the red on its first journey up the table by about
+a foot, but found it later on and sent it into a pocket.
+
+“Ninety-nine plays nothing,” said Dick, who was marking.  “Better make it
+a hundred and fifty, hadn’t we, Captain?”
+
+“Well, I’d like to get in a shot,” said the Captain, “before the game is
+over.  Perhaps we had better make it a hundred and fifty, if Mr. Malooney
+has no objection.”
+
+“Whatever you think right, sir,” said Rory Malooney.
+
+Malooney finished his break for twenty-two, leaving himself hanging over
+the middle pocket and the red tucked up in baulk.
+
+“Nothing plays a hundred and eight,” said Dick.
+
+“When I want the score,” said the Captain, “I’ll ask for it.”
+
+“Beg pardon, sir,” said Dick.
+
+“I hate a noisy game,” said the Captain.
+
+The Captain, making up his mind without much waste of time, sent his ball
+under the cushion, six inches outside baulk.
+
+“What will I do here?” asked Malooney.
+
+“I don’t know what you will do,” said the Captain; “I’m waiting to see.”
+
+Owing to the position of the ball, Malooney was unable to employ his
+whole strength.  All he did that turn was to pocket the Captain’s ball
+and leave himself under the bottom cushion, four inches from the red.
+The Captain said a nautical word, and gave another miss.  Malooney
+squared up to the balls for the third time.  They flew before him,
+panic-stricken.  They banged against one another, came back and hit one
+another again for no reason whatever.  The red, in particular, Malooney
+had succeeded apparently in frightening out of its wits.  It is a stupid
+ball, generally speaking, our red—its one idea to get under a cushion and
+watch the game.  With Malooney it soon found it was safe nowhere on the
+table.  Its only hope was pockets.  I may have been mistaken, my eye may
+have been deceived by the rapidity of the play, but it seemed to me that
+the red never waited to be hit.  When it saw Malooney’s ball coming for
+it at the rate of forty miles an hour, it just made for the nearest
+pocket.  It rushed round the table looking for pockets.  If in its
+excitement, it passed an empty pocket, it turned back and crawled in.
+There were times when in its terror it jumped the table and took shelter
+under the sofa or behind the sideboard.  One began to feel sorry for the
+red.
+
+The Captain had scored a legitimate thirty-eight, and Malooney had given
+him twenty-four, when it really seemed as if the Captain’s chance had
+come.  I could have scored myself as the balls were then.
+
+“Sixty-two plays one hundred and twenty-eight.  Now then, Captain, game
+in your hands,” said Dick.
+
+We gathered round.  The children left their play.  It was a pretty
+picture: the bright young faces, eager with expectation, the old worn
+veteran squinting down his cue, as if afraid that watching Malooney’s
+play might have given it the squirms.
+
+“Now follow this,” I whispered to Malooney.  “Don’t notice merely what he
+does, but try and understand why he does it.  Any fool—after a little
+practice, that is—can hit a ball.  But why do you hit it?  What happens
+after you’ve hit it?  What—”
+
+“Hush,” said Dick.
+
+The Captain drew his cue back and gently pushed it forward.
+
+“Pretty stroke,” I whispered to Malooney; “now, that’s the sort—”
+
+I offer, by way of explanation, that the Captain by this time was
+probably too full of bottled-up language to be master of his nerves.  The
+ball travelled slowly past the red.  Dick said afterwards that you
+couldn’t have put so much as a sheet of paper between them.  It comforts
+a man, sometimes, when you tell him this; and at other times it only
+makes him madder.  It travelled on and passed the white—you could have
+put quite a lot of paper between it and the white—and dropped with a
+contented thud into the top left-hand pocket.
+
+“Why does he do that?” Malooney whispered.  Malooney has a singularly
+hearty whisper.
+
+Dick and I got the women and children out of the room as quickly as we
+could, but of course Veronica managed to tumble over something on the
+way—Veronica would find something to tumble over in the desert of Sahara;
+and a few days later I overheard expressions, scorching their way through
+the nursery door, that made my hair rise up.  I entered, and found
+Veronica standing on the table.  Jumbo was sitting upon the music-stool.
+The poor dog himself was looking scared, though he must have heard a bit
+of language in his time, one way and another.
+
+“Veronica,” I said, “are you not ashamed of yourself?  You wicked child,
+how dare you—”
+
+“It’s all right,” said Veronica.  “I don’t really mean any harm.  He’s a
+sailor, and I have to talk to him like that, else he don’t know he’s
+being talked to.”
+
+I pay hard-working, conscientious ladies to teach this child things right
+and proper for her to know.  They tell her clever things that Julius
+Cæsar said; observations made by Marcus Aurelius that, pondered over,
+might help her to become a beautiful character.  She complains that it
+produces a strange buzzy feeling in her head; and her mother argues that
+perhaps her brain is of the creative order, not intended to remember
+much—thinks that perhaps she is going to be something.  A good
+round-dozen oaths the Captain must have let fly before Dick and I
+succeeded in rolling her out of the room.  She had only heard them once,
+yet, so far as I could judge, she had got them letter perfect.
+
+The Captain, now no longer under the necessity of employing all his
+energies to suppress his natural instincts, gradually recovered form, and
+eventually the game stood at one hundred and forty-nine all, Malooney to
+play.  The Captain had left the balls in a position that would have
+disheartened any other opponent than Malooney.  To any other opponent
+than Malooney the Captain would have offered irritating sympathy.
+“Afraid the balls are not rolling well for you to-night,” the Captain
+would have said; or, “Sorry, sir, I don’t seem to have left you very
+much.”  To-night the Captain wasn’t feeling playful.
+
+“Well, if he scores off that!” said Dick.
+
+“Short of locking up the balls and turning out the lights, I don’t myself
+see how one is going to stop him,” sighed the Captain.
+
+The Captain’s ball was in hand.  Malooney went for the red and
+hit—perhaps it would be more correct to say, frightened—it into a pocket.
+Malooney’s ball, with the table to itself, then gave a solo performance,
+and ended up by breaking a window.  It was what the lawyers call a nice
+point.  What was the effect upon the score?
+
+Malooney argued that, seeing he had pocketed the red before his own ball
+left the table, his three should be counted first, and that therefore he
+had won.  Dick maintained that a ball that had ended up in a flower-bed
+couldn’t be deemed to have scored anything.  The Captain declined to
+assist.  He said that, although he had been playing billiards for upwards
+of forty years, the incident was new to him.  My own feeling was that of
+thankfulness that we had got through the game without anybody being
+really injured.  We agreed that the person to decide the point would be
+the editor of _The Field_.
+
+It remains still undecided.  The Captain came into my study the next
+morning.  He said: “If you haven’t written that letter to _The Field_,
+don’t mention my name.  They know me on _The Field_.  I would rather it
+did not get about that I have been playing with a man who cannot keep his
+ball within the four walls of a billiard-room.”
+
+“Well,” I answered, “I know most of the fellows on _The Field_ myself.
+They don’t often get hold of anything novel in the way of a story.  When
+they do, they are apt to harp upon it.  My idea was to keep my own name
+out of it altogether.”
+
+“It is not a point likely to crop up often,” said the Captain.  “I’d let
+it rest if I were you.”
+
+I should like to have had it settled.  In the end, I wrote the editor a
+careful letter, in a disguised hand, giving a false name and address.
+But if any answer ever appeared I must have missed it.
+
+Myself I have a sort of consciousness that somewhere inside me there is
+quite a good player, if only I could persuade him to come out.  He is
+shy, that is all.  He does not seem able to play when people are looking
+on.  The shots he misses when people are looking on would give you a
+wrong idea of him.  When nobody is about, a prettier game you do not
+often see.  If some folks who fancy themselves could see me when there is
+nobody about, it might take the conceit out of them.  Only once I played
+up to what I feel is my real form, and then it led to argument.  I was
+staying at an hotel in Switzerland, and the second evening a
+pleasant-spoken young fellow, who said he had read all my books—later, he
+appeared surprised on learning I had written more than two—asked me if I
+would care to play a hundred up.  We played even, and I paid for the
+table.  The next evening he said he thought it would make a better game
+if he gave me forty and I broke.  It was a fairly close finish, and
+afterwards he suggested that I should put down my name for the handicap
+they were arranging.
+
+“I am afraid,” I answered, “that I hardly play well enough.  Just a quiet
+game with you is one thing; but in a handicap with a crowd looking on—”
+
+“I should not let that trouble you,” he said; “there are some here who
+play worse than you—just one or two.  It passes the evening.”
+
+It was merely a friendly affair.  I paid my twenty marks, and was given
+plus a hundred.  I drew for my first game a chatty type of man, who
+started minus twenty.  We neither of us did much for the first five
+minutes, and then I made a break of forty-four.
+
+There was not a fluke in it from beginning to end.  I was never more
+astonished in my life.  It seemed to me it was the cue was doing it.
+
+Minus Twenty was even more astonished.  I heard him as I passed:
+
+“Who handicapped this man?” he asked.
+
+“I did,” said the pleasant-spoken youngster.
+
+“Oh,” said Minus Twenty—“friend of yours, I presume?”
+
+There are evenings that seem to belong to you.  We finished that two
+hundred and fifty under the three-quarters of an hour.  I explained to
+Minus Twenty—he was plus sixty-three at the end—that my play that night
+had been exceptional.  He said that he had heard of cases similar.  I
+left him talking volubly to the committee.  He was not a nice man at all.
+
+After that I did not care to win; and that of course was fatal.  The less
+I tried, the more impossible it seemed for me to do wrong.  I was left in
+at the last with a man from another hotel.  But for that I am convinced I
+should have carried off the handicap.  Our hotel didn’t, anyhow, want the
+other hotel to win.  So they gathered round me, and offered me sound
+advice, and begged me to be careful; with the natural result that I went
+back to my usual form quite suddenly.
+
+Never before or since have I played as I played that week.  But it showed
+me what I could do.  I shall get a new table, with proper pockets this
+time.  There is something wrong about our pockets.  The balls go into
+them and then come out again.  You would think they had seen something
+there to frighten them.  They come out trembling and hold on to the
+cushion.
+
+I shall also get a new red ball.  I fancy it must be a very old ball, our
+red.  It seems to me to be always tired.
+
+“The billiard-room,” I said to Dick, “I see my way to easily enough.
+Adding another ten feet to what is now the dairy will give us
+twenty-eight by twenty.  I am hopeful that will be sufficient even for
+your friend Malooney.  The drawing-room is too small to be of any use.  I
+may decide—as Robina has suggested—to ‘throw it into the hall.’  But the
+stairs will remain.  For dancing, private theatricals—things to keep you
+children out of mischief—I have an idea I will explain to you later on.
+The kitchen—”
+
+“Can I have a room to myself?” asked Veronica.
+
+Veronica was sitting on the floor, staring into the fire, her chin
+supported by her hand.  Veronica, in those rare moments when she is
+resting from her troubles, wears a holy, far-away expression apt to
+mislead the stranger.  Governesses, new to her, have their doubts whether
+on these occasions they are justified in dragging her back to discuss
+mere dates and tables.  Poets who are friends of mine, coming
+unexpectedly upon Veronica standing by the window, gazing upward at the
+evening star, have thought it was a vision, until they got closer and
+found that she was sucking peppermints.
+
+“I should so like to have a room all to myself,” added Veronica.
+
+“It would be a room!” commented Robin.
+
+“It wouldn’t have your hairpins sticking up all over the bed, anyhow,”
+murmured Veronica dreamily.
+
+“I like that!” said Robin; “why—”
+
+“You’re harder than I am,” said Veronica.
+
+“I should wish you to have a room, Veronica,” I said.  “My fear is that
+in place of one untidy bedroom in the house—a room that makes me shudder
+every time I see it through the open door; and the door, in spite of all
+I can say, generally is wide open—”
+
+“I’m not untidy,” said Robin, “not really.  I know where everything is in
+the dark—if people would only leave them alone.”
+
+“You are.  You’re about the most untidy girl I know,” said Dick.
+
+“I’m not,” said Robin; “you don’t see other girls’ rooms.  Look at yours
+at Cambridge.  Malooney told us you’d had a fire, and we all believed him
+at first.”
+
+“When a man’s working—” said Dick.
+
+“He must have an orderly place to work in,” suggested Robin.
+
+Dick sighed.  “It’s never any good talking to you,” said Dick.  “You
+don’t even see your own faults.”
+
+“I can,” said Robin; “I see them more than anyone.  All I claim is
+justice.”
+
+“Show me, Veronica,” I said, “that you are worthy to possess a room.  At
+present you appear to regard the whole house as your room.  I find your
+gaiters on the croquet lawn.  A portion of your costume—an article that
+anyone possessed of the true feelings of a lady would desire to keep
+hidden from the world—is discovered waving from the staircase window.”
+
+“I put it out to be mended,” explained Veronica.
+
+“You opened the door and flung it out.  I told you of it at the time,”
+said Robin.  “You do the same with your boots.”
+
+“You are too high-spirited for your size,” explained Dick to her.  “Try
+to be less dashing.”
+
+“I could also wish, Veronica,” I continued, “that you shed your back comb
+less easily, or at least that you knew when you had shed it.  As for your
+gloves—well, hunting your gloves has come to be our leading winter
+sport.”
+
+“People look in such funny places for them,” said Veronica.
+
+“Granted.  But be just, Veronica,” I pleaded.  “Admit that it is in funny
+places we occasionally find them.  When looking for your things one
+learns, Veronica, never to despair.  So long as there remains a corner
+unexplored inside or outside the house, within the half-mile radius, hope
+need not be abandoned.”
+
+Veronica was still gazing dreamily into the fire.
+
+“I suppose,” said Veronica, “it’s reditty.”
+
+“It’s what?” I said.
+
+“She means heredity,” suggested Dick—“cheeky young beggar!  I wonder you
+let her talk to you the way she does.”
+
+“Besides,” added Robin, “as I am always explaining to you, Pa is a
+literary man.  With him it is part of his temperament.”
+
+“It’s hard on us children,” said Veronica.
+
+We were all agreed—with the exception of Veronica—that it was time
+Veronica went to bed.  As chairman I took it upon myself to closure the
+debate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+“DO you mean, Governor, that you have actually bought the house?”
+demanded Dick, “or are we only talking about it?”
+
+“This time, Dick,” I answered, “I have done it.”
+
+Dick looked serious.  “Is it what you wanted?” he asked.
+
+“No, Dick,” I replied, “it is not what I wanted.  I wanted an
+old-fashioned, picturesque, rambling sort of a place, all gables and ivy
+and oriel windows.”
+
+“You are mixing things up,” Dick interrupted, “gables and oriel windows
+don’t go together.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Dick,” I corrected him, “in the house I wanted, they
+do.  It is the style of house you find in the Christmas number.  I have
+never seen it anywhere else, but I took a fancy to it from the first.  It
+is not too far from the church, and it lights up well at night.  ‘One of
+these days,’ I used to say to myself when a boy, ‘I’ll be a clever man
+and live in a house just like that.’  It was my dream.”
+
+“And what is this place like?” demanded Robin, “this place you have
+bought.”
+
+“The agent,” I explained, “claims for it that it is capable of
+improvement.  I asked him to what school of architecture he would say it
+belonged; he said he thought that it must have been a local school, and
+pointed out—what seems to be the truth—that nowadays they do not build
+such houses.”
+
+“Near to the river?” demanded Dick.
+
+“Well, by the road,” I answered, “I daresay it may be a couple of miles.”
+
+“And by the shortest way?” questioned Dick.
+
+“That is the shortest way,” I explained; “there’s a prettier way through
+the woods, but that is about three miles and a half.”
+
+“But we had decided it was to be near the river,” said Robin.
+
+“We also decided,” I replied, “that it was to be on sandy soil, with a
+south-west aspect.  Only one thing in this house has a south-west aspect,
+and that’s the back door.  I asked the agent about the sand.  He advised
+me, if I wanted it in any quantity, to get an estimate from the Railway
+Company.  I wanted it on a hill.  It is on a hill, with a bigger hill in
+front of it.  I didn’t want that other hill.  I wanted an uninterrupted
+view of the southern half of England.  I wanted to take people out on the
+step, and cram them with stories about our being able on clear days to
+see the Bristol Channel.  They might not have believed me, but without
+that hill I could have stuck to it, and they could not have been
+certain—not dead certain—I was lying.
+
+“Personally, I should have liked a house where something had happened.  I
+should have liked, myself, a blood-stain—not a fussy blood-stain, a neat
+unobtrusive blood-stain that would have been content, most of its time,
+to remain hidden under the mat, shown only occasionally as a treat to
+visitors.  I had hopes even of a ghost.  I don’t mean one of those noisy
+ghosts that doesn’t seem to know it is dead.  A lady ghost would have
+been my fancy, a gentle ghost with quiet, pretty ways.  This house—well,
+it is such a sensible-looking house, that is my chief objection to it.
+It has got an echo.  If you go to the end of the garden and shout at it
+very loudly, it answers you back.  This is the only bit of fun you can
+have with it.  Even then it answers you in such a tone you feel it thinks
+the whole thing silly—is doing it merely to humour you.  It is one of
+those houses that always seems to be thinking of its rates and taxes.”
+
+“Any reason at all for your having bought it?” asked Dick.
+
+“Yes, Dick,” I answered.  “We are all of us tired of this suburb.  We
+want to live in the country and be good.  To live in the country with any
+comfort it is necessary to have a house there.  This being admitted, it
+follows we must either build a house or buy one.  I would rather not
+build a house.  Talboys built himself a house.  You know Talboys.  When I
+first met him, before he started building, he was a cheerful soul with a
+kindly word for everyone.  The builder assures him that in another twenty
+years, when the colour has had time to tone down, his house will be a
+picture.  At present it makes him bilious, the mere sight of it.  Year by
+year, they tell him, as the dampness wears itself away, he will suffer
+less and less from rheumatism, ague, and lumbago.  He has a hedge round
+the garden; it is eighteen inches high.  To keep the boys out he has put
+up barbed-wire fencing.  But wire fencing affords no real privacy.  When
+the Talboys are taking coffee on the lawn, there is generally a crowd
+from the village watching them.  There are trees in the garden; you know
+they are trees—there is a label tied to each one telling you what sort of
+tree it is.  For the moment there is a similarity about them.  Thirty
+years hence, Talboys estimates, they will afford him shade and comfort;
+but by that time he hopes to be dead.  I want a house that has got over
+all its troubles; I don’t want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a
+young and inexperienced house.”
+
+“But why this particular house?” urged Robin, “if, as you say, it is not
+the house you wanted.”
+
+“Because, my dear girl,” I answered, “it is less unlike the house I
+wanted than other houses I have seen.  When we are young we make up our
+minds to try and get what we want; when we have arrived at years of
+discretion we decide to try and want what we can get.  It saves time.
+During the last two years I have seen about sixty houses, and out of the
+lot there was only one that was really the house I wanted.  Hitherto I
+have kept the story to myself.  Even now, thinking about it irritates me.
+It was not an agent who told me of it.  I met a man by chance in a
+railway carriage.  He had a black eye.  If ever I meet him again I’ll
+give him another.  He accounted for it by explaining that he had had
+trouble with a golf ball, and at the time I believed him.  I mentioned to
+him in conversation I was looking for a house.  He described this place
+to me, and it seemed to me hours before the train stopped at a station.
+When it did I got out and took the next train back.  I did not even wait
+for lunch.  I had my bicycle with me, and I went straight there.  It
+was—well, it was the house I wanted.  If it had vanished suddenly, and I
+had found myself in bed, the whole thing would have seemed more
+reasonable.  The proprietor opened the door to me himself.  He had the
+bearing of a retired military man.  It was afterwards I learnt he was the
+proprietor.
+
+“I said, ‘Good afternoon; if it is not troubling you, I would like to
+look over the house.’  We were standing in the oak-panelled hall.  I
+noticed the carved staircase about which the man in the train had told
+me, also the Tudor fireplaces.  That is all I had time to notice.  The
+next moment I was lying on my back in the middle of the gravel with the
+door shut.  I looked up.  I saw the old maniac’s head sticking out of a
+little window.  It was an evil face.  He had a gun in his hand.
+
+“‘I’m going to count twenty,’ he said.  ‘If you are not the other side of
+the gate by then, I shoot.’
+
+“I ran over the figures myself on my way to the gate.  I made it
+eighteen.
+
+“I had an hour to wait for the train.  I talked the matter over with the
+station-master.
+
+“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’ll be trouble up there one of these days.’
+
+“I said, ‘It seems to me to have begun.’
+
+“He said, ‘It’s the Indian sun.  It gets into their heads.  We have one
+or two in the neighbourhood.  They are quiet enough till something
+happens.’
+
+“‘If I’d been two seconds longer,’ I said, ‘I believe he’d have done it.’
+
+“‘It’s a taking house,’ said the station-master; ‘not too big and not too
+little.  It’s the sort of house people seem to be looking for.’
+
+“‘I don’t envy,’ I said, ‘the next person that finds it.’
+
+“‘He settled himself down here,’ said the station-master, ‘about ten
+years ago.  Since then, if one person has offered to take the house off
+his hands, I suppose a thousand have.  At first he would laugh at them
+good-temperedly—explain to them that his idea was to live there himself,
+in peace and quietness, till he died.  Two out of every three of them
+would express their willingness to wait for that, and suggest some
+arrangement by which they might enter into possession, say, a week after
+the funeral.  The last few months it has been worse than ever.  I reckon
+you’re about the eighth that has been up there this week, and to-day only
+Thursday.  There’s something to be said, you know, for the old man.’”
+
+“And did he,” asked Dick—“did he shoot the next party that came along?”
+
+“Don’t be so silly, Dick,” said Robin; “it’s a story.  Tell us another,
+Pa.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean, Robina, by a story,” I said.  “If you mean
+to imply—”
+
+Robina said she didn’t; but I know quite well she did.  Because I am an
+author, and have to tell stories for my living, people think I don’t know
+any truth.  It is vexing enough to be doubted when one is exaggerating;
+to have sneers flung at one by one’s own kith and kin when one is
+struggling to confine oneself to bald, bare narrative—well, where is the
+inducement to be truthful?  There are times when I almost say to myself
+that I will never tell the truth again.
+
+“As it happens,” I said, “the story is true, in many places.  I pass over
+your indifference to the risk I ran; though a nice girl at the point
+where the gun was mentioned would have expressed alarm.  Anyhow, at the
+end you might have said something more sympathetic than merely, ‘Tell us
+another.’  He did not shoot the next party that arrived, for the reason
+that the very next day his wife, alarmed at what had happened, went up to
+London and consulted an expert—none too soon, as it turned out.  The poor
+old fellow died six months later in a private lunatic asylum; I had it
+from the station-master on passing through the junction again this
+spring.  The house fell into the possession of his nephew, who is living
+in it now.  He is a youngish man with a large family, and people have
+learnt that the place is not for sale.  It seems to me rather a sad
+story.  The Indian sun, as the station-master thinks, may have started
+the trouble; but the end was undoubtedly hastened by the annoyance to
+which the unfortunate gentleman had been subjected; and I myself might
+have been shot.  The only thing that comforts me is thinking of that
+fool’s black eye—the fool that sent me there.”
+
+“And none of the other houses,” suggested Dick, “were any good at all?”
+
+“There were drawbacks, Dick,” I explained.  “There was a house in Essex;
+it was one of the first your mother and I inspected.  I nearly shed tears
+of joy when I read the advertisement.  It had once been a priory.  Queen
+Elizabeth had slept there on her way to Greenwich.  A photograph of the
+house accompanied the advertisement.  I should not have believed the
+thing had it been a picture.  It was under twelve miles from Charing
+Cross.  The owner, it was stated, was open to offers.”
+
+“All humbug, I suppose,” suggested Dick.
+
+“The advertisement, if anything,” I replied, “had under-estimated the
+attractiveness of that house.  All I blame the advertisement for is that
+it did not mention other things.  It did not mention, for instance, that
+since Queen Elizabeth’s time the neighbourhood had changed.  It did not
+mention that the entrance was between a public-house one side of the gate
+and a fried-fish shop on the other; that the Great Eastern
+Railway-Company had established a goods depot at the bottom of the
+garden; that the drawing-room windows looked out on extensive chemical
+works, and the dining-room windows, which were round the corner, on a
+stonemason’s yard.  The house itself was a dream.”
+
+“But what is the sense of it?” demanded Dick.  “What do house agents
+think is the good of it?  Do they think people likely to take a house
+after reading the advertisement without ever going to see it?”
+
+“I asked an agent once that very question,” I replied.  “He said they did
+it first and foremost to keep up the spirits of the owner—the man who
+wanted to sell the house.  He said that when a man was trying to part
+with a house he had to listen to so much abuse of it from people who came
+to see it that if somebody did not stick up for the house—say all that
+could be said for it, and gloss over its defects—he would end by becoming
+so ashamed of it he would want to give it away, or blow it up with
+dynamite.  He said that reading the advertisement in the agent’s
+catalogue was the only thing that reconciled him to being the owner of
+the house.  He said one client of his had been trying to sell his house
+for years—until one day in the office he read by chance the agent’s
+description of it.  Upon which he went straight home, took down the
+board, and has lived there contentedly ever since.  From that point of
+view there is reason in the system; but for the house-hunter it works
+badly.
+
+“One agent sent me a day’s journey to see a house standing in the middle
+of a brickfield, with a view of the Grand Junction Canal.  I asked him
+where was the river he had mentioned.  He explained it was the other side
+of the canal, but on a lower level; that was the only reason why from the
+house you couldn’t see it.  I asked him for his picturesque scenery.  He
+explained it was farther on, round the bend.  He seemed to think me
+unreasonable, expecting to find everything I wanted just outside the
+front-door.  He suggested my shutting out the brickfield—if I didn’t like
+the brickfield—with trees.  He suggested the eucalyptus-tree.  He said it
+was a rapid grower.  He also told me that it yielded gum.
+
+“Another house I travelled down into Dorsetshire to see.  It contained,
+according to the advertisement, ‘perhaps the most perfect specimen of
+Norman arch extant in Southern England.’  It was to be found mentioned in
+Dugdale, and dated from the thirteenth century.  I don’t quite know what
+I expected.  I argued to myself that there must have been ruffians of
+only moderate means even in those days.  Here and there some robber baron
+who had struck a poor line of country would have had to be content with a
+homely little castle.  A few such, hidden away in unfrequented districts,
+had escaped destruction.  More civilised descendants had adapted them to
+later requirements.  I had in my mind, before the train reached
+Dorchester, something between a miniature Tower of London and a mediæval
+edition of Ann Hathaway’s cottage at Stratford.  I pictured dungeons and
+a drawbridge, perhaps a secret passage.  Lamchick has a secret passage,
+leading from behind a sort of portrait in the dining-room to the back of
+the kitchen chimney.  They use it for a linen closet.  It seems to me a
+pity.  Of course originally it went on farther.  The vicar, who is a bit
+of an antiquarian, believes it comes out somewhere in the churchyard.  I
+tell Lamchick he ought to have it opened up, but his wife doesn’t want it
+touched.  She seems to think it just right as it is.  I have always had a
+fancy for a secret passage.  I decided I would have the drawbridge
+repaired and made practicable.  Flanked on each side with flowers in
+tubs, it would have been a novel and picturesque approach.”
+
+“Was there a drawbridge?” asked Dick.
+
+“There was no drawbridge,” I explained.  “The entrance to the house was
+through what the caretaker called the conservatory.  It was not the sort
+of house that goes with a drawbridge.”
+
+“Then what about the Norman arches?” argued Dick.
+
+“Not arches,” I corrected him; “Arch.  The Norman arch was downstairs in
+the kitchen.  It was the kitchen, that had been built in the thirteenth
+century—and had not had much done to it since, apparently.  Originally, I
+should say, it had been the torture chamber; it gave you that idea.  I
+think your mother would have raised objections to the kitchen—anyhow,
+when she came to think of the cook.  It would have been necessary to put
+it to the woman before engaging her:—
+
+“‘You don’t mind cooking in a dungeon in the dark, do you?’
+
+“Some cooks would.  The rest of the house was what I should describe as
+present-day mixed style.  The last tenant but one had thrown out a
+bathroom in corrugated iron.”
+
+“Then there was a house in Berkshire that I took your mother to see, with
+a trout stream running through the grounds.  I imagined myself going out
+after lunch, catching trout for dinner; inviting swagger friends down to
+‘my little place in Berkshire’ for a few days’ trout-fishing.  There is a
+man I once knew who is now a baronet.  He used to be keen on fishing.  I
+thought maybe I’d get him.  It would have looked well in the Literary
+Gossip column: ‘Among the other distinguished guests’—you know the sort
+of thing.  I had the paragraph already in my mind.  The wonder is I
+didn’t buy a rod.”
+
+“Wasn’t there any trout stream?” questioned Robin.
+
+“There was a stream,” I answered; “if anything, too much stream.  The
+stream was the first thing your mother noticed.  She noticed it a quarter
+of an hour before we came to it—before we knew it was the stream.  We
+drove back to the town, and she bought a smelling-bottle, the larger
+size.
+
+“It gave your mother a headache, that stream, and made me mad.  The
+agent’s office was opposite the station.  I allowed myself half an hour
+on my way back to tell him what I thought of him, and then I missed the
+train.  I could have got it in if he had let me talk all the time, but he
+would interrupt.  He said it was the people at the paper-mill—that he had
+spoken to them about it more than once; he seemed to think sympathy was
+all I wanted.  He assured me, on his word as a house-agent, that it had
+once been a trout stream.  The fact was historical.  Isaac Walton had
+fished there—that was prior to the paper-mill.  He thought a collection
+of trout, male and female, might be bought and placed in it; preference
+being given to some hardy breed of trout, accustomed to roughing it.  I
+told him I wasn’t looking for a place where I could play at being Noah;
+and left him, as I explained to him, with the intention of going straight
+to my solicitors and instituting proceedings against him for talking like
+a fool; and he put on his hat and went across to his solicitors to
+commence proceedings against me for libel.
+
+“I suppose that, with myself, he thought better of it in the end.  But
+I’m tired of having my life turned into one perpetual first of April.
+This house that I have bought is not my heart’s desire, but about it
+there are possibilities.  We will put in lattice windows, and fuss-up the
+chimneys.  Maybe we will let in a tablet over the front-door, with a
+date—always looks well: it is a picturesque figure, the old-fashioned
+five.  By the time we have done with it—for all practical purposes—it
+will be a Tudor manor-house.  I have always wanted an old Tudor
+manor-house.  There is no reason, so far as I can see, why there should
+not be stories connected with this house.  Why should not we have a room
+in which Somebody once slept?  We won’t have Queen Elizabeth.  I’m tired
+of Queen Elizabeth.  Besides, I don’t believe she’d have been nice.  Why
+not Queen Anne?  A quiet, gentle old lady, from all accounts, who would
+not have given trouble.  Or, better still, Shakespeare.  He was
+constantly to and fro between London and Stratford.  It would not have
+been so very much out of his way.  ‘The room where Shakespeare slept!’
+Why, it’s a new idea.  Nobody ever seems to have thought of Shakespeare.
+There is the four-post bedstead.  Your mother never liked it.  She will
+insist, it harbours things.  We might hang the wall with scenes from his
+plays, and have a bust of the old gentleman himself over the door.  If
+I’m left alone and not worried, I’ll probably end by believing that he
+really did sleep there.”
+
+“What about cupboards?” suggested Dick.  “The Little Mother will clamour
+for cupboards.”
+
+It is unexplainable, the average woman’s passion for cupboards.  In
+heaven, her first request, I am sure, is always, “Can I have a cupboard?”
+She would keep her husband and children in cupboards if she had her way:
+that would be her idea of the perfect home, everybody wrapped up with a
+piece of camphor in his or her own proper cupboard.  I knew a woman once
+who was happy—for a woman.  She lived in a house with twenty-nine
+cupboards: I think it must have been built by a woman.  They were
+spacious cupboards, many of them, with doors in no way different from
+other doors.  Visitors would wish each other good-night and disappear
+with their candles into cupboards, staggering out backwards the next
+moment, looking scared.  One poor gentleman, this woman’s husband told
+me, having to go downstairs again for something he had forgotten, and
+unable on his return to strike anything else but cupboards, lost heart
+and finished up the night in a cupboard.  At breakfast-time guests would
+hurry down, and burst open cupboard doors with a cheery “Good-morning.”
+When that woman was out, nobody in that house ever knew where anything
+was; and when she came home she herself only knew where it ought to have
+been.  Yet once, when one of those twenty-nine cupboards had to be
+cleared out temporarily for repairs, she never smiled, her husband told
+me, for more than three weeks—not till the workmen were out of the house,
+and that cupboard in working order again.  She said it was so confusing,
+having nowhere to put her things.
+
+The average woman does not want a house, in the ordinary sense of the
+word.  What she wants is something made by a genii.  You have found, as
+you think, the ideal house.  You show her the Adams fireplace in the
+drawing-room.  You tap the wainscoting of the hall with your umbrella:
+“Oak,” you impress upon her, “all oak.”  You draw her attention to the
+view: you tell her the local legend.  By fixing her head against the
+window-pane she can see the tree on which the man was hanged.  You dwell
+upon the sundial; you mention for a second time the Adams fireplace.
+
+“It’s all very nice,” she answers, “but where are the children going to
+sleep?”
+
+It is so disheartening.
+
+If it isn’t the children, it’s the water.  She wants water—wants to know
+where it comes from.  You show her where it comes from.
+
+“What, out of that nasty place!” she exclaims.
+
+She is equally dissatisfied whether it be drawn from a well, or whether
+it be water that has fallen from heaven and been stored in tanks.  She
+has no faith in Nature’s water.  A woman never believes that water can be
+good that does not come from a water-works.  Her idea appears to be that
+the Company makes it fresh every morning from some old family recipe.
+
+If you do succeed in reconciling her to the water, then she feels sure
+that the chimneys smoke; they look as if they smoked.  Why—as you tell
+her—the chimneys are the best part of the house.  You take her outside
+and make her look at them.  They are genuine sixteenth-century chimneys,
+with carving on them.  They couldn’t smoke.  They wouldn’t do anything so
+inartistic.  She says she only hopes you are right, and suggests cowls,
+if they do.
+
+After that she wants to see the kitchen—where’s the kitchen?  You don’t
+know where it is.  You didn’t bother about the kitchen.  There must be a
+kitchen, of course.  You proceed to search for the kitchen.  When you
+find it she is worried because it is the opposite end of the house to the
+dining-room.  You point out to her the advantage of being away from the
+smell of the cooking.  At that she gets personal: tells you that you are
+the first to grumble when the dinner is cold; and in her madness accuses
+the whole male sex of being impractical.  The mere sight of an empty
+house makes a woman fretful.
+
+Of course the stove is wrong.  The kitchen stove always is wrong.  You
+promise she shall have a new one.  Six months later she will want the old
+one back again: but it would be cruel to tell her this.  The promise of
+that new stove comforts her.  The woman never loses hope that one day it
+will come—the all-satisfying kitchen stove, the stove of her girlish
+dreams.
+
+The question of the stove settled, you imagine you have silenced all
+opposition.  At once she begins to talk about things that nobody but a
+woman or a sanitary inspector can talk about without blushing.
+
+It calls for tact, getting a woman into a new house.  She is nervous,
+suspicious.
+
+“I am glad, my dear Dick,” I answered; “that you have mentioned
+cupboards.  It is with cupboards that I am hoping to lure your mother.
+The cupboards, from her point of view, will be the one bright spot; there
+are fourteen of them.  I am trusting to cupboards to tide me over many
+things.  I shall want you to come with me, Dick.  Whenever your mother
+begins a sentence with: ‘But now to be practical, dear,’ I want you to
+murmur something about cupboards—not irritatingly as if it had been
+prearranged: have a little gumption.”
+
+“Will there be room for a tennis court?” demanded Dick.
+
+“An excellent tennis court already exists,” I informed him.  “I have also
+purchased the adjoining paddock.  We shall be able to keep our own cow.
+Maybe we’ll breed horses.”
+
+“We might have a croquet lawn,” suggested Robin.
+
+“We might easily have a croquet lawn,” I agreed.  “On a full-sized lawn I
+believe Veronica might be taught to play.  There are natures that demand
+space.  On a full-sized lawn, protected by a stout iron border, less time
+might be wasted exploring the surrounding scenery for Veronica’s lost
+ball.”
+
+“No chance of a golf links anywhere in the neighbourhood?” feared Dick.
+
+“I am not so sure,” I answered.  “Barely a mile away there is a pretty
+piece of gorse land that appears to be no good to anyone.  I daresay for
+a reasonable offer—”
+
+“I say, when will this show be ready?” interrupted Dick.
+
+“I propose beginning the alterations at once,” I explained.  “By luck
+there happens to be a gamekeeper’s cottage vacant and within distance.
+The agent is going to get me the use of it for a year—a primitive little
+place, but charmingly situate on the edge of a wood.  I shall furnish a
+couple of rooms; and for part of every week I shall make a point of being
+down there, superintending.  I have always been considered good at
+superintending.  My poor father used to say it was the only work I seemed
+to take an interest in.  By being on the spot to hurry everybody on I
+hope to have the ‘show,’ as you term it, ready by the spring.”
+
+“I shall never marry,” said Robin.
+
+“Don’t be so easily discouraged,” advised Dick; “you are still young.”
+
+“I don’t ever want to get married,” continued Robin.  “I should only
+quarrel with my husband, if I did.  And Dick will never do anything—not
+with his head.”
+
+“Forgive me if I am dull,” I pleaded, “but what is the connection between
+this house, your quarrels with your husband if you ever get one, and
+Dick’s head?”
+
+By way of explanation, Robin sprang to the ground, and before he could
+stop her had flung her arms around Dick’s neck.
+
+“We can’t help it, Dick dear,” she told him.  “Clever parents always have
+duffing children.  But we’ll be of some use in the world after all, you
+and I.”
+
+The idea was that Dick, when he had finished failing in examinations,
+should go out to Canada and start a farm, taking Robin with him.  They
+would breed cattle, and gallop over the prairies, and camp out in the
+primeval forest, and slide about on snow-shoes, and carry canoes on their
+backs, and shoot rapids, and stalk things—so far as I could gather, have
+a sort of everlasting Buffalo-Bill’s show all to themselves.  How and
+when the farm work was to get itself done was not at all clear.  The
+Little Mother and myself were to end our days with them.  We were to sit
+about in the sun for a time, and then pass peacefully away.  Robin shed a
+few tears at this point, but regained her spirits, thinking of Veronica,
+who was to be lured out on a visit and married to some true-hearted
+yeoman: which is not at present Veronica’s ambition.  Veronica’s
+conviction is that she would look well in a coronet: her own idea is
+something in the ducal line.  Robina talked for about ten minutes.  By
+the time she had done she had persuaded Dick that life in the backwoods
+of Canada had been his dream from infancy.  She is that sort of girl.
+
+I tried talking reason, but talking to Robin when she has got a notion in
+her head is like trying to fix a halter on a two-year-old colt.  This
+tumble-down, six-roomed cottage was to be the saving of the family.  An
+ecstatic look transfigured Robina’s face even as she spoke of it.  You
+might have fancied it a shrine.  Robina would do the cooking.  Robina
+would rise early and milk the cow, and gather the morning egg.  We would
+lead the simple life, learn to fend for ourselves.  It would be so good
+for Veronica.  The higher education could wait; let the higher ideals
+have a chance.  Veronica would make the beds, dust the rooms.  In the
+evening Veronica, her little basket by her side, would sit and sew while
+I talked, telling them things, and Robina moved softly to and fro about
+her work, the household fairy.  The Little Mother, whenever strong
+enough, would come to us.  We would hover round her, tending her with
+loving hands.  The English farmer must know something, in spite of all
+that is said.  Dick could arrange for lessons in practical farming.  She
+did not say it crudely; but hinted that, surrounded by example, even I
+might come to take an interest in honest labour, might end by learning to
+do something useful.
+
+Robina talked, I should say, for a quarter of an hour.  By the time she
+had done, it appeared to me rather a beautiful idea.  Dick’s vacation had
+just commenced.  For the next three months there would be nothing else
+for him to do but—to employ his own expressive phrase—“rot round.”  In
+any event, it would be keeping him out of mischief.  Veronica’s governess
+was leaving.  Veronica’s governess generally does leave at the end of
+about a year.  I think sometimes of advertising for a lady without a
+conscience.  At the end of a year, they explain to me that their
+conscience will not allow them to remain longer; they do not feel they
+are earning their salary.  It is not that the child is not a dear child,
+it is not that she is stupid.  Simply it is—as a German lady to whom Dick
+had been giving what he called finishing lessons in English, once put
+it—that she does not seem to be “taking any.”  Her mother’s idea is that
+it is “sinking in.”  Perhaps if we allowed Veronica to lie fallow for
+awhile, something might show itself.  Robina, speaking for herself, held
+that a period of quiet usefulness, away from the society of other silly
+girls and sillier boys, would result in her becoming a sensible woman.
+It is not often that Robina’s yearnings take this direction: to thwart
+them, when they did, seemed wrong.
+
+We had some difficulty with the Little Mother.  That these three babies
+of hers will ever be men and women capable of running a six-roomed
+cottage appears to the Little Mother in the light of a fantastic dream.
+I explained to her that I should be there, at all events for two or three
+days in every week, to give an eye to things.  Even that did not content
+her.  She gave way eventually on Robina’s solemn undertaking that she
+should be telegraphed for the first time Veronica coughed.
+
+On Monday we packed a one-horse van with what we deemed essential.  Dick
+and Robina rode their bicycles.  Veronica, supported by assorted bedding,
+made herself comfortable upon the tailboard.  I followed down by train on
+the Wednesday afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+IT was the cow that woke me the first morning.  I did not know it was our
+cow—not at the time.  I didn’t know we had a cow.  I looked at my watch;
+it was half-past two.  I thought maybe she would go to sleep again, but
+her idea was that the day had begun.  I went to the window, the moon was
+at the full.  She was standing by the gate, her head inside the garden; I
+took it her anxiety was lest we might miss any of it.  Her neck was
+stretched out straight, her eyes towards the sky; which gave to her the
+appearance of a long-eared alligator.  I have never had much to do with
+cows.  I don’t know how you talk to them.  I told her to “be quiet,” and
+to “lie down”; and made pretence to throw a boot at her.  It seemed to
+cheer her, having an audience; she added half a dozen extra notes.  I
+never knew before a cow had so much in her.  There is a thing one
+sometimes meets with in the suburbs—or one used to; I do not know whether
+it is still extant, but when I was a boy it was quite common.  It has a
+hurdy-gurdy fixed to its waist and a drum strapped on behind, a row of
+pipes hanging from its face, and bells and clappers from most of its
+other joints.  It plays them all at once, and smiles.  This cow reminded
+me of it—with organ effects added.  She didn’t smile; there was that to
+be said in her favour.
+
+I hoped that if I made believe to be asleep she would get discouraged.
+So I closed the window ostentatiously, and went back to bed.  But it only
+had the effect of putting her on her mettle.  “He did not care for that
+last,” I imagined her saying to herself, “I wasn’t at my best.  There
+wasn’t feeling enough in it.”  She kept it up for about half an hour, and
+then the gate against which, I suppose, she had been leaning, gave way
+with a crash.  That frightened her, and I heard her gallop off across the
+field.  I was on the point of dozing off again when a pair of pigeons
+settled on the window-sill and began to coo.  It is a pretty sound when
+you are in the mood for it.  I wrote a poem once—a simple thing, but
+instinct with longing—while sitting under a tree and listening to the
+cooing of a pigeon.  But that was in the afternoon.  My only longing now
+was for a gun.  Three times I got out of bed and “shoo’d” them away.  The
+third time I remained by the window till I had got it firmly into their
+heads that I really did not want them.  My behaviour on the former two
+occasions they had evidently judged to be mere playfulness.  I had just
+got back to bed again when an owl began to screech.  That is another
+sound I used to think attractive—so weird, so mysterious.  It is
+Swinburne, I think, who says that you never get the desired one and the
+time and the place all right together.  If the beloved one is with you,
+it is the wrong place or at the wrong time; and if the time and the place
+happen to be right, then it is the party that is wrong.  The owl was all
+right: I like owls.  The place was all right.  He had struck the wrong
+time, that was all.  Eleven o’clock at night, when you can’t see him, and
+naturally feel that you want to, is the proper time for an owl.  Perched
+on the roof of a cow-shed in the early dawn he looks silly.  He clung
+there, flapping his wings and screeching at the top of his voice.  What
+it was he wanted I am sure I don’t know; and anyhow it didn’t seem the
+way to get it.  He came to this conclusion himself at the end of twenty
+minutes, and shut himself up and went home.  I thought I was going to
+have at last some peace, when a corncrake—a creature upon whom Nature has
+bestowed a song like to the tearing of calico-sheets mingled with the
+sharpening of saws—settled somewhere in the garden and set to work to
+praise its Maker according to its lights.  I have a friend, a poet, who
+lives just off the Strand, and spends his evenings at the Garrick Club.
+He writes occasional verse for the evening papers, and talks about the
+“silent country, drowsy with the weight of languors.”  One of these times
+I’ll lure him down for a Saturday to Monday and let him find out what the
+country really is—let him hear it.  He is becoming too much of a dreamer:
+it will do him good, wake him up a bit.  The corncrake after awhile
+stopped quite suddenly with a jerk, and for quite five minutes there was
+silence.
+
+“If this continues for another five,” I said to myself, “I’ll be asleep.”
+I felt it coming over me.  I had hardly murmured the words when the cow
+turned up again.  I should say she had been somewhere and had had a
+drink.  She was in better voice than ever.
+
+It occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to make a few notes
+on the sunrise.  The literary man is looked to for occasional description
+of the sunrise.  The earnest reader who has heard about this sunrise
+thirsts for full particulars.  Myself, for purposes of observation, I
+have generally chosen December or the early part of January.  But one
+never knows.  Maybe one of these days I’ll want a summer sunrise, with
+birds and dew-besprinkled flowers: it goes well with the rustic heroine,
+the miller’s daughter, or the girl who brings up chickens and has dreams.
+I met a brother author once at seven o’clock in the morning in Kensington
+Gardens.  He looked half asleep and so disagreeable that I hesitated for
+awhile to speak to him: he is a man that as a rule breakfasts at eleven.
+But I summoned my courage and accosted him.
+
+“This is early for you,” I said.
+
+“It’s early for anyone but a born fool,” he answered.
+
+“What’s the matter?” I asked.  “Can’t you sleep?”
+
+“Can’t I sleep?” he retorted indignantly.  “Why, I daren’t sit down upon
+a seat, I daren’t lean up against a tree.  If I did I’d be asleep in half
+a second.”
+
+“What’s the idea?” I persisted.  “Been reading Smiles’s ‘Self Help and
+the Secret of Success’?  Don’t be absurd,” I advised him.  “You’ll be
+going to Sunday school next and keeping a diary.  You have left it too
+late: we don’t reform at forty.  Go home and go to bed.”  I could see he
+was doing himself no good.
+
+“I’m going to bed,” he answered, “I’m going to bed for a month when I’ve
+finished this confounded novel that I’m on.  Take my advice,” he said—he
+laid his hand upon my shoulder—“Never choose a colonial girl for your
+heroine.  At our age it is simple madness.”
+
+“She’s a fine girl,” he continued, “and good.  Has a heart of gold.
+She’s wearing me to a shadow.  I wanted something fresh and
+unconventional.  I didn’t grasp what it was going to do.  She’s the girl
+that gets up early in the morning and rides bare-back—the horse, I mean,
+of course; don’t be so silly.  Over in New South Wales it didn’t matter.
+I threw in the usual local colour—the eucalyptus-tree and the
+kangaroo—and let her ride.  It is now that she is over here in London
+that I wish I had never thought of her.  She gets up at five and wanders
+about the silent city.  That means, of course, that I have to get up at
+five in order to record her impressions.  I have walked six miles this
+morning.  First to St. Paul’s Cathedral; she likes it when there’s nobody
+about.  You’d think it wasn’t big enough for her to see if anybody else
+was in the street.  She thinks of it as of a mother watching over her
+sleeping children; she’s full of all that sort of thing.  And from there
+to Westminster Bridge.  She sits on the parapet and reads Wordsworth,
+till the policeman turns her off.  This is another of her favourite
+spots.”  He indicated with a look of concentrated disgust the avenue
+where we were standing.  “This is where she likes to finish up.  She
+comes here to listen to a blackbird.”
+
+“Well, you are through with it now,” I said to console him.  “You’ve done
+it; and it’s over.”
+
+“Through with it!” he laughed bitterly.  “I’m just beginning it.  There’s
+the entire East End to be done yet: she’s got to meet a fellow there as
+big a crank as herself.  And walking isn’t the worst.  She’s going to
+have a horse; you can guess what that means.—Hyde Park will be no good to
+her.  She’ll find out Richmond and Ham Common.  I’ve got to describe the
+scenery and the mad joy of the thing.”
+
+“Can’t you imagine it?” I suggested.
+
+“I’m going to imagine all the enjoyable part of it,” he answered.  “I
+must have a groundwork to go upon.  She’s got to have feelings come to
+her upon this horse.  You can’t enter into a rider’s feelings when you’ve
+almost forgotten which side of the horse you get up.”
+
+I walked with him to the Serpentine.  I had been wondering how it was he
+had grown stout so suddenly.  He had a bath towel round him underneath
+his coat.
+
+“It’ll give me my death of cold, I know it will,” he chattered while
+unlacing his boots.
+
+“Can’t you leave it till the summer-time,” I suggested, “and take her to
+Ostend?”
+
+“It wouldn’t be unconventional,” he growled.  “She wouldn’t take an
+interest in it.”
+
+“But do they allow ladies to bathe in the Serpentine?” I persisted.
+
+“It won’t be the Serpentine,” he explained.  “It’s going to be the Thames
+at Greenwich.  But it must be the same sort of feeling.  She’s got to
+tell them all about it during a lunch in Queen’s Gate, and shock them
+all.  That’s all she does it for, in my opinion.”
+
+He emerged a mottled blue.  I helped him into his clothes, and he was
+fortunate enough to find an early cab.  The book appeared at Christmas.
+The critics agreed that the heroine was a delightful creation.  Some of
+them said they would like to have known her.
+
+Remembering my poor friend, it occurred to me that by going out now and
+making a few notes about the morning, I might be saving myself trouble
+later on.  I slipped on a few things—nothing elaborate—put a notebook in
+my pocket, opened the door and went down.
+
+Perhaps it would be more correct to say “opened the door and was down.”
+It was my own fault, I admit.  We had talked this thing over before going
+to bed, and I myself had impressed upon Veronica the need for caution.
+The architect of the country cottage does not waste space.  He dispenses
+with landings; the bedroom door opens on to the top stair.  It does not
+do to walk out of your bedroom, for the reason there is nothing outside
+to walk on.  I had said to Veronica, pointing out this fact to her:
+
+“Now don’t, in the morning, come bursting out of the room in your usual
+volcanic style, because if you do there will be trouble.  As you
+perceive, there is no landing.  The stairs commence at once; they are
+steep, and they lead down to a brick floor.  Open the door quietly, look
+where you are going, and step carefully.”
+
+Dick had added his advice to mine.  “I did that myself the first
+morning,” Dick had said.  “I stepped straight out of the bedroom into the
+kitchen; and I can tell you, it hurts.  You be careful, young ’un.  This
+cottage doesn’t lend itself to dash.”
+
+Robina had fallen down with a tray in her hand.  She said that never
+should she forget the horror of that moment, when, sitting on the kitchen
+floor, she had cried to Dick—her own voice sounding to her as if it came
+from somewhere quite far off: “Is it broken?  Tell me the truth.  Is it
+broken anywhere?” and Dick had replied: “Broken! why, it’s smashed to
+atoms.  What did you expect?”  Robina had asked the question with
+reference to her head, while Dick had thought she was alluding to the
+teapot.  In that moment, had said Robina, her whole life had passed
+before her.  She let Veronica feel the bump.
+
+Veronica was disappointed with the bump, having expected something
+bigger, but had promised to be careful.  We had all agreed that if in
+spite of our warnings she forgot, and came blundering down in the
+morning, it would serve her right.  It was thinking of all this that, as
+I lay upon the floor, made me feel angry with everybody.  I hate people
+who can sleep through noises that wake me up.  Why was I the only person
+in the house to be disturbed?  Dick’s room was round the corner; there
+was some excuse for him.  But Robina and Veronica’s window looked
+straight down upon the cow.  If Robina and Veronica were not a couple of
+logs, the cow would have aroused them.  We should have discussed the
+matter with the door ajar.  Robina would have said, “Whatever you do, be
+careful of the stairs, Pa,” and I should have remembered.  The modern
+child appears to me to have no feeling for its parent.
+
+I picked myself up and started for the door.  The cow continued bellowing
+steadily.  My whole anxiety was to get to her quickly and to hit her.
+But the door took more finding than I could have believed possible.  The
+shutters were closed and the whole place was in pitch darkness.  The idea
+had been to furnish this cottage only with things that were absolutely
+necessary, but the room appeared to me to be overcrowded.  There was a
+milking-stool, which is a thing made purposely heavy so that it may not
+be easily upset.  If I tumbled over it once I tumbled over it a dozen
+times.  I got hold of it at last and carried it about with me.  I thought
+I would use it to hit the cow—that is, when I had found the front-door.
+I knew it led out of the parlour, but could not recollect its exact
+position.  I argued that if I kept along the wall I should be bound to
+come to it.  I found the wall, and set off full of hope.  I suppose the
+explanation was that, without knowing it, I must have started with the
+door, not the front-door, the other door, leading into the kitchen.  I
+crept along, carefully feeling my way, and struck quite new things
+altogether—things I had no recollection of and that hit me in fresh
+places.  I climbed over what I presumed to be a beer-barrel and landed
+among bottles; there were dozens upon dozens of them.  To get away from
+these bottles I had to leave the wall; but I found it again, as I
+thought, and I felt along it for another half a dozen yards or so and
+then came again upon bottles: the room appeared to be paved with bottles.
+A little farther on I rolled over another beer-barrel: as a matter of
+fact it was the same beer-barrel, but I did not know this.  At the time
+it seemed to me that Robina had made up her mind to run a public-house.
+I found the milking-stool again and started afresh, and before I had gone
+a dozen steps was in among bottles again.  Later on, in the broad
+daylight, it was easy enough to understand what had happened.  I had been
+carefully feeling my way round and round a screen.  I got so sick of
+these bottles and so tired of rolling over these everlasting
+beer-barrels, that I abandoned the wall and plunged boldly into space.
+
+I had barely started, when, looking up, I saw the sky above me: a star
+was twinkling just above my head.  Had I been wide awake, and had the cow
+stopped bellowing for just one minute, I should have guessed that somehow
+or another I had got into a chimney.  But as things were, the wonder and
+the mystery of it all appalled me.  “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
+would have appeared to me, at that moment, in the nature of a guide to
+travellers.  Had a rocking-horse or a lobster suddenly appeared to me I
+should have sat and talked to it; and if it had not answered me I should
+have thought it sulky and been hurt.  I took a step forward and the star
+disappeared, just as if somebody had blown it out.  I was not surprised
+in the least.  I was expecting anything to happen.
+
+I found a door and it opened quite easily.  A wood was in front of me.  I
+couldn’t see any cow anywhere, but I still heard her.  It all seemed
+quite natural.  I would wander into the wood; most likely I should meet
+her there, and she would be smoking a pipe.  In all probability she would
+know some poetry.
+
+With the fresh air my senses gradually came back to me, and I began to
+understand why it was I could not see the cow.  The reason was that the
+house was between us.  By some mysterious process I had been discharged
+into the back garden.  I still had the milking-stool in my hand, but the
+cow no longer troubled me.  Let her see if she could wake Veronica by
+merely bellowing outside the door; it was more than I had ever been able
+to do.
+
+I sat down on the stool and opened my note-book.  I headed the page:
+“Sunrise in July: observations and emotions,” and I wrote down at once,
+lest I should forget it, that towards three o’clock a faint light is
+discernible, and added that this light gets stronger as the time goes on.
+
+It sounded footling even to myself, but I had been reading a novel of the
+realistic school that had been greatly praised for its actuality.  There
+is a demand in some quarters for this class of observation.  I likewise
+made a note that the pigeon and the corncrake appear to be among the
+earliest of Nature’s children to welcome the coming day; and added that
+the screech-owl may be heard, perhaps at its best, by anyone caring to
+rise for the purpose, some quarter of an hour before the dawn.  That was
+all I could think of just then.  As regards emotions, I did not seem to
+have any.
+
+I lit a pipe and waited for the sun.  The sky in front of me was tinged
+with a faint pink.  Every moment it flushed a deeper red.  I maintain
+that anyone, not an expert, would have said that was the portion of the
+horizon on which to keep one’s eye.  I kept my eye upon it, but no sun
+appeared.  I lit another pipe.  The sky in front of me was now a blaze of
+glory.  I scribbled a few lines, likening the scattered clouds to brides
+blushing at the approach of the bridegroom.  That would have been all
+right if later on they hadn’t begun to turn green: it seemed the wrong
+colour for a bride.  Later on still they went yellow, and that spoilt the
+simile past hope.  One cannot wax poetical about a bride who at the
+approach of the bridegroom turns first green and then yellow: you can
+only feel sorry for her.  I waited some more.  The sky in front of me
+grew paler every moment.  I began to fear that something had happened to
+that sun.  If I hadn’t known so much astronomy I should have said that he
+had changed his mind and had gone back again.  I rose with the idea of
+seeing into things.  He had been up apparently for hours: he had got up
+at the back of me.  It seemed to be nobody’s fault.  I put my pipe into
+my pocket and strolled round to the front.  The cow was still there; she
+was pleased to see me, and started bellowing again.
+
+I heard a sound of whistling.  It proceeded from a farmer’s boy.  I
+hailed him, and he climbed a gate and came to me across the field.  He
+was a cheerful youth.  He nodded to the cow and hoped she had had a good
+night: he pronounced it “nihet.”
+
+“You know the cow?” I said.
+
+“Well,” he explained, “we don’t precisely move in the sime set.  Sort o’
+business relytionship more like—if you understand me?”
+
+Something about this boy was worrying me.  He did not seem like a real
+farmer’s boy.  But then nothing seemed quite real this morning.  My
+feeling was to let things go.
+
+“Whose cow is it?” I asked.
+
+He stared at me.
+
+“I want to know to whom it belongs,” I said.  “I want to restore it to
+him.”
+
+“Excuse me,” said the boy, “but where do you live?”
+
+He was making me cross.  “Where do I live?” I retorted.  “Why, in this
+cottage.  You don’t think I’ve got up early and come from a distance to
+listen to this cow?  Don’t talk so much.  Do you know whose cow it is, or
+don’t you?”
+
+“It’s your cow,” said the boy.
+
+It was my turn to stare.
+
+“But I haven’t got a cow,” I told him.
+
+“Yus you have,” he persisted; “you’ve got that cow.”
+
+She had stopped bellowing for a moment.  She was not the cow I felt I
+could ever take a pride in.  At some time or another, quite recently, she
+must have sat down in some mud.
+
+“How did I get her?” I demanded.
+
+“The young lydy,” explained the boy, “she came rahnd to our plice on
+Tuesday—”
+
+I began to see light.  “An excitable young lady—talks very fast—never
+waits for the answer?”
+
+“With jolly fine eyes,” added the boy approvingly.
+
+“And she ordered a cow?”
+
+“Didn’t seem to ’ave strength enough to live another dy withaht it.”
+
+“Any stipulation made concerning the price of the cow?”
+
+“Any what?”
+
+“The young lady with the eyes—did she think to ask the price of the cow?”
+
+“No sordid details was entered into, so far as I could ’ear,” replied the
+boy.
+
+They would not have been—by Robina.
+
+“Any hint let fall as to what the cow was wanted for?”
+
+“The lydy gives us to understand,” said the boy, “that fresh milk was ’er
+idea.”
+
+That surprised me: that was thoughtful of Robina.  “And this is the cow?”
+
+“I towed her rahnd last night.  I didn’t knock at the door and tell yer
+abaht ’er, cos, to be quite frank with yer, there wasn’t anybody in.”
+
+“What is she bellowing for?” I asked.
+
+“Well,” said the boy, “it’s only a theory, o’ course, but I should sy,
+from the look of ’er, that she wanted to be milked.”
+
+“But it started bellowing at half-past two,” I argued.  “It doesn’t
+expect to be milked at half-past two, does it?”
+
+“Meself,” said the boy, “I’ve given up looking for sense in cows.”
+
+In some unaccountable way this boy was hypnotising me.  Everything had
+suddenly become out of place.
+
+The cow had suddenly become absurd: she ought to have been a milk-can.
+The wood struck me as neglected: there ought to have been notice-boards
+about, “Keep off the Grass,” “Smoking Strictly Prohibited”: there wasn’t
+a seat to be seen.  The cottage had surely got itself there by accident:
+where was the street?  The birds were all out of their cages; everything
+was upside down.
+
+“Are you a real farmer’s boy?” I asked him.
+
+“O’ course I am,” he answered.  “What do yer tike me for—a hartist in
+disguise?”
+
+It came to me.  “What is your name?”
+
+“’Enery—’Enery ’Opkins.”
+
+“Where were you born?”
+
+“Camden Tahn.”
+
+Here was a nice beginning to a rural life!  What place could be the
+country while this boy Hopkins was about?  He would have given to the
+Garden of Eden the atmosphere of an outlying suburb.
+
+“Do you want to earn an occasional shilling?” I put it to him.
+
+“I’d rather it come reggler,” said Hopkins.  “Better for me kerrickter.”
+
+“You drop that Cockney accent and learn Berkshire, and I’ll give you half
+a sovereign when you can talk it,” I promised him.  “Don’t, for instance,
+say ‘ain’t,’” I explained to him.  “Say ‘bain’t.’  Don’t say ‘The young
+lydy, she came rahnd to our plice;’ say ‘The missy, ’er coomed down; ’er
+coomed, and ’er ses to the maister, ’er ses . . . ’  That’s the sort of
+thing I want to surround myself with here.  When you informed me that the
+cow was mine, you should have said: ‘Whoi, ’er be your cow, surelie ’er
+be.’”
+
+“Sure it’s Berkshire?” demanded Hopkins.  “You’re confident about it?”
+There is a type that is by nature suspicious.
+
+“It may not be Berkshire pure and undefiled,” I admitted.  “It is what in
+literature we term ‘dialect.’  It does for most places outside the
+twelve-mile radius.  The object is to convey a feeling of rustic
+simplicity.  Anyhow, it isn’t Camden Town.”
+
+I started him with a shilling then and there to encourage him.  He
+promised to come round in the evening for one or two books, written by
+friends of mine, that I reckoned would be of help to him; and I returned
+to the cottage and set to work to rouse Robina.  Her tone was apologetic.
+She had got the notion into her head that I had been calling her for
+quite a long time.  I explained that this was not the case.
+
+“How funny!” she answered.  “I said to Veronica more than an hour ago:
+‘I’m sure that’s Pa calling us.’  I suppose I must have been dreaming.”
+
+“Well, don’t dream any more,” I suggested.  “Come down and see to this
+confounded cow of yours.”
+
+“Oh,” said Veronica, “has it come?”
+
+“It has come,” I told her.  “As a matter of fact, it has been here some
+time.  It ought to have been milked four hours ago, according to its own
+idea.”
+
+Robina said she would be down in a minute.
+
+She was down in twenty-five, which was sooner than I had expected.  She
+brought Veronica with her.  She said she would have been down sooner if
+she had not waited for Veronica.  It appeared that this was just
+precisely what Veronica had been telling her.  I was feeling irritable.
+I had been up half a day, and hadn’t had my breakfast.
+
+“Don’t stand there arguing,” I told them.  “For goodness’ sake let’s get
+to work and milk this cow.  We shall have the poor creature dying on our
+hands if we’re not careful.”
+
+Robina was wandering round the room.
+
+“You haven’t come across a milking-stool anywhere, have you, Pa?” asked
+Robina.
+
+“I have come across your milking-stool, I estimate, some thirteen times,”
+I told her.  I fetched it from where I had left it, and gave it to her;
+and we filed out in procession; Veronica with a galvanised iron bucket
+bringing up the rear.
+
+The problem that was forcing itself upon my mind was: did Robina know how
+to milk a cow?  Robina, I argued, the idea once in her mind, would
+immediately have ordered a cow, clamouring for it—as Hopkins had
+picturesquely expressed it—as though she had not strength to live another
+day without a cow.  Her next proceeding would have been to buy a
+milking-stool.  It was a tasteful milking-stool, this one she had
+selected, ornamented with the rough drawing of a cow in poker work: a
+little too solid for my taste, but one that I should say would wear well.
+The pail she had not as yet had time to see about.  This galvanised
+bucket we were using was, I took it, a temporary makeshift.  When Robina
+had leisure she would go into the town and purchase something at an art
+stores.  That, to complete the scheme, she would have done well to have
+taken a few practical lessons in milking would come to her, as an
+inspiration, with the arrival of the cow.  I noticed that Robina’s steps
+as we approached the cow were less elastic.  Just outside the cow Robina
+halted.
+
+“I suppose,” said Robina, “there’s only one way of milking a cow?”
+
+“There may be fancy ways,” I answered, “necessary to you if later on you
+think of entering a competition.  This morning, seeing we are late, I
+shouldn’t worry too much about style.  If I were you, this morning I
+should adopt the ordinary unimaginative method, and aim only at results.”
+
+Robina sat down and placed her bucket underneath the cow.
+
+“I suppose,” said Robina, “it doesn’t matter which—which one I begin
+with?”
+
+It was perfectly plain she hadn’t the least notion how to milk a cow.  I
+told her so, adding comments.  Now and then a little fatherly talk does
+good.  As a rule I have to work myself up for these occasions.  This
+morning I was feeling fairly fit: things had conspired to this end.  I
+put before Robina the aims and privileges of the household fairy as they
+appeared, not to her, but to me.  I also confided to Veronica the result
+of many weeks’ reflections concerning her and her behaviour.  I also told
+them both what I thought about Dick.  I do this sort of thing once every
+six months: it has an excellent effect for about three days.
+
+Robina wiped away her tears, and seized the first one that came to her
+hand.  The cow, without saying a word, kicked over the empty bucket, and
+walked away, disgust expressed in every hair of her body.  Robina, crying
+quietly, followed her.  By patting her on her neck, and letting her wipe
+her nose upon my coat—which seemed to comfort her—I persuaded her to keep
+still while Robina worked for ten minutes at high pressure.  The result
+was about a glassful and a half, the cow’s capacity, to all appearance,
+being by this time some five or six gallons.
+
+Robina broke down, and acknowledged she had been a wicked girl.  If the
+cow died, so she said, she should never forgive herself.  Veronica at
+this burst into tears also; and the cow, whether moved afresh by her own
+troubles or by theirs, commenced again to bellow.  I was fortunately able
+to find an elderly labourer smoking a pipe and eating bacon underneath a
+tree; and with him I bargained that for a shilling a day he should milk
+the cow till further notice.
+
+We left him busy, and returned to the cottage.  Dick met us at the door
+with a cheery “Good morning.”  He wanted to know if we had heard the
+storm.  He also wanted to know when breakfast would be ready.  Robina
+thought that happy event would be shortly after he had boiled the kettle
+and made the tea and fried the bacon, while Veronica was laying the
+table.
+
+“But I thought—”
+
+Robina said that if he dared to mention the word “household-fairy” she
+would box his ears, and go straight up to bed, and leave everybody to do
+everything.  She said she meant it.
+
+Dick has one virtue: it is philosophy.  “Come on, young ’un,” said Dick
+to Veronica.  “Trouble is good for us all.”
+
+“Some of us,” said Veronica, “it makes bitter.”
+
+We sat down to breakfast at eight-thirty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+OUR architect arrived on Friday afternoon, or rather, his assistant.
+
+I felt from the first I was going to like him.  He is shy, and that, of
+course, makes him appear awkward.  But, as I explained to Robina, it is
+the shy young men who, generally speaking, turn out best: few men could
+have been more painfully shy up to twenty-five than myself.
+
+Robina said that was different: in the case of an author it did not
+matter.  Robina’s attitude towards the literary profession would not
+annoy me so much were it not typical.  To be a literary man is, in
+Robina’s opinion, to be a licensed idiot.  It was only a week or two ago
+that I overheard from my study window a conversation between Veronica and
+Robina upon this very point.  Veronica’s eye had caught something lying
+on the grass.  I could not myself see what it was, in consequence of an
+intervening laurel bush.  Veronica stooped down and examined it with
+care.  The next instant, uttering a piercing whoop, she leapt into the
+air; then, clapping her hands, began to dance.  Her face was radiant with
+a holy joy.  Robina, passing near, stopped and demanded explanation.
+
+“Pa’s tennis racket!” shouted Veronica—Veronica never sees the use of
+talking in an ordinary tone of voice when shouting will do just as well.
+She continued clapping her hands and taking little bounds into the air.
+
+“Well, what are you going on like that for?” asked Robina.  “It hasn’t
+bit you, has it?”
+
+“It’s been out all night in the wet,” shouted Veronica.  “He forgot to
+bring it in.”
+
+“You wicked child!” said Robina severely.  “It’s nothing to be pleased
+about.”
+
+“Yes, it is,” explained Veronica.  “I thought at first it was mine.  Oh,
+wouldn’t there have been a talk about it, if it had been!  Oh my!
+wouldn’t there have been a row!”  She settled down to a steady rhythmic
+dance, suggestive of a Greek chorus expressing satisfaction with the
+gods.
+
+Robina seized her by the shoulders and shook her back into herself.  “If
+it had been yours,” said Robina, “you would deserve to have been sent to
+bed.”
+
+“Well, then, why don’t he go to bed?” argued Veronica.
+
+Robina took her by the arm and walked her up and down just underneath my
+window.  I listened, because the conversation interested me.
+
+“Pa, as I am always explaining to you,” said Robina, “is a literary man.
+He cannot help forgetting things.”
+
+“Well, I can’t help forgetting things,” insisted Veronica.
+
+“You find it hard,” explained Robina kindly; “but if you keep on trying
+you will succeed.  You will get more thoughtful.  I used to be forgetful
+and do foolish things once, when I was a little girl.”
+
+“Good thing for us if we was all literary,” suggested Veronica.
+
+“If we ‘were’ all literary,” Robina corrected her.  “But you see we are
+not.  You and I and Dick, we are just ordinary mortals.  We must try and
+think, and be sensible.  In the same way, when Pa gets excited and
+raves—I mean, seems to rave—it’s the literary temperament.  He can’t help
+it.”
+
+“Can’t you help doing anything when you are literary?” asked Veronica.
+
+“There’s a good deal you can’t help,” answered Robina.  “It isn’t fair to
+judge them by the ordinary standard.”
+
+They drifted towards the kitchen garden—it was the time of
+strawberries—and the remainder of the talk I lost.  I noticed that for
+some days afterwards Veronica displayed a tendency to shutting herself up
+in the schoolroom with a copybook, and that lead pencils had a way of
+disappearing from my desk.  One in particular that had suited me I
+determined if possible to recover.  A subtle instinct guided me to
+Veronica’s sanctum.  I found her thoughtfully sucking it.  She explained
+to me that she was writing a little play.
+
+“You get things from your father, don’t you?” she enquired of me.
+
+“You do,” I admitted; “but you ought not to take them without asking.  I
+am always telling you of it.  That pencil is the only one I can write
+with.”
+
+“I didn’t mean the pencil,” explained Veronica.  “I was wondering if I
+had got your literary temper.”
+
+It is puzzling, when you come to think of it, this estimate accorded by
+the general public to the _littérateur_.  It stands to reason that the
+man who writes books, explaining everything and putting everybody right,
+must be himself an exceptionally clever man; else how could he do it!
+The thing is pure logic.  Yet to listen to Robina and her like you might
+think we had not sense enough to run ourselves, as the saying is—let
+alone running the universe.  If I would let her, Robina would sit and
+give me information by the hour.
+
+“The ordinary girl . . . ” Robina will begin, with the air of a
+University Extension Lecturer.
+
+It is so exasperating.  As if I did not know all there is to be known
+about girls!  Why, it is my business.  I point this out to Robina.
+
+“Yes, I know,” Robina will answer sweetly.  “But I was meaning the real
+girl.”
+
+It would make not the slightest difference were I even quite a high-class
+literary man—Robina thinks I am: she is a dear child.  Were I Shakespeare
+himself, and could I in consequence say to her: “Methinks, child, the
+creator of Ophelia and Juliet, and Rosamund and Beatrice, must surely
+know something about girls,” Robina would still make answer:
+
+“Of course, Pa dear.  Everybody knows how clever you are.  But I was
+thinking for the moment of real girls.”
+
+I wonder to myself sometimes, Is literature to the general reader ever
+anything more than a fairy-tale?  We write with our heart’s blood, as we
+put it.  We ask our conscience, Is it right thus to lay bare the secrets
+of our souls?  The general reader does not grasp that we are writing with
+our heart’s blood: to him it is just ink.  He does not believe we are
+laying bare the secrets of our souls: he takes it we are just pretending.
+“Once upon a time there lived a girl named Angelina who loved a party by
+the name of Edwin.”  He imagines—he, the general reader—when we tell him
+all the wonderful thoughts that were inside Angelina, that it was we who
+put them there.  He does not know, he will not try to understand, that
+Angelina is in reality more real than is Miss Jones, who rides up every
+morning in the ’bus with him, and has a pretty knack of rendering
+conversation about the weather novel and suggestive.  As a boy I won some
+popularity among my schoolmates as a teller of stories.  One afternoon,
+to a small collection with whom I was homing across Regent’s Park, I told
+the story of a beautiful Princess.  But she was not the ordinary
+Princess.  She would not behave as a Princess should.  I could not help
+it.  The others heard only my voice, but I was listening to the wind.
+She thought she loved the Prince—until he had wounded the Dragon unto
+death and had carried her away into the wood.  Then, while the Prince lay
+sleeping, she heard the Dragon calling to her in its pain, and crept back
+to where it lay bleeding, and put her arms about its scaly neck and
+kissed it; and that healed it.  I was hoping myself that at this point it
+would turn into a prince itself, but it didn’t; it just remained a
+dragon—so the wind said.  Yet the Princess loved it: it wasn’t half a bad
+dragon, when you knew it.  I could not tell them what became of the
+Prince: the wind didn’t seem to care a hang about the Prince.
+
+Myself, I liked the story, but Hocker, who was a Fifth Form boy, voicing
+our little public, said it was rot, so far, and that I had got to hurry
+up and finish things rightly.
+
+“But that is all,” I told them.
+
+“No, it isn’t,” said Hocker.  “She’s got to marry the Prince in the end.
+He’ll have to kill the Dragon again; and mind he does it properly this
+time.  Whoever heard of a Princess leaving a Prince for a Dragon!”
+
+“But she wasn’t the ordinary sort of Princess,” I argued.
+
+“Then she’s got to be,” criticised Hocker.  “Don’t you give yourself so
+many airs.  You make her marry the Prince, and be slippy about it.  I’ve
+got to catch the four-fifteen from Chalk Farm station.”
+
+“But she didn’t,” I persisted obstinately.  “She married the Dragon and
+lived happy ever afterwards.”
+
+Hocker adopted sterner measures.  He seized my arm and twisted it behind
+me.
+
+“She married who?” demanded Hocker: grammar was not Hocker’s strong
+point.
+
+“The Dragon,” I growled.
+
+“She married who?” repeated Hocker.
+
+“The Dragon,” I whined.
+
+“She married who?” for the third time urged Hocker.
+
+Hocker was strong, and the tears were forcing themselves into my eyes in
+spite of me.  So the Princess in return for healing the Dragon made it
+promise to reform.  It went back with her to the Prince, and made itself
+generally useful to both of them for the rest of the tour.  And the
+Prince took the Princess home with him and married her; and the Dragon
+died and was buried.  The others liked the story better, but I hated it;
+and the wind sighed and died away.
+
+The little crowd becomes the reading public, and Hocker grows into an
+editor; he twists my arm in other ways.  Some are brave, so the crowd
+kicks them and scurries off to catch the four-fifteen.  But most of us, I
+fear, are slaves to Hocker.  Then, after awhile, the wind grows sulky and
+will not tell us stories any more, and we have to make them up out of our
+own heads.  Perhaps it is just as well.  What were doors and windows made
+for but to keep out the wind.
+
+He is a dangerous fellow, this wandering Wind; he leads me astray.  I was
+talking about our architect.
+
+He made a bad start, so far as Robina was concerned, by coming in at the
+back-door.  Robina, in a big apron, was washing up.  He apologised for
+having blundered into the kitchen, and offered to go out again and work
+round to the front.  Robina replied, with unnecessary severity as I
+thought, that an architect, if anyone, might have known the difference
+between the right side of a house and the wrong; but presumed that youth
+and inexperience could always be pleaded as excuse for stupidity.  I
+cannot myself see why Robina should have been so much annoyed.  Labour,
+as Robina had been explaining to Veronica only a few hours before, exalts
+a woman.  In olden days, ladies—the highest in the land—were proud, not
+ashamed, of their ability to perform domestic duties.  This, later on, I
+pointed out to Robina.  Her answer was that in olden days you didn’t have
+chits of boys going about, calling themselves architects, and opening
+back-doors without knocking; or if they did knock, knocking so that
+nobody on earth could hear them.
+
+Robina wiped her hands on the towel behind the door, and brought him into
+the front-room, where she announced him, coldly, as “The young man from
+the architect’s office.”  He explained—but quite modestly—that he was not
+exactly Messrs. Spreight’s young man, but an architect himself, a junior
+member of the firm.  To make it clear he produced his card, which was
+that of Mr. Archibald T. Bute, F.R.I.B.A.  Practically speaking, all this
+was unnecessary.  Through the open door I had, of course, heard every
+word; and old Spreight had told me of his intention to send me one of his
+most promising assistants, who would be able to devote himself entirely
+to my work.  I put matters right by introducing him formally to Robina.
+They bowed to one another rather stiffly.  Robina said that if he would
+excuse her she would return to her work; and he answered “Charmed,” and
+also that he didn’t mean it.  As I have tried to get it into Robina’s
+head, the young fellow was confused.  He had meant—it was
+self-evident—that he was charmed at being introduced to her, not at her
+desire to return to the kitchen.  But Robina appears to have taken a
+dislike to him.
+
+I gave him a cigar, and we started for the house.  It lies just a mile
+from this cottage, the other side of the wood.  One excellent trait in
+him I soon discovered—he is intelligent without knowing everything.
+
+I confess it to my shame, but the young man who knows everything has come
+to pall upon me.  According to Emerson, this is a proof of my own
+intellectual feebleness.  The strong man, intellectually, cultivates the
+society of his superiors.  He wants to get on, he wants to learn things.
+If I loved knowledge as one should, I would have no one but young men
+about me.  There was a friend of Dick’s, a gentleman from Rugby.  At one
+time he had hopes of me; I felt he had.  But he was too impatient.  He
+tried to bring me on too quickly.  You must take into consideration
+natural capacity.  After listening to him for an hour or two my mind
+would wander.  I could not help it.  The careless laughter of uninformed
+middle-aged gentlemen and ladies would creep to me from the croquet lawn
+or from the billiard-room.  I longed to be among them.  Sometimes I would
+battle with my lower nature.  What did they know?  What could they tell
+me?  More often I would succumb.  There were occasions when I used to get
+up and go away from him, quite suddenly.
+
+I talked with young Bute during our walk about domestic architecture in
+general.  He said he should describe the present tendency in domestic
+architecture as towards corners.  The desire of the British public was to
+go into a corner and live.  A lady for whose husband his firm had lately
+built a house in Surrey had propounded to him a problem in connection
+with this point.  She agreed it was a charming house; no house in Surrey
+had more corners, and that was saying much.  But she could not see how
+for the future she was going to bring up her children.  She was a
+humanely minded lady.  Hitherto she had punished them, when needful, by
+putting them in the corner; the shame of it had always exercised upon
+them a salutary effect.  But in the new house corners are reckoned the
+prime parts of every room.  It is the honoured guest who is sent into the
+corner.  The father has a corner sacred to himself, with high up above
+his head a complicated cupboard, wherein with the help of a step-ladder,
+he may keep his pipes and his tobacco, and thus by slow degrees cure
+himself of the habit of smoking.  The mother likewise has her corner,
+where stands her spinning-wheel, in case the idea comes to her to weave
+sheets and underclothing.  It also has a book-shelf supporting thirteen
+volumes, arranged in a sloping position to look natural; the last one
+maintained at its angle of forty-five degrees by a ginger-jar in old blue
+Nankin.  You are not supposed to touch them, because that would
+disarrange them.  Besides which, fooling about, you might upset the
+ginger-jar.  The consequence of all this is the corner is no longer
+disgraceful.  The parent can no more say to the erring child:
+
+“You wicked boy!  Go into the cosy corner this very minute!”
+
+In the house of the future the place of punishment will have to be the
+middle of the room.  The angry mother will exclaim:
+
+“Don’t you answer me, you saucy minx!  You go straight into the middle of
+the room, and don’t you dare to come out of it till I tell you!”
+
+The difficulty with the artistic house is finding the right people to put
+into it.  In the picture the artistic room never has anybody in it.
+There is a strip of art embroidery upon the table, together with a bowl
+of roses.  Upon the ancient high-backed settee lies an item of fancy
+work, unfinished—just as she left it.  In the “study” an open book, face
+downwards, has been left on a chair.  It is the last book he was
+reading—it has never been disturbed.  A pipe of quaint design is cold
+upon the lintel of the lattice window.  No one will ever smoke that pipe
+again: it must have been difficult to smoke at any time.  The sight of
+the artistic room, as depicted in the furniture catalogue, always brings
+tears to my eyes.  People once inhabited these rooms, read there those
+old volumes bound in vellum, smoked—or tried to smoke—these impracticable
+pipes; white hands, that someone maybe had loved to kiss, once fluttered
+among the folds of these unfinished antimacassars, or Berlin wool-work
+slippers, and went away, leaving the things about.
+
+One takes it that the people who once occupied these artistic rooms are
+now all dead.  This was their “Dining-Room.”  They sat on those artistic
+chairs.  They could hardly have used the dinner service set out upon the
+Elizabethan dresser, because that would have left the dresser bare: one
+assumes they had an extra service for use, or else that they took their
+meals in the kitchen.  The “Entrance Hall” is a singularly chaste
+apartment.  There is no necessity for a door-mat: people with muddy
+boots, it is to be presumed, were sent round to the back.  A
+riding-cloak, the relic apparently of a highwayman, hangs behind the
+door.  It is the sort of cloak you would expect to find there—a
+decorative cloak.  An umbrella or a waterproof cape would be fatal to the
+whole effect.
+
+Now and again the illustrator of the artistic room will permit a young
+girl to come and sit there.  But she has to be a very carefully selected
+girl.  To begin with, she has got to look and dress as though she had
+been born at least three hundred years ago.  She has got to have that
+sort of clothes, and she has got to have her hair done just that way.
+
+She has got to look sad; a cheerful girl in the artistic room would jar
+one’s artistic sense.  One imagines the artist consulting with the proud
+possessor of the house.
+
+“You haven’t got such a thing as a miserable daughter, have you?  Some
+fairly good-looking girl who has been crossed in love, or is
+misunderstood.  Because if so, you might dress her up in something out of
+the local museum and send her along.  A little thing like that gives
+verisimilitude to a design.”
+
+She must not touch anything.  All she may do is to read a book—not really
+read it, that would suggest too much life and movement: she sits with the
+book in her lap and gazes into the fire, if it happens to be the
+dining-room: or out of the window if it happens to be a morning-room, and
+the architect wishes to call attention to the window-seat.  Nothing of
+the male species, as far as I have been able to ascertain, has ever
+entered these rooms.  I once thought I had found a man who had been
+allowed into his own “Smoking-Den,” but on closer examination it turned
+out he was only a portrait.
+
+Sometimes one is given “Vistas.”  Doors stand open, and you can see right
+away through “The Nook” into the garden.  There is never a living soul
+about the place.  The whole family has been sent out for a walk or locked
+up in the cellars.  This strikes you as odd until you come to think the
+matter out.  The modern man and woman is not artistic.  I am not
+artistic—not what I call really artistic.  I don’t go well with Gobelin
+tapestry and warming-pans.  I feel I don’t.  Robina is not artistic, not
+in that sense.  I tried her once with a harpsichord I picked up cheap in
+Wardour Street, and a reproduction of a Roman stool.  The thing was an
+utter failure.  A cottage piano, with a photo-frame and a fern upon, it
+is what the soul cries out for in connection with Robina.  Dick is not
+artistic.  Dick does not go with peacocks’ feathers and guitars.  I can
+see Dick with a single peacock’s feather at St. Giles’s Fair, when the
+bulldogs are not looking; but the decorative panel of peacock’s feathers
+is too much for him.  I can imagine him with a banjo—but a guitar
+decorated with pink ribbons!  To begin with he is not dressed for it.
+Unless a family be prepared to make themselves up as troubadours or
+cavaliers and to talk blank verse, I don’t see how they can expect to be
+happy living in these fifteenth-century houses.  The modern family—the
+old man in baggy trousers and a frock-coat he could not button if he
+tried to; the mother of figure distinctly Victorian; the boys in flannel
+suits and collars up to their ears; the girls in motor caps—are as
+incongruous in these mediæval dwellings as a party of Cook’s tourists
+drinking bottled beer in the streets of Pompeii.
+
+The designer of “The Artistic Home” is right in keeping to still life.
+In the artistic home—to paraphrase Dr. Watts—every prospect pleases and
+only man is inartistic.  In the picture, the artistic bedroom, “in apple
+green, the bedstead of cherry-wood, with a touch of turkey-red throughout
+the draperies,” is charming.  It need hardly be said the bed is empty.
+Put a man or woman in that cherry-wood bed—I don’t care how artistic they
+may think themselves—the charm would be gone.  The really artistic party,
+one supposes, has a little room behind, where he sleeps and dresses
+himself.  He peeps in at the door of this artistic bedroom, maybe
+occasionally enters to change the roses.
+
+Imagine the artistic nursery five minutes after the real child had been
+let loose in it.  I know a lady who once spent hundreds of pounds on an
+artistic nursery.  She showed it to her friends with pride.  The children
+were allowed in there on Sunday afternoons.  I did an equally silly thing
+myself not long ago.  Lured by a furniture catalogue, I started Robina in
+a boudoir.  I gave it to her as a birthday-present.  We have both
+regretted it ever since.  Robina reckons she could have had a bicycle, a
+diamond bracelet, and a mandoline, and I should have saved money.  I did
+the thing well.  I told the furniture people I wanted it just as it stood
+in the picture: “Design for bedroom and boudoir combined, suitable for
+young girl, in teak, with sparrow blue hangings.”  We had everything: the
+antique fire arrangements that a vestal virgin might possibly have
+understood; the candlesticks, that were pictures in themselves, until we
+tried to put candles in them; the book-case and writing-desk combined,
+that wasn’t big enough to write on, and out of which it was impossible to
+get a book until you had abandoned the idea of writing and had closed the
+cover; the enclosed washstand, that shut down and looked like an old
+bureau, with the inevitable bowl of flowers upon it that had to be taken
+off and put on the floor whenever you wanted to use the thing as a
+washstand; the toilet-table, with its cunning little glass, just big
+enough to see your nose in; the bedstead, hidden away behind the
+“thinking corner,” where the girl couldn’t get at it to make it.  A
+prettier room you could not have imagined, till Robina started sleeping
+in it.  I think she tried.  Girl friends of hers, to whom she had bragged
+about it, would drop in and ask to be allowed to see it.  Robina would
+say, “Wait a minute,” and would run up and slam the door; and we would
+hear her for the next half-hour or so rushing round opening and shutting
+drawers and dragging things about.  By the time it was a boudoir again
+she was exhausted and irritable.  She wants now to give it up to
+Veronica, but Veronica objects to the position, which is between the
+bathroom and my study.  Her idea is a room more removed, where she would
+be able to shut herself in and do her work, as she explains, without fear
+of interruption.
+
+Young Bute told me that a friend of his, a well-to-do young fellow, who
+lived in Piccadilly, had had the whim to make his flat the reproduction
+of a Roman villa.  There were of course no fires, the rooms were warmed
+by hot air from the kitchen.  They had a cheerless aspect on a November
+afternoon, and nobody knew exactly where to sit.  Light was obtained in
+the evening from Grecian lamps, which made it easy to understand why the
+ancient Athenians, as a rule, went to bed early.  You dined sprawling on
+a couch.  This was no doubt practicable when you took your plate into
+your hand and fed yourself with your fingers; but with a knife and fork
+the meal had all the advantages of a hot picnic.  You did not feel
+luxurious or even wicked: you only felt nervous about your clothes.  The
+thing lacked completeness.  He could not expect his friends to come to
+him in Roman togas, and even his own man declined firmly to wear the
+costume of a Roman slave.  The compromise was unsatisfactory, even from
+the purely pictorial point of view.  You cannot be a Roman patrician of
+the time of Antoninus when you happen to live in Piccadilly at the
+opening of the twentieth century.  All you can do is to make your friends
+uncomfortable and spoil their dinner for them.  Young Bute said that, so
+far as he was concerned, he would always rather have spent the evening
+with his little nephews and nieces, playing at horses; it seemed to him a
+more sensible game.
+
+Young Bute said that, speaking as an architect, he of course admired the
+ancient masterpieces of his art.  He admired the Erechtheum at Athens;
+but Spurgeon’s Tabernacle in the Old Kent Road built upon the same model
+would have irritated him.  For a Grecian temple you wanted Grecian skies
+and Grecian girls.  He said that, even as it was, Westminster Abbey in
+the season was an eyesore to him.  The Dean and Choir in their white
+surplices passed muster, but the congregation in its black frock-coats
+and Paris hats gave him the same sense of incongruity as would a banquet
+of barefooted friars in the dining-hall of the Cannon Street Hotel.
+
+It struck me there was sense in what he said.  I decided not to mention
+my idea of carving 1553 above the front-door.
+
+He said he could not understand this passion of the modern house-builder
+for playing at being a Crusader or a Canterbury Pilgrim.  A retired
+Berlin boot-maker of his acquaintance had built himself a miniature Roman
+Castle near Heidelberg.  They played billiards in the dungeon, and let
+off fireworks on the Kaiser’s birthday from the roof of the watch-tower.
+
+Another acquaintance of his, a draper at Holloway, had built himself a
+moated grange.  The moat was supplied from the water-works under special
+arrangement, and all the electric lights were imitation candles.  He had
+done the thing thoroughly.  He had even designed a haunted chamber in
+blue, and a miniature chapel, which he used as a telephone closet.  Young
+Bute had been invited down there for the shooting in the autumn.  He said
+he could not be sure whether he was doing right or wrong, but his
+intention was to provide himself with a bow and arrows.
+
+A change was coming over this young man.  We had talked on other subjects
+and he had been shy and deferential.  On this matter of bricks and mortar
+he spoke as one explaining things.
+
+I ventured to say a few words in favour of the Tudor house.  The Tudor
+house, he argued, was a fit and proper residence for the Tudor
+citizen—for the man whose wife rode behind him on a pack-saddle, who
+conducted his correspondence by the help of a moss-trooper.  The Tudor
+fireplace was designed for folks to whom coal was unknown, and who left
+their smoking to their chimneys.  A house that looked ridiculous with a
+motor-car before the door, where the electric bell jarred upon one’s
+sense of fitness every time one heard it, was out of date, he maintained.
+
+“For you, sir,” he continued, “a twentieth-century writer, to build
+yourself a Tudor House would be as absurd as for Ben Jonson to have
+planned himself a Norman Castle with a torture-chamber underneath the
+wine-cellar, and the fireplace in the middle of the dining-hall.  His
+fellow cronies of the Mermaid would have thought him stark, staring mad.”
+
+There was reason in what he was saying.  I decided not to mention my idea
+of altering the chimneys and fixing up imitation gables, especially as
+young Bute seemed pleased with the house, which by this time we had
+reached.
+
+“Now, that is a good house,” said young Bute.  “That is a house where a
+man in a frock-coat and trousers can sit down and not feel himself a
+stranger from another age.  It was built for a man who wore a frock-coat
+and trousers—on weekdays, maybe, gaiters and a shooting-coat.  You can
+enjoy a game of billiards in that house without the feeling that comes to
+you when playing tennis in the shadow of the Pyramids.”
+
+We entered, and I put before him my notions—such of them as I felt he
+would approve.  We were some time about the business, and when we looked
+at our watches young Bute’s last train to town had gone.  There still
+remained much to talk about, and I suggested he should return with me to
+the cottage and take his luck.  I could sleep with Dick and he could have
+my room.  I told him about the cow, but he said he was a practised
+sleeper and would be delighted, if I could lend him a night-shirt, and if
+I thought Miss Robina would not be put out.  I assured him that it would
+be a good thing for Robina; the unexpected guest would be a useful lesson
+to her in housekeeping.  Besides, as I pointed out to him, it didn’t
+really matter even if Robina were put out.
+
+“Not to you, sir, perhaps,” he answered, with a smile.  “It is not with
+you that she will be indignant.”
+
+“That will be all right, my boy,” I told him; “I take all
+responsibility.”
+
+“And I shall get all the blame,” he laughed.
+
+But, as I pointed out to him, it really didn’t matter whom Robina blamed.
+We talked about women generally on our way back.  I told him—impressing
+upon him there was no need for it to go farther—that I personally had
+come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with women was to treat
+them all as children.  He agreed it might be a good method, but wanted to
+know what you did when they treated you as a child.
+
+I know a most delightful couple: they have been married nearly twenty
+years, and both will assure you that an angry word has never passed
+between them.  He calls her his “Little One,” although she must be quite
+six inches taller than himself, and is never tired of patting her hand or
+pinching her ear.  They asked her once in the drawing-room—so the Little
+Mother tells me—her recipe for domestic bliss.  She said the mistake most
+women made was taking men too seriously.
+
+“They are just overgrown children, that’s all they are, poor dears,” she
+laughed.
+
+There are two kinds of love: there is the love that kneels and looks
+upward, and the love that looks down and pats.  For durability I am
+prepared to back the latter.
+
+The architect had died out of young Bute; he was again a shy young man
+during our walk back to the cottage.  My hand was on the latch when he
+stayed me.
+
+“Isn’t this the back-door again, sir?” he enquired.
+
+It was the back-door; I had not noticed it.
+
+“Hadn’t we better go round to the front, sir, don’t you think?” he said.
+
+“It doesn’t matter—” I began.
+
+But he had disappeared.  So I followed him, and we entered by the front.
+Robina was standing by the table, peeling potatoes.
+
+“I have brought Mr. Bute back with me,” I explained.  “He is going to
+stop the night.”
+
+Robina said: “If ever I go to live in a cottage again it will have one
+door.”  She took her potatoes with her and went upstairs.
+
+“I do hope she isn’t put out,” said young Bute.
+
+“Don’t worry yourself,” I comforted him.  “Of course she isn’t put out.
+Besides, I don’t care if she is.  She’s got to get used to being put out;
+it’s part of the lesson of life.”
+
+I took him upstairs, meaning to show him his bedroom and take my own
+things out of it.  The doors of the two bedrooms were opposite one
+another.  I made a mistake and opened the wrong door.  Robina, still
+peeling potatoes, was sitting on the bed.
+
+I explained we had made a mistake.  Robina said it was of no consequence
+whatever, and, taking the potatoes with her, went downstairs again.
+Looking out of the window, I saw her making towards the wood.  She was
+taking the potatoes with her.
+
+“I do wish we hadn’t opened the door of the wrong room,” groaned young
+Bute.
+
+“What a worrying chap you are!” I said to him.  “Look at the thing from
+the humorous point of view.  It’s funny when you come to think of it.
+Wherever the poor girl goes, trying to peel her potatoes in peace and
+quietness, we burst in upon her.  What we ought to do now is to take a
+walk in the wood.  It is a pretty wood.  We might say we had come to pick
+wild flowers.”
+
+But I could not persuade him.  He said he had letters to write, and, if I
+would allow him, would remain in his room till dinner was ready.
+
+Dick and Veronica came in a little later.  Dick had been to see Mr. St.
+Leonard to arrange about lessons in farming.  He said he thought I should
+like the old man, who wasn’t a bit like a farmer.  He had brought
+Veronica back in one of her good moods, she having met there and fallen
+in love with a donkey.  Dick confided to me that, without committing
+himself, he had hinted to Veronica that if she would remain good for
+quite a long while I might be induced to buy it for her.  It was a sturdy
+little animal, and could be made useful.  Anyhow, it would give Veronica
+an object in life—something to strive for—which was just what she wanted.
+He is a thoughtful lad at times, is Dick.
+
+The dinner was more successful than I had hoped for.  Robina gave us
+melon as a _hors d’œuvre_, followed by sardines and a fowl, with potatoes
+and vegetable marrow.  Her cooking surprised me.  I had warned young Bute
+that it might be necessary to regard this dinner rather as a joke than as
+an evening meal, and was prepared myself to extract amusement from it
+rather than nourishment.  My disappointment was agreeable.  One can
+always imagine a comic dinner.
+
+I dined once with a newly married couple who had just returned from their
+honeymoon.  We ought to have sat down at eight o’clock; we sat down
+instead at half-past ten.  The cook had started drinking in the morning;
+by seven o’clock she was speechless.  The wife, giving up hope at a
+quarter to eight, had cooked the dinner herself.  The other guests were
+sympathised with, but all I got was congratulation.
+
+“He’ll write something so funny about this dinner,” they said.
+
+You might have thought the cook had got drunk on purpose to oblige me.  I
+have never been able to write anything funny about that dinner; it
+depresses me to this day, merely thinking of it.
+
+We finished up with a cold trifle and some excellent coffee that Robina
+brewed over a lamp on the table while Dick and Veronica cleared away.  It
+was one of the jolliest little dinners I have ever eaten; and, if
+Robina’s figures are to be trusted, cost exactly six-and-fourpence for
+the five of us.  There being no servants about, we talked freely and
+enjoyed ourselves.  I began once at a dinner to tell a good story about a
+Scotchman, when my host silenced me with a look.  He is a kindly man, and
+had heard the story before.  He explained to me afterwards, over the
+walnuts, that his parlourmaid was Scotch and rather touchy.  The talk
+fell into the discussion of Home Rule, and again our host silenced us.
+It seemed his butler was an Irishman and a violent Parnellite.  Some
+people can talk as though servants were mere machines, but to me they are
+human beings, and their presence hampers me.  I know my guests have not
+heard the story before, and from one’s own flesh and blood one expects a
+certain amount of sacrifice.  But I feel so sorry for the housemaid who
+is waiting; she must have heard it a dozen times.  I really cannot
+inflict it upon her again.
+
+After dinner we pushed the table into a corner, and Dick extracted a sort
+of waltz from Robina’s mandoline.  It is years since I danced; but
+Veronica said she would rather dance with me any day than with some of
+the “lumps” you were given to drag round by the dancing-mistress.  I have
+half a mind to take it up again.  After all, a man is only as old as he
+feels.
+
+Young Bute, it turned out, was a capital dancer, and could even reverse,
+which in a room fourteen feet square is of advantage.  Robina confided to
+me after he was gone that while he was dancing she could just tolerate
+him.  I cannot myself see rhyme or reason in Robina’s objection to him.
+He is not handsome, but he is good-looking, as boys go, and has a
+pleasant smile.  Robina says it is his smile that maddens her.  Dick
+agrees with me that there is sense in him; and Veronica, not given to
+loose praise, considers his performance of a Red Indian, both dead and
+alive, the finest piece of acting she has ever encountered.  We wound up
+the evening with a little singing.  The extent of Dick’s repertoire
+surprised me; evidently he has not been so idle at Cambridge as it
+seemed.  Young Bute has a baritone voice of some richness.  We remembered
+at quarter-past eleven that Veronica ought to have gone to bed at eight.
+We were all of us surprised at the lateness of the hour.
+
+“Why can’t we always live in a cottage and do just as we like?  I’m sure
+it’s much jollier,” Veronica put it to me as I kissed her good night.
+
+“Because we are idiots, most of us, Veronica,” I answered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+I STARTED the next morning to call upon St. Leonard.  Near to the house I
+encountered young Hopkins on a horse.  He was waving a pitchfork over his
+head and reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”  The horse looked
+amused.  He told me I should find “the gov’nor” up by the stables.  St.
+Leonard is not an “old man.”  Dick must have seen him in a bad light.  I
+should describe him as about the prime of life, a little older than
+myself, but nothing to speak of.  Dick was right, however, in saying he
+was not like a farmer.  To begin with, “Hubert St. Leonard” does not
+sound like a farmer.  One can imagine a man with a name like that writing
+a book about farming, having theories on this subject.  But in the
+ordinary course of nature things would not grow for him.  He does not
+look like a farmer.  One cannot say precisely what it is, but there is
+that about a farmer that tells you he is a farmer.  The farmer has a way
+of leaning over a gate.  There are not many ways of leaning over a gate.
+I have tried all I could think of, but it was never quite the right way.
+It has to be in the blood.  A farmer has a way of standing on one leg and
+looking at a thing that isn’t there.  It sounds simple, but there is
+knack in it.  The farmer is not surprised it is not there.  He never
+expected it to be there.  It is one of those things that ought to be, and
+is not.  The farmer’s life is full of such.  Suffering reduced to a
+science is what the farmer stands for.  All his life he is the good man
+struggling against adversity.  Nothing his way comes right.  This does
+not seem to be his planet.  Providence means well, but she does not
+understand farming.  She is doing her best, he supposes; that she is a
+born muddler is not her fault.  If Providence could only step down for a
+month or two and take a few lessons in practical farming, things might be
+better; but this being out of the question there is nothing more to be
+said.  From conversation with farmers one conjures up a picture of
+Providence as a well-intentioned amateur, put into a position for which
+she is utterly unsuited.
+
+“Rain,” says Providence, “they are wanting rain.  What did I do with that
+rain?”
+
+She finds the rain and starts it, and is pleased with herself until some
+Wandering Spirit pauses on his way and asks her sarcastically what she
+thinks she’s doing.
+
+“Raining,” explains Providence.  “They wanted rain—farmers, you know,
+that sort of people.”
+
+“They won’t want anything for long,” retorts the Spirit.  “They’ll be
+drowned in their beds before you’ve done with them.”
+
+“Don’t say that!” says Providence.
+
+“Well, have a look for yourself if you won’t believe me,” says the
+Spirit.  “You’ve spoilt that harvest again, you’ve ruined all the fruit,
+and you are rotting even the turnips.  Don’t you ever learn by
+experience?”
+
+“It is so difficult,” says Providence, “to regulate these things just
+right.”
+
+“So it seems—for you,” retorts the Spirit.  “Anyhow, I should not rain
+any more, if I were you.  If you must, at least give them time to build
+another ark.”  And the Wandering Spirit continues on his way.
+
+“The place does look a bit wet, now I come to notice it,” says
+Providence, peeping down over the edge of her star.  “Better turn on the
+fine weather, I suppose.”
+
+She starts with she calls “set fair,” and feeling now that she is
+something like a Providence, composes herself for a doze.  She is
+startled out of her sleep by the return of the Wandering Spirit.
+
+“Been down there again?” she asks him pleasantly.
+
+“Just come back,” explains the Wandering Spirit.
+
+“Pretty spot, isn’t it?” says Providence.  “Things nice and dry down
+there now, aren’t they?”
+
+“You’ve hit it,” he answers.  “Dry is the word.  The rivers are dried up,
+the wells are dried up, the cattle are dying, the grass is all withered.
+As for the harvest, there won’t be any harvest for the next two years!
+Oh, yes, things are dry enough.”
+
+One imagines Providence bursting into tears.  “But you suggested yourself
+a little fine weather.”
+
+“I know I did,” answers the Spirit.  “I didn’t suggest a six months’
+drought with the thermometer at a hundred and twenty in the shade.
+Doesn’t seem to me that you’ve got any sense at all.”
+
+“I do wish this job had been given to someone else,” says Providence.
+
+“Yes, and you are not the only one to wish it,” retorts the Spirit
+unfeelingly.
+
+“I do my best,” urges Providence, wiping her eyes with her wings.  “I am
+not fitted for it.”
+
+“A truer word you never uttered,” retorts the Spirit.
+
+“I try—nobody could try harder,” wails Providence.  “Everything I do
+seems to be wrong.”
+
+“What you want,” says the Spirit, “is less enthusiasm and a little
+commonsense in place of it.  You get excited, and then you lose your
+head.  When you do send rain, ten to one you send it when it isn’t
+wanted.  You keep back your sunshine—just as a duffer at whist keeps back
+his trumps—until it is no good, and then you deal it out all at once.”
+
+“I’ll try again,” said Providence.  “I’ll try quite hard this time.”
+
+“You’ve been trying again,” retorts the Spirit unsympathetically, “ever
+since I have known you.  It is not that you do not try.  It is that you
+have not got the hang of things.  Why don’t you get yourself an
+almanack?”
+
+The Wandering Spirit takes his leave.  Providence tells herself she
+really must get that almanack.  She ties a knot in her handkerchief.  It
+is not her fault: she was made like it.  She forgets altogether for what
+reason she tied that knot.  Thinks it was to remind her to send frosts in
+May, or Scotch mists in August.  She is not sure which, so sends both.
+The farmer has ceased even to be angry with her—recognises that
+affliction and sorrow are good for his immortal soul, and pursues his way
+in calmness to the Bankruptcy Court.
+
+Hubert St. Leonard, of Windrush Bottom Farm, I found to be a
+worried-looking gentleman.  He taps his weather-glass, and hopes and
+fears, not knowing as yet that all things have been ordered for his ill.
+It will be years before his spirit is attuned to that attitude of
+tranquil despair essential to the farmer: one feels it.  He is tall and
+thin, with a sensitive, mobile face, and a curious trick of taking his
+head every now and again between his hands, as if to be sure it is still
+there.  When I met him he was on the point of starting for his round, so
+I walked with him.  He told me that he had not always been a farmer.
+Till a few years ago he had been a stockbroker.  But he had always hated
+his office; and having saved a little, had determined when he came to
+forty to enjoy the rare luxury of living his own life.  I asked him if he
+found that farming paid.  He said:
+
+“As in everything else, it depends upon the price you put upon yourself.
+Now, as a casual observer, what wage per annum would you say I was
+worth?”
+
+It was an awkward question.
+
+“You are afraid that if you spoke candidly you would offend me,” he
+suggested.  “Very well.  For the purpose of explaining my theory let us
+take, instead, your own case.  I have read all your books, and I like
+them.  Speaking as an admirer, I should estimate you at five hundred a
+year.  You, perhaps, make two thousand, and consider yourself worth
+five.”
+
+The whimsical smile with which he accompanied the speech disarmed me.
+
+“What we most of us do,” he continued, “is to over-capitalise ourselves.
+John Smith, honestly worth a hundred a year, claims to be worth two.
+Result: difficulty of earning dividend, over-work, over-worry, constant
+fear of being wound up.  Now, there is that about your work that suggests
+to me you would be happier earning five hundred a year than you ever will
+be earning two thousand.  To pay your dividend—to earn your two
+thousand—you have to do work that brings you no pleasure in the doing.
+Content with five hundred, you could afford to do only that work that
+does give you pleasure.  This is not a perfect world, we must remember.
+In the perfect world the thinker would be worth more than the mere
+jester.  In the perfect world the farmer would be worth more than the
+stockbroker.  In making the exchange I had to write myself down.  I earn
+less money, but get more enjoyment out of life.  I used to be able to
+afford champagne, but my liver was always wrong, and I dared not drink
+it.  Now I cannot afford champagne, but I enjoy my beer.  That is my
+theory, that we are all of us entitled to payment according to our market
+value, neither more nor less.  You can take it all in cash.  I used to.
+Or you can take less cash and more fun: that is what I am getting now.”
+
+“It is delightful,” I said, “to meet with a philosopher.  One hears about
+them, of course; but I had got it into my mind they were all dead.”
+
+“People laugh at philosophy,” he said.  “I never could understand why.
+It is the science of living a free, peaceful, happy existence.  I would
+give half my remaining years to be a philosopher.”
+
+“I am not laughing at philosophy,” I said.  “I honestly thought you were
+a philosopher.  I judged so from the way you talked.”
+
+“Talked!” he retorted.  “Anybody can talk.  As you have just said, I talk
+like a philosopher.”
+
+“But you not only talk,” I insisted, “you behave like a philosopher.
+Sacrificing your income to the joy of living your own life!  It is the
+act of a philosopher.”
+
+I wanted to keep him in good humour.  I had three things to talk to him
+about: the cow, the donkey, and Dick.
+
+“No, it wasn’t,” he answered.  “A philosopher would have remained a
+stockbroker and been just as happy.  Philosophy does not depend upon
+environment.  You put the philosopher down anywhere.  It is all the same
+to him, he takes his philosophy with him.  You can suddenly tell him he
+is an emperor, or give him penal servitude for life.  He goes on being a
+philosopher just as if nothing had happened.  We have an old tom-cat.
+The children lead it an awful life.  It does not seem to matter to the
+cat.  They shut it up in the piano: their idea is that it will make a
+noise and frighten someone.  It doesn’t make a noise; it goes to sleep.
+When an hour later someone opens the piano, the poor thing is lying there
+stretched out upon the keyboard purring to itself.  They dress it up in
+the baby’s clothes and take it out in the perambulator: it lies there
+perfectly contented looking round at the scenery—takes in the fresh air.
+They haul it about by its tail.  You would think, to watch it swinging
+gently to and fro head downwards, that it was grateful to them for giving
+it a new sensation.  Apparently it looks on everything that comes its way
+as helpful experience.  It lost a leg last winter in a trap: it goes
+about quite cheerfully on three.  Seems to be rather pleased, if
+anything, at having lost the fourth—saves washing.  Now, he is your true
+philosopher, that cat; never minds what happens to him, and is equally
+contented if it doesn’t.”
+
+I found myself becoming fretful.  I know a man with whom it is impossible
+to disagree.  Men at the Club—new-comers—have been lured into taking bets
+that they could on any topic under the sun find themselves out of
+sympathy with him.  They have denounced Mr. Lloyd George as a traitor to
+his country.  This man has risen and shaken them by the hand, words being
+too weak to express his admiration of their outspoken fearlessness.  You
+might have thought them Nihilists denouncing the Russian Government from
+the steps of the Kremlin at Moscow.  They have, in the next breath,
+abused Mr. Balfour in terms transgressing the law of slander.  He has
+almost fallen on their necks.  It has transpired that the one dream of
+his life was to hear Mr. Balfour abused.  I have talked to him myself for
+a quarter of an hour, and gathered that at heart he was a
+peace-at-any-price man, strongly in favour of Conscription, a vehement
+Republican, with a deep-rooted contempt for the working classes.  It is
+not bad sport to collect half a dozen and talk round him.  At such times
+he suggests the family dog that six people from different parts of the
+house are calling to at the same time.  He wants to go to them all at
+once.
+
+I felt I had got to understand this man, or he would worry me.
+
+“We are going to be neighbours,” I said, “and I am inclined to think I
+shall like you.  That is, if I can get to know you.  You commence by
+enthusing on philosophy: I hasten to agree with you.  It is a noble
+science.  When my youngest daughter has grown up, when the other one has
+learnt a little sense, when Dick is off my hands, and the British public
+has come to appreciate good literature, I am hoping to be a bit of a
+philosopher myself.  But before I can explain to you my views you have
+already changed your own, and are likening the philosopher to an old
+tom-cat that seems to be weak in his head.  Soberly now, what are you?”
+
+“A fool,” he answered promptly; “a most unfortunate fool.  I have the
+mind of a philosopher coupled to an intensely irritable temperament.  My
+philosophy teaches me to be ashamed of my irritability, and my
+irritability makes my philosophy appear to be arrant nonsense to myself.
+The philosopher in me tells me it does not matter when the twins fall
+down the wishing-well.  It is not a deep well.  It is not the first time
+they have fallen into it: it will not be the last.  Such things pass: the
+philosopher only smiles.  The man in me calls the philosopher a
+blithering idiot for saying it does not matter when it does matter.  Men
+have to be called away from their work to haul them out.  We all of us
+get wet.  I get wet and excited, and that always starts my liver.  The
+children’s clothes are utterly spoilt.  Confound them,”—the blood was
+mounting to his head—“they never care to go near the well except they are
+dressed in their best clothes.  On other days they will stop indoors and
+read Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs.’  There is something uncanny about twins.
+What is it?  Why should twins be worse than other children?  The ordinary
+child is not an angel, Heaven knows.  Take these boots of mine.  Look at
+them; I have had them for over two years.  I tramp ten miles a day in
+them; they have been soaked through a hundred times.  You buy a boy a
+pair of boots—”
+
+“Why don’t you cover over the well?” I suggested.
+
+“There you are again,” he replied.  “The philosopher in me—the sensible
+man—says, ‘What is the good of the well?  It is nothing but mud and
+rubbish.  Something is always falling into it—if it isn’t the children
+it’s the pigs.  Why not do away with it?’”
+
+“Seems to be sound advice,” I commented.
+
+“It is,” he agreed.  “No man alive has more sound commonsense than I
+have, if only I were capable of listening to myself.  Do you know why I
+don’t brick in that well?  Because my wife told me I would have to.  It
+was the first thing she said when she saw it.  She says it again every
+time anything does fall into it.  ‘If only you would take my advice’—you
+know the sort of thing.  Nobody irritates me more than the person who
+says, ‘I told you so.’  It’s a picturesque old ruin: it used to be
+haunted.  That’s all been knocked on the head since we came.  What
+self-respecting nymph can haunt a well into which children and pigs are
+for ever flopping?”
+
+He laughed; but before I could join him he was angry again.  “Why should
+I block up an historic well, that is an ornament to the garden, because a
+pack of fools can’t keep a gate shut?  As for the children, what they
+want is a thorough good whipping, and one of these days—”
+
+A voice crying to us to stop interrupted him.
+
+“Am on my round.  Can’t come,” he shouted.
+
+“But you must,” explained the voice.
+
+He turned so quickly that he almost knocked me over.  “Bother and
+confound them all!” he said.  “Why don’t they keep to the time-table?
+There’s no system in this place.  That is what ruins farming—want of
+system.”
+
+He went on grumbling as he walked.  I followed him.  Halfway across the
+field we met the owner of the voice.  She was a pleasant-looking lass,
+not exactly pretty—not the sort of girl one turns to look at in a
+crowd—yet, having seen her, it was agreeable to continue looking at her.
+St. Leonard introduced me to her as his eldest daughter, Janie, and
+explained to her that behind the study door, if only she would take the
+trouble to look, she would find a time-table—
+
+“According to which,” replied Miss Janie, with a smile, “you ought at the
+present moment to be in the rick-yard, which is just where I want you.”
+
+“What time is it?” he asked, feeling his waistcoat for a watch that
+appeared not to be there.
+
+“Quarter to eleven,” I told him.
+
+He took his head between his hands.  “Good God!” he cried, “you don’t say
+that!”
+
+The new binder, Miss Janie told us, had just arrived.  She was anxious
+her father should see it was in working order before the men went back.
+“Otherwise,” so she argued, “old Wilkins will persist it was all right
+when he delivered it, and we shall have no remedy.”
+
+We turned towards the house.
+
+“Speaking of the practical,” I said, “there were three things I came to
+talk to you about.  First and foremost, that cow.”
+
+“Ah, yes, the cow,” said St. Leonard.  He turned to his daughter.  “It
+was Maud, was it not?”
+
+“No,” she answered, “it was Susie.”
+
+“It is the one,” I said, “that bellows most all night and three parts of
+the day.  Your boy Hopkins thinks maybe she’s fretting.”
+
+“Poor soul!” said St. Leonard.  “We only took her calf away from her—when
+did we take her calf away from her?” he asked of Janie.
+
+“On Thursday morning,” returned Janie; “the day we sent her over.”
+
+“They feel it so at first,” said St. Leonard sympathetically.
+
+“It sounds a brutal sentiment,” I said, “but I was wondering if by any
+chance you happened to have by you one that didn’t feel it quite so much.
+I suppose among cows there is no class that corresponds to what we term
+our ‘Smart Set’—cows that don’t really care for their calves, that are
+glad to get away from them?”
+
+Miss Janie smiled.  When she smiled, you felt you would do much to see
+her smile again.
+
+“But why not keep it up at your house, in the paddock,” she suggested,
+“and have the milk brought down?  There is an excellent cowshed, and it
+is only a mile away.”
+
+It struck me there was sense in this idea.  I had not thought of that.  I
+asked St. Leonard what I owed him for the cow.  He asked Miss Janie, and
+she said sixteen pounds.  I had been warned that in doing business with
+farmers it would be necessary always to bargain; but there was that about
+Miss Janie’s tone telling me that when she said sixteen pounds she meant
+sixteen pounds.  I began to see a brighter side to Hubert St. Leonard’s
+career as a farmer.
+
+“Very well,” I said; “we will regard the cow as settled.”
+
+I made a note: “Cow, sixteen pounds.  Have the cowshed got ready, and buy
+one of those big cans on wheels.”
+
+“You don’t happen to want milk?” I put it to Miss Janie.  “Susie seems to
+be good for about five gallons a day.  I’m afraid if we drink it all
+ourselves we’ll get too fat.”
+
+“At twopence halfpenny a quart, delivered at the house, as much as you
+like,” replied Miss Janie.
+
+I made a note of that also.  “Happen to know a useful boy?” I asked Miss
+Janie.
+
+“What about young Hopkins,” suggested her father.
+
+“The only male thing on this farm—with the exception of yourself, of
+course, father dear—that has got any sense,” said Miss Janie.  “He can’t
+have Hopkins.”
+
+“The only fault I have to find with Hopkins,” said St. Leonard, “is that
+he talks too much.”
+
+“Personally,” I said, “I should prefer a country lad.  I have come down
+here to be in the country.  With Hopkins around, I don’t somehow feel it
+is the country.  I might imagine it a garden city: that is as near as
+Hopkins would allow me to get.  I should like myself something more
+suggestive of rural simplicity.”
+
+“I think I know the sort of thing you mean,” smiled Miss Janie.  “Are you
+fairly good-tempered?”
+
+“I can generally,” I answered, “confine myself to sarcasm.  It pleases
+me, and as far as I have been able to notice, does neither harm nor good
+to anyone else.”
+
+“I’ll send you up a boy,” promised Miss Janie.
+
+I thanked her.  “And now we come to the donkey.”
+
+“Nathaniel,” explained Miss Janie, in answer to her father’s look of
+enquiry.  “We don’t really want it.”
+
+“Janie,” said Mr. St. Leonard in a tone of authority, “I insist upon
+being honest.”
+
+“I was going to be honest,” retorted Miss Janie, offended.
+
+“My daughter Veronica has given me to understand,” I said, “that if I buy
+her this donkey it will be, for her, the commencement of a new and better
+life.  I do not attach undue importance to the bargain, but one never
+knows.  The influences that make for reformation in human character are
+subtle and unexpected.  Anyhow, it doesn’t seem right to throw a chance
+away.  Added to which, it has occurred to me that a donkey might be
+useful in the garden.”
+
+“He has lived at my expense for upwards of two years,” replied St.
+Leonard.  “I cannot myself see any moral improvement he has brought into
+my family.  What effect he may have upon your children, I cannot say.
+But when you talk about his being useful in a garden—”
+
+“He draws a cart,” interrupted Miss Janie.
+
+“So long as someone walks beside him feeding him with carrots.  We tried
+fixing the carrot on a pole six inches beyond his reach.  That works all
+right in the picture: it starts this donkey kicking.”
+
+“You know yourself,” he continued with growing indignation, “the very
+last time your mother took him out she used up all her carrots getting
+there, with the result that he and the cart had to be hauled home behind
+a trolley.”
+
+We had reached the yard.  Nathaniel was standing with his head stretched
+out above the closed half of his stable door.  I noticed points of
+resemblance between him and Veronica herself: there was about him a like
+suggestion of resignation, of suffering virtue misunderstood; his eye had
+the same wistful, yearning expression with which Veronica will stand
+before the window gazing out upon the purple sunset, while people are
+calling to her from distant parts of the house to come and put her things
+away.  Miss Janie, bending over him, asked him to kiss her.  He complied,
+but with a gentle, reproachful look that seemed to say, “Why call me back
+again to earth?”
+
+It made me mad with him.  I was wrong in thinking Miss Janie not a pretty
+girl.  Hers is that type of beauty that escapes attention by its own
+perfection.  It is the eccentric, the discordant, that arrests the roving
+eye.  To harmony one has to attune oneself.
+
+“I believe,” said Miss Janie, as she drew away, wiping her cheek, “one
+could teach that donkey anything.”
+
+Apparently she regarded willingness to kiss her as indication of
+exceptional amiability.
+
+“Except to work,” commented her father.  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he
+said.  “If you take that donkey off my hands and promise not to send it
+back again, why, you can have it.”
+
+“For nothing?” demanded Janie woefully.
+
+“For nothing,” insisted her father.  “And if I have any argument, I’ll
+throw in the cart.”
+
+Miss Janie sighed and shrugged her shoulders.  It was arranged that
+Hopkins should deliver Nathaniel into my keeping some time the next day.
+Hopkins, it appeared, was the only person on the farm who could make the
+donkey go.
+
+“I don’t know what it is,” said St. Leonard, “but he has a way with him.”
+
+“And now,” I said, “there remains but Dick.”
+
+“The lad I saw yesterday?” suggested St. Leonard.  “Good-looking young
+fellow.”
+
+“He is a nice boy,” I said.  “I don’t really think I know a nicer boy
+than Dick; and clever, when you come to understand him.  There is only
+one fault I have to find with Dick: I don’t seem able to get him to
+work.”
+
+Miss Janie was smiling.  I asked her why.
+
+“I was thinking,” she answered, “how close the resemblance appears to be
+between him and Nathaniel.”
+
+It was true.  I had not thought of it.
+
+“The mistake,” said St. Leonard, “is with ourselves.  We assume every boy
+to have the soul of a professor, and every girl a genius for music.  We
+pack off our sons to cram themselves with Greek and Latin, and put our
+daughters down to strum at the piano.  Nine times out of ten it is sheer
+waste of time.  They sent me to Cambridge, and said I was lazy.  I was
+not lazy.  I was not intended by nature for a Senior Wrangler.  I did not
+see the good of being a Senior Wrangler.  Who wants a world of Senior
+Wranglers?  Then why start every young man trying?  I wanted to be a
+farmer.  If intelligent lads were taught farming as a business, farming
+would pay.  In the name of commonsense—”
+
+“I am inclined to agree with you,” I interrupted him.  “I would rather
+see Dick a good farmer than a third-rate barrister, anyhow.  He thinks he
+could take an interest in farming.  There are ten weeks before he need go
+back to Cambridge, sufficient time for the experiment.  Will you take him
+as a pupil?”
+
+St. Leonard grasped his head between his hands and held it firmly.  “If I
+consent,” he said, “I must insist on being honest.”
+
+I saw the woefulness again in Janie’s eyes.
+
+“I think,” I said, “it is my turn to be honest.  I have got the donkey
+for nothing; I insist on paying for Dick.  They are waiting for you in
+the rick-yard.  I will settle the terms with Miss Janie.”
+
+He regarded us both suspiciously.
+
+“I will promise to be honest,” laughed Miss Janie.
+
+“If it’s more than I’m worth,” he said, “I’ll send him home again.  My
+theory is—”
+
+He stumbled over a pig which, according to the time-table, ought not to
+have been there.  They went off hurriedly together, the pig leading, both
+screaming.
+
+Miss Janie said she would show me the short cut across the fields; we
+could talk as we went.  We walked in silence for awhile.
+
+“You must not think,” she said, “I like being the one to do all the
+haggling.  I feel a little sore about it very often.  But somebody, of
+course, must do it; and as for father, poor dear—”
+
+I looked at her.  Her’s is the beauty to which a touch of sadness adds a
+charm.
+
+“How old are you?” I asked her.
+
+“Twenty,” she answered, “next birthday.”
+
+“I judged you to be older,” I said.
+
+“Most people do,” she answered.
+
+“My daughter Robina,” I said, “is just the same age—according to years;
+and Dick is twenty-one.  I hope you will be friends with them.  They have
+got sense, both of them.  It comes out every now and again and surprises
+you.  Veronica, I think, is nine.  I am not sure how Veronica is going to
+turn out.  Sometimes things happen that make us think she has a beautiful
+character, and then for quite long periods she seems to lose it
+altogether.  The Little Mother—I don’t know why we always call her Little
+Mother—will not join us till things are more ship-shape.  She does not
+like to be thought an invalid, and if we have her about anywhere near
+work that has to be done, and are not always watching her, she gets at it
+and tires herself.”
+
+“I am glad we are going to be neighbours,” said Miss Janie.  “There are
+ten of us altogether.  Father, I am sure, you will like; clever men
+always like father.  Mother’s day is Friday.  As a rule it is the only
+day no one ever calls.”  She laughed.  The cloud had vanished.  “They
+come on other days and find us all in our old clothes.  On Friday
+afternoon we sit in state and nobody comes near us, and we have to eat
+the cakes ourselves.  It makes her so cross.  You will try and remember
+Fridays, won’t you?”
+
+I made a note of it then and there.
+
+“I am the eldest,” she continued, “as I think father told you.  Harry and
+Jack came next; but Jack is in Canada and Harry died, so there is
+somewhat of a gap between me and the rest.  Bertie is twelve and Ted
+eleven; they are home just now for the holidays.  Sally is eight, and
+then there come the twins.  People don’t half believe the tales that are
+told about twins, but I am sure there is no need to exaggerate.  They are
+only six, but they have a sense of humour you would hardly credit.  One
+is a boy, and the other a girl.  They are always changing clothes, and we
+are never quite sure which is which.  Wilfrid gets sent to bed because
+Winnie has not practised her scales, and Winnie is given syrup of squills
+because Wilfried has been eating green gooseberries.  Last spring Winnie
+had the measles.  When the doctor came on the fifth day he was as pleased
+as punch; he said it was the quickest cure he had ever known, and that
+really there was no reason why she might not get up.  We had our
+suspicions, and they were right.  Winnie was hiding in the cupboard,
+wrapped up in a blanket.  They don’t seem to mind what trouble they get
+into, provided it isn’t their own.  The only safe plan, unless you happen
+to catch them red-handed, is to divide the punishment between them, and
+leave them to settle accounts between themselves afterwards.  Algy is
+four; till last year he was always called the baby.  Now, of course,
+there is no excuse; but the name still clings to him in spite of his
+indignant protestations.  Father called upstairs to him the other day:
+‘Baby, bring me down my gaiters.’  He walked straight up to the cradle
+and woke up the baby.  ‘Get up,’ I heard him say—I was just outside the
+door—‘and take your father down his gaiters.  Don’t you hear him calling
+you?’  He is a droll little fellow.  Father took him to Oxford last
+Saturday.  He is small for his age.  The ticket-collector, quite
+contented, threw him a glance, and merely as a matter of form asked if he
+was under three.  ‘No,’ he shouted before father could reply; ‘I ’sists
+on being honest.  I’se four.’  It is father’s pet phrase.”
+
+“What view do you take of the exchange,” I asked her, “from stockbroking
+with its larger income to farming with its smaller?”
+
+“Perhaps it was selfish,” she answered, “but I am afraid I rather
+encouraged father.  It seems to me mean, making your living out of work
+that does no good to anyone.  I hate the bargaining, but the farming
+itself I love.  Of course, it means having only one evening dress a year
+and making that myself.  But even when I had a lot I always preferred
+wearing the one that I thought suited me the best.  As for the children,
+they are as healthy as young savages, and everything they want to make
+them happy is just outside the door.  The boys won’t go to college; but
+seeing they will have to earn their own living, that, perhaps, is just as
+well.  It is mother, poor dear, that worries so.”  She laughed again.
+“Her favourite walk is to the workhouse.  She came back quite excited the
+other day because she had heard the Guardians intend to try the
+experiment of building separate houses for old married couples.  She is
+convinced she and father are going to end their days there.”
+
+“You, as the business partner,” I asked her, “are hopeful that the farm
+will pay?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” she answered, “it will pay all right—it does pay, for the
+matter of that.  We live on it and live comfortably.  But, of course, I
+can see mother’s point of view, with seven young children to bring up.
+And it is not only that.”  She stopped herself abruptly.  “Oh, well,” she
+continued with a laugh, “you have got to know us.  Father is trying.  He
+loves experiments, and a woman hates experiments.  Last year it was bare
+feet.  I daresay it is healthier.  But children who have been about in
+bare feet all the morning—well, it isn’t pleasant when they sit down to
+lunch; I don’t care what you say.  You can’t be always washing.  He is so
+unpractical.  He was quite angry with mother and myself because we
+wouldn’t.  And a man in bare feet looks so ridiculous.  This summer it is
+short hair and no hats; and Sally had such pretty hair.  Next year it
+will be sabots or turbans—something or other suggesting the idea that
+we’ve lately escaped from a fair.  On Mondays and Thursdays we talk
+French.  We have got a French nurse; and those are the only days in the
+week on which she doesn’t understand a word that’s said to her.  We can
+none of us understand father, and that makes him furious.  He won’t say
+it in English; he makes a note of it, meaning to tell us on Tuesday or
+Friday, and then, of course, he forgets, and wonders why we haven’t done
+it.  He’s the dearest fellow alive.  When I think of him as a big boy,
+then he is charming, and if he really were only a big boy there are times
+when I would shake him and feel better for it.”
+
+She laughed again.  I wanted her to go on talking, because her laugh was
+so delightful.  But we had reached the road, and she said she must go
+back: there were so many things she had to do.
+
+“We have not settled about Dick,” I reminded her.
+
+“Mother took rather a liking to him,” she murmured.
+
+“If Dick could make a living,” I said, “by getting people to like him, I
+should not be so anxious about his future—lazy young devil!”
+
+“He has promised to work hard if you let him take up farming,” said Miss
+Janie.
+
+“He has been talking to you?” I said.
+
+She admitted it.
+
+“He will begin well,” I said.  “I know him.  In a month he will have
+tired of it, and be clamouring to do something else.”
+
+“I shall be very disappointed in him if he does,” she said.
+
+“I will tell him that,” I said, “it may help.  People don’t like other
+people to be disappointed in them.”
+
+“I would rather you didn’t,” she said.  “You could say that father will
+be disappointed in him.  Father formed rather a good opinion of him, I
+know.”
+
+“I will tell him,” I suggested, “that we shall all be disappointed in
+him.”
+
+She agreed to that, and we parted.  I remembered, when she was gone, that
+after all we had not settled terms.
+
+Dick overtook me a little way from home.
+
+“I have settled your business,” I told him.
+
+“It’s awfully good of you,” said Dick.
+
+“Mind,” I continued, “it’s on the understanding that you throw yourself
+into the thing and work hard.  If you don’t, I shall be disappointed in
+you, I tell you so frankly.”
+
+“That’s all right, governor,” he answered cheerfully.  “Don’t you worry.”
+
+“Mr. St. Leonard will also be disappointed in you, Dick,” I informed him.
+“He has formed a very high opinion of you.  Don’t give him cause to
+change it.”
+
+“I’ll get on all right with him,” answered Dick.  “Jolly old duffer,
+ain’t he?”
+
+“Miss Janie will also be disappointed in you,” I added.
+
+“Did she say that?” he asked.
+
+“She mentioned it casually,” I explained: “though now I come to think of
+it she asked me not to say so.  What she wanted me to impress upon you
+was that her father would be disappointed in you.”
+
+Dick walked beside me in silence for awhile.
+
+“Sorry I’ve been a worry to you, dad,” he said at last
+
+“Glad to hear you say so,” I replied.
+
+“I’m going to turn over a new leaf, dad,” he said.  “I’m going to work
+hard.”
+
+“About time,” I said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+WE had cold bacon for lunch that day.  There was not much of it.  I took
+it to be the bacon we had not eaten for breakfast.  But on a clean dish
+with parsley it looked rather neat.  It did not suggest, however, a lunch
+for four people, two of whom had been out all the morning in the open
+air.  There was some excuse for Dick.
+
+“I never heard before,” said Dick, “of cold fried bacon as a _hors
+d’œuvre_.”
+
+“It is not a _hors d’œuvre_,” explained Robina.  “It is all there is for
+lunch.”  She spoke in the quiet, passionless voice of one who has done
+with all human emotion.  She added that she should not be requiring any
+herself, she having lunched already.
+
+Veronica, conveying by her tone and bearing the impression of something
+midway between a perfect lady and a Christian martyr, observed that she
+also had lunched.
+
+“Wish I had,” growled Dick.
+
+I gave him a warning kick.  I could see he was on the way to getting
+himself into trouble.  As I explained to him afterwards, a woman is most
+dangerous when at her meekest.  A man, when he feels his temper rising,
+takes every opportunity of letting it escape.  Trouble at such times he
+welcomes.  A broken boot-lace, or a shirt without a button, is to him
+then as water in the desert.  An only collar-stud that will disappear as
+if by magic from between his thumb and finger and vanish apparently into
+thin air is a piece of good fortune sent on these occasions only to those
+whom the gods love.  By the time he has waddled on his hands and knees
+twice round the room, broken the boot-jack raking with it underneath the
+wardrobe, been bumped and slapped and kicked by every piece of furniture
+that the room contains, and ended up by stepping on that stud and
+treading it flat, he has not a bitter or an angry thought left in him.
+All that remains of him is sweet and peaceful.  He fastens his collar
+with a safety-pin, humming an old song the while.
+
+Failing the gifts of Providence, the children—if in health—can generally
+be depended upon to afford him an opening.  Sooner or later one or
+another of them will do something that no child, when he was a boy, would
+have dared—or dreamed of daring—to even so much as think of doing.  The
+child, conveying by expression that the world, it is glad to say, is
+slowly but steadily growing in sense, and pity it is that old-fashioned
+folks can’t bustle up and keep abreast of it, points out that firstly it
+has not done this thing, that for various reasons—a few only of which
+need be dwelt upon—it is impossible it could have done this thing; that
+secondly it has been expressly requested to do this thing, that wishful
+always to give satisfaction, it has—at sacrifice of all its own
+ideas—gone out of its way to do this thing; that thirdly it can’t help
+doing this thing, strive against fate as it will.
+
+He says he does not want to hear what the child has got to say on the
+subject—nor on any other subject, neither then nor at any other time.  He
+says there’s going to be a new departure in this house, and that things
+all round are going to be very different.  He suddenly remembers every
+rule and regulation he has made during the past ten years for the
+guidance of everybody, and that everybody, himself included, has
+forgotten.  He tries to talk about them all at once, in haste lest he
+should forget them again.  By the time he has succeeded in getting
+himself, if nobody else, to understand himself, the children are swarming
+round his knees extracting from him promises that in his sober moments he
+will be sorry that he made.
+
+I knew a woman—a wise and good woman she was—who when she noticed that
+her husband’s temper was causing him annoyance, took pains to help him to
+get rid of it.  To relieve his sufferings I have known her search the
+house for a last month’s morning paper and, ironing it smooth, lay it
+warm and neatly folded on his breakfast plate.
+
+“One thing in this world to be thankful for, at all events, and that is
+that we don’t live in Ditchley-in-the-Marsh,” he would growl ten minutes
+later from the other side of it.
+
+“Sounds a bit damp,” the good woman would reply.
+
+“Damp!” he would grunt, “who minds a bit of damp!  Good for you.  Makes
+us Englishmen what we are.  Being murdered in one’s bed about once a week
+is what I should object to.”
+
+“Do they do much of that sort of thing down there?” the good woman would
+enquire.
+
+“Seems to be the chief industry of the place.  Do you mean to say you
+don’t remember that old maiden lady being murdered by her own gardener
+and buried in the fowl-run?  You women! you take no interest in public
+affairs.”
+
+“I do remember something about it, now you mention it, dear,” the good
+woman would confess.  “Always seems such an innocent type of man, a
+gardener.”
+
+“Seems to be a special breed of them at Ditchley-in-the-Marsh,” he
+answers.  “Here again last Monday,” he continues, reading with growing
+interest.  “Almost the same case—even to the pruning knife.  Yes, hanged
+if he doesn’t!—buries her in the fowl-run.  This is most extraordinary.”
+
+“It must be the imitative instinct asserting itself,” suggests the good
+woman.  “As you, dear, have so often pointed out, one crime makes
+another.”
+
+“I have always said so,” he agrees; “it has always been a theory of
+mine.”
+
+He folds the paper over.  “Dull dogs, these political chaps!” he says.
+“Here’s the Duke of Devonshire, speaking last night at Hackney, begins by
+telling a funny story he says he has just heard about a parrot.  Why,
+it’s the same story somebody told a month ago; I remember reading it.
+Yes—upon my soul—word for word, I’d swear to it.  Shows you the sort of
+men we’re governed by.”
+
+“You can’t expect everyone, dear, to possess your repertoire,” the good
+woman remarks.
+
+“Needn’t say he’s just heard it that afternoon, anyhow,” responds the
+good man.
+
+He turns to another column.  “What the devil!  Am I going off my head?”
+He pounces on the eldest boy.  “When was the Oxford and Cambridge
+Boat-race?” he fiercely demands.
+
+“The Oxford and Cambridge Boat-race!” repeats the astonished youth.
+“Why, it’s over.  You took us all to see it, last month.  The Saturday
+before—”
+
+The conversation for the next ten minutes he conducts himself, unaided.
+At the end he is tired, maybe a trifle hoarse.  But all his bad temper is
+gone.  His sorrow is there was not sufficient of it.  He could have done
+with more.
+
+Woman knows nothing of simple mechanics.  A woman thinks you can get rid
+of steam by boxing it up and sitting on the safety-valve.
+
+“Feeling as I do this morning, that I’d like to wring everybody’s neck
+for them,” the average woman argues to herself; “my proper course—I see
+it clearly—is to creep about the house, asking of everyone that has the
+time to spare to trample on me.”
+
+She coaxes you to tell her of her faults.  When you have finished she
+asks for more—reminds you of one or two you had missed out.  She wonders
+why it is that she is always wrong.  There must be a reason for it; if
+only she could discover it.  She wonders how it is that people can put up
+with her—thinks it so good of them.
+
+At last, of course, the explosion happens.  The awkward thing is that
+neither she herself nor anyone else knows when it is coming.  A husband
+cornered me one evening in the club.  It evidently did him good to talk.
+He told me that, finding his wife that morning in one of her rare
+listening moods, he had seized the opportunity to mention one or two
+matters in connection with the house he would like to have altered; that
+was, if she had no objection.  She had—quite pleasantly—reminded him the
+house was his, that he was master there.  She added that any wish of his
+of course was law to her.
+
+He was a young and inexperienced husband; it seemed to him a hopeful
+opening.  He spoke of quite a lot of things—things about which he felt
+that he was right and she was wrong.  She went and fetched a quire of
+paper, and borrowed his pencil and wrote them down.
+
+Later on, going through his letters in the study, he found an unexpected
+cheque; and ran upstairs and asked her if she would not like to come out
+with him and get herself a new hat.
+
+“I could have understood it,” he moaned, “if she had dropped on me while
+I was—well, I suppose, you might say lecturing her.  She had listened to
+it like a lamb—hadn’t opened her mouth except to say ‘yes, dear,’ or ‘no,
+dear.’  Then, when I only asked her if she’d like a new hat, she goes
+suddenly raving mad.  I never saw a woman go so mad.”
+
+I doubt if there be anything in nature quite as unexpected as a woman’s
+temper, unless it be tumbling into a hole.  I told all this to Dick.  I
+have told it him before.  One of these days he will know it.
+
+“You are right to be angry with me,” Robina replied meekly; “there is no
+excuse for me.  The whole thing is the result of my own folly.”
+
+Her pathetic humility should have appealed to him.  He can be
+sympathetic, when he isn’t hungry.  Just then he happened to be hungry.
+
+“I left you making a pie,” he said.  “It looked to me a fair-sized pie.
+There was a duck on the table, with a cauliflower and potatoes; Veronica
+was up to her elbows in peas.  It made me hungry merely passing through
+the kitchen.  I wouldn’t have anything to eat in the town for fear of
+spoiling my appetite.  Where is it all?  You don’t mean to say that you
+and Veronica have eaten the whole blessed lot!”
+
+There is one thing—she admits it herself—that exhausts Veronica’s
+patience: it is unjust suspicion.
+
+“Do I look as if I’d eaten anything for hours and hours?” Veronica
+demanded.  “You can feel my waistband if you don’t believe me.”
+
+“You said just now you had had your lunch,” Dick argued.
+
+“I know I did,” Veronica admitted.  “One minute you are told that it is
+wicked to tell lies; the next—”
+
+“Veronica!” Robina interrupted threateningly.
+
+“It’s easy for you,” retorted Veronica.  “You are not a growing child.
+You don’t feel it.”
+
+“The least you can do,” said Robina, “is to keep silence.”
+
+“What’s the good,” said Veronica—not without reason.  “You’ll tell them
+when I’ve gone to bed, and can’t put in a word for myself.  Everything is
+always my fault.  I wish sometimes that I was dead.”
+
+“That I were dead,” I corrected her.  “The verb ‘to wish,’ implying
+uncertainty, should always be followed by the conditional mood.”
+
+“You ought,” said Robina, “to be thankful to Providence that you’re not
+dead.”
+
+“People are sorry when you’re dead,” said Veronica.
+
+“I suppose there’s some bread-and-cheese in the house,” suggested Dick.
+
+“The baker, for some reason or another, has not called this morning,”
+Robina answered sweetly.  “Neither unfortunately has the grocer.
+Everything there is to eat in the house you see upon the table.”
+
+“Accidents will happen,” I said.  “The philosopher—as our friend St.
+Leonard would tell us—only smiles.”
+
+“I could smile,” said Dick, “if it were his lunch.”
+
+“Cultivate,” I said, “a sense of humour.  From a humorous point of view
+this lunch is rather good.”
+
+“Did you have anything to eat at the St. Leonards’?” he asked.
+
+“Just a glass or so of beer and a sandwich or two,” I admitted.  “They
+brought it out to us while we were talking in the yard.  To tell the
+truth, I was feeling rather peckish.”
+
+Dick made no answer, but continued to chew bacon-rind.  Nothing I could
+say seemed to cheer him.  I thought I would try religion.
+
+“A dinner of herbs—the sentiment applies equally to lunch—and contentment
+therewith is better,” I said, “than a stalled ox.”
+
+“Don’t talk about oxen,” he interrupted fretfully.  “I feel I could just
+eat one—a plump one.”
+
+There is a man I know.  I confess he irritates me.  His argument is that
+you should always rise from a meal feeling hungry.  As I once explained
+to him, you cannot rise from a meal feeling hungry without sitting down
+to a meal feeling hungry; which means, of course, that you are always
+hungry.  He agreed with me.  He said that was the idea—always ready.
+
+“Most people,” he said, “rise from a meal feeling no more interest in
+their food.  That was a mental attitude injurious to digestion.  Keep it
+always interested; that was the proper way to treat it.”
+
+“By ‘it’ you mean . . . ?” I said.
+
+“Of course,” he answered; “I’m talking about it.”
+
+“Now I myself;” he explained—“I rise from breakfast feeling eager for my
+lunch.  I get up from my lunch looking forward to my dinner.  I go to bed
+just ready for my breakfast.”
+
+Cheerful expectancy, he said, was a wonderful aid to digestion.  “I call
+myself;” he said, “a cheerful feeder.”
+
+“You don’t seem to me,” I said, “to be anything else.  You talk like a
+tadpole.  Haven’t you any other interest in life?  What about home, and
+patriotism, and Shakespeare—all those sort of things?  Why not give it a
+square meal, and silence it for an hour or two; leave yourself free to
+think of something else.”
+
+“How can you think of anything,” he argued, “when your stomach’s out of
+order?”
+
+“How can you think of anything,” I argued, “when it takes you all your
+time to keep it in order?  You are not a man; you are a nurse to your own
+stomach.”  We were growing excited, both of us, forgetting our natural
+refinement.  “You don’t get even your one afternoon a week.  You are
+healthy enough, I admit it.  So are the convicts at Portland.  They never
+suffer from indigestion.  I knew a doctor once who prescribed for a
+patient two years’ penal servitude as the only thing likely to do him
+permanent good.  Your stomach won’t let you smoke.  It won’t let you
+drink—not when you are thirsty.  It allows you a glass of Apenta water at
+times when you don’t want it, assuming there could ever be a time when
+you did want it.  You are deprived of your natural victuals, and made to
+live upon prepared food, as though you were some sort of a prize chicken.
+You are sent to bed at eleven, and dressed in hygienic clothing that
+makes no pretence to fit you.  Talk of being hen-pecked!  Why, the
+mildest husband living would run away or drown himself, rather than
+remain tied for the rest of his existence to your stomach.”
+
+“It is easy to sneer,” he said.
+
+“I am not sneering,” I said; “I am sympathising with you.”
+
+He said he did not want any sympathy.  He said if only I would give up
+over-eating and drinking myself, it would surprise me how bright and
+intelligent I should become.
+
+I thought this man might be of use to us on the present occasion.
+Accordingly I spoke of him and of his theory.  Dick seemed impressed.
+
+“Nice sort of man?” he asked.
+
+“An earnest man,” I replied.  “He practises what he preaches, and whether
+because, or in spite of it, the fact remains that a chirpier soul I am
+sure does not exist.”
+
+“Married?” demanded Dick.
+
+“A single man,” I answered.  “In all things an idealist.  He has told me
+he will never marry until he can find his ideal woman.”
+
+“What about Robina here!” suggested Dick.  “Seem to have been made for
+one another.”
+
+Robina smiled.  It was a wan, pathetic smile.
+
+“Even he,” thought Robina, “would want his beans cooked to time, and to
+feel that a reasonable supply of nuts was always in the house.  We
+incompetent women never ought to marry.”
+
+We had finished the bacon.  Dick said he would take a stroll into the
+town.  Robina suggested he might take Veronica with him, that perhaps a
+bun and a glass of milk would do the child no harm.
+
+Veronica for a wonder seemed to know where all her things were.  Before
+Dick had filled his pipe she was ready dressed and waiting for him.
+Robina said she would give them a list of things they might bring back
+with them.  She also asked Dick to get together a plumber, a carpenter, a
+bricklayer, a glazier, and a civil engineer, and to see to it that they
+started off at once.  She thought that among them they might be able to
+do all that was temporarily necessary, but the great thing was that the
+work should be commenced without delay.
+
+“Why, what on earth’s the matter, old girl?” asked Dick.  “Have you had
+an accident?”
+
+Then it was that Robina exploded.  I had been wondering when it would
+happen.  To Dick’s astonishment it happened then.
+
+Yes, she answered, there had been an accident.  Did he suppose that seven
+scrimpy scraps of bacon was her notion of a lunch between four hungry
+persons?  Did he, judging from himself, imagine that our family yielded
+only lunatics?  Was it kind—was it courteous to his parents, to the
+mother he pretended to love, to the father whose grey hairs he was by his
+general behaviour bringing down in sorrow to the grave—to assume without
+further enquiry that their eldest daughter was an imbecile?  (My hair,
+by-the-bye, is not grey.  There may be a suggestion of greyness here and
+there, the natural result of deep thinking.  To describe it in the lump
+as grey is to show lack of observation.  And at forty-eight—or a trifle
+over—one is not going down into the grave, not straight down.  Robina
+when excited uses exaggerated language.  I did not, however, interrupt
+her; she meant well.  Added to which, interrupting Robina, when—to use
+her own expression—she is tired of being a worm, is like trying to stop a
+cyclone with an umbrella.)  Had his attention been less concentrated on
+the guzzling of cold bacon (he had only had four mouthfuls, poor
+fellow)—had he noticed the sweet patient child starving before his very
+eyes (this referred to Veronica)—his poor elder sister, worn out with
+work and worry, pining for nourishment herself, it might have occurred to
+even his intelligence that there had been an accident.  The selfishness,
+the egotism of men it was that staggered, overwhelmed Robina, when she
+came to think of it.
+
+Robina paused.  Not for want of material, I judged, so much as want of
+breath.  Veronica performed a useful service by seizing the moment to
+express a hope that it was not early-closing day.  Robina felt a
+conviction that it was: it would be just like Dick to stand there
+dawdling in a corner till it was too late to do anything.
+
+“I have been trying to get out of this corner for the last five minutes,”
+explained Dick, with that angelic smile of his that I confess is
+irritating.  “If you have done talking, and will give me an opening, I
+will go.”
+
+Robina told him that she had done talking.  She gave him her reasons for
+having done talking.  If talking to him would be of any use she would
+often have felt it her duty to talk to him, not only with regard to his
+stupidity and selfishness and general aggravatingness, but with reference
+to his character as a whole.  Her excuse for not talking to him was the
+crushing conviction of the hopelessness of ever effecting any improvement
+in him.  Were it otherwise—
+
+“Seriously speaking,” said Dick, now escaped from his corner, “something,
+I take it, has gone wrong with the stove, and you want a sort of general
+smith.”
+
+He opened the kitchen door and looked in.
+
+“Great Scott!” he said.  “What was it—an earthquake?”
+
+I looked in over his shoulder.
+
+“But it could not have been an earthquake,” I said.  “We should have felt
+it.”
+
+“It is not an earthquake,” explained Robina.  “It is your youngest
+daughter’s notion of making herself useful.”
+
+Robina spoke severely.  I felt for the moment as if I had done it all
+myself.  I had an uncle who used to talk like that.  “Your aunt,” he
+would say, regarding me with a reproachful eye, “your aunt can be, when
+she likes, the most trying woman to live with I have ever known.”  It
+would depress me for days.  I would wonder whether I ought to speak to
+her about it, or whether I should be doing only harm.
+
+“But how did she do it?” I demanded.  “It is impossible that a mere
+child—where is the child?”
+
+The parlour contained but Robina.  I hurried to the door; Dick was
+already half across the field.  Veronica I could not see.
+
+“We are making haste,” Dick shouted back, “in case it is early-closing
+day.”
+
+“I want Veronica!” I shouted.
+
+“What?” shouted Dick.
+
+“Veronica!” I shouted with my hands to my mouth.
+
+“Yes!” shouted Dick.  “She’s on ahead.”
+
+It was useless screaming any more.  He was now climbing the stile.
+
+“They always take each other’s part, those two,” sighed Robina.
+
+“Yes, and you are just as bad,” I told her; “if he doesn’t, you do.  And
+then if it’s you they take your part.  And you take his part.  And he
+takes both your parts.  And between you all I am just getting tired of
+bringing any of you up.”  (Which is the truth.)  “How did this thing
+happen?”
+
+“I had got everything finished,” answered Robina.  “The duck was in the
+oven with the pie; the peas and potatoes were boiling nicely.  I was
+feeling hot, and I thought I could trust Veronica to watch the things for
+awhile.  She promised not to play King Alfred.”
+
+“What’s that?” I asked.
+
+“You know,” said Robina—“King Alfred and the cakes.  I left her one
+afternoon last year when we were on the houseboat to watch some buns.
+When I came back she was sitting in front of the fire, wrapped up in the
+table-cloth, with Dick’s banjo on her knees and a cardboard crown upon
+her head.  The buns were all burnt to a cinder.  As I told her, if I had
+known what she wanted to be up to I could have given her some extra bits
+of dough to make believe with.  But oh, no! if you please, that would not
+have suited her at all.  It was their being real buns, and my being real
+mad, that was the best part of the game.  She is an uncanny child.”
+
+“What was the game this time?” I asked.
+
+“I don’t think it was intended for a game—not at first,” answered Robina.
+“I went into the wood to pick some flowers for the table.  I was on my
+way back, still at some distance from the house, when I heard quite a
+loud report.  I took it for a gun, and wondered what anyone would be
+shooting in July.  It must be rabbits, I thought.  Rabbits never seem to
+have any time at all to themselves, poor things.  And in consequence I
+did not hurry myself.  It must have been about twenty minutes later when
+I came in sight of the house.  Veronica was in the garden deep in
+confabulation with an awful-looking boy, dressed in nothing but rags.
+His face and hands were almost black.  You never saw such an object.
+They both seemed very excited.  Veronica came to meet me; and with a face
+as serious as mine is now, stood there and told me the most barefaced
+pack of lies you ever heard.  She said that a few minutes after I had
+gone, robbers had come out of the wood—she talked about them as though
+there had been hundreds—and had with the most awful threats demanded to
+be admitted into the house.  Why they had not lifted the latch and walked
+in, she did not explain.  It appeared this cottage was their secret
+rendezvous, where all their treasure lies hidden.  Veronica would not let
+them in, but shouted for help: and immediately this awful-looking boy, to
+whom she introduced me as ‘Sir Robert’ something or another, had appeared
+upon the scene; and then there had followed—well, I have not the patience
+to tell you the whole of the rigmarole they had concocted.  The upshot of
+it was that the robbers, defeated in their attempt to get into the house,
+had fired a secret mine, which had exploded in the kitchen.  If I did not
+believe them I could go into the kitchen and see for myself.  Say what I
+would, that is the story they both stuck to.  It was not till I had
+talked to Veronica for a quarter of an hour, and had told her that you
+would most certainly communicate with the police, and that she would have
+to convince a judge and jury of the truth of her story, that I got any
+sense at all out of her.”
+
+“What was the sense you did get out of her?” I asked.
+
+“Well, I am not sure even now that it is the truth,” said Robina—“the
+child does not seem to possess a proper conscience.  What she will grow
+up like, if something does not happen to change her, it is awful to
+think.”
+
+“I don’t want to appear a hustler,” I said, “and maybe I am mistaken in
+the actual time, but it feels to me like hours since I asked you how the
+catastrophe really occurred.”
+
+“I am telling you,” explained Robina, hurt.  “She was in the kitchen
+yesterday when I mentioned to Harry’s mother, who had looked in to help
+me wash up, that the kitchen chimney smoked: and then she said—”
+
+“Who said?” I asked.
+
+“Why, she did,” answered Robina, “Harry’s mother.  She said that very
+often a pennyworth of gunpowder—”
+
+“Now at last we have begun,” I said.  “From this point I may be able to
+help you, and we will get on.  At the word ‘gunpowder’ Veronica pricked
+up her ears.  The thing by its very nature would appeal to Veronica’s
+sympathies.  She went to bed dreaming of gunpowder.  Left in solitude
+before the kitchen fire, other maidens might have seen pictured in the
+glowing coals, princes, carriages, and balls.  Veronica saw visions of
+gunpowder.  Who knows?—perhaps even she one day will have gunpowder of
+her own!  She looks up from her reverie: a fairy godmamma in the disguise
+of a small boy—it was a small boy, was it not?”
+
+“Rather a nice little boy, he gave me the idea of having been,
+originally,” answered Robina; “the child, I should say, of well-to-do
+parents.  He was dressed in a little Lord Fauntleroy suit—or rather, he
+had been.”
+
+“Did Veronica know how he was—anything about him?” I asked.
+
+“Nothing that I could get out of her,” replied Robina; “you know her
+way—how she chums on with anybody and everybody.  As I told her, if she
+had been attending to her duties instead of staring out of the window,
+she would not have seen him.  He happened to be crossing the field just
+at the time.”
+
+“A boy born to ill-luck, evidently,” I observed.  “To Veronica of course
+he seemed like the answer to a prayer.  A boy would surely know where
+gunpowder could be culled.”
+
+“They must have got a pound of it from somewhere,” said Robina, “judging
+from the result.”
+
+“Any notion where they got it from?” I asked.
+
+“No,” explained Robina.  “All Veronica can say is that he told her he
+knew where he could get some, and was gone about ten minutes.  Of course
+they must have stolen it—even that did not seem to trouble her.”
+
+“It came to her as a gift from the gods, Robina,” I explained.  “I
+remember how I myself used to feel about these things, at ten.  To have
+enquired further would have seemed to her impious.  How was it they were
+not both killed?”
+
+“Providence,” was Robina’s suggestion: it seemed to be the only one
+possible.  “They lifted off one of the saucepans and just dropped the
+thing in—fortunately wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, which gave them
+both time to get out of the house.  At least Veronica got clear off.  For
+a change it was not she who fell over the mat, it was the boy.”
+
+I looked again into the kitchen; then I returned and put my hands on
+Robina’s shoulders.  “It is a most amusing incident—as it has turned
+out,” I said.
+
+“It might have turned out rather seriously,” thought Robina.
+
+“It might,” I agreed: “she might be lying upstairs.”
+
+“She is a wicked, heartless child,” said Robina; “she ought to be
+punished.”
+
+I lent Robina my handkerchief; she never has one of her own.
+
+“She is going to be punished,” I said; “I will think of something.”
+
+“And so ought I,” said Robina; “it was my fault, leaving her, knowing
+what she’s like.  I might have murdered her.  She doesn’t care.  She’s
+stuffing herself with cakes at this very moment.”
+
+“They will probably give her indigestion,” I said.  “I hope they do.”
+
+“Why didn’t you have better children?” sobbed Robina; “we are none of us
+any good to you.”
+
+“You are not the children I wanted, I confess,” I answered.
+
+“That’s a nice kind thing to say!” retorted Robina indignantly.
+
+“I wanted such charming children,” I explained—“my idea of charming
+children: the children I had imagined for myself.  Even as babies you
+disappointed me.”
+
+Robina looked astonished.
+
+“You, Robina, were the most disappointing,” I complained.  “Dick was a
+boy.  One does not calculate upon boy angels; and by the time Veronica
+arrived I had got more used to things.  But I was so excited when you
+came.  The Little Mother and I would steal at night into the nursery.
+‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ the Little Mother would whisper, ‘to think it all
+lies hidden there: the little tiresome child, the sweetheart they will
+one day take away from us, the wife, the mother?’  ‘I am glad it is a
+girl,’ I would whisper; ‘I shall be able to watch her grow into
+womanhood.  Most of the girls one comes across in books strike one as not
+perhaps quite true to life.  It will give me such an advantage having a
+girl of my own.  I shall keep a note-book, with a lock and key, devoted
+to her.’”
+
+“Did you?” asked Robina.
+
+“I put it away,” I answered; “there were but a few pages written on.  It
+came to me quite early in your life that you were not going to be the
+model heroine.  I was looking for the picture baby, the clean, thoughtful
+baby, with its magical, mystical smile.  I wrote poetry about you,
+Robina, but you would slobber and howl.  Your little nose was always
+having to be wiped, and somehow the poetry did not seem to fit you.  You
+were at your best when you were asleep, but you would not even sleep when
+it was expected of you.  I think, Robina, that the fellows who draw the
+pictures for the comic journals of the man in his night-shirt with the
+squalling baby in his arms must all be single men.  The married man sees
+only sadness in the design.  It is not the mere discomfort.  If the
+little creature were ill or in pain we should not think of that.  It is
+the reflection that we, who meant so well, have brought into the world
+just an ordinary fretful human creature with a nasty temper of its own:
+that is the tragedy, Robina.  And then you grew into a little girl.  I
+wanted the soulful little girl with the fathomless eyes, who would steal
+to me at twilight and question me concerning life’s conundrums.
+
+“But I used to ask you questions,” grumbled Robina, “and you would tell
+me not to be silly.”
+
+“Don’t you understand, Robina?” I answered.  “I am not blaming you, I am
+blaming myself.  We are like children who plant seeds in a garden, and
+then are angry with the flowers because they are not what we expected.
+You were a dear little girl; I see that now, looking back.  But not the
+little girl I had in my mind.  So I missed you, thinking of the little
+girl you were not.  We do that all our lives, Robina.  We are always
+looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling
+underfoot, the blossoms round about us.  It was the same with Dick.  I
+wanted a naughty boy.  Well, Dick was naughty, no one can say that he was
+not.  But it was not my naughtiness.  I was prepared for his robbing
+orchards.  I rather hoped he would rob orchards.  All the high-spirited
+boys in books rob orchards, and become great men.  But there were not any
+orchards handy.  We happened to be living in Chelsea at the time he ought
+to have been robbing orchards: that, of course, was my fault.  I did not
+think of that.  He stole a bicycle that a lady had left outside the
+tea-room in Battersea Park, he and another boy, the son of a common
+barber, who shaved people for three-halfpence.  I am a Republican in
+theory, but it grieved me that a son of mine could be drawn to such
+companionship.  They contrived to keep it for a week—till the police
+found it one night, artfully hidden behind bushes.  Logically, I do not
+see why stealing apples should be noble and stealing bicycles should be
+mean, but it struck me that way at the time.  It was not the particular
+steal I had been hoping for.
+
+“I wanted him wild; the hero of the book was ever in his college days a
+wild young man.  Well, he was wild.  It cost me three hundred pounds to
+keep that breach of promise case out of Court; I had never imagined a
+breach of promise case.  Then he got drunk, and bonneted a bishop in
+mistake for a ‘bull-dog.’  I didn’t mind the bishop.  That by itself
+would have been wholesome fun.  But to think that a son of mine should
+have been drunk!”
+
+“He has never been drunk since,” pleaded Robina.  “He had only three
+glasses of champagne and a liqueur: it was the liqueur—he was not used to
+it.  He got into the wrong set.  You cannot in college belong to the wild
+set without getting drunk occasionally.”
+
+“Perhaps not,” I admitted.  “In the book the wild young man drinks
+without ever getting drunk.  Maybe there is a difference between life and
+the book.  In the book you enjoy your fun, but contrive somehow to escape
+the licking: in life the licking is the only thing sure.  It was the wild
+young man of fiction I was looking for, who, a fortnight before the
+exam., ties a wet towel round his head, drinks strong tea, and passes
+easily with honours.  He tried the wet towel, he tells me.  It never
+would keep in its place.  Added to which it gave him neuralgia; while the
+strong tea gave him indigestion.  I used to picture myself the proud,
+indulgent father lecturing him for his wildness—turning away at some
+point in the middle of my tirade to hide a smile.  There was never any
+smile to hide.  I feel that he has behaved disgracefully, wasting his
+time and my money.”
+
+“He is going to turn over a new leaf;” said Robina: “I am sure he will
+make an excellent farmer.”
+
+“I did not want a farmer,” I explained; “I wanted a Prime Minister.
+Children, Robina, are very disappointing.  Veronica is all wrong.  I like
+a mischievous child.  I like reading stories of mischievous children:
+they amuse me.  But not the child who puts a pound of gunpowder into a
+red-hot fire, and escapes with her life by a miracle.”
+
+“And yet, I daresay,” suggested Robina, “that if one put it into a book—I
+mean that if you put it into a book, it would read amusingly.”
+
+“Likely enough,” I agreed.  “Other people’s troubles can always be
+amusing.  As it is, I shall be in a state of anxiety for the next six
+months, wondering, every moment that she is out of my sight, what new
+devilment she is up to.  The Little Mother will be worried out of her
+life, unless we can keep it from her.”
+
+“Children will be children,” murmured Robina, meaning to be comforting.
+
+“That is what I am complaining of, Robina.  We are always hoping that
+ours won’t be.  She is full of faults, Veronica, and they are not always
+nice faults.  She is lazy—lazy is not the word for it.”
+
+“She is lazy,” Robina was compelled to admit.
+
+“There are other faults she might have had and welcome,” I pointed out;
+“faults I could have taken an interest in and liked her all the better
+for.  You children are so obstinate.  You will choose your own faults.
+Veronica is not truthful always.  I wanted a family of little George
+Washingtons, who could not tell a lie.  Veronica can.  To get herself out
+of trouble—and provided there is any hope of anybody believing her—she
+does.”
+
+“We all of us used to when we were young,” Robina maintained; “Dick used
+to, I used to.  It is a common fault with children.”
+
+“I know it is,” I answered.  “I did not want a child with common faults.
+I wanted something all my own.  I wanted you, Robina, to be my ideal
+daughter.  I had a girl in my mind that I am sure would have been
+charming.  You are not a bit like her.  I don’t say she was perfect, she
+had her failings, but they were such delightful failings—much better than
+yours, Robina.  She had a temper—a woman without a temper is insipid; but
+it was that kind of temper that made you love her all the more.  Yours
+doesn’t, Robina.  I wish you had not been in such a hurry, and had left
+me to arrange your temper for you.  We should all of us have preferred
+mine.  It had all the attractions of temper without the drawbacks of the
+ordinary temper.”
+
+“Couldn’t use it up, I suppose, for yourself, Pa?” suggested Robina.
+
+“It was a lady’s temper,” I explained.  “Besides,” as I asked her, “what
+is wrong with the one I have?”
+
+“Nothing,” answered Robina.  Yet her tone conveyed doubt.  “It seems to
+me sometimes that an older temper would suit you better, that was all.”
+
+“You have hinted as much before, Robina,” I remarked, “not only with
+reference to my temper, but with reference to things generally.  One
+would think that you were dissatisfied with me because I am too young.”
+
+“Not in years perhaps,” replied Robina, “but—well, you know what I mean.
+One wants one’s father to be always great and dignified.”
+
+“We cannot change our ego,” I explained to her.  “Some daughters would
+appreciate a father youthful enough in temperament to sympathise with and
+to indulge them.  The solemn old fogey you have in your mind would have
+brought you up very differently.  Let me tell you that, my girl.  You
+would not have liked him, if you had had him.”
+
+“Perhaps not,” Robina agreed.  “You are awfully good in some ways.”
+
+“What we have got to do in this world, Robina,” I said, “is to take
+people as they are, and make the best of them.  We cannot expect
+everybody to be just as we would have them, and maybe we should not like
+them any better if they were.  Don’t bother yourself about how much nicer
+they might be; think how nice they are.”
+
+Robina said she would try.  I have hopes of making Robina a sensible
+woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+DICK and Veronica returned laden with parcels.  They explained that
+“Daddy Slee,” as it appeared he was generally called, a local builder of
+renown, was following in his pony-cart, and was kindly bringing the
+bulkier things with him.
+
+“I tried to hustle him,” said Dick, “but coming up after he had washed
+himself and had his tea seemed to be his idea of hustling.  He has got
+the reputation of being an honest old Johnny, slow but sure; the others,
+they tell me, are slower.  I thought you might care, later on, to talk to
+him about the house.”
+
+Veronica took off her things and put them away, each one in its proper
+place.  She said, if no one wanted her, she would read a chapter of “The
+Vicar of Wakefield,” and retired upstairs.  Robina and I had an egg with
+our tea; Mr. Slee arrived as we had finished, and I took him straight
+into the kitchen.  He was a large man, with a dreamy expression and a
+habit of sighing.  He sighed when he saw our kitchen.
+
+“There’s four days’ work for three men here,” he said, “and you’ll want a
+new stove.  Lord! what trouble children can be!”
+
+Robina agreed with him.
+
+“Meanwhile,” she demanded, “how am I to cook?”
+
+“Myself, missie,” sighed Mr. Slee, “I don’t see how you are going to
+cook.”
+
+“We’ll all have to tramp home again,” thought Dick.
+
+“And tell Little Mother the reason, and frighten her out of her life!”
+retorted Robina indignantly.
+
+Robina had other ideas.  Mr. Slee departed, promising that work should be
+commenced at seven o’clock on Monday morning.  Robina, the door closed,
+began to talk.
+
+“Let Pa have a sandwich,” said Robina, “and catch the six-fifteen.”
+
+“We might all have a sandwich,” suggested Dick; “I could do with one
+myself.”
+
+“Pa can explain,” said Robina, “that he has been called back to town on
+business.  That will account for everything, and Little Mother will not
+be alarmed.”
+
+“She won’t believe that business has brought him back at nine o’clock on
+a Saturday night,” argued Dick; “you think that Little Mother hasn’t any
+sense.  She’ll see there’s something up, and ask a hundred questions.
+You know what she is.”
+
+“Pa,” said Robina, “will have time while in the train to think out
+something plausible; that’s where Pa is clever.  With Pa off my hands I
+sha’n’t mind.  We three can live on cold ham and things like that.  By
+Thursday we will be all right, and then he can come down again.”
+
+I pointed out to Robina, kindly but firmly, the utter absurdity of her
+idea.  How could I leave them, three helpless children, with no one to
+look after them?  What would the Little Mother say?  What might not
+Veronica be up to in my absence?  There were other things to be
+considered.  The donkey might arrive at any moment—no responsible person
+there to receive him—to see to it that his simple wants would be provided
+for.  I should have to interview Mr. St. Leonard again to fix up final
+details as regarded Dick.  Who was going to look after the cow, about to
+be separated from us?  Young Bute would be down again with plans.  Who
+was going to take him over the house, explain things to him intelligibly?
+The new boy might turn up—this simple son of the soil Miss Janie had
+promised to dig out and send along.  He would talk Berkshire.  Who would
+there be to understand him—to reply to him in dialect?  What was the use
+of her being impetuous and talking nonsense?
+
+She went on cutting sandwiches.  She said they were not helpless
+children.  She said if she and Dick at forty-two hadn’t grit enough to
+run a six-roomed cottage it was time they learned.
+
+“Who’s forty-two?” I demanded.
+
+“We are,” explained Robina, “Dick and I—between us.  We shall be
+forty-two next birthday.  Nearly your own age.”
+
+“Veronica,” she continued, “for the next few days won’t be a child at
+all.  She knows nothing of the happy medium.  She is either herself or
+she goes to the opposite extreme, and tries to be an angel.  Till about
+the end of the week it will be like living with a vision.  As for the
+donkey, we’ll try and make him feel as much at home as if you were here.”
+
+“I don’t mean to be rude, Pa,” Robina explained, “but from the way you
+put it you evidently regard yourself as the only one among us capable of
+interesting him.  I take it he won’t mind for a night or two sharing the
+shed with the cow.  If he looks shocked at the suggestion, Dick can knock
+up a partition.  I’d rather for the present, till you come down again,
+the cow stopped where she was.  She helps to wake me in the morning.  You
+may reckon you have settled everything as far as Dick is concerned.  If
+you talk to St. Leonard again for an hour it will be about the future of
+the Yellow Races or the possibility of life in Jupiter.  If you mention
+terms he will be insulted, and if he won’t let you then you will be
+insulted, and the whole thing will be off.  Let me talk to Janie.  We’ve
+both of us got sense.  As for Mr. Bute, I know all your ideas about the
+house, and I sha’n’t listen to any of his silly arguments.  What that
+young man wants is someone to tell him what he’s got to do, and then let
+there be an end of it.  And the sooner that handy boy turns up the
+better.  I don’t mind what he talks.  All I want him to do is to clean
+knives and fetch water and chop wood.  At the worst I’ll get that home to
+him by pantomime.  For conversation he can wait till you come down.”
+
+That is the gist of what she said.  It didn’t run exactly as I have put
+it down.  There were points at which I interrupted, but Robina never
+listens; she just talks on, and at the end she assumes that, as a matter
+of course, you have come round to her point of view, and persuading her
+that you haven’t means beginning the whole thing over again.
+
+She said I hadn’t time to talk, and that she would write and tell me
+everything.  Dick also said he would write and tell me everything; and
+that if I felt moved to send them down a hamper—the sort of thing that,
+left to themselves, Fortnum & Mason would put together for a good-class
+picnic, say, for six persons—I might rely upon it that nothing would be
+wasted.
+
+Veronica, by my desire, walked with me to the end of the lane.  I talked
+to her very seriously.  Her difficulty was that she had not been blown
+up.  Had she been blown up, then she would have known herself she had
+done wrong.  In the book it is the disobedient child that is tossed by
+the bull.  The child that has been sent with the little basket to visit
+the sick aunt may be right in the bull’s way.  That is a bit of bad luck
+for the bull.  The poor bull is compelled to waste valuable time working
+round carefully, so as not to upset the basket.  If the wicked child had
+sense (which in the book does not happen), it would, while the bull was
+dodging to get past the good child, seize the opportunity to move itself
+quickly.  The wicked child never looks round, but pegs along steadily;
+and when the bull arrives it is sure to be in the most convenient
+position for receiving moral lessons.  The good child, whatever its
+weight, crosses the ice in safety.  The bad child may turn the scale at
+two stone lighter; the ice will have none of him.  “Don’t you talk to me
+about relative pressure to the square inch,” says the indignant ice.
+“You were unkind to your little baby brother the week before last: in you
+go.”  Veronica’s argument, temperately and courteously expressed, I
+admit, came practically to this:
+
+“I may have acted without sufficient knowledge to guide me.  My education
+has not, perhaps, on the whole, been ordered wisely.  Subjects that I
+feel will never be of the slightest interest or consequence to me have
+been insisted upon with almost tiresome reiteration.  Matters that should
+be useful and helpful to me—gunpowder, to take but one example—I have
+been left in ignorance concerning.  About all that I say nothing; people
+have done their best according to their lights, no doubt.  When, however,
+we come to purity of motives, singleness of intention, then, I maintain,
+I am above reproach.  The proof of this is that Providence has bestowed
+upon me the seal of its approval: I was not blown up.  Had my conduct
+been open to censure—as in certain quarters has been suggested—should I
+be walking besides you now, undamaged—not a hair turned, as the saying
+is?  No.  Discriminating Fate—that is, if any reliance at all is to be
+placed on literature for the young—would have made it her business that
+at least I was included in the _débris_.  Instead, what do we notice!—a
+shattered chimney, a ruined stove, broken windows, a wreckage of
+household utensils; I, alone of all things, miraculously preserved.  I do
+not wish to press the point offensively, but really it would almost seem
+that it must be you three—you, my dear parent, upon whom will fall the
+bill for repairs; Dick, apt to attach too much importance, maybe, to his
+victuals, and who for the next few days will be compelled to exist
+chiefly upon tinned goods; Robina, by nature of a worrying disposition,
+certain till things get straight again to be next door to off her
+head—who must, by reason of conduct into which I do not enquire, have
+merited chastisement at the hands of Providence.  The moral lesson would
+certainly appear to be between you three.  I—it grows clear to me—have
+been throughout but the innocent instrument.”
+
+Admit the premise that to be virtuous is to escape whipping, the argument
+is logical.  I felt that left uncombated it might lead us into yet
+further trouble.
+
+“Veronica,” I said, “the time has come to reveal to you a secret:
+literature is not always a safe guide to life.”
+
+“You mean—” said Veronica.
+
+“I mean,” I said, “that the writer of books is, generally speaking, an
+exceptionally moral man.  That is what leads him astray: he is too good.
+This world does not come up to his ideas.  It is not the world as he
+would have made it himself.  To satisfy his craving for morality he sets
+to work to make a world of his own.  It is not this world.  It is not a
+bit like this world.  In a world as it should be, Veronica, you would
+undoubtedly have been blown up—if not altogether, at all events
+partially.  What you have to do, Veronica, is, with a full heart, to
+praise Heaven that this is not a perfect world.  If it were I doubt very
+much, Veronica, your being here.  That you are here happy and thriving
+proves that all is not as it should be.  The bull of this world, feeling
+he wants to toss somebody, does not sit upon himself, so to speak, till
+the wicked child comes by.  He takes the first child that turns up, and
+thanks God for it.  A hundred to one it is the best child for miles
+around.  The bull does not care.  He spoils that pattern child.  He’d
+spoil a bishop, feeling as he does that morning.  Your little friend in
+the velvet suit who did get himself blown up, at all events as regards
+the suit—  Which of you was it that thought of that gunpowder, you or
+he?”
+
+Veronica claimed that the inspiration had been hers.
+
+“I can easily believe it.  And was he anxious to steal the gunpowder and
+put it on the fire, or did he have to be persuaded?”
+
+Veronica admitted that in the qualities of a first-class hero he was
+wanting.  Not till it had been suggested to him that he must at heart be
+a cowardy cowardy custard had he been moved to take a hand in the
+enterprise.
+
+“A lad, clearly,” I continued, “that left to himself would be a comfort
+to his friends.  And the story of the robbers—your invention or his?”
+
+Veronica was generously of opinion that he might have thought of it had
+he not been chiefly concerned at the moment with the idea of getting home
+to his mother.  As it was, the clothing with romance of incidents
+otherwise bald and uninteresting had fallen upon her.
+
+“The good child of the story.  The fact stands out at every point.  His
+one failing an amiable weakness.  Do you not see it for yourself;
+Veronica?  In the book, you, not he, would have tumbled over the mat.  In
+this wicked world it is the wicked who prosper.  He, the innocent, the
+virtuous, is torn into rags.  You, the villain of the story, escape.”
+
+“I see,” said Veronica; “then whenever nothing happens to you that means
+that you’re a wrong ’un.”
+
+“I don’t go so far as to say that, Veronica.  And I wish you wouldn’t use
+slang.  Dick is a man, and a man—well, never mind about a man.  You,
+Veronica, must never forget that you’re a lady.  Justice must not be
+looked for in this world.  Sometimes the wicked get what they deserve.
+More often they don’t.  There seems to be no rule.  Follow the dictates
+of your conscience, Veronica, and blow—I mean be indifferent to the
+consequences.  Sometimes you’ll come out all right, and sometimes you
+won’t.  But the beautiful sensation will always be with you: I did right.
+Things have turned out unfortunately: but that’s not my fault.  Nobody
+can blame me.”
+
+“But they do,” said Veronica, “they blame you just as if you’d meant to
+go and do it.”
+
+“It does not matter, Veronica,” I pointed out, “the opinion of the world.
+The good man disregards it.”
+
+“But they send you to bed,” persisted Veronica.
+
+“Let them,” I said.  “What is bed so long as the voice of the inward
+Monitor consoles us with the reflection—”
+
+“But it don’t,” interrupted Veronica; “it makes you feel all the madder.
+It does really.”
+
+“It oughtn’t to,” I told her.
+
+“Then why does it?” argued Veronica.  “Why don’t it do what it ought to?”
+
+The trouble about arguing with children is that they will argue too.
+
+“Life’s a difficult problem, Veronica,” I allowed.  “Things are not as
+they ought to be, I admit it.  But one must not despair.  Something’s got
+to be done.”
+
+“It’s jolly hard on some of us,” said Veronica.  “Strive as you may, you
+can’t please everyone.  And if you just as much as stand up for yourself,
+oh, crikey!”
+
+“The duty of the grown-up person, Veronica,” I said, “is to bring up the
+child in the way that it should go.  It isn’t easy work, and occasionally
+irritability may creep in.”
+
+“There’s such a lot of ’em at it,” grumbled Veronica.  “There are times,
+between ’em all, when you don’t know whether you’re standing on your head
+or your heels.”
+
+“They mean well, Veronica,” I said.  “When I was a little boy I used to
+think just as you do.  But now—”
+
+“Did you ever get into rows?” interrupted Veronica.
+
+“Did I ever?—was never out of them, so far as I can recollect.  If it
+wasn’t one thing, then it was another.”
+
+“And didn’t it make you wild?” enquired Veronica, “when first of all
+they’d ask what you’d got to say and why you’d done it, and then, when
+you tried to explain things to them, wouldn’t listen to you?”
+
+“What used to irritate me most, Veronica,” I replied—“I can remember it
+so well—was when they talked steadily for half an hour themselves, and
+then, when I would attempt with one sentence to put them right about the
+thing, turn round and bully-rag me for being argumentative.”
+
+“If they would only listen,” agreed Veronica, “you might get them to
+grasp things.  But no, they talk and talk, till at the end they don’t
+know what they are talking about themselves, and then they pretend it’s
+your fault for having made them tired.”
+
+“I know,” I said, “they always end up like that.  ‘I am tired of talking
+to you,’ they say—as if we were not tired of listening to them!”
+
+“And then when you think,” said Veronica, “they say you oughtn’t to
+think.  And if you don’t think, and let it out by accident, then they say
+‘why don’t you think?’  It don’t seem as though we could do right.  It
+makes one almost despair.”
+
+“And it isn’t even as if they were always right themselves,” I pointed
+out to her.  “When they knock over a glass it is, ‘Who put that glass
+there?’  You’d think that somebody had put it there on purpose and made
+it invisible.  They are not expected to see a glass six inches in front
+of their nose, in the place where the glass ought to be.  The way they
+talk you’d suppose that a glass had no business on a table.  If I broke
+it, then it was always, ‘Clumsy little devil! ought to have his dinner in
+the nursery.’  If they mislay their things and can’t find them, it’s,
+‘Who’s been interfering with my things?  Who’s been in here rummaging
+about?’  Then when they find it they want to know indignantly who put it
+there.  If I could not find a thing, for the simple reason that somebody
+had taken it away and put it somewhere else, then wherever they had put
+it was the right place for it, and I was a little idiot for not knowing
+it.”
+
+“And of course you mustn’t say anything,” commented Veronica.  “Oh, no!
+If they do something silly and you just point it out to them, then there
+is always a reason for it that you wouldn’t understand.  Oh, yes!  And if
+you make just the slightest mistake, like what is natural to all of us,
+that is because you are wicked and unfeeling and don’t want to be
+anything else.”
+
+“I will tell you what we will do, Veronica,” I said; “we will write a
+book.  You shall help me.  And in it the children shall be the wise and
+good people who never make mistakes, and they shall boss the show—you
+know what I mean—look after the grown-up people and bring them up
+properly.  And everything the grown-up people do, or don’t do, will be
+wrong.”
+
+Veronica clapped her hands.  “No, will you really?” she said.  “Oh, do.”
+
+“I will really,” I answered.  “We will call it a moral tale for parents;
+and all the children will buy it and give it to their fathers and mothers
+and such-like folk for their birthdays, with writing on the title-page,
+‘From Johnny, or Jenny, to dear Papa, or to dear Aunty, with every good
+wish for his or her improvement!’”
+
+“Do you think they will read it?” doubted Veronica.
+
+“We will put in it something shocking,” I suggested, “and get some paper
+to denounce it as a disgrace to English literature.  And if that won’t do
+it we will say it is a translation from the Russian.  The children shall
+stop at home and arrange what to have for dinner, and the grown-up people
+shall be sent to school.  We will start them off each morning with a
+little satchel.  They shall be made to read ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ in the
+original German, with notes; and learn ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ by heart and
+explain the grammar.”
+
+“And go to bed early,” suggested Veronica.
+
+“We will have them all in bed by eight o’clock, Veronica, and they will
+go cheerfully, as if they liked it, or we will know the reason why.  We
+will make them say their prayers.  Between ourselves, Veronica, I don’t
+believe they always do.  And no reading in bed, and no final glass of
+whisky toddy, or any nonsense of that sort.  An Abernethy biscuit and
+perhaps if they are good a jujube, and then ‘Good night,’ and down with
+their head on the pillow.  And no calling out, and no pretending they
+have got a pain in their tummy and creeping downstairs in their
+night-shirts and clamouring for brandy.  We will be up to all their
+tricks.”
+
+“And they’ll have to take their medicine,” Veronica remembered.
+
+“The slightest suggestion of sulkiness, the first intimation that they
+are not enjoying themselves, will mean cod liver oil in a tablespoon,
+Veronica.”
+
+“And we will ask them why they never use their commonsense,” chirped
+Veronica.
+
+“That will be our trouble, Veronica; that they won’t have any sense of
+any sort—not what we shall deem sense.  But, nevertheless, we will be
+just.  We will always give them a reason why they have got to do
+everything they don’t want to do, and nothing that they want to do.  They
+won’t understand it and they won’t agree that it is a reason; but they
+will keep that to themselves, if they are wise.”
+
+“And of course they must not argue,” Veronica insisted.
+
+“If they answer back, Veronica, that will show they are cursed with an
+argumentative temperament which must be rooted out at any cost,” I
+agreed; “and if they don’t say anything, that will prove them possessed
+of a surly disposition which must be checked at once, before it develops
+into a vice.”
+
+“And whatever we do to them we will tell them it’s for their own good,”
+Veronica chortled.
+
+“Of course it will be for their own good,” I answered.  “That will be our
+chief pleasure—making them good and happy.  It won’t be their pleasure,
+but that will be owing to their ignorance.”
+
+“They will be grateful to us later on,” gurgled Veronica.
+
+“With that assurance we will comfort them from time to time,” I answered.
+“We will be good to them in all ways.  We will let them play games—not
+stupid games, golf and croquet, that do you no good and lead only to
+language and dispute—but bears and wolves and whales; educational sort of
+games that will aid them in acquiring knowledge of natural history.  We
+will show them how to play Pirates and Red Indians and Ogres—sensible
+play that will help them to develop their imaginative faculties.  That is
+why grown-up people are so dull; they are never made to think.  But now
+and then,” I continued, “we will let them play their own games, say on
+Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.  We will invite other grown-ups to
+come to tea with them, and let them flirt in the garden, or if wet make
+love in the dining-room, till nurse comes for them.  But we, of course,
+must choose their friends for them—nice, well-behaved ladies and
+gentlemen, the parents of respectable children; because left to
+themselves—well, you know what they are!  They would just as likely fall
+in love with quite undesirable people—men and women we could not think of
+having about the house.  We will select for them companions we feel sure
+will be the most suitable for them; and if they don’t like them—if Uncle
+William says he can’t bear the girl we have invited up to love him—that
+he positively hates her, we till tell him that it is only his wilful
+temper, and that he’s got to like her because she’s good for him; and
+don’t let us have any of his fretfulness.  And if Grandmamma pouts and
+says she won’t love old man Jones merely because he’s got a red nose, or
+a glass eye, or some silly reason of that sort, we will say to her: ‘All
+right, my lady, you will play with Mr. Jones and be nice to him, or you
+will spend the afternoon putting your room tidy; make up your mind.’  We
+will let them marry (on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons), and play at
+keeping house.  And if they quarrel we will shake them and take the
+babies away from them, and lock them up in drawers, and tell them they
+sha’n’t have them again till they are good.”
+
+“And the more they try to be good, the more it will turn out that they
+ain’t been good,” Veronica reflected.
+
+“Their goodness and their badness will depend upon us in more senses than
+one, Veronica,” I explained.  “When Consols are down, when the east wind
+has touched up our liver, they will be surprised how bad they are.”
+
+“And they mustn’t ever forget what they’ve ever been once told,” crowed
+Veronica.  “We mustn’t have to tell ’em the same thing over and over
+again, like we was talking to brick walls.”
+
+“And if we meant to tell them and forgot to tell them,” I added, “we will
+tell them that they ought not to want us to tell them a simple thing like
+that, as if they were mere babies.  We must remember all these points.”
+
+“And if they grumble we’ll tell them that’s ’cos they don’t know how
+happy they are.  And we’ll tell them how good we used to be when—I say,
+don’t you miss your train, or I shall get into a row.”
+
+“Great Scott!  I’d forgotten all about that train, Veronica,” I admitted.
+
+“Better run,” suggested Veronica.
+
+It sounded good advice.
+
+“Keep on thinking about that book,” shouted Veronica.
+
+“Make a note of things as they occur to you,” I shouted back.
+
+“What shall we call it?” Veronica screamed.
+
+“‘Why the Man in the Moon looks sat upon,’” I shrieked.
+
+When I turned again she was sitting on the top rail of the stile
+conducting an imaginary orchestra with one of her own shoes.  The
+six-fifteen was fortunately twenty minutes late.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I thought it best to tell Ethelbertha the truth; that things had gone
+wrong with the kitchen stove.
+
+“Let me know the worst,” she said.  “Is Veronica hurt?”
+
+“The worst,” I said, “is that I shall have to pay for a new range.  Why,
+when anything goes amiss, poor Veronica should be assumed as a matter of
+course to be in it, appears to me unjust.”
+
+“You are sure she’s all right?” persisted Ethelbertha.
+
+“Honest Injun—confound those children and their slang—I mean positively,”
+I answered.  The Little Mother looked relieved.
+
+I told her all the trouble we had had in connection with the cow.  Her
+sympathies were chiefly with the cow.  I told her I had hopes of Robina’s
+developing into a sensible woman.  We talked quite a deal about Robina.
+We agreed that between us we had accomplished something rather clever.
+
+“I must get back as soon as I can,” I said.  “I don’t want young Bute
+getting wrong ideas into his head.”
+
+“Who is young Bute?” she asked.
+
+“The architect,” I explained.
+
+“I thought he was an old man,” said Ethelbertha.
+
+“Old Spreight is old enough,” I said.  “Young Bute is one of his young
+men; but he understands his work, and seems intelligent.”
+
+“What’s he like?” she asked.
+
+“Personally, an exceedingly nice young fellow.  There’s a good deal of
+sense in him.  I like a boy who listens.”
+
+“Good-looking?” she asked.
+
+“Not objectionably so,” I replied.  “A pleasant face—particularly when he
+smiles.”
+
+“Is he married?” she asked.
+
+“Really, it did not occur to me to ask him,” I admitted.  “How curious
+you women are!  No, I don’t think so.  I should say not.”
+
+“Why don’t you think so?” she demanded.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know.  He doesn’t give you the idea of a married man.
+You’ll like him.  Seems so fond of his sister.”
+
+“Shall we be seeing much of him?” she asked.
+
+“A goodish deal,” I answered.  “I expect he will be going down on Monday.
+Very annoying, this stove business.”
+
+“What is the use of his being there without you?” Ethelbertha wanted to
+know.
+
+“Oh, he’ll potter round,” I suggested, “and take measurements.  Dick will
+be about to explain things to him.  Or, if he isn’t, there’s
+Robina—awkward thing is, Robina seems to have taken a dislike to him.”
+
+“Why has she taken a dislike to him?” asked Ethelbertha.
+
+“Oh, because he mistook the back of the house for the front, or the front
+of the house for the back,” I explained; “I forget which now.  Says it’s
+his smile that irritates her.  She owns herself there’s no real reason.”
+
+“When will you be going down again?” Ethelbertha asked.
+
+“On Thursday next,” I told her; “stove or no stove.”
+
+She said she would come with me.  She felt the change would do her good,
+and promised not to do anything when she got there.  And then I told her
+all that I had done for Dick.
+
+“The ordinary farmer,” I pointed out to her, “is so often a haphazard
+type of man with no ideas.  If successful, it is by reason of a natural
+instinct which cannot be taught.  St. Leonard has studied the theory of
+the thing.  From him Dick will learn all that can be learnt about
+farming.  The selection, I felt, demanded careful judgment.”
+
+“But will Dick stick to it?” Ethelbertha wondered.
+
+“There, again,” I pointed out to her, “the choice was one calling for
+exceptional foresight.  The old man—as a matter of fact, he isn’t old at
+all; can’t be very much older than myself; I don’t know why they all call
+him the old man—has formed a high opinion of Dick.  His daughter told me
+so, and I have taken care to let Dick know it.  The boy will not care to
+disappoint him.  Her mother—”
+
+“Whose mother?” interrupted Ethelbertha.
+
+“Janie’s mother, Mrs. St. Leonard,” I explained.  “She also has formed a
+good opinion of him.  The children like him.  Janie told me so.”
+
+“She seems to do a goodish deal of talking, this Miss Janie,” remarked
+Ethelbertha.
+
+“You will like her,” I said.  “She is a charming girl—so sensible, and
+good, and unselfish, and—”
+
+“Who told you all this about her?” interrupted Ethelbertha.
+
+“You can see it for yourself,” I answered.  “The mother appears to be a
+nonentity, and St. Leonard himself—well, he is not a business man.  It is
+Janie who manages everything—keeps everything going.”
+
+“What is she like?” asked Ethelbertha.
+
+“I am telling you,” I said.  “She is so practical, and yet at the same
+time—”
+
+“In appearance, I mean,” explained Ethelbertha.
+
+“How you women,” I said, “do worry about mere looks!  What does it
+matter?  If you want to know, it is that sort of face that grows upon
+you.  At first you do not notice how beautiful it is, but when you come
+to look into it—”
+
+“And has she also formed a high opinion of Dick?” interrupted
+Ethelbertha.
+
+“She will be disappointed in him,” I said, “if he does not work hard and
+stick to it.  They will all be disappointed in him.”
+
+“What’s it got to do with them?” demanded Ethelbertha.
+
+“I’m not thinking about them,” I said.  “What I look at is—”
+
+“I don’t like her,” said Ethelbertha.  “I don’t like any of them.”
+
+“But—”  She didn’t seem to be listening.
+
+“I know that class of man,” she said; “and the wife appears, if anything,
+to be worse.  As for the girl—”
+
+“When you come to know them—” I said.
+
+She said she didn’t want to know them.  She wanted to go down on Monday,
+early.
+
+I got her to see—it took some little time—the disadvantages of this.  We
+should only be adding to Robina’s troubles; and change of plan now would
+unsettle Dick’s mind.
+
+“He has promised to write me,” I said, “and tell me the result of his
+first day’s experience.  Let us wait and hear what he says.”
+
+She said that whatever could have possessed her to let me take those poor
+unfortunate children away from her, and muddle up everything without her,
+was a mystery to herself.  She hoped that, at least, I had done nothing
+irrevocable in the case of Veronica.
+
+“Veronica,” I said, “is really wishful, I think, to improve.  I have
+bought her a donkey.”
+
+“A what?” exclaimed Ethelbertha.
+
+“A donkey,” I repeated.  “The child took a fancy to it, and we all agreed
+it might help to steady her—give her a sense of responsibility.”
+
+“I somehow felt you hadn’t overlooked Veronica,” said Ethelbertha.
+
+I thought it best to change the conversation.  She seemed in a fretful
+mood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+ROBINA’S letter was dated Monday evening, and reached us Tuesday morning.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+“I hope you caught your train,” she wrote.  “Veronica did not get back
+till half-past six.  She informed me that you and she had found a good
+deal to talk about, and that ‘one thing had led to another.’  She is a
+quaint young imp, but I think your lecture must have done her good.  Her
+present attitude is that of gentle forbearance to all around her—not
+without its dignity.  She has not snorted once, and at times is really
+helpful.  I have given her an empty scribbling diary we found in your
+desk, and most of her spare time she remains shut up with it in the
+bedroom.  She tells me you and she are writing a book together.  I asked
+her what about.  She waved me aside with the assurance that I would know
+‘all in good time,’ and that it was going to do good.  I caught sight of
+just the title-page last night.  It was lying open on the dressing-table:
+‘Why the Man in the Moon looks sat upon.’  It sounds like a title of
+yours.  But I would not look further, though tempted.  She has drawn a
+picture underneath.  It is really not bad.  The old gentleman really does
+look sat upon, and intensely disgusted.
+
+“‘Sir Robert’—his name being Theodore, which doesn’t seem to suit
+him—turns out to be the only son of a widow, a Mrs. Foy, our next-door
+neighbour to the south.  We met her coming out of church on Sunday
+morning.  She was still crying.  Dick took Veronica on ahead, and I
+walked part of the way home with them.  Her grandfather, it appears, was
+killed many years ago by the bursting of a boiler; and she is haunted,
+poor lady, by the conviction that Theodore is the inheritor of an
+hereditary tendency to getting himself blown up.  She attaches no blame
+to us, seeing in Saturday’s catastrophe only the hand of the Family
+Curse.  I tried to comfort her with the idea that the Curse having spent
+itself upon a futile effort, nothing further need now be feared from it;
+but she persists in taking the gloomier view that in wrecking our
+kitchen, Theodore’s ‘Doom,’ as she calls it, was merely indulging in a
+sort of dress rehearsal; the finishing performance may be relied upon to
+follow.  It sounds ridiculous, but the poor woman was so desperately in
+earnest that when an unlucky urchin, coming out of a cottage we were
+passing, tripped on the doorstep and let fall a jug, we both screamed at
+the same time, and were equally surprised to find ‘Sir Robert’ still
+between us and all in one piece.  I thought it foolish to discuss all
+this before the child himself; but did not like to stop her.  As a
+result, he regards himself evidently as the chosen foe of Heaven, and is
+not, unnaturally, proud of himself.  She called here this (Monday)
+afternoon to leave cards; and, at her request, I showed her the kitchen
+and the mat over which he had stumbled.  She seemed surprised that the
+‘Doom’ had let slip so favourable a chance of accomplishing its business,
+and gathered from the fact added cause for anxiety.  Evidently something
+much more thorough is in store for Master Theodore.  It was only half a
+pound of gunpowder, she told me.  Doctor Smallboy’s gardener had bought
+it for the purpose of raising the stump of an old elm-tree, and had left
+it for a moment on the grass while he had returned to the house for more
+brown paper.  She seemed pleased with the gardener, who, as she said,
+might, if dishonestly inclined, have charged her for a pound.  I wanted
+to pay for—at all events—our share, but she would not take a penny.  Her
+late lamented grandfather she regards as the person responsible for the
+entire incident, and perhaps it may be as well not to disturb her view.
+Had I suggested it, I feel sure she would have seen the justice of her
+providing us with a new kitchen range.
+
+“Wildly exaggerated accounts of the affair are flying round the
+neighbourhood; and my chief fear is that Veronica may discover she is a
+local celebrity.  Your sudden disappearance is supposed to have been
+heavenward.  An old farm labourer who saw you pass on your way to the
+station speaks of you as ‘the ghost of the poor gentleman himself;’ and
+fragments of clothing found anywhere within a radius of two miles are
+being preserved, I am told, as specimens of your remains.  Boots would
+appear to have been your chief apparel.  Seven pairs have already been
+collected from the surrounding ditches.  Among the more public-spirited
+there is talk of using you to start a local museum.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+These first three paragraphs I did not read to Ethelbertha.  Fortunately
+they just filled the first sheet, which I took an opportunity of slipping
+into my pocket unobserved.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+“The new boy arrived on Sunday morning,” she continued.  “His name—if I
+have got it right—is William.  Anyhow, that is the nearest I can get to
+it.  His other name, if any, I must leave you to extract from him
+yourself.  It may be Berkshire that he talks, but it sounds more like
+barking.  Please excuse the pun; but I have just been talking to him for
+half an hour, trying to make him understand that I want him to go home,
+and maybe, as a result, I am feeling a little hysterical.  Anything more
+rural I cannot imagine.  But he is anxious to learn, and a fairly wide
+field is in front of him.  I caught him after our breakfast on Sunday
+calmly throwing everything left over onto the dust-heap.  I pointed out
+to him the wickedness of wasting nourishing food, and impressed upon him
+that the proper place for victuals was inside us.  He never answers.  He
+stands stock still, with his mouth as wide open as it will go—which is
+saying a good deal—and one trusts that one’s words are entering into him.
+All Sunday afternoon he was struggling valiantly against an almost
+supernatural sleepiness.  After tea he got worse, and I began to think he
+would be no use to me.  We none of us ate much supper; and Dick, who
+appears able to understand him, helped him to carry the things out.  I
+heard them talking, and then Dick came back and closed the door behind
+him.  ‘He wants to know,’ said Dick, ‘if he can leave the corned beef
+over till to-morrow.  Because, if he eats it all to-night, he doesn’t
+think he will be able to walk home.’
+
+“Veronica takes great interest in him.  She has evidently a motherly side
+to her character, for which we none of us have given her credit.  She
+says she is sure there is good in him.  She sits beside him while he
+chops wood, and tells him carefully selected stories, calculated, she
+argues, to develop his intelligence.  She is careful, moreover, not to
+hurt his feelings by any display of superiority.  ‘Of course, anyone
+leading a useful life, such as yours,’ I overheard her saying to him this
+morning, ‘don’t naturally get much time for reading.  I’ve nothing else
+to do, you see, ’cept to improve myself.’
+
+“The donkey arrived this afternoon while I was out—galloping, I am given
+to understand, with ’Opkins on his back.  There seems to be some secret
+between those two.  We have tried him with hay, and we have tried him
+with thistles; but he seems to prefer bread-and-butter.  I have not been
+able as yet to find out whether he takes tea or coffee in the morning.
+But he is an animal that evidently knows his own mind, and fortunately
+both are in the house.  We are putting him up for to-night with the cow,
+who greeted him at first with enthusiasm and wanted to adopt him, but has
+grown cold to him since on discovering that he is not a calf.  I have
+been trying to make friends with her, but she is so very unresponsive.
+She doesn’t seem to want anything but grass, and prefers to get that for
+herself.  She doesn’t seem to want to be happy ever again.
+
+“A funny thing happened in church.  I was forgetting to tell you.  The
+St. Leonards occupy two pews at the opposite end from the door.  They
+were all there when we arrived, with the exception of the old gentleman
+himself.  He came in just before the ‘Dearly Beloved,’ when everybody was
+standing up.  A running fire of suppressed titters followed him up the
+aisle, and some of the people laughed outright.  I could see no reason
+why.  He looked a dignified old gentleman in his grey hair and tightly
+buttoned frock coat, which gives him a somewhat military appearance.  But
+when he came level with our pew I understood.  Hurrying back from his
+morning round, and with no one there to superintend him, the dear old
+absent-minded thing had forgotten to change his breeches.  From a little
+above the knee upward he was a perfect Christian; but his legs were just
+those of a disreputable sinner.
+
+“‘What’s the joke?’ he whispered to me as he passed—I was in the corner
+seat.  ‘Have I missed it?’
+
+“We called round on them after lunch, and at once I was appealed to for
+my decision.
+
+“‘Now, here’s a plain sensible girl,’ exclaimed the old gentleman the
+moment I entered the room.’  (You will notice I put no comma after
+‘plain.’  I am taking it he did not intend one.  You can employ one
+adjective to qualify another, can’t you?)  ‘And I will put it to her,
+What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church in
+trousers or in breeches?’
+
+“‘I do not see,’ retorted Mrs. St. Leonard somewhat coldly, ‘that Miss
+Robina is in any better position than myself to speak with authority on
+the views of the Almighty’—which I felt was true.  ‘If it makes no
+difference to the Almighty, then why not, for my sake, trousers?’
+
+“‘The essential thing,’ he persisted, ‘is a contrite heart.’  He was
+getting very cross.
+
+“‘It may just as well be dressed respectably,’ was his wife’s opinion.
+He left the room, slamming the door.
+
+“I do like Janie the more and more I see of her.  I do hope she will let
+me get real chums with her.  She does me so much good.  (I read that bit
+twice over to Ethelbertha, pretending I had lost the place.)  I suppose
+it is having rather a silly mother and an unpractical father that has
+made her so capable.  If you and Little Mother had been proper sort of
+parents I might have been quite a decent sort of girl.  But it’s too late
+finding fault with you now.  I suppose I must put up with you.  She works
+so hard, and is so unselfish.  But she is not like some good people, who
+make you feel it is hopeless your trying to be good.  She gets cross and
+impatient; and then she laughs at herself, and gets right again that way.
+Poor Mrs. St. Leonard!  I cannot help feeling sorry for her.  She would
+have been so happy as the wife of a really respectable City man, who
+would have gone off every morning with a flower in his buttonhole and
+have worn a white waistcoat on Sundays.  I don’t believe what they say:
+that husbands and wives should be the opposite of one another.  Mr. St.
+Leonard ought to have married a brainy woman, who would have discussed
+philosophy with him, and have been just as happy drinking beer out of a
+tea-cup: you know the sort I mean.  If ever I marry it will be a
+short-tempered man who loves music and is a good dancer; and if I find
+out too late that he’s clever I’ll run away from him.
+
+“Dick has not yet come home—nearly eight o’clock.  Veronica is supposed
+to be in bed, but I can hear things falling.  Poor boy!  I expect he’ll
+be tired; but to-day is an exception.  Three hundred sheep have had to be
+brought all the way from Ilsley, and must be ‘herded’—I fancy it is
+called—before anybody can think of supper.  I saw to it that he had a
+good dinner.
+
+“And now to come to business.  Young Bute has been here all day, and has
+only just left.  He is coming down again on Friday—which, by the way,
+don’t forget is Mrs. St. Leonard’s ‘At Home’ day.  She hopes she may then
+have the pleasure of making your acquaintance, and thinks that possibly
+there may be present one or two people we may like to know.  From which I
+gather that half the neighbourhood has been specially invited to meet
+you.  So mind you bring a frock-coat; and if Little Mother can put her
+hand easily on my pink muslin with the spots—it is either in my wardrobe
+or else in the bottom drawer in Veronica’s room, if it isn’t in the
+cardboard box underneath mother’s bed—you might slip it into your bag.
+But whatever you do don’t crush it.  The sash I feel sure mother put away
+somewhere herself.  He sees no reason—I’m talking now about young
+Bute,—if you approve his plans, why work should not be commenced
+immediately.  Shall I write old Slee to meet you at the house on Friday?
+From all accounts I don’t think you’ll do better.  He is on the spot, and
+they say he is most reasonable.  But you have to get estimates, don’t
+you?  He suggests—Mr. Bute, I mean—throwing what used to be the dairy
+into the passage, which will make a hall big enough for anything.  We
+might even give a dance in it, he thinks.  But all this you will be able
+to discuss with him on Friday.  He has evidently taken a great deal of
+pains, and some of his suggestions sound sensible.  But of course he must
+fully understand that it is what we want, not what he thinks, that is
+important.  I told him you said I could have my room exactly as I liked
+it myself; and I have explained to him my ideas.  He seemed at first to
+be under the impression that I didn’t know what I was talking about, so I
+made it quite clear to him that I did, with the result that he has
+consented to carry out my instructions, on condition that I put them down
+in black and white—which I think just as well, as then there can be no
+excuse afterwards for argument.  I like him better than I did the first
+time.  About everything else he can be fairly amiable.  It is when he
+talks about ‘frontal elevations’ and ‘ground plans’ that he irritates me.
+Tell Little Mother that I’ll write her to-morrow.  Couldn’t she come down
+with you on Friday?  Everything will be ship-shape by then; and—”
+
+The remainder was of a nature more private.  She concluded with a
+postscript, which also I did not read to Ethelbertha.
+
+“Thought I had finished telling you everything, when quite a stylish
+rat-tat sounded on the door.  I placed an old straw hat of Dick’s in a
+prominent position, called loudly to an imaginary ‘John’ not to go
+without the letters, and then opened it.  He turned out to be the local
+reporter.  I need not have been alarmed.  He was much the more nervous of
+the two, and was so full of excuses that had I not come to his rescue I
+believe he would have gone away forgetting what he’d come for.  Nothing
+save an overwhelming sense of duty to the Public (with a capital P) could
+have induced him to inflict himself upon me.  Could I give him a few
+details which would enable him to set rumour right?  I immediately saw
+visions of headlines: ‘Domestic Tragedy!’  ‘Eminent Author blown up by
+his own Daughter!’  ‘Once Happy Home now a Mere Wreck!’  It seemed to me
+our only plan was to enlist this amiable young man upon our side; I hope
+I did not overdo it.  My idea was to convey the impression that one
+glance at him had convinced me he was the best and noblest of mankind;
+that I felt I could rely upon his wit and courage to save us from a
+notoriety that, so far as I was concerned, would sadden my whole life;
+and that if he did so eternal gratitude and admiration would be the least
+I could lay at his feet.  I can be nice when I try.  People have said so.
+We parted with only a pressure of the hand, and I hope he won’t get into
+trouble, but I see _The Berkshire Courier_ is going to be deprived of its
+prey.  Dick has just come in.  He promises to talk when he has finished
+eating.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Dick’s letter, for which Ethelbertha seemed to be strangely impatient,
+reached us on Wednesday morning.
+
+“If ever you want to find out, Dad, what hard work really means, you try
+farming,” wrote Dick; “and yet I believe you would like it.  Hasn’t some
+old Johnny somewhere described it as the poetry of the ploughshare?  Why
+did we ever take to bothering about anything else—shutting ourselves up
+in stuffy offices, worrying ourselves to death about a lot of rubbish
+that isn’t any good to anybody?  I wish I could put it properly, Dad; you
+would see just what I mean.  Why don’t we live in simply-built houses and
+get most everything we want out of the land: which we easily could?  You
+take a dozen poor devils away from walking behind the plough and put them
+down into coal-mines, and set them running about half-naked among a lot
+of roaring furnaces, and between them they turn out a machine that does
+the ploughing for them.  What is the sense of it?  Of course some things
+are useful.  I would like a motor-car, and railways and steamboats are
+all right; but it seems to me that half the fiddle-faddles we fancy we
+want we’d be just as well, if not better, without, and there would be all
+that time and energy to spare for the sort of things that everybody ought
+to have.  It’s everywhere just like it was at school.  They kept us so
+hard at it, studying Greek roots, we hadn’t time to learn English
+grammar.  Look at young Dennis Yewbury.  He’s got two thousand acres up
+in Scotland.  He could lead a jolly life turning the place into some real
+use.  Instead of which he lets it all run to waste for nothing but to
+breed a few hundred birds that wouldn’t keep a single family alive; while
+he works from morning till night at humbugging people in a beastly hole
+in the City, just to fill his house with a host of silly gim-cracks and
+dress up himself and his women-folk like peacocks.  Of course we would
+always want clever chaps like you to tell us stories; and doctors we
+couldn’t do without, though I guess if we were leading sensible lives
+we’d be able to get along with about half of them.  It seems to me that
+what we want is a comfortable home, enough to eat and drink, and a few
+fal-lal sort of things to make the girls look pretty; and that all the
+rest is rot.  We would all of us have time then to think and play a bit,
+and if we were all working fairly at something really useful and were
+contented with our own share, there’d be enough for everybody.
+
+“I suppose this is all nonsense, but I wish it wasn’t.  Anyway, it’s what
+I mean to do myself; and I’m awfully much obliged to you, Dad, for giving
+me this chance.  You’ve hit the right nail on the head this time.
+Farming was what I was meant for; I feel it.  I would have hated being a
+barrister, setting people by the ears and making my living out of other
+people’s troubles.  Being a farmer you feel that in doing good to
+yourself you are doing good all round.  Miss Janie agrees with all I say.
+I think she is one of the most sensible girls I have ever come across,
+and Robin likes her awfully.  So is the old man: he’s a brick.  I think
+he has taken a liking to me, and I know I have to him.  He’s the dearest
+old fellow imaginable.  The very turnips he seems to think of as though
+they were so many rows of little children.  And he makes you see the
+inside of things.  Take fields now, for instance.  I used to think a
+field was just a field.  You scraped it about and planted it with seeds,
+and everything else depended on the weather.  Why, Dad, it’s alive!
+There are good fields that want to get on—that are grateful for
+everything you do for them, and take a pride in themselves.  And there
+are brutes of fields that you feel you want to kick.  You can waste a
+hundred pounds’ worth of manure on them, and it only makes them more
+stupid than they were before.  One of our fields—a wizened-looking
+eleven-acre strip bordering the Fyfield road—he has christened Mrs.
+Gummidge: it seems to feel everything more than any other field.  From
+whatever point of the compass the wind blows that field gets the most
+harm from it.  You would think to look at it after a storm that there
+hadn’t been any rain in any other field—that that particular field must
+have got it all; while two days’ sunshine has the effect upon it that a
+six weeks’ drought would on any other field.  His theory (he must have a
+theory to account for everything; it comforts him.  He has just hit upon
+a theory that explains why twins are born with twice as much original sin
+as other children, and doesn’t seem to mind now what they do) is that
+each odd corner of the earth has gained a character of its own from the
+spirits of the countless dead men buried in its bosom.  ‘Robbers and
+thieves,’ he will say, kicking the sod of some field all stones and
+thistles; ‘silly fighting men who thought God built the world merely to
+give them the fun of knocking it about.  Look at them, the fools! stones
+and thistles—thistles and stones: that is their notion of a field.’  Or,
+leaning over the gate of some field of rich-smelling soil, he will
+stretch out his arms as though to caress it: ‘Brave lads!’ he will say;
+‘kindly honest fellows who loved the poor peasant folk.’  I fancy he has
+not got much sense of humour; or if he has, it is a humour he leaves you
+to find out for yourself.  One does not feel one wants to laugh,
+listening even to his most whimsical ideas; and anyhow it is a fact that
+of two fields quite close to one another, one will be worth ten pounds an
+acre and the other dear at half a crown, and there seems to be nothing to
+explain it.  We have a seven-acre patch just halfway up the hill.  He
+says he never passes it without taking off his hat to it.  Whatever you
+put in it does well; while other fields, try them with what you will, it
+is always the very thing they did not want.  You might fancy them
+fractious children, always crying for the other child’s bun.  There is
+really no reason for its being such a good field, except its own pluck.
+It faces the east, and the wood for half the day hides it from the sun;
+but it makes the best of everything, and even on the greyest day it seems
+to be smiling at you.  ‘Some happy-hearted Mother Thing—a singer of love
+songs the while she toiled,’ he will have it, must lie sleeping there.
+By-the-bye, what a jolly field Janie would make!  Don’t you think so,
+Dad?
+
+“What the dickens, Dad, have you done to Veronica?  She wanders about
+everywhere with an exercise book in her hand, and when you say anything
+to her, instead of answering you back, she sits plump down wherever she
+is and writes for all she’s worth.  She won’t say what she’s up to.  She
+says it’s a private matter between you and her, and that later on things
+are going to be seen in their true light.  I told her this morning what I
+thought of her for forgetting to feed the donkey.  I was prepared, of
+course, for a hundred explanations: First, that she had meant to feed the
+donkey; secondly, that it wasn’t her place to feed the donkey; thirdly,
+that the donkey would have been fed if circumstances over which she had
+no control had not arisen rendering it impossible for her to feed the
+donkey; fourthly, that the morning wasn’t the proper time to feed the
+donkey, and so on.  Instead of which, out she whips this ridiculous book
+and asks me if I would mind saying it over again.
+
+“I keep forgetting to ask Janie what it is he has been accustomed to.  We
+have tried him with thistles, and we’ve tried him with hay.  The thistles
+he scratches himself against; but for the hay he appears to have no use
+whatever.  Robin thinks his idea is to save us trouble.  We are not to
+get in anything especially for him—whatever we may happen to be having
+ourselves he will put up with.  Bread-and-butter cut thick, or a slice of
+cake with an apple seems to be his notion of a light lunch; and for drink
+he fancies tea out of a slop-basin, with two knobs of sugar and plenty of
+milk.  Robin says it’s waste of time taking his meals out to him.  She
+says she is going to train him to come in when he hears the gong.  We use
+the alarm clock at present for a gong.  I don’t know what I shall do when
+the cow goes away.  She wakes me every morning punctually at half-past
+four, but I’m in a blue funk that one of these days she will oversleep
+herself.  It is one of those clocks you read about.  You wrote something
+rather funny about one once yourself, but I always thought you had
+invented it.  I bought it because they said it was an extra loud one, and
+so it is.  The thing that’s wrong about it is that, do what you will, you
+can’t get it to go off before six o’clock in the morning.  I set it on
+Sunday evening for half-past four—we farmers do have to work, I can tell
+you.  But it’s worth it.  I had no idea that the world was so beautiful.
+There is a light you never see at any other time, and the whole air seems
+to be full of fluttering song.  You feel—but you must get up and come out
+with me, Dad.  I can’t describe it.  If it hadn’t been for the good old
+cow, Lord knows what time I’d have been up.  The clock went off at
+half-past four in the afternoon, just as they were sitting down to tea,
+and frightened them all out of their skins.  We have fiddled about with
+it all we know, but there’s no getting it to do anything between six p.m.
+and six am.  Anything you want of it in the daytime it is quite agreeable
+to.  But it seems to have fixed its own working hours, and isn’t going to
+be bustled out of its proper rest.  I got so mad with it myself I wanted
+to pitch it out of the window, but Robin thought we ought to keep it till
+you came, that perhaps you might be able to do something with it—writing
+something about it, she means.  I said I thought alarm clocks were pretty
+well played out by this time; but, as she says, there is always a new
+generation coming along to whom almost everything must be fresh.  Anyhow,
+the confounded thing cost seven and six, and seems to be no good for
+anything else.
+
+“Whatever was it that you really did say to Robin about her room?  Young
+Bute came round to me on Monday quite upset about it.  He says it is
+going to be all windows, and will look, when finished, like an incorrect
+copy of the Eddystone lighthouse.  He says there will be no place for the
+bed, and if there is to be a fireplace at all it will have to be in the
+cupboard, and that the only way, so far as he can see, of her getting in
+and out of it will be by a door through the bathroom.  She said that you
+said she could have it entirely to her own idea, and that he was just to
+carry out her instructions; but, as he points out, you can’t have a room
+in a house as if the rest of the house wasn’t there, even if it is your
+own room.  Nobody, it seems, will be able to have a bath without first
+talking it over with her, and arranging a time mutually convenient.  I
+told him I was sure you never meant him to do anything absurd; and that
+his best plan would be to go straight back to her, explain to her that
+she’d been talking like a silly goat—he could have put it politely, of
+course—and that he wasn’t going to pay any attention to her.  You might
+have thought I had suggested his walking into a den of lions and pulling
+all their tails.  I don’t know what Robin has done to him, but he seems
+quite frightened of her.  I had to promise that I would talk to her.
+He’d better have done it himself.  I only told her just what he said, and
+off she went in one of her tantrums.  You know her style: If she liked to
+live in a room where she could see to do her hair that was no business of
+his, and if he couldn’t design a plain, simple bedroom that wasn’t going
+to look ridiculous and make her the laughing-stock of all the
+neighbourhood, then the Royal Institute of British Architects must have
+strange notions of the sort of person entitled to go about the country
+building houses; that if he thought the proper place for a fire was in a
+cupboard, she didn’t; that his duty was to carry out the instructions of
+his employers, and if he imagined for a moment she was going to consent
+to remain shut up in her room till everybody in the house had finished
+bathing it would be better for us to secure the services of somebody
+possessed of a little commonsense; that next time she met him she would
+certainly tell him what she thought of him, also that she should
+certainly decline to hold any further communication with him again; that
+she doesn’t want a bedroom now of any sort—perhaps she may be permitted a
+shakedown in the pantry, or perhaps Veronica will allow her an occasional
+night’s rest with her, and if not it doesn’t matter.  You’ll have to talk
+to her yourself.  I’m not going to say any more.
+
+“Don’t forget that Friday is the St. Leonards’ ‘At Home’ day.  I’ve
+promised Janie that you shall be there in all your best clothes.  (Don’t
+tell her I’m calling her Janie.  It might offend her.  But nobody calls
+her Miss St. Leonard.)  Everybody is coming, and all the children are
+having their hair washed.  You will have it all your own way down here.
+There’s no other celebrity till you get to Boss Croker, the Tammany man,
+the other side of Ilsley Downs.  Artists they don’t count.  The rumour
+was all round the place last week that you were here incognito in the
+person of a dismal-looking Johnny, staying at the ‘Fisherman’s Retreat,’
+who used to sit all day in a punt up the backwater drinking whisky.  It
+made me rather mad when I saw him.  I suppose it was the whisky that
+suggested the idea to them.  They have got the notion in these parts that
+a literary man is a sort of inspired tramp.  A Mrs. Jaggerswade—or some
+such name—whom I met here on Sunday and who is coming on Friday, took me
+aside and asked me ‘what sort of things’ you said when you talked?  She
+said she felt sure it would be so clever, and, herself, she was looking
+forward to it; but would I—‘quite between ourselves’—advise her to bring
+the children.
+
+“I say, you will have to talk seriously to Veronica.  Country life seems
+to agree with her.  She’s taken to poaching already—she and the twins.
+It was the one sin that hitherto they had never committed, and I fancy
+the old man was feeling proud of this.  Luckily I caught them coming
+home—with ten dead rabbits strung on a pole, the twins carrying it
+between them on their shoulders, suggesting the picture of the spies
+returning from the promised land with that bunch of grapes—Veronica
+scouting on ahead with, every ten yards, her ear to the ground, listening
+for hostile footsteps.  The thing that troubled her most was that she
+hadn’t heard me coming; she seemed to fear that something had gone wrong
+with the laws of Nature.  They had found the whole collection hanging
+from a tree, and had persuaded themselves that Providence must have been
+expecting them.  I insisted on their going back with me and showing me
+the tree, much to their disgust.  And fortunately the keeper wasn’t
+about—they are men that love making a row.  I talked some fine moral
+sentiment to her.  But she says you have told her that it doesn’t matter
+whether you are good or bad, things happen to you just the same; and this
+being so she feels she may as well enjoy herself.  I asked her why she
+never seemed able to enjoy herself being good—I believe if I’d always had
+a kid to bring up I’d have been a model chap myself by this time.  Her
+answer was that she supposed she was born bad.  I pointed out to her that
+was a reflection on you and Little Mother; and she answered she guessed
+she must be a ‘throw-back.’  Old Slee’s got a dog that ought to have been
+a fox-terrier, but isn’t, and he seems to have been explaining things to
+her.
+
+“A thing that will trouble you down here, Dad, is the cruelty of the
+country.  They catch these poor little wretches in traps, leaving them
+sometimes for days suffering what must be to them nothing short of
+agony—to say nothing of the terror and the hunger.  I tried putting my
+finger in one of the beastly things and keeping it there for just two
+minutes by my watch.  It seemed like twenty.  The pain grows more intense
+with every second, and I’m not a soft, as you know.  I’ve lain half an
+hour with a broken leg, and that wasn’t as bad.  One hears the little
+creatures screaming, but cannot find them.  Of course when one draws near
+they keep silent.  It makes one quite dislike country people.  They are
+so callous.  When you speak to them about it they only grin.  Janie goes
+nearly mad about it.  Mr. St. Leonard tried to get the clergyman to say
+something on the subject, but he answered that he thought it better ‘for
+the Church to confine herself to the accomplishment of her own great
+mission.’  Ass!
+
+“Bring Little Mother down; we want to show her off on Friday.  And make
+her put on something pretty.  Ask her if she’s got that lilac thing with
+lace she wore at Cambridge for the May Week the year before last.  Tell
+her not to be silly; it wasn’t a bit too young.  Nash said she looked
+like something out of an old picture, and he’s going to be an artist.
+Don’t let her dress herself.  She doesn’t understand it.  And will you
+get me a gun—”
+
+The remainder of the letter was taken up with instructions concerning the
+gun.  It seemed a complicated sort of gun.  I wished I hadn’t read about
+the gun to Ethelbertha.  It made her nervous for the rest of the day.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Veronica’s letter followed on Thursday morning.  I read it going down in
+the train.  In transcribing I have thought it better, as regards the
+spelling, to adopt the more conventional forms.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+“You will be pleased to hear,” Veronica wrote, “that we are all quite
+well.  Robin works very hard.  But I think it does her good.  And of
+course I help her.  All I can.  I am glad she has got a boy.  To do the
+washing-up.  I think that was too much for her.  It used to make her
+cross.  One cannot blame her.  It is trying work.  And it makes you
+mucky.  He is a good boy.  But has been neglected.  So doesn’t know much.
+I am teaching him grammar.  He says ‘you was’ and ‘her be.’  But is
+getting better.  He says he went to school.  But they couldn’t have taken
+any trouble with him.  Could they?  The system, I suppose, was rotten.
+Robina says I mustn’t overdo it.  Because you want him to talk Berkshire.
+So I propose confining our attention to the elementary rules.  He had
+never heard of Robinson Crusoe.  What a life!  We went to church on
+Sunday.  I could not find my gloves.  And Robina was waxy.  But Mr. St.
+Leonard came without his trousers.  Which was worse.  We found them in
+the evening.  The little boy that blew up our stove was there with his
+mother.  But I didn’t speak to her.  He’s got a doom.  That’s what made
+him blow it up.  He couldn’t help it.  So you see it wasn’t my fault.
+After all.  His grandfather was blown up.  And he’s going to be blown up
+again.  Later on.  But he is very brave.  And is going to make a will.  I
+like all the St. Leonards very much.  We went there to tea on Sunday.
+And Mr. St. Leonard said I was bright.  I think Miss Janie very
+beautiful.  And so does Dick.  She makes me think of angels.  So she does
+Dick.  And he says she is so kind to her little brothers and sisters.  It
+is a good sign.  I think she ought to marry Dick.  It would steady him.
+He works very hard.  But I think it does him good.  We have breakfast at
+seven.  And I lay the table.  It is very beautiful in the morning.  When
+you are once up.  Mrs. St. Leonard has twins.  They are a great anxiety
+to her.  But she would not part from them.  She has had much trouble.
+And is sometimes very sad.  I like the girl best.  Her name is Winnie.
+She is more like a boy.  His name is Wilfrid.  But sometimes they change
+clothes.  Then you’re done.  They are only nearly seven.  But they know a
+lot.  They are going to teach me swimming.  Is it not kind of them?  The
+two older boys are at home for their holidays.  But they give themselves
+a lot of airs.  And they called me a flapper.  I told him he’d be sorry.
+When he was a man.  Because perhaps I’d grow up beautiful.  And then he’d
+fall in love with me.  But he said he wouldn’t.  So I let him see what I
+thought of him.  The little girl is very nice.  She is about my own age.
+Her name is Sally.  We are going to write a play.  But we sha’n’t let
+Bertie act in it.  Unless he turns over a new leaf.  I’m going to be a
+princess that doesn’t know it.  But only feels it.  And she’s going to be
+a wicked witch.  What wants me to marry her son.  What’s a sight.  But I
+won’t, because I’d rather die first.  And am in love with a swineherd.
+That is a genius.  Only nobody suspects it.  I wear a crown in the last
+act.  And everybody rejoices.  Except her.  I think it will be good.  We
+have nearly finished the first act.  She writes very well.  And has a
+sense of atmosphere.  And I tell her what to say.  Miss Janie is going to
+make me a dress with a train.  And gold spangles.  And Robina is going to
+lend me her blue necklace.  Anything will do of course for the old witch.
+So it won’t be much trouble to anyone.  Mr. Bute is going to paint us
+some scenery.  And we are going to invite everybody.  He is very nice.
+Robina says he thinks too much of himself.  By a long chalk.  But she is
+very critical where men are concerned.  She admits it.  She says she
+can’t help it.  I find him very affable.  And so does Dick.  We think
+Robina will get over it.  And he has promised not to be angry with her.
+Because I have told him that she does not mean it.  It is only her way.
+She says she feels it is unjust of her.  Because really he is rather
+charming.  I told him that.  And he said I was a dear little girl.  He is
+going to get me a real crown.  Robina says he has nice eyes.  I told him
+that.  And he laughed.  There is a gentleman comes here that I think is
+in love with Robina.  But I shouldn’t say anything to her about it.  If I
+was you.  She is very snappy about it.  He is not handsome.  But he looks
+good.  He writes for the papers.  But I don’t think he is rich.  And
+Robina is very nice to him.  Until he’s gone.  Then she gets mad.  It all
+began with the explosion.  So perhaps it was fate.  He is going to keep
+it out of the papers.  As much as he can.  But of course he owes a duty
+to the public.  I am going to decline to see him.  I think it better.
+Mr. Slee says everything will be in apple-pie order to-morrow.  So you
+can come down.  And we are going to have Irish stew.  And roly-poly
+pudding.  It will be a change.  He is very nice.  And says he was always
+in trouble himself when he was a little boy.  It’s all experience.  We
+are all going on Friday to a party at Mr. St. Leonard’s.  And you have
+got to come too.  Robina says I can wear my new frock.  But we can’t find
+the sash.  It is very strange.  Because I remember having seen it.  You
+didn’t take it for anything, did you?  We shall have to get a new one, I
+suppose.  It is very annoying.  My new shoes have also not worn well.
+And they ought to have.  Because Robina says they were expensive.  The
+donkey has come.  And he is sweet.  He eats out of my hand.  And lets me
+kiss him.  But he won’t go.  He goes a little when you shout at him.
+Very loud.  Me and Robina went for a drive yesterday after tea.  And Dick
+ran beside.  And shouted.  But he got hoarse.  And then he wouldn’t go no
+more.  And Robina did not like it.  Because Dick shouted swear words.  He
+says they come naturally to you when you shout.  And Robina said it was
+horrible.  And that people would hear him.  So we got out.  And pushed
+him home.  But he is very strong.  And we were all very tired.  And
+Robina says she hates him.  Dick is going to give Mr. ’Opkins half a
+crown.  To tell him how he makes him go.  Because Mr. ’Opkins makes him
+gallop.  Robina says it must be hypnotism.  But Dick thinks it might be
+something simpler.  I think Mr. ’Opkins very nice.  He says you promised
+to lend him a book.  What would help him to talk like a real country boy.
+So I have lent him a book about a window.  By Mr. Bane.  What came to see
+us last year.  It has a lot of funny words in it.  And he is going to
+learn them up.  But he don’t know what they mean.  No more do I.  I have
+written a lot of the book.  It promises to be very interesting.  It is
+all a dream.  He is just the ordinary grown-up father.  Neither better
+nor worse.  And he goes up and up.  It is a pleasant sensation.  Till he
+reaches the moon.  And there everything is different.  It is the children
+that know everything.  And are always right.  And the grown-ups have to
+do all what they tell them.  They are kind but firm.  It is very good for
+him.  And when he wakes up he is a better man.  I put down everything
+that occurs to me.  Like you suggested.  There is quite a lot of it.  And
+it makes you see how unjustly children are treated.  They said I was to
+feed the donkey.  Because it was my donkey.  And I fed him.  And there
+wasn’t enough supper for Dick.  And Dick said I was an idiot.  And Robina
+said I wasn’t to feed him.  And in the morning there wasn’t anything to
+feed him on.  Because he won’t eat anything but bread-and-butter.  And
+the baker hadn’t come.  And he wasn’t there.  Because the man that comes
+to milk the cow had left the door open.  And I was distracted.  And Dick
+asked had I fed him.  And of course I hadn’t fed him.  And lord how Dick
+talked.  Never waited to hear anything, mind you.  I let him talk.  But
+it just shows you.  We are all very happy.  But shall be pleased to see
+you.  Once again.  The peppermint creams down here are not good.  And are
+very dear.  Compared with London prices.  Isn’t this a good letter?  You
+said I was to always write just as I thought.  So I’m doing it.  I think
+that’s all.”
+
+I read selections from this letter aloud to Ethelbertha.  She said she
+was glad she had decided to come down with me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+HAD all things gone as ordered, our arrival at the St. Leonards’ on
+Friday afternoon would have been imposing.  It was our entrance, so to
+speak, upon the local stage; and Robina had decided it was a case where
+small economies ought not to be considered.  The livery stable proprietor
+had suggested a brougham, but that would have necessitated one of us
+riding outside.  I explained to Robina that, in the country, this was
+usual; and Robina had replied that much depended upon first impressions.
+Dick would, in all probability, claim the place for himself; and, the
+moment we were started, stick a pipe in his mouth.  She selected an open
+landau of quite an extraordinary size, painted yellow.  It looked to me
+an object more appropriate to a Lord Mayor’s show than to the
+requirements of a Christian family; but Robina seemed touchy on the
+subject, and I said no more.  It certainly was roomy.  Old Glossop had
+turned it out well, with a pair of greys—seventeen hands, I judged them.
+The only thing that seemed wrong was the coachman.  I can’t explain why,
+but he struck me as the class of youth one associates with a milk-cart.
+
+We set out at a gentle trot.  Veronica, who had been in trouble most of
+the morning, sat stiffly on the extreme edge of her seat, clothed in the
+attitude of one dead to the world; Dick, in lavender gloves that Robina
+had thoughtfully bought for him, next to her.  Ethelbertha, Robina, and
+myself sat perched on the back seat; to have leaned back would have been
+to lie down.  Ethelbertha, having made up her mind she was going to
+dislike the whole family of the St. Leonards, seemed disinclined for
+conversation.  Myself I had forgotten my cigar-case.  I have tried the
+St. Leonard cigar.  He does not smoke himself; but keeps a box for his
+friends.  He tells me he fancies men are smoking cigars less than
+formerly.  I did not see how I was going to get a smoke for the next
+three hours.  Nothing annoys me more than being bustled and made to
+forget things.  Robina, who has recently changed her views on the subject
+of freckles, shared a parasol with her mother.  They had to hold it
+almost horizontally in front of them, and this obscured their view.  I
+could not myself understand why people smiled as we went by.  Apart from
+the carriage, which they must have seen before, we were not, I should
+have said, an exhilarating spectacle.  A party of cyclists laughed
+outright.  Robina said there was one thing we should have to be careful
+about, living in the country, and that was that the strong air and the
+loneliness combined didn’t sap our intellect.  She said she had noticed
+it—the tendency of country people to become prematurely silly.  I did not
+share her fears, as I had by this time divined what it was that was
+amusing folks.  Dick had discovered behind the cushions—remnant of some
+recent wedding, one supposes—a large and tastefully bound Book of Common
+Prayer.  He and Veronica sat holding it between them.  Looking at their
+faces one could almost hear the organ pealing.
+
+Dick kept one eye on the parasol; and when, on passing into shade, it was
+lowered, he and Veronica were watching with rapt ecstasy the flight of
+swallows.  Robina said she should tell Mr. Glossop of the insults to
+which respectable people were subject when riding in his carriage.  She
+thought he ought to take steps to prevent it.  She likewise suggested
+that the four of us, leaving the Little Mother in the carriage, should
+walk up the hill.  Ethelbertha said that she herself would like a walk.
+She had been balancing herself on the edge of a cushion with her feet
+dangling for two miles, and was tired.  She herself would have preferred
+a carriage made for ordinary-sized people.  Our coachman called attention
+to the heat of the afternoon and the length of the hill, and recommended
+our remaining where we were; but his advice was dismissed as exhibiting
+want of feeling.  Robina is, perhaps, a trifle over-sympathetic where
+animals are concerned.  I remember, when they were children, her banging
+Dick over the head with the nursery bellows because he would not agree to
+talk in a whisper for fear of waking the cat.  You can, of course, overdo
+kindness to animals, but it is a fault on the right side; and, as a rule,
+I do not discourage her.  Veronica was allowed to remain, owing to her
+bad knee.  It is a most unfortunate affliction.  It comes on quite
+suddenly.  There is nothing to be seen; but the child’s face while she is
+suffering from it would move a heart of stone.  It had been troubling
+her, so it appeared, all the morning; but she had said nothing, not
+wishing to alarm her mother.  Ethelbertha, who thinks it may be
+hereditary—she herself having had an aunt who had suffered from
+contracted ligament—fixed her up as comfortably as the pain would permit
+with cushions in the centre of the back seat; and the rest of us toiled
+after the carriage.
+
+I should not like to say for certain that horses have a sense of humour,
+but I sometimes think they must.  I had a horse years ago who used to
+take delight in teasing girls.  I can describe it no other way.  He would
+pick out a girl a quarter of a mile off; always some haughty,
+well-dressed girl who was feeling pleased with herself.  As we approached
+he would eye her with horror and astonishment.  It was too marked to
+escape notice.  A hundred yards off he would be walking sideways, backing
+away from her; I would see the poor lady growing scarlet with the insult
+and annoyance of it.  Opposite to her, he would shy the entire width of
+the road, and make pretence to bolt.  Looking back I would see her vainly
+appealing to surrounding nature for a looking-glass to see what it was
+that had gone wrong with her.
+
+“What is the matter with me,” she would be crying to herself; “that the
+very beasts of the field should shun me?  Do they take me for a
+gollywog?”
+
+Halfway up the hill, the off-side grey turned his head and looked at us.
+We were about a couple of hundred yards behind; it was a hot and dusty
+day.  He whispered to the near-side grey, and the near-side grey turned
+and looked at us also.  I knew what was coming.  I’ve been played the
+same trick before.  I shouted to the boy, but it was too late.  They took
+the rest of the hill at a gallop and disappeared over the brow.  Had
+there been an experienced coachman behind them, I should not have
+worried.  Dick told his mother not to be alarmed, and started off at
+fifteen miles an hour.  I calculated I was doing about ten, which for a
+gentleman past his first youth, in a frock suit designed to disguise
+rather than give play to the figure, I consider creditable.  Robina,
+undecided whether to go on ahead with Dick or remain to assist her
+mother, wasted vigour by running from one to the other.  Ethelbertha’s
+one hope was that she might reach the wreckage in time to receive
+Veronica’s last wishes.
+
+It was in this order that we arrived at the St. Leonards’.  Veronica,
+under an awning, sipping iced sherbet, appeared to be the centre of the
+party.  She was recounting her experiences with a modesty that had
+already won all hearts.  The rest of us, she had explained, had preferred
+walking, and would arrive later.  She was evidently pleased to see me,
+and volunteered the information that the greys, to all seeming, had
+enjoyed their gallop.
+
+I sent Dick back to break the good news to his mother.  Young Bute said
+he would go too.  He said he was fresher than Dick, and would get there
+first.  As a matter of history he did, and was immediately sorry that he
+had.
+
+This is not a well-ordered world, or it would not be our good deeds that
+would so often get us into trouble.  Robina’s insistence on our walking
+up the hill had been prompted by tender feeling for dumb animals: a
+virtuous emotion that surely the angels should have blessed.  The result
+had been to bring down upon her suffering and reproach.  It is not often
+that Ethelbertha loses her temper.  When she does she makes use of the
+occasion to perform what one might describe as a mental spring-cleaning.
+All loose odds and ends of temper that may be lying about in her mind—any
+scrap of indignation that has been reposing peacefully, half forgotten,
+in a corner of her brain, she ferrets out and brushes into the general
+heap.  Small annoyances of the year before last—little things she hadn’t
+noticed at the time—incidents in your past life that, so far as you are
+concerned, present themselves as dim visions connected maybe with some
+previous existence, she whisks triumphantly into her pan.  The method has
+its advantages.  It leaves her, swept and garnished, without a scrap of
+ill-feeling towards any living soul.  For quite a long period after one
+of these explosions it is impossible to get a cross word out of her.  One
+has to wait sometimes for months.  But while the clearing up is in
+progress the atmosphere round about is disturbing.  The element of the
+whole thing is its comprehensive swiftness.  Before they had reached the
+summit of the hill, Robina had acquired a tolerably complete idea of all
+she had done wrong since Christmas twelvemonth: the present afternoon’s
+proceedings—including as they did the almost certain sacrificing of a
+sister to a violent death, together with the probable destruction of a
+father, no longer of an age to trifle with apoplexy—being but a fit and
+proper complement to what had gone before.  It would be long, as Robina
+herself that evening bitterly declared, before she would again give ear
+to the promptings of her better nature.
+
+To take next the sad case of Archibald Bute: his sole desire had been to
+relieve, at the earliest moment possible, the anxieties of a sister and a
+mother.  Robina’s new hat, not intended for sport, had broken away from
+its fastenings.  With it, it had brought down her hair.  There is a
+harmless contrivance for building up the female hair called, I am told, a
+pad.  It can be made of combings, and then, of course, is literally the
+girl’s own hair.  He came upon Robina at the moment when, retracing her
+steps and with her back towards him, she was looking for it.  With his
+usual luck, he was the first to find it.  Ethelbertha thanked him for his
+information concerning Veronica, but seemed chiefly anxious to push on
+and convince herself that it was true.  She took Dick’s arm, and left
+Robina to follow on with Bute.
+
+As I explained to him afterwards, had he stopped to ask my advice I
+should have counselled his leaving the job to Dick, who, after all, was
+only thirty seconds behind him.  As regarded himself, I should have
+suggested his taking a walk in the opposite direction, returning, say, in
+half an hour, and pretending to have just arrived.  By that time Robina,
+with the assistance of Janie’s brush and comb, and possibly her
+powder-puff, would have been feeling herself again.  He could have
+listened sympathetically to an account of the affair from Robina
+herself—her version, in which she would have appeared to advantage.  Give
+her time, and she has a sense of humour.  She would have made it bright
+and whimsical.  Without asserting it in so many words, she would have
+conveyed the impression—I know her way—that she alone, throughout the
+whole commotion, had remained calm and helpful.  “Dear old Dick” and
+“Poor dear papa”—I can hear her saying it—would have supplied the low
+comedy, and Veronica, alluded to with affection free from sentimentality,
+would have furnished the dramatic interest.  It is not that Robina
+intends to mislead, but she has the artistic instinct.  It would have
+made quite a charming story; Robina always the central figure.  She would
+have enjoyed telling it, and would have been pleased with the person
+listening.  All this—which would have been the reward of subterfuge—he
+had missed.  Virtuous intention had gained for him nothing but a few
+scattered observations from Robina concerning himself; the probable
+object of his Creator in fashioning him—his relation to the scheme of
+things in general: observations all of which he had felt to be unjust.
+
+We compared experiences over a pipe that same evening; and he told me of
+a friend of his, a law student, who had shared diggings with him in
+Edinburgh.  A kinder-hearted young man, Bute felt sure, could never have
+breathed; nor one with a tenderer, more chivalrous regard for women; and
+the misery this brought him, to say nothing of the irritation caused to
+quite a number of respectable people, could hardly be imagined, so young
+Bute assured me, by anyone not personally acquainted with the parties.
+It was the plain and snappy girl, and the less attractive type of old
+maid, for whom he felt the most sorrow.  He could not help thinking of
+all they had missed, and were likely to go on missing; the rapture—surely
+the woman’s birthright—of feeling herself adored, anyhow, once in her
+life; the delight of seeing the lover’s eye light up at her coming.  Had
+he been a Mormon he would have married them all.  They too—the neglected
+that none had invited to the feast of love—they also should know the joys
+of home, feel the sweet comfort of a husband’s arm.  Being a Christian,
+his power for good was limited.  But at least he could lift from them the
+despairing conviction that they were outside the pale of masculine
+affection.  Not one of them, so far as he could help it, but should be
+able to say:
+
+“I—even I had a lover once.  No, dear, we never married.  It was one of
+those spiritual loves; a formal engagement with a ring would have spoiled
+it—coarsened it.  No; it was just a beautiful thing that came into my
+life and passed away again, leaving behind it a fragrance that has
+sweetened all my days.”
+
+That is how he imagined they would talk about it, years afterwards, to
+the little niece or nephew, asking artless questions—how they would feel
+about it themselves.  Whether law circles are peculiarly rich in
+unattractive spinsters, or whether it merely happened to be an
+exceptional season for them, Bute could not say; but certain it was that
+the number of sour-faced girls and fretful old maids in excess of the
+demand seemed to be greater than usual that winter in Edinburgh, with the
+result that young Hapgood had a busy time of it.  He made love to them,
+not obtrusively, which might have laid them open to ridicule—many of them
+were old enough to have been his mother—but more by insinuation, by
+subtle suggestion.  His feelings, so they gathered, were too deep for
+words; but the adoring eyes with which he would follow their every
+movement, the rapt ecstasy with which he would drink in their lightest
+remark about the weather, the tone of almost reverential awe with which
+he would enquire of them concerning their lesser ailments—all conveyed to
+their sympathetic observation the message that he dared not tell.  He had
+no favourites.  Sufficient it was that a woman should be unpleasant, for
+him to pour out at her feet the simulated passion of a lifetime.  He sent
+them presents—nothing expensive—wrapped in pleasing pretence of
+anonymity; valentines carefully selected for their compromising
+character.  One carroty-headed old maid with warts he had kissed upon the
+brow.
+
+All this he did out of his great pity for them.  It was a beautiful idea,
+but it worked badly.  They did not understand—never got the hang of the
+thing: not one of them.  They thought he was really gone on them.  For a
+time his elusiveness, his backwardness in coming to the point, they
+attributed to a fit and proper fear of his fate; but as the months went
+by the feeling of each one was that he was carrying the apprehension of
+his own unworthiness too far.  They gave him encouragement, provided for
+him “openings,” till the wonder grew upon them how any woman ever did get
+married.  At the end of their resources, they consulted bosom friends.
+In several instances the bosom friend turned out to be the bosom friend
+of more than one of them.  The bosom friends began to take a hand in it.
+Some of them came to him with quite a little list, insisting—playfully at
+first—on his making up his mind what he was going to take and what he was
+going to leave; offering, as reward for prompt decision, to make things
+as easy for him as possible with the remainder of the column.
+
+It was then he saw that his good intentions were likely to end in
+catastrophe.  He would not tell the truth: that the whole scheme had been
+conceived out of charity towards all ill-constructed or dilapidated
+ladies; that personally he didn’t care a hang for any of them; had only
+taken them on, vulgarly speaking, to give them a treat, and because
+nobody else would.  That wasn’t going to be a golden memory, colouring
+their otherwise drab existence.  He explained that it was not love—not
+the love that alone would justify a man’s asking of a woman that she
+should give herself to him for life—that he felt and always should feel
+for them, but merely admiration and deep esteem; and seventeen of them
+thought that would be sufficient to start with, and offered to chance the
+rest.
+
+The truth had to come out.  Friends who knew his noble nature could not
+sit by and hear him denounced as a heartless and eccentric profligate.
+Ladies whose beauty and popularity were beyond dispute thought it a
+touching and tender thing for him to have done; but every woman to whom
+he had ever addressed a kind word wanted to wring his neck.
+
+He did the most sensible thing he could, under all the circumstances;
+changed his address to Aberdeen, where he had an aunt living.  But the
+story followed him.  No woman would be seen speaking to him.  One
+admiring glance from Hapgood would send the prettiest girls home weeping
+to their mothers.  Later on he fell in love—hopelessly, madly in love.
+But he dared not tell her—dared not let a living soul guess it.  That was
+the only way he could show it.  It is not sufficient, in this world, to
+want to do good; there’s got to be a knack about it.
+
+There was a man I met in Colorado, one Christmas-time.  I was on a
+lecturing tour.  His idea was to send a loving greeting to his wife in
+New York.  He had been married nineteen years, and this was the first
+time he had been separated from his family on Christmas Day.  He pictured
+them round the table in the little far-away New England parlour; his
+wife, his sister-in-law, Uncle Silas, Cousin Jane, Jack and Willy, and
+golden-haired Lena.  They would be just sitting down to dinner, talking
+about him, most likely; wishing he were among them.  They were a nice
+family and all fond of him.  What joy it would give them to know that he
+was safe and sound; to hear the very tones of his loved voice speaking to
+them!  Modern science has made possible these miracles.  True, the
+long-distance telephone would cost him five dollars; but what is five
+dollars weighed against the privilege of wafting happiness to an entire
+family on Christmas Day!  We had just come back from a walk.  He slammed
+the money down, and laughed aloud at the thought of the surprise he was
+about to give them all.
+
+The telephone bell rang out clear and distinct at the precise moment when
+his wife, with knife and fork in hand, was preparing to carve the turkey.
+She was a nervous lady, and twice that week had dreamed that she had seen
+her husband without being able to get to him.  On the first occasion she
+had seen him enter a dry-goods store in Broadway, and hastening across
+the road had followed him in.  He was hardly a dozen yards in front of
+her, but before she could overtake him all the young lady assistants had
+rushed from behind their counters and, forming a circle round her, had
+refused to let her pass, which in her dream had irritated her
+considerably.  On the next occasion he had boarded a Brooklyn car in
+which she was returning home.  She had tried to attract his attention
+with her umbrella, but he did not seem to see her; and every time she
+rose to go across to him the car gave a jerk and bumped her back into her
+seat.  When she did get over to him it was not her husband at all, but
+the gentleman out of the Quaker Oats advertisement.  She went to the
+telephone, feeling—as she said herself afterwards—all of a tremble.
+
+That you could speak from Colorado to New York she would not then have
+believed had you told her.  The thing was in its early stages, which may
+also have accounted for the voice reaching her strange and broken.  I was
+standing beside him while he spoke.  We were in the vestibule of the
+Savoy Hotel at Colorado Springs.  It was five o’clock in the afternoon,
+which would be about seven in New York.  He told her he was safe and
+well, and that she was not to fret about him.  He told her he had been
+that morning for a walk in the Garden of the Gods, which is the name
+given to the local park; they do that sort of thing in Colorado.  Also
+that he had drunk from the silicial springs abounding in that favoured
+land.  I am not sure that “silicial” was the correct word.  He was not
+sure himself: added to which he pronounced it badly.  Whatever they were,
+he assured her they had done him good.  He sent a special message to his
+Cousin Jane—a maiden lady of means—to the effect that she could rely upon
+seeing him soon.  She was a touchy old lady, and liked to be singled out
+for special attention.  He made the usual kind enquiries about everybody,
+sent them all his blessing, and only wished they could be with him in
+this delectable land where it seemed to be always sunshine and balmy
+breezes.  He could have said more, but his time being up the telephone
+people switched him off; and feeling he had done a good and thoughtful
+deed, he suggested a game of billiards.
+
+Could he have been a witness of events at the other end of the wire, his
+condition would have been one of less self-complacence.  Long before the
+end of the first sentence his wife had come to the conclusion that this
+was a message from the dead.  Why through a telephone did not greatly
+worry her.  It seemed as reasonable a medium as any other she had ever
+heard of—indeed a trifle more so.  Later, when she was able to review the
+matter calmly, it afforded her some consolation to reflect that things
+might have been worse.  That “garden,” together with the “silicial
+springs”—which she took to be “celestial,” there was not much difference
+the way he pronounced it—was distinctly reassuring.  The “eternal
+sunshine” and the “balmy breezes” likewise agreed with her knowledge of
+heavenly topography as derived from the Congregational Hymn-Book.  That
+he should have needed to enquire concerning the health of herself and the
+children had puzzled her.  The only explanation was that they didn’t know
+everything, not even up.  There—may be, not the new-comers.  She had
+answered as coherently as her state of distraction would permit, and had
+then dropped limply to the floor.  It was the sound of her falling
+against the umbrella-stand and upsetting it that brought them all
+trooping out from the dining-room.
+
+It took her some time to get the thing home to them; and when she had
+finished, her brother Silas, acting on the impulse of the moment, rang up
+the Exchange, with some vague idea of getting into communication with St.
+Peter and obtaining further particulars, but recollected himself in time
+to explain to the “hulloa girl” that he had made a mistake.
+
+The eldest boy, a practical youth, pointed out, very sensibly, that
+nothing could be gained by their not going on with their dinner, but was
+bitterly reproached for being able to think of any form of enjoyment at a
+moment when his poor dear father was in heaven.  It reminded his mother
+of the special message to Cousin Jane, who up to that moment had been
+playing the part of comforter.  With the collapse of Cousin Jane,
+dramatic in its suddenness, conversation disappeared.  At nine o’clock
+the entire family went dinnerless to bed.
+
+The eldest boy—as I have said, a practical youth—had the sense to get up
+early the next morning and send a wire, which brought the glad news back
+to them that their beloved one was not in heaven, but was still in
+Colorado.  But the only reward my friend got for all his tender
+thoughtfulness was the vehement injunction never for the remainder of his
+life to play such a fool’s trick again.
+
+There were other cases I could have recited showing the ill recompense
+that so often overtakes the virtuous action; but, as I explained to Bute,
+it would have saddened me to dwell upon the theme.
+
+It was quite a large party assembled at the St. Leonards’, including one
+or two county people, and I should have liked, myself, to have made a
+better entrance.  A large lady with a very small voice seemed to be under
+the impression that I had arranged the whole business on purpose.  She
+said it was “so dramatic.”  One good thing came out of it: Janie, in her
+quiet, quick way, saw to it that Ethelbertha and Robina slipped into the
+house unnoticed by way of the dairy.  When they joined the other guests,
+half an hour later, they had had a cup of tea and a rest, and were
+feeling calm and cool, with their hair nicely done; and Ethelbertha
+remarked to Robina on the way home what a comfort it must be to Mrs. St.
+Leonard to have a daughter so capable, one who knew just the right thing
+to do, and did it without making a fuss and a disturbance.
+
+Everyone was very nice.  Of course we made the usual mistake: they talked
+to me about books and plays, and I gave them my views on agriculture and
+cub-hunting.  I’m not quite sure what fool it was who described a bore as
+a man who talked about himself.  As a matter of fact it is the only
+subject the average man knows sufficiently well to make interesting.
+There’s a man I know; he makes a fortune out of a patent food for
+infants.  He began life as a dairy farmer, and hit upon it quite by
+accident.  When he talks about the humours of company promoting and the
+tricks of the advertising agent he is amusing.  I have sat at his table,
+when he was a bachelor, and listened to him by the hour with enjoyment.
+The mistake he made was marrying a broad-minded, cultured woman, who
+ruined him—conversationally, I mean.  He is now well-informed and
+tiresome on most topics.  That is why actors and actresses are always
+such delightful company: they are not ashamed to talk about themselves.
+I remember a dinner-party once: our host was one of the best-known
+barristers in London.  A famous lady novelist sat on his right, and a
+scientist of world-wide reputation had the place of honour next our
+hostess, who herself had written a history of the struggle for
+nationality in South America that serves as an authority to all the
+Foreign Offices in Europe.  Among the remaining guests were a bishop, the
+editor-in-chief of a London daily newspaper, a man who knew the interior
+of China as well as most men know their own club, a Russian revolutionist
+just escaped from Siberia, a leading dramatist, a Cabinet Minister, and a
+poet whose name is a household word wherever the English tongue is
+spoken.  And for two hours we sat and listened to a wicked-looking little
+woman who from the boards of a Bowery music-hall had worked her way up to
+the position of a star in musical comedy.  Education, as she observed
+herself without regret, had not been compulsory throughout the waterside
+district of Chicago in her young days; and, compelled to earn her own
+living from the age of thirteen, opportunity for supplying the original
+deficiency had been wanting.  But she knew her subject, which was
+Herself—her experiences, her reminiscences: and bad sense enough to stick
+to it.  Until the moment when she took “the liberty of chipping in,” to
+use her own expression, the amount of twaddle talked had been appalling.
+The bishop had told us all he had learnt about China during a visit to
+San Francisco, while the man who had spent the last twenty years of his
+life in the country was busy explaining his views on the subject of the
+English drama.  Our hostess had been endeavouring to make the scientist
+feel at home by talking to him about radium.  The dramatist had explained
+at some length his views of the crisis in Russia.  The poet had quite
+spoilt his dinner trying to suggest to the Cabinet Minister new sources
+of taxation.  The Russian revolutionist had told us what ought to have
+been a funny story about a duck; and the lady novelist and the Cabinet
+Minister had discussed Christian Science for a quarter of an hour, each
+under the mistaken impression that the other one was a believer in it.
+The editor had been explaining the attitude of the Church towards the New
+Theology; and our host, one of the wittiest men at the Bar, had been
+talking chiefly to the butler.  The relief of listening to anybody
+talking about something they knew was like finding a match-box to a man
+who has been barking his shins in the dark.  For the rest of the dinner
+we clung to her.
+
+I could have made myself quite interesting to these good squires and
+farmers talking to them about theatres and the literary celebrities I
+have met; and they could have told me dog stories and given me useful
+information as to the working of the Small Holdings Act.  They said some
+very charming things about my books—mostly to the effect that they read
+and enjoyed them when feeling ill or suffering from mental collapse.  I
+gathered that had they always continued in a healthy state of mind and
+body it would not have occurred to them to read me.  One man assured me I
+had saved his life.  It was his brain, he told me.  He had been so upset
+by something that had happened to him that he had almost lost his reason.
+There were times when he could not even remember his own name; his mind
+seemed an absolute blank.  And then one day by chance—or Providence, or
+whatever you choose to call it—he had taken up a book of mine.  It was
+the only thing he had been able to read for months and months!  And now,
+whenever he felt himself run down—his brain like a squeezed orange (that
+was his simile)—he would put everything else aside and read a book of
+mine—any one: it didn’t matter which.  I suppose one ought to be glad
+that one has saved somebody’s life; but I should like to have the
+choosing of them myself.
+
+I am not sure that Ethelbertha is going to like Mrs. St. Leonard; and I
+don’t think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like Ethelbertha.  I have gathered
+that Mrs. St. Leonard doesn’t like anybody much—except, of course, when
+it is her duty.  She does not seem to have the time.  Man is born to
+trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself accustomed to the
+feeling.  But Mrs. St. Leonard has given herself up to the pursuit of
+trouble to the exclusion of all other interests in life.  She appears to
+regard it as the only calling worthy a Christian woman.  I found her
+alone one afternoon.  Her manner was preoccupied; I asked if I could be
+of any assistance.
+
+“No,” she answered, “I am merely trying to think what it can be that has
+been worrying me all the morning.  It has clean gone out of my head.”
+
+She remembered it a little later with a glad sigh.
+
+St. Leonard himself, Ethelbertha thinks charming.  We are to go again on
+Sunday for her to see the children.  Three or four people we met I fancy
+we shall be able to fit in with.  We left at half-past six, and took Bute
+back with us to supper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+“SHE’S a good woman,” said Robina.
+
+“Who’s a good woman?” I asked.
+
+“He’s trying, I expect; although he is an old dear: to live with, I
+mean,” continued Robina, addressing apparently the rising moon.  “And
+then there are all those children.”
+
+“You are thinking of Mrs. St. Leonard,” I suggested.
+
+“There seems no way of making her happy,” explained Robina.  “On Thursday
+I went round early in the morning to help Janie pack the baskets for the
+picnic.  It was her own idea, the picnic.”
+
+“Speaking of picnics,” I said.
+
+“You might have thought,” went on Robina, “that she was dressing for her
+own funeral.  She said she knew she was going to catch her death of cold,
+sitting on the wet grass.  Something told her.  I reminded her it hadn’t
+rained for three weeks, and that everything was as dry as a bone, but she
+said that made no difference to grass.  There is always a moisture in
+grass, and that cushions and all that only helped to draw it out.  Not
+that it mattered.  The end had to come, and so long as the others were
+happy—you know her style.  Nobody ever thought of her.  She was to be
+dragged here, dragged there.  She talked about herself as if she were
+some sacred image.  It got upon my nerves at last, so that I persuaded
+Janie to let me offer to stop at home with her.  I wasn’t too keen about
+going myself; not by that time.”
+
+“When our desires leave us, says Rochefoucauld,” I remarked, “we pride
+ourselves upon our virtue in having overcome them.”
+
+“Well, it was her fault, anyhow,” retorted Robina; “and I didn’t make a
+virtue of it.  I told her I’d just as soon not go, and that I felt sure
+the others would be all right without her, so that there was no need for
+her to be dragged anywhere.  And then she burst into tears.”
+
+“She said,” I suggested, “that it was hard on her to have children who
+could wish to go to a picnic and leave their mother at home; that it was
+little enough enjoyment she had in her life, heaven knows; that if there
+was one thing she had been looking forward to it was this day’s outing;
+but still, of course, if everybody would be happier without her—”
+
+“Something of the sort,” admitted Robina; “only there was a lot of it.
+We had to all fuss round her, and swear that without her it wouldn’t be
+worth calling a picnic.  She brightened up on the way home.”
+
+The screech-owl in the yew-tree emitted a blood-curdling scream.  He
+perches there each evening on the extreme end of the longest bough.
+Dimly outlined against the night, he has the appearance of a friendly
+hobgoblin.  But I wish he didn’t fancy himself as a vocalist.  It is
+against his own interests, I am sure, if he only knew it.  That American
+college yell of his must have the effect of sending every living thing
+within half a mile back into its hole.  Maybe it is a provision of nature
+for clearing off the very old mice who have become stone deaf and would
+otherwise be a burden on their relatives.  The others, unless out for
+suicide, must, one thinks, be tolerably safe.  Ethelbertha is persuaded
+he is a sign of death; but seeing there isn’t a square quarter of a mile
+in this county without its screech-owl, there can hardly by this time be
+a resident that an Assurance Society would look at.  Veronica likes him.
+She even likes his screech.  I found her under the tree the other night,
+wrapped up in a shawl, trying to learn it.  As if one of them were not
+enough!  It made me quite cross with her.  Besides, it wasn’t a bit like
+it, as I told her.  She said it was better than I could do, anyhow; and I
+was idiot enough to take up the challenge.  It makes me angry now, when I
+think of it: a respectable, middle-aged literary man, standing under a
+yew-tree trying to screech like an owl.  And the bird was silly enough to
+encourage us.
+
+“She was a charming girl,” I said, “seven-and-twenty years ago, when St.
+Leonard fell in love with her.  She had those dark, dreamy eyes so
+suggestive of veiled mysteries; and her lips must have looked bewitching
+when they pouted.  I expect they often did.  They do so still; but the
+pout of a woman of forty-six no longer fascinates.  To a pretty girl of
+nineteen a spice of temper, an illogical unreasonableness, are added
+attractions: the scratch of a blue-eyed kitten only tempts us to tease
+her the more.  Young Hubert St. Leonard—he had curly brown hair, with a
+pretty trick of blushing, and was going to conquer the world—found her
+fretfulness, her very selfishness adorable: and told her so, kneeling
+before her, gazing into her bewildering eyes—only he called it her
+waywardness, her imperiousness; begged her for his sake to be more
+capricious.  Told her how beautiful she looked when displeased.  So, no
+doubt, she did—at nineteen.”
+
+“He didn’t tell you all that, did he?” demanded Robina.
+
+“Not a word,” I reassured her, “except that she was acknowledged by all
+authorities to have been the most beautiful girl in Tunbridge Wells, and
+that her father had been ruined by a rascally solicitor.  No, I was
+merely, to use the phrase of the French police courts, ‘reconstructing
+the crime.’”
+
+“It may be all wrong,” grumbled Robina.
+
+“It may be,” I agreed.  “But why?  Does it strike you as improbable?”
+
+We were sitting in the porch, waiting for Dick to come by the white path
+across the field.
+
+“No,” answered Robina.  “It all sounds very probable.  I wish it didn’t.”
+
+“You must remember,” I continued, “that I am an old playgoer.  I have sat
+out so many of this world’s dramas.  It is as easy to reconstruct them
+backwards as forwards.  We are witnessing the last act of the St. Leonard
+drama: that unsatisfactory last act that merely fills out time after the
+play is ended!  The intermediate acts were probably more exciting,
+containing ‘passionate scenes’ played with much earnestness; chiefly for
+the amusement of the servants.  But the first act, with the Kentish lanes
+and woods for a back-cloth, must have been charming.  Here was the devout
+lover she had heard of, dreamed of.  It is delightful to be regarded as
+perfection—not absolute perfection, for that might put a strain upon us
+to live up to, but as so near perfection that to be more perfect would
+just spoil it.  The spots upon us, that unappreciative friends and
+relations would magnify into blemishes, seen in their true light:
+artistic shading relieving a faultlessness that might otherwise prove too
+glaring.  Dear Hubert found her excellent just as she was in every
+detail.  It would have been a crime against Love for her to seek to
+change herself.”
+
+“Well, then, it was his fault,” argued Robina.  “If he was silly enough
+to like her faults, and encourage her in them—”
+
+“What could he have done,” I asked, “even if he had seen them?  A lover
+does not point out his mistress’s shortcomings to her.”
+
+“Much the more sensible plan if he did,” insisted Robina.  “Then if she
+cared for him she could set to work to cure herself.”
+
+“You would like it?” I said; “you would appreciate it in your own case?
+Can you imagine young Bute—?”
+
+“Why young Bute?” demanded Robina; “what’s he got to do with it?”
+
+“Nothing,” I answered; “except that he happens to be the first male
+creature you have ever come across since you were six that you haven’t
+flirted with.”
+
+“I don’t flirt with them,” said Robina; “I merely try to be nice to
+them.”
+
+“With the exception of young Bute,” I persisted.
+
+“He irritates me,” Robina explained.
+
+“I was reading,” I said, “the other day, an account of the marriage
+customs prevailing among the Lower Caucasians.  The lover takes his stand
+beneath his lady’s window, and, having attracted her attention, proceeds
+to sing.  And if she seems to like it—if she listens to it without
+getting mad, that means she doesn’t want him.  But if she gets upset
+about it—slams down the window and walks away, then it’s all right.  I
+think it’s the Lower Caucasians.”
+
+“Must be a very silly people,” said Robina; “I suppose a pail of water
+would be the highest proof of her affection he could hope for.”
+
+“A complex being, man,” I agreed.  “We will call him X.  Can you imagine
+young X coming to you and saying: ‘My dear Robina, you have many
+excellent qualities.  You can be amiable—so long as you are having your
+own way in everything; but thwarted you can be just horrid.  You are very
+kind—to those who are willing for you to be kind to them in your own way,
+which is not always their way.  You can be quite unselfish—when you
+happen to be in an unselfish mood, which is far from frequent.  You are
+capable and clever, but, like most capable and clever people, impatient
+and domineering; highly energetic when not feeling lazy; ready to forgive
+the moment your temper is exhausted.  You are generous and frank, but if
+your object could only be gained through meanness or deceit you would not
+hesitate a moment longer than was necessary to convince yourself that the
+circumstances justified the means.  You are sympathetic, tender-hearted,
+and have a fine sense of justice; but I can see that tongue of yours, if
+not carefully watched, wearing decidedly shrewish.  You have any amount
+of grit.  A man might go tiger-hunting with you—with no one better; but
+you are obstinate, conceited, and exacting.  In short, to sum you up, you
+have all the makings in you of an ideal wife combined with faults
+sufficient to make a Socrates regret he’d ever married you.’”
+
+“Yes, I would!” said Robina, springing to her feet.  I could not see her
+face, but I knew there was the look upon it that made Primgate want to
+paint her as Joan of Arc; only it would never stop long enough.  “I’d
+love him for talking like that.  And I’d respect him.  If he was that
+sort of man I’d pray God to help me to be the sort of woman he wanted me
+to be.  I’d try.  I’d try all day long.  I would!”
+
+“I wonder,” I said.  Robina had surprised me.  I admit it.  I thought I
+knew the sex better.
+
+“Any girl would,” said Robina.  “He’d be worth it.”
+
+“It would be a new idea,” I mused.  “_Gott im Himmel_! what a new world
+might it not create!”  The fancy began to take hold of me.  “Love no
+longer blind.  Love refusing any more to be the poor blind fool—sport of
+gods and men.  Love no longer passion’s slave.  His bonds broken, the
+senseless bandage flung aside.  Love helping life instead of muddling it.
+Marriage, the foundation of civilisation, no longer reared upon the sands
+of lies and illusions, but grappled to the rock of truth—reality.  Have
+you ever read ‘Tom Jones?’” I said.
+
+“No,” answered Robina; “I’ve always heard it wasn’t a nice book.”
+
+“It isn’t,” I said.  “Man isn’t a nice animal, not all of him.  Nor woman
+either.  There’s a deal of the beast in man.  What can you expect?  Till
+a few paltry thousands of years ago he _was_ a beast, fighting with other
+beasts, his fellow denizens of the woods and caves; watching for his
+prey, crouched in the long grass of the river’s bank, tearing it with
+claws and teeth, growling as he ate.  So he lived and died through the
+dim unnamed ages, transmitting his beast’s blood, his bestial instincts,
+to his offspring, growing ever stronger, fiercer, from generation to
+generation, while the rocks piled up their strata and the oceans shaped
+their beds.  Moses!  Why, Lord Rothschild’s great-grandfather, a few
+score times removed, must have known Moses, talked with him.  Babylon!
+It is a modern city, fallen into disuse for the moment, owing to
+alteration of traffic routes.  History! it is a tale of to-day.  Man was
+crawling about the world on all fours, learning to be an animal for
+millions of years before the secret of his birth was whispered to him.
+It is only during the last few centuries that he has been trying to be a
+man.  Our modern morality!  Why, compared with the teachings of nature,
+it is but a few days old.  What do you expect?  That he shall forget the
+lessons of the æons at the bidding of the hours?”
+
+“Then you advise me to read ‘Tom Jones’?” said Robina.
+
+“Yes,” I said, “I do.  I should not if I thought you were still a child,
+knowing only blind trust, or blind terror.  The sun is not extinguished
+because occasionally obscured by mist; the scent of the rose is not dead
+because of the worm in the leaf.  A healthy rose can afford a few
+worms—has got to, anyhow.  All men are not Tom Joneses.  The standard of
+masculine behaviour continues to go up: many of us make fine efforts to
+conform to it, and some of us succeed.  But the Tom Jones is there in all
+of us who are not anæmic or consumptive.  And there’s no sense at all in
+getting cross with us about it, because we cannot help it.  We are doing
+our best.  In another hundred thousand years or so, provided all goes
+well, we shall be the perfect man.  And seeing our early training, I
+flatter myself that, up to the present, we have done remarkably well.”
+
+“Nothing like being satisfied with oneself,” said Robina.
+
+“I’m not satisfied,” I said; “I’m only hopeful.  But it irritates me when
+I hear people talk as though man had been born a white-souled angel and
+was making supernatural efforts to become a sinner.  That seems to me the
+way to discourage him.  What he wants is bucking up; somebody to say to
+him, ‘Bravo! why, this is splendid!  Just think, my boy, what you were,
+and that not so very long ago—an unwashed, hairy savage; your law that of
+the jungle, your morals those of the rabbit-warren.  Now look at
+yourself—dressed in your little shiny hat, your trousers neatly creased,
+walking with your wife to church on Sunday!  Keep on—that’s all you’ve
+got to do.  In a few more centuries your own mother Nature won’t know
+you.’
+
+“You women,” I continued; “why, a handful of years ago we bought and sold
+you, kept you in cages, took the stick to you when you were not spry in
+doing what you were told.  Did you ever read the history of Patient
+Griselda?”
+
+“Yes,” said Robina, “I have.”  I gathered from her tone that the Joan of
+Arc expression had departed.  Had Primgate wanted to paint her at that
+particular moment I should have suggested Katherine—during the earlier
+stages—listening to a curtain lecture from Petruchio.  “Are you
+suggesting that all women should take her for a model?”
+
+“No,” I said, “I’m not.  Though were we living in Chaucer’s time I might;
+and you would not think it even silly.  What I’m impressing upon you is
+that the human race has yet a little way to travel before the average man
+can be regarded as an up-to-date edition of King Arthur—the King Arthur
+of the poetical legend, I mean.  Don’t be too impatient with him.”
+
+“Thinking what a beast he has been ought to make him impatient himself
+with himself,” considered Robina.  “He ought to be feeling so ashamed of
+himself as to be willing to do anything.”
+
+The owl in the old yew screamed, whether with indignation or amusement I
+cannot tell.
+
+“And woman,” I said, “had the power been hers, would she have used it to
+sweeter purpose?  Where is your evidence?  Your Cleopatras, Pompadours,
+Jezebels; your Catherines of Russia, late Empresses of China; your
+Faustines of all ages and all climes; your Mother Brownriggs; your
+Lucretia Borgias, Salomes—I could weary you with names.  Your Roman
+task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house slaveys; your ladies who
+whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages; your modern dames of
+fashion, decked with the plumage of the tortured grove.  There have been
+other women also—noble women, their names like beacon-lights studding the
+dark waste of history.  So there have been noble men—saints, martyrs,
+heroes.  The sex-line divides us physically, not morally.  Woman has been
+man’s accomplice in too many crimes to claim to be his judge.  ‘Male and
+female created He them’—like and like, for good and evil.”
+
+By good fortune I found a loose match.  I lighted a fresh cigar.
+
+“Dick, I suppose, is the average man,” said Robina.
+
+“Most of us are,” I said, “when we are at home.  Carlyle was the average
+man in the little front parlour in Cheyne Row, though, to hear fools
+talk, you might think no married couple outside literary circles had ever
+been known to exchange a cross look.  So was Oliver Cromwell in his own
+palace with the door shut.  Mrs. Cromwell must have thought him monstrous
+silly, placing sticky sweetmeats for his guests to sit on—told him so,
+most likely.  A cheery, kindly man, notwithstanding, though given to
+moods.  He and Mrs. Cromwell seem to have rubbed along, on the whole,
+pretty well together.  Old Sam Johnson—great, God-fearing, lovable,
+cantankerous old brute!  Life with him, in a small house on a limited
+income, must have had its ups and downs.  Milton and Frederick the Great
+were, one hopes, a little below the average.  Did their best, no doubt;
+lacked understanding.  Not so easy as it looks, living up to the standard
+of the average man.  Very clever people, in particular, find it tiring.”
+
+“I shall never marry,” said Robina.  “At least, I hope I sha’n’t.”
+
+“Why ‘hope’?” I asked.
+
+“Because I hope I shall never be idiot enough,” she answered.  “I see it
+all so clearly.  I wish I didn’t.  Love! it’s only an ugly thing with a
+pretty name.  It will not be me that he will fall in love with.  He will
+not know me until it is too late.  How can he?  It will be merely with
+the outside of me—my pink-and-white skin, my rounded arms.  I feel it
+sometimes when I see men looking at me, and it makes me mad.  And at
+other times the admiration in their eyes pleases me.  And that makes me
+madder still.”
+
+The moon had slipped behind the wood.  She had risen, and, leaning
+against the porch, was standing with her hands clasped.  I fancy she had
+forgotten me.  She seemed to be talking to the night.
+
+“It’s only a trick of Nature to make fools of us,” she said.  “He will
+tell me I am all the world to him; that his love will outlive the
+stars—will believe it himself at the time, poor fellow!  He will call me
+a hundred pretty names, will kiss my feet and hands.  And if I’m fool
+enough to listen to him, it may last”—she laughed; it was rather an ugly
+laugh—“six months; with luck perhaps a year, if I’m careful not to go out
+in the east wind and come home with a red nose, and never let him catch
+me in curl papers.  It will not be me that he will want: only my youth,
+and the novelty of me, and the mystery.  And when that is gone—”
+
+She turned to me.  It was a strange face I saw then in the pale light,
+quite a fierce little face.  She laid her hands upon my shoulders, and I
+felt them cold.  “What comes when it is dead?” she said.  “What follows?
+You must know.  Tell me.  I want the truth.”
+
+Her vehemence had arisen so suddenly.  The little girl I had set out to
+talk with was no longer there.  To my bewilderment, it was a woman that
+was questioning me.
+
+I drew her down beside me.  But the childish face was still stern.
+
+“I want the truth,” she said; so that I answered very gravely:
+
+“When the passion is passed; when the glory and the wonder of
+Desire—Nature’s eternal ritual of marriage, solemnising, sanctifying it
+to her commands—is ended; when, sooner or later, some grey dawn finds you
+wandering bewildered in once familiar places, seeking vainly the lost
+palace of youth’s dreams; when Love’s frenzy is faded, like the fragrance
+of the blossom, like the splendour of the dawn; there will remain to you,
+just what was there before—no more, no less.  If passion was all you had
+to give to one another, God help you.  You have had your hour of madness.
+It is finished.  If greed of praise and worship was your price—well, you
+have had your payment.  The bargain is complete.  If mere hope to be made
+happy was your lure, one pities you.  We do not make each other happy.
+Happiness is the gift of the gods, not of man.  The secret lies within
+you, not without.  What remains to you will depend not upon what you
+_thought_, but upon what you _are_.  If behind the lover there was the
+man—behind the impossible goddess of his love-sick brain some honest,
+human woman, then life lies not behind you, but before you.
+
+“Life is giving, not getting.  That is the mistake we most of us set out
+with.  It is the work that is the joy, not the wages; the game, not the
+score.  The lover’s delight is to yield, not to claim.  The crown of
+motherhood is pain.  To serve the State at cost of ease and leisure; to
+spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is the man’s
+ambition.  Life is doing, not having.  It is to gain the peak the climber
+strives, not to possess it.  Fools marry thinking what they are going to
+get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for
+self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses—the wages of the wanton.  The
+rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility—manhood, womanhood.
+Love’s baby talk you will have outgrown.  You will no longer be his
+‘Goddess,’ ‘Angel,’ ‘Popsy Wopsy,’ ‘Queen of his heart.’  There are finer
+names than these: wife, mother, priestess in the temple of humanity.
+Marriage is renunciation, the sacrifice of Self upon the altar of the
+race.  ‘A trick of Nature’ you call it.  Perhaps.  But a trick of Nature
+compelling you to surrender yourself to the purposes of God.”
+
+I fancy we must have sat in silence for quite a long while; for the moon,
+creeping upward past the wood, had flooded the fields again with light
+before Robina spoke.
+
+“Then all love is needless,” she said, “we could do better without it,
+choose with more discretion.  If it is only something that worries us for
+a little while and then passes, what is the sense of it?”
+
+“You could ask the same question of Life itself,” I said; “‘something
+that worries us for a little while, then passes.’  Perhaps the ‘worry,’
+as you call it, has its uses.  Volcanic upheavals are necessary to the
+making of a world.  Without them the ground would remain rock-bound,
+unfitted for its purposes.  That explosion of Youth’s pent-up forces that
+we term Love serves to the making of man and woman.  It does not die, it
+takes new shape.  The blossom fades as the fruit forms.  The passion
+passes to give place to peace.  The trembling lover has become the
+helper, the comforter, the husband.”
+
+“But the failures,” Robina persisted; “I do not mean the silly or the
+wicked people; but the people who begin by really loving one another,
+only to end in disliking—almost hating one another.  How do _they_ get
+there?”
+
+“Sit down,” I said, “and I will tell you a story.
+
+“Once upon a time there was a girl, and a boy who loved her.  She was a
+clever, brilliant girl, and she had the face of an angel.  They lived
+near to one another, seeing each other almost daily.  But the boy, awed
+by the difference of their social position, kept his secret, as he
+thought, to himself; dreaming, as youth will, of the day when fame and
+wealth would bridge the gulf between them.  The kind look in her eyes,
+the occasional seeming pressure of her hand, he allowed to feed his
+hopes; and on the morning of his departure for London an incident
+occurred that changed his vague imaginings to set resolve.  He had sent
+on his scanty baggage by the carrier, intending to walk the three miles
+to the station.  It was early in the morning, and he had not expected to
+meet a soul.  But a mile from the village he overtook her.  She was
+reading a book, but she made no pretence that the meeting was accidental,
+leaving him to form what conclusions he would.  She walked with him some
+distance, and he told her of his plans and hopes; and she answered him
+quite simply that she should always remember him, always be more glad
+than she could tell to hear of his success.  Near the end of the lane
+they parted, she wishing him in that low sweet woman’s voice of hers all
+things good.  He turned, a little farther on, and found that she had also
+turned.  She waved her hand to him, smiling.  And through the long day’s
+journey and through many days to come there remained with him that
+picture of her, bringing with it the scent of the pine-woods: her white
+hand waving to him, her sweet eyes smiling wistfully.
+
+“But fame and fortune are not won so quickly as boys dream, nor is life
+as easy to live bravely as it looks in visions.  It was nearly twenty
+years before they met again.  Neither had married.  Her people were dead
+and she was living alone; and to him the world at last had opened her
+doors.  She was still beautiful.  A gracious, gentle lady, she had grown;
+clothed with that soft sweet dignity that Time bestows upon rare women,
+rendering them fairer with the years.
+
+“To the man it seemed a miracle.  The dream of those early days came back
+to him.  Surely there was nothing now to separate them.  Nothing had
+changed but the years, bringing to them both wider sympathies, calmer,
+more enduring emotions.  She welcomed him again with the old kind smile,
+a warmer pressure of the hand; and, allowing a little time to pass for
+courtesy’s sake, he told her what was the truth: that he had never ceased
+to love her, never ceased to keep the vision of her fair pure face before
+him, his ideal of all that man could find of help in womanhood.  And her
+answer, until years later he read the explanation, remained a mystery to
+him.  She told him that she loved him, that she had never loved any other
+man and never should; that his love, for so long as he chose to give it
+to her, she should always prize as the greatest gift of her life.  But
+with that she prayed him to remain content.
+
+“He thought perhaps it was a touch of woman’s pride, of hurt dignity that
+he had kept silent so long, not trusting her; that perhaps as time went
+by she would change her mind.  But she never did; and after awhile,
+finding that his persistence only pained her, he accepted the situation.
+She was not the type of woman about whom people talk scandal, nor would
+it have troubled her much had they done so.  Able now to work where he
+would, he took a house in a neighbouring village, where for the best part
+of the year he lived, near to her.  And to the end they remained lovers.”
+
+“I think I understand,” said Robina.  “I will tell you afterwards if I am
+wrong.”
+
+“I told the story to a woman many years ago,” I said, “and she also
+thought she understood.  But she was only half right.”
+
+“We will see,” said Robina.  “Go on.”
+
+“She left a letter, to be given to him after her death, in case he
+survived her; if not, to be burned unopened.  In it she told him her
+reason, or rather her reasons, for having refused him.  It was an odd
+letter.  The ‘reasons’ sounded so pitiably insufficient.  Until one took
+the pains to examine them in the cold light of experience.  And then her
+letter struck one, not as foolish, but as one of the grimmest
+commentaries upon marriage that perhaps had ever been penned.
+
+“It was because she had wished always to remain his ideal; to keep their
+love for one another to the end, untarnished; to be his true helpmeet in
+all things, that she had refused to marry him.
+
+“Had he spoken that morning she had waited for him in the lane—she had
+half hoped, half feared it—she might have given her promise: ‘For Youth,’
+so she wrote, ‘always dreams it can find a new way.’  She thanked God
+that he had not.
+
+“‘Sooner or later,’ so ran the letter, ‘you would have learned, Dear,
+that I was neither saint nor angel; but just a woman—such a tiresome,
+inconsistent creature; she would have exasperated you—full of a thousand
+follies and irritabilities that would have marred for you all that was
+good in her.  I wanted you to have of me only what was worthy, and this
+seemed the only way.  Counting the hours to your coming, hating the pain
+of your going, I could always give to you my best.  The ugly words, the
+whims and frets that poison speech—they could wait; it was my lover’s
+hour.
+
+“‘And you, Dear, were always so tender, so gay.  You brought me joy with
+both your hands.  Would it have been the same, had you been my husband?
+How could it?  There were times, even as it was, when you vexed me.
+Forgive me, Dear, I mean it was my fault—ways of thought and action that
+did not fit in with my ways, that I was not large-minded enough to pass
+over.  As my lover, they were but as spots upon the sun.  It was easy to
+control the momentary irritation that they caused me.  Time was too
+precious for even a moment of estrangement.  As my husband, the jarring
+note would have been continuous, would have widened into discord.  You
+see, Dear, I was not great enough to love _all_ of you.  I remember, as a
+child, how indignant I always felt with God when my nurse told me He
+would not love me because I was naughty, that He only loved good
+children.  It seemed such a poor sort of love, that.  Yet that is
+precisely how we men and women do love; taking only what gives us
+pleasure, repaying the rest with anger.  There would have arisen the
+unkind words that can never be recalled; the ugly silences; the gradual
+withdrawing from one another.  I dared not face it.
+
+“‘It was not all selfishness.  Truthfully I can say I thought more of you
+than of myself.  I wanted to keep the shadows of life away from you.  We
+men and women are like the flowers.  It is in sunshine that we come to
+our best.  You were my hero.  I wanted you to be great.  I wanted you to
+be surrounded by lovely dreams.  I wanted your love to be a thing holy,
+helpful to you.’
+
+“It was a long letter.  I have given you the gist of it.”
+
+Again there was a silence between us.
+
+“You think she did right?” asked Robina.
+
+“I cannot say,” I answered; “there are no rules for Life, only for the
+individual.”
+
+“I have read it somewhere,” said Robina—“where was it?—‘Love suffers all
+things, and rejoices.’”
+
+“Maybe in old Thomas Kempis.  I am not sure,” I said.
+
+“It seems to me,” said Robina, “that the explanation lies in that one
+sentence of hers: ‘I was not great enough to love _all_ of you.’”
+
+“It seems to me,” I said, “that the whole art of marriage is the art of
+getting on with the other fellow.  It means patience, self-control,
+forbearance.  It means the laying aside of our self-conceit and admitting
+to ourselves that, judged by eyes less partial than our own, there may be
+much in us that is objectionable, that calls for alteration.  It means
+toleration for views and opinions diametrically opposed to our most
+cherished convictions.  It means, of necessity, the abandonment of many
+habits and indulgences that however trivial have grown to be important to
+us.  It means the shaping of our own desires to the needs of others; the
+acceptance often of surroundings and conditions personally distasteful to
+us.  It means affection deep and strong enough to bear away the ugly
+things of life—its quarrels, wrongs, misunderstandings—swiftly and
+silently into the sea of forgetfulness.  It means courage, good humour,
+commonsense.”
+
+“That is what I am saying,” explained Robina.  “It means loving him even
+when he’s naughty.”
+
+Dick came across the fields.  Robina rose and slipped into the house.
+
+“You are looking mighty solemn, Dad,” said Dick.
+
+“Thinking of Life, Dick,” I confessed.  “Of the meaning and the
+explanation of it.”
+
+“Yes, it’s a problem, Life,” admitted Dick.
+
+“A bit of a teaser,” I agreed.
+
+We smoked in silence for awhile.
+
+“Loving a good woman must be a tremendous help to a man,” said Dick.
+
+He looked very handsome, very gallant, his boyish face flashing challenge
+to the Fates.
+
+“Tremendous, Dick,” I agreed.
+
+Robina called to him that his supper was ready.  He knocked the ashes
+from his pipe, and followed her into the house.  Their laughing voices
+came to me broken through the half-closed doors.  From the night around
+me rose a strange low murmur.  It seemed to me as though above the
+silence I heard the far-off music of the Mills of God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+I FANCY Veronica is going to be an authoress.  Her mother thinks this may
+account for many things about her that have been troubling us.  The story
+never got far.  It was laid aside for the more alluring work of
+play-writing, and apparently forgotten.  I came across the copy-book
+containing her “Rough Notes” the other day.  There is decided flavour
+about them.  I transcribe selections; the spelling, as before, being my
+own.
+
+“The scene is laid in the Moon.  But everything is just the same as down
+here.  With one exception.  The children rule.  The grown-ups do not like
+it.  But they cannot help it.  Something has happened to them.  They
+don’t know what.  And the world is as it used to be.  In the sweet old
+story-books.  Before sin came.  There are fairies that dance o’ nights.
+And Witches.  That lure you.  And then turn you into things.  And a
+dragon who lives in a cave.  And springs out at people.  And eats them.
+So that you have to be careful.  And all the animals talk.  And there are
+giants.  And lots of magic.  And it is the children who know everything.
+And what to do for it.  And they have to teach the grown-ups.  And the
+grown-ups don’t believe half of it.  And are far too fond of arguing.
+Which is a sore trial to the children.  But they have patience, and are
+just.
+
+“Of course the grown-ups have to go to school.  They have much to learn.
+Poor things!  And they hate it.  They take no interest in fairy lore.
+And what would happen to them if they got wrecked on a Desert Island they
+don’t seem to care.  And then there are languages.  What they will need
+when they come to be children.  And have to talk to all the animals.  And
+magic.  Which is deep.  And they hate it.  And say it is rot.  They are
+full of tricks.  One catches them reading trashy novels.  Under the desk.
+All about love.  Which is wasting their children’s money.  And God knows
+it is hard enough to earn.  But the children are not angry with them.
+Remembering how they felt themselves.  When they were grown up.  Only
+firm.
+
+“The children give them plenty of holidays.  Because holidays are good
+for everyone.  They freshen you up.  But the grown-ups are very stupid.
+And do not care for sensible games.  Such as Indians.  And Pirates.  What
+would sharpen their faculties.  And so fit them for the future.  They
+only care to play with a ball.  Which is of no help.  To the stern
+realities of life.  Or talk.  Lord, how they talk!
+
+“There is one grown-up.  Who is very clever.  He can talk about
+everything.  But it leads to nothing.  And spoils the party.  So they
+send him to bed.  And there are two grown-ups.  A male and a female.  And
+they talk love.  All the time.  Even on fine days.  Which is maudlin.
+But the children are patient with them.  Knowing it takes all sorts.  To
+make a world.  And trusting they will grow out of it.  And of course
+there are grown-ups who are good.  And a comfort to their children.
+
+“And everything the children like is good.  And wholesome.  And
+everything the grown-ups like is bad for them.  _And they mustn’t have
+it_.  They clamour for tea and coffee.  What undermines their nervous
+system.  And waste their money in the tuck shop.  Upon chops.  And turtle
+soup.  And the children have to put them to bed.  And give them pills.
+Till they feel better.
+
+“There is a little girl named Prue.  Who lives with a little boy named
+Simon.  They mean well.  But haven’t much sense.  They have two
+grown-ups.  A male and a female.  Named Peter and Martha.  Respectively.
+They are just the ordinary grown-ups.  Neither better nor worse.  And
+much might be done with them.  By kindness.  But Prue and Simon _go the
+wrong way to work_.  It is blame blame all day long.  But as for praise.
+Oh never!
+
+“One summer’s day Prue and Simon take Peter for a walk.  In the country.
+And they meet a cow.  And they think this a good opportunity.  To test
+Peter’s knowledge.  Of languages.  So they tell him to talk to the cow.
+And he talks to the cow.  And the cow don’t understand him.  And he don’t
+understand the cow.  And they are mad with him.  ‘What is the use,’ they
+say.  ‘Of our paying expensive fees.  To have you taught the language.
+By a first-class cow.  And when you come out into the country.  You can’t
+talk it.’  And he says he did talk it.  But they will not listen to him.
+But go on raving.  And in the end it turns out.  _It was a Jersey cow_!
+What talked a dialect.  So of course he couldn’t understand it.  But did
+they apologise?  Oh dear no.
+
+“Another time.  One morning at breakfast.  Martha didn’t like her
+raspberry vinegar.  So she didn’t drink it.  And Simon came into the
+nursery.  And he saw that Martha hadn’t drunk her raspberry vinegar.  And
+he asked her why.  And she said she didn’t like it.  Because it was
+nasty.  And he said it wasn’t nasty.  And that she _ought_ to like it.
+And how it was shocking.  The way grown-ups nowadays grumbled.  At good
+wholesome food.  Provided for them by their too-indulgent children.  And
+how when _he_ was a grown-up.  He would never have dared.  And so on.
+All in the usual style.  And to prove it wasn’t nasty.  He poured himself
+out a cupful.  And drank it off.  In a gulp.  And he said it was
+delicious.  And turned pale.  And left the room.
+
+“And Prue came into the nursery.  And she saw that Martha hadn’t drunk
+her raspberry vinegar.  And she asked her why.  And Martha told her how
+she didn’t like it.  Because it was nasty.  And Prue told her she ought
+to be ashamed of herself.  For not liking it.  Because it was good for
+her.  And really very nice.  And anyhow she’d _got_ to like it.  And not
+get stuffing herself up with messy tea and coffee.  Because she wouldn’t
+have it.  And there was an end of it.  And so on.  And to prove it was
+all right.  She poured herself out a cupful.  And drank it off.  In a
+gulp.  And she said there was nothing wrong with it.  Nothing whatever.
+And turned pale.  And left the room.
+
+“And it wasn’t raspberry vinegar.  But just red ink.  What had got put
+into the raspberry vinegar decanter.  By an oversight.  And they needn’t
+have been ill at all.  If only they had listened.  To poor old Martha.
+But no.  That was their fixed idea.  That grown-ups hadn’t any sense.  At
+all.  What is a mistake.  As one perceives.”
+
+Other characters had been sketched, some of them to be abandoned after a
+few bold touches: the difficulty of avoiding too close a portraiture to
+the living original having apparently proved irksome.  Against one such,
+evidently an attempt to help Dick see himself in his true colours, I find
+this marginal, note in pencil: “Better not.  Might make him ratty.”
+Opposite to another—obviously of Mrs. St. Leonard, and with instinct for
+alliteration—is scribbled; “Too terribly true.  She’d twig it.”
+
+Another character is that of a gent: “With a certain gift.  For telling
+stories.  Some of them _not bad_.”  A promising party, on the whole.
+Indeed, one might say, judging from description, a quite rational person:
+“_When not on the rantan_.  But inconsistent.”  He is the grown-up of a
+little girl: “Not beautiful.  But strangely attractive.  Whom we will
+call Enid.” One gathers that if all the children had been Enids, then
+surely the last word in worlds had been said.  She has only this one
+grown-up of her very own; but she makes it her business to adopt and
+reform all the incorrigible old folk the other children have despaired
+of.  It is all done by kindness.  “She is _ever_ patient.  And just.”
+Prominent among her numerous _protégées_ is a military man, an elderly
+colonel; until she took him in hand, the awful example of what a grown-up
+might easily become, left to the care of incompetent infants.  He defies
+his own child, a virtuous youth, but “lacking in sympathy;” is rude to
+his little nephews and nieces; a holy terror to his governess.  He uses
+wicked words, picked up from retired pirates.  “Of course without
+understanding.  Their terrible significance.”  He steals the Indian’s
+fire-water.  “What few can partake of.  With impunity.”  Certainly not
+the Colonel.  “Can this be he!  This gibbering wreck!”  He hides cigars
+in a hollow tree, and smokes on the sly.  He plays truant.  Lures other
+old gentlemen away from their lessons to join him.  They are discovered
+in the woods, in a cave, playing whist for sixpenny points.
+
+Does Enid storm and bullyrag; threaten that if ever she catches him so
+much as looking at a card again she will go straight out and tell the
+dragon, who will in his turn be so shocked that in all probability he
+will decide on coming back with her to kill and eat the Colonel on the
+spot?  No.  “Such are not her methods.”  Instead she smiles:
+“indulgently.”  She says it is only natural for grown-ups to like playing
+cards.  She is not angry with him.  And there is no need for him to run
+away and hide in a nasty damp cave.  “_She herself will play whist with
+him_.”  The effect upon the Colonel is immediate: he bursts into tears.
+She plays whist with him in the garden: “After school hours.  When he has
+been _good_.”  Double dummy, one presumes.  One leaves the Colonel, in
+the end, cured of his passion for whist.  Whether as the consequence of
+her play or her influence the “Rough Notes” give no indication.
+
+In the play, I am inclined to think, Veronica received assistance.  The
+house had got itself finished early in September.  Young Bute has
+certainly done wonders.  We performed it in the empty billiard-room,
+followed by a one-act piece of my own.  The occasion did duty as a
+house-warming.  We had quite a crowd, and ended up with a dance.
+Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, except young Bertie St. Leonard,
+who played the Prince, and could not get out of his helmet in time for
+supper.  It was a good helmet, but had been fastened clumsily; and
+inexperienced people trying to help had only succeeded in jambing all the
+screws.  Not only wouldn’t it come off, it would not even open for a
+drink.  All thought it an excellent joke, with the exception of young
+Herbert St. Leonard.  Our Mayor, a cheerful little man and very popular,
+said that it ought to be sent to _Punch_.  The local reporter reminded
+him that the late John Leech had already made use of precisely the same
+incident for a comic illustration, afterwards remembering that it was not
+Leech, but the late Phil May.  He seemed to think this ended the matter.
+St. Leonard and the Vicar, who are rival authorities upon the subject,
+fell into an argument upon armour in general, with special reference to
+the fourteenth century.  Each used the boy’s head to confirm his own
+theory, passing it triumphantly from one to the other.  We had to send
+off young Hopkins in the donkey-cart for the blacksmith.  I have found
+out, by the way, how it is young Hopkins makes our donkey go.  Young
+Hopkins argues it is far less brutal than whacking him, especially after
+experience has proved that he evidently does not know why you are
+whacking him.  I am not at all sure the boy is not right.
+
+Janie played the Fairy Godmamma in a white wig and panniers.  She will
+make a beautiful old lady.  The white hair gives her the one thing that
+she lacks: distinction.  I found myself glancing apprehensively round the
+room, wishing we had not invited so many eligible bachelors.  Dick is
+making me anxious.  The sense of his own unworthiness, which has come to
+him quite suddenly, and apparently with all the shock of a new discovery,
+has completely unnerved him.  It is a healthy sentiment, and does him
+good.  But I do not want it carried to the length of losing her.  The
+thought of what he might one day bring home has been a nightmare to me
+ever since he left school.  I suppose it is to most fathers.  Especially
+if one thinks of the women one loved oneself when in the early twenties.
+A large pale-faced girl, who served in a bun-shop in the Strand, is the
+first I can recollect.  How I trembled when by chance her hand touched
+mine!  I cannot recall a single attraction about her except her size, yet
+for nearly six months I lunched off pastry and mineral waters merely to
+be near her.  To this very day an attack of indigestion will always
+recreate her image in my mind.  Another was a thin, sallow girl, but with
+magnificent eyes, I met one afternoon in the South Kensington Museum.
+She was a brainless, vixenish girl, but the memory of her eyes would
+always draw me back to her.  More than two-thirds of our time together we
+spent in violent quarrels; and all my hopes of eternity I would have
+given to make her my companion for life.  But for Luck, in the shape of a
+well-to-do cab proprietor, as great an idiot as myself I might have done
+it.  The third was a chorus girl: on the whole, the best of the bunch.
+Her father was a coachman, and she had ten brothers and sisters, most of
+them doing well in service.  And she was succeeded—if I have the order
+correct—by the ex-wife of a solicitor, a sprightly lady; according to her
+own account the victim of complicated injustice.  I daresay there were
+others, if I took the time to think; but not one of them can I remember
+without returning thanks to Providence for having lost her.  What is one
+to do?  There are days in springtime when a young man ought not to be
+allowed outside the house.  Thank Heaven and Convention it is not the
+girls who propose!  Few women, who would choose the right moment to put
+their hands upon a young man’s shoulders, and, looking into his eyes, ask
+him to marry them next week, would receive No for an answer.  It is only
+our shyness that saves us.  A wise friend of mine, who has observed much,
+would have all those marrying under five-and-twenty divorced by automatic
+effluxion of time at forty, leaving the few who had chosen satisfactorily
+to be reunited if they wished: his argument being that to condemn grown
+men and women to abide by the choice of inexperienced boys and girls is
+unjust and absurd.  There were nice girls I could have fallen in love
+with.  They never occurred to me.  It would seem as if a man had to learn
+taste in women as in all other things, namely, by education.  Here and
+there may exist the born connoisseur.  But with most of us our first
+instincts are towards vulgarity.  It is Barrie, I think, who says that if
+only there were silly women enough to go round, good women would never
+get a look in.  It is certainly remarkable, the number of sweet old maids
+one meets.  Almost as remarkable as the number of stupid, cross-grained
+wives.  As I tell Dick, I have no desire for a daughter-in-law of whom he
+feels himself worthy.  If he can’t do better than that he had best remain
+single.  Janie and he, if I know anything of life, are just suited for
+one another.  Helpful people take their happiness in helping.  I knew
+just such another, once: a sweet, industrious, sensible girl.  She made
+the mistake of marrying a thoroughly good man.  There was nothing for her
+to do.  She ended by losing all interest in him, devoting herself to a
+Home in the East End for the reformation of newsboys.  It was a pitiful
+waste: so many women would have been glad of him; while to the ordinary
+sinful man she would have been a life-long comfort.  I must have a
+serious talk to Dick.  I shall point out what a good thing it will be for
+her.  I can see Dick keeping her busy and contented for the rest of her
+days.
+
+Veronica played the Princess,—with little boy Foy—“Sir Robert of the
+Curse”—as her page.  Anything more dignified has, I should say, rarely
+been seen upon the English stage.  Among her wedding presents were: Two
+Votes for Women, presented by the local Fire Brigade; a Flying Machine of
+“proved stability.  Might be used as a bathing tent;” a National Theatre,
+“with Cold Water Douche in Basement for reception of English Dramatists;”
+Recipe for building a Navy, without paying for it, “Gift of that great
+Financial Expert, Sir Hocus Pocus;” one Conscientious Income Taxpayer,
+“has been driven by a Lady;” two Socialists in agreement as to what it
+means, “smaller one slightly damaged;” one Contented Farmer, “Babylonian
+Period;” and one extra-sized bottle, “Solution of the Servant Problem.”
+
+Dick played the “Dragon without a Tail.”  We had to make him without a
+tail owing to the smallness of the stage.  He had once had a tail.  But
+that was a long story: added to which there was not time to tell it.
+Little Sally St. Leonard played his wife, and Robina was his
+mother-in-law.  So much depends upon one’s mood.  What an ocean of
+boredom might be saved if science could but give us a barometer
+foretelling us our changes of temperament!  How much more to our comfort
+we could plan our lives, knowing that on Monday, say, we should be
+feeling frivolous; on Saturday “dull to bad-tempered.”
+
+I took a man once to see _The Private Secretary_.  I began by enjoying
+myself, and ended by feeling ashamed of myself and vexed with the scheme
+of creation.  That authors should write such plays, that actors should be
+willing to degrade our common nature by appearing in them was
+explainable, he supposed, by the law of supply and demand.  What he could
+not understand was how the public could contrive to extract amusement
+from them.  What was there funny in seeing a poor gentleman shut up in a
+box?  Why should everybody roar with laughter when he asked for a bun?
+People asked for buns every day—people in railway refreshment rooms, in
+aerated bread shops.  Where was the joke?  A month later I found myself
+by chance occupying the seat just behind him at the pantomime.  The low
+comedian was bathing a baby, and tears of merriment were rolling down his
+cheeks.  To me the whole business seemed painful and revolting.  We were
+being asked to find delight in the spectacle of a father—scouring down an
+infant of tender years with a scrubbing-brush.  How women—many of them
+mothers—could remain through such an exhibition without rising in protest
+appeared to me an argument against female suffrage.  A lady entered, the
+wife, so the programme informed me, of a Baron!  All I can say is that a
+more vulgar, less prepossessing female I never wish to meet.  I even
+doubted her sobriety.  She sat down plump upon the baby.  She must have
+been a woman rising sixteen stone, and for one minute fifteen seconds by
+my watch the whole house rocked with laughter.  That the thing was only a
+stage property I felt was no excuse.  The humour—heaven save the mark—lay
+in the supposition that what we were witnessing was the agony and
+death—for no child could have survived that woman’s weight—of a real
+baby.  Had I been able to tap myself beforehand I should have learned
+that on that particular Saturday I was going to be “set-serious.”
+Instead of booking a seat for the pantomime I should have gone to a
+lecture on Egyptian pottery which was being given by a friend of mine at
+the London Library, and have had a good time.
+
+Children could tap their parents, warn each other that father was “going
+down;” that mother next week was likely to be “gusty.”  Children
+themselves might hang out their little barometers.  I remember a rainy
+day in a country house during the Christmas holidays.  We had among us a
+Member of Parliament: a man of sunny disposition, extremely fond of
+children.  He said it was awfully hard lines on the little beggars cooped
+up in a nursery; and borrowing his host’s motor-coat, pretended he was a
+bear.  He plodded round on his hands and knees and growled a good deal,
+and the children sat on the sofa and watched him.  But they didn’t seem
+to be enjoying it, not much; and after a quarter of an hour or so he
+noticed this himself.  He thought it was, maybe, that they were tired of
+bears, and fancied that a whale might rouse them.  He turned the table
+upside down and placed the children in it on three chairs, explaining to
+them that they were ship-wrecked sailors on a raft, and that they must be
+careful the whale did not get underneath it and upset them.  He draped a
+sheet over the towel-horse to represent an iceberg, and rolled himself up
+in a mackintosh and flopped about the floor on his stomach, butting his
+head occasionally against the table in order to suggest to them their
+danger.  The attitude of the children still remained that of polite
+spectators.  True, the youngest boy did make the suggestion of borrowing
+the kitchen toasting-fork, and employing it as a harpoon; but even this
+appeared to be the outcome rather of a desire to please than of any
+warmer interest; and, the whale objecting, the idea fell through.  After
+that he climbed up on the dresser and announced to them that he was an
+ourang-outang.  They watched him break a soup-tureen, and then the eldest
+boy, stepping out into the middle of the room, held up his arm, and the
+Member of Parliament, somewhat surprised, sat down on the dresser and
+listened.
+
+“Please, sir,” said the eldest boy, “we’re awfully sorry.  It’s awfully
+good of you, sir.  But somehow we’re not feeling in the mood for wild
+beasts this afternoon.”
+
+The Member of Parliament brought them down into the drawing-room, where
+we had music; and the children, at their own request, were allowed to
+sing hymns.  The next day they came of their own accord, and asked the
+Member of Parliament to play at beasts with them; but it seemed he had
+letters to write.
+
+There are times when jokes about mothers-in-law strike me as lacking both
+in taste and freshness.  On this particular evening they came to me
+bringing with them all the fragrance of the days that are no more.  The
+first play I ever saw dealt with the subject of the mother-in-law—the
+“Problem” I think it was called in those days.  The occasion was an
+amateur performance given in aid of the local Ragged School.  A cousin of
+mine, lately married, played the wife; and my aunt, I remember, got up
+and walked out in the middle of the second act.  Robina, in spectacles
+and an early Victorian bonnet, reminded me of her.  Young Bute played a
+comic cabman.  It was at the old Haymarket, in Buckstone’s time, that I
+first met the cabman of art and literature.  Dear bibulous, becoated
+creature, with ever-wrathful outstretched palm and husky “’Ere!  Wot’s
+this?”  How good it was to see him once again!  I felt I wanted to climb
+over the foot-lights and shake him by the hand.  The twins played a
+couple of Young Turks, much concerned about their constitutions; and made
+quite a hit with a topical duet to the refrain: “And so you see The
+reason he Is not the Boss for us.”  We all agreed it was a pun worthy of
+Tom Hood himself.  The Vicar thought he had heard it before, but this
+seemed improbable.  There was a unanimous call for Author, giving rise to
+sounds of discussion behind the curtain.  Eventually the whole company
+appeared, with Veronica in the centre.  I had noticed throughout that the
+centre of the stage appeared to be Veronica’s favourite spot.  I can see
+the makings of a leading actress in Veronica.
+
+In my own piece, which followed, Robina and Bute played a young married
+couple who do not know how to quarrel.  It has always struck me how much
+more satisfactorily people quarrel on the stage than in real life.  On
+the stage the man, having made up his mind—to have it out, enters and
+closes the door.  He lights a cigarette; if not a teetotaller mixes
+himself a brandy-and-soda.  His wife all this time is careful to remain
+silent.  Quite evident it is that he is preparing for her benefit
+something unpleasant, and chatter might disturb him.  To fill up the time
+she toys with a novel or touches softly the keys of the piano until he is
+quite comfortable and ready to begin.  He glides into his subject with
+the studied calm of one with all the afternoon before him.  She listens
+to him in rapt attention.  She does not dream of interrupting him; would
+scorn the suggestion of chipping in with any little notion of her own
+likely to disarrange his train of thought.  All she does when he pauses,
+as occasionally he has to for the purpose of taking breath, is to come to
+his assistance with short encouraging remarks, such, for instance, as:
+“Well.”  “You think that.”  “And if I did?”  Her object seems to be to
+help him on.  “Go on,” she says from time to time, bitterly.  And he goes
+on.  Towards the end, when he shows signs of easing up, she puts it to
+him as one sportsman to another: Is he quite finished?  Is that all?
+Sometimes it isn’t.  As often as not he has been saving the pick of the
+basket for the last.
+
+“No,” he says, “that is not all.  There is something else!”
+
+That is quite enough for her.  That is all she wanted to know.  She
+merely asked in case there might be.  As it appears there is, she
+re-settles herself in her chair and is again all ears.
+
+When it does come—when he is quite sure there is nothing he has
+forgotten, no little point that he has overlooked, she rises.
+
+“I have listened patiently,” she begins, “to all that you have said.”
+(The devil himself could not deny this.  “Patience” hardly seems the
+word.  “Enthusiastically” she might almost have said).  “Now”—with rising
+inflection—“you listen to me.”
+
+The stage husband—always the gentleman—bows;—stiffly maybe, but quite
+politely; and prepares in his turn to occupy the _rôle_ of dumb but
+dignified defendant.  To emphasise the coming change in their positions,
+the lady most probably crosses over to what has hitherto been his side of
+the stage; while he, starting at the same moment, and passing her about
+the centre, settles himself down in what must be regarded as the
+listener’s end of the room.  We then have the whole story over again from
+her point of view; and this time it is the gentleman who would bite off
+his tongue rather than make a retort calculated to put the lady off.
+
+In the end it is the party who is in the right that conquers.  Off the
+stage this is more or less of a toss-up; on the stage, never.  If justice
+be with the husband, then it is his voice that, gradually growing louder
+and louder, rings at last triumphant through the house.  The lady sees
+herself that she has been to blame, and wonders why it did not occur to
+her before—is grateful for the revelation, and asks to be forgiven.  If,
+on the other hand, it was the husband who was at fault, then it is the
+lady who will be found eventually occupying the centre of the stage; the
+miserable husband who, morally speaking, will be trying to get under the
+table.
+
+Now, in real life things don’t happen quite like this.  What the quarrel
+in real life suffers from is want of system.  There is no order, no
+settled plan.  There is much too much go-as-you-please about the quarrel
+in real life, and the result is naturally pure muddle.  The man, turning
+things over in the morning while shaving, makes up his mind to have this
+matter out and have done with it.  He knows exactly what he is going to
+say.  He repeats it to himself at intervals during the day.  He will
+first say This, and then he will go on to That; while he is about it he
+will perhaps mention the Other.  He reckons it will take him a quarter of
+an hour.  Which will just give him time to dress for dinner.
+
+After it is over, and he looks at his watch, he finds it has taken him
+longer than that.  Added to which he has said next to nothing—next to
+nothing, that is, of what he meant to say.  It went wrong from the very
+start.  As a matter of fact there wasn’t any start.  He entered the room
+and closed the door.  That is as far as he got.  The cigarette he never
+even lighted.  There ought to have been a box of matches on the
+mantelpiece behind the photo-frame.  And of course there were none there.
+For her to fly into a temper merely because he reminded her that he had
+spoken about this very matter at least a hundred times before, and accuse
+him of going about his own house “stealing” his own matches was
+positively laughable.  They had quarrelled for about five minutes over
+those wretched matches, and then for another ten because he said that
+women had no sense of humour, and she wanted to know how he knew.  After
+that there had cropped up the last quarter’s gas-bill, and that by a
+process still mysterious to him had led them into the subject of his
+behaviour on the night of the Hockey Club dance.  By an effort of almost
+supernatural self-control he had contrived at length to introduce the
+subject he had come home half an hour earlier than usual on purpose to
+discuss.  It didn’t interest her in the least.  What she was full of by
+this time was a girl named Arabella Jones.  She got in quite a lot while
+he was vainly trying to remember where he had last seen the damned girl.
+He had just succeeded in getting back to his own topic when the Cuddiford
+girl from next door dashed in without a hat to borrow a tuning-fork.  It
+had been quite a business finding the tuning-fork, and when she was gone
+they had to begin all over again.  They had quarrelled about the
+drawing-room carpet; about her sister Florrie’s birthday present; and the
+way he drove the motor-car.  It had taken them over an hour and a half,
+and rather than waste the tickets for the theatre, they had gone without
+their dinner.  The matter of the cold chisel still remained to be
+thrashed out.
+
+It had occurred to me that through the medium of the drama I might show
+how the domestic quarrel could so easily be improved.  Adolphus Goodbody,
+a worthy young man deeply attached to his wife, feels nevertheless that
+the dinners she is inflicting upon him are threatening with permanent
+damage his digestive system.  He determines, come what may, to insist
+upon a change.  Elvira Goodbody, a charming girl, admiring and devoted to
+her husband, is notwithstanding a trifle _en tête_, especially when her
+domestic arrangements happen to be the theme of discussion.  Adolphus,
+his courage screwed to the sticking-point, broaches the difficult
+subject; and for the first half of the act my aim was to picture the
+progress of the human quarrel, not as it should be, but as it is.  They
+never reach the cook.  The first mention of the word “dinner” reminds
+Elvira (quick to perceive that argument is brewing, and alive to the
+advantage of getting in first) that twice the month before he had dined
+out, not returning till the small hours of the morning.  What she wants
+to know is where this sort of thing is going to end?  If the purpose of
+Freemasonry is the ruin of the home and the desertion of women, then all
+she has to say—it turns out to be quite a good deal.  Adolphus, when able
+to get in a word, suggests that eleven o’clock at the latest can hardly
+be described as the “small hours of the morning”: the fault with women is
+that they never will confine themselves to the simple truth.  From that
+point onwards, as can be imagined, the scene almost wrote itself.  They
+have passed through all the customary stages, and are planning, with
+exaggerated calm, arrangements for the separation which each now feels to
+be inevitable, when a knock comes to the front-door, and there enters a
+mutual friend.
+
+Their hasty attempts to cover up the traces of mental disorder with which
+the atmosphere is strewed do not deceive him.  There has been, let us
+say, a ripple on the waters of perfect agreement.  Come!  What was it all
+about?
+
+“About!”  They look from one to the other.  Surely it would be simpler to
+tell him what it had _not_ been about.  It had been about the parrot,
+about her want of punctuality, about his using the butter-knife for the
+marmalade, about a pair of slippers he had lost at Christmas, about the
+education question, and her dressmaker’s bill, and his friend George, and
+the next-door dog—
+
+The mutual friend cuts short the catalogue.  Clearly there is nothing for
+it but to begin the quarrel all over again; and this time, if they will
+put themselves into his hands, he feels sure he can promise victory to
+whichever one is in the right.
+
+Elvira—she has a sweet, impulsive nature—throws her arms around him: that
+is all she wants.  If only Adolphus could be brought to see!  Adolphus
+grips him by the hand.  If only Elvira would listen to sense!
+
+The mutual friend—he is an old stage-manager—arranges the scene: Elvira
+in easy-chair by fire with crochet.  Enter Adolphus.  He lights a
+cigarette; flings the match on the floor; with his hands in his pockets
+paces up and down the room; kicks a footstool out of his way.
+
+“Tell me when I am to begin,” says Elvira.
+
+The mutual friend promises to give her the right cue.
+
+Adolphus comes to a halt in the centre of the room.
+
+“I am sorry, my dear,” he says, “but there is something I must say to
+you—something that may not be altogether pleasant for you to hear.”
+
+To which Elvira, still crocheting, replies, “Oh, indeed.  And pray what
+may that be?”
+
+This was not Elvira’s own idea.  Springing from her chair, she had got as
+far as: “Look here.  If you have come home early merely for the purpose
+of making a row—” before the mutual friend could stop her.  The mutual
+friend was firm.  Only by exacting strict obedience could he guarantee a
+successful issue.  What she had got to say was, “Oh, indeed.  Etcetera.”
+The mutual friend had need of all his tact to prevent its becoming a
+quarrel of three.
+
+Adolphus, allowed to proceed, explained that the subject about which he
+wished to speak was the subject of dinner.  The mutual friend this time
+was beforehand.  Elvira’s retort to that was: “Dinner!  You complain of
+the dinners I provide for you?” enabling him to reply, “Yes, madam, I do
+complain,” and to give reasons.  It seemed to Elvira that the mutual
+friend had lost his senses.  To tell her to “wait”; that “her time would
+come”; of what use was that!  Half of what she wanted to say would be
+gone out of her head.  Adolphus brought to a conclusion his criticism of
+Elvira’s kitchen; and then Elvira, incapable of restraining herself
+further, rose majestically.
+
+The mutual friend was saved the trouble of suppressing Adolphus.  Until
+Elvira had finished Adolphus never got an opening.  He grumbled at their
+dinners.  He! who can dine night after night with his precious
+Freemasons.  Does he think she likes them any better?  She, doomed to
+stay at home and eat them.  What does he take her for?  An ostrich?
+Whose fault is it that they keep an incompetent cook too old to learn and
+too obstinate to want to?  Whose old family servant was she?  Not
+Elvira’s.  It has been to please Adolphus that she has suffered the
+woman.  And this is her reward.  This!  She breaks down.  Adolphus is
+astonished and troubled.  Personally he never liked the woman.  Faithful
+she may have been, but a cook never.  His own idea, had he been
+consulted, would have been a small pension.  Elvira falls upon his neck.
+Why did he not say so before?  Adolphus presses her to his bosom.  If
+only he had known!  They promise the mutual friend never to quarrel again
+without his assistance.
+
+The acting all round was quite good.  Our curate, who is a bachelor, said
+it taught a lesson.  Veronica had tears in her eyes.  She whispered to me
+that she thought it beautiful.  There is more in Veronica than people
+think.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+I AM sorry the house is finished.  There is a proverb: “Fools build
+houses for wise men to live in.”  It depends upon what you are after.
+The fool gets the fun, and the wise men the bricks and mortar.  I
+remember a whimsical story I picked up at the bookstall of the Gare de
+Lyon.  I read it between Paris and Fontainebleau many years ago.  Three
+friends, youthful Bohemians, smoking their pipes after the meagre dinner
+of a cheap restaurant in the Latin Quarter, fell to thinking of their
+poverty, of the long and bitter struggle that lay before them.
+
+“My themes are so original,” sighed the Musician.  “It will take me a
+year of _fête_ days to teach the public to understand them, even if ever
+I do succeed.  And meanwhile I shall live unknown, neglected; watching
+the men without ideals passing me by in the race, splashed with the mud
+from their carriage-wheels as I beat the pavements with worn shoes.  It
+is really a most unjust world.”
+
+“An abominable world,” agreed the Poet.  “But think of me!  My case is
+far harder than yours.  Your gift lies within you.  Mine is to translate
+what lies around me; and that, for so far ahead as I can see, will always
+be the shadow side of life.  To develop my genius to its fullest I need
+the sunshine of existence.  My soul is being starved for lack of the
+beautiful things of life.  A little of the wealth that vulgar people
+waste would make a great poet for France.  It is not only of myself that
+I am thinking.”
+
+The Painter laughed.  “I cannot soar to your heights,” he said.  “Frankly
+speaking, it is myself that chiefly appeals to me.  Why not?  I give the
+world Beauty, and in return what does it give me?  This dingy restaurant,
+where I eat ill-flavoured food off hideous platters, a foul garret giving
+on to chimney-pots.  After long years of ill-requited labour I may—as
+others have before me—come into my kingdom: possess my studio in the
+Champs Elysées, my fine house at Neuilly; but the prospect of the
+intervening period, I confess, appals me.”
+
+Absorbed in themselves, they had not noticed that a stranger, seated at a
+neighbouring table, had been listening with attention.  He rose and,
+apologising with easy grace for intrusion into a conversation he could
+hardly have avoided overhearing, requested permission to be of service.
+The restaurant was dimly lighted; the three friends on entering had
+chosen its obscurest corner.  The Stranger appeared to be well-dressed;
+his voice and bearing suggested the man of affairs; his face—what feeble
+light there was being behind him—remained in shadow.
+
+The three friends eyed him furtively: possibly some rich but eccentric
+patron of the arts; not beyond the bounds of speculation that he was
+acquainted with their work, had read the Poet’s verses in one of the
+minor magazines, had stumbled upon some sketch of the Painter’s while
+bargain-hunting among the dealers of the Quartier St. Antoine, been
+struck by the beauty of the Composer’s Nocturne in F heard at some
+student’s concert; having made enquiries concerning their haunts, had
+chosen this method of introducing himself.  The young men made room for
+him with feelings of hope mingled with curiosity.  The affable Stranger
+called for liqueurs, and handed round his cigar-case.  And almost his
+first words brought them joy.
+
+“Before we go further,” said the smiling Stranger, “it is my pleasure to
+inform you that all three of you are destined to become great.”
+
+The liqueurs to their unaccustomed palates were proving potent.  The
+Stranger’s cigars were singularly aromatic.  It seemed the most
+reasonable thing in the world that the Stranger should be thus able to
+foretell to them their future.
+
+“Fame, fortune will be yours,” continued the agreeable Stranger.  “All
+things delightful will be to your hand: the adoration of women, the
+honour of men, the incense of Society, joys spiritual and material,
+beauteous surroundings, choice foods, all luxury and ease, the world your
+pleasure-ground.”
+
+The stained walls of the dingy restaurant were fading into space before
+the young men’s eyes.  They saw themselves as gods walking in the garden
+of their hearts’ desires.
+
+“But, alas,” went on the Stranger—and with the first note of his changed
+voice the visions vanished, the dingy walls came back—“these things take
+time.  You will, all three, be well past middle-age before you will reap
+the just reward of your toil and talents.  Meanwhile—” the sympathetic
+Stranger shrugged his shoulders—“it is the old story: genius spending its
+youth battling for recognition against indifference, ridicule, envy; the
+spirit crushed by its sordid environment, the drab monotony of narrow
+days.  There will be winter nights when you will tramp the streets, cold,
+hungry, forlorn; summer days when you will hide in your attics, ashamed
+of the sunlight on your ragged garments; chill dawns when you will watch
+wild-eyed the suffering of those you love, helpless by reason of your
+poverty to alleviate their pain.”
+
+The Stranger paused while the ancient waiter replenished the empty
+glasses.  The three friends drank in silence.
+
+“I propose,” said the Stranger, with a pleasant laugh, “that we pass over
+this customary period of probation—that we skip the intervening
+years—arrive at once at our true destination.”
+
+The Stranger, leaning back in his chair, regarded the three friends with
+a smile they felt rather than saw.  And something about the Stranger—they
+could not have told themselves what—made all things possible.
+
+“A quite simple matter,” the Stranger assured them.  “A little sleep and
+a forgetting, and the years lie behind us.  Come, gentlemen.  Have I your
+consent?”
+
+It seemed a question hardly needing answer.  To escape at one stride the
+long, weary struggle; to enter without fighting into victory!  The young
+men looked at one another.  And each one, thinking of his gain, bartered
+the battle for the spoil.
+
+It seemed to them that suddenly the lights went out; and a darkness like
+a rushing wind swept past them, filled with many sounds.  And then
+forgetfulness.  And then the coming back of light.
+
+They were seated at a table, glittering with silver and dainty chinaware,
+to which the red wine in Venetian goblets, the varied fruit and flowers,
+gave colour.  The room, furnished too gorgeously for taste, they judged
+to be a private cabinet in one of the great restaurants.  Of such
+interiors they had occasionally caught glimpses through open windows on
+summer nights.  It was softly illuminated by shaded lamps.  The
+Stranger’s face was still in shadow.  But what surprised each of the
+three most was to observe opposite him two more or less bald-headed
+gentlemen of somewhat flabby appearance, whose features, however, in some
+mysterious way appeared familiar.  The Stranger had his wine-glass raised
+in his hand.
+
+“Our dear Paul,” the Stranger was saying, “has declined, with his
+customary modesty, any public recognition of his triumph.  He will not
+refuse three old friends the privilege of offering him their heartiest
+congratulations.  Gentlemen, I drink not only to our dear Paul, but to
+the French Academy, which in honouring him has honoured France.”
+
+The Stranger, rising from his chair, turned his piercing eyes—the only
+part of him that could be clearly seen—upon the astonished Poet.  The two
+elderly gentlemen opposite, evidently as bewildered as Paul himself,
+taking their cue from the Stranger, drained their glasses.  Still
+following the Stranger’s lead, leant each across the table and shook him
+warmly by the hand.
+
+“I beg pardon,” said the Poet, “but really I am afraid I must have been
+asleep.  Would it sound rude to you”—he addressed himself to the
+Stranger: the faces of the elderly gentlemen opposite did not suggest
+their being of much assistance to him—“if I asked you where I was?”
+
+Again there flickered across the Stranger’s face the smile that was felt
+rather than seen.  “You are in a private room of the Café Pretali,” he
+answered.  “We are met this evening to celebrate your recent elevation
+into the company of the Immortals.”
+
+“Oh,” said the Poet, “thank you.”
+
+“The Academy,” continued the Stranger, “is always a little late in these
+affairs.  Myself, I could have wished your election had taken place ten
+years ago, when all France—all France that counts, that is—was talking of
+you.  At fifty-three”—the Stranger touched lightly with his fingers the
+Poet’s fat hand—“one does not write as when the sap was running up,
+instead of down.”
+
+Slowly, memory of the dingy _café_ in the Rue St. Louis, of the strange
+happening that took place there that night when he was young, crept back
+into the Poet’s brain.
+
+“Would you mind,” said the Poet, “would it be troubling you too much to
+tell me something of what has occurred to me?”
+
+“Not in the least,” responded the agreeable Stranger.  “Your career has
+been most interesting—for the first few years chiefly to yourself.  You
+married Marguerite.  You remember Marguerite?”
+
+The Poet remembered her.
+
+“A mad thing to do, so most people would have said,” continued the
+Stranger.  “You had not a sou between you.  But, myself, I think you were
+justified.  Youth comes to us but once.  And at twenty-five our business
+is to live.  Undoubtedly the marriage helped you.  You lived an idyllic
+existence, for a time, in a tumble-down cottage at Suresnes, with a
+garden that went down to the river.  Poor, of course you were; poor as
+church mice.  But who fears poverty when hope and love are singing on the
+bough!  I really think quite your best work was done during those years
+at Suresnes.  Ah, the sweetness, the tenderness of it!  There has been
+nothing like it in French poetry.  It made no mark at the time; but ten
+years later the public went mad about it.  She was dead then.  Poor
+child, it had been a hard struggle.  And, as you may remember, she was
+always fragile.  Yet even in her death I think she helped you.  There
+entered a new note into your poetry, a depth that had hitherto been
+wanting.  It was the best thing that ever came to you, your love for
+Marguerite.”
+
+The Stranger refilled his glass, and passed the decanter.  But the Poet
+left the wine unheeded.
+
+“And then, ah, yes, then followed that excursion into politics.  Those
+scathing articles you wrote for _La Liberté_!  It is hardly an
+exaggeration to say that they altered the whole aspect of French
+political thought.  Those wonderful speeches you made during your
+election campaign at Angers.  How the people worshipped you!  You might
+have carried your portfolio had you persisted.  But you poets are such
+restless fellows.  And after all, I daresay you have really accomplished
+more by your plays.  You remember—no, of course, how could you?—the first
+night of _La Conquêtte_.  Shall I ever forget it!  I have always reckoned
+that the crown of your career.  Your marriage with Madame Deschenelle—I
+do not think it was for the public good.  Poor Deschenelle’s millions—is
+it not so?  Poetry and millions interfere with one another.  But a
+thousand pardons, my dear Paul.  You have done so much.  It is only right
+you should now be taking your ease.  Your work is finished.”
+
+The Poet does not answer.  Sits staring before him with eyes turned
+inward.  The Painter, the Musician: what did the years bring to them?
+The Stranger tells them also of all that they have lost: of the griefs
+and sorrows, of the hopes and fears they have never tasted, of their
+tears that ended in laughter, of the pain that gave sweetness to joy, of
+the triumphs that came to them in the days before triumph had lost its
+savour, of the loves and the longings and fervours they would never know.
+All was ended.  The Stranger had given them what he had promised, what
+they had desired: the gain without the getting.
+
+Then they break out.
+
+“What is it to me,” cries the Painter, “that I wake to find myself
+wearing the gold medal of the Salon, robbed of the memory of all by which
+it was earned?”
+
+The Stranger points out to him that he is illogical; such memories would
+have included long vistas of meagre dinners in dingy restaurants, of
+attic studios, of a life the chief part of which had been passed amid
+ugly surroundings.  It was to escape from all such that he had clamoured.
+The Poet is silent.
+
+“I asked but for recognition,” cries the Musician, “that men might listen
+to me; not for my music to be taken from me in exchange for the
+recompense of a successful tradesman.  My inspiration is burnt out; I
+feel it.  The music that once filled my soul is mute.”
+
+“It was born of the strife and anguish,” the Stranger tells him, “of the
+loves that died, of the hopes that faded, of the beating of youth’s wings
+against the bars of sorrow, of the glory and madness and torment called
+Life, of the struggle you shrank from facing.”
+
+The Poet takes up the tale.
+
+“You have robbed us of Life,” he cries.  “You tell us of dead lips whose
+kisses we have never felt, of songs of victory sung to our deaf ears.
+You have taken our fires, you have left us but the ashes.”
+
+“The fires that scorch and sear,” the Stranger adds, “the lips that cried
+in their pain, the victory bought of wounds.”
+
+“It is not yet too late,” the Stranger tells them.  “All this can be but
+a troubled dream, growing fainter with each waking moment.  Will you buy
+back your Youth at the cost of ease?  Will you buy back Life at the price
+of tears?”
+
+They cry with one voice, “Give us back our Youth with its burdens, and a
+heart to bear them!  Give us back Life with its mingled bitter and
+sweet!”
+
+Then suddenly the Stranger stands revealed before them.  They see that he
+is Life—Life born of battle, Life made strong by endeavour, Life learning
+song from suffering.
+
+There follows more talk; which struck me, when I read the story, as a
+mistake; for all that he tells them they have now learnt: that life to be
+enjoyed must be lived; that victory to be sweet must be won.
+
+They awake in the dingy _café_ in the Rue St. Louis.  The ancient waiter
+is piling up the chairs preparatory to closing the shutters.  The Poet
+draws forth his small handful of coins; asks what is to pay.  “Nothing,”
+the waiter answers.  A stranger who sat with them and talked awhile
+before they fell asleep has paid the bill.  They look at one another, but
+no one speaks.
+
+The streets are empty.  A thin rain is falling.  They turn up the collars
+of their coats; strike out into the night.  And as their footsteps echo
+on the glistening pavement it comes to each of them that they are walking
+with a new, brave step.
+
+I feel so sorry for Dick—for the tens of thousands of happy, healthy,
+cared-for lads of whom Dick is the type.  There must be millions of
+youngsters in the world who have never known hunger, except as an
+appetiser to their dinner; who have never felt what it was to be tired,
+without the knowledge that a comfortable bed was awaiting them.
+
+To the well-to-do man or woman life is one perpetual nursery.  They are
+wakened in the morning—not too early, not till the nursery has been swept
+out and made ready, and the fire lighted—awakened gently with a cup of
+tea to give them strength and courage for this great business of getting
+up—awakened with whispered words, lest any sudden start should make their
+little heads ache—the blinds carefully arranged to exclude the naughty
+sun, which otherwise might shine into their little eyes and make them
+fretful.  The water, with the nasty chill off, is put ready for them;
+they wash their little hands and faces, all by themselves!  Then they are
+shaved and have their hair done; their little hands are manicured, their
+little corns cut for them.  When they are neat and clean, they toddle
+into breakfast; they are shown into their little chairs, their little
+napkins handed to them; the nice food that is so good for them is put
+upon their little plates; the drink is poured out for them into their
+cups.  If they want to play, there is the day nursery.  They have only to
+tell kind nurse what game it is they fancy.  The toys are at once brought
+out.  The little gun is put into their hand; the little horse is dragged
+forth from its corner, their little feet carefully placed in the
+stirrups.  The little ball and bat is taken from its box.
+
+Or they will take the air, as the wise doctor has ordered.  The little
+carriage will be ready in five minutes; the nice warm cloak is buttoned
+round them, the footstool placed beneath their feet, the cushion at their
+back.
+
+The day is done.  The games have been played; the toys have been taken
+from their tired hands, put back into the cupboard.  The food that is so
+good for them, that makes them strong little men and women, has all been
+eaten.  They have been dressed for going out into the pretty Park,
+undressed and dressed again for going out to tea with the little boys and
+girls next door; undressed and dressed again for the party.  They have
+read their little book? have seen a little play, have looked at pretty
+pictures.  The kind gentleman with the long hair has played the piano to
+them.  They have danced.  Their little feet are really quite tired.  The
+footman brings them home.  They are put into their little nighties.  The
+candle is blown out, the nursery door is softly closed.
+
+Now and again some restless little man, wearying of the smug nursery,
+will run out past the garden gate, and down the long white road; will
+find the North Pole or, failing that, the South Pole, or where the Nile
+rises, or how it feels to fly; will climb the Mountains of the Moon—do
+anything, go anywhere, to escape from Nurse Civilisation’s everlasting
+apron strings.
+
+Or some queer little woman, wondering where the people come from, will
+run and run till she comes to the great town, watch in wonder the strange
+folk that sweat and groan—the peaceful nursery, with the toys, the pretty
+frocks never quite the same again to her.
+
+But to the nineteen-twentieths of the well-to-do the world beyond the
+nursery is an unknown land.  Terrible things occur out there to little
+men and women who have no pretty nursery to live in.  People push and
+shove you about, will even tread on your toes if you are not careful.
+Out there is no kind, strong Nurse Bank-Balance to hold one’s little
+hand, and see that no harm comes to one.  Out there, one has to fight
+one’s own battles.  Often one is cold and hungry, out there.
+
+One has to fend for oneself, out there; earn one’s dinner before one eats
+it, never quite sure of the week after next.  Terrible things take place,
+out there: strain and contest and fierce endeavour; the ways are full of
+dangers and surprises; folk go up, folk go down; you have to set your
+teeth and fight.  Well-to-do little men and women shudder.  Draw down the
+nursery blinds.
+
+Robina had a little dog.  It led the usual dog’s life: slept in a basket
+on an eiderdown cushion, sheltered from any chance draught by silk
+curtains; its milk warmed and sweetened; its cosy chair reserved for it,
+in winter, near the fire; in summer, where the sun might reach it; its
+three meals a day that a gourmet might have eaten gladly; its very fleas
+taken off its hands.
+
+And twice a year still extra care was needed, lest it should wantonly
+fling aside its days and nights of luxurious ease, claim its small share
+of the passion and pain that go to the making of dogs and men.  For twice
+a year there came a wind, salt with the brine of earth’s ceaseless tides,
+whispering to it of a wondrous land whose sharpest stones are sweeter
+than the silken cushions of all the world without.
+
+One winter’s night there was great commotion.  Babette was nowhere to be
+found.  We were living in the country, miles away from everywhere.
+“Babette, Babette,” cried poor frenzied Robina; and for answer came only
+the laughter of the wind, pausing in his game of romps with the
+snow-flakes.
+
+Next morning an old woman from the town four miles away brought back
+Babette at the end of a string.  Oh, such a soaked, bedraggled Babette!
+The old woman had found her crouching in a doorway, a bewildered little
+heap of palpitating femininity; and, reading the address upon her collar,
+and may be scenting a not impossible reward, had thought she might as
+well earn it for herself.
+
+Robina was shocked, disgusted.  To think that Babette—dainty, petted,
+spoilt Babette—should have chosen of her own accord to go down into the
+mud and darkness of the vulgar town; to leave her curtained eiderdown to
+tramp the streets like any drab!  Robina, to whom Babette had hitherto
+been the ideal dog, moved away to hide her tears of vexation.  The old
+dame smiled.  She had borne her good man eleven, so she told us.  It had
+been a hard struggle, and some had gone down, and some were dead; but
+some, thank God, were doing well.
+
+The old dame wished us good day; but as she turned to go an impulse
+seized her.  She crossed to where Babette, ashamed, yet half defiant, sat
+a wet, woeful little image on the hearthrug, stooped and lifted the
+little creature in her thin, worn arms.
+
+“It’s trouble you’ve brought yourself,” said the old dame.  “You couldn’t
+help it, could you?”
+
+Babette’s little pink tongue stole out.
+
+“We understand, we know—we Mothers,” they seemed to be saying to one
+another.
+
+And so the two kissed.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I think the terrace will be my favourite spot.  Ethelbertha thinks, too,
+that on sunny days she will like to sit there.  From it, through an
+opening I have made in the trees, I can see the cottage just a mile away
+at the edge of the wood.  Young Bute tells me it is the very place he has
+been looking for.  Most of his time, of course, he has to pass in town,
+but his Fridays to Mondays he likes to spend in the country.  Maybe I
+shall hand it over to him.  St. Leonard’s chimneys we can also see above
+the trees.  Dick tells me he has quite made up his mind to become a
+farmer.  He thinks it would be a good plan, for a beginning, to go into
+partnership with St. Leonard.  It is not unlikely that St. Leonard’s
+restless temperament may prompt him eventually to tire of farming.  He
+has a brother in Canada doing well in the lumber business, and St.
+Leonard often talks of the advantages of the colonies to a man who is
+bringing up a large family.  I shall be sorry to lose him as a neighbour;
+though I see the advantages, under certain possibilities, of Mrs. St.
+Leonard’s address being Manitoba.
+
+Veronica also thinks the terrace may come to be her favourite
+resting-place.
+
+“I suppose,” said Veronica, “that if anything was to happen to Robina,
+everything would fall on me.”
+
+“It would be a change, Veronica,” I suggested.  “Hitherto it is you who
+have done most of the falling.”
+
+“Suppose I’ve got to see about growing up,” said Veronica.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 THE END.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEY AND I***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 2437-0.txt or 2437-0.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/2437
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/2437-0.zip b/2437-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..49907a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2437-0.zip
diff --git a/2437-h.zip b/2437-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ec5e73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2437-h.zip
diff --git a/2437-h/2437-h.htm b/2437-h/2437-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b37bb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2437-h/2437-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8014 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html
+     PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+     "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>They and I, by Jerome K. Jerome</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    P {  margin-top: .75em;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;}
+    P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; }
+    .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; }
+    H1, H2 {
+         text-align: center;
+		margin-top: 2em;
+		margin-bottom: 2em;
+         }
+    H3, H4, H5 {
+	text-align: center;
+	margin-top: 1em;
+	margin-bottom: 1em;
+	}
+    BODY{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+ table { border-collapse: collapse; }
+table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;}
+    td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;}
+    td p { margin: 0.2em; }
+    .blkquot  {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */
+
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .pagenum {position: absolute;
+               left: 92%;
+               font-size: small;
+               text-align: right;
+		font-weight: normal;
+               color: gray;
+               }
+    img { border: none; }
+    img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; }
+    p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; }
+    div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; }
+    div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} 
+    div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%;
+                  border-top: 1px solid; }
+    div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%;
+		  border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;}
+     div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%;
+                  margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid;
+                  border-bottom: 1px solid; }
+    div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%;
+                  margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid;
+                  border-bottom: 1px solid;}
+    div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%;
+		  border-top: 1px solid; }
+    .citation {vertical-align: super;
+               font-size: .8em;
+               text-decoration: none;}
+    img.floatleft { float: left;
+			margin-right: 1em;
+			margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
+    img.floatright { float: right;
+			margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;
+			margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
+    img.clearcenter {display: block;
+			margin-left: auto;
+			margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em;
+			margin-bottom: 0.5em}
+    -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, They and I, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: They and I
+
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 31, 2013  [eBook #2437]
+[This file was first posted on February 11, 2000]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEY AND I***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1909 Bernhard Tauchnitz edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>THEY AND I</h1>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="GutSmall">BY</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">JEROME K. JEROME</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">AUTHOR
+OF</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">&ldquo;THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE
+FELLOW,&rdquo; &ldquo;THREE MEN ON</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE BUMMEL,&rdquo; &ldquo;PAUL
+KELVER,&rdquo; ETC.</span></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>COPYRIGHT EDITION</i></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">LEIPZIG</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">1909.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">It</span> is not a large
+house,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want a large
+house.&nbsp; Two spare bedrooms, and the little three-cornered
+place you see marked there on the plan, next to the bathroom, and
+which will just do for a bachelor, will be all we shall
+require&mdash;at all events, for the present.&nbsp; Later on, if
+I ever get rich, we can throw out a wing.&nbsp; The kitchen I
+shall have to break to your mother gently.&nbsp; Whatever the
+original architect could have been thinking of&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind the kitchen,&rdquo; said Dick: &ldquo;what
+about the billiard-room?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The way children nowadays will interrupt a parent is nothing
+short of a national disgrace.&nbsp; I also wish Dick would not
+sit on the table, swinging his legs.&nbsp; It is not
+respectful.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why, when I was a boy,&rdquo; as I said
+to him, &ldquo;I should as soon have thought of sitting on a
+table, interrupting my father&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s this thing in the middle of the hall, that
+looks like a grating?&rdquo; demanded Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She means the stairs,&rdquo; explained Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then why don&rsquo;t they look like stairs?&rdquo;
+commented Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They do,&rdquo; replied Dick, &ldquo;to people with
+sense.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; persisted Robina, &ldquo;they
+look like a grating.&rdquo;&nbsp; Robina, with the plan spread
+out across her knee, was sitting balanced on the arm of an
+easy-chair.&nbsp; Really, I hardly see the use of buying chairs
+for these people.&nbsp; Nobody seems to know what they are
+for&mdash;except it be one or another of the dogs.&nbsp; Perches
+are all they want.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If we threw the drawing-room into the hall and could do
+away with the stairs,&rdquo; thought Robina, &ldquo;we should be
+able to give a dance now and then.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; I suggested, &ldquo;you would like to
+clear out the house altogether, leaving nothing but the four bare
+walls.&nbsp; That would give us still more room, that
+would.&nbsp; For just living in, we could fix up a shed in the
+garden; or&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m talking seriously,&rdquo; said Robina:
+&ldquo;what&rsquo;s the good of a drawing-room?&nbsp; One only
+wants it to show the sort of people into that one wishes
+hadn&rsquo;t come.&nbsp; They&rsquo;d sit about, looking
+miserable, just as well anywhere else.&nbsp; If we could only get
+rid of the stairs&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, of course! we could get rid of the stairs,&rdquo; I
+agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;It would be a bit awkward at first, when we
+wanted to go to bed.&nbsp; But I daresay we should get used to
+it.&nbsp; We could have a ladder and climb up to our rooms
+through the windows.&nbsp; Or we might adopt the Norwegian method
+and have the stairs outside.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you would be sensible,&rdquo; said Robin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am trying to be,&rdquo; I explained; &ldquo;and I am
+also trying to put a little sense into you.&nbsp; At present you
+are crazy about dancing.&nbsp; If you had your way, you would
+turn the house into a dancing-saloon with primitive
+sleeping-accommodation attached.&nbsp; It will last six months,
+your dancing craze.&nbsp; Then you will want the house
+transformed into a swimming-bath, or a skating-rink, or cleared
+out for hockey.&nbsp; My idea may be conventional.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t expect you to sympathise with it.&nbsp; My notion is
+just an ordinary Christian house, not a gymnasium.&nbsp; There
+are going to be bedrooms in this house, and there&rsquo;s going
+to be a staircase leading to them.&nbsp; It may strike you as
+sordid, but there is also going to be a kitchen: though why when
+building the house they should have put the kitchen&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget the billiard-room,&rdquo; said
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you thought more of your future career and less
+about billiards,&rdquo; Robin pointed out to him, &ldquo;perhaps
+you&rsquo;d get through your Little-go in the course of the next
+few years.&nbsp; If Pa only had sense&mdash;I mean if he
+wasn&rsquo;t so absurdly indulgent wherever you are concerned, he
+would not have a billiard-table in the house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You talk like that,&rdquo; retorted Dick, &ldquo;merely
+because you can&rsquo;t play.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can beat you, anyhow,&rdquo; retorted Robin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once,&rdquo; admitted Dick&mdash;&ldquo;once in six
+weeks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Twice,&rdquo; corrected Robin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t play,&rdquo; Dick explained to her;
+&ldquo;you just whack round and trust to Providence.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t whack round,&rdquo; said Robin; &ldquo;I
+always aim at something.&nbsp; When you try and it doesn&rsquo;t
+come off, you say it&rsquo;s &lsquo;hard luck;&rsquo; and when I
+try and it does come off, you say it&rsquo;s fluking.&nbsp; So
+like a man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You both of you,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;attach too much
+importance to the score.&nbsp; When you try for a cannon off the
+white and hit it on the wrong side and send it into a pocket, and
+your own ball travels on and makes a losing hazard off the red,
+instead of being vexed with yourselves&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you get a really good table, governor,&rdquo; said
+Dick, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll teach you billiards.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I do believe Dick really thinks he can play.&nbsp; It is the
+same with golf.&nbsp; Beginners are invariably lucky.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I think I shall like it,&rdquo; they tell you; &ldquo;I
+seem to have the game in me, if you understand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is a friend of mine, an old sea-captain.&nbsp; He
+is the sort of man that when the three balls are lying in a
+straight line, tucked up under the cushion, looks pleased;
+because then he knows he can make a cannon and leave the red just
+where he wants it.&nbsp; An Irish youngster named Malooney, a
+college chum of Dick&rsquo;s, was staying with us; and the
+afternoon being wet, the Captain said he would explain it to
+Malooney, how a young man might practise billiards without any
+danger of cutting the cloth.&nbsp; He taught him how to hold the
+cue, and he told him how to make a bridge.&nbsp; Malooney was
+grateful, and worked for about an hour.&nbsp; He did not show
+much promise.&nbsp; He is a powerfully built young man, and he
+didn&rsquo;t seem able to get it into his head that he
+wasn&rsquo;t playing cricket.&nbsp; Whenever he hit a little low
+the result was generally lost ball.&nbsp; To save time&mdash;and
+damage to furniture&mdash;Dick and I fielded for him.&nbsp; Dick
+stood at long-stop, and I was short slip.&nbsp; It was dangerous
+work, however, and when Dick had caught him out twice running, we
+agreed that we had won, and took him in to tea.&nbsp; In the
+evening&mdash;none of the rest of us being keen to try our luck a
+second time&mdash;the Captain said, that just for the joke of the
+thing he would give Malooney eighty-five and play him a hundred
+up.&nbsp; To confess the truth, I find no particular fun myself
+in playing billiards with the Captain.&nbsp; The game consists,
+as far as I am concerned, in walking round the table, throwing
+him back the balls, and saying &ldquo;Good!&rdquo;&nbsp; By the
+time my turn comes I don&rsquo;t seem to care what happens:
+everything seems against me.&nbsp; He is a kind old gentleman and
+he means well, but the tone in which he says &ldquo;Hard
+lines!&rdquo; whenever I miss an easy stroke irritates me.&nbsp;
+I feel I&rsquo;d like to throw the balls at his head and fling
+the table out of window.&nbsp; I suppose it is that I am in a
+fretful state of mind, but the mere way in which he chalks his
+cue aggravates me.&nbsp; He carries his own chalk in his
+waistcoat pocket&mdash;as if our chalk wasn&rsquo;t good enough
+for him&mdash;and when he has finished chalking, he smooths the
+tip round with his finger and thumb and taps the cue against the
+table.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh! go on with the game,&rdquo; I want to say
+to him; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t be so full of tricks.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>The Captain led off with a miss in baulk.&nbsp; Malooney
+gripped his cue, drew in a deep breath, and let fly.&nbsp; The
+result was ten: a cannon and all three balls in the same
+pocket.&nbsp; As a matter of fact he made the cannon twice; but
+the second time, as we explained to him, of course did not
+count.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good beginning!&rdquo; said the Captain.</p>
+<p>Malooney seemed pleased with himself, and took off his
+coat.</p>
+<p>Malooney&rsquo;s ball missed the red on its first journey up
+the table by about a foot, but found it later on and sent it into
+a pocket.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ninety-nine plays nothing,&rdquo; said Dick, who was
+marking.&nbsp; &ldquo;Better make it a hundred and fifty,
+hadn&rsquo;t we, Captain?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;d like to get in a shot,&rdquo; said the
+Captain, &ldquo;before the game is over.&nbsp; Perhaps we had
+better make it a hundred and fifty, if Mr. Malooney has no
+objection.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whatever you think right, sir,&rdquo; said Rory
+Malooney.</p>
+<p>Malooney finished his break for twenty-two, leaving himself
+hanging over the middle pocket and the red tucked up in
+baulk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing plays a hundred and eight,&rdquo; said
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When I want the score,&rdquo; said the Captain,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll ask for it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Beg pardon, sir,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hate a noisy game,&rdquo; said the Captain.</p>
+<p>The Captain, making up his mind without much waste of time,
+sent his ball under the cushion, six inches outside baulk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What will I do here?&rdquo; asked Malooney.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you will do,&rdquo; said the
+Captain; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m waiting to see.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Owing to the position of the ball, Malooney was unable to
+employ his whole strength.&nbsp; All he did that turn was to
+pocket the Captain&rsquo;s ball and leave himself under the
+bottom cushion, four inches from the red.&nbsp; The Captain said
+a nautical word, and gave another miss.&nbsp; Malooney squared up
+to the balls for the third time.&nbsp; They flew before him,
+panic-stricken.&nbsp; They banged against one another, came back
+and hit one another again for no reason whatever.&nbsp; The red,
+in particular, Malooney had succeeded apparently in frightening
+out of its wits.&nbsp; It is a stupid ball, generally speaking,
+our red&mdash;its one idea to get under a cushion and watch the
+game.&nbsp; With Malooney it soon found it was safe nowhere on
+the table.&nbsp; Its only hope was pockets.&nbsp; I may have been
+mistaken, my eye may have been deceived by the rapidity of the
+play, but it seemed to me that the red never waited to be
+hit.&nbsp; When it saw Malooney&rsquo;s ball coming for it at the
+rate of forty miles an hour, it just made for the nearest
+pocket.&nbsp; It rushed round the table looking for
+pockets.&nbsp; If in its excitement, it passed an empty pocket,
+it turned back and crawled in.&nbsp; There were times when in its
+terror it jumped the table and took shelter under the sofa or
+behind the sideboard.&nbsp; One began to feel sorry for the
+red.</p>
+<p>The Captain had scored a legitimate thirty-eight, and Malooney
+had given him twenty-four, when it really seemed as if the
+Captain&rsquo;s chance had come.&nbsp; I could have scored myself
+as the balls were then.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sixty-two plays one hundred and twenty-eight.&nbsp; Now
+then, Captain, game in your hands,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+<p>We gathered round.&nbsp; The children left their play.&nbsp;
+It was a pretty picture: the bright young faces, eager with
+expectation, the old worn veteran squinting down his cue, as if
+afraid that watching Malooney&rsquo;s play might have given it
+the squirms.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now follow this,&rdquo; I whispered to Malooney.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t notice merely what he does, but try and
+understand why he does it.&nbsp; Any fool&mdash;after a little
+practice, that is&mdash;can hit a ball.&nbsp; But why do you hit
+it?&nbsp; What happens after you&rsquo;ve hit it?&nbsp;
+What&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hush,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+<p>The Captain drew his cue back and gently pushed it
+forward.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pretty stroke,&rdquo; I whispered to Malooney;
+&ldquo;now, that&rsquo;s the sort&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I offer, by way of explanation, that the Captain by this time
+was probably too full of bottled-up language to be master of his
+nerves.&nbsp; The ball travelled slowly past the red.&nbsp; Dick
+said afterwards that you couldn&rsquo;t have put so much as a
+sheet of paper between them.&nbsp; It comforts a man, sometimes,
+when you tell him this; and at other times it only makes him
+madder.&nbsp; It travelled on and passed the white&mdash;you
+could have put quite a lot of paper between it and the
+white&mdash;and dropped with a contented thud into the top
+left-hand pocket.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why does he do that?&rdquo; Malooney whispered.&nbsp;
+Malooney has a singularly hearty whisper.</p>
+<p>Dick and I got the women and children out of the room as
+quickly as we could, but of course Veronica managed to tumble
+over something on the way&mdash;Veronica would find something to
+tumble over in the desert of Sahara; and a few days later I
+overheard expressions, scorching their way through the nursery
+door, that made my hair rise up.&nbsp; I entered, and found
+Veronica standing on the table.&nbsp; Jumbo was sitting upon the
+music-stool.&nbsp; The poor dog himself was looking scared,
+though he must have heard a bit of language in his time, one way
+and another.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Veronica,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;are you not ashamed of
+yourself?&nbsp; You wicked child, how dare you&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; said Veronica.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really mean any harm.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s a
+sailor, and I have to talk to him like that, else he don&rsquo;t
+know he&rsquo;s being talked to.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I pay hard-working, conscientious ladies to teach this child
+things right and proper for her to know.&nbsp; They tell her
+clever things that Julius C&aelig;sar said; observations made by
+Marcus Aurelius that, pondered over, might help her to become a
+beautiful character.&nbsp; She complains that it produces a
+strange buzzy feeling in her head; and her mother argues that
+perhaps her brain is of the creative order, not intended to
+remember much&mdash;thinks that perhaps she is going to be
+something.&nbsp; A good round-dozen oaths the Captain must have
+let fly before Dick and I succeeded in rolling her out of the
+room.&nbsp; She had only heard them once, yet, so far as I could
+judge, she had got them letter perfect.</p>
+<p>The Captain, now no longer under the necessity of employing
+all his energies to suppress his natural instincts, gradually
+recovered form, and eventually the game stood at one hundred and
+forty-nine all, Malooney to play.&nbsp; The Captain had left the
+balls in a position that would have disheartened any other
+opponent than Malooney.&nbsp; To any other opponent than Malooney
+the Captain would have offered irritating sympathy.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Afraid the balls are not rolling well for you
+to-night,&rdquo; the Captain would have said; or, &ldquo;Sorry,
+sir, I don&rsquo;t seem to have left you very much.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+To-night the Captain wasn&rsquo;t feeling playful.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, if he scores off that!&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Short of locking up the balls and turning out the
+lights, I don&rsquo;t myself see how one is going to stop
+him,&rdquo; sighed the Captain.</p>
+<p>The Captain&rsquo;s ball was in hand.&nbsp; Malooney went for
+the red and hit&mdash;perhaps it would be more correct to say,
+frightened&mdash;it into a pocket.&nbsp; Malooney&rsquo;s ball,
+with the table to itself, then gave a solo performance, and ended
+up by breaking a window.&nbsp; It was what the lawyers call a
+nice point.&nbsp; What was the effect upon the score?</p>
+<p>Malooney argued that, seeing he had pocketed the red before
+his own ball left the table, his three should be counted first,
+and that therefore he had won.&nbsp; Dick maintained that a ball
+that had ended up in a flower-bed couldn&rsquo;t be deemed to
+have scored anything.&nbsp; The Captain declined to assist.&nbsp;
+He said that, although he had been playing billiards for upwards
+of forty years, the incident was new to him.&nbsp; My own feeling
+was that of thankfulness that we had got through the game without
+anybody being really injured.&nbsp; We agreed that the person to
+decide the point would be the editor of <i>The Field</i>.</p>
+<p>It remains still undecided.&nbsp; The Captain came into my
+study the next morning.&nbsp; He said: &ldquo;If you
+haven&rsquo;t written that letter to <i>The Field</i>,
+don&rsquo;t mention my name.&nbsp; They know me on <i>The
+Field</i>.&nbsp; I would rather it did not get about that I have
+been playing with a man who cannot keep his ball within the four
+walls of a billiard-room.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;I know most of the
+fellows on <i>The Field</i> myself.&nbsp; They don&rsquo;t often
+get hold of anything novel in the way of a story.&nbsp; When they
+do, they are apt to harp upon it.&nbsp; My idea was to keep my
+own name out of it altogether.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is not a point likely to crop up often,&rdquo; said
+the Captain.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d let it rest if I were
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I should like to have had it settled.&nbsp; In the end, I
+wrote the editor a careful letter, in a disguised hand, giving a
+false name and address.&nbsp; But if any answer ever appeared I
+must have missed it.</p>
+<p>Myself I have a sort of consciousness that somewhere inside me
+there is quite a good player, if only I could persuade him to
+come out.&nbsp; He is shy, that is all.&nbsp; He does not seem
+able to play when people are looking on.&nbsp; The shots he
+misses when people are looking on would give you a wrong idea of
+him.&nbsp; When nobody is about, a prettier game you do not often
+see.&nbsp; If some folks who fancy themselves could see me when
+there is nobody about, it might take the conceit out of
+them.&nbsp; Only once I played up to what I feel is my real form,
+and then it led to argument.&nbsp; I was staying at an hotel in
+Switzerland, and the second evening a pleasant-spoken young
+fellow, who said he had read all my books&mdash;later, he
+appeared surprised on learning I had written more than
+two&mdash;asked me if I would care to play a hundred up.&nbsp; We
+played even, and I paid for the table.&nbsp; The next evening he
+said he thought it would make a better game if he gave me forty
+and I broke.&nbsp; It was a fairly close finish, and afterwards
+he suggested that I should put down my name for the handicap they
+were arranging.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;that I hardly
+play well enough.&nbsp; Just a quiet game with you is one thing;
+but in a handicap with a crowd looking on&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should not let that trouble you,&rdquo; he said;
+&ldquo;there are some here who play worse than you&mdash;just one
+or two.&nbsp; It passes the evening.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was merely a friendly affair.&nbsp; I paid my twenty marks,
+and was given plus a hundred.&nbsp; I drew for my first game a
+chatty type of man, who started minus twenty.&nbsp; We neither of
+us did much for the first five minutes, and then I made a break
+of forty-four.</p>
+<p>There was not a fluke in it from beginning to end.&nbsp; I was
+never more astonished in my life.&nbsp; It seemed to me it was
+the cue was doing it.</p>
+<p>Minus Twenty was even more astonished.&nbsp; I heard him as I
+passed:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who handicapped this man?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did,&rdquo; said the pleasant-spoken youngster.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Minus Twenty&mdash;&ldquo;friend of
+yours, I presume?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There are evenings that seem to belong to you.&nbsp; We
+finished that two hundred and fifty under the three-quarters of
+an hour.&nbsp; I explained to Minus Twenty&mdash;he was plus
+sixty-three at the end&mdash;that my play that night had been
+exceptional.&nbsp; He said that he had heard of cases
+similar.&nbsp; I left him talking volubly to the committee.&nbsp;
+He was not a nice man at all.</p>
+<p>After that I did not care to win; and that of course was
+fatal.&nbsp; The less I tried, the more impossible it seemed for
+me to do wrong.&nbsp; I was left in at the last with a man from
+another hotel.&nbsp; But for that I am convinced I should have
+carried off the handicap.&nbsp; Our hotel didn&rsquo;t, anyhow,
+want the other hotel to win.&nbsp; So they gathered round me, and
+offered me sound advice, and begged me to be careful; with the
+natural result that I went back to my usual form quite
+suddenly.</p>
+<p>Never before or since have I played as I played that
+week.&nbsp; But it showed me what I could do.&nbsp; I shall get a
+new table, with proper pockets this time.&nbsp; There is
+something wrong about our pockets.&nbsp; The balls go into them
+and then come out again.&nbsp; You would think they had seen
+something there to frighten them.&nbsp; They come out trembling
+and hold on to the cushion.</p>
+<p>I shall also get a new red ball.&nbsp; I fancy it must be a
+very old ball, our red.&nbsp; It seems to me to be always
+tired.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The billiard-room,&rdquo; I said to Dick, &ldquo;I see
+my way to easily enough.&nbsp; Adding another ten feet to what is
+now the dairy will give us twenty-eight by twenty.&nbsp; I am
+hopeful that will be sufficient even for your friend
+Malooney.&nbsp; The drawing-room is too small to be of any
+use.&nbsp; I may decide&mdash;as Robina has suggested&mdash;to
+&lsquo;throw it into the hall.&rsquo;&nbsp; But the stairs will
+remain.&nbsp; For dancing, private theatricals&mdash;things to
+keep you children out of mischief&mdash;I have an idea I will
+explain to you later on.&nbsp; The kitchen&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can I have a room to myself?&rdquo; asked Veronica.</p>
+<p>Veronica was sitting on the floor, staring into the fire, her
+chin supported by her hand.&nbsp; Veronica, in those rare moments
+when she is resting from her troubles, wears a holy, far-away
+expression apt to mislead the stranger.&nbsp; Governesses, new to
+her, have their doubts whether on these occasions they are
+justified in dragging her back to discuss mere dates and
+tables.&nbsp; Poets who are friends of mine, coming unexpectedly
+upon Veronica standing by the window, gazing upward at the
+evening star, have thought it was a vision, until they got closer
+and found that she was sucking peppermints.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should so like to have a room all to myself,&rdquo;
+added Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It would be a room!&rdquo; commented Robin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t have your hairpins sticking up all
+over the bed, anyhow,&rdquo; murmured Veronica dreamily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I like that!&rdquo; said Robin;
+&ldquo;why&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re harder than I am,&rdquo; said
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should wish you to have a room, Veronica,&rdquo; I
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;My fear is that in place of one untidy bedroom
+in the house&mdash;a room that makes me shudder every time I see
+it through the open door; and the door, in spite of all I can
+say, generally is wide open&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not untidy,&rdquo; said Robin, &ldquo;not
+really.&nbsp; I know where everything is in the dark&mdash;if
+people would only leave them alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are.&nbsp; You&rsquo;re about the most untidy girl
+I know,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; said Robin; &ldquo;you
+don&rsquo;t see other girls&rsquo; rooms.&nbsp; Look at yours at
+Cambridge.&nbsp; Malooney told us you&rsquo;d had a fire, and we
+all believed him at first.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When a man&rsquo;s working&mdash;&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He must have an orderly place to work in,&rdquo;
+suggested Robin.</p>
+<p>Dick sighed.&nbsp; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s never any good talking to
+you,&rdquo; said Dick.&nbsp; &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t even see your
+own faults.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can,&rdquo; said Robin; &ldquo;I see them more than
+anyone.&nbsp; All I claim is justice.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Show me, Veronica,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that you are
+worthy to possess a room.&nbsp; At present you appear to regard
+the whole house as your room.&nbsp; I find your gaiters on the
+croquet lawn.&nbsp; A portion of your costume&mdash;an article
+that anyone possessed of the true feelings of a lady would desire
+to keep hidden from the world&mdash;is discovered waving from the
+staircase window.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I put it out to be mended,&rdquo; explained
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You opened the door and flung it out.&nbsp; I told you
+of it at the time,&rdquo; said Robin.&nbsp; &ldquo;You do the
+same with your boots.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are too high-spirited for your size,&rdquo;
+explained Dick to her.&nbsp; &ldquo;Try to be less
+dashing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I could also wish, Veronica,&rdquo; I continued,
+&ldquo;that you shed your back comb less easily, or at least that
+you knew when you had shed it.&nbsp; As for your
+gloves&mdash;well, hunting your gloves has come to be our leading
+winter sport.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;People look in such funny places for them,&rdquo; said
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Granted.&nbsp; But be just, Veronica,&rdquo; I
+pleaded.&nbsp; &ldquo;Admit that it is in funny places we
+occasionally find them.&nbsp; When looking for your things one
+learns, Veronica, never to despair.&nbsp; So long as there
+remains a corner unexplored inside or outside the house, within
+the half-mile radius, hope need not be abandoned.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Veronica was still gazing dreamily into the fire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Veronica, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+reditty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s what?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She means heredity,&rdquo; suggested
+Dick&mdash;&ldquo;cheeky young beggar!&nbsp; I wonder you let her
+talk to you the way she does.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; added Robin, &ldquo;as I am always
+explaining to you, Pa is a literary man.&nbsp; With him it is
+part of his temperament.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard on us children,&rdquo; said
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>We were all agreed&mdash;with the exception of
+Veronica&mdash;that it was time Veronica went to bed.&nbsp; As
+chairman I took it upon myself to closure the debate.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Do</span> you mean, Governor, that
+you have actually bought the house?&rdquo; demanded Dick,
+&ldquo;or are we only talking about it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This time, Dick,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;I have done
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dick looked serious.&nbsp; &ldquo;Is it what you
+wanted?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, Dick,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;it is not what I
+wanted.&nbsp; I wanted an old-fashioned, picturesque, rambling
+sort of a place, all gables and ivy and oriel windows.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are mixing things up,&rdquo; Dick interrupted,
+&ldquo;gables and oriel windows don&rsquo;t go
+together.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon, Dick,&rdquo; I corrected him,
+&ldquo;in the house I wanted, they do.&nbsp; It is the style of
+house you find in the Christmas number.&nbsp; I have never seen
+it anywhere else, but I took a fancy to it from the first.&nbsp;
+It is not too far from the church, and it lights up well at
+night.&nbsp; &lsquo;One of these days,&rsquo; I used to say to
+myself when a boy, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll be a clever man and live in
+a house just like that.&rsquo;&nbsp; It was my dream.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what is this place like?&rdquo; demanded Robin,
+&ldquo;this place you have bought.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The agent,&rdquo; I explained, &ldquo;claims for it
+that it is capable of improvement.&nbsp; I asked him to what
+school of architecture he would say it belonged; he said he
+thought that it must have been a local school, and pointed
+out&mdash;what seems to be the truth&mdash;that nowadays they do
+not build such houses.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Near to the river?&rdquo; demanded Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, by the road,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;I daresay
+it may be a couple of miles.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And by the shortest way?&rdquo; questioned Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is the shortest way,&rdquo; I explained;
+&ldquo;there&rsquo;s a prettier way through the woods, but that
+is about three miles and a half.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But we had decided it was to be near the river,&rdquo;
+said Robin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We also decided,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;that it was
+to be on sandy soil, with a south-west aspect.&nbsp; Only one
+thing in this house has a south-west aspect, and that&rsquo;s the
+back door.&nbsp; I asked the agent about the sand.&nbsp; He
+advised me, if I wanted it in any quantity, to get an estimate
+from the Railway Company.&nbsp; I wanted it on a hill.&nbsp; It
+is on a hill, with a bigger hill in front of it.&nbsp; I
+didn&rsquo;t want that other hill.&nbsp; I wanted an
+uninterrupted view of the southern half of England.&nbsp; I
+wanted to take people out on the step, and cram them with stories
+about our being able on clear days to see the Bristol
+Channel.&nbsp; They might not have believed me, but without that
+hill I could have stuck to it, and they could not have been
+certain&mdash;not dead certain&mdash;I was lying.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Personally, I should have liked a house where something
+had happened.&nbsp; I should have liked, myself, a
+blood-stain&mdash;not a fussy blood-stain, a neat unobtrusive
+blood-stain that would have been content, most of its time, to
+remain hidden under the mat, shown only occasionally as a treat
+to visitors.&nbsp; I had hopes even of a ghost.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t mean one of those noisy ghosts that doesn&rsquo;t
+seem to know it is dead.&nbsp; A lady ghost would have been my
+fancy, a gentle ghost with quiet, pretty ways.&nbsp; This
+house&mdash;well, it is such a sensible-looking house, that is my
+chief objection to it.&nbsp; It has got an echo.&nbsp; If you go
+to the end of the garden and shout at it very loudly, it answers
+you back.&nbsp; This is the only bit of fun you can have with
+it.&nbsp; Even then it answers you in such a tone you feel it
+thinks the whole thing silly&mdash;is doing it merely to humour
+you.&nbsp; It is one of those houses that always seems to be
+thinking of its rates and taxes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Any reason at all for your having bought it?&rdquo;
+asked Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Dick,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;We are all
+of us tired of this suburb.&nbsp; We want to live in the country
+and be good.&nbsp; To live in the country with any comfort it is
+necessary to have a house there.&nbsp; This being admitted, it
+follows we must either build a house or buy one.&nbsp; I would
+rather not build a house.&nbsp; Talboys built himself a
+house.&nbsp; You know Talboys.&nbsp; When I first met him, before
+he started building, he was a cheerful soul with a kindly word
+for everyone.&nbsp; The builder assures him that in another
+twenty years, when the colour has had time to tone down, his
+house will be a picture.&nbsp; At present it makes him bilious,
+the mere sight of it.&nbsp; Year by year, they tell him, as the
+dampness wears itself away, he will suffer less and less from
+rheumatism, ague, and lumbago.&nbsp; He has a hedge round the
+garden; it is eighteen inches high.&nbsp; To keep the boys out he
+has put up barbed-wire fencing.&nbsp; But wire fencing affords no
+real privacy.&nbsp; When the Talboys are taking coffee on the
+lawn, there is generally a crowd from the village watching
+them.&nbsp; There are trees in the garden; you know they are
+trees&mdash;there is a label tied to each one telling you what
+sort of tree it is.&nbsp; For the moment there is a similarity
+about them.&nbsp; Thirty years hence, Talboys estimates, they
+will afford him shade and comfort; but by that time he hopes to
+be dead.&nbsp; I want a house that has got over all its troubles;
+I don&rsquo;t want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a
+young and inexperienced house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why this particular house?&rdquo; urged Robin,
+&ldquo;if, as you say, it is not the house you wanted.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because, my dear girl,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;it is
+less unlike the house I wanted than other houses I have
+seen.&nbsp; When we are young we make up our minds to try and get
+what we want; when we have arrived at years of discretion we
+decide to try and want what we can get.&nbsp; It saves
+time.&nbsp; During the last two years I have seen about sixty
+houses, and out of the lot there was only one that was really the
+house I wanted.&nbsp; Hitherto I have kept the story to
+myself.&nbsp; Even now, thinking about it irritates me.&nbsp; It
+was not an agent who told me of it.&nbsp; I met a man by chance
+in a railway carriage.&nbsp; He had a black eye.&nbsp; If ever I
+meet him again I&rsquo;ll give him another.&nbsp; He accounted
+for it by explaining that he had had trouble with a golf ball,
+and at the time I believed him.&nbsp; I mentioned to him in
+conversation I was looking for a house.&nbsp; He described this
+place to me, and it seemed to me hours before the train stopped
+at a station.&nbsp; When it did I got out and took the next train
+back.&nbsp; I did not even wait for lunch.&nbsp; I had my bicycle
+with me, and I went straight there.&nbsp; It was&mdash;well, it
+was the house I wanted.&nbsp; If it had vanished suddenly, and I
+had found myself in bed, the whole thing would have seemed more
+reasonable.&nbsp; The proprietor opened the door to me
+himself.&nbsp; He had the bearing of a retired military
+man.&nbsp; It was afterwards I learnt he was the proprietor.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;Good afternoon; if it is not troubling
+you, I would like to look over the house.&rsquo;&nbsp; We were
+standing in the oak-panelled hall.&nbsp; I noticed the carved
+staircase about which the man in the train had told me, also the
+Tudor fireplaces.&nbsp; That is all I had time to notice.&nbsp;
+The next moment I was lying on my back in the middle of the
+gravel with the door shut.&nbsp; I looked up.&nbsp; I saw the old
+maniac&rsquo;s head sticking out of a little window.&nbsp; It was
+an evil face.&nbsp; He had a gun in his hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;m going to count twenty,&rsquo; he
+said.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you are not the other side of the gate by
+then, I shoot.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I ran over the figures myself on my way to the
+gate.&nbsp; I made it eighteen.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I had an hour to wait for the train.&nbsp; I talked the
+matter over with the station-master.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;there&rsquo;ll be
+trouble up there one of these days.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;It seems to me to have begun.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He said, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s the Indian sun.&nbsp; It
+gets into their heads.&nbsp; We have one or two in the
+neighbourhood.&nbsp; They are quiet enough till something
+happens.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;If I&rsquo;d been two seconds longer,&rsquo; I
+said, &lsquo;I believe he&rsquo;d have done it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s a taking house,&rsquo; said the
+station-master; &lsquo;not too big and not too little.&nbsp;
+It&rsquo;s the sort of house people seem to be looking
+for.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t envy,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;the
+next person that finds it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;He settled himself down here,&rsquo; said the
+station-master, &lsquo;about ten years ago.&nbsp; Since then, if
+one person has offered to take the house off his hands, I suppose
+a thousand have.&nbsp; At first he would laugh at them
+good-temperedly&mdash;explain to them that his idea was to live
+there himself, in peace and quietness, till he died.&nbsp; Two
+out of every three of them would express their willingness to
+wait for that, and suggest some arrangement by which they might
+enter into possession, say, a week after the funeral.&nbsp; The
+last few months it has been worse than ever.&nbsp; I reckon
+you&rsquo;re about the eighth that has been up there this week,
+and to-day only Thursday.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s something to be
+said, you know, for the old man.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And did he,&rdquo; asked Dick&mdash;&ldquo;did he shoot
+the next party that came along?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be so silly, Dick,&rdquo; said Robin;
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s a story.&nbsp; Tell us another, Pa.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean, Robina, by a
+story,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;If you mean to
+imply&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina said she didn&rsquo;t; but I know quite well she
+did.&nbsp; Because I am an author, and have to tell stories for
+my living, people think I don&rsquo;t know any truth.&nbsp; It is
+vexing enough to be doubted when one is exaggerating; to have
+sneers flung at one by one&rsquo;s own kith and kin when one is
+struggling to confine oneself to bald, bare narrative&mdash;well,
+where is the inducement to be truthful?&nbsp; There are times
+when I almost say to myself that I will never tell the truth
+again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As it happens,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the story is true,
+in many places.&nbsp; I pass over your indifference to the risk I
+ran; though a nice girl at the point where the gun was mentioned
+would have expressed alarm.&nbsp; Anyhow, at the end you might
+have said something more sympathetic than merely, &lsquo;Tell us
+another.&rsquo;&nbsp; He did not shoot the next party that
+arrived, for the reason that the very next day his wife, alarmed
+at what had happened, went up to London and consulted an
+expert&mdash;none too soon, as it turned out.&nbsp; The poor old
+fellow died six months later in a private lunatic asylum; I had
+it from the station-master on passing through the junction again
+this spring.&nbsp; The house fell into the possession of his
+nephew, who is living in it now.&nbsp; He is a youngish man with
+a large family, and people have learnt that the place is not for
+sale.&nbsp; It seems to me rather a sad story.&nbsp; The Indian
+sun, as the station-master thinks, may have started the trouble;
+but the end was undoubtedly hastened by the annoyance to which
+the unfortunate gentleman had been subjected; and I myself might
+have been shot.&nbsp; The only thing that comforts me is thinking
+of that fool&rsquo;s black eye&mdash;the fool that sent me
+there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And none of the other houses,&rdquo; suggested Dick,
+&ldquo;were any good at all?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There were drawbacks, Dick,&rdquo; I explained.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;There was a house in Essex; it was one of the first your
+mother and I inspected.&nbsp; I nearly shed tears of joy when I
+read the advertisement.&nbsp; It had once been a priory.&nbsp;
+Queen Elizabeth had slept there on her way to Greenwich.&nbsp; A
+photograph of the house accompanied the advertisement.&nbsp; I
+should not have believed the thing had it been a picture.&nbsp;
+It was under twelve miles from Charing Cross.&nbsp; The owner, it
+was stated, was open to offers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All humbug, I suppose,&rdquo; suggested Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The advertisement, if anything,&rdquo; I replied,
+&ldquo;had under-estimated the attractiveness of that
+house.&nbsp; All I blame the advertisement for is that it did not
+mention other things.&nbsp; It did not mention, for instance,
+that since Queen Elizabeth&rsquo;s time the neighbourhood had
+changed.&nbsp; It did not mention that the entrance was between a
+public-house one side of the gate and a fried-fish shop on the
+other; that the Great Eastern Railway-Company had established a
+goods depot at the bottom of the garden; that the drawing-room
+windows looked out on extensive chemical works, and the
+dining-room windows, which were round the corner, on a
+stonemason&rsquo;s yard.&nbsp; The house itself was a
+dream.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what is the sense of it?&rdquo; demanded
+Dick.&nbsp; &ldquo;What do house agents think is the good of
+it?&nbsp; Do they think people likely to take a house after
+reading the advertisement without ever going to see
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I asked an agent once that very question,&rdquo; I
+replied.&nbsp; &ldquo;He said they did it first and foremost to
+keep up the spirits of the owner&mdash;the man who wanted to sell
+the house.&nbsp; He said that when a man was trying to part with
+a house he had to listen to so much abuse of it from people who
+came to see it that if somebody did not stick up for the
+house&mdash;say all that could be said for it, and gloss over its
+defects&mdash;he would end by becoming so ashamed of it he would
+want to give it away, or blow it up with dynamite.&nbsp; He said
+that reading the advertisement in the agent&rsquo;s catalogue was
+the only thing that reconciled him to being the owner of the
+house.&nbsp; He said one client of his had been trying to sell
+his house for years&mdash;until one day in the office he read by
+chance the agent&rsquo;s description of it.&nbsp; Upon which he
+went straight home, took down the board, and has lived there
+contentedly ever since.&nbsp; From that point of view there is
+reason in the system; but for the house-hunter it works
+badly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One agent sent me a day&rsquo;s journey to see a house
+standing in the middle of a brickfield, with a view of the Grand
+Junction Canal.&nbsp; I asked him where was the river he had
+mentioned.&nbsp; He explained it was the other side of the canal,
+but on a lower level; that was the only reason why from the house
+you couldn&rsquo;t see it.&nbsp; I asked him for his picturesque
+scenery.&nbsp; He explained it was farther on, round the
+bend.&nbsp; He seemed to think me unreasonable, expecting to find
+everything I wanted just outside the front-door.&nbsp; He
+suggested my shutting out the brickfield&mdash;if I didn&rsquo;t
+like the brickfield&mdash;with trees.&nbsp; He suggested the
+eucalyptus-tree.&nbsp; He said it was a rapid grower.&nbsp; He
+also told me that it yielded gum.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Another house I travelled down into Dorsetshire to
+see.&nbsp; It contained, according to the advertisement,
+&lsquo;perhaps the most perfect specimen of Norman arch extant in
+Southern England.&rsquo;&nbsp; It was to be found mentioned in
+Dugdale, and dated from the thirteenth century.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t quite know what I expected.&nbsp; I argued to myself
+that there must have been ruffians of only moderate means even in
+those days.&nbsp; Here and there some robber baron who had struck
+a poor line of country would have had to be content with a homely
+little castle.&nbsp; A few such, hidden away in unfrequented
+districts, had escaped destruction.&nbsp; More civilised
+descendants had adapted them to later requirements.&nbsp; I had
+in my mind, before the train reached Dorchester, something
+between a miniature Tower of London and a medi&aelig;val edition
+of Ann Hathaway&rsquo;s cottage at Stratford.&nbsp; I pictured
+dungeons and a drawbridge, perhaps a secret passage.&nbsp;
+Lamchick has a secret passage, leading from behind a sort of
+portrait in the dining-room to the back of the kitchen
+chimney.&nbsp; They use it for a linen closet.&nbsp; It seems to
+me a pity.&nbsp; Of course originally it went on farther.&nbsp;
+The vicar, who is a bit of an antiquarian, believes it comes out
+somewhere in the churchyard.&nbsp; I tell Lamchick he ought to
+have it opened up, but his wife doesn&rsquo;t want it
+touched.&nbsp; She seems to think it just right as it is.&nbsp; I
+have always had a fancy for a secret passage.&nbsp; I decided I
+would have the drawbridge repaired and made practicable.&nbsp;
+Flanked on each side with flowers in tubs, it would have been a
+novel and picturesque approach.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was there a drawbridge?&rdquo; asked Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There was no drawbridge,&rdquo; I explained.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The entrance to the house was through what the caretaker
+called the conservatory.&nbsp; It was not the sort of house that
+goes with a drawbridge.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then what about the Norman arches?&rdquo; argued
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not arches,&rdquo; I corrected him; &ldquo;Arch.&nbsp;
+The Norman arch was downstairs in the kitchen.&nbsp; It was the
+kitchen, that had been built in the thirteenth century&mdash;and
+had not had much done to it since, apparently.&nbsp; Originally,
+I should say, it had been the torture chamber; it gave you that
+idea.&nbsp; I think your mother would have raised objections to
+the kitchen&mdash;anyhow, when she came to think of the
+cook.&nbsp; It would have been necessary to put it to the woman
+before engaging her:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You don&rsquo;t mind cooking in a dungeon in the
+dark, do you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some cooks would.&nbsp; The rest of the house was what
+I should describe as present-day mixed style.&nbsp; The last
+tenant but one had thrown out a bathroom in corrugated
+iron.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then there was a house in Berkshire that I took your
+mother to see, with a trout stream running through the
+grounds.&nbsp; I imagined myself going out after lunch, catching
+trout for dinner; inviting swagger friends down to &lsquo;my
+little place in Berkshire&rsquo; for a few days&rsquo;
+trout-fishing.&nbsp; There is a man I once knew who is now a
+baronet.&nbsp; He used to be keen on fishing.&nbsp; I thought
+maybe I&rsquo;d get him.&nbsp; It would have looked well in the
+Literary Gossip column: &lsquo;Among the other distinguished
+guests&rsquo;&mdash;you know the sort of thing.&nbsp; I had the
+paragraph already in my mind.&nbsp; The wonder is I didn&rsquo;t
+buy a rod.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t there any trout stream?&rdquo; questioned
+Robin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There was a stream,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;if
+anything, too much stream.&nbsp; The stream was the first thing
+your mother noticed.&nbsp; She noticed it a quarter of an hour
+before we came to it&mdash;before we knew it was the
+stream.&nbsp; We drove back to the town, and she bought a
+smelling-bottle, the larger size.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It gave your mother a headache, that stream, and made
+me mad.&nbsp; The agent&rsquo;s office was opposite the
+station.&nbsp; I allowed myself half an hour on my way back to
+tell him what I thought of him, and then I missed the
+train.&nbsp; I could have got it in if he had let me talk all the
+time, but he would interrupt.&nbsp; He said it was the people at
+the paper-mill&mdash;that he had spoken to them about it more
+than once; he seemed to think sympathy was all I wanted.&nbsp; He
+assured me, on his word as a house-agent, that it had once been a
+trout stream.&nbsp; The fact was historical.&nbsp; Isaac Walton
+had fished there&mdash;that was prior to the paper-mill.&nbsp; He
+thought a collection of trout, male and female, might be bought
+and placed in it; preference being given to some hardy breed of
+trout, accustomed to roughing it.&nbsp; I told him I wasn&rsquo;t
+looking for a place where I could play at being Noah; and left
+him, as I explained to him, with the intention of going straight
+to my solicitors and instituting proceedings against him for
+talking like a fool; and he put on his hat and went across to his
+solicitors to commence proceedings against me for libel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose that, with myself, he thought better of it in
+the end.&nbsp; But I&rsquo;m tired of having my life turned into
+one perpetual first of April.&nbsp; This house that I have bought
+is not my heart&rsquo;s desire, but about it there are
+possibilities.&nbsp; We will put in lattice windows, and fuss-up
+the chimneys.&nbsp; Maybe we will let in a tablet over the
+front-door, with a date&mdash;always looks well: it is a
+picturesque figure, the old-fashioned five.&nbsp; By the time we
+have done with it&mdash;for all practical purposes&mdash;it will
+be a Tudor manor-house.&nbsp; I have always wanted an old Tudor
+manor-house.&nbsp; There is no reason, so far as I can see, why
+there should not be stories connected with this house.&nbsp; Why
+should not we have a room in which Somebody once slept?&nbsp; We
+won&rsquo;t have Queen Elizabeth.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m tired of Queen
+Elizabeth.&nbsp; Besides, I don&rsquo;t believe she&rsquo;d have
+been nice.&nbsp; Why not Queen Anne?&nbsp; A quiet, gentle old
+lady, from all accounts, who would not have given trouble.&nbsp;
+Or, better still, Shakespeare.&nbsp; He was constantly to and fro
+between London and Stratford.&nbsp; It would not have been so
+very much out of his way.&nbsp; &lsquo;The room where Shakespeare
+slept!&rsquo;&nbsp; Why, it&rsquo;s a new idea.&nbsp; Nobody ever
+seems to have thought of Shakespeare.&nbsp; There is the
+four-post bedstead.&nbsp; Your mother never liked it.&nbsp; She
+will insist, it harbours things.&nbsp; We might hang the wall
+with scenes from his plays, and have a bust of the old gentleman
+himself over the door.&nbsp; If I&rsquo;m left alone and not
+worried, I&rsquo;ll probably end by believing that he really did
+sleep there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about cupboards?&rdquo; suggested Dick.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The Little Mother will clamour for cupboards.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is unexplainable, the average woman&rsquo;s passion for
+cupboards.&nbsp; In heaven, her first request, I am sure, is
+always, &ldquo;Can I have a cupboard?&rdquo;&nbsp; She would keep
+her husband and children in cupboards if she had her way: that
+would be her idea of the perfect home, everybody wrapped up with
+a piece of camphor in his or her own proper cupboard.&nbsp; I
+knew a woman once who was happy&mdash;for a woman.&nbsp; She
+lived in a house with twenty-nine cupboards: I think it must have
+been built by a woman.&nbsp; They were spacious cupboards, many
+of them, with doors in no way different from other doors.&nbsp;
+Visitors would wish each other good-night and disappear with
+their candles into cupboards, staggering out backwards the next
+moment, looking scared.&nbsp; One poor gentleman, this
+woman&rsquo;s husband told me, having to go downstairs again for
+something he had forgotten, and unable on his return to strike
+anything else but cupboards, lost heart and finished up the night
+in a cupboard.&nbsp; At breakfast-time guests would hurry down,
+and burst open cupboard doors with a cheery
+&ldquo;Good-morning.&rdquo;&nbsp; When that woman was out, nobody
+in that house ever knew where anything was; and when she came
+home she herself only knew where it ought to have been.&nbsp; Yet
+once, when one of those twenty-nine cupboards had to be cleared
+out temporarily for repairs, she never smiled, her husband told
+me, for more than three weeks&mdash;not till the workmen were out
+of the house, and that cupboard in working order again.&nbsp; She
+said it was so confusing, having nowhere to put her things.</p>
+<p>The average woman does not want a house, in the ordinary sense
+of the word.&nbsp; What she wants is something made by a
+genii.&nbsp; You have found, as you think, the ideal house.&nbsp;
+You show her the Adams fireplace in the drawing-room.&nbsp; You
+tap the wainscoting of the hall with your umbrella:
+&ldquo;Oak,&rdquo; you impress upon her, &ldquo;all
+oak.&rdquo;&nbsp; You draw her attention to the view: you tell
+her the local legend.&nbsp; By fixing her head against the
+window-pane she can see the tree on which the man was
+hanged.&nbsp; You dwell upon the sundial; you mention for a
+second time the Adams fireplace.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all very nice,&rdquo; she answers,
+&ldquo;but where are the children going to sleep?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is so disheartening.</p>
+<p>If it isn&rsquo;t the children, it&rsquo;s the water.&nbsp;
+She wants water&mdash;wants to know where it comes from.&nbsp;
+You show her where it comes from.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What, out of that nasty place!&rdquo; she exclaims.</p>
+<p>She is equally dissatisfied whether it be drawn from a well,
+or whether it be water that has fallen from heaven and been
+stored in tanks.&nbsp; She has no faith in Nature&rsquo;s
+water.&nbsp; A woman never believes that water can be good that
+does not come from a water-works.&nbsp; Her idea appears to be
+that the Company makes it fresh every morning from some old
+family recipe.</p>
+<p>If you do succeed in reconciling her to the water, then she
+feels sure that the chimneys smoke; they look as if they
+smoked.&nbsp; Why&mdash;as you tell her&mdash;the chimneys are
+the best part of the house.&nbsp; You take her outside and make
+her look at them.&nbsp; They are genuine sixteenth-century
+chimneys, with carving on them.&nbsp; They couldn&rsquo;t
+smoke.&nbsp; They wouldn&rsquo;t do anything so inartistic.&nbsp;
+She says she only hopes you are right, and suggests cowls, if
+they do.</p>
+<p>After that she wants to see the kitchen&mdash;where&rsquo;s
+the kitchen?&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t know where it is.&nbsp; You
+didn&rsquo;t bother about the kitchen.&nbsp; There must be a
+kitchen, of course.&nbsp; You proceed to search for the
+kitchen.&nbsp; When you find it she is worried because it is the
+opposite end of the house to the dining-room.&nbsp; You point out
+to her the advantage of being away from the smell of the
+cooking.&nbsp; At that she gets personal: tells you that you are
+the first to grumble when the dinner is cold; and in her madness
+accuses the whole male sex of being impractical.&nbsp; The mere
+sight of an empty house makes a woman fretful.</p>
+<p>Of course the stove is wrong.&nbsp; The kitchen stove always
+is wrong.&nbsp; You promise she shall have a new one.&nbsp; Six
+months later she will want the old one back again: but it would
+be cruel to tell her this.&nbsp; The promise of that new stove
+comforts her.&nbsp; The woman never loses hope that one day it
+will come&mdash;the all-satisfying kitchen stove, the stove of
+her girlish dreams.</p>
+<p>The question of the stove settled, you imagine you have
+silenced all opposition.&nbsp; At once she begins to talk about
+things that nobody but a woman or a sanitary inspector can talk
+about without blushing.</p>
+<p>It calls for tact, getting a woman into a new house.&nbsp; She
+is nervous, suspicious.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad, my dear Dick,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;that
+you have mentioned cupboards.&nbsp; It is with cupboards that I
+am hoping to lure your mother.&nbsp; The cupboards, from her
+point of view, will be the one bright spot; there are fourteen of
+them.&nbsp; I am trusting to cupboards to tide me over many
+things.&nbsp; I shall want you to come with me, Dick.&nbsp;
+Whenever your mother begins a sentence with: &lsquo;But now to be
+practical, dear,&rsquo; I want you to murmur something about
+cupboards&mdash;not irritatingly as if it had been prearranged:
+have a little gumption.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will there be room for a tennis court?&rdquo; demanded
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An excellent tennis court already exists,&rdquo; I
+informed him.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have also purchased the adjoining
+paddock.&nbsp; We shall be able to keep our own cow.&nbsp; Maybe
+we&rsquo;ll breed horses.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We might have a croquet lawn,&rdquo; suggested
+Robin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We might easily have a croquet lawn,&rdquo; I
+agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;On a full-sized lawn I believe Veronica
+might be taught to play.&nbsp; There are natures that demand
+space.&nbsp; On a full-sized lawn, protected by a stout iron
+border, less time might be wasted exploring the surrounding
+scenery for Veronica&rsquo;s lost ball.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No chance of a golf links anywhere in the
+neighbourhood?&rdquo; feared Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am not so sure,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Barely a mile away there is a pretty piece of gorse land
+that appears to be no good to anyone.&nbsp; I daresay for a
+reasonable offer&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I say, when will this show be ready?&rdquo; interrupted
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I propose beginning the alterations at once,&rdquo; I
+explained.&nbsp; &ldquo;By luck there happens to be a
+gamekeeper&rsquo;s cottage vacant and within distance.&nbsp; The
+agent is going to get me the use of it for a year&mdash;a
+primitive little place, but charmingly situate on the edge of a
+wood.&nbsp; I shall furnish a couple of rooms; and for part of
+every week I shall make a point of being down there,
+superintending.&nbsp; I have always been considered good at
+superintending.&nbsp; My poor father used to say it was the only
+work I seemed to take an interest in.&nbsp; By being on the spot
+to hurry everybody on I hope to have the &lsquo;show,&rsquo; as
+you term it, ready by the spring.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall never marry,&rdquo; said Robin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be so easily discouraged,&rdquo; advised
+Dick; &ldquo;you are still young.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t ever want to get married,&rdquo;
+continued Robin.&nbsp; &ldquo;I should only quarrel with my
+husband, if I did.&nbsp; And Dick will never do
+anything&mdash;not with his head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Forgive me if I am dull,&rdquo; I pleaded, &ldquo;but
+what is the connection between this house, your quarrels with
+your husband if you ever get one, and Dick&rsquo;s
+head?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By way of explanation, Robin sprang to the ground, and before
+he could stop her had flung her arms around Dick&rsquo;s
+neck.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t help it, Dick dear,&rdquo; she told
+him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Clever parents always have duffing
+children.&nbsp; But we&rsquo;ll be of some use in the world after
+all, you and I.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The idea was that Dick, when he had finished failing in
+examinations, should go out to Canada and start a farm, taking
+Robin with him.&nbsp; They would breed cattle, and gallop over
+the prairies, and camp out in the primeval forest, and slide
+about on snow-shoes, and carry canoes on their backs, and shoot
+rapids, and stalk things&mdash;so far as I could gather, have a
+sort of everlasting Buffalo-Bill&rsquo;s show all to
+themselves.&nbsp; How and when the farm work was to get itself
+done was not at all clear.&nbsp; The Little Mother and myself
+were to end our days with them.&nbsp; We were to sit about in the
+sun for a time, and then pass peacefully away.&nbsp; Robin shed a
+few tears at this point, but regained her spirits, thinking of
+Veronica, who was to be lured out on a visit and married to some
+true-hearted yeoman: which is not at present Veronica&rsquo;s
+ambition.&nbsp; Veronica&rsquo;s conviction is that she would
+look well in a coronet: her own idea is something in the ducal
+line.&nbsp; Robina talked for about ten minutes.&nbsp; By the
+time she had done she had persuaded Dick that life in the
+backwoods of Canada had been his dream from infancy.&nbsp; She is
+that sort of girl.</p>
+<p>I tried talking reason, but talking to Robin when she has got
+a notion in her head is like trying to fix a halter on a
+two-year-old colt.&nbsp; This tumble-down, six-roomed cottage was
+to be the saving of the family.&nbsp; An ecstatic look
+transfigured Robina&rsquo;s face even as she spoke of it.&nbsp;
+You might have fancied it a shrine.&nbsp; Robina would do the
+cooking.&nbsp; Robina would rise early and milk the cow, and
+gather the morning egg.&nbsp; We would lead the simple life,
+learn to fend for ourselves.&nbsp; It would be so good for
+Veronica.&nbsp; The higher education could wait; let the higher
+ideals have a chance.&nbsp; Veronica would make the beds, dust
+the rooms.&nbsp; In the evening Veronica, her little basket by
+her side, would sit and sew while I talked, telling them things,
+and Robina moved softly to and fro about her work, the household
+fairy.&nbsp; The Little Mother, whenever strong enough, would
+come to us.&nbsp; We would hover round her, tending her with
+loving hands.&nbsp; The English farmer must know something, in
+spite of all that is said.&nbsp; Dick could arrange for lessons
+in practical farming.&nbsp; She did not say it crudely; but
+hinted that, surrounded by example, even I might come to take an
+interest in honest labour, might end by learning to do something
+useful.</p>
+<p>Robina talked, I should say, for a quarter of an hour.&nbsp;
+By the time she had done, it appeared to me rather a beautiful
+idea.&nbsp; Dick&rsquo;s vacation had just commenced.&nbsp; For
+the next three months there would be nothing else for him to do
+but&mdash;to employ his own expressive phrase&mdash;&ldquo;rot
+round.&rdquo;&nbsp; In any event, it would be keeping him out of
+mischief.&nbsp; Veronica&rsquo;s governess was leaving.&nbsp;
+Veronica&rsquo;s governess generally does leave at the end of
+about a year.&nbsp; I think sometimes of advertising for a lady
+without a conscience.&nbsp; At the end of a year, they explain to
+me that their conscience will not allow them to remain longer;
+they do not feel they are earning their salary.&nbsp; It is not
+that the child is not a dear child, it is not that she is
+stupid.&nbsp; Simply it is&mdash;as a German lady to whom Dick
+had been giving what he called finishing lessons in English, once
+put it&mdash;that she does not seem to be &ldquo;taking
+any.&rdquo;&nbsp; Her mother&rsquo;s idea is that it is
+&ldquo;sinking in.&rdquo;&nbsp; Perhaps if we allowed Veronica to
+lie fallow for awhile, something might show itself.&nbsp; Robina,
+speaking for herself, held that a period of quiet usefulness,
+away from the society of other silly girls and sillier boys,
+would result in her becoming a sensible woman.&nbsp; It is not
+often that Robina&rsquo;s yearnings take this direction: to
+thwart them, when they did, seemed wrong.</p>
+<p>We had some difficulty with the Little Mother.&nbsp; That
+these three babies of hers will ever be men and women capable of
+running a six-roomed cottage appears to the Little Mother in the
+light of a fantastic dream.&nbsp; I explained to her that I
+should be there, at all events for two or three days in every
+week, to give an eye to things.&nbsp; Even that did not content
+her.&nbsp; She gave way eventually on Robina&rsquo;s solemn
+undertaking that she should be telegraphed for the first time
+Veronica coughed.</p>
+<p>On Monday we packed a one-horse van with what we deemed
+essential.&nbsp; Dick and Robina rode their bicycles.&nbsp;
+Veronica, supported by assorted bedding, made herself comfortable
+upon the tailboard.&nbsp; I followed down by train on the
+Wednesday afternoon.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was the cow that woke me the
+first morning.&nbsp; I did not know it was our cow&mdash;not at
+the time.&nbsp; I didn&rsquo;t know we had a cow.&nbsp; I looked
+at my watch; it was half-past two.&nbsp; I thought maybe she
+would go to sleep again, but her idea was that the day had
+begun.&nbsp; I went to the window, the moon was at the
+full.&nbsp; She was standing by the gate, her head inside the
+garden; I took it her anxiety was lest we might miss any of
+it.&nbsp; Her neck was stretched out straight, her eyes towards
+the sky; which gave to her the appearance of a long-eared
+alligator.&nbsp; I have never had much to do with cows.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t know how you talk to them.&nbsp; I told her to
+&ldquo;be quiet,&rdquo; and to &ldquo;lie down&rdquo;; and made
+pretence to throw a boot at her.&nbsp; It seemed to cheer her,
+having an audience; she added half a dozen extra notes.&nbsp; I
+never knew before a cow had so much in her.&nbsp; There is a
+thing one sometimes meets with in the suburbs&mdash;or one used
+to; I do not know whether it is still extant, but when I was a
+boy it was quite common.&nbsp; It has a hurdy-gurdy fixed to its
+waist and a drum strapped on behind, a row of pipes hanging from
+its face, and bells and clappers from most of its other
+joints.&nbsp; It plays them all at once, and smiles.&nbsp; This
+cow reminded me of it&mdash;with organ effects added.&nbsp; She
+didn&rsquo;t smile; there was that to be said in her favour.</p>
+<p>I hoped that if I made believe to be asleep she would get
+discouraged.&nbsp; So I closed the window ostentatiously, and
+went back to bed.&nbsp; But it only had the effect of putting her
+on her mettle.&nbsp; &ldquo;He did not care for that last,&rdquo;
+I imagined her saying to herself, &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t at my
+best.&nbsp; There wasn&rsquo;t feeling enough in it.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+She kept it up for about half an hour, and then the gate against
+which, I suppose, she had been leaning, gave way with a
+crash.&nbsp; That frightened her, and I heard her gallop off
+across the field.&nbsp; I was on the point of dozing off again
+when a pair of pigeons settled on the window-sill and began to
+coo.&nbsp; It is a pretty sound when you are in the mood for
+it.&nbsp; I wrote a poem once&mdash;a simple thing, but instinct
+with longing&mdash;while sitting under a tree and listening to
+the cooing of a pigeon.&nbsp; But that was in the
+afternoon.&nbsp; My only longing now was for a gun.&nbsp; Three
+times I got out of bed and &ldquo;shoo&rsquo;d&rdquo; them
+away.&nbsp; The third time I remained by the window till I had
+got it firmly into their heads that I really did not want
+them.&nbsp; My behaviour on the former two occasions they had
+evidently judged to be mere playfulness.&nbsp; I had just got
+back to bed again when an owl began to screech.&nbsp; That is
+another sound I used to think attractive&mdash;so weird, so
+mysterious.&nbsp; It is Swinburne, I think, who says that you
+never get the desired one and the time and the place all right
+together.&nbsp; If the beloved one is with you, it is the wrong
+place or at the wrong time; and if the time and the place happen
+to be right, then it is the party that is wrong.&nbsp; The owl
+was all right: I like owls.&nbsp; The place was all right.&nbsp;
+He had struck the wrong time, that was all.&nbsp; Eleven
+o&rsquo;clock at night, when you can&rsquo;t see him, and
+naturally feel that you want to, is the proper time for an
+owl.&nbsp; Perched on the roof of a cow-shed in the early dawn he
+looks silly.&nbsp; He clung there, flapping his wings and
+screeching at the top of his voice.&nbsp; What it was he wanted I
+am sure I don&rsquo;t know; and anyhow it didn&rsquo;t seem the
+way to get it.&nbsp; He came to this conclusion himself at the
+end of twenty minutes, and shut himself up and went home.&nbsp; I
+thought I was going to have at last some peace, when a
+corncrake&mdash;a creature upon whom Nature has bestowed a song
+like to the tearing of calico-sheets mingled with the sharpening
+of saws&mdash;settled somewhere in the garden and set to work to
+praise its Maker according to its lights.&nbsp; I have a friend,
+a poet, who lives just off the Strand, and spends his evenings at
+the Garrick Club.&nbsp; He writes occasional verse for the
+evening papers, and talks about the &ldquo;silent country, drowsy
+with the weight of languors.&rdquo;&nbsp; One of these times
+I&rsquo;ll lure him down for a Saturday to Monday and let him
+find out what the country really is&mdash;let him hear it.&nbsp;
+He is becoming too much of a dreamer: it will do him good, wake
+him up a bit.&nbsp; The corncrake after awhile stopped quite
+suddenly with a jerk, and for quite five minutes there was
+silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If this continues for another five,&rdquo; I said to
+myself, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be asleep.&rdquo;&nbsp; I felt it
+coming over me.&nbsp; I had hardly murmured the words when the
+cow turned up again.&nbsp; I should say she had been somewhere
+and had had a drink.&nbsp; She was in better voice than ever.</p>
+<p>It occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to make a
+few notes on the sunrise.&nbsp; The literary man is looked to for
+occasional description of the sunrise.&nbsp; The earnest reader
+who has heard about this sunrise thirsts for full
+particulars.&nbsp; Myself, for purposes of observation, I have
+generally chosen December or the early part of January.&nbsp; But
+one never knows.&nbsp; Maybe one of these days I&rsquo;ll want a
+summer sunrise, with birds and dew-besprinkled flowers: it goes
+well with the rustic heroine, the miller&rsquo;s daughter, or the
+girl who brings up chickens and has dreams.&nbsp; I met a brother
+author once at seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning in Kensington
+Gardens.&nbsp; He looked half asleep and so disagreeable that I
+hesitated for awhile to speak to him: he is a man that as a rule
+breakfasts at eleven.&nbsp; But I summoned my courage and
+accosted him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is early for you,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s early for anyone but a born fool,&rdquo; he
+answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; I asked.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you sleep?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t I sleep?&rdquo; he retorted
+indignantly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why, I daren&rsquo;t sit down upon a
+seat, I daren&rsquo;t lean up against a tree.&nbsp; If I did
+I&rsquo;d be asleep in half a second.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the idea?&rdquo; I persisted.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Been reading Smiles&rsquo;s &lsquo;Self Help and the
+Secret of Success&rsquo;?&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t be absurd,&rdquo; I
+advised him.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be going to Sunday school
+next and keeping a diary.&nbsp; You have left it too late: we
+don&rsquo;t reform at forty.&nbsp; Go home and go to
+bed.&rdquo;&nbsp; I could see he was doing himself no good.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to bed,&rdquo; he answered,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to bed for a month when I&rsquo;ve
+finished this confounded novel that I&rsquo;m on.&nbsp; Take my
+advice,&rdquo; he said&mdash;he laid his hand upon my
+shoulder&mdash;&ldquo;Never choose a colonial girl for your
+heroine.&nbsp; At our age it is simple madness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a fine girl,&rdquo; he continued,
+&ldquo;and good.&nbsp; Has a heart of gold.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s
+wearing me to a shadow.&nbsp; I wanted something fresh and
+unconventional.&nbsp; I didn&rsquo;t grasp what it was going to
+do.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s the girl that gets up early in the morning
+and rides bare-back&mdash;the horse, I mean, of course;
+don&rsquo;t be so silly.&nbsp; Over in New South Wales it
+didn&rsquo;t matter.&nbsp; I threw in the usual local
+colour&mdash;the eucalyptus-tree and the kangaroo&mdash;and let
+her ride.&nbsp; It is now that she is over here in London that I
+wish I had never thought of her.&nbsp; She gets up at five and
+wanders about the silent city.&nbsp; That means, of course, that
+I have to get up at five in order to record her
+impressions.&nbsp; I have walked six miles this morning.&nbsp;
+First to St. Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral; she likes it when
+there&rsquo;s nobody about.&nbsp; You&rsquo;d think it
+wasn&rsquo;t big enough for her to see if anybody else was in the
+street.&nbsp; She thinks of it as of a mother watching over her
+sleeping children; she&rsquo;s full of all that sort of
+thing.&nbsp; And from there to Westminster Bridge.&nbsp; She sits
+on the parapet and reads Wordsworth, till the policeman turns her
+off.&nbsp; This is another of her favourite spots.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He indicated with a look of concentrated disgust the avenue where
+we were standing.&nbsp; &ldquo;This is where she likes to finish
+up.&nbsp; She comes here to listen to a blackbird.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you are through with it now,&rdquo; I said to
+console him.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve done it; and it&rsquo;s
+over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Through with it!&rdquo; he laughed bitterly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m just beginning it.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s the
+entire East End to be done yet: she&rsquo;s got to meet a fellow
+there as big a crank as herself.&nbsp; And walking isn&rsquo;t
+the worst.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s going to have a horse; you can guess
+what that means.&mdash;Hyde Park will be no good to her.&nbsp;
+She&rsquo;ll find out Richmond and Ham Common.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve
+got to describe the scenery and the mad joy of the
+thing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you imagine it?&rdquo; I suggested.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to imagine all the enjoyable part of
+it,&rdquo; he answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;I must have a groundwork to
+go upon.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s got to have feelings come to her upon
+this horse.&nbsp; You can&rsquo;t enter into a rider&rsquo;s
+feelings when you&rsquo;ve almost forgotten which side of the
+horse you get up.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I walked with him to the Serpentine.&nbsp; I had been
+wondering how it was he had grown stout so suddenly.&nbsp; He had
+a bath towel round him underneath his coat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll give me my death of cold, I know it
+will,&rdquo; he chattered while unlacing his boots.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you leave it till the summer-time,&rdquo; I
+suggested, &ldquo;and take her to Ostend?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be unconventional,&rdquo; he
+growled.&nbsp; &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t take an interest in
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But do they allow ladies to bathe in the
+Serpentine?&rdquo; I persisted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t be the Serpentine,&rdquo; he
+explained.&nbsp; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be the Thames at
+Greenwich.&nbsp; But it must be the same sort of feeling.&nbsp;
+She&rsquo;s got to tell them all about it during a lunch in
+Queen&rsquo;s Gate, and shock them all.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s all
+she does it for, in my opinion.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He emerged a mottled blue.&nbsp; I helped him into his
+clothes, and he was fortunate enough to find an early cab.&nbsp;
+The book appeared at Christmas.&nbsp; The critics agreed that the
+heroine was a delightful creation.&nbsp; Some of them said they
+would like to have known her.</p>
+<p>Remembering my poor friend, it occurred to me that by going
+out now and making a few notes about the morning, I might be
+saving myself trouble later on.&nbsp; I slipped on a few
+things&mdash;nothing elaborate&mdash;put a notebook in my pocket,
+opened the door and went down.</p>
+<p>Perhaps it would be more correct to say &ldquo;opened the door
+and was down.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was my own fault, I admit.&nbsp; We
+had talked this thing over before going to bed, and I myself had
+impressed upon Veronica the need for caution.&nbsp; The architect
+of the country cottage does not waste space.&nbsp; He dispenses
+with landings; the bedroom door opens on to the top stair.&nbsp;
+It does not do to walk out of your bedroom, for the reason there
+is nothing outside to walk on.&nbsp; I had said to Veronica,
+pointing out this fact to her:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t, in the morning, come bursting out of
+the room in your usual volcanic style, because if you do there
+will be trouble.&nbsp; As you perceive, there is no
+landing.&nbsp; The stairs commence at once; they are steep, and
+they lead down to a brick floor.&nbsp; Open the door quietly,
+look where you are going, and step carefully.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dick had added his advice to mine.&nbsp; &ldquo;I did that
+myself the first morning,&rdquo; Dick had said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+stepped straight out of the bedroom into the kitchen; and I can
+tell you, it hurts.&nbsp; You be careful, young &rsquo;un.&nbsp;
+This cottage doesn&rsquo;t lend itself to dash.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina had fallen down with a tray in her hand.&nbsp; She said
+that never should she forget the horror of that moment, when,
+sitting on the kitchen floor, she had cried to Dick&mdash;her own
+voice sounding to her as if it came from somewhere quite far off:
+&ldquo;Is it broken?&nbsp; Tell me the truth.&nbsp; Is it broken
+anywhere?&rdquo; and Dick had replied: &ldquo;Broken! why,
+it&rsquo;s smashed to atoms.&nbsp; What did you
+expect?&rdquo;&nbsp; Robina had asked the question with reference
+to her head, while Dick had thought she was alluding to the
+teapot.&nbsp; In that moment, had said Robina, her whole life had
+passed before her.&nbsp; She let Veronica feel the bump.</p>
+<p>Veronica was disappointed with the bump, having expected
+something bigger, but had promised to be careful.&nbsp; We had
+all agreed that if in spite of our warnings she forgot, and came
+blundering down in the morning, it would serve her right.&nbsp;
+It was thinking of all this that, as I lay upon the floor, made
+me feel angry with everybody.&nbsp; I hate people who can sleep
+through noises that wake me up.&nbsp; Why was I the only person
+in the house to be disturbed?&nbsp; Dick&rsquo;s room was round
+the corner; there was some excuse for him.&nbsp; But Robina and
+Veronica&rsquo;s window looked straight down upon the cow.&nbsp;
+If Robina and Veronica were not a couple of logs, the cow would
+have aroused them.&nbsp; We should have discussed the matter with
+the door ajar.&nbsp; Robina would have said, &ldquo;Whatever you
+do, be careful of the stairs, Pa,&rdquo; and I should have
+remembered.&nbsp; The modern child appears to me to have no
+feeling for its parent.</p>
+<p>I picked myself up and started for the door.&nbsp; The cow
+continued bellowing steadily.&nbsp; My whole anxiety was to get
+to her quickly and to hit her.&nbsp; But the door took more
+finding than I could have believed possible.&nbsp; The shutters
+were closed and the whole place was in pitch darkness.&nbsp; The
+idea had been to furnish this cottage only with things that were
+absolutely necessary, but the room appeared to me to be
+overcrowded.&nbsp; There was a milking-stool, which is a thing
+made purposely heavy so that it may not be easily upset.&nbsp; If
+I tumbled over it once I tumbled over it a dozen times.&nbsp; I
+got hold of it at last and carried it about with me.&nbsp; I
+thought I would use it to hit the cow&mdash;that is, when I had
+found the front-door.&nbsp; I knew it led out of the parlour, but
+could not recollect its exact position.&nbsp; I argued that if I
+kept along the wall I should be bound to come to it.&nbsp; I
+found the wall, and set off full of hope.&nbsp; I suppose the
+explanation was that, without knowing it, I must have started
+with the door, not the front-door, the other door, leading into
+the kitchen.&nbsp; I crept along, carefully feeling my way, and
+struck quite new things altogether&mdash;things I had no
+recollection of and that hit me in fresh places.&nbsp; I climbed
+over what I presumed to be a beer-barrel and landed among
+bottles; there were dozens upon dozens of them.&nbsp; To get away
+from these bottles I had to leave the wall; but I found it again,
+as I thought, and I felt along it for another half a dozen yards
+or so and then came again upon bottles: the room appeared to be
+paved with bottles.&nbsp; A little farther on I rolled over
+another beer-barrel: as a matter of fact it was the same
+beer-barrel, but I did not know this.&nbsp; At the time it seemed
+to me that Robina had made up her mind to run a
+public-house.&nbsp; I found the milking-stool again and started
+afresh, and before I had gone a dozen steps was in among bottles
+again.&nbsp; Later on, in the broad daylight, it was easy enough
+to understand what had happened.&nbsp; I had been carefully
+feeling my way round and round a screen.&nbsp; I got so sick of
+these bottles and so tired of rolling over these everlasting
+beer-barrels, that I abandoned the wall and plunged boldly into
+space.</p>
+<p>I had barely started, when, looking up, I saw the sky above
+me: a star was twinkling just above my head.&nbsp; Had I been
+wide awake, and had the cow stopped bellowing for just one
+minute, I should have guessed that somehow or another I had got
+into a chimney.&nbsp; But as things were, the wonder and the
+mystery of it all appalled me.&nbsp; &ldquo;Alice&rsquo;s
+Adventures in Wonderland&rdquo; would have appeared to me, at
+that moment, in the nature of a guide to travellers.&nbsp; Had a
+rocking-horse or a lobster suddenly appeared to me I should have
+sat and talked to it; and if it had not answered me I should have
+thought it sulky and been hurt.&nbsp; I took a step forward and
+the star disappeared, just as if somebody had blown it out.&nbsp;
+I was not surprised in the least.&nbsp; I was expecting anything
+to happen.</p>
+<p>I found a door and it opened quite easily.&nbsp; A wood was in
+front of me.&nbsp; I couldn&rsquo;t see any cow anywhere, but I
+still heard her.&nbsp; It all seemed quite natural.&nbsp; I would
+wander into the wood; most likely I should meet her there, and
+she would be smoking a pipe.&nbsp; In all probability she would
+know some poetry.</p>
+<p>With the fresh air my senses gradually came back to me, and I
+began to understand why it was I could not see the cow.&nbsp; The
+reason was that the house was between us.&nbsp; By some
+mysterious process I had been discharged into the back
+garden.&nbsp; I still had the milking-stool in my hand, but the
+cow no longer troubled me.&nbsp; Let her see if she could wake
+Veronica by merely bellowing outside the door; it was more than I
+had ever been able to do.</p>
+<p>I sat down on the stool and opened my note-book.&nbsp; I
+headed the page: &ldquo;Sunrise in July: observations and
+emotions,&rdquo; and I wrote down at once, lest I should forget
+it, that towards three o&rsquo;clock a faint light is
+discernible, and added that this light gets stronger as the time
+goes on.</p>
+<p>It sounded footling even to myself, but I had been reading a
+novel of the realistic school that had been greatly praised for
+its actuality.&nbsp; There is a demand in some quarters for this
+class of observation.&nbsp; I likewise made a note that the
+pigeon and the corncrake appear to be among the earliest of
+Nature&rsquo;s children to welcome the coming day; and added that
+the screech-owl may be heard, perhaps at its best, by anyone
+caring to rise for the purpose, some quarter of an hour before
+the dawn.&nbsp; That was all I could think of just then.&nbsp; As
+regards emotions, I did not seem to have any.</p>
+<p>I lit a pipe and waited for the sun.&nbsp; The sky in front of
+me was tinged with a faint pink.&nbsp; Every moment it flushed a
+deeper red.&nbsp; I maintain that anyone, not an expert, would
+have said that was the portion of the horizon on which to keep
+one&rsquo;s eye.&nbsp; I kept my eye upon it, but no sun
+appeared.&nbsp; I lit another pipe.&nbsp; The sky in front of me
+was now a blaze of glory.&nbsp; I scribbled a few lines, likening
+the scattered clouds to brides blushing at the approach of the
+bridegroom.&nbsp; That would have been all right if later on they
+hadn&rsquo;t begun to turn green: it seemed the wrong colour for
+a bride.&nbsp; Later on still they went yellow, and that spoilt
+the simile past hope.&nbsp; One cannot wax poetical about a bride
+who at the approach of the bridegroom turns first green and then
+yellow: you can only feel sorry for her.&nbsp; I waited some
+more.&nbsp; The sky in front of me grew paler every moment.&nbsp;
+I began to fear that something had happened to that sun.&nbsp; If
+I hadn&rsquo;t known so much astronomy I should have said that he
+had changed his mind and had gone back again.&nbsp; I rose with
+the idea of seeing into things.&nbsp; He had been up apparently
+for hours: he had got up at the back of me.&nbsp; It seemed to be
+nobody&rsquo;s fault.&nbsp; I put my pipe into my pocket and
+strolled round to the front.&nbsp; The cow was still there; she
+was pleased to see me, and started bellowing again.</p>
+<p>I heard a sound of whistling.&nbsp; It proceeded from a
+farmer&rsquo;s boy.&nbsp; I hailed him, and he climbed a gate and
+came to me across the field.&nbsp; He was a cheerful youth.&nbsp;
+He nodded to the cow and hoped she had had a good night: he
+pronounced it &ldquo;nihet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know the cow?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;we don&rsquo;t
+precisely move in the sime set.&nbsp; Sort o&rsquo; business
+relytionship more like&mdash;if you understand me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Something about this boy was worrying me.&nbsp; He did not
+seem like a real farmer&rsquo;s boy.&nbsp; But then nothing
+seemed quite real this morning.&nbsp; My feeling was to let
+things go.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whose cow is it?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>He stared at me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I want to know to whom it belongs,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I want to restore it to him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;but where do you
+live?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was making me cross.&nbsp; &ldquo;Where do I live?&rdquo; I
+retorted.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why, in this cottage.&nbsp; You
+don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve got up early and come from a
+distance to listen to this cow?&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t talk so
+much.&nbsp; Do you know whose cow it is, or don&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s your cow,&rdquo; said the boy.</p>
+<p>It was my turn to stare.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t got a cow,&rdquo; I told him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yus you have,&rdquo; he persisted; &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve
+got that cow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She had stopped bellowing for a moment.&nbsp; She was not the
+cow I felt I could ever take a pride in.&nbsp; At some time or
+another, quite recently, she must have sat down in some mud.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did I get her?&rdquo; I demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The young lydy,&rdquo; explained the boy, &ldquo;she
+came rahnd to our plice on Tuesday&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I began to see light.&nbsp; &ldquo;An excitable young
+lady&mdash;talks very fast&mdash;never waits for the
+answer?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With jolly fine eyes,&rdquo; added the boy
+approvingly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And she ordered a cow?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t seem to &rsquo;ave strength enough to live
+another dy withaht it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Any stipulation made concerning the price of the
+cow?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Any what?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The young lady with the eyes&mdash;did she think to ask
+the price of the cow?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No sordid details was entered into, so far as I could
+&rsquo;ear,&rdquo; replied the boy.</p>
+<p>They would not have been&mdash;by Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Any hint let fall as to what the cow was wanted
+for?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The lydy gives us to understand,&rdquo; said the boy,
+&ldquo;that fresh milk was &rsquo;er idea.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That surprised me: that was thoughtful of Robina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And this is the cow?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I towed her rahnd last night.&nbsp; I didn&rsquo;t
+knock at the door and tell yer abaht &rsquo;er, cos, to be quite
+frank with yer, there wasn&rsquo;t anybody in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is she bellowing for?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s only a
+theory, o&rsquo; course, but I should sy, from the look of
+&rsquo;er, that she wanted to be milked.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it started bellowing at half-past two,&rdquo; I
+argued.&nbsp; &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t expect to be milked at
+half-past two, does it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Meself,&rdquo; said the boy, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve given up
+looking for sense in cows.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In some unaccountable way this boy was hypnotising me.&nbsp;
+Everything had suddenly become out of place.</p>
+<p>The cow had suddenly become absurd: she ought to have been a
+milk-can.&nbsp; The wood struck me as neglected: there ought to
+have been notice-boards about, &ldquo;Keep off the Grass,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Smoking Strictly Prohibited&rdquo;: there wasn&rsquo;t a
+seat to be seen.&nbsp; The cottage had surely got itself there by
+accident: where was the street?&nbsp; The birds were all out of
+their cages; everything was upside down.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are you a real farmer&rsquo;s boy?&rdquo; I asked
+him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O&rsquo; course I am,&rdquo; he answered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What do yer tike me for&mdash;a hartist in
+disguise?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It came to me.&nbsp; &ldquo;What is your name?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Enery&mdash;&rsquo;Enery
+&rsquo;Opkins.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where were you born?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Camden Tahn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Here was a nice beginning to a rural life!&nbsp; What place
+could be the country while this boy Hopkins was about?&nbsp; He
+would have given to the Garden of Eden the atmosphere of an
+outlying suburb.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you want to earn an occasional shilling?&rdquo; I
+put it to him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather it come reggler,&rdquo; said
+Hopkins.&nbsp; &ldquo;Better for me kerrickter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You drop that Cockney accent and learn Berkshire, and
+I&rsquo;ll give you half a sovereign when you can talk it,&rdquo;
+I promised him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, for instance, say
+&lsquo;ain&rsquo;t,&rsquo;&rdquo; I explained to him.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Say &lsquo;bain&rsquo;t.&rsquo;&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t say
+&lsquo;The young lydy, she came rahnd to our plice;&rsquo; say
+&lsquo;The missy, &rsquo;er coomed down; &rsquo;er coomed, and
+&rsquo;er ses to the maister, &rsquo;er ses . . . &rsquo;&nbsp;
+That&rsquo;s the sort of thing I want to surround myself with
+here.&nbsp; When you informed me that the cow was mine, you
+should have said: &lsquo;Whoi, &rsquo;er be your cow, surelie
+&rsquo;er be.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure it&rsquo;s Berkshire?&rdquo; demanded
+Hopkins.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;re confident about
+it?&rdquo;&nbsp; There is a type that is by nature
+suspicious.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It may not be Berkshire pure and undefiled,&rdquo; I
+admitted.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is what in literature we term
+&lsquo;dialect.&rsquo;&nbsp; It does for most places outside the
+twelve-mile radius.&nbsp; The object is to convey a feeling of
+rustic simplicity.&nbsp; Anyhow, it isn&rsquo;t Camden
+Town.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I started him with a shilling then and there to encourage
+him.&nbsp; He promised to come round in the evening for one or
+two books, written by friends of mine, that I reckoned would be
+of help to him; and I returned to the cottage and set to work to
+rouse Robina.&nbsp; Her tone was apologetic.&nbsp; She had got
+the notion into her head that I had been calling her for quite a
+long time.&nbsp; I explained that this was not the case.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How funny!&rdquo; she answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;I said to
+Veronica more than an hour ago: &lsquo;I&rsquo;m sure
+that&rsquo;s Pa calling us.&rsquo;&nbsp; I suppose I must have
+been dreaming.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t dream any more,&rdquo; I
+suggested.&nbsp; &ldquo;Come down and see to this confounded cow
+of yours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Veronica, &ldquo;has it
+come?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It has come,&rdquo; I told her.&nbsp; &ldquo;As a
+matter of fact, it has been here some time.&nbsp; It ought to
+have been milked four hours ago, according to its own
+idea.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina said she would be down in a minute.</p>
+<p>She was down in twenty-five, which was sooner than I had
+expected.&nbsp; She brought Veronica with her.&nbsp; She said she
+would have been down sooner if she had not waited for
+Veronica.&nbsp; It appeared that this was just precisely what
+Veronica had been telling her.&nbsp; I was feeling
+irritable.&nbsp; I had been up half a day, and hadn&rsquo;t had
+my breakfast.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t stand there arguing,&rdquo; I told
+them.&nbsp; &ldquo;For goodness&rsquo; sake let&rsquo;s get to
+work and milk this cow.&nbsp; We shall have the poor creature
+dying on our hands if we&rsquo;re not careful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina was wandering round the room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t come across a milking-stool anywhere,
+have you, Pa?&rdquo; asked Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have come across your milking-stool, I estimate, some
+thirteen times,&rdquo; I told her.&nbsp; I fetched it from where
+I had left it, and gave it to her; and we filed out in
+procession; Veronica with a galvanised iron bucket bringing up
+the rear.</p>
+<p>The problem that was forcing itself upon my mind was: did
+Robina know how to milk a cow?&nbsp; Robina, I argued, the idea
+once in her mind, would immediately have ordered a cow,
+clamouring for it&mdash;as Hopkins had picturesquely expressed
+it&mdash;as though she had not strength to live another day
+without a cow.&nbsp; Her next proceeding would have been to buy a
+milking-stool.&nbsp; It was a tasteful milking-stool, this one
+she had selected, ornamented with the rough drawing of a cow in
+poker work: a little too solid for my taste, but one that I
+should say would wear well.&nbsp; The pail she had not as yet had
+time to see about.&nbsp; This galvanised bucket we were using
+was, I took it, a temporary makeshift.&nbsp; When Robina had
+leisure she would go into the town and purchase something at an
+art stores.&nbsp; That, to complete the scheme, she would have
+done well to have taken a few practical lessons in milking would
+come to her, as an inspiration, with the arrival of the
+cow.&nbsp; I noticed that Robina&rsquo;s steps as we approached
+the cow were less elastic.&nbsp; Just outside the cow Robina
+halted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s
+only one way of milking a cow?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There may be fancy ways,&rdquo; I answered,
+&ldquo;necessary to you if later on you think of entering a
+competition.&nbsp; This morning, seeing we are late, I
+shouldn&rsquo;t worry too much about style.&nbsp; If I were you,
+this morning I should adopt the ordinary unimaginative method,
+and aim only at results.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina sat down and placed her bucket underneath the cow.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;it doesn&rsquo;t
+matter which&mdash;which one I begin with?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was perfectly plain she hadn&rsquo;t the least notion how
+to milk a cow.&nbsp; I told her so, adding comments.&nbsp; Now
+and then a little fatherly talk does good.&nbsp; As a rule I have
+to work myself up for these occasions.&nbsp; This morning I was
+feeling fairly fit: things had conspired to this end.&nbsp; I put
+before Robina the aims and privileges of the household fairy as
+they appeared, not to her, but to me.&nbsp; I also confided to
+Veronica the result of many weeks&rsquo; reflections concerning
+her and her behaviour.&nbsp; I also told them both what I thought
+about Dick.&nbsp; I do this sort of thing once every six months:
+it has an excellent effect for about three days.</p>
+<p>Robina wiped away her tears, and seized the first one that
+came to her hand.&nbsp; The cow, without saying a word, kicked
+over the empty bucket, and walked away, disgust expressed in
+every hair of her body.&nbsp; Robina, crying quietly, followed
+her.&nbsp; By patting her on her neck, and letting her wipe her
+nose upon my coat&mdash;which seemed to comfort her&mdash;I
+persuaded her to keep still while Robina worked for ten minutes
+at high pressure.&nbsp; The result was about a glassful and a
+half, the cow&rsquo;s capacity, to all appearance, being by this
+time some five or six gallons.</p>
+<p>Robina broke down, and acknowledged she had been a wicked
+girl.&nbsp; If the cow died, so she said, she should never
+forgive herself.&nbsp; Veronica at this burst into tears also;
+and the cow, whether moved afresh by her own troubles or by
+theirs, commenced again to bellow.&nbsp; I was fortunately able
+to find an elderly labourer smoking a pipe and eating bacon
+underneath a tree; and with him I bargained that for a shilling a
+day he should milk the cow till further notice.</p>
+<p>We left him busy, and returned to the cottage.&nbsp; Dick met
+us at the door with a cheery &ldquo;Good morning.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+wanted to know if we had heard the storm.&nbsp; He also wanted to
+know when breakfast would be ready.&nbsp; Robina thought that
+happy event would be shortly after he had boiled the kettle and
+made the tea and fried the bacon, while Veronica was laying the
+table.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I thought&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina said that if he dared to mention the word
+&ldquo;household-fairy&rdquo; she would box his ears, and go
+straight up to bed, and leave everybody to do everything.&nbsp;
+She said she meant it.</p>
+<p>Dick has one virtue: it is philosophy.&nbsp; &ldquo;Come on,
+young &rsquo;un,&rdquo; said Dick to Veronica.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Trouble is good for us all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some of us,&rdquo; said Veronica, &ldquo;it makes
+bitter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We sat down to breakfast at eight-thirty.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Our</span> architect arrived on Friday
+afternoon, or rather, his assistant.</p>
+<p>I felt from the first I was going to like him.&nbsp; He is
+shy, and that, of course, makes him appear awkward.&nbsp; But, as
+I explained to Robina, it is the shy young men who, generally
+speaking, turn out best: few men could have been more painfully
+shy up to twenty-five than myself.</p>
+<p>Robina said that was different: in the case of an author it
+did not matter.&nbsp; Robina&rsquo;s attitude towards the
+literary profession would not annoy me so much were it not
+typical.&nbsp; To be a literary man is, in Robina&rsquo;s
+opinion, to be a licensed idiot.&nbsp; It was only a week or two
+ago that I overheard from my study window a conversation between
+Veronica and Robina upon this very point.&nbsp; Veronica&rsquo;s
+eye had caught something lying on the grass.&nbsp; I could not
+myself see what it was, in consequence of an intervening laurel
+bush.&nbsp; Veronica stooped down and examined it with
+care.&nbsp; The next instant, uttering a piercing whoop, she
+leapt into the air; then, clapping her hands, began to
+dance.&nbsp; Her face was radiant with a holy joy.&nbsp; Robina,
+passing near, stopped and demanded explanation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pa&rsquo;s tennis racket!&rdquo; shouted
+Veronica&mdash;Veronica never sees the use of talking in an
+ordinary tone of voice when shouting will do just as well.&nbsp;
+She continued clapping her hands and taking little bounds into
+the air.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what are you going on like that for?&rdquo; asked
+Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;It hasn&rsquo;t bit you, has it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s been out all night in the wet,&rdquo;
+shouted Veronica.&nbsp; &ldquo;He forgot to bring it
+in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You wicked child!&rdquo; said Robina severely.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing to be pleased about.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it is,&rdquo; explained Veronica.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+thought at first it was mine.&nbsp; Oh, wouldn&rsquo;t there have
+been a talk about it, if it had been!&nbsp; Oh my! wouldn&rsquo;t
+there have been a row!&rdquo;&nbsp; She settled down to a steady
+rhythmic dance, suggestive of a Greek chorus expressing
+satisfaction with the gods.</p>
+<p>Robina seized her by the shoulders and shook her back into
+herself.&nbsp; &ldquo;If it had been yours,&rdquo; said Robina,
+&ldquo;you would deserve to have been sent to bed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, why don&rsquo;t he go to bed?&rdquo; argued
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>Robina took her by the arm and walked her up and down just
+underneath my window.&nbsp; I listened, because the conversation
+interested me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pa, as I am always explaining to you,&rdquo; said
+Robina, &ldquo;is a literary man.&nbsp; He cannot help forgetting
+things.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I can&rsquo;t help forgetting things,&rdquo;
+insisted Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You find it hard,&rdquo; explained Robina kindly;
+&ldquo;but if you keep on trying you will succeed.&nbsp; You will
+get more thoughtful.&nbsp; I used to be forgetful and do foolish
+things once, when I was a little girl.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good thing for us if we was all literary,&rdquo;
+suggested Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If we &lsquo;were&rsquo; all literary,&rdquo; Robina
+corrected her.&nbsp; &ldquo;But you see we are not.&nbsp; You and
+I and Dick, we are just ordinary mortals.&nbsp; We must try and
+think, and be sensible.&nbsp; In the same way, when Pa gets
+excited and raves&mdash;I mean, seems to rave&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+the literary temperament.&nbsp; He can&rsquo;t help
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you help doing anything when you are
+literary?&rdquo; asked Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a good deal you can&rsquo;t help,&rdquo;
+answered Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t fair to judge them
+by the ordinary standard.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They drifted towards the kitchen garden&mdash;it was the time
+of strawberries&mdash;and the remainder of the talk I lost.&nbsp;
+I noticed that for some days afterwards Veronica displayed a
+tendency to shutting herself up in the schoolroom with a
+copybook, and that lead pencils had a way of disappearing from my
+desk.&nbsp; One in particular that had suited me I determined if
+possible to recover.&nbsp; A subtle instinct guided me to
+Veronica&rsquo;s sanctum.&nbsp; I found her thoughtfully sucking
+it.&nbsp; She explained to me that she was writing a little
+play.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You get things from your father, don&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo; she enquired of me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You do,&rdquo; I admitted; &ldquo;but you ought not to
+take them without asking.&nbsp; I am always telling you of
+it.&nbsp; That pencil is the only one I can write
+with.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean the pencil,&rdquo; explained
+Veronica.&nbsp; &ldquo;I was wondering if I had got your literary
+temper.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is puzzling, when you come to think of it, this estimate
+accorded by the general public to the
+<i>litt&eacute;rateur</i>.&nbsp; It stands to reason that the man
+who writes books, explaining everything and putting everybody
+right, must be himself an exceptionally clever man; else how
+could he do it!&nbsp; The thing is pure logic.&nbsp; Yet to
+listen to Robina and her like you might think we had not sense
+enough to run ourselves, as the saying is&mdash;let alone running
+the universe.&nbsp; If I would let her, Robina would sit and give
+me information by the hour.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ordinary girl . . . &rdquo; Robina will begin, with
+the air of a University Extension Lecturer.</p>
+<p>It is so exasperating.&nbsp; As if I did not know all there is
+to be known about girls!&nbsp; Why, it is my business.&nbsp; I
+point this out to Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; Robina will answer sweetly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But I was meaning the real girl.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It would make not the slightest difference were I even quite a
+high-class literary man&mdash;Robina thinks I am: she is a dear
+child.&nbsp; Were I Shakespeare himself, and could I in
+consequence say to her: &ldquo;Methinks, child, the creator of
+Ophelia and Juliet, and Rosamund and Beatrice, must surely know
+something about girls,&rdquo; Robina would still make answer:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, Pa dear.&nbsp; Everybody knows how clever
+you are.&nbsp; But I was thinking for the moment of real
+girls.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I wonder to myself sometimes, Is literature to the general
+reader ever anything more than a fairy-tale?&nbsp; We write with
+our heart&rsquo;s blood, as we put it.&nbsp; We ask our
+conscience, Is it right thus to lay bare the secrets of our
+souls?&nbsp; The general reader does not grasp that we are
+writing with our heart&rsquo;s blood: to him it is just
+ink.&nbsp; He does not believe we are laying bare the secrets of
+our souls: he takes it we are just pretending.&nbsp; &ldquo;Once
+upon a time there lived a girl named Angelina who loved a party
+by the name of Edwin.&rdquo;&nbsp; He imagines&mdash;he, the
+general reader&mdash;when we tell him all the wonderful thoughts
+that were inside Angelina, that it was we who put them
+there.&nbsp; He does not know, he will not try to understand,
+that Angelina is in reality more real than is Miss Jones, who
+rides up every morning in the &rsquo;bus with him, and has a
+pretty knack of rendering conversation about the weather novel
+and suggestive.&nbsp; As a boy I won some popularity among my
+schoolmates as a teller of stories.&nbsp; One afternoon, to a
+small collection with whom I was homing across Regent&rsquo;s
+Park, I told the story of a beautiful Princess.&nbsp; But she was
+not the ordinary Princess.&nbsp; She would not behave as a
+Princess should.&nbsp; I could not help it.&nbsp; The others
+heard only my voice, but I was listening to the wind.&nbsp; She
+thought she loved the Prince&mdash;until he had wounded the
+Dragon unto death and had carried her away into the wood.&nbsp;
+Then, while the Prince lay sleeping, she heard the Dragon calling
+to her in its pain, and crept back to where it lay bleeding, and
+put her arms about its scaly neck and kissed it; and that healed
+it.&nbsp; I was hoping myself that at this point it would turn
+into a prince itself, but it didn&rsquo;t; it just remained a
+dragon&mdash;so the wind said.&nbsp; Yet the Princess loved it:
+it wasn&rsquo;t half a bad dragon, when you knew it.&nbsp; I
+could not tell them what became of the Prince: the wind
+didn&rsquo;t seem to care a hang about the Prince.</p>
+<p>Myself, I liked the story, but Hocker, who was a Fifth Form
+boy, voicing our little public, said it was rot, so far, and that
+I had got to hurry up and finish things rightly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But that is all,&rdquo; I told them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, it isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Hocker.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s got to marry the Prince in the end.&nbsp;
+He&rsquo;ll have to kill the Dragon again; and mind he does it
+properly this time.&nbsp; Whoever heard of a Princess leaving a
+Prince for a Dragon!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But she wasn&rsquo;t the ordinary sort of
+Princess,&rdquo; I argued.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then she&rsquo;s got to be,&rdquo; criticised
+Hocker.&nbsp; &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you give yourself so many
+airs.&nbsp; You make her marry the Prince, and be slippy about
+it.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve got to catch the four-fifteen from Chalk
+Farm station.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But she didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; I persisted
+obstinately.&nbsp; &ldquo;She married the Dragon and lived happy
+ever afterwards.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Hocker adopted sterner measures.&nbsp; He seized my arm and
+twisted it behind me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She married who?&rdquo; demanded Hocker: grammar was
+not Hocker&rsquo;s strong point.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Dragon,&rdquo; I growled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She married who?&rdquo; repeated Hocker.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Dragon,&rdquo; I whined.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She married who?&rdquo; for the third time urged
+Hocker.</p>
+<p>Hocker was strong, and the tears were forcing themselves into
+my eyes in spite of me.&nbsp; So the Princess in return for
+healing the Dragon made it promise to reform.&nbsp; It went back
+with her to the Prince, and made itself generally useful to both
+of them for the rest of the tour.&nbsp; And the Prince took the
+Princess home with him and married her; and the Dragon died and
+was buried.&nbsp; The others liked the story better, but I hated
+it; and the wind sighed and died away.</p>
+<p>The little crowd becomes the reading public, and Hocker grows
+into an editor; he twists my arm in other ways.&nbsp; Some are
+brave, so the crowd kicks them and scurries off to catch the
+four-fifteen.&nbsp; But most of us, I fear, are slaves to
+Hocker.&nbsp; Then, after awhile, the wind grows sulky and will
+not tell us stories any more, and we have to make them up out of
+our own heads.&nbsp; Perhaps it is just as well.&nbsp; What were
+doors and windows made for but to keep out the wind.</p>
+<p>He is a dangerous fellow, this wandering Wind; he leads me
+astray.&nbsp; I was talking about our architect.</p>
+<p>He made a bad start, so far as Robina was concerned, by coming
+in at the back-door.&nbsp; Robina, in a big apron, was washing
+up.&nbsp; He apologised for having blundered into the kitchen,
+and offered to go out again and work round to the front.&nbsp;
+Robina replied, with unnecessary severity as I thought, that an
+architect, if anyone, might have known the difference between the
+right side of a house and the wrong; but presumed that youth and
+inexperience could always be pleaded as excuse for
+stupidity.&nbsp; I cannot myself see why Robina should have been
+so much annoyed.&nbsp; Labour, as Robina had been explaining to
+Veronica only a few hours before, exalts a woman.&nbsp; In olden
+days, ladies&mdash;the highest in the land&mdash;were proud, not
+ashamed, of their ability to perform domestic duties.&nbsp; This,
+later on, I pointed out to Robina.&nbsp; Her answer was that in
+olden days you didn&rsquo;t have chits of boys going about,
+calling themselves architects, and opening back-doors without
+knocking; or if they did knock, knocking so that nobody on earth
+could hear them.</p>
+<p>Robina wiped her hands on the towel behind the door, and
+brought him into the front-room, where she announced him, coldly,
+as &ldquo;The young man from the architect&rsquo;s
+office.&rdquo;&nbsp; He explained&mdash;but quite
+modestly&mdash;that he was not exactly Messrs. Spreight&rsquo;s
+young man, but an architect himself, a junior member of the
+firm.&nbsp; To make it clear he produced his card, which was that
+of Mr. Archibald T. Bute, F.R.I.B.A.&nbsp; Practically speaking,
+all this was unnecessary.&nbsp; Through the open door I had, of
+course, heard every word; and old Spreight had told me of his
+intention to send me one of his most promising assistants, who
+would be able to devote himself entirely to my work.&nbsp; I put
+matters right by introducing him formally to Robina.&nbsp; They
+bowed to one another rather stiffly.&nbsp; Robina said that if he
+would excuse her she would return to her work; and he answered
+&ldquo;Charmed,&rdquo; and also that he didn&rsquo;t mean
+it.&nbsp; As I have tried to get it into Robina&rsquo;s head, the
+young fellow was confused.&nbsp; He had meant&mdash;it was
+self-evident&mdash;that he was charmed at being introduced to
+her, not at her desire to return to the kitchen.&nbsp; But Robina
+appears to have taken a dislike to him.</p>
+<p>I gave him a cigar, and we started for the house.&nbsp; It
+lies just a mile from this cottage, the other side of the
+wood.&nbsp; One excellent trait in him I soon discovered&mdash;he
+is intelligent without knowing everything.</p>
+<p>I confess it to my shame, but the young man who knows
+everything has come to pall upon me.&nbsp; According to Emerson,
+this is a proof of my own intellectual feebleness.&nbsp; The
+strong man, intellectually, cultivates the society of his
+superiors.&nbsp; He wants to get on, he wants to learn
+things.&nbsp; If I loved knowledge as one should, I would have no
+one but young men about me.&nbsp; There was a friend of
+Dick&rsquo;s, a gentleman from Rugby.&nbsp; At one time he had
+hopes of me; I felt he had.&nbsp; But he was too impatient.&nbsp;
+He tried to bring me on too quickly.&nbsp; You must take into
+consideration natural capacity.&nbsp; After listening to him for
+an hour or two my mind would wander.&nbsp; I could not help
+it.&nbsp; The careless laughter of uninformed middle-aged
+gentlemen and ladies would creep to me from the croquet lawn or
+from the billiard-room.&nbsp; I longed to be among them.&nbsp;
+Sometimes I would battle with my lower nature.&nbsp; What did
+they know?&nbsp; What could they tell me?&nbsp; More often I
+would succumb.&nbsp; There were occasions when I used to get up
+and go away from him, quite suddenly.</p>
+<p>I talked with young Bute during our walk about domestic
+architecture in general.&nbsp; He said he should describe the
+present tendency in domestic architecture as towards
+corners.&nbsp; The desire of the British public was to go into a
+corner and live.&nbsp; A lady for whose husband his firm had
+lately built a house in Surrey had propounded to him a problem in
+connection with this point.&nbsp; She agreed it was a charming
+house; no house in Surrey had more corners, and that was saying
+much.&nbsp; But she could not see how for the future she was
+going to bring up her children.&nbsp; She was a humanely minded
+lady.&nbsp; Hitherto she had punished them, when needful, by
+putting them in the corner; the shame of it had always exercised
+upon them a salutary effect.&nbsp; But in the new house corners
+are reckoned the prime parts of every room.&nbsp; It is the
+honoured guest who is sent into the corner.&nbsp; The father has
+a corner sacred to himself, with high up above his head a
+complicated cupboard, wherein with the help of a step-ladder, he
+may keep his pipes and his tobacco, and thus by slow degrees cure
+himself of the habit of smoking.&nbsp; The mother likewise has
+her corner, where stands her spinning-wheel, in case the idea
+comes to her to weave sheets and underclothing.&nbsp; It also has
+a book-shelf supporting thirteen volumes, arranged in a sloping
+position to look natural; the last one maintained at its angle of
+forty-five degrees by a ginger-jar in old blue Nankin.&nbsp; You
+are not supposed to touch them, because that would disarrange
+them.&nbsp; Besides which, fooling about, you might upset the
+ginger-jar.&nbsp; The consequence of all this is the corner is no
+longer disgraceful.&nbsp; The parent can no more say to the
+erring child:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You wicked boy!&nbsp; Go into the cosy corner this very
+minute!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the house of the future the place of punishment will have
+to be the middle of the room.&nbsp; The angry mother will
+exclaim:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you answer me, you saucy minx!&nbsp; You go
+straight into the middle of the room, and don&rsquo;t you dare to
+come out of it till I tell you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The difficulty with the artistic house is finding the right
+people to put into it.&nbsp; In the picture the artistic room
+never has anybody in it.&nbsp; There is a strip of art embroidery
+upon the table, together with a bowl of roses.&nbsp; Upon the
+ancient high-backed settee lies an item of fancy work,
+unfinished&mdash;just as she left it.&nbsp; In the
+&ldquo;study&rdquo; an open book, face downwards, has been left
+on a chair.&nbsp; It is the last book he was reading&mdash;it has
+never been disturbed.&nbsp; A pipe of quaint design is cold upon
+the lintel of the lattice window.&nbsp; No one will ever smoke
+that pipe again: it must have been difficult to smoke at any
+time.&nbsp; The sight of the artistic room, as depicted in the
+furniture catalogue, always brings tears to my eyes.&nbsp; People
+once inhabited these rooms, read there those old volumes bound in
+vellum, smoked&mdash;or tried to smoke&mdash;these impracticable
+pipes; white hands, that someone maybe had loved to kiss, once
+fluttered among the folds of these unfinished antimacassars, or
+Berlin wool-work slippers, and went away, leaving the things
+about.</p>
+<p>One takes it that the people who once occupied these artistic
+rooms are now all dead.&nbsp; This was their
+&ldquo;Dining-Room.&rdquo;&nbsp; They sat on those artistic
+chairs.&nbsp; They could hardly have used the dinner service set
+out upon the Elizabethan dresser, because that would have left
+the dresser bare: one assumes they had an extra service for use,
+or else that they took their meals in the kitchen.&nbsp; The
+&ldquo;Entrance Hall&rdquo; is a singularly chaste
+apartment.&nbsp; There is no necessity for a door-mat: people
+with muddy boots, it is to be presumed, were sent round to the
+back.&nbsp; A riding-cloak, the relic apparently of a highwayman,
+hangs behind the door.&nbsp; It is the sort of cloak you would
+expect to find there&mdash;a decorative cloak.&nbsp; An umbrella
+or a waterproof cape would be fatal to the whole effect.</p>
+<p>Now and again the illustrator of the artistic room will permit
+a young girl to come and sit there.&nbsp; But she has to be a
+very carefully selected girl.&nbsp; To begin with, she has got to
+look and dress as though she had been born at least three hundred
+years ago.&nbsp; She has got to have that sort of clothes, and
+she has got to have her hair done just that way.</p>
+<p>She has got to look sad; a cheerful girl in the artistic room
+would jar one&rsquo;s artistic sense.&nbsp; One imagines the
+artist consulting with the proud possessor of the house.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t got such a thing as a miserable
+daughter, have you?&nbsp; Some fairly good-looking girl who has
+been crossed in love, or is misunderstood.&nbsp; Because if so,
+you might dress her up in something out of the local museum and
+send her along.&nbsp; A little thing like that gives
+verisimilitude to a design.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She must not touch anything.&nbsp; All she may do is to read a
+book&mdash;not really read it, that would suggest too much life
+and movement: she sits with the book in her lap and gazes into
+the fire, if it happens to be the dining-room: or out of the
+window if it happens to be a morning-room, and the architect
+wishes to call attention to the window-seat.&nbsp; Nothing of the
+male species, as far as I have been able to ascertain, has ever
+entered these rooms.&nbsp; I once thought I had found a man who
+had been allowed into his own &ldquo;Smoking-Den,&rdquo; but on
+closer examination it turned out he was only a portrait.</p>
+<p>Sometimes one is given &ldquo;Vistas.&rdquo;&nbsp; Doors stand
+open, and you can see right away through &ldquo;The Nook&rdquo;
+into the garden.&nbsp; There is never a living soul about the
+place.&nbsp; The whole family has been sent out for a walk or
+locked up in the cellars.&nbsp; This strikes you as odd until you
+come to think the matter out.&nbsp; The modern man and woman is
+not artistic.&nbsp; I am not artistic&mdash;not what I call
+really artistic.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t go well with Gobelin
+tapestry and warming-pans.&nbsp; I feel I don&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+Robina is not artistic, not in that sense.&nbsp; I tried her once
+with a harpsichord I picked up cheap in Wardour Street, and a
+reproduction of a Roman stool.&nbsp; The thing was an utter
+failure.&nbsp; A cottage piano, with a photo-frame and a fern
+upon, it is what the soul cries out for in connection with
+Robina.&nbsp; Dick is not artistic.&nbsp; Dick does not go with
+peacocks&rsquo; feathers and guitars.&nbsp; I can see Dick with a
+single peacock&rsquo;s feather at St. Giles&rsquo;s Fair, when
+the bulldogs are not looking; but the decorative panel of
+peacock&rsquo;s feathers is too much for him.&nbsp; I can imagine
+him with a banjo&mdash;but a guitar decorated with pink
+ribbons!&nbsp; To begin with he is not dressed for it.&nbsp;
+Unless a family be prepared to make themselves up as troubadours
+or cavaliers and to talk blank verse, I don&rsquo;t see how they
+can expect to be happy living in these fifteenth-century
+houses.&nbsp; The modern family&mdash;the old man in baggy
+trousers and a frock-coat he could not button if he tried to; the
+mother of figure distinctly Victorian; the boys in flannel suits
+and collars up to their ears; the girls in motor caps&mdash;are
+as incongruous in these medi&aelig;val dwellings as a party of
+Cook&rsquo;s tourists drinking bottled beer in the streets of
+Pompeii.</p>
+<p>The designer of &ldquo;The Artistic Home&rdquo; is right in
+keeping to still life.&nbsp; In the artistic home&mdash;to
+paraphrase Dr. Watts&mdash;every prospect pleases and only man is
+inartistic.&nbsp; In the picture, the artistic bedroom, &ldquo;in
+apple green, the bedstead of cherry-wood, with a touch of
+turkey-red throughout the draperies,&rdquo; is charming.&nbsp; It
+need hardly be said the bed is empty.&nbsp; Put a man or woman in
+that cherry-wood bed&mdash;I don&rsquo;t care how artistic they
+may think themselves&mdash;the charm would be gone.&nbsp; The
+really artistic party, one supposes, has a little room behind,
+where he sleeps and dresses himself.&nbsp; He peeps in at the
+door of this artistic bedroom, maybe occasionally enters to
+change the roses.</p>
+<p>Imagine the artistic nursery five minutes after the real child
+had been let loose in it.&nbsp; I know a lady who once spent
+hundreds of pounds on an artistic nursery.&nbsp; She showed it to
+her friends with pride.&nbsp; The children were allowed in there
+on Sunday afternoons.&nbsp; I did an equally silly thing myself
+not long ago.&nbsp; Lured by a furniture catalogue, I started
+Robina in a boudoir.&nbsp; I gave it to her as a
+birthday-present.&nbsp; We have both regretted it ever
+since.&nbsp; Robina reckons she could have had a bicycle, a
+diamond bracelet, and a mandoline, and I should have saved
+money.&nbsp; I did the thing well.&nbsp; I told the furniture
+people I wanted it just as it stood in the picture: &ldquo;Design
+for bedroom and boudoir combined, suitable for young girl, in
+teak, with sparrow blue hangings.&rdquo;&nbsp; We had everything:
+the antique fire arrangements that a vestal virgin might possibly
+have understood; the candlesticks, that were pictures in
+themselves, until we tried to put candles in them; the book-case
+and writing-desk combined, that wasn&rsquo;t big enough to write
+on, and out of which it was impossible to get a book until you
+had abandoned the idea of writing and had closed the cover; the
+enclosed washstand, that shut down and looked like an old bureau,
+with the inevitable bowl of flowers upon it that had to be taken
+off and put on the floor whenever you wanted to use the thing as
+a washstand; the toilet-table, with its cunning little glass,
+just big enough to see your nose in; the bedstead, hidden away
+behind the &ldquo;thinking corner,&rdquo; where the girl
+couldn&rsquo;t get at it to make it.&nbsp; A prettier room you
+could not have imagined, till Robina started sleeping in
+it.&nbsp; I think she tried.&nbsp; Girl friends of hers, to whom
+she had bragged about it, would drop in and ask to be allowed to
+see it.&nbsp; Robina would say, &ldquo;Wait a minute,&rdquo; and
+would run up and slam the door; and we would hear her for the
+next half-hour or so rushing round opening and shutting drawers
+and dragging things about.&nbsp; By the time it was a boudoir
+again she was exhausted and irritable.&nbsp; She wants now to
+give it up to Veronica, but Veronica objects to the position,
+which is between the bathroom and my study.&nbsp; Her idea is a
+room more removed, where she would be able to shut herself in and
+do her work, as she explains, without fear of interruption.</p>
+<p>Young Bute told me that a friend of his, a well-to-do young
+fellow, who lived in Piccadilly, had had the whim to make his
+flat the reproduction of a Roman villa.&nbsp; There were of
+course no fires, the rooms were warmed by hot air from the
+kitchen.&nbsp; They had a cheerless aspect on a November
+afternoon, and nobody knew exactly where to sit.&nbsp; Light was
+obtained in the evening from Grecian lamps, which made it easy to
+understand why the ancient Athenians, as a rule, went to bed
+early.&nbsp; You dined sprawling on a couch.&nbsp; This was no
+doubt practicable when you took your plate into your hand and fed
+yourself with your fingers; but with a knife and fork the meal
+had all the advantages of a hot picnic.&nbsp; You did not feel
+luxurious or even wicked: you only felt nervous about your
+clothes.&nbsp; The thing lacked completeness.&nbsp; He could not
+expect his friends to come to him in Roman togas, and even his
+own man declined firmly to wear the costume of a Roman
+slave.&nbsp; The compromise was unsatisfactory, even from the
+purely pictorial point of view.&nbsp; You cannot be a Roman
+patrician of the time of Antoninus when you happen to live in
+Piccadilly at the opening of the twentieth century.&nbsp; All you
+can do is to make your friends uncomfortable and spoil their
+dinner for them.&nbsp; Young Bute said that, so far as he was
+concerned, he would always rather have spent the evening with his
+little nephews and nieces, playing at horses; it seemed to him a
+more sensible game.</p>
+<p>Young Bute said that, speaking as an architect, he of course
+admired the ancient masterpieces of his art.&nbsp; He admired the
+Erechtheum at Athens; but Spurgeon&rsquo;s Tabernacle in the Old
+Kent Road built upon the same model would have irritated
+him.&nbsp; For a Grecian temple you wanted Grecian skies and
+Grecian girls.&nbsp; He said that, even as it was, Westminster
+Abbey in the season was an eyesore to him.&nbsp; The Dean and
+Choir in their white surplices passed muster, but the
+congregation in its black frock-coats and Paris hats gave him the
+same sense of incongruity as would a banquet of barefooted friars
+in the dining-hall of the Cannon Street Hotel.</p>
+<p>It struck me there was sense in what he said.&nbsp; I decided
+not to mention my idea of carving 1553 above the front-door.</p>
+<p>He said he could not understand this passion of the modern
+house-builder for playing at being a Crusader or a Canterbury
+Pilgrim.&nbsp; A retired Berlin boot-maker of his acquaintance
+had built himself a miniature Roman Castle near Heidelberg.&nbsp;
+They played billiards in the dungeon, and let off fireworks on
+the Kaiser&rsquo;s birthday from the roof of the watch-tower.</p>
+<p>Another acquaintance of his, a draper at Holloway, had built
+himself a moated grange.&nbsp; The moat was supplied from the
+water-works under special arrangement, and all the electric
+lights were imitation candles.&nbsp; He had done the thing
+thoroughly.&nbsp; He had even designed a haunted chamber in blue,
+and a miniature chapel, which he used as a telephone
+closet.&nbsp; Young Bute had been invited down there for the
+shooting in the autumn.&nbsp; He said he could not be sure
+whether he was doing right or wrong, but his intention was to
+provide himself with a bow and arrows.</p>
+<p>A change was coming over this young man.&nbsp; We had talked
+on other subjects and he had been shy and deferential.&nbsp; On
+this matter of bricks and mortar he spoke as one explaining
+things.</p>
+<p>I ventured to say a few words in favour of the Tudor
+house.&nbsp; The Tudor house, he argued, was a fit and proper
+residence for the Tudor citizen&mdash;for the man whose wife rode
+behind him on a pack-saddle, who conducted his correspondence by
+the help of a moss-trooper.&nbsp; The Tudor fireplace was
+designed for folks to whom coal was unknown, and who left their
+smoking to their chimneys.&nbsp; A house that looked ridiculous
+with a motor-car before the door, where the electric bell jarred
+upon one&rsquo;s sense of fitness every time one heard it, was
+out of date, he maintained.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For you, sir,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;a
+twentieth-century writer, to build yourself a Tudor House would
+be as absurd as for Ben Jonson to have planned himself a Norman
+Castle with a torture-chamber underneath the wine-cellar, and the
+fireplace in the middle of the dining-hall.&nbsp; His fellow
+cronies of the Mermaid would have thought him stark, staring
+mad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was reason in what he was saying.&nbsp; I decided not to
+mention my idea of altering the chimneys and fixing up imitation
+gables, especially as young Bute seemed pleased with the house,
+which by this time we had reached.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, that is a good house,&rdquo; said young
+Bute.&nbsp; &ldquo;That is a house where a man in a frock-coat
+and trousers can sit down and not feel himself a stranger from
+another age.&nbsp; It was built for a man who wore a frock-coat
+and trousers&mdash;on weekdays, maybe, gaiters and a
+shooting-coat.&nbsp; You can enjoy a game of billiards in that
+house without the feeling that comes to you when playing tennis
+in the shadow of the Pyramids.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We entered, and I put before him my notions&mdash;such of them
+as I felt he would approve.&nbsp; We were some time about the
+business, and when we looked at our watches young Bute&rsquo;s
+last train to town had gone.&nbsp; There still remained much to
+talk about, and I suggested he should return with me to the
+cottage and take his luck.&nbsp; I could sleep with Dick and he
+could have my room.&nbsp; I told him about the cow, but he said
+he was a practised sleeper and would be delighted, if I could
+lend him a night-shirt, and if I thought Miss Robina would not be
+put out.&nbsp; I assured him that it would be a good thing for
+Robina; the unexpected guest would be a useful lesson to her in
+housekeeping.&nbsp; Besides, as I pointed out to him, it
+didn&rsquo;t really matter even if Robina were put out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not to you, sir, perhaps,&rdquo; he answered, with a
+smile.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is not with you that she will be
+indignant.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That will be all right, my boy,&rdquo; I told him;
+&ldquo;I take all responsibility.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I shall get all the blame,&rdquo; he laughed.</p>
+<p>But, as I pointed out to him, it really didn&rsquo;t matter
+whom Robina blamed.&nbsp; We talked about women generally on our
+way back.&nbsp; I told him&mdash;impressing upon him there was no
+need for it to go farther&mdash;that I personally had come to the
+conclusion that the best way to deal with women was to treat them
+all as children.&nbsp; He agreed it might be a good method, but
+wanted to know what you did when they treated you as a child.</p>
+<p>I know a most delightful couple: they have been married nearly
+twenty years, and both will assure you that an angry word has
+never passed between them.&nbsp; He calls her his &ldquo;Little
+One,&rdquo; although she must be quite six inches taller than
+himself, and is never tired of patting her hand or pinching her
+ear.&nbsp; They asked her once in the drawing-room&mdash;so the
+Little Mother tells me&mdash;her recipe for domestic bliss.&nbsp;
+She said the mistake most women made was taking men too
+seriously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They are just overgrown children, that&rsquo;s all they
+are, poor dears,&rdquo; she laughed.</p>
+<p>There are two kinds of love: there is the love that kneels and
+looks upward, and the love that looks down and pats.&nbsp; For
+durability I am prepared to back the latter.</p>
+<p>The architect had died out of young Bute; he was again a shy
+young man during our walk back to the cottage.&nbsp; My hand was
+on the latch when he stayed me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t this the back-door again, sir?&rdquo; he
+enquired.</p>
+<p>It was the back-door; I had not noticed it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t we better go round to the front, sir,
+don&rsquo;t you think?&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter&mdash;&rdquo; I began.</p>
+<p>But he had disappeared.&nbsp; So I followed him, and we
+entered by the front.&nbsp; Robina was standing by the table,
+peeling potatoes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have brought Mr. Bute back with me,&rdquo; I
+explained.&nbsp; &ldquo;He is going to stop the night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina said: &ldquo;If ever I go to live in a cottage again it
+will have one door.&rdquo;&nbsp; She took her potatoes with her
+and went upstairs.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do hope she isn&rsquo;t put out,&rdquo; said young
+Bute.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry yourself,&rdquo; I comforted
+him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Of course she isn&rsquo;t put out.&nbsp;
+Besides, I don&rsquo;t care if she is.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s got to
+get used to being put out; it&rsquo;s part of the lesson of
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I took him upstairs, meaning to show him his bedroom and take
+my own things out of it.&nbsp; The doors of the two bedrooms were
+opposite one another.&nbsp; I made a mistake and opened the wrong
+door.&nbsp; Robina, still peeling potatoes, was sitting on the
+bed.</p>
+<p>I explained we had made a mistake.&nbsp; Robina said it was of
+no consequence whatever, and, taking the potatoes with her, went
+downstairs again.&nbsp; Looking out of the window, I saw her
+making towards the wood.&nbsp; She was taking the potatoes with
+her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do wish we hadn&rsquo;t opened the door of the wrong
+room,&rdquo; groaned young Bute.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What a worrying chap you are!&rdquo; I said to
+him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Look at the thing from the humorous point of
+view.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s funny when you come to think of it.&nbsp;
+Wherever the poor girl goes, trying to peel her potatoes in peace
+and quietness, we burst in upon her.&nbsp; What we ought to do
+now is to take a walk in the wood.&nbsp; It is a pretty
+wood.&nbsp; We might say we had come to pick wild
+flowers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But I could not persuade him.&nbsp; He said he had letters to
+write, and, if I would allow him, would remain in his room till
+dinner was ready.</p>
+<p>Dick and Veronica came in a little later.&nbsp; Dick had been
+to see Mr. St. Leonard to arrange about lessons in farming.&nbsp;
+He said he thought I should like the old man, who wasn&rsquo;t a
+bit like a farmer.&nbsp; He had brought Veronica back in one of
+her good moods, she having met there and fallen in love with a
+donkey.&nbsp; Dick confided to me that, without committing
+himself, he had hinted to Veronica that if she would remain good
+for quite a long while I might be induced to buy it for
+her.&nbsp; It was a sturdy little animal, and could be made
+useful.&nbsp; Anyhow, it would give Veronica an object in
+life&mdash;something to strive for&mdash;which was just what she
+wanted.&nbsp; He is a thoughtful lad at times, is Dick.</p>
+<p>The dinner was more successful than I had hoped for.&nbsp;
+Robina gave us melon as a <i>hors d&rsquo;&oelig;uvre</i>,
+followed by sardines and a fowl, with potatoes and vegetable
+marrow.&nbsp; Her cooking surprised me.&nbsp; I had warned young
+Bute that it might be necessary to regard this dinner rather as a
+joke than as an evening meal, and was prepared myself to extract
+amusement from it rather than nourishment.&nbsp; My
+disappointment was agreeable.&nbsp; One can always imagine a
+comic dinner.</p>
+<p>I dined once with a newly married couple who had just returned
+from their honeymoon.&nbsp; We ought to have sat down at eight
+o&rsquo;clock; we sat down instead at half-past ten.&nbsp; The
+cook had started drinking in the morning; by seven o&rsquo;clock
+she was speechless.&nbsp; The wife, giving up hope at a quarter
+to eight, had cooked the dinner herself.&nbsp; The other guests
+were sympathised with, but all I got was congratulation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll write something so funny about this
+dinner,&rdquo; they said.</p>
+<p>You might have thought the cook had got drunk on purpose to
+oblige me.&nbsp; I have never been able to write anything funny
+about that dinner; it depresses me to this day, merely thinking
+of it.</p>
+<p>We finished up with a cold trifle and some excellent coffee
+that Robina brewed over a lamp on the table while Dick and
+Veronica cleared away.&nbsp; It was one of the jolliest little
+dinners I have ever eaten; and, if Robina&rsquo;s figures are to
+be trusted, cost exactly six-and-fourpence for the five of
+us.&nbsp; There being no servants about, we talked freely and
+enjoyed ourselves.&nbsp; I began once at a dinner to tell a good
+story about a Scotchman, when my host silenced me with a
+look.&nbsp; He is a kindly man, and had heard the story
+before.&nbsp; He explained to me afterwards, over the walnuts,
+that his parlourmaid was Scotch and rather touchy.&nbsp; The talk
+fell into the discussion of Home Rule, and again our host
+silenced us.&nbsp; It seemed his butler was an Irishman and a
+violent Parnellite.&nbsp; Some people can talk as though servants
+were mere machines, but to me they are human beings, and their
+presence hampers me.&nbsp; I know my guests have not heard the
+story before, and from one&rsquo;s own flesh and blood one
+expects a certain amount of sacrifice.&nbsp; But I feel so sorry
+for the housemaid who is waiting; she must have heard it a dozen
+times.&nbsp; I really cannot inflict it upon her again.</p>
+<p>After dinner we pushed the table into a corner, and Dick
+extracted a sort of waltz from Robina&rsquo;s mandoline.&nbsp; It
+is years since I danced; but Veronica said she would rather dance
+with me any day than with some of the &ldquo;lumps&rdquo; you
+were given to drag round by the dancing-mistress.&nbsp; I have
+half a mind to take it up again.&nbsp; After all, a man is only
+as old as he feels.</p>
+<p>Young Bute, it turned out, was a capital dancer, and could
+even reverse, which in a room fourteen feet square is of
+advantage.&nbsp; Robina confided to me after he was gone that
+while he was dancing she could just tolerate him.&nbsp; I cannot
+myself see rhyme or reason in Robina&rsquo;s objection to
+him.&nbsp; He is not handsome, but he is good-looking, as boys
+go, and has a pleasant smile.&nbsp; Robina says it is his smile
+that maddens her.&nbsp; Dick agrees with me that there is sense
+in him; and Veronica, not given to loose praise, considers his
+performance of a Red Indian, both dead and alive, the finest
+piece of acting she has ever encountered.&nbsp; We wound up the
+evening with a little singing.&nbsp; The extent of Dick&rsquo;s
+repertoire surprised me; evidently he has not been so idle at
+Cambridge as it seemed.&nbsp; Young Bute has a baritone voice of
+some richness.&nbsp; We remembered at quarter-past eleven that
+Veronica ought to have gone to bed at eight.&nbsp; We were all of
+us surprised at the lateness of the hour.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t we always live in a cottage and do just
+as we like?&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s much jollier,&rdquo;
+Veronica put it to me as I kissed her good night.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because we are idiots, most of us, Veronica,&rdquo; I
+answered.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">started</span> the next morning to call
+upon St. Leonard.&nbsp; Near to the house I encountered young
+Hopkins on a horse.&nbsp; He was waving a pitchfork over his head
+and reciting &ldquo;The Charge of the Light Brigade.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The horse looked amused.&nbsp; He told me I should find
+&ldquo;the gov&rsquo;nor&rdquo; up by the stables.&nbsp; St.
+Leonard is not an &ldquo;old man.&rdquo;&nbsp; Dick must have
+seen him in a bad light.&nbsp; I should describe him as about the
+prime of life, a little older than myself, but nothing to speak
+of.&nbsp; Dick was right, however, in saying he was not like a
+farmer.&nbsp; To begin with, &ldquo;Hubert St. Leonard&rdquo;
+does not sound like a farmer.&nbsp; One can imagine a man with a
+name like that writing a book about farming, having theories on
+this subject.&nbsp; But in the ordinary course of nature things
+would not grow for him.&nbsp; He does not look like a
+farmer.&nbsp; One cannot say precisely what it is, but there is
+that about a farmer that tells you he is a farmer.&nbsp; The
+farmer has a way of leaning over a gate.&nbsp; There are not many
+ways of leaning over a gate.&nbsp; I have tried all I could think
+of, but it was never quite the right way.&nbsp; It has to be in
+the blood.&nbsp; A farmer has a way of standing on one leg and
+looking at a thing that isn&rsquo;t there.&nbsp; It sounds
+simple, but there is knack in it.&nbsp; The farmer is not
+surprised it is not there.&nbsp; He never expected it to be
+there.&nbsp; It is one of those things that ought to be, and is
+not.&nbsp; The farmer&rsquo;s life is full of such.&nbsp;
+Suffering reduced to a science is what the farmer stands
+for.&nbsp; All his life he is the good man struggling against
+adversity.&nbsp; Nothing his way comes right.&nbsp; This does not
+seem to be his planet.&nbsp; Providence means well, but she does
+not understand farming.&nbsp; She is doing her best, he supposes;
+that she is a born muddler is not her fault.&nbsp; If Providence
+could only step down for a month or two and take a few lessons in
+practical farming, things might be better; but this being out of
+the question there is nothing more to be said.&nbsp; From
+conversation with farmers one conjures up a picture of Providence
+as a well-intentioned amateur, put into a position for which she
+is utterly unsuited.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rain,&rdquo; says Providence, &ldquo;they are wanting
+rain.&nbsp; What did I do with that rain?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She finds the rain and starts it, and is pleased with herself
+until some Wandering Spirit pauses on his way and asks her
+sarcastically what she thinks she&rsquo;s doing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Raining,&rdquo; explains Providence.&nbsp; &ldquo;They
+wanted rain&mdash;farmers, you know, that sort of
+people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t want anything for long,&rdquo; retorts
+the Spirit.&nbsp; &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll be drowned in their beds
+before you&rsquo;ve done with them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that!&rdquo; says Providence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, have a look for yourself if you won&rsquo;t
+believe me,&rdquo; says the Spirit.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve
+spoilt that harvest again, you&rsquo;ve ruined all the fruit, and
+you are rotting even the turnips.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t you ever
+learn by experience?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is so difficult,&rdquo; says Providence, &ldquo;to
+regulate these things just right.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So it seems&mdash;for you,&rdquo; retorts the
+Spirit.&nbsp; &ldquo;Anyhow, I should not rain any more, if I
+were you.&nbsp; If you must, at least give them time to build
+another ark.&rdquo;&nbsp; And the Wandering Spirit continues on
+his way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The place does look a bit wet, now I come to notice
+it,&rdquo; says Providence, peeping down over the edge of her
+star.&nbsp; &ldquo;Better turn on the fine weather, I
+suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She starts with she calls &ldquo;set fair,&rdquo; and feeling
+now that she is something like a Providence, composes herself for
+a doze.&nbsp; She is startled out of her sleep by the return of
+the Wandering Spirit.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Been down there again?&rdquo; she asks him
+pleasantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just come back,&rdquo; explains the Wandering
+Spirit.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pretty spot, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; says
+Providence.&nbsp; &ldquo;Things nice and dry down there now,
+aren&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve hit it,&rdquo; he answers.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Dry is the word.&nbsp; The rivers are dried up, the wells
+are dried up, the cattle are dying, the grass is all
+withered.&nbsp; As for the harvest, there won&rsquo;t be any
+harvest for the next two years!&nbsp; Oh, yes, things are dry
+enough.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>One imagines Providence bursting into tears.&nbsp; &ldquo;But
+you suggested yourself a little fine weather.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know I did,&rdquo; answers the Spirit.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+didn&rsquo;t suggest a six months&rsquo; drought with the
+thermometer at a hundred and twenty in the shade.&nbsp;
+Doesn&rsquo;t seem to me that you&rsquo;ve got any sense at
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do wish this job had been given to someone
+else,&rdquo; says Providence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, and you are not the only one to wish it,&rdquo;
+retorts the Spirit unfeelingly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do my best,&rdquo; urges Providence, wiping her eyes
+with her wings.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am not fitted for it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A truer word you never uttered,&rdquo; retorts the
+Spirit.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I try&mdash;nobody could try harder,&rdquo; wails
+Providence.&nbsp; &ldquo;Everything I do seems to be
+wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What you want,&rdquo; says the Spirit, &ldquo;is less
+enthusiasm and a little commonsense in place of it.&nbsp; You get
+excited, and then you lose your head.&nbsp; When you do send
+rain, ten to one you send it when it isn&rsquo;t wanted.&nbsp;
+You keep back your sunshine&mdash;just as a duffer at whist keeps
+back his trumps&mdash;until it is no good, and then you deal it
+out all at once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll try again,&rdquo; said Providence.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll try quite hard this time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been trying again,&rdquo; retorts the
+Spirit unsympathetically, &ldquo;ever since I have known
+you.&nbsp; It is not that you do not try.&nbsp; It is that you
+have not got the hang of things.&nbsp; Why don&rsquo;t you get
+yourself an almanack?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Wandering Spirit takes his leave.&nbsp; Providence tells
+herself she really must get that almanack.&nbsp; She ties a knot
+in her handkerchief.&nbsp; It is not her fault: she was made like
+it.&nbsp; She forgets altogether for what reason she tied that
+knot.&nbsp; Thinks it was to remind her to send frosts in May, or
+Scotch mists in August.&nbsp; She is not sure which, so sends
+both.&nbsp; The farmer has ceased even to be angry with
+her&mdash;recognises that affliction and sorrow are good for his
+immortal soul, and pursues his way in calmness to the Bankruptcy
+Court.</p>
+<p>Hubert St. Leonard, of Windrush Bottom Farm, I found to be a
+worried-looking gentleman.&nbsp; He taps his weather-glass, and
+hopes and fears, not knowing as yet that all things have been
+ordered for his ill.&nbsp; It will be years before his spirit is
+attuned to that attitude of tranquil despair essential to the
+farmer: one feels it.&nbsp; He is tall and thin, with a
+sensitive, mobile face, and a curious trick of taking his head
+every now and again between his hands, as if to be sure it is
+still there.&nbsp; When I met him he was on the point of starting
+for his round, so I walked with him.&nbsp; He told me that he had
+not always been a farmer.&nbsp; Till a few years ago he had been
+a stockbroker.&nbsp; But he had always hated his office; and
+having saved a little, had determined when he came to forty to
+enjoy the rare luxury of living his own life.&nbsp; I asked him
+if he found that farming paid.&nbsp; He said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As in everything else, it depends upon the price you
+put upon yourself.&nbsp; Now, as a casual observer, what wage per
+annum would you say I was worth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was an awkward question.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are afraid that if you spoke candidly you would
+offend me,&rdquo; he suggested.&nbsp; &ldquo;Very well.&nbsp; For
+the purpose of explaining my theory let us take, instead, your
+own case.&nbsp; I have read all your books, and I like
+them.&nbsp; Speaking as an admirer, I should estimate you at five
+hundred a year.&nbsp; You, perhaps, make two thousand, and
+consider yourself worth five.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The whimsical smile with which he accompanied the speech
+disarmed me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What we most of us do,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;is
+to over-capitalise ourselves.&nbsp; John Smith, honestly worth a
+hundred a year, claims to be worth two.&nbsp; Result: difficulty
+of earning dividend, over-work, over-worry, constant fear of
+being wound up.&nbsp; Now, there is that about your work that
+suggests to me you would be happier earning five hundred a year
+than you ever will be earning two thousand.&nbsp; To pay your
+dividend&mdash;to earn your two thousand&mdash;you have to do
+work that brings you no pleasure in the doing.&nbsp; Content with
+five hundred, you could afford to do only that work that does
+give you pleasure.&nbsp; This is not a perfect world, we must
+remember.&nbsp; In the perfect world the thinker would be worth
+more than the mere jester.&nbsp; In the perfect world the farmer
+would be worth more than the stockbroker.&nbsp; In making the
+exchange I had to write myself down.&nbsp; I earn less money, but
+get more enjoyment out of life.&nbsp; I used to be able to afford
+champagne, but my liver was always wrong, and I dared not drink
+it.&nbsp; Now I cannot afford champagne, but I enjoy my
+beer.&nbsp; That is my theory, that we are all of us entitled to
+payment according to our market value, neither more nor
+less.&nbsp; You can take it all in cash.&nbsp; I used to.&nbsp;
+Or you can take less cash and more fun: that is what I am getting
+now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is delightful,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;to meet with a
+philosopher.&nbsp; One hears about them, of course; but I had got
+it into my mind they were all dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;People laugh at philosophy,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I never could understand why.&nbsp; It is the science of
+living a free, peaceful, happy existence.&nbsp; I would give half
+my remaining years to be a philosopher.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am not laughing at philosophy,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I honestly thought you were a philosopher.&nbsp; I judged
+so from the way you talked.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Talked!&rdquo; he retorted.&nbsp; &ldquo;Anybody can
+talk.&nbsp; As you have just said, I talk like a
+philosopher.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you not only talk,&rdquo; I insisted, &ldquo;you
+behave like a philosopher.&nbsp; Sacrificing your income to the
+joy of living your own life!&nbsp; It is the act of a
+philosopher.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I wanted to keep him in good humour.&nbsp; I had three things
+to talk to him about: the cow, the donkey, and Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, it wasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+philosopher would have remained a stockbroker and been just as
+happy.&nbsp; Philosophy does not depend upon environment.&nbsp;
+You put the philosopher down anywhere.&nbsp; It is all the same
+to him, he takes his philosophy with him.&nbsp; You can suddenly
+tell him he is an emperor, or give him penal servitude for
+life.&nbsp; He goes on being a philosopher just as if nothing had
+happened.&nbsp; We have an old tom-cat.&nbsp; The children lead
+it an awful life.&nbsp; It does not seem to matter to the
+cat.&nbsp; They shut it up in the piano: their idea is that it
+will make a noise and frighten someone.&nbsp; It doesn&rsquo;t
+make a noise; it goes to sleep.&nbsp; When an hour later someone
+opens the piano, the poor thing is lying there stretched out upon
+the keyboard purring to itself.&nbsp; They dress it up in the
+baby&rsquo;s clothes and take it out in the perambulator: it lies
+there perfectly contented looking round at the
+scenery&mdash;takes in the fresh air.&nbsp; They haul it about by
+its tail.&nbsp; You would think, to watch it swinging gently to
+and fro head downwards, that it was grateful to them for giving
+it a new sensation.&nbsp; Apparently it looks on everything that
+comes its way as helpful experience.&nbsp; It lost a leg last
+winter in a trap: it goes about quite cheerfully on three.&nbsp;
+Seems to be rather pleased, if anything, at having lost the
+fourth&mdash;saves washing.&nbsp; Now, he is your true
+philosopher, that cat; never minds what happens to him, and is
+equally contented if it doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I found myself becoming fretful.&nbsp; I know a man with whom
+it is impossible to disagree.&nbsp; Men at the
+Club&mdash;new-comers&mdash;have been lured into taking bets that
+they could on any topic under the sun find themselves out of
+sympathy with him.&nbsp; They have denounced Mr. Lloyd George as
+a traitor to his country.&nbsp; This man has risen and shaken
+them by the hand, words being too weak to express his admiration
+of their outspoken fearlessness.&nbsp; You might have thought
+them Nihilists denouncing the Russian Government from the steps
+of the Kremlin at Moscow.&nbsp; They have, in the next breath,
+abused Mr. Balfour in terms transgressing the law of
+slander.&nbsp; He has almost fallen on their necks.&nbsp; It has
+transpired that the one dream of his life was to hear Mr. Balfour
+abused.&nbsp; I have talked to him myself for a quarter of an
+hour, and gathered that at heart he was a peace-at-any-price man,
+strongly in favour of Conscription, a vehement Republican, with a
+deep-rooted contempt for the working classes.&nbsp; It is not bad
+sport to collect half a dozen and talk round him.&nbsp; At such
+times he suggests the family dog that six people from different
+parts of the house are calling to at the same time.&nbsp; He
+wants to go to them all at once.</p>
+<p>I felt I had got to understand this man, or he would worry
+me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We are going to be neighbours,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;and I am inclined to think I shall like you.&nbsp; That
+is, if I can get to know you.&nbsp; You commence by enthusing on
+philosophy: I hasten to agree with you.&nbsp; It is a noble
+science.&nbsp; When my youngest daughter has grown up, when the
+other one has learnt a little sense, when Dick is off my hands,
+and the British public has come to appreciate good literature, I
+am hoping to be a bit of a philosopher myself.&nbsp; But before I
+can explain to you my views you have already changed your own,
+and are likening the philosopher to an old tom-cat that seems to
+be weak in his head.&nbsp; Soberly now, what are you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A fool,&rdquo; he answered promptly; &ldquo;a most
+unfortunate fool.&nbsp; I have the mind of a philosopher coupled
+to an intensely irritable temperament.&nbsp; My philosophy
+teaches me to be ashamed of my irritability, and my irritability
+makes my philosophy appear to be arrant nonsense to myself.&nbsp;
+The philosopher in me tells me it does not matter when the twins
+fall down the wishing-well.&nbsp; It is not a deep well.&nbsp; It
+is not the first time they have fallen into it: it will not be
+the last.&nbsp; Such things pass: the philosopher only
+smiles.&nbsp; The man in me calls the philosopher a blithering
+idiot for saying it does not matter when it does matter.&nbsp;
+Men have to be called away from their work to haul them
+out.&nbsp; We all of us get wet.&nbsp; I get wet and excited, and
+that always starts my liver.&nbsp; The children&rsquo;s clothes
+are utterly spoilt.&nbsp; Confound them,&rdquo;&mdash;the blood
+was mounting to his head&mdash;&ldquo;they never care to go near
+the well except they are dressed in their best clothes.&nbsp; On
+other days they will stop indoors and read Foxe&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Book of Martyrs.&rsquo;&nbsp; There is something uncanny
+about twins.&nbsp; What is it?&nbsp; Why should twins be worse
+than other children?&nbsp; The ordinary child is not an angel,
+Heaven knows.&nbsp; Take these boots of mine.&nbsp; Look at them;
+I have had them for over two years.&nbsp; I tramp ten miles a day
+in them; they have been soaked through a hundred times.&nbsp; You
+buy a boy a pair of boots&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you cover over the well?&rdquo; I
+suggested.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There you are again,&rdquo; he replied.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The philosopher in me&mdash;the sensible man&mdash;says,
+&lsquo;What is the good of the well?&nbsp; It is nothing but mud
+and rubbish.&nbsp; Something is always falling into it&mdash;if
+it isn&rsquo;t the children it&rsquo;s the pigs.&nbsp; Why not do
+away with it?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seems to be sound advice,&rdquo; I commented.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is,&rdquo; he agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;No man alive has
+more sound commonsense than I have, if only I were capable of
+listening to myself.&nbsp; Do you know why I don&rsquo;t brick in
+that well?&nbsp; Because my wife told me I would have to.&nbsp;
+It was the first thing she said when she saw it.&nbsp; She says
+it again every time anything does fall into it.&nbsp; &lsquo;If
+only you would take my advice&rsquo;&mdash;you know the sort of
+thing.&nbsp; Nobody irritates me more than the person who says,
+&lsquo;I told you so.&rsquo;&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a picturesque old
+ruin: it used to be haunted.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s all been knocked
+on the head since we came.&nbsp; What self-respecting nymph can
+haunt a well into which children and pigs are for ever
+flopping?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He laughed; but before I could join him he was angry
+again.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why should I block up an historic well, that
+is an ornament to the garden, because a pack of fools can&rsquo;t
+keep a gate shut?&nbsp; As for the children, what they want is a
+thorough good whipping, and one of these days&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A voice crying to us to stop interrupted him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Am on my round.&nbsp; Can&rsquo;t come,&rdquo; he
+shouted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you must,&rdquo; explained the voice.</p>
+<p>He turned so quickly that he almost knocked me over.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Bother and confound them all!&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t they keep to the time-table?&nbsp;
+There&rsquo;s no system in this place.&nbsp; That is what ruins
+farming&mdash;want of system.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He went on grumbling as he walked.&nbsp; I followed him.&nbsp;
+Halfway across the field we met the owner of the voice.&nbsp; She
+was a pleasant-looking lass, not exactly pretty&mdash;not the
+sort of girl one turns to look at in a crowd&mdash;yet, having
+seen her, it was agreeable to continue looking at her.&nbsp; St.
+Leonard introduced me to her as his eldest daughter, Janie, and
+explained to her that behind the study door, if only she would
+take the trouble to look, she would find a time-table&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;According to which,&rdquo; replied Miss Janie, with a
+smile, &ldquo;you ought at the present moment to be in the
+rick-yard, which is just where I want you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What time is it?&rdquo; he asked, feeling his waistcoat
+for a watch that appeared not to be there.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Quarter to eleven,&rdquo; I told him.</p>
+<p>He took his head between his hands.&nbsp; &ldquo;Good
+God!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t say that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The new binder, Miss Janie told us, had just arrived.&nbsp;
+She was anxious her father should see it was in working order
+before the men went back.&nbsp; &ldquo;Otherwise,&rdquo; so she
+argued, &ldquo;old Wilkins will persist it was all right when he
+delivered it, and we shall have no remedy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We turned towards the house.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Speaking of the practical,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there
+were three things I came to talk to you about.&nbsp; First and
+foremost, that cow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, yes, the cow,&rdquo; said St. Leonard.&nbsp; He
+turned to his daughter.&nbsp; &ldquo;It was Maud, was it
+not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;it was
+Susie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is the one,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that bellows most
+all night and three parts of the day.&nbsp; Your boy Hopkins
+thinks maybe she&rsquo;s fretting.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poor soul!&rdquo; said St. Leonard.&nbsp; &ldquo;We
+only took her calf away from her&mdash;when did we take her calf
+away from her?&rdquo; he asked of Janie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On Thursday morning,&rdquo; returned Janie; &ldquo;the
+day we sent her over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They feel it so at first,&rdquo; said St. Leonard
+sympathetically.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It sounds a brutal sentiment,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;but
+I was wondering if by any chance you happened to have by you one
+that didn&rsquo;t feel it quite so much.&nbsp; I suppose among
+cows there is no class that corresponds to what we term our
+&lsquo;Smart Set&rsquo;&mdash;cows that don&rsquo;t really care
+for their calves, that are glad to get away from them?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Miss Janie smiled.&nbsp; When she smiled, you felt you would
+do much to see her smile again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why not keep it up at your house, in the
+paddock,&rdquo; she suggested, &ldquo;and have the milk brought
+down?&nbsp; There is an excellent cowshed, and it is only a mile
+away.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It struck me there was sense in this idea.&nbsp; I had not
+thought of that.&nbsp; I asked St. Leonard what I owed him for
+the cow.&nbsp; He asked Miss Janie, and she said sixteen
+pounds.&nbsp; I had been warned that in doing business with
+farmers it would be necessary always to bargain; but there was
+that about Miss Janie&rsquo;s tone telling me that when she said
+sixteen pounds she meant sixteen pounds.&nbsp; I began to see a
+brighter side to Hubert St. Leonard&rsquo;s career as a
+farmer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;we will regard the cow
+as settled.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I made a note: &ldquo;Cow, sixteen pounds.&nbsp; Have the
+cowshed got ready, and buy one of those big cans on
+wheels.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t happen to want milk?&rdquo; I put it to
+Miss Janie.&nbsp; &ldquo;Susie seems to be good for about five
+gallons a day.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m afraid if we drink it all
+ourselves we&rsquo;ll get too fat.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;At twopence halfpenny a quart, delivered at the house,
+as much as you like,&rdquo; replied Miss Janie.</p>
+<p>I made a note of that also.&nbsp; &ldquo;Happen to know a
+useful boy?&rdquo; I asked Miss Janie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about young Hopkins,&rdquo; suggested her
+father.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The only male thing on this farm&mdash;with the
+exception of yourself, of course, father dear&mdash;that has got
+any sense,&rdquo; said Miss Janie.&nbsp; &ldquo;He can&rsquo;t
+have Hopkins.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The only fault I have to find with Hopkins,&rdquo; said
+St. Leonard, &ldquo;is that he talks too much.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Personally,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I should prefer a
+country lad.&nbsp; I have come down here to be in the
+country.&nbsp; With Hopkins around, I don&rsquo;t somehow feel it
+is the country.&nbsp; I might imagine it a garden city: that is
+as near as Hopkins would allow me to get.&nbsp; I should like
+myself something more suggestive of rural simplicity.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think I know the sort of thing you mean,&rdquo;
+smiled Miss Janie.&nbsp; &ldquo;Are you fairly
+good-tempered?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can generally,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;confine
+myself to sarcasm.&nbsp; It pleases me, and as far as I have been
+able to notice, does neither harm nor good to anyone
+else.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send you up a boy,&rdquo; promised Miss
+Janie.</p>
+<p>I thanked her.&nbsp; &ldquo;And now we come to the
+donkey.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nathaniel,&rdquo; explained Miss Janie, in answer to
+her father&rsquo;s look of enquiry.&nbsp; &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t
+really want it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Janie,&rdquo; said Mr. St. Leonard in a tone of
+authority, &ldquo;I insist upon being honest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was going to be honest,&rdquo; retorted Miss Janie,
+offended.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My daughter Veronica has given me to understand,&rdquo;
+I said, &ldquo;that if I buy her this donkey it will be, for her,
+the commencement of a new and better life.&nbsp; I do not attach
+undue importance to the bargain, but one never knows.&nbsp; The
+influences that make for reformation in human character are
+subtle and unexpected.&nbsp; Anyhow, it doesn&rsquo;t seem right
+to throw a chance away.&nbsp; Added to which, it has occurred to
+me that a donkey might be useful in the garden.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has lived at my expense for upwards of two
+years,&rdquo; replied St. Leonard.&nbsp; &ldquo;I cannot myself
+see any moral improvement he has brought into my family.&nbsp;
+What effect he may have upon your children, I cannot say.&nbsp;
+But when you talk about his being useful in a
+garden&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He draws a cart,&rdquo; interrupted Miss Janie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So long as someone walks beside him feeding him with
+carrots.&nbsp; We tried fixing the carrot on a pole six inches
+beyond his reach.&nbsp; That works all right in the picture: it
+starts this donkey kicking.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know yourself,&rdquo; he continued with growing
+indignation, &ldquo;the very last time your mother took him out
+she used up all her carrots getting there, with the result that
+he and the cart had to be hauled home behind a
+trolley.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We had reached the yard.&nbsp; Nathaniel was standing with his
+head stretched out above the closed half of his stable
+door.&nbsp; I noticed points of resemblance between him and
+Veronica herself: there was about him a like suggestion of
+resignation, of suffering virtue misunderstood; his eye had the
+same wistful, yearning expression with which Veronica will stand
+before the window gazing out upon the purple sunset, while people
+are calling to her from distant parts of the house to come and
+put her things away.&nbsp; Miss Janie, bending over him, asked
+him to kiss her.&nbsp; He complied, but with a gentle,
+reproachful look that seemed to say, &ldquo;Why call me back
+again to earth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It made me mad with him.&nbsp; I was wrong in thinking Miss
+Janie not a pretty girl.&nbsp; Hers is that type of beauty that
+escapes attention by its own perfection.&nbsp; It is the
+eccentric, the discordant, that arrests the roving eye.&nbsp; To
+harmony one has to attune oneself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; said Miss Janie, as she drew away,
+wiping her cheek, &ldquo;one could teach that donkey
+anything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Apparently she regarded willingness to kiss her as indication
+of exceptional amiability.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Except to work,&rdquo; commented her father.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what I&rsquo;ll do,&rdquo; he
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;If you take that donkey off my hands and
+promise not to send it back again, why, you can have
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For nothing?&rdquo; demanded Janie woefully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For nothing,&rdquo; insisted her father.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And if I have any argument, I&rsquo;ll throw in the
+cart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Miss Janie sighed and shrugged her shoulders.&nbsp; It was
+arranged that Hopkins should deliver Nathaniel into my keeping
+some time the next day.&nbsp; Hopkins, it appeared, was the only
+person on the farm who could make the donkey go.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it is,&rdquo; said St. Leonard,
+&ldquo;but he has a way with him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there remains but
+Dick.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The lad I saw yesterday?&rdquo; suggested St.
+Leonard.&nbsp; &ldquo;Good-looking young fellow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He is a nice boy,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t really think I know a nicer boy than Dick; and
+clever, when you come to understand him.&nbsp; There is only one
+fault I have to find with Dick: I don&rsquo;t seem able to get
+him to work.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Miss Janie was smiling.&nbsp; I asked her why.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was thinking,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;how close
+the resemblance appears to be between him and
+Nathaniel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was true.&nbsp; I had not thought of it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The mistake,&rdquo; said St. Leonard, &ldquo;is with
+ourselves.&nbsp; We assume every boy to have the soul of a
+professor, and every girl a genius for music.&nbsp; We pack off
+our sons to cram themselves with Greek and Latin, and put our
+daughters down to strum at the piano.&nbsp; Nine times out of ten
+it is sheer waste of time.&nbsp; They sent me to Cambridge, and
+said I was lazy.&nbsp; I was not lazy.&nbsp; I was not intended
+by nature for a Senior Wrangler.&nbsp; I did not see the good of
+being a Senior Wrangler.&nbsp; Who wants a world of Senior
+Wranglers?&nbsp; Then why start every young man trying?&nbsp; I
+wanted to be a farmer.&nbsp; If intelligent lads were taught
+farming as a business, farming would pay.&nbsp; In the name of
+commonsense&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am inclined to agree with you,&rdquo; I interrupted
+him.&nbsp; &ldquo;I would rather see Dick a good farmer than a
+third-rate barrister, anyhow.&nbsp; He thinks he could take an
+interest in farming.&nbsp; There are ten weeks before he need go
+back to Cambridge, sufficient time for the experiment.&nbsp; Will
+you take him as a pupil?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>St. Leonard grasped his head between his hands and held it
+firmly.&nbsp; &ldquo;If I consent,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I must
+insist on being honest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I saw the woefulness again in Janie&rsquo;s eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it is my turn to be
+honest.&nbsp; I have got the donkey for nothing; I insist on
+paying for Dick.&nbsp; They are waiting for you in the
+rick-yard.&nbsp; I will settle the terms with Miss
+Janie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He regarded us both suspiciously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will promise to be honest,&rdquo; laughed Miss
+Janie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s more than I&rsquo;m worth,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send him home again.&nbsp; My theory
+is&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stumbled over a pig which, according to the time-table,
+ought not to have been there.&nbsp; They went off hurriedly
+together, the pig leading, both screaming.</p>
+<p>Miss Janie said she would show me the short cut across the
+fields; we could talk as we went.&nbsp; We walked in silence for
+awhile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You must not think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I like
+being the one to do all the haggling.&nbsp; I feel a little sore
+about it very often.&nbsp; But somebody, of course, must do it;
+and as for father, poor dear&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I looked at her.&nbsp; Her&rsquo;s is the beauty to which a
+touch of sadness adds a charm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; I asked her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Twenty,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;next
+birthday.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I judged you to be older,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Most people do,&rdquo; she answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My daughter Robina,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is just the
+same age&mdash;according to years; and Dick is twenty-one.&nbsp;
+I hope you will be friends with them.&nbsp; They have got sense,
+both of them.&nbsp; It comes out every now and again and
+surprises you.&nbsp; Veronica, I think, is nine.&nbsp; I am not
+sure how Veronica is going to turn out.&nbsp; Sometimes things
+happen that make us think she has a beautiful character, and then
+for quite long periods she seems to lose it altogether.&nbsp; The
+Little Mother&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know why we always call her
+Little Mother&mdash;will not join us till things are more
+ship-shape.&nbsp; She does not like to be thought an invalid, and
+if we have her about anywhere near work that has to be done, and
+are not always watching her, she gets at it and tires
+herself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad we are going to be neighbours,&rdquo; said
+Miss Janie.&nbsp; &ldquo;There are ten of us altogether.&nbsp;
+Father, I am sure, you will like; clever men always like
+father.&nbsp; Mother&rsquo;s day is Friday.&nbsp; As a rule it is
+the only day no one ever calls.&rdquo;&nbsp; She laughed.&nbsp;
+The cloud had vanished.&nbsp; &ldquo;They come on other days and
+find us all in our old clothes.&nbsp; On Friday afternoon we sit
+in state and nobody comes near us, and we have to eat the cakes
+ourselves.&nbsp; It makes her so cross.&nbsp; You will try and
+remember Fridays, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I made a note of it then and there.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am the eldest,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;as I
+think father told you.&nbsp; Harry and Jack came next; but Jack
+is in Canada and Harry died, so there is somewhat of a gap
+between me and the rest.&nbsp; Bertie is twelve and Ted eleven;
+they are home just now for the holidays.&nbsp; Sally is eight,
+and then there come the twins.&nbsp; People don&rsquo;t half
+believe the tales that are told about twins, but I am sure there
+is no need to exaggerate.&nbsp; They are only six, but they have
+a sense of humour you would hardly credit.&nbsp; One is a boy,
+and the other a girl.&nbsp; They are always changing clothes, and
+we are never quite sure which is which.&nbsp; Wilfrid gets sent
+to bed because Winnie has not practised her scales, and Winnie is
+given syrup of squills because Wilfried has been eating green
+gooseberries.&nbsp; Last spring Winnie had the measles.&nbsp;
+When the doctor came on the fifth day he was as pleased as punch;
+he said it was the quickest cure he had ever known, and that
+really there was no reason why she might not get up.&nbsp; We had
+our suspicions, and they were right.&nbsp; Winnie was hiding in
+the cupboard, wrapped up in a blanket.&nbsp; They don&rsquo;t
+seem to mind what trouble they get into, provided it isn&rsquo;t
+their own.&nbsp; The only safe plan, unless you happen to catch
+them red-handed, is to divide the punishment between them, and
+leave them to settle accounts between themselves
+afterwards.&nbsp; Algy is four; till last year he was always
+called the baby.&nbsp; Now, of course, there is no excuse; but
+the name still clings to him in spite of his indignant
+protestations.&nbsp; Father called upstairs to him the other day:
+&lsquo;Baby, bring me down my gaiters.&rsquo;&nbsp; He walked
+straight up to the cradle and woke up the baby.&nbsp; &lsquo;Get
+up,&rsquo; I heard him say&mdash;I was just outside the
+door&mdash;&lsquo;and take your father down his gaiters.&nbsp;
+Don&rsquo;t you hear him calling you?&rsquo;&nbsp; He is a droll
+little fellow.&nbsp; Father took him to Oxford last
+Saturday.&nbsp; He is small for his age.&nbsp; The
+ticket-collector, quite contented, threw him a glance, and merely
+as a matter of form asked if he was under three.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;No,&rsquo; he shouted before father could reply; &lsquo;I
+&rsquo;sists on being honest.&nbsp; I&rsquo;se four.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+It is father&rsquo;s pet phrase.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What view do you take of the exchange,&rdquo; I asked
+her, &ldquo;from stockbroking with its larger income to farming
+with its smaller?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps it was selfish,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;but
+I am afraid I rather encouraged father.&nbsp; It seems to me
+mean, making your living out of work that does no good to
+anyone.&nbsp; I hate the bargaining, but the farming itself I
+love.&nbsp; Of course, it means having only one evening dress a
+year and making that myself.&nbsp; But even when I had a lot I
+always preferred wearing the one that I thought suited me the
+best.&nbsp; As for the children, they are as healthy as young
+savages, and everything they want to make them happy is just
+outside the door.&nbsp; The boys won&rsquo;t go to college; but
+seeing they will have to earn their own living, that, perhaps, is
+just as well.&nbsp; It is mother, poor dear, that worries
+so.&rdquo;&nbsp; She laughed again.&nbsp; &ldquo;Her favourite
+walk is to the workhouse.&nbsp; She came back quite excited the
+other day because she had heard the Guardians intend to try the
+experiment of building separate houses for old married
+couples.&nbsp; She is convinced she and father are going to end
+their days there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You, as the business partner,&rdquo; I asked her,
+&ldquo;are hopeful that the farm will pay?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;it will pay all
+right&mdash;it does pay, for the matter of that.&nbsp; We live on
+it and live comfortably.&nbsp; But, of course, I can see
+mother&rsquo;s point of view, with seven young children to bring
+up.&nbsp; And it is not only that.&rdquo;&nbsp; She stopped
+herself abruptly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; she continued
+with a laugh, &ldquo;you have got to know us.&nbsp; Father is
+trying.&nbsp; He loves experiments, and a woman hates
+experiments.&nbsp; Last year it was bare feet.&nbsp; I daresay it
+is healthier.&nbsp; But children who have been about in bare feet
+all the morning&mdash;well, it isn&rsquo;t pleasant when they sit
+down to lunch; I don&rsquo;t care what you say.&nbsp; You
+can&rsquo;t be always washing.&nbsp; He is so unpractical.&nbsp;
+He was quite angry with mother and myself because we
+wouldn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; And a man in bare feet looks so
+ridiculous.&nbsp; This summer it is short hair and no hats; and
+Sally had such pretty hair.&nbsp; Next year it will be sabots or
+turbans&mdash;something or other suggesting the idea that
+we&rsquo;ve lately escaped from a fair.&nbsp; On Mondays and
+Thursdays we talk French.&nbsp; We have got a French nurse; and
+those are the only days in the week on which she doesn&rsquo;t
+understand a word that&rsquo;s said to her.&nbsp; We can none of
+us understand father, and that makes him furious.&nbsp; He
+won&rsquo;t say it in English; he makes a note of it, meaning to
+tell us on Tuesday or Friday, and then, of course, he forgets,
+and wonders why we haven&rsquo;t done it.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s the
+dearest fellow alive.&nbsp; When I think of him as a big boy,
+then he is charming, and if he really were only a big boy there
+are times when I would shake him and feel better for
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She laughed again.&nbsp; I wanted her to go on talking,
+because her laugh was so delightful.&nbsp; But we had reached the
+road, and she said she must go back: there were so many things
+she had to do.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We have not settled about Dick,&rdquo; I reminded
+her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mother took rather a liking to him,&rdquo; she
+murmured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If Dick could make a living,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;by
+getting people to like him, I should not be so anxious about his
+future&mdash;lazy young devil!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has promised to work hard if you let him take up
+farming,&rdquo; said Miss Janie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has been talking to you?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>She admitted it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He will begin well,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I know
+him.&nbsp; In a month he will have tired of it, and be clamouring
+to do something else.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall be very disappointed in him if he does,&rdquo;
+she said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will tell him that,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it may
+help.&nbsp; People don&rsquo;t like other people to be
+disappointed in them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would rather you didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You could say that father will be disappointed in
+him.&nbsp; Father formed rather a good opinion of him, I
+know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will tell him,&rdquo; I suggested, &ldquo;that we
+shall all be disappointed in him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She agreed to that, and we parted.&nbsp; I remembered, when
+she was gone, that after all we had not settled terms.</p>
+<p>Dick overtook me a little way from home.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have settled your business,&rdquo; I told him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s awfully good of you,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mind,&rdquo; I continued, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s on the
+understanding that you throw yourself into the thing and work
+hard.&nbsp; If you don&rsquo;t, I shall be disappointed in you, I
+tell you so frankly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right, governor,&rdquo; he answered
+cheerfully.&nbsp; &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you worry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. St. Leonard will also be disappointed in you,
+Dick,&rdquo; I informed him.&nbsp; &ldquo;He has formed a very
+high opinion of you.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t give him cause to change
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll get on all right with him,&rdquo; answered
+Dick.&nbsp; &ldquo;Jolly old duffer, ain&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Janie will also be disappointed in you,&rdquo; I
+added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did she say that?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She mentioned it casually,&rdquo; I explained:
+&ldquo;though now I come to think of it she asked me not to say
+so.&nbsp; What she wanted me to impress upon you was that her
+father would be disappointed in you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dick walked beside me in silence for awhile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sorry I&rsquo;ve been a worry to you, dad,&rdquo; he
+said at last</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Glad to hear you say so,&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to turn over a new leaf, dad,&rdquo; he
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to work hard.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;About time,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> had cold bacon for lunch that
+day.&nbsp; There was not much of it.&nbsp; I took it to be the
+bacon we had not eaten for breakfast.&nbsp; But on a clean dish
+with parsley it looked rather neat.&nbsp; It did not suggest,
+however, a lunch for four people, two of whom had been out all
+the morning in the open air.&nbsp; There was some excuse for
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I never heard before,&rdquo; said Dick, &ldquo;of cold
+fried bacon as a <i>hors d&rsquo;&oelig;uvre</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is not a <i>hors d&rsquo;&oelig;uvre</i>,&rdquo;
+explained Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is all there is for
+lunch.&rdquo;&nbsp; She spoke in the quiet, passionless voice of
+one who has done with all human emotion.&nbsp; She added that she
+should not be requiring any herself, she having lunched
+already.</p>
+<p>Veronica, conveying by her tone and bearing the impression of
+something midway between a perfect lady and a Christian martyr,
+observed that she also had lunched.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wish I had,&rdquo; growled Dick.</p>
+<p>I gave him a warning kick.&nbsp; I could see he was on the way
+to getting himself into trouble.&nbsp; As I explained to him
+afterwards, a woman is most dangerous when at her meekest.&nbsp;
+A man, when he feels his temper rising, takes every opportunity
+of letting it escape.&nbsp; Trouble at such times he
+welcomes.&nbsp; A broken boot-lace, or a shirt without a button,
+is to him then as water in the desert.&nbsp; An only collar-stud
+that will disappear as if by magic from between his thumb and
+finger and vanish apparently into thin air is a piece of good
+fortune sent on these occasions only to those whom the gods
+love.&nbsp; By the time he has waddled on his hands and knees
+twice round the room, broken the boot-jack raking with it
+underneath the wardrobe, been bumped and slapped and kicked by
+every piece of furniture that the room contains, and ended up by
+stepping on that stud and treading it flat, he has not a bitter
+or an angry thought left in him.&nbsp; All that remains of him is
+sweet and peaceful.&nbsp; He fastens his collar with a
+safety-pin, humming an old song the while.</p>
+<p>Failing the gifts of Providence, the children&mdash;if in
+health&mdash;can generally be depended upon to afford him an
+opening.&nbsp; Sooner or later one or another of them will do
+something that no child, when he was a boy, would have
+dared&mdash;or dreamed of daring&mdash;to even so much as think
+of doing.&nbsp; The child, conveying by expression that the
+world, it is glad to say, is slowly but steadily growing in
+sense, and pity it is that old-fashioned folks can&rsquo;t bustle
+up and keep abreast of it, points out that firstly it has not
+done this thing, that for various reasons&mdash;a few only of
+which need be dwelt upon&mdash;it is impossible it could have
+done this thing; that secondly it has been expressly requested to
+do this thing, that wishful always to give satisfaction, it
+has&mdash;at sacrifice of all its own ideas&mdash;gone out of its
+way to do this thing; that thirdly it can&rsquo;t help doing this
+thing, strive against fate as it will.</p>
+<p>He says he does not want to hear what the child has got to say
+on the subject&mdash;nor on any other subject, neither then nor
+at any other time.&nbsp; He says there&rsquo;s going to be a new
+departure in this house, and that things all round are going to
+be very different.&nbsp; He suddenly remembers every rule and
+regulation he has made during the past ten years for the guidance
+of everybody, and that everybody, himself included, has
+forgotten.&nbsp; He tries to talk about them all at once, in
+haste lest he should forget them again.&nbsp; By the time he has
+succeeded in getting himself, if nobody else, to understand
+himself, the children are swarming round his knees extracting
+from him promises that in his sober moments he will be sorry that
+he made.</p>
+<p>I knew a woman&mdash;a wise and good woman she was&mdash;who
+when she noticed that her husband&rsquo;s temper was causing him
+annoyance, took pains to help him to get rid of it.&nbsp; To
+relieve his sufferings I have known her search the house for a
+last month&rsquo;s morning paper and, ironing it smooth, lay it
+warm and neatly folded on his breakfast plate.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One thing in this world to be thankful for, at all
+events, and that is that we don&rsquo;t live in
+Ditchley-in-the-Marsh,&rdquo; he would growl ten minutes later
+from the other side of it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sounds a bit damp,&rdquo; the good woman would
+reply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Damp!&rdquo; he would grunt, &ldquo;who minds a bit of
+damp!&nbsp; Good for you.&nbsp; Makes us Englishmen what we
+are.&nbsp; Being murdered in one&rsquo;s bed about once a week is
+what I should object to.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do they do much of that sort of thing down
+there?&rdquo; the good woman would enquire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seems to be the chief industry of the place.&nbsp; Do
+you mean to say you don&rsquo;t remember that old maiden lady
+being murdered by her own gardener and buried in the
+fowl-run?&nbsp; You women! you take no interest in public
+affairs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do remember something about it, now you mention it,
+dear,&rdquo; the good woman would confess.&nbsp; &ldquo;Always
+seems such an innocent type of man, a gardener.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seems to be a special breed of them at
+Ditchley-in-the-Marsh,&rdquo; he answers.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here again
+last Monday,&rdquo; he continues, reading with growing
+interest.&nbsp; &ldquo;Almost the same case&mdash;even to the
+pruning knife.&nbsp; Yes, hanged if he
+doesn&rsquo;t!&mdash;buries her in the fowl-run.&nbsp; This is
+most extraordinary.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It must be the imitative instinct asserting
+itself,&rdquo; suggests the good woman.&nbsp; &ldquo;As you,
+dear, have so often pointed out, one crime makes
+another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have always said so,&rdquo; he agrees; &ldquo;it has
+always been a theory of mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He folds the paper over.&nbsp; &ldquo;Dull dogs, these
+political chaps!&rdquo; he says.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the
+Duke of Devonshire, speaking last night at Hackney, begins by
+telling a funny story he says he has just heard about a
+parrot.&nbsp; Why, it&rsquo;s the same story somebody told a
+month ago; I remember reading it.&nbsp; Yes&mdash;upon my
+soul&mdash;word for word, I&rsquo;d swear to it.&nbsp; Shows you
+the sort of men we&rsquo;re governed by.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t expect everyone, dear, to possess your
+repertoire,&rdquo; the good woman remarks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Needn&rsquo;t say he&rsquo;s just heard it that
+afternoon, anyhow,&rdquo; responds the good man.</p>
+<p>He turns to another column.&nbsp; &ldquo;What the devil!&nbsp;
+Am I going off my head?&rdquo;&nbsp; He pounces on the eldest
+boy.&nbsp; &ldquo;When was the Oxford and Cambridge
+Boat-race?&rdquo; he fiercely demands.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Oxford and Cambridge Boat-race!&rdquo; repeats the
+astonished youth.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s over.&nbsp; You
+took us all to see it, last month.&nbsp; The Saturday
+before&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The conversation for the next ten minutes he conducts himself,
+unaided.&nbsp; At the end he is tired, maybe a trifle
+hoarse.&nbsp; But all his bad temper is gone.&nbsp; His sorrow is
+there was not sufficient of it.&nbsp; He could have done with
+more.</p>
+<p>Woman knows nothing of simple mechanics.&nbsp; A woman thinks
+you can get rid of steam by boxing it up and sitting on the
+safety-valve.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Feeling as I do this morning, that I&rsquo;d like to
+wring everybody&rsquo;s neck for them,&rdquo; the average woman
+argues to herself; &ldquo;my proper course&mdash;I see it
+clearly&mdash;is to creep about the house, asking of everyone
+that has the time to spare to trample on me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She coaxes you to tell her of her faults.&nbsp; When you have
+finished she asks for more&mdash;reminds you of one or two you
+had missed out.&nbsp; She wonders why it is that she is always
+wrong.&nbsp; There must be a reason for it; if only she could
+discover it.&nbsp; She wonders how it is that people can put up
+with her&mdash;thinks it so good of them.</p>
+<p>At last, of course, the explosion happens.&nbsp; The awkward
+thing is that neither she herself nor anyone else knows when it
+is coming.&nbsp; A husband cornered me one evening in the
+club.&nbsp; It evidently did him good to talk.&nbsp; He told me
+that, finding his wife that morning in one of her rare listening
+moods, he had seized the opportunity to mention one or two
+matters in connection with the house he would like to have
+altered; that was, if she had no objection.&nbsp; She
+had&mdash;quite pleasantly&mdash;reminded him the house was his,
+that he was master there.&nbsp; She added that any wish of his of
+course was law to her.</p>
+<p>He was a young and inexperienced husband; it seemed to him a
+hopeful opening.&nbsp; He spoke of quite a lot of
+things&mdash;things about which he felt that he was right and she
+was wrong.&nbsp; She went and fetched a quire of paper, and
+borrowed his pencil and wrote them down.</p>
+<p>Later on, going through his letters in the study, he found an
+unexpected cheque; and ran upstairs and asked her if she would
+not like to come out with him and get herself a new hat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I could have understood it,&rdquo; he moaned, &ldquo;if
+she had dropped on me while I was&mdash;well, I suppose, you
+might say lecturing her.&nbsp; She had listened to it like a
+lamb&mdash;hadn&rsquo;t opened her mouth except to say
+&lsquo;yes, dear,&rsquo; or &lsquo;no, dear.&rsquo;&nbsp; Then,
+when I only asked her if she&rsquo;d like a new hat, she goes
+suddenly raving mad.&nbsp; I never saw a woman go so
+mad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I doubt if there be anything in nature quite as unexpected as
+a woman&rsquo;s temper, unless it be tumbling into a hole.&nbsp;
+I told all this to Dick.&nbsp; I have told it him before.&nbsp;
+One of these days he will know it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are right to be angry with me,&rdquo; Robina
+replied meekly; &ldquo;there is no excuse for me.&nbsp; The whole
+thing is the result of my own folly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her pathetic humility should have appealed to him.&nbsp; He
+can be sympathetic, when he isn&rsquo;t hungry.&nbsp; Just then
+he happened to be hungry.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I left you making a pie,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It looked to me a fair-sized pie.&nbsp; There was a duck
+on the table, with a cauliflower and potatoes; Veronica was up to
+her elbows in peas.&nbsp; It made me hungry merely passing
+through the kitchen.&nbsp; I wouldn&rsquo;t have anything to eat
+in the town for fear of spoiling my appetite.&nbsp; Where is it
+all?&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t mean to say that you and Veronica have
+eaten the whole blessed lot!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There is one thing&mdash;she admits it herself&mdash;that
+exhausts Veronica&rsquo;s patience: it is unjust suspicion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do I look as if I&rsquo;d eaten anything for hours and
+hours?&rdquo; Veronica demanded.&nbsp; &ldquo;You can feel my
+waistband if you don&rsquo;t believe me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You said just now you had had your lunch,&rdquo; Dick
+argued.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know I did,&rdquo; Veronica admitted.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;One minute you are told that it is wicked to tell lies;
+the next&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Veronica!&rdquo; Robina interrupted threateningly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s easy for you,&rdquo; retorted
+Veronica.&nbsp; &ldquo;You are not a growing child.&nbsp; You
+don&rsquo;t feel it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The least you can do,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;is to
+keep silence.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good,&rdquo; said Veronica&mdash;not
+without reason.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll tell them when
+I&rsquo;ve gone to bed, and can&rsquo;t put in a word for
+myself.&nbsp; Everything is always my fault.&nbsp; I wish
+sometimes that I was dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That I were dead,&rdquo; I corrected her.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The verb &lsquo;to wish,&rsquo; implying uncertainty,
+should always be followed by the conditional mood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You ought,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;to be thankful to
+Providence that you&rsquo;re not dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;People are sorry when you&rsquo;re dead,&rdquo; said
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose there&rsquo;s some bread-and-cheese in the
+house,&rdquo; suggested Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The baker, for some reason or another, has not called
+this morning,&rdquo; Robina answered sweetly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Neither unfortunately has the grocer.&nbsp; Everything
+there is to eat in the house you see upon the table.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Accidents will happen,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+philosopher&mdash;as our friend St. Leonard would tell
+us&mdash;only smiles.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I could smile,&rdquo; said Dick, &ldquo;if it were his
+lunch.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cultivate,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;a sense of
+humour.&nbsp; From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather
+good.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you have anything to eat at the St.
+Leonards&rsquo;?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just a glass or so of beer and a sandwich or
+two,&rdquo; I admitted.&nbsp; &ldquo;They brought it out to us
+while we were talking in the yard.&nbsp; To tell the truth, I was
+feeling rather peckish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dick made no answer, but continued to chew bacon-rind.&nbsp;
+Nothing I could say seemed to cheer him.&nbsp; I thought I would
+try religion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A dinner of herbs&mdash;the sentiment applies equally
+to lunch&mdash;and contentment therewith is better,&rdquo; I
+said, &ldquo;than a stalled ox.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk about oxen,&rdquo; he interrupted
+fretfully.&nbsp; &ldquo;I feel I could just eat one&mdash;a plump
+one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There is a man I know.&nbsp; I confess he irritates me.&nbsp;
+His argument is that you should always rise from a meal feeling
+hungry.&nbsp; As I once explained to him, you cannot rise from a
+meal feeling hungry without sitting down to a meal feeling
+hungry; which means, of course, that you are always hungry.&nbsp;
+He agreed with me.&nbsp; He said that was the idea&mdash;always
+ready.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Most people,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;rise from a meal
+feeling no more interest in their food.&nbsp; That was a mental
+attitude injurious to digestion.&nbsp; Keep it always interested;
+that was the proper way to treat it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By &lsquo;it&rsquo; you mean . . . ?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m talking
+about it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now I myself;&rdquo; he explained&mdash;&ldquo;I rise
+from breakfast feeling eager for my lunch.&nbsp; I get up from my
+lunch looking forward to my dinner.&nbsp; I go to bed just ready
+for my breakfast.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Cheerful expectancy, he said, was a wonderful aid to
+digestion.&nbsp; &ldquo;I call myself;&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;a
+cheerful feeder.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t seem to me,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;to be
+anything else.&nbsp; You talk like a tadpole.&nbsp; Haven&rsquo;t
+you any other interest in life?&nbsp; What about home, and
+patriotism, and Shakespeare&mdash;all those sort of things?&nbsp;
+Why not give it a square meal, and silence it for an hour or two;
+leave yourself free to think of something else.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How can you think of anything,&rdquo; he argued,
+&ldquo;when your stomach&rsquo;s out of order?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How can you think of anything,&rdquo; I argued,
+&ldquo;when it takes you all your time to keep it in order?&nbsp;
+You are not a man; you are a nurse to your own
+stomach.&rdquo;&nbsp; We were growing excited, both of us,
+forgetting our natural refinement.&nbsp; &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t
+get even your one afternoon a week.&nbsp; You are healthy enough,
+I admit it.&nbsp; So are the convicts at Portland.&nbsp; They
+never suffer from indigestion.&nbsp; I knew a doctor once who
+prescribed for a patient two years&rsquo; penal servitude as the
+only thing likely to do him permanent good.&nbsp; Your stomach
+won&rsquo;t let you smoke.&nbsp; It won&rsquo;t let you
+drink&mdash;not when you are thirsty.&nbsp; It allows you a glass
+of Apenta water at times when you don&rsquo;t want it, assuming
+there could ever be a time when you did want it.&nbsp; You are
+deprived of your natural victuals, and made to live upon prepared
+food, as though you were some sort of a prize chicken.&nbsp; You
+are sent to bed at eleven, and dressed in hygienic clothing that
+makes no pretence to fit you.&nbsp; Talk of being
+hen-pecked!&nbsp; Why, the mildest husband living would run away
+or drown himself, rather than remain tied for the rest of his
+existence to your stomach.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is easy to sneer,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am not sneering,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I am
+sympathising with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He said he did not want any sympathy.&nbsp; He said if only I
+would give up over-eating and drinking myself, it would surprise
+me how bright and intelligent I should become.</p>
+<p>I thought this man might be of use to us on the present
+occasion.&nbsp; Accordingly I spoke of him and of his
+theory.&nbsp; Dick seemed impressed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nice sort of man?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An earnest man,&rdquo; I replied.&nbsp; &ldquo;He
+practises what he preaches, and whether because, or in spite of
+it, the fact remains that a chirpier soul I am sure does not
+exist.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Married?&rdquo; demanded Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A single man,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;In all
+things an idealist.&nbsp; He has told me he will never marry
+until he can find his ideal woman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about Robina here!&rdquo; suggested Dick.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Seem to have been made for one another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina smiled.&nbsp; It was a wan, pathetic smile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Even he,&rdquo; thought Robina, &ldquo;would want his
+beans cooked to time, and to feel that a reasonable supply of
+nuts was always in the house.&nbsp; We incompetent women never
+ought to marry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We had finished the bacon.&nbsp; Dick said he would take a
+stroll into the town.&nbsp; Robina suggested he might take
+Veronica with him, that perhaps a bun and a glass of milk would
+do the child no harm.</p>
+<p>Veronica for a wonder seemed to know where all her things
+were.&nbsp; Before Dick had filled his pipe she was ready dressed
+and waiting for him.&nbsp; Robina said she would give them a list
+of things they might bring back with them.&nbsp; She also asked
+Dick to get together a plumber, a carpenter, a bricklayer, a
+glazier, and a civil engineer, and to see to it that they started
+off at once.&nbsp; She thought that among them they might be able
+to do all that was temporarily necessary, but the great thing was
+that the work should be commenced without delay.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, what on earth&rsquo;s the matter, old girl?&rdquo;
+asked Dick.&nbsp; &ldquo;Have you had an accident?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then it was that Robina exploded.&nbsp; I had been wondering
+when it would happen.&nbsp; To Dick&rsquo;s astonishment it
+happened then.</p>
+<p>Yes, she answered, there had been an accident.&nbsp; Did he
+suppose that seven scrimpy scraps of bacon was her notion of a
+lunch between four hungry persons?&nbsp; Did he, judging from
+himself, imagine that our family yielded only lunatics?&nbsp; Was
+it kind&mdash;was it courteous to his parents, to the mother he
+pretended to love, to the father whose grey hairs he was by his
+general behaviour bringing down in sorrow to the grave&mdash;to
+assume without further enquiry that their eldest daughter was an
+imbecile?&nbsp; (My hair, by-the-bye, is not grey.&nbsp; There
+may be a suggestion of greyness here and there, the natural
+result of deep thinking.&nbsp; To describe it in the lump as grey
+is to show lack of observation.&nbsp; And at forty-eight&mdash;or
+a trifle over&mdash;one is not going down into the grave, not
+straight down.&nbsp; Robina when excited uses exaggerated
+language.&nbsp; I did not, however, interrupt her; she meant
+well.&nbsp; Added to which, interrupting Robina, when&mdash;to
+use her own expression&mdash;she is tired of being a worm, is
+like trying to stop a cyclone with an umbrella.)&nbsp; Had his
+attention been less concentrated on the guzzling of cold bacon
+(he had only had four mouthfuls, poor fellow)&mdash;had he
+noticed the sweet patient child starving before his very eyes
+(this referred to Veronica)&mdash;his poor elder sister, worn out
+with work and worry, pining for nourishment herself, it might
+have occurred to even his intelligence that there had been an
+accident.&nbsp; The selfishness, the egotism of men it was that
+staggered, overwhelmed Robina, when she came to think of it.</p>
+<p>Robina paused.&nbsp; Not for want of material, I judged, so
+much as want of breath.&nbsp; Veronica performed a useful service
+by seizing the moment to express a hope that it was not
+early-closing day.&nbsp; Robina felt a conviction that it was: it
+would be just like Dick to stand there dawdling in a corner till
+it was too late to do anything.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have been trying to get out of this corner for the
+last five minutes,&rdquo; explained Dick, with that angelic smile
+of his that I confess is irritating.&nbsp; &ldquo;If you have
+done talking, and will give me an opening, I will go.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina told him that she had done talking.&nbsp; She gave him
+her reasons for having done talking.&nbsp; If talking to him
+would be of any use she would often have felt it her duty to talk
+to him, not only with regard to his stupidity and selfishness and
+general aggravatingness, but with reference to his character as a
+whole.&nbsp; Her excuse for not talking to him was the crushing
+conviction of the hopelessness of ever effecting any improvement
+in him.&nbsp; Were it otherwise&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seriously speaking,&rdquo; said Dick, now escaped from
+his corner, &ldquo;something, I take it, has gone wrong with the
+stove, and you want a sort of general smith.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He opened the kitchen door and looked in.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Great Scott!&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;What was
+it&mdash;an earthquake?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I looked in over his shoulder.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it could not have been an earthquake,&rdquo; I
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;We should have felt it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is not an earthquake,&rdquo; explained Robina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It is your youngest daughter&rsquo;s notion of making
+herself useful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina spoke severely.&nbsp; I felt for the moment as if I had
+done it all myself.&nbsp; I had an uncle who used to talk like
+that.&nbsp; &ldquo;Your aunt,&rdquo; he would say, regarding me
+with a reproachful eye, &ldquo;your aunt can be, when she likes,
+the most trying woman to live with I have ever
+known.&rdquo;&nbsp; It would depress me for days.&nbsp; I would
+wonder whether I ought to speak to her about it, or whether I
+should be doing only harm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how did she do it?&rdquo; I demanded.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It is impossible that a mere child&mdash;where is the
+child?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The parlour contained but Robina.&nbsp; I hurried to the door;
+Dick was already half across the field.&nbsp; Veronica I could
+not see.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We are making haste,&rdquo; Dick shouted back,
+&ldquo;in case it is early-closing day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I want Veronica!&rdquo; I shouted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; shouted Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Veronica!&rdquo; I shouted with my hands to my
+mouth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; shouted Dick.&nbsp; &ldquo;She&rsquo;s on
+ahead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was useless screaming any more.&nbsp; He was now climbing
+the stile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They always take each other&rsquo;s part, those
+two,&rdquo; sighed Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, and you are just as bad,&rdquo; I told her;
+&ldquo;if he doesn&rsquo;t, you do.&nbsp; And then if it&rsquo;s
+you they take your part.&nbsp; And you take his part.&nbsp; And
+he takes both your parts.&nbsp; And between you all I am just
+getting tired of bringing any of you up.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Which is
+the truth.)&nbsp; &ldquo;How did this thing happen?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I had got everything finished,&rdquo; answered
+Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;The duck was in the oven with the pie; the
+peas and potatoes were boiling nicely.&nbsp; I was feeling hot,
+and I thought I could trust Veronica to watch the things for
+awhile.&nbsp; She promised not to play King Alfred.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know,&rdquo; said Robina&mdash;&ldquo;King Alfred
+and the cakes.&nbsp; I left her one afternoon last year when we
+were on the houseboat to watch some buns.&nbsp; When I came back
+she was sitting in front of the fire, wrapped up in the
+table-cloth, with Dick&rsquo;s banjo on her knees and a cardboard
+crown upon her head.&nbsp; The buns were all burnt to a
+cinder.&nbsp; As I told her, if I had known what she wanted to be
+up to I could have given her some extra bits of dough to make
+believe with.&nbsp; But oh, no! if you please, that would not
+have suited her at all.&nbsp; It was their being real buns, and
+my being real mad, that was the best part of the game.&nbsp; She
+is an uncanny child.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What was the game this time?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it was intended for a
+game&mdash;not at first,&rdquo; answered Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+went into the wood to pick some flowers for the table.&nbsp; I
+was on my way back, still at some distance from the house, when I
+heard quite a loud report.&nbsp; I took it for a gun, and
+wondered what anyone would be shooting in July.&nbsp; It must be
+rabbits, I thought.&nbsp; Rabbits never seem to have any time at
+all to themselves, poor things.&nbsp; And in consequence I did
+not hurry myself.&nbsp; It must have been about twenty minutes
+later when I came in sight of the house.&nbsp; Veronica was in
+the garden deep in confabulation with an awful-looking boy,
+dressed in nothing but rags.&nbsp; His face and hands were almost
+black.&nbsp; You never saw such an object.&nbsp; They both seemed
+very excited.&nbsp; Veronica came to meet me; and with a face as
+serious as mine is now, stood there and told me the most
+barefaced pack of lies you ever heard.&nbsp; She said that a few
+minutes after I had gone, robbers had come out of the
+wood&mdash;she talked about them as though there had been
+hundreds&mdash;and had with the most awful threats demanded to be
+admitted into the house.&nbsp; Why they had not lifted the latch
+and walked in, she did not explain.&nbsp; It appeared this
+cottage was their secret rendezvous, where all their treasure
+lies hidden.&nbsp; Veronica would not let them in, but shouted
+for help: and immediately this awful-looking boy, to whom she
+introduced me as &lsquo;Sir Robert&rsquo; something or another,
+had appeared upon the scene; and then there had
+followed&mdash;well, I have not the patience to tell you the
+whole of the rigmarole they had concocted.&nbsp; The upshot of it
+was that the robbers, defeated in their attempt to get into the
+house, had fired a secret mine, which had exploded in the
+kitchen.&nbsp; If I did not believe them I could go into the
+kitchen and see for myself.&nbsp; Say what I would, that is the
+story they both stuck to.&nbsp; It was not till I had talked to
+Veronica for a quarter of an hour, and had told her that you
+would most certainly communicate with the police, and that she
+would have to convince a judge and jury of the truth of her
+story, that I got any sense at all out of her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What was the sense you did get out of her?&rdquo; I
+asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I am not sure even now that it is the
+truth,&rdquo; said Robina&mdash;&ldquo;the child does not seem to
+possess a proper conscience.&nbsp; What she will grow up like, if
+something does not happen to change her, it is awful to
+think.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to appear a hustler,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;and maybe I am mistaken in the actual time, but it feels
+to me like hours since I asked you how the catastrophe really
+occurred.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am telling you,&rdquo; explained Robina, hurt.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;She was in the kitchen yesterday when I mentioned to
+Harry&rsquo;s mother, who had looked in to help me wash up, that
+the kitchen chimney smoked: and then she said&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who said?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, she did,&rdquo; answered Robina,
+&ldquo;Harry&rsquo;s mother.&nbsp; She said that very often a
+pennyworth of gunpowder&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now at last we have begun,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;From this point I may be able to help you, and we will get
+on.&nbsp; At the word &lsquo;gunpowder&rsquo; Veronica pricked up
+her ears.&nbsp; The thing by its very nature would appeal to
+Veronica&rsquo;s sympathies.&nbsp; She went to bed dreaming of
+gunpowder.&nbsp; Left in solitude before the kitchen fire, other
+maidens might have seen pictured in the glowing coals, princes,
+carriages, and balls.&nbsp; Veronica saw visions of
+gunpowder.&nbsp; Who knows?&mdash;perhaps even she one day will
+have gunpowder of her own!&nbsp; She looks up from her reverie: a
+fairy godmamma in the disguise of a small boy&mdash;it was a
+small boy, was it not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rather a nice little boy, he gave me the idea of having
+been, originally,&rdquo; answered Robina; &ldquo;the child, I
+should say, of well-to-do parents.&nbsp; He was dressed in a
+little Lord Fauntleroy suit&mdash;or rather, he had
+been.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did Veronica know how he was&mdash;anything about
+him?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing that I could get out of her,&rdquo; replied
+Robina; &ldquo;you know her way&mdash;how she chums on with
+anybody and everybody.&nbsp; As I told her, if she had been
+attending to her duties instead of staring out of the window, she
+would not have seen him.&nbsp; He happened to be crossing the
+field just at the time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A boy born to ill-luck, evidently,&rdquo; I
+observed.&nbsp; &ldquo;To Veronica of course he seemed like the
+answer to a prayer.&nbsp; A boy would surely know where gunpowder
+could be culled.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They must have got a pound of it from somewhere,&rdquo;
+said Robina, &ldquo;judging from the result.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Any notion where they got it from?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; explained Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;All Veronica
+can say is that he told her he knew where he could get some, and
+was gone about ten minutes.&nbsp; Of course they must have stolen
+it&mdash;even that did not seem to trouble her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It came to her as a gift from the gods, Robina,&rdquo;
+I explained.&nbsp; &ldquo;I remember how I myself used to feel
+about these things, at ten.&nbsp; To have enquired further would
+have seemed to her impious.&nbsp; How was it they were not both
+killed?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Providence,&rdquo; was Robina&rsquo;s suggestion: it
+seemed to be the only one possible.&nbsp; &ldquo;They lifted off
+one of the saucepans and just dropped the thing
+in&mdash;fortunately wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, which
+gave them both time to get out of the house.&nbsp; At least
+Veronica got clear off.&nbsp; For a change it was not she who
+fell over the mat, it was the boy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I looked again into the kitchen; then I returned and put my
+hands on Robina&rsquo;s shoulders.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is a most
+amusing incident&mdash;as it has turned out,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It might have turned out rather seriously,&rdquo;
+thought Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It might,&rdquo; I agreed: &ldquo;she might be lying
+upstairs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She is a wicked, heartless child,&rdquo; said Robina;
+&ldquo;she ought to be punished.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I lent Robina my handkerchief; she never has one of her
+own.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She is going to be punished,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I
+will think of something.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And so ought I,&rdquo; said Robina; &ldquo;it was my
+fault, leaving her, knowing what she&rsquo;s like.&nbsp; I might
+have murdered her.&nbsp; She doesn&rsquo;t care.&nbsp;
+She&rsquo;s stuffing herself with cakes at this very
+moment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They will probably give her indigestion,&rdquo; I
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I hope they do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you have better children?&rdquo;
+sobbed Robina; &ldquo;we are none of us any good to
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are not the children I wanted, I confess,&rdquo; I
+answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a nice kind thing to say!&rdquo; retorted
+Robina indignantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wanted such charming children,&rdquo; I
+explained&mdash;&ldquo;my idea of charming children: the children
+I had imagined for myself.&nbsp; Even as babies you disappointed
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina looked astonished.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You, Robina, were the most disappointing,&rdquo; I
+complained.&nbsp; &ldquo;Dick was a boy.&nbsp; One does not
+calculate upon boy angels; and by the time Veronica arrived I had
+got more used to things.&nbsp; But I was so excited when you
+came.&nbsp; The Little Mother and I would steal at night into the
+nursery.&nbsp; &lsquo;Isn&rsquo;t it wonderful,&rsquo; the Little
+Mother would whisper, &lsquo;to think it all lies hidden there:
+the little tiresome child, the sweetheart they will one day take
+away from us, the wife, the mother?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I am glad
+it is a girl,&rsquo; I would whisper; &lsquo;I shall be able to
+watch her grow into womanhood.&nbsp; Most of the girls one comes
+across in books strike one as not perhaps quite true to
+life.&nbsp; It will give me such an advantage having a girl of my
+own.&nbsp; I shall keep a note-book, with a lock and key, devoted
+to her.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you?&rdquo; asked Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I put it away,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;there were but
+a few pages written on.&nbsp; It came to me quite early in your
+life that you were not going to be the model heroine.&nbsp; I was
+looking for the picture baby, the clean, thoughtful baby, with
+its magical, mystical smile.&nbsp; I wrote poetry about you,
+Robina, but you would slobber and howl.&nbsp; Your little nose
+was always having to be wiped, and somehow the poetry did not
+seem to fit you.&nbsp; You were at your best when you were
+asleep, but you would not even sleep when it was expected of
+you.&nbsp; I think, Robina, that the fellows who draw the
+pictures for the comic journals of the man in his night-shirt
+with the squalling baby in his arms must all be single men.&nbsp;
+The married man sees only sadness in the design.&nbsp; It is not
+the mere discomfort.&nbsp; If the little creature were ill or in
+pain we should not think of that.&nbsp; It is the reflection that
+we, who meant so well, have brought into the world just an
+ordinary fretful human creature with a nasty temper of its own:
+that is the tragedy, Robina.&nbsp; And then you grew into a
+little girl.&nbsp; I wanted the soulful little girl with the
+fathomless eyes, who would steal to me at twilight and question
+me concerning life&rsquo;s conundrums.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I used to ask you questions,&rdquo; grumbled
+Robina, &ldquo;and you would tell me not to be silly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you understand, Robina?&rdquo; I
+answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am not blaming you, I am blaming
+myself.&nbsp; We are like children who plant seeds in a garden,
+and then are angry with the flowers because they are not what we
+expected.&nbsp; You were a dear little girl; I see that now,
+looking back.&nbsp; But not the little girl I had in my
+mind.&nbsp; So I missed you, thinking of the little girl you were
+not.&nbsp; We do that all our lives, Robina.&nbsp; We are always
+looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling
+underfoot, the blossoms round about us.&nbsp; It was the same
+with Dick.&nbsp; I wanted a naughty boy.&nbsp; Well, Dick was
+naughty, no one can say that he was not.&nbsp; But it was not my
+naughtiness.&nbsp; I was prepared for his robbing orchards.&nbsp;
+I rather hoped he would rob orchards.&nbsp; All the high-spirited
+boys in books rob orchards, and become great men.&nbsp; But there
+were not any orchards handy.&nbsp; We happened to be living in
+Chelsea at the time he ought to have been robbing orchards: that,
+of course, was my fault.&nbsp; I did not think of that.&nbsp; He
+stole a bicycle that a lady had left outside the tea-room in
+Battersea Park, he and another boy, the son of a common barber,
+who shaved people for three-halfpence.&nbsp; I am a Republican in
+theory, but it grieved me that a son of mine could be drawn to
+such companionship.&nbsp; They contrived to keep it for a
+week&mdash;till the police found it one night, artfully hidden
+behind bushes.&nbsp; Logically, I do not see why stealing apples
+should be noble and stealing bicycles should be mean, but it
+struck me that way at the time.&nbsp; It was not the particular
+steal I had been hoping for.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wanted him wild; the hero of the book was ever in his
+college days a wild young man.&nbsp; Well, he was wild.&nbsp; It
+cost me three hundred pounds to keep that breach of promise case
+out of Court; I had never imagined a breach of promise
+case.&nbsp; Then he got drunk, and bonneted a bishop in mistake
+for a &lsquo;bull-dog.&rsquo;&nbsp; I didn&rsquo;t mind the
+bishop.&nbsp; That by itself would have been wholesome fun.&nbsp;
+But to think that a son of mine should have been
+drunk!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has never been drunk since,&rdquo; pleaded
+Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;He had only three glasses of champagne and a
+liqueur: it was the liqueur&mdash;he was not used to it.&nbsp; He
+got into the wrong set.&nbsp; You cannot in college belong to the
+wild set without getting drunk occasionally.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; I admitted.&nbsp; &ldquo;In the
+book the wild young man drinks without ever getting drunk.&nbsp;
+Maybe there is a difference between life and the book.&nbsp; In
+the book you enjoy your fun, but contrive somehow to escape the
+licking: in life the licking is the only thing sure.&nbsp; It was
+the wild young man of fiction I was looking for, who, a fortnight
+before the exam., ties a wet towel round his head, drinks strong
+tea, and passes easily with honours.&nbsp; He tried the wet
+towel, he tells me.&nbsp; It never would keep in its place.&nbsp;
+Added to which it gave him neuralgia; while the strong tea gave
+him indigestion.&nbsp; I used to picture myself the proud,
+indulgent father lecturing him for his wildness&mdash;turning
+away at some point in the middle of my tirade to hide a
+smile.&nbsp; There was never any smile to hide.&nbsp; I feel that
+he has behaved disgracefully, wasting his time and my
+money.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He is going to turn over a new leaf;&rdquo; said
+Robina: &ldquo;I am sure he will make an excellent
+farmer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did not want a farmer,&rdquo; I explained; &ldquo;I
+wanted a Prime Minister.&nbsp; Children, Robina, are very
+disappointing.&nbsp; Veronica is all wrong.&nbsp; I like a
+mischievous child.&nbsp; I like reading stories of mischievous
+children: they amuse me.&nbsp; But not the child who puts a pound
+of gunpowder into a red-hot fire, and escapes with her life by a
+miracle.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And yet, I daresay,&rdquo; suggested Robina,
+&ldquo;that if one put it into a book&mdash;I mean that if you
+put it into a book, it would read amusingly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Likely enough,&rdquo; I agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;Other
+people&rsquo;s troubles can always be amusing.&nbsp; As it is, I
+shall be in a state of anxiety for the next six months,
+wondering, every moment that she is out of my sight, what new
+devilment she is up to.&nbsp; The Little Mother will be worried
+out of her life, unless we can keep it from her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Children will be children,&rdquo; murmured Robina,
+meaning to be comforting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is what I am complaining of, Robina.&nbsp; We are
+always hoping that ours won&rsquo;t be.&nbsp; She is full of
+faults, Veronica, and they are not always nice faults.&nbsp; She
+is lazy&mdash;lazy is not the word for it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She is lazy,&rdquo; Robina was compelled to admit.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There are other faults she might have had and
+welcome,&rdquo; I pointed out; &ldquo;faults I could have taken
+an interest in and liked her all the better for.&nbsp; You
+children are so obstinate.&nbsp; You will choose your own
+faults.&nbsp; Veronica is not truthful always.&nbsp; I wanted a
+family of little George Washingtons, who could not tell a
+lie.&nbsp; Veronica can.&nbsp; To get herself out of
+trouble&mdash;and provided there is any hope of anybody believing
+her&mdash;she does.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We all of us used to when we were young,&rdquo; Robina
+maintained; &ldquo;Dick used to, I used to.&nbsp; It is a common
+fault with children.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know it is,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;I did not
+want a child with common faults.&nbsp; I wanted something all my
+own.&nbsp; I wanted you, Robina, to be my ideal daughter.&nbsp; I
+had a girl in my mind that I am sure would have been
+charming.&nbsp; You are not a bit like her.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
+say she was perfect, she had her failings, but they were such
+delightful failings&mdash;much better than yours, Robina.&nbsp;
+She had a temper&mdash;a woman without a temper is insipid; but
+it was that kind of temper that made you love her all the
+more.&nbsp; Yours doesn&rsquo;t, Robina.&nbsp; I wish you had not
+been in such a hurry, and had left me to arrange your temper for
+you.&nbsp; We should all of us have preferred mine.&nbsp; It had
+all the attractions of temper without the drawbacks of the
+ordinary temper.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t use it up, I suppose, for yourself,
+Pa?&rdquo; suggested Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was a lady&rsquo;s temper,&rdquo; I explained.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; as I asked her, &ldquo;what is wrong with
+the one I have?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; answered Robina.&nbsp; Yet her tone
+conveyed doubt.&nbsp; &ldquo;It seems to me sometimes that an
+older temper would suit you better, that was all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have hinted as much before, Robina,&rdquo; I
+remarked, &ldquo;not only with reference to my temper, but with
+reference to things generally.&nbsp; One would think that you
+were dissatisfied with me because I am too young.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not in years perhaps,&rdquo; replied Robina,
+&ldquo;but&mdash;well, you know what I mean.&nbsp; One wants
+one&rsquo;s father to be always great and dignified.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We cannot change our ego,&rdquo; I explained to
+her.&nbsp; &ldquo;Some daughters would appreciate a father
+youthful enough in temperament to sympathise with and to indulge
+them.&nbsp; The solemn old fogey you have in your mind would have
+brought you up very differently.&nbsp; Let me tell you that, my
+girl.&nbsp; You would not have liked him, if you had had
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; Robina agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;You are
+awfully good in some ways.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What we have got to do in this world, Robina,&rdquo; I
+said, &ldquo;is to take people as they are, and make the best of
+them.&nbsp; We cannot expect everybody to be just as we would
+have them, and maybe we should not like them any better if they
+were.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t bother yourself about how much nicer they
+might be; think how nice they are.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina said she would try.&nbsp; I have hopes of making Robina
+a sensible woman.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Dick</span> and Veronica returned laden
+with parcels.&nbsp; They explained that &ldquo;Daddy Slee,&rdquo;
+as it appeared he was generally called, a local builder of
+renown, was following in his pony-cart, and was kindly bringing
+the bulkier things with him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I tried to hustle him,&rdquo; said Dick, &ldquo;but
+coming up after he had washed himself and had his tea seemed to
+be his idea of hustling.&nbsp; He has got the reputation of being
+an honest old Johnny, slow but sure; the others, they tell me,
+are slower.&nbsp; I thought you might care, later on, to talk to
+him about the house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Veronica took off her things and put them away, each one in
+its proper place.&nbsp; She said, if no one wanted her, she would
+read a chapter of &ldquo;The Vicar of Wakefield,&rdquo; and
+retired upstairs.&nbsp; Robina and I had an egg with our tea; Mr.
+Slee arrived as we had finished, and I took him straight into the
+kitchen.&nbsp; He was a large man, with a dreamy expression and a
+habit of sighing.&nbsp; He sighed when he saw our kitchen.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s four days&rsquo; work for three men
+here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and you&rsquo;ll want a new
+stove.&nbsp; Lord! what trouble children can be!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Robina agreed with him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Meanwhile,&rdquo; she demanded, &ldquo;how am I to
+cook?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Myself, missie,&rdquo; sighed Mr. Slee, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t see how you are going to cook.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll all have to tramp home again,&rdquo;
+thought Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And tell Little Mother the reason, and frighten her out
+of her life!&rdquo; retorted Robina indignantly.</p>
+<p>Robina had other ideas.&nbsp; Mr. Slee departed, promising
+that work should be commenced at seven o&rsquo;clock on Monday
+morning.&nbsp; Robina, the door closed, began to talk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let Pa have a sandwich,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;and
+catch the six-fifteen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We might all have a sandwich,&rdquo; suggested Dick;
+&ldquo;I could do with one myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pa can explain,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;that he has
+been called back to town on business.&nbsp; That will account for
+everything, and Little Mother will not be alarmed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She won&rsquo;t believe that business has brought him
+back at nine o&rsquo;clock on a Saturday night,&rdquo; argued
+Dick; &ldquo;you think that Little Mother hasn&rsquo;t any
+sense.&nbsp; She&rsquo;ll see there&rsquo;s something up, and ask
+a hundred questions.&nbsp; You know what she is.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pa,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;will have time while in
+the train to think out something plausible; that&rsquo;s where Pa
+is clever.&nbsp; With Pa off my hands I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t
+mind.&nbsp; We three can live on cold ham and things like
+that.&nbsp; By Thursday we will be all right, and then he can
+come down again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I pointed out to Robina, kindly but firmly, the utter
+absurdity of her idea.&nbsp; How could I leave them, three
+helpless children, with no one to look after them?&nbsp; What
+would the Little Mother say?&nbsp; What might not Veronica be up
+to in my absence?&nbsp; There were other things to be
+considered.&nbsp; The donkey might arrive at any moment&mdash;no
+responsible person there to receive him&mdash;to see to it that
+his simple wants would be provided for.&nbsp; I should have to
+interview Mr. St. Leonard again to fix up final details as
+regarded Dick.&nbsp; Who was going to look after the cow, about
+to be separated from us?&nbsp; Young Bute would be down again
+with plans.&nbsp; Who was going to take him over the house,
+explain things to him intelligibly?&nbsp; The new boy might turn
+up&mdash;this simple son of the soil Miss Janie had promised to
+dig out and send along.&nbsp; He would talk Berkshire.&nbsp; Who
+would there be to understand him&mdash;to reply to him in
+dialect?&nbsp; What was the use of her being impetuous and
+talking nonsense?</p>
+<p>She went on cutting sandwiches.&nbsp; She said they were not
+helpless children.&nbsp; She said if she and Dick at forty-two
+hadn&rsquo;t grit enough to run a six-roomed cottage it was time
+they learned.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s forty-two?&rdquo; I demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We are,&rdquo; explained Robina, &ldquo;Dick and
+I&mdash;between us.&nbsp; We shall be forty-two next
+birthday.&nbsp; Nearly your own age.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Veronica,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;for the next few
+days won&rsquo;t be a child at all.&nbsp; She knows nothing of
+the happy medium.&nbsp; She is either herself or she goes to the
+opposite extreme, and tries to be an angel.&nbsp; Till about the
+end of the week it will be like living with a vision.&nbsp; As
+for the donkey, we&rsquo;ll try and make him feel as much at home
+as if you were here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean to be rude, Pa,&rdquo; Robina
+explained, &ldquo;but from the way you put it you evidently
+regard yourself as the only one among us capable of interesting
+him.&nbsp; I take it he won&rsquo;t mind for a night or two
+sharing the shed with the cow.&nbsp; If he looks shocked at the
+suggestion, Dick can knock up a partition.&nbsp; I&rsquo;d rather
+for the present, till you come down again, the cow stopped where
+she was.&nbsp; She helps to wake me in the morning.&nbsp; You may
+reckon you have settled everything as far as Dick is
+concerned.&nbsp; If you talk to St. Leonard again for an hour it
+will be about the future of the Yellow Races or the possibility
+of life in Jupiter.&nbsp; If you mention terms he will be
+insulted, and if he won&rsquo;t let you then you will be
+insulted, and the whole thing will be off.&nbsp; Let me talk to
+Janie.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ve both of us got sense.&nbsp; As for Mr.
+Bute, I know all your ideas about the house, and I
+sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t listen to any of his silly arguments.&nbsp;
+What that young man wants is someone to tell him what he&rsquo;s
+got to do, and then let there be an end of it.&nbsp; And the
+sooner that handy boy turns up the better.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
+mind what he talks.&nbsp; All I want him to do is to clean knives
+and fetch water and chop wood.&nbsp; At the worst I&rsquo;ll get
+that home to him by pantomime.&nbsp; For conversation he can wait
+till you come down.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That is the gist of what she said.&nbsp; It didn&rsquo;t run
+exactly as I have put it down.&nbsp; There were points at which I
+interrupted, but Robina never listens; she just talks on, and at
+the end she assumes that, as a matter of course, you have come
+round to her point of view, and persuading her that you
+haven&rsquo;t means beginning the whole thing over again.</p>
+<p>She said I hadn&rsquo;t time to talk, and that she would write
+and tell me everything.&nbsp; Dick also said he would write and
+tell me everything; and that if I felt moved to send them down a
+hamper&mdash;the sort of thing that, left to themselves, Fortnum
+&amp; Mason would put together for a good-class picnic, say, for
+six persons&mdash;I might rely upon it that nothing would be
+wasted.</p>
+<p>Veronica, by my desire, walked with me to the end of the
+lane.&nbsp; I talked to her very seriously.&nbsp; Her difficulty
+was that she had not been blown up.&nbsp; Had she been blown up,
+then she would have known herself she had done wrong.&nbsp; In
+the book it is the disobedient child that is tossed by the
+bull.&nbsp; The child that has been sent with the little basket
+to visit the sick aunt may be right in the bull&rsquo;s
+way.&nbsp; That is a bit of bad luck for the bull.&nbsp; The poor
+bull is compelled to waste valuable time working round carefully,
+so as not to upset the basket.&nbsp; If the wicked child had
+sense (which in the book does not happen), it would, while the
+bull was dodging to get past the good child, seize the
+opportunity to move itself quickly.&nbsp; The wicked child never
+looks round, but pegs along steadily; and when the bull arrives
+it is sure to be in the most convenient position for receiving
+moral lessons.&nbsp; The good child, whatever its weight, crosses
+the ice in safety.&nbsp; The bad child may turn the scale at two
+stone lighter; the ice will have none of him.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you talk to me about relative pressure to the
+square inch,&rdquo; says the indignant ice.&nbsp; &ldquo;You were
+unkind to your little baby brother the week before last: in you
+go.&rdquo;&nbsp; Veronica&rsquo;s argument, temperately and
+courteously expressed, I admit, came practically to this:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I may have acted without sufficient knowledge to guide
+me.&nbsp; My education has not, perhaps, on the whole, been
+ordered wisely.&nbsp; Subjects that I feel will never be of the
+slightest interest or consequence to me have been insisted upon
+with almost tiresome reiteration.&nbsp; Matters that should be
+useful and helpful to me&mdash;gunpowder, to take but one
+example&mdash;I have been left in ignorance concerning.&nbsp;
+About all that I say nothing; people have done their best
+according to their lights, no doubt.&nbsp; When, however, we come
+to purity of motives, singleness of intention, then, I maintain,
+I am above reproach.&nbsp; The proof of this is that Providence
+has bestowed upon me the seal of its approval: I was not blown
+up.&nbsp; Had my conduct been open to censure&mdash;as in certain
+quarters has been suggested&mdash;should I be walking besides you
+now, undamaged&mdash;not a hair turned, as the saying is?&nbsp;
+No.&nbsp; Discriminating Fate&mdash;that is, if any reliance at
+all is to be placed on literature for the young&mdash;would have
+made it her business that at least I was included in the
+<i>d&eacute;bris</i>.&nbsp; Instead, what do we notice!&mdash;a
+shattered chimney, a ruined stove, broken windows, a wreckage of
+household utensils; I, alone of all things, miraculously
+preserved.&nbsp; I do not wish to press the point offensively,
+but really it would almost seem that it must be you
+three&mdash;you, my dear parent, upon whom will fall the bill for
+repairs; Dick, apt to attach too much importance, maybe, to his
+victuals, and who for the next few days will be compelled to
+exist chiefly upon tinned goods; Robina, by nature of a worrying
+disposition, certain till things get straight again to be next
+door to off her head&mdash;who must, by reason of conduct into
+which I do not enquire, have merited chastisement at the hands of
+Providence.&nbsp; The moral lesson would certainly appear to be
+between you three.&nbsp; I&mdash;it grows clear to me&mdash;have
+been throughout but the innocent instrument.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Admit the premise that to be virtuous is to escape whipping,
+the argument is logical.&nbsp; I felt that left uncombated it
+might lead us into yet further trouble.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Veronica,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the time has come to
+reveal to you a secret: literature is not always a safe guide to
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean&mdash;&rdquo; said Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that the writer of books
+is, generally speaking, an exceptionally moral man.&nbsp; That is
+what leads him astray: he is too good.&nbsp; This world does not
+come up to his ideas.&nbsp; It is not the world as he would have
+made it himself.&nbsp; To satisfy his craving for morality he
+sets to work to make a world of his own.&nbsp; It is not this
+world.&nbsp; It is not a bit like this world.&nbsp; In a world as
+it should be, Veronica, you would undoubtedly have been blown
+up&mdash;if not altogether, at all events partially.&nbsp; What
+you have to do, Veronica, is, with a full heart, to praise Heaven
+that this is not a perfect world.&nbsp; If it were I doubt very
+much, Veronica, your being here.&nbsp; That you are here happy
+and thriving proves that all is not as it should be.&nbsp; The
+bull of this world, feeling he wants to toss somebody, does not
+sit upon himself, so to speak, till the wicked child comes
+by.&nbsp; He takes the first child that turns up, and thanks God
+for it.&nbsp; A hundred to one it is the best child for miles
+around.&nbsp; The bull does not care.&nbsp; He spoils that
+pattern child.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d spoil a bishop, feeling as he
+does that morning.&nbsp; Your little friend in the velvet suit
+who did get himself blown up, at all events as regards the
+suit&mdash;&nbsp; Which of you was it that thought of that
+gunpowder, you or he?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Veronica claimed that the inspiration had been hers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can easily believe it.&nbsp; And was he anxious to
+steal the gunpowder and put it on the fire, or did he have to be
+persuaded?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Veronica admitted that in the qualities of a first-class hero
+he was wanting.&nbsp; Not till it had been suggested to him that
+he must at heart be a cowardy cowardy custard had he been moved
+to take a hand in the enterprise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A lad, clearly,&rdquo; I continued, &ldquo;that left to
+himself would be a comfort to his friends.&nbsp; And the story of
+the robbers&mdash;your invention or his?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Veronica was generously of opinion that he might have thought
+of it had he not been chiefly concerned at the moment with the
+idea of getting home to his mother.&nbsp; As it was, the clothing
+with romance of incidents otherwise bald and uninteresting had
+fallen upon her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The good child of the story.&nbsp; The fact stands out
+at every point.&nbsp; His one failing an amiable weakness.&nbsp;
+Do you not see it for yourself; Veronica?&nbsp; In the book, you,
+not he, would have tumbled over the mat.&nbsp; In this wicked
+world it is the wicked who prosper.&nbsp; He, the innocent, the
+virtuous, is torn into rags.&nbsp; You, the villain of the story,
+escape.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Veronica; &ldquo;then whenever
+nothing happens to you that means that you&rsquo;re a wrong
+&rsquo;un.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t go so far as to say that, Veronica.&nbsp;
+And I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t use slang.&nbsp; Dick is a man, and
+a man&mdash;well, never mind about a man.&nbsp; You, Veronica,
+must never forget that you&rsquo;re a lady.&nbsp; Justice must
+not be looked for in this world.&nbsp; Sometimes the wicked get
+what they deserve.&nbsp; More often they don&rsquo;t.&nbsp; There
+seems to be no rule.&nbsp; Follow the dictates of your
+conscience, Veronica, and blow&mdash;I mean be indifferent to the
+consequences.&nbsp; Sometimes you&rsquo;ll come out all right,
+and sometimes you won&rsquo;t.&nbsp; But the beautiful sensation
+will always be with you: I did right.&nbsp; Things have turned
+out unfortunately: but that&rsquo;s not my fault.&nbsp; Nobody
+can blame me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But they do,&rdquo; said Veronica, &ldquo;they blame
+you just as if you&rsquo;d meant to go and do it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It does not matter, Veronica,&rdquo; I pointed out,
+&ldquo;the opinion of the world.&nbsp; The good man disregards
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But they send you to bed,&rdquo; persisted
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let them,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;What is bed so
+long as the voice of the inward Monitor consoles us with the
+reflection&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; interrupted Veronica;
+&ldquo;it makes you feel all the madder.&nbsp; It does
+really.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It oughtn&rsquo;t to,&rdquo; I told her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then why does it?&rdquo; argued Veronica.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t it do what it ought to?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The trouble about arguing with children is that they will
+argue too.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Life&rsquo;s a difficult problem, Veronica,&rdquo; I
+allowed.&nbsp; &ldquo;Things are not as they ought to be, I admit
+it.&nbsp; But one must not despair.&nbsp; Something&rsquo;s got
+to be done.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s jolly hard on some of us,&rdquo; said
+Veronica.&nbsp; &ldquo;Strive as you may, you can&rsquo;t please
+everyone.&nbsp; And if you just as much as stand up for yourself,
+oh, crikey!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The duty of the grown-up person, Veronica,&rdquo; I
+said, &ldquo;is to bring up the child in the way that it should
+go.&nbsp; It isn&rsquo;t easy work, and occasionally irritability
+may creep in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s such a lot of &rsquo;em at it,&rdquo;
+grumbled Veronica.&nbsp; &ldquo;There are times, between
+&rsquo;em all, when you don&rsquo;t know whether you&rsquo;re
+standing on your head or your heels.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They mean well, Veronica,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;When I was a little boy I used to think just as you
+do.&nbsp; But now&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you ever get into rows?&rdquo; interrupted
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did I ever?&mdash;was never out of them, so far as I
+can recollect.&nbsp; If it wasn&rsquo;t one thing, then it was
+another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And didn&rsquo;t it make you wild?&rdquo; enquired
+Veronica, &ldquo;when first of all they&rsquo;d ask what
+you&rsquo;d got to say and why you&rsquo;d done it, and then,
+when you tried to explain things to them, wouldn&rsquo;t listen
+to you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What used to irritate me most, Veronica,&rdquo; I
+replied&mdash;&ldquo;I can remember it so well&mdash;was when
+they talked steadily for half an hour themselves, and then, when
+I would attempt with one sentence to put them right about the
+thing, turn round and bully-rag me for being
+argumentative.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If they would only listen,&rdquo; agreed Veronica,
+&ldquo;you might get them to grasp things.&nbsp; But no, they
+talk and talk, till at the end they don&rsquo;t know what they
+are talking about themselves, and then they pretend it&rsquo;s
+your fault for having made them tired.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;they always end up like
+that.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am tired of talking to you,&rsquo; they
+say&mdash;as if we were not tired of listening to
+them!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then when you think,&rdquo; said Veronica,
+&ldquo;they say you oughtn&rsquo;t to think.&nbsp; And if you
+don&rsquo;t think, and let it out by accident, then they say
+&lsquo;why don&rsquo;t you think?&rsquo;&nbsp; It don&rsquo;t
+seem as though we could do right.&nbsp; It makes one almost
+despair.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And it isn&rsquo;t even as if they were always right
+themselves,&rdquo; I pointed out to her.&nbsp; &ldquo;When they
+knock over a glass it is, &lsquo;Who put that glass
+there?&rsquo;&nbsp; You&rsquo;d think that somebody had put it
+there on purpose and made it invisible.&nbsp; They are not
+expected to see a glass six inches in front of their nose, in the
+place where the glass ought to be.&nbsp; The way they talk
+you&rsquo;d suppose that a glass had no business on a
+table.&nbsp; If I broke it, then it was always, &lsquo;Clumsy
+little devil! ought to have his dinner in the
+nursery.&rsquo;&nbsp; If they mislay their things and can&rsquo;t
+find them, it&rsquo;s, &lsquo;Who&rsquo;s been interfering with
+my things?&nbsp; Who&rsquo;s been in here rummaging
+about?&rsquo;&nbsp; Then when they find it they want to know
+indignantly who put it there.&nbsp; If I could not find a thing,
+for the simple reason that somebody had taken it away and put it
+somewhere else, then wherever they had put it was the right place
+for it, and I was a little idiot for not knowing it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And of course you mustn&rsquo;t say anything,&rdquo;
+commented Veronica.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, no!&nbsp; If they do
+something silly and you just point it out to them, then there is
+always a reason for it that you wouldn&rsquo;t understand.&nbsp;
+Oh, yes!&nbsp; And if you make just the slightest mistake, like
+what is natural to all of us, that is because you are wicked and
+unfeeling and don&rsquo;t want to be anything else.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will tell you what we will do, Veronica,&rdquo; I
+said; &ldquo;we will write a book.&nbsp; You shall help me.&nbsp;
+And in it the children shall be the wise and good people who
+never make mistakes, and they shall boss the show&mdash;you know
+what I mean&mdash;look after the grown-up people and bring them
+up properly.&nbsp; And everything the grown-up people do, or
+don&rsquo;t do, will be wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Veronica clapped her hands.&nbsp; &ldquo;No, will you
+really?&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will really,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;We will
+call it a moral tale for parents; and all the children will buy
+it and give it to their fathers and mothers and such-like folk
+for their birthdays, with writing on the title-page, &lsquo;From
+Johnny, or Jenny, to dear Papa, or to dear Aunty, with every good
+wish for his or her improvement!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think they will read it?&rdquo; doubted
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We will put in it something shocking,&rdquo; I
+suggested, &ldquo;and get some paper to denounce it as a disgrace
+to English literature.&nbsp; And if that won&rsquo;t do it we
+will say it is a translation from the Russian.&nbsp; The children
+shall stop at home and arrange what to have for dinner, and the
+grown-up people shall be sent to school.&nbsp; We will start them
+off each morning with a little satchel.&nbsp; They shall be made
+to read &lsquo;Grimm&rsquo;s Fairy Tales&rsquo; in the original
+German, with notes; and learn &lsquo;Old Mother Hubbard&rsquo; by
+heart and explain the grammar.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And go to bed early,&rdquo; suggested Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We will have them all in bed by eight o&rsquo;clock,
+Veronica, and they will go cheerfully, as if they liked it, or we
+will know the reason why.&nbsp; We will make them say their
+prayers.&nbsp; Between ourselves, Veronica, I don&rsquo;t believe
+they always do.&nbsp; And no reading in bed, and no final glass
+of whisky toddy, or any nonsense of that sort.&nbsp; An Abernethy
+biscuit and perhaps if they are good a jujube, and then
+&lsquo;Good night,&rsquo; and down with their head on the
+pillow.&nbsp; And no calling out, and no pretending they have got
+a pain in their tummy and creeping downstairs in their
+night-shirts and clamouring for brandy.&nbsp; We will be up to
+all their tricks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And they&rsquo;ll have to take their medicine,&rdquo;
+Veronica remembered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The slightest suggestion of sulkiness, the first
+intimation that they are not enjoying themselves, will mean cod
+liver oil in a tablespoon, Veronica.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And we will ask them why they never use their
+commonsense,&rdquo; chirped Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That will be our trouble, Veronica; that they
+won&rsquo;t have any sense of any sort&mdash;not what we shall
+deem sense.&nbsp; But, nevertheless, we will be just.&nbsp; We
+will always give them a reason why they have got to do everything
+they don&rsquo;t want to do, and nothing that they want to
+do.&nbsp; They won&rsquo;t understand it and they won&rsquo;t
+agree that it is a reason; but they will keep that to themselves,
+if they are wise.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And of course they must not argue,&rdquo; Veronica
+insisted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If they answer back, Veronica, that will show they are
+cursed with an argumentative temperament which must be rooted out
+at any cost,&rdquo; I agreed; &ldquo;and if they don&rsquo;t say
+anything, that will prove them possessed of a surly disposition
+which must be checked at once, before it develops into a
+vice.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And whatever we do to them we will tell them it&rsquo;s
+for their own good,&rdquo; Veronica chortled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course it will be for their own good,&rdquo; I
+answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;That will be our chief
+pleasure&mdash;making them good and happy.&nbsp; It won&rsquo;t
+be their pleasure, but that will be owing to their
+ignorance.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They will be grateful to us later on,&rdquo; gurgled
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With that assurance we will comfort them from time to
+time,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;We will be good to them in
+all ways.&nbsp; We will let them play games&mdash;not stupid
+games, golf and croquet, that do you no good and lead only to
+language and dispute&mdash;but bears and wolves and whales;
+educational sort of games that will aid them in acquiring
+knowledge of natural history.&nbsp; We will show them how to play
+Pirates and Red Indians and Ogres&mdash;sensible play that will
+help them to develop their imaginative faculties.&nbsp; That is
+why grown-up people are so dull; they are never made to
+think.&nbsp; But now and then,&rdquo; I continued, &ldquo;we will
+let them play their own games, say on Wednesday and Saturday
+afternoons.&nbsp; We will invite other grown-ups to come to tea
+with them, and let them flirt in the garden, or if wet make love
+in the dining-room, till nurse comes for them.&nbsp; But we, of
+course, must choose their friends for them&mdash;nice,
+well-behaved ladies and gentlemen, the parents of respectable
+children; because left to themselves&mdash;well, you know what
+they are!&nbsp; They would just as likely fall in love with quite
+undesirable people&mdash;men and women we could not think of
+having about the house.&nbsp; We will select for them companions
+we feel sure will be the most suitable for them; and if they
+don&rsquo;t like them&mdash;if Uncle William says he can&rsquo;t
+bear the girl we have invited up to love him&mdash;that he
+positively hates her, we till tell him that it is only his wilful
+temper, and that he&rsquo;s got to like her because she&rsquo;s
+good for him; and don&rsquo;t let us have any of his
+fretfulness.&nbsp; And if Grandmamma pouts and says she
+won&rsquo;t love old man Jones merely because he&rsquo;s got a
+red nose, or a glass eye, or some silly reason of that sort, we
+will say to her: &lsquo;All right, my lady, you will play with
+Mr. Jones and be nice to him, or you will spend the afternoon
+putting your room tidy; make up your mind.&rsquo;&nbsp; We will
+let them marry (on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons), and play
+at keeping house.&nbsp; And if they quarrel we will shake them
+and take the babies away from them, and lock them up in drawers,
+and tell them they sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t have them again till they
+are good.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And the more they try to be good, the more it will turn
+out that they ain&rsquo;t been good,&rdquo; Veronica
+reflected.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Their goodness and their badness will depend upon us in
+more senses than one, Veronica,&rdquo; I explained.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;When Consols are down, when the east wind has touched up
+our liver, they will be surprised how bad they are.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And they mustn&rsquo;t ever forget what they&rsquo;ve
+ever been once told,&rdquo; crowed Veronica.&nbsp; &ldquo;We
+mustn&rsquo;t have to tell &rsquo;em the same thing over and over
+again, like we was talking to brick walls.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And if we meant to tell them and forgot to tell
+them,&rdquo; I added, &ldquo;we will tell them that they ought
+not to want us to tell them a simple thing like that, as if they
+were mere babies.&nbsp; We must remember all these
+points.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And if they grumble we&rsquo;ll tell them that&rsquo;s
+&rsquo;cos they don&rsquo;t know how happy they are.&nbsp; And
+we&rsquo;ll tell them how good we used to be when&mdash;I say,
+don&rsquo;t you miss your train, or I shall get into a
+row.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Great Scott!&nbsp; I&rsquo;d forgotten all about that
+train, Veronica,&rdquo; I admitted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Better run,&rdquo; suggested Veronica.</p>
+<p>It sounded good advice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Keep on thinking about that book,&rdquo; shouted
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Make a note of things as they occur to you,&rdquo; I
+shouted back.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What shall we call it?&rdquo; Veronica screamed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Why the Man in the Moon looks sat
+upon,&rsquo;&rdquo; I shrieked.</p>
+<p>When I turned again she was sitting on the top rail of the
+stile conducting an imaginary orchestra with one of her own
+shoes.&nbsp; The six-fifteen was fortunately twenty minutes
+late.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>I thought it best to tell Ethelbertha the truth; that things
+had gone wrong with the kitchen stove.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me know the worst,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Is
+Veronica hurt?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The worst,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is that I shall have
+to pay for a new range.&nbsp; Why, when anything goes amiss, poor
+Veronica should be assumed as a matter of course to be in it,
+appears to me unjust.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are sure she&rsquo;s all right?&rdquo; persisted
+Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Honest Injun&mdash;confound those children and their
+slang&mdash;I mean positively,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp; The
+Little Mother looked relieved.</p>
+<p>I told her all the trouble we had had in connection with the
+cow.&nbsp; Her sympathies were chiefly with the cow.&nbsp; I told
+her I had hopes of Robina&rsquo;s developing into a sensible
+woman.&nbsp; We talked quite a deal about Robina.&nbsp; We agreed
+that between us we had accomplished something rather clever.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must get back as soon as I can,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want young Bute getting wrong ideas into his
+head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who is young Bute?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The architect,&rdquo; I explained.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought he was an old man,&rdquo; said
+Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Old Spreight is old enough,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Young Bute is one of his young men; but he understands his
+work, and seems intelligent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s he like?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Personally, an exceedingly nice young fellow.&nbsp;
+There&rsquo;s a good deal of sense in him.&nbsp; I like a boy who
+listens.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good-looking?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not objectionably so,&rdquo; I replied.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+pleasant face&mdash;particularly when he smiles.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is he married?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Really, it did not occur to me to ask him,&rdquo; I
+admitted.&nbsp; &ldquo;How curious you women are!&nbsp; No, I
+don&rsquo;t think so.&nbsp; I should say not.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo; she demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know.&nbsp; He doesn&rsquo;t give you
+the idea of a married man.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll like him.&nbsp;
+Seems so fond of his sister.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shall we be seeing much of him?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A goodish deal,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+expect he will be going down on Monday.&nbsp; Very annoying, this
+stove business.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is the use of his being there without you?&rdquo;
+Ethelbertha wanted to know.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;ll potter round,&rdquo; I suggested,
+&ldquo;and take measurements.&nbsp; Dick will be about to explain
+things to him.&nbsp; Or, if he isn&rsquo;t, there&rsquo;s
+Robina&mdash;awkward thing is, Robina seems to have taken a
+dislike to him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why has she taken a dislike to him?&rdquo; asked
+Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, because he mistook the back of the house for the
+front, or the front of the house for the back,&rdquo; I
+explained; &ldquo;I forget which now.&nbsp; Says it&rsquo;s his
+smile that irritates her.&nbsp; She owns herself there&rsquo;s no
+real reason.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When will you be going down again?&rdquo; Ethelbertha
+asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On Thursday next,&rdquo; I told her; &ldquo;stove or no
+stove.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She said she would come with me.&nbsp; She felt the change
+would do her good, and promised not to do anything when she got
+there.&nbsp; And then I told her all that I had done for
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ordinary farmer,&rdquo; I pointed out to her,
+&ldquo;is so often a haphazard type of man with no ideas.&nbsp;
+If successful, it is by reason of a natural instinct which cannot
+be taught.&nbsp; St. Leonard has studied the theory of the
+thing.&nbsp; From him Dick will learn all that can be learnt
+about farming.&nbsp; The selection, I felt, demanded careful
+judgment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But will Dick stick to it?&rdquo; Ethelbertha
+wondered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There, again,&rdquo; I pointed out to her, &ldquo;the
+choice was one calling for exceptional foresight.&nbsp; The old
+man&mdash;as a matter of fact, he isn&rsquo;t old at all;
+can&rsquo;t be very much older than myself; I don&rsquo;t know
+why they all call him the old man&mdash;has formed a high opinion
+of Dick.&nbsp; His daughter told me so, and I have taken care to
+let Dick know it.&nbsp; The boy will not care to disappoint
+him.&nbsp; Her mother&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whose mother?&rdquo; interrupted Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Janie&rsquo;s mother, Mrs. St. Leonard,&rdquo; I
+explained.&nbsp; &ldquo;She also has formed a good opinion of
+him.&nbsp; The children like him.&nbsp; Janie told me
+so.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She seems to do a goodish deal of talking, this Miss
+Janie,&rdquo; remarked Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will like her,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;She is a
+charming girl&mdash;so sensible, and good, and unselfish,
+and&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who told you all this about her?&rdquo; interrupted
+Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can see it for yourself,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The mother appears to be a nonentity, and St. Leonard
+himself&mdash;well, he is not a business man.&nbsp; It is Janie
+who manages everything&mdash;keeps everything going.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is she like?&rdquo; asked Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am telling you,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;She is so
+practical, and yet at the same time&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In appearance, I mean,&rdquo; explained
+Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How you women,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;do worry about
+mere looks!&nbsp; What does it matter?&nbsp; If you want to know,
+it is that sort of face that grows upon you.&nbsp; At first you
+do not notice how beautiful it is, but when you come to look into
+it&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And has she also formed a high opinion of Dick?&rdquo;
+interrupted Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She will be disappointed in him,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;if he does not work hard and stick to it.&nbsp; They will
+all be disappointed in him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s it got to do with them?&rdquo; demanded
+Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not thinking about them,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What I look at is&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like her,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like any of them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp; She didn&rsquo;t seem to be
+listening.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know that class of man,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and
+the wife appears, if anything, to be worse.&nbsp; As for the
+girl&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When you come to know them&mdash;&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>She said she didn&rsquo;t want to know them.&nbsp; She wanted
+to go down on Monday, early.</p>
+<p>I got her to see&mdash;it took some little time&mdash;the
+disadvantages of this.&nbsp; We should only be adding to
+Robina&rsquo;s troubles; and change of plan now would unsettle
+Dick&rsquo;s mind.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has promised to write me,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and
+tell me the result of his first day&rsquo;s experience.&nbsp; Let
+us wait and hear what he says.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She said that whatever could have possessed her to let me take
+those poor unfortunate children away from her, and muddle up
+everything without her, was a mystery to herself.&nbsp; She hoped
+that, at least, I had done nothing irrevocable in the case of
+Veronica.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Veronica,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is really wishful, I
+think, to improve.&nbsp; I have bought her a donkey.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A what?&rdquo; exclaimed Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A donkey,&rdquo; I repeated.&nbsp; &ldquo;The child
+took a fancy to it, and we all agreed it might help to steady
+her&mdash;give her a sense of responsibility.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I somehow felt you hadn&rsquo;t overlooked
+Veronica,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>I thought it best to change the conversation.&nbsp; She seemed
+in a fretful mood.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Robina&rsquo;s</span> letter was dated
+Monday evening, and reached us Tuesday morning.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>&ldquo;I hope you caught your train,&rdquo; she wrote.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Veronica did not get back till half-past six.&nbsp; She
+informed me that you and she had found a good deal to talk about,
+and that &lsquo;one thing had led to another.&rsquo;&nbsp; She is
+a quaint young imp, but I think your lecture must have done her
+good.&nbsp; Her present attitude is that of gentle forbearance to
+all around her&mdash;not without its dignity.&nbsp; She has not
+snorted once, and at times is really helpful.&nbsp; I have given
+her an empty scribbling diary we found in your desk, and most of
+her spare time she remains shut up with it in the bedroom.&nbsp;
+She tells me you and she are writing a book together.&nbsp; I
+asked her what about.&nbsp; She waved me aside with the assurance
+that I would know &lsquo;all in good time,&rsquo; and that it was
+going to do good.&nbsp; I caught sight of just the title-page
+last night.&nbsp; It was lying open on the dressing-table:
+&lsquo;Why the Man in the Moon looks sat upon.&rsquo;&nbsp; It
+sounds like a title of yours.&nbsp; But I would not look further,
+though tempted.&nbsp; She has drawn a picture underneath.&nbsp;
+It is really not bad.&nbsp; The old gentleman really does look
+sat upon, and intensely disgusted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Sir Robert&rsquo;&mdash;his name being Theodore,
+which doesn&rsquo;t seem to suit him&mdash;turns out to be the
+only son of a widow, a Mrs. Foy, our next-door neighbour to the
+south.&nbsp; We met her coming out of church on Sunday
+morning.&nbsp; She was still crying.&nbsp; Dick took Veronica on
+ahead, and I walked part of the way home with them.&nbsp; Her
+grandfather, it appears, was killed many years ago by the
+bursting of a boiler; and she is haunted, poor lady, by the
+conviction that Theodore is the inheritor of an hereditary
+tendency to getting himself blown up.&nbsp; She attaches no blame
+to us, seeing in Saturday&rsquo;s catastrophe only the hand of
+the Family Curse.&nbsp; I tried to comfort her with the idea that
+the Curse having spent itself upon a futile effort, nothing
+further need now be feared from it; but she persists in taking
+the gloomier view that in wrecking our kitchen, Theodore&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Doom,&rsquo; as she calls it, was merely indulging in a
+sort of dress rehearsal; the finishing performance may be relied
+upon to follow.&nbsp; It sounds ridiculous, but the poor woman
+was so desperately in earnest that when an unlucky urchin, coming
+out of a cottage we were passing, tripped on the doorstep and let
+fall a jug, we both screamed at the same time, and were equally
+surprised to find &lsquo;Sir Robert&rsquo; still between us and
+all in one piece.&nbsp; I thought it foolish to discuss all this
+before the child himself; but did not like to stop her.&nbsp; As
+a result, he regards himself evidently as the chosen foe of
+Heaven, and is not, unnaturally, proud of himself.&nbsp; She
+called here this (Monday) afternoon to leave cards; and, at her
+request, I showed her the kitchen and the mat over which he had
+stumbled.&nbsp; She seemed surprised that the &lsquo;Doom&rsquo;
+had let slip so favourable a chance of accomplishing its
+business, and gathered from the fact added cause for
+anxiety.&nbsp; Evidently something much more thorough is in store
+for Master Theodore.&nbsp; It was only half a pound of gunpowder,
+she told me.&nbsp; Doctor Smallboy&rsquo;s gardener had bought it
+for the purpose of raising the stump of an old elm-tree, and had
+left it for a moment on the grass while he had returned to the
+house for more brown paper.&nbsp; She seemed pleased with the
+gardener, who, as she said, might, if dishonestly inclined, have
+charged her for a pound.&nbsp; I wanted to pay for&mdash;at all
+events&mdash;our share, but she would not take a penny.&nbsp; Her
+late lamented grandfather she regards as the person responsible
+for the entire incident, and perhaps it may be as well not to
+disturb her view.&nbsp; Had I suggested it, I feel sure she would
+have seen the justice of her providing us with a new kitchen
+range.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wildly exaggerated accounts of the affair are flying
+round the neighbourhood; and my chief fear is that Veronica may
+discover she is a local celebrity.&nbsp; Your sudden
+disappearance is supposed to have been heavenward.&nbsp; An old
+farm labourer who saw you pass on your way to the station speaks
+of you as &lsquo;the ghost of the poor gentleman himself;&rsquo;
+and fragments of clothing found anywhere within a radius of two
+miles are being preserved, I am told, as specimens of your
+remains.&nbsp; Boots would appear to have been your chief
+apparel.&nbsp; Seven pairs have already been collected from the
+surrounding ditches.&nbsp; Among the more public-spirited there
+is talk of using you to start a local museum.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>These first three paragraphs I did not read to
+Ethelbertha.&nbsp; Fortunately they just filled the first sheet,
+which I took an opportunity of slipping into my pocket
+unobserved.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>&ldquo;The new boy arrived on Sunday morning,&rdquo; she
+continued.&nbsp; &ldquo;His name&mdash;if I have got it
+right&mdash;is William.&nbsp; Anyhow, that is the nearest I can
+get to it.&nbsp; His other name, if any, I must leave you to
+extract from him yourself.&nbsp; It may be Berkshire that he
+talks, but it sounds more like barking.&nbsp; Please excuse the
+pun; but I have just been talking to him for half an hour, trying
+to make him understand that I want him to go home, and maybe, as
+a result, I am feeling a little hysterical.&nbsp; Anything more
+rural I cannot imagine.&nbsp; But he is anxious to learn, and a
+fairly wide field is in front of him.&nbsp; I caught him after
+our breakfast on Sunday calmly throwing everything left over onto
+the dust-heap.&nbsp; I pointed out to him the wickedness of
+wasting nourishing food, and impressed upon him that the proper
+place for victuals was inside us.&nbsp; He never answers.&nbsp;
+He stands stock still, with his mouth as wide open as it will
+go&mdash;which is saying a good deal&mdash;and one trusts that
+one&rsquo;s words are entering into him.&nbsp; All Sunday
+afternoon he was struggling valiantly against an almost
+supernatural sleepiness.&nbsp; After tea he got worse, and I
+began to think he would be no use to me.&nbsp; We none of us ate
+much supper; and Dick, who appears able to understand him, helped
+him to carry the things out.&nbsp; I heard them talking, and then
+Dick came back and closed the door behind him.&nbsp; &lsquo;He
+wants to know,&rsquo; said Dick, &lsquo;if he can leave the
+corned beef over till to-morrow.&nbsp; Because, if he eats it all
+to-night, he doesn&rsquo;t think he will be able to walk
+home.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Veronica takes great interest in him.&nbsp; She has
+evidently a motherly side to her character, for which we none of
+us have given her credit.&nbsp; She says she is sure there is
+good in him.&nbsp; She sits beside him while he chops wood, and
+tells him carefully selected stories, calculated, she argues, to
+develop his intelligence.&nbsp; She is careful, moreover, not to
+hurt his feelings by any display of superiority.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of
+course, anyone leading a useful life, such as yours,&rsquo; I
+overheard her saying to him this morning, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t
+naturally get much time for reading.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve nothing
+else to do, you see, &rsquo;cept to improve myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The donkey arrived this afternoon while I was
+out&mdash;galloping, I am given to understand, with &rsquo;Opkins
+on his back.&nbsp; There seems to be some secret between those
+two.&nbsp; We have tried him with hay, and we have tried him with
+thistles; but he seems to prefer bread-and-butter.&nbsp; I have
+not been able as yet to find out whether he takes tea or coffee
+in the morning.&nbsp; But he is an animal that evidently knows
+his own mind, and fortunately both are in the house.&nbsp; We are
+putting him up for to-night with the cow, who greeted him at
+first with enthusiasm and wanted to adopt him, but has grown cold
+to him since on discovering that he is not a calf.&nbsp; I have
+been trying to make friends with her, but she is so very
+unresponsive.&nbsp; She doesn&rsquo;t seem to want anything but
+grass, and prefers to get that for herself.&nbsp; She
+doesn&rsquo;t seem to want to be happy ever again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A funny thing happened in church.&nbsp; I was
+forgetting to tell you.&nbsp; The St. Leonards occupy two pews at
+the opposite end from the door.&nbsp; They were all there when we
+arrived, with the exception of the old gentleman himself.&nbsp;
+He came in just before the &lsquo;Dearly Beloved,&rsquo; when
+everybody was standing up.&nbsp; A running fire of suppressed
+titters followed him up the aisle, and some of the people laughed
+outright.&nbsp; I could see no reason why.&nbsp; He looked a
+dignified old gentleman in his grey hair and tightly buttoned
+frock coat, which gives him a somewhat military appearance.&nbsp;
+But when he came level with our pew I understood.&nbsp; Hurrying
+back from his morning round, and with no one there to superintend
+him, the dear old absent-minded thing had forgotten to change his
+breeches.&nbsp; From a little above the knee upward he was a
+perfect Christian; but his legs were just those of a disreputable
+sinner.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;What&rsquo;s the joke?&rsquo; he whispered to me
+as he passed&mdash;I was in the corner seat.&nbsp; &lsquo;Have I
+missed it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We called round on them after lunch, and at once I was
+appealed to for my decision.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Now, here&rsquo;s a plain sensible girl,&rsquo;
+exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the
+room.&rsquo;&nbsp; (You will notice I put no comma after
+&lsquo;plain.&rsquo;&nbsp; I am taking it he did not intend
+one.&nbsp; You can employ one adjective to qualify another,
+can&rsquo;t you?)&nbsp; &lsquo;And I will put it to her, What
+difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church in
+trousers or in breeches?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I do not see,&rsquo; retorted Mrs. St. Leonard
+somewhat coldly, &lsquo;that Miss Robina is in any better
+position than myself to speak with authority on the views of the
+Almighty&rsquo;&mdash;which I felt was true.&nbsp; &lsquo;If it
+makes no difference to the Almighty, then why not, for my sake,
+trousers?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;The essential thing,&rsquo; he persisted,
+&lsquo;is a contrite heart.&rsquo;&nbsp; He was getting very
+cross.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It may just as well be dressed
+respectably,&rsquo; was his wife&rsquo;s opinion.&nbsp; He left
+the room, slamming the door.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do like Janie the more and more I see of her.&nbsp; I
+do hope she will let me get real chums with her.&nbsp; She does
+me so much good.&nbsp; (I read that bit twice over to
+Ethelbertha, pretending I had lost the place.)&nbsp; I suppose it
+is having rather a silly mother and an unpractical father that
+has made her so capable.&nbsp; If you and Little Mother had been
+proper sort of parents I might have been quite a decent sort of
+girl.&nbsp; But it&rsquo;s too late finding fault with you
+now.&nbsp; I suppose I must put up with you.&nbsp; She works so
+hard, and is so unselfish.&nbsp; But she is not like some good
+people, who make you feel it is hopeless your trying to be
+good.&nbsp; She gets cross and impatient; and then she laughs at
+herself, and gets right again that way.&nbsp; Poor Mrs. St.
+Leonard!&nbsp; I cannot help feeling sorry for her.&nbsp; She
+would have been so happy as the wife of a really respectable City
+man, who would have gone off every morning with a flower in his
+buttonhole and have worn a white waistcoat on Sundays.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t believe what they say: that husbands and wives should
+be the opposite of one another.&nbsp; Mr. St. Leonard ought to
+have married a brainy woman, who would have discussed philosophy
+with him, and have been just as happy drinking beer out of a
+tea-cup: you know the sort I mean.&nbsp; If ever I marry it will
+be a short-tempered man who loves music and is a good dancer; and
+if I find out too late that he&rsquo;s clever I&rsquo;ll run away
+from him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dick has not yet come home&mdash;nearly eight
+o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; Veronica is supposed to be in bed, but I can
+hear things falling.&nbsp; Poor boy!&nbsp; I expect he&rsquo;ll
+be tired; but to-day is an exception.&nbsp; Three hundred sheep
+have had to be brought all the way from Ilsley, and must be
+&lsquo;herded&rsquo;&mdash;I fancy it is called&mdash;before
+anybody can think of supper.&nbsp; I saw to it that he had a good
+dinner.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And now to come to business.&nbsp; Young Bute has been
+here all day, and has only just left.&nbsp; He is coming down
+again on Friday&mdash;which, by the way, don&rsquo;t forget is
+Mrs. St. Leonard&rsquo;s &lsquo;At Home&rsquo; day.&nbsp; She
+hopes she may then have the pleasure of making your acquaintance,
+and thinks that possibly there may be present one or two people
+we may like to know.&nbsp; From which I gather that half the
+neighbourhood has been specially invited to meet you.&nbsp; So
+mind you bring a frock-coat; and if Little Mother can put her
+hand easily on my pink muslin with the spots&mdash;it is either
+in my wardrobe or else in the bottom drawer in Veronica&rsquo;s
+room, if it isn&rsquo;t in the cardboard box underneath
+mother&rsquo;s bed&mdash;you might slip it into your bag.&nbsp;
+But whatever you do don&rsquo;t crush it.&nbsp; The sash I feel
+sure mother put away somewhere herself.&nbsp; He sees no
+reason&mdash;I&rsquo;m talking now about young Bute,&mdash;if you
+approve his plans, why work should not be commenced
+immediately.&nbsp; Shall I write old Slee to meet you at the
+house on Friday?&nbsp; From all accounts I don&rsquo;t think
+you&rsquo;ll do better.&nbsp; He is on the spot, and they say he
+is most reasonable.&nbsp; But you have to get estimates,
+don&rsquo;t you?&nbsp; He suggests&mdash;Mr. Bute, I
+mean&mdash;throwing what used to be the dairy into the passage,
+which will make a hall big enough for anything.&nbsp; We might
+even give a dance in it, he thinks.&nbsp; But all this you will
+be able to discuss with him on Friday.&nbsp; He has evidently
+taken a great deal of pains, and some of his suggestions sound
+sensible.&nbsp; But of course he must fully understand that it is
+what we want, not what he thinks, that is important.&nbsp; I told
+him you said I could have my room exactly as I liked it myself;
+and I have explained to him my ideas.&nbsp; He seemed at first to
+be under the impression that I didn&rsquo;t know what I was
+talking about, so I made it quite clear to him that I did, with
+the result that he has consented to carry out my instructions, on
+condition that I put them down in black and white&mdash;which I
+think just as well, as then there can be no excuse afterwards for
+argument.&nbsp; I like him better than I did the first
+time.&nbsp; About everything else he can be fairly amiable.&nbsp;
+It is when he talks about &lsquo;frontal elevations&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;ground plans&rsquo; that he irritates me.&nbsp; Tell
+Little Mother that I&rsquo;ll write her to-morrow.&nbsp;
+Couldn&rsquo;t she come down with you on Friday?&nbsp; Everything
+will be ship-shape by then; and&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The remainder was of a nature more private.&nbsp; She
+concluded with a postscript, which also I did not read to
+Ethelbertha.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thought I had finished telling you everything, when
+quite a stylish rat-tat sounded on the door.&nbsp; I placed an
+old straw hat of Dick&rsquo;s in a prominent position, called
+loudly to an imaginary &lsquo;John&rsquo; not to go without the
+letters, and then opened it.&nbsp; He turned out to be the local
+reporter.&nbsp; I need not have been alarmed.&nbsp; He was much
+the more nervous of the two, and was so full of excuses that had
+I not come to his rescue I believe he would have gone away
+forgetting what he&rsquo;d come for.&nbsp; Nothing save an
+overwhelming sense of duty to the Public (with a capital P) could
+have induced him to inflict himself upon me.&nbsp; Could I give
+him a few details which would enable him to set rumour
+right?&nbsp; I immediately saw visions of headlines:
+&lsquo;Domestic Tragedy!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Eminent Author blown
+up by his own Daughter!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Once Happy Home now a
+Mere Wreck!&rsquo;&nbsp; It seemed to me our only plan was to
+enlist this amiable young man upon our side; I hope I did not
+overdo it.&nbsp; My idea was to convey the impression that one
+glance at him had convinced me he was the best and noblest of
+mankind; that I felt I could rely upon his wit and courage to
+save us from a notoriety that, so far as I was concerned, would
+sadden my whole life; and that if he did so eternal gratitude and
+admiration would be the least I could lay at his feet.&nbsp; I
+can be nice when I try.&nbsp; People have said so.&nbsp; We
+parted with only a pressure of the hand, and I hope he
+won&rsquo;t get into trouble, but I see <i>The Berkshire
+Courier</i> is going to be deprived of its prey.&nbsp; Dick has
+just come in.&nbsp; He promises to talk when he has finished
+eating.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>Dick&rsquo;s letter, for which Ethelbertha seemed to be
+strangely impatient, reached us on Wednesday morning.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If ever you want to find out, Dad, what hard work
+really means, you try farming,&rdquo; wrote Dick; &ldquo;and yet
+I believe you would like it.&nbsp; Hasn&rsquo;t some old Johnny
+somewhere described it as the poetry of the ploughshare?&nbsp;
+Why did we ever take to bothering about anything
+else&mdash;shutting ourselves up in stuffy offices, worrying
+ourselves to death about a lot of rubbish that isn&rsquo;t any
+good to anybody?&nbsp; I wish I could put it properly, Dad; you
+would see just what I mean.&nbsp; Why don&rsquo;t we live in
+simply-built houses and get most everything we want out of the
+land: which we easily could?&nbsp; You take a dozen poor devils
+away from walking behind the plough and put them down into
+coal-mines, and set them running about half-naked among a lot of
+roaring furnaces, and between them they turn out a machine that
+does the ploughing for them.&nbsp; What is the sense of it?&nbsp;
+Of course some things are useful.&nbsp; I would like a motor-car,
+and railways and steamboats are all right; but it seems to me
+that half the fiddle-faddles we fancy we want we&rsquo;d be just
+as well, if not better, without, and there would be all that time
+and energy to spare for the sort of things that everybody ought
+to have.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s everywhere just like it was at
+school.&nbsp; They kept us so hard at it, studying Greek roots,
+we hadn&rsquo;t time to learn English grammar.&nbsp; Look at
+young Dennis Yewbury.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s got two thousand acres up
+in Scotland.&nbsp; He could lead a jolly life turning the place
+into some real use.&nbsp; Instead of which he lets it all run to
+waste for nothing but to breed a few hundred birds that
+wouldn&rsquo;t keep a single family alive; while he works from
+morning till night at humbugging people in a beastly hole in the
+City, just to fill his house with a host of silly gim-cracks and
+dress up himself and his women-folk like peacocks.&nbsp; Of
+course we would always want clever chaps like you to tell us
+stories; and doctors we couldn&rsquo;t do without, though I guess
+if we were leading sensible lives we&rsquo;d be able to get along
+with about half of them.&nbsp; It seems to me that what we want
+is a comfortable home, enough to eat and drink, and a few fal-lal
+sort of things to make the girls look pretty; and that all the
+rest is rot.&nbsp; We would all of us have time then to think and
+play a bit, and if we were all working fairly at something really
+useful and were contented with our own share, there&rsquo;d be
+enough for everybody.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose this is all nonsense, but I wish it
+wasn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; Anyway, it&rsquo;s what I mean to do myself;
+and I&rsquo;m awfully much obliged to you, Dad, for giving me
+this chance.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ve hit the right nail on the head
+this time.&nbsp; Farming was what I was meant for; I feel
+it.&nbsp; I would have hated being a barrister, setting people by
+the ears and making my living out of other people&rsquo;s
+troubles.&nbsp; Being a farmer you feel that in doing good to
+yourself you are doing good all round.&nbsp; Miss Janie agrees
+with all I say.&nbsp; I think she is one of the most sensible
+girls I have ever come across, and Robin likes her awfully.&nbsp;
+So is the old man: he&rsquo;s a brick.&nbsp; I think he has taken
+a liking to me, and I know I have to him.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s the
+dearest old fellow imaginable.&nbsp; The very turnips he seems to
+think of as though they were so many rows of little
+children.&nbsp; And he makes you see the inside of things.&nbsp;
+Take fields now, for instance.&nbsp; I used to think a field was
+just a field.&nbsp; You scraped it about and planted it with
+seeds, and everything else depended on the weather.&nbsp; Why,
+Dad, it&rsquo;s alive!&nbsp; There are good fields that want to
+get on&mdash;that are grateful for everything you do for them,
+and take a pride in themselves.&nbsp; And there are brutes of
+fields that you feel you want to kick.&nbsp; You can waste a
+hundred pounds&rsquo; worth of manure on them, and it only makes
+them more stupid than they were before.&nbsp; One of our
+fields&mdash;a wizened-looking eleven-acre strip bordering the
+Fyfield road&mdash;he has christened Mrs. Gummidge: it seems to
+feel everything more than any other field.&nbsp; From whatever
+point of the compass the wind blows that field gets the most harm
+from it.&nbsp; You would think to look at it after a storm that
+there hadn&rsquo;t been any rain in any other field&mdash;that
+that particular field must have got it all; while two days&rsquo;
+sunshine has the effect upon it that a six weeks&rsquo; drought
+would on any other field.&nbsp; His theory (he must have a theory
+to account for everything; it comforts him.&nbsp; He has just hit
+upon a theory that explains why twins are born with twice as much
+original sin as other children, and doesn&rsquo;t seem to mind
+now what they do) is that each odd corner of the earth has gained
+a character of its own from the spirits of the countless dead men
+buried in its bosom.&nbsp; &lsquo;Robbers and thieves,&rsquo; he
+will say, kicking the sod of some field all stones and thistles;
+&lsquo;silly fighting men who thought God built the world merely
+to give them the fun of knocking it about.&nbsp; Look at them,
+the fools! stones and thistles&mdash;thistles and stones: that is
+their notion of a field.&rsquo;&nbsp; Or, leaning over the gate
+of some field of rich-smelling soil, he will stretch out his arms
+as though to caress it: &lsquo;Brave lads!&rsquo; he will say;
+&lsquo;kindly honest fellows who loved the poor peasant
+folk.&rsquo;&nbsp; I fancy he has not got much sense of humour;
+or if he has, it is a humour he leaves you to find out for
+yourself.&nbsp; One does not feel one wants to laugh, listening
+even to his most whimsical ideas; and anyhow it is a fact that of
+two fields quite close to one another, one will be worth ten
+pounds an acre and the other dear at half a crown, and there
+seems to be nothing to explain it.&nbsp; We have a seven-acre
+patch just halfway up the hill.&nbsp; He says he never passes it
+without taking off his hat to it.&nbsp; Whatever you put in it
+does well; while other fields, try them with what you will, it is
+always the very thing they did not want.&nbsp; You might fancy
+them fractious children, always crying for the other
+child&rsquo;s bun.&nbsp; There is really no reason for its being
+such a good field, except its own pluck.&nbsp; It faces the east,
+and the wood for half the day hides it from the sun; but it makes
+the best of everything, and even on the greyest day it seems to
+be smiling at you.&nbsp; &lsquo;Some happy-hearted Mother
+Thing&mdash;a singer of love songs the while she toiled,&rsquo;
+he will have it, must lie sleeping there.&nbsp; By-the-bye, what
+a jolly field Janie would make!&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t you think so,
+Dad?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What the dickens, Dad, have you done to Veronica?&nbsp;
+She wanders about everywhere with an exercise book in her hand,
+and when you say anything to her, instead of answering you back,
+she sits plump down wherever she is and writes for all
+she&rsquo;s worth.&nbsp; She won&rsquo;t say what she&rsquo;s up
+to.&nbsp; She says it&rsquo;s a private matter between you and
+her, and that later on things are going to be seen in their true
+light.&nbsp; I told her this morning what I thought of her for
+forgetting to feed the donkey.&nbsp; I was prepared, of course,
+for a hundred explanations: First, that she had meant to feed the
+donkey; secondly, that it wasn&rsquo;t her place to feed the
+donkey; thirdly, that the donkey would have been fed if
+circumstances over which she had no control had not arisen
+rendering it impossible for her to feed the donkey; fourthly,
+that the morning wasn&rsquo;t the proper time to feed the donkey,
+and so on.&nbsp; Instead of which, out she whips this ridiculous
+book and asks me if I would mind saying it over again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I keep forgetting to ask Janie what it is he has been
+accustomed to.&nbsp; We have tried him with thistles, and
+we&rsquo;ve tried him with hay.&nbsp; The thistles he scratches
+himself against; but for the hay he appears to have no use
+whatever.&nbsp; Robin thinks his idea is to save us
+trouble.&nbsp; We are not to get in anything especially for
+him&mdash;whatever we may happen to be having ourselves he will
+put up with.&nbsp; Bread-and-butter cut thick, or a slice of cake
+with an apple seems to be his notion of a light lunch; and for
+drink he fancies tea out of a slop-basin, with two knobs of sugar
+and plenty of milk.&nbsp; Robin says it&rsquo;s waste of time
+taking his meals out to him.&nbsp; She says she is going to train
+him to come in when he hears the gong.&nbsp; We use the alarm
+clock at present for a gong.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know what I
+shall do when the cow goes away.&nbsp; She wakes me every morning
+punctually at half-past four, but I&rsquo;m in a blue funk that
+one of these days she will oversleep herself.&nbsp; It is one of
+those clocks you read about.&nbsp; You wrote something rather
+funny about one once yourself, but I always thought you had
+invented it.&nbsp; I bought it because they said it was an extra
+loud one, and so it is.&nbsp; The thing that&rsquo;s wrong about
+it is that, do what you will, you can&rsquo;t get it to go off
+before six o&rsquo;clock in the morning.&nbsp; I set it on Sunday
+evening for half-past four&mdash;we farmers do have to work, I
+can tell you.&nbsp; But it&rsquo;s worth it.&nbsp; I had no idea
+that the world was so beautiful.&nbsp; There is a light you never
+see at any other time, and the whole air seems to be full of
+fluttering song.&nbsp; You feel&mdash;but you must get up and
+come out with me, Dad.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t describe it.&nbsp; If
+it hadn&rsquo;t been for the good old cow, Lord knows what time
+I&rsquo;d have been up.&nbsp; The clock went off at half-past
+four in the afternoon, just as they were sitting down to tea, and
+frightened them all out of their skins.&nbsp; We have fiddled
+about with it all we know, but there&rsquo;s no getting it to do
+anything between six p.m. and six am.&nbsp; Anything you want of
+it in the daytime it is quite agreeable to.&nbsp; But it seems to
+have fixed its own working hours, and isn&rsquo;t going to be
+bustled out of its proper rest.&nbsp; I got so mad with it myself
+I wanted to pitch it out of the window, but Robin thought we
+ought to keep it till you came, that perhaps you might be able to
+do something with it&mdash;writing something about it, she
+means.&nbsp; I said I thought alarm clocks were pretty well
+played out by this time; but, as she says, there is always a new
+generation coming along to whom almost everything must be
+fresh.&nbsp; Anyhow, the confounded thing cost seven and six, and
+seems to be no good for anything else.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whatever was it that you really did say to Robin about
+her room?&nbsp; Young Bute came round to me on Monday quite upset
+about it.&nbsp; He says it is going to be all windows, and will
+look, when finished, like an incorrect copy of the Eddystone
+lighthouse.&nbsp; He says there will be no place for the bed, and
+if there is to be a fireplace at all it will have to be in the
+cupboard, and that the only way, so far as he can see, of her
+getting in and out of it will be by a door through the
+bathroom.&nbsp; She said that you said she could have it entirely
+to her own idea, and that he was just to carry out her
+instructions; but, as he points out, you can&rsquo;t have a room
+in a house as if the rest of the house wasn&rsquo;t there, even
+if it is your own room.&nbsp; Nobody, it seems, will be able to
+have a bath without first talking it over with her, and arranging
+a time mutually convenient.&nbsp; I told him I was sure you never
+meant him to do anything absurd; and that his best plan would be
+to go straight back to her, explain to her that she&rsquo;d been
+talking like a silly goat&mdash;he could have put it politely, of
+course&mdash;and that he wasn&rsquo;t going to pay any attention
+to her.&nbsp; You might have thought I had suggested his walking
+into a den of lions and pulling all their tails.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t know what Robin has done to him, but he seems quite
+frightened of her.&nbsp; I had to promise that I would talk to
+her.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d better have done it himself.&nbsp; I only
+told her just what he said, and off she went in one of her
+tantrums.&nbsp; You know her style: If she liked to live in a
+room where she could see to do her hair that was no business of
+his, and if he couldn&rsquo;t design a plain, simple bedroom that
+wasn&rsquo;t going to look ridiculous and make her the
+laughing-stock of all the neighbourhood, then the Royal Institute
+of British Architects must have strange notions of the sort of
+person entitled to go about the country building houses; that if
+he thought the proper place for a fire was in a cupboard, she
+didn&rsquo;t; that his duty was to carry out the instructions of
+his employers, and if he imagined for a moment she was going to
+consent to remain shut up in her room till everybody in the house
+had finished bathing it would be better for us to secure the
+services of somebody possessed of a little commonsense; that next
+time she met him she would certainly tell him what she thought of
+him, also that she should certainly decline to hold any further
+communication with him again; that she doesn&rsquo;t want a
+bedroom now of any sort&mdash;perhaps she may be permitted a
+shakedown in the pantry, or perhaps Veronica will allow her an
+occasional night&rsquo;s rest with her, and if not it
+doesn&rsquo;t matter.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll have to talk to her
+yourself.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not going to say any more.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget that Friday is the St.
+Leonards&rsquo; &lsquo;At Home&rsquo; day.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve
+promised Janie that you shall be there in all your best
+clothes.&nbsp; (Don&rsquo;t tell her I&rsquo;m calling her
+Janie.&nbsp; It might offend her.&nbsp; But nobody calls her Miss
+St. Leonard.)&nbsp; Everybody is coming, and all the children are
+having their hair washed.&nbsp; You will have it all your own way
+down here.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s no other celebrity till you get to
+Boss Croker, the Tammany man, the other side of Ilsley
+Downs.&nbsp; Artists they don&rsquo;t count.&nbsp; The rumour was
+all round the place last week that you were here incognito in the
+person of a dismal-looking Johnny, staying at the
+&lsquo;Fisherman&rsquo;s Retreat,&rsquo; who used to sit all day
+in a punt up the backwater drinking whisky.&nbsp; It made me
+rather mad when I saw him.&nbsp; I suppose it was the whisky that
+suggested the idea to them.&nbsp; They have got the notion in
+these parts that a literary man is a sort of inspired
+tramp.&nbsp; A Mrs. Jaggerswade&mdash;or some such
+name&mdash;whom I met here on Sunday and who is coming on Friday,
+took me aside and asked me &lsquo;what sort of things&rsquo; you
+said when you talked?&nbsp; She said she felt sure it would be so
+clever, and, herself, she was looking forward to it; but would
+I&mdash;&lsquo;quite between ourselves&rsquo;&mdash;advise her to
+bring the children.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I say, you will have to talk seriously to
+Veronica.&nbsp; Country life seems to agree with her.&nbsp;
+She&rsquo;s taken to poaching already&mdash;she and the
+twins.&nbsp; It was the one sin that hitherto they had never
+committed, and I fancy the old man was feeling proud of
+this.&nbsp; Luckily I caught them coming home&mdash;with ten dead
+rabbits strung on a pole, the twins carrying it between them on
+their shoulders, suggesting the picture of the spies returning
+from the promised land with that bunch of grapes&mdash;Veronica
+scouting on ahead with, every ten yards, her ear to the ground,
+listening for hostile footsteps.&nbsp; The thing that troubled
+her most was that she hadn&rsquo;t heard me coming; she seemed to
+fear that something had gone wrong with the laws of Nature.&nbsp;
+They had found the whole collection hanging from a tree, and had
+persuaded themselves that Providence must have been expecting
+them.&nbsp; I insisted on their going back with me and showing me
+the tree, much to their disgust.&nbsp; And fortunately the keeper
+wasn&rsquo;t about&mdash;they are men that love making a
+row.&nbsp; I talked some fine moral sentiment to her.&nbsp; But
+she says you have told her that it doesn&rsquo;t matter whether
+you are good or bad, things happen to you just the same; and this
+being so she feels she may as well enjoy herself.&nbsp; I asked
+her why she never seemed able to enjoy herself being good&mdash;I
+believe if I&rsquo;d always had a kid to bring up I&rsquo;d have
+been a model chap myself by this time.&nbsp; Her answer was that
+she supposed she was born bad.&nbsp; I pointed out to her that
+was a reflection on you and Little Mother; and she answered she
+guessed she must be a &lsquo;throw-back.&rsquo;&nbsp; Old
+Slee&rsquo;s got a dog that ought to have been a fox-terrier, but
+isn&rsquo;t, and he seems to have been explaining things to
+her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A thing that will trouble you down here, Dad, is the
+cruelty of the country.&nbsp; They catch these poor little
+wretches in traps, leaving them sometimes for days suffering what
+must be to them nothing short of agony&mdash;to say nothing of
+the terror and the hunger.&nbsp; I tried putting my finger in one
+of the beastly things and keeping it there for just two minutes
+by my watch.&nbsp; It seemed like twenty.&nbsp; The pain grows
+more intense with every second, and I&rsquo;m not a soft, as you
+know.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve lain half an hour with a broken leg, and
+that wasn&rsquo;t as bad.&nbsp; One hears the little creatures
+screaming, but cannot find them.&nbsp; Of course when one draws
+near they keep silent.&nbsp; It makes one quite dislike country
+people.&nbsp; They are so callous.&nbsp; When you speak to them
+about it they only grin.&nbsp; Janie goes nearly mad about
+it.&nbsp; Mr. St. Leonard tried to get the clergyman to say
+something on the subject, but he answered that he thought it
+better &lsquo;for the Church to confine herself to the
+accomplishment of her own great mission.&rsquo;&nbsp; Ass!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bring Little Mother down; we want to show her off on
+Friday.&nbsp; And make her put on something pretty.&nbsp; Ask her
+if she&rsquo;s got that lilac thing with lace she wore at
+Cambridge for the May Week the year before last.&nbsp; Tell her
+not to be silly; it wasn&rsquo;t a bit too young.&nbsp; Nash said
+she looked like something out of an old picture, and he&rsquo;s
+going to be an artist.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t let her dress
+herself.&nbsp; She doesn&rsquo;t understand it.&nbsp; And will
+you get me a gun&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The remainder of the letter was taken up with instructions
+concerning the gun.&nbsp; It seemed a complicated sort of
+gun.&nbsp; I wished I hadn&rsquo;t read about the gun to
+Ethelbertha.&nbsp; It made her nervous for the rest of the
+day.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>Veronica&rsquo;s letter followed on Thursday morning.&nbsp; I
+read it going down in the train.&nbsp; In transcribing I have
+thought it better, as regards the spelling, to adopt the more
+conventional forms.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>&ldquo;You will be pleased to hear,&rdquo; Veronica wrote,
+&ldquo;that we are all quite well.&nbsp; Robin works very
+hard.&nbsp; But I think it does her good.&nbsp; And of course I
+help her.&nbsp; All I can.&nbsp; I am glad she has got a
+boy.&nbsp; To do the washing-up.&nbsp; I think that was too much
+for her.&nbsp; It used to make her cross.&nbsp; One cannot blame
+her.&nbsp; It is trying work.&nbsp; And it makes you mucky.&nbsp;
+He is a good boy.&nbsp; But has been neglected.&nbsp; So
+doesn&rsquo;t know much.&nbsp; I am teaching him grammar.&nbsp;
+He says &lsquo;you was&rsquo; and &lsquo;her be.&rsquo;&nbsp; But
+is getting better.&nbsp; He says he went to school.&nbsp; But
+they couldn&rsquo;t have taken any trouble with him.&nbsp; Could
+they?&nbsp; The system, I suppose, was rotten.&nbsp; Robina says
+I mustn&rsquo;t overdo it.&nbsp; Because you want him to talk
+Berkshire.&nbsp; So I propose confining our attention to the
+elementary rules.&nbsp; He had never heard of Robinson
+Crusoe.&nbsp; What a life!&nbsp; We went to church on
+Sunday.&nbsp; I could not find my gloves.&nbsp; And Robina was
+waxy.&nbsp; But Mr. St. Leonard came without his trousers.&nbsp;
+Which was worse.&nbsp; We found them in the evening.&nbsp; The
+little boy that blew up our stove was there with his
+mother.&nbsp; But I didn&rsquo;t speak to her.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s
+got a doom.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s what made him blow it up.&nbsp; He
+couldn&rsquo;t help it.&nbsp; So you see it wasn&rsquo;t my
+fault.&nbsp; After all.&nbsp; His grandfather was blown up.&nbsp;
+And he&rsquo;s going to be blown up again.&nbsp; Later on.&nbsp;
+But he is very brave.&nbsp; And is going to make a will.&nbsp; I
+like all the St. Leonards very much.&nbsp; We went there to tea
+on Sunday.&nbsp; And Mr. St. Leonard said I was bright.&nbsp; I
+think Miss Janie very beautiful.&nbsp; And so does Dick.&nbsp;
+She makes me think of angels.&nbsp; So she does Dick.&nbsp; And
+he says she is so kind to her little brothers and sisters.&nbsp;
+It is a good sign.&nbsp; I think she ought to marry Dick.&nbsp;
+It would steady him.&nbsp; He works very hard.&nbsp; But I think
+it does him good.&nbsp; We have breakfast at seven.&nbsp; And I
+lay the table.&nbsp; It is very beautiful in the morning.&nbsp;
+When you are once up.&nbsp; Mrs. St. Leonard has twins.&nbsp;
+They are a great anxiety to her.&nbsp; But she would not part
+from them.&nbsp; She has had much trouble.&nbsp; And is sometimes
+very sad.&nbsp; I like the girl best.&nbsp; Her name is
+Winnie.&nbsp; She is more like a boy.&nbsp; His name is
+Wilfrid.&nbsp; But sometimes they change clothes.&nbsp; Then
+you&rsquo;re done.&nbsp; They are only nearly seven.&nbsp; But
+they know a lot.&nbsp; They are going to teach me swimming.&nbsp;
+Is it not kind of them?&nbsp; The two older boys are at home for
+their holidays.&nbsp; But they give themselves a lot of
+airs.&nbsp; And they called me a flapper.&nbsp; I told him
+he&rsquo;d be sorry.&nbsp; When he was a man.&nbsp; Because
+perhaps I&rsquo;d grow up beautiful.&nbsp; And then he&rsquo;d
+fall in love with me.&nbsp; But he said he wouldn&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+So I let him see what I thought of him.&nbsp; The little girl is
+very nice.&nbsp; She is about my own age.&nbsp; Her name is
+Sally.&nbsp; We are going to write a play.&nbsp; But we
+sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t let Bertie act in it.&nbsp; Unless he turns
+over a new leaf.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m going to be a princess that
+doesn&rsquo;t know it.&nbsp; But only feels it.&nbsp; And
+she&rsquo;s going to be a wicked witch.&nbsp; What wants me to
+marry her son.&nbsp; What&rsquo;s a sight.&nbsp; But I
+won&rsquo;t, because I&rsquo;d rather die first.&nbsp; And am in
+love with a swineherd.&nbsp; That is a genius.&nbsp; Only nobody
+suspects it.&nbsp; I wear a crown in the last act.&nbsp; And
+everybody rejoices.&nbsp; Except her.&nbsp; I think it will be
+good.&nbsp; We have nearly finished the first act.&nbsp; She
+writes very well.&nbsp; And has a sense of atmosphere.&nbsp; And
+I tell her what to say.&nbsp; Miss Janie is going to make me a
+dress with a train.&nbsp; And gold spangles.&nbsp; And Robina is
+going to lend me her blue necklace.&nbsp; Anything will do of
+course for the old witch.&nbsp; So it won&rsquo;t be much trouble
+to anyone.&nbsp; Mr. Bute is going to paint us some
+scenery.&nbsp; And we are going to invite everybody.&nbsp; He is
+very nice.&nbsp; Robina says he thinks too much of himself.&nbsp;
+By a long chalk.&nbsp; But she is very critical where men are
+concerned.&nbsp; She admits it.&nbsp; She says she can&rsquo;t
+help it.&nbsp; I find him very affable.&nbsp; And so does
+Dick.&nbsp; We think Robina will get over it.&nbsp; And he has
+promised not to be angry with her.&nbsp; Because I have told him
+that she does not mean it.&nbsp; It is only her way.&nbsp; She
+says she feels it is unjust of her.&nbsp; Because really he is
+rather charming.&nbsp; I told him that.&nbsp; And he said I was a
+dear little girl.&nbsp; He is going to get me a real crown.&nbsp;
+Robina says he has nice eyes.&nbsp; I told him that.&nbsp; And he
+laughed.&nbsp; There is a gentleman comes here that I think is in
+love with Robina.&nbsp; But I shouldn&rsquo;t say anything to her
+about it.&nbsp; If I was you.&nbsp; She is very snappy about
+it.&nbsp; He is not handsome.&nbsp; But he looks good.&nbsp; He
+writes for the papers.&nbsp; But I don&rsquo;t think he is
+rich.&nbsp; And Robina is very nice to him.&nbsp; Until
+he&rsquo;s gone.&nbsp; Then she gets mad.&nbsp; It all began with
+the explosion.&nbsp; So perhaps it was fate.&nbsp; He is going to
+keep it out of the papers.&nbsp; As much as he can.&nbsp; But of
+course he owes a duty to the public.&nbsp; I am going to decline
+to see him.&nbsp; I think it better.&nbsp; Mr. Slee says
+everything will be in apple-pie order to-morrow.&nbsp; So you can
+come down.&nbsp; And we are going to have Irish stew.&nbsp; And
+roly-poly pudding.&nbsp; It will be a change.&nbsp; He is very
+nice.&nbsp; And says he was always in trouble himself when he was
+a little boy.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s all experience.&nbsp; We are all
+going on Friday to a party at Mr. St. Leonard&rsquo;s.&nbsp; And
+you have got to come too.&nbsp; Robina says I can wear my new
+frock.&nbsp; But we can&rsquo;t find the sash.&nbsp; It is very
+strange.&nbsp; Because I remember having seen it.&nbsp; You
+didn&rsquo;t take it for anything, did you?&nbsp; We shall have
+to get a new one, I suppose.&nbsp; It is very annoying.&nbsp; My
+new shoes have also not worn well.&nbsp; And they ought to
+have.&nbsp; Because Robina says they were expensive.&nbsp; The
+donkey has come.&nbsp; And he is sweet.&nbsp; He eats out of my
+hand.&nbsp; And lets me kiss him.&nbsp; But he won&rsquo;t
+go.&nbsp; He goes a little when you shout at him.&nbsp; Very
+loud.&nbsp; Me and Robina went for a drive yesterday after
+tea.&nbsp; And Dick ran beside.&nbsp; And shouted.&nbsp; But he
+got hoarse.&nbsp; And then he wouldn&rsquo;t go no more.&nbsp;
+And Robina did not like it.&nbsp; Because Dick shouted swear
+words.&nbsp; He says they come naturally to you when you
+shout.&nbsp; And Robina said it was horrible.&nbsp; And that
+people would hear him.&nbsp; So we got out.&nbsp; And pushed him
+home.&nbsp; But he is very strong.&nbsp; And we were all very
+tired.&nbsp; And Robina says she hates him.&nbsp; Dick is going
+to give Mr. &rsquo;Opkins half a crown.&nbsp; To tell him how he
+makes him go.&nbsp; Because Mr. &rsquo;Opkins makes him
+gallop.&nbsp; Robina says it must be hypnotism.&nbsp; But Dick
+thinks it might be something simpler.&nbsp; I think Mr.
+&rsquo;Opkins very nice.&nbsp; He says you promised to lend him a
+book.&nbsp; What would help him to talk like a real country
+boy.&nbsp; So I have lent him a book about a window.&nbsp; By Mr.
+Bane.&nbsp; What came to see us last year.&nbsp; It has a lot of
+funny words in it.&nbsp; And he is going to learn them up.&nbsp;
+But he don&rsquo;t know what they mean.&nbsp; No more do I.&nbsp;
+I have written a lot of the book.&nbsp; It promises to be very
+interesting.&nbsp; It is all a dream.&nbsp; He is just the
+ordinary grown-up father.&nbsp; Neither better nor worse.&nbsp;
+And he goes up and up.&nbsp; It is a pleasant sensation.&nbsp;
+Till he reaches the moon.&nbsp; And there everything is
+different.&nbsp; It is the children that know everything.&nbsp;
+And are always right.&nbsp; And the grown-ups have to do all what
+they tell them.&nbsp; They are kind but firm.&nbsp; It is very
+good for him.&nbsp; And when he wakes up he is a better
+man.&nbsp; I put down everything that occurs to me.&nbsp; Like
+you suggested.&nbsp; There is quite a lot of it.&nbsp; And it
+makes you see how unjustly children are treated.&nbsp; They said
+I was to feed the donkey.&nbsp; Because it was my donkey.&nbsp;
+And I fed him.&nbsp; And there wasn&rsquo;t enough supper for
+Dick.&nbsp; And Dick said I was an idiot.&nbsp; And Robina said I
+wasn&rsquo;t to feed him.&nbsp; And in the morning there
+wasn&rsquo;t anything to feed him on.&nbsp; Because he
+won&rsquo;t eat anything but bread-and-butter.&nbsp; And the
+baker hadn&rsquo;t come.&nbsp; And he wasn&rsquo;t there.&nbsp;
+Because the man that comes to milk the cow had left the door
+open.&nbsp; And I was distracted.&nbsp; And Dick asked had I fed
+him.&nbsp; And of course I hadn&rsquo;t fed him.&nbsp; And lord
+how Dick talked.&nbsp; Never waited to hear anything, mind
+you.&nbsp; I let him talk.&nbsp; But it just shows you.&nbsp; We
+are all very happy.&nbsp; But shall be pleased to see you.&nbsp;
+Once again.&nbsp; The peppermint creams down here are not
+good.&nbsp; And are very dear.&nbsp; Compared with London
+prices.&nbsp; Isn&rsquo;t this a good letter?&nbsp; You said I
+was to always write just as I thought.&nbsp; So I&rsquo;m doing
+it.&nbsp; I think that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I read selections from this letter aloud to Ethelbertha.&nbsp;
+She said she was glad she had decided to come down with me.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Had</span> all things gone as ordered, our
+arrival at the St. Leonards&rsquo; on Friday afternoon would have
+been imposing.&nbsp; It was our entrance, so to speak, upon the
+local stage; and Robina had decided it was a case where small
+economies ought not to be considered.&nbsp; The livery stable
+proprietor had suggested a brougham, but that would have
+necessitated one of us riding outside.&nbsp; I explained to
+Robina that, in the country, this was usual; and Robina had
+replied that much depended upon first impressions.&nbsp; Dick
+would, in all probability, claim the place for himself; and, the
+moment we were started, stick a pipe in his mouth.&nbsp; She
+selected an open landau of quite an extraordinary size, painted
+yellow.&nbsp; It looked to me an object more appropriate to a
+Lord Mayor&rsquo;s show than to the requirements of a Christian
+family; but Robina seemed touchy on the subject, and I said no
+more.&nbsp; It certainly was roomy.&nbsp; Old Glossop had turned
+it out well, with a pair of greys&mdash;seventeen hands, I judged
+them.&nbsp; The only thing that seemed wrong was the
+coachman.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t explain why, but he struck me as
+the class of youth one associates with a milk-cart.</p>
+<p>We set out at a gentle trot.&nbsp; Veronica, who had been in
+trouble most of the morning, sat stiffly on the extreme edge of
+her seat, clothed in the attitude of one dead to the world; Dick,
+in lavender gloves that Robina had thoughtfully bought for him,
+next to her.&nbsp; Ethelbertha, Robina, and myself sat perched on
+the back seat; to have leaned back would have been to lie
+down.&nbsp; Ethelbertha, having made up her mind she was going to
+dislike the whole family of the St. Leonards, seemed disinclined
+for conversation.&nbsp; Myself I had forgotten my
+cigar-case.&nbsp; I have tried the St. Leonard cigar.&nbsp; He
+does not smoke himself; but keeps a box for his friends.&nbsp; He
+tells me he fancies men are smoking cigars less than
+formerly.&nbsp; I did not see how I was going to get a smoke for
+the next three hours.&nbsp; Nothing annoys me more than being
+bustled and made to forget things.&nbsp; Robina, who has recently
+changed her views on the subject of freckles, shared a parasol
+with her mother.&nbsp; They had to hold it almost horizontally in
+front of them, and this obscured their view.&nbsp; I could not
+myself understand why people smiled as we went by.&nbsp; Apart
+from the carriage, which they must have seen before, we were not,
+I should have said, an exhilarating spectacle.&nbsp; A party of
+cyclists laughed outright.&nbsp; Robina said there was one thing
+we should have to be careful about, living in the country, and
+that was that the strong air and the loneliness combined
+didn&rsquo;t sap our intellect.&nbsp; She said she had noticed
+it&mdash;the tendency of country people to become prematurely
+silly.&nbsp; I did not share her fears, as I had by this time
+divined what it was that was amusing folks.&nbsp; Dick had
+discovered behind the cushions&mdash;remnant of some recent
+wedding, one supposes&mdash;a large and tastefully bound Book of
+Common Prayer.&nbsp; He and Veronica sat holding it between
+them.&nbsp; Looking at their faces one could almost hear the
+organ pealing.</p>
+<p>Dick kept one eye on the parasol; and when, on passing into
+shade, it was lowered, he and Veronica were watching with rapt
+ecstasy the flight of swallows.&nbsp; Robina said she should tell
+Mr. Glossop of the insults to which respectable people were
+subject when riding in his carriage.&nbsp; She thought he ought
+to take steps to prevent it.&nbsp; She likewise suggested that
+the four of us, leaving the Little Mother in the carriage, should
+walk up the hill.&nbsp; Ethelbertha said that she herself would
+like a walk.&nbsp; She had been balancing herself on the edge of
+a cushion with her feet dangling for two miles, and was
+tired.&nbsp; She herself would have preferred a carriage made for
+ordinary-sized people.&nbsp; Our coachman called attention to the
+heat of the afternoon and the length of the hill, and recommended
+our remaining where we were; but his advice was dismissed as
+exhibiting want of feeling.&nbsp; Robina is, perhaps, a trifle
+over-sympathetic where animals are concerned.&nbsp; I remember,
+when they were children, her banging Dick over the head with the
+nursery bellows because he would not agree to talk in a whisper
+for fear of waking the cat.&nbsp; You can, of course, overdo
+kindness to animals, but it is a fault on the right side; and, as
+a rule, I do not discourage her.&nbsp; Veronica was allowed to
+remain, owing to her bad knee.&nbsp; It is a most unfortunate
+affliction.&nbsp; It comes on quite suddenly.&nbsp; There is
+nothing to be seen; but the child&rsquo;s face while she is
+suffering from it would move a heart of stone.&nbsp; It had been
+troubling her, so it appeared, all the morning; but she had said
+nothing, not wishing to alarm her mother.&nbsp; Ethelbertha, who
+thinks it may be hereditary&mdash;she herself having had an aunt
+who had suffered from contracted ligament&mdash;fixed her up as
+comfortably as the pain would permit with cushions in the centre
+of the back seat; and the rest of us toiled after the
+carriage.</p>
+<p>I should not like to say for certain that horses have a sense
+of humour, but I sometimes think they must.&nbsp; I had a horse
+years ago who used to take delight in teasing girls.&nbsp; I can
+describe it no other way.&nbsp; He would pick out a girl a
+quarter of a mile off; always some haughty, well-dressed girl who
+was feeling pleased with herself.&nbsp; As we approached he would
+eye her with horror and astonishment.&nbsp; It was too marked to
+escape notice.&nbsp; A hundred yards off he would be walking
+sideways, backing away from her; I would see the poor lady
+growing scarlet with the insult and annoyance of it.&nbsp;
+Opposite to her, he would shy the entire width of the road, and
+make pretence to bolt.&nbsp; Looking back I would see her vainly
+appealing to surrounding nature for a looking-glass to see what
+it was that had gone wrong with her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is the matter with me,&rdquo; she would be crying
+to herself; &ldquo;that the very beasts of the field should shun
+me?&nbsp; Do they take me for a gollywog?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Halfway up the hill, the off-side grey turned his head and
+looked at us.&nbsp; We were about a couple of hundred yards
+behind; it was a hot and dusty day.&nbsp; He whispered to the
+near-side grey, and the near-side grey turned and looked at us
+also.&nbsp; I knew what was coming.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve been played
+the same trick before.&nbsp; I shouted to the boy, but it was too
+late.&nbsp; They took the rest of the hill at a gallop and
+disappeared over the brow.&nbsp; Had there been an experienced
+coachman behind them, I should not have worried.&nbsp; Dick told
+his mother not to be alarmed, and started off at fifteen miles an
+hour.&nbsp; I calculated I was doing about ten, which for a
+gentleman past his first youth, in a frock suit designed to
+disguise rather than give play to the figure, I consider
+creditable.&nbsp; Robina, undecided whether to go on ahead with
+Dick or remain to assist her mother, wasted vigour by running
+from one to the other.&nbsp; Ethelbertha&rsquo;s one hope was
+that she might reach the wreckage in time to receive
+Veronica&rsquo;s last wishes.</p>
+<p>It was in this order that we arrived at the St.
+Leonards&rsquo;.&nbsp; Veronica, under an awning, sipping iced
+sherbet, appeared to be the centre of the party.&nbsp; She was
+recounting her experiences with a modesty that had already won
+all hearts.&nbsp; The rest of us, she had explained, had
+preferred walking, and would arrive later.&nbsp; She was
+evidently pleased to see me, and volunteered the information that
+the greys, to all seeming, had enjoyed their gallop.</p>
+<p>I sent Dick back to break the good news to his mother.&nbsp;
+Young Bute said he would go too.&nbsp; He said he was fresher
+than Dick, and would get there first.&nbsp; As a matter of
+history he did, and was immediately sorry that he had.</p>
+<p>This is not a well-ordered world, or it would not be our good
+deeds that would so often get us into trouble.&nbsp;
+Robina&rsquo;s insistence on our walking up the hill had been
+prompted by tender feeling for dumb animals: a virtuous emotion
+that surely the angels should have blessed.&nbsp; The result had
+been to bring down upon her suffering and reproach.&nbsp; It is
+not often that Ethelbertha loses her temper.&nbsp; When she does
+she makes use of the occasion to perform what one might describe
+as a mental spring-cleaning.&nbsp; All loose odds and ends of
+temper that may be lying about in her mind&mdash;any scrap of
+indignation that has been reposing peacefully, half forgotten, in
+a corner of her brain, she ferrets out and brushes into the
+general heap.&nbsp; Small annoyances of the year before
+last&mdash;little things she hadn&rsquo;t noticed at the
+time&mdash;incidents in your past life that, so far as you are
+concerned, present themselves as dim visions connected maybe with
+some previous existence, she whisks triumphantly into her
+pan.&nbsp; The method has its advantages.&nbsp; It leaves her,
+swept and garnished, without a scrap of ill-feeling towards any
+living soul.&nbsp; For quite a long period after one of these
+explosions it is impossible to get a cross word out of her.&nbsp;
+One has to wait sometimes for months.&nbsp; But while the
+clearing up is in progress the atmosphere round about is
+disturbing.&nbsp; The element of the whole thing is its
+comprehensive swiftness.&nbsp; Before they had reached the summit
+of the hill, Robina had acquired a tolerably complete idea of all
+she had done wrong since Christmas twelvemonth: the present
+afternoon&rsquo;s proceedings&mdash;including as they did the
+almost certain sacrificing of a sister to a violent death,
+together with the probable destruction of a father, no longer of
+an age to trifle with apoplexy&mdash;being but a fit and proper
+complement to what had gone before.&nbsp; It would be long, as
+Robina herself that evening bitterly declared, before she would
+again give ear to the promptings of her better nature.</p>
+<p>To take next the sad case of Archibald Bute: his sole desire
+had been to relieve, at the earliest moment possible, the
+anxieties of a sister and a mother.&nbsp; Robina&rsquo;s new hat,
+not intended for sport, had broken away from its
+fastenings.&nbsp; With it, it had brought down her hair.&nbsp;
+There is a harmless contrivance for building up the female hair
+called, I am told, a pad.&nbsp; It can be made of combings, and
+then, of course, is literally the girl&rsquo;s own hair.&nbsp; He
+came upon Robina at the moment when, retracing her steps and with
+her back towards him, she was looking for it.&nbsp; With his
+usual luck, he was the first to find it.&nbsp; Ethelbertha
+thanked him for his information concerning Veronica, but seemed
+chiefly anxious to push on and convince herself that it was
+true.&nbsp; She took Dick&rsquo;s arm, and left Robina to follow
+on with Bute.</p>
+<p>As I explained to him afterwards, had he stopped to ask my
+advice I should have counselled his leaving the job to Dick, who,
+after all, was only thirty seconds behind him.&nbsp; As regarded
+himself, I should have suggested his taking a walk in the
+opposite direction, returning, say, in half an hour, and
+pretending to have just arrived.&nbsp; By that time Robina, with
+the assistance of Janie&rsquo;s brush and comb, and possibly her
+powder-puff, would have been feeling herself again.&nbsp; He
+could have listened sympathetically to an account of the affair
+from Robina herself&mdash;her version, in which she would have
+appeared to advantage.&nbsp; Give her time, and she has a sense
+of humour.&nbsp; She would have made it bright and
+whimsical.&nbsp; Without asserting it in so many words, she would
+have conveyed the impression&mdash;I know her way&mdash;that she
+alone, throughout the whole commotion, had remained calm and
+helpful.&nbsp; &ldquo;Dear old Dick&rdquo; and &ldquo;Poor dear
+papa&rdquo;&mdash;I can hear her saying it&mdash;would have
+supplied the low comedy, and Veronica, alluded to with affection
+free from sentimentality, would have furnished the dramatic
+interest.&nbsp; It is not that Robina intends to mislead, but she
+has the artistic instinct.&nbsp; It would have made quite a
+charming story; Robina always the central figure.&nbsp; She would
+have enjoyed telling it, and would have been pleased with the
+person listening.&nbsp; All this&mdash;which would have been the
+reward of subterfuge&mdash;he had missed.&nbsp; Virtuous
+intention had gained for him nothing but a few scattered
+observations from Robina concerning himself; the probable object
+of his Creator in fashioning him&mdash;his relation to the scheme
+of things in general: observations all of which he had felt to be
+unjust.</p>
+<p>We compared experiences over a pipe that same evening; and he
+told me of a friend of his, a law student, who had shared
+diggings with him in Edinburgh.&nbsp; A kinder-hearted young man,
+Bute felt sure, could never have breathed; nor one with a
+tenderer, more chivalrous regard for women; and the misery this
+brought him, to say nothing of the irritation caused to quite a
+number of respectable people, could hardly be imagined, so young
+Bute assured me, by anyone not personally acquainted with the
+parties.&nbsp; It was the plain and snappy girl, and the less
+attractive type of old maid, for whom he felt the most
+sorrow.&nbsp; He could not help thinking of all they had missed,
+and were likely to go on missing; the rapture&mdash;surely the
+woman&rsquo;s birthright&mdash;of feeling herself adored, anyhow,
+once in her life; the delight of seeing the lover&rsquo;s eye
+light up at her coming.&nbsp; Had he been a Mormon he would have
+married them all.&nbsp; They too&mdash;the neglected that none
+had invited to the feast of love&mdash;they also should know the
+joys of home, feel the sweet comfort of a husband&rsquo;s
+arm.&nbsp; Being a Christian, his power for good was
+limited.&nbsp; But at least he could lift from them the
+despairing conviction that they were outside the pale of
+masculine affection.&nbsp; Not one of them, so far as he could
+help it, but should be able to say:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&mdash;even I had a lover once.&nbsp; No, dear, we
+never married.&nbsp; It was one of those spiritual loves; a
+formal engagement with a ring would have spoiled
+it&mdash;coarsened it.&nbsp; No; it was just a beautiful thing
+that came into my life and passed away again, leaving behind it a
+fragrance that has sweetened all my days.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That is how he imagined they would talk about it, years
+afterwards, to the little niece or nephew, asking artless
+questions&mdash;how they would feel about it themselves.&nbsp;
+Whether law circles are peculiarly rich in unattractive
+spinsters, or whether it merely happened to be an exceptional
+season for them, Bute could not say; but certain it was that the
+number of sour-faced girls and fretful old maids in excess of the
+demand seemed to be greater than usual that winter in Edinburgh,
+with the result that young Hapgood had a busy time of it.&nbsp;
+He made love to them, not obtrusively, which might have laid them
+open to ridicule&mdash;many of them were old enough to have been
+his mother&mdash;but more by insinuation, by subtle
+suggestion.&nbsp; His feelings, so they gathered, were too deep
+for words; but the adoring eyes with which he would follow their
+every movement, the rapt ecstasy with which he would drink in
+their lightest remark about the weather, the tone of almost
+reverential awe with which he would enquire of them concerning
+their lesser ailments&mdash;all conveyed to their sympathetic
+observation the message that he dared not tell.&nbsp; He had no
+favourites.&nbsp; Sufficient it was that a woman should be
+unpleasant, for him to pour out at her feet the simulated passion
+of a lifetime.&nbsp; He sent them presents&mdash;nothing
+expensive&mdash;wrapped in pleasing pretence of anonymity;
+valentines carefully selected for their compromising
+character.&nbsp; One carroty-headed old maid with warts he had
+kissed upon the brow.</p>
+<p>All this he did out of his great pity for them.&nbsp; It was a
+beautiful idea, but it worked badly.&nbsp; They did not
+understand&mdash;never got the hang of the thing: not one of
+them.&nbsp; They thought he was really gone on them.&nbsp; For a
+time his elusiveness, his backwardness in coming to the point,
+they attributed to a fit and proper fear of his fate; but as the
+months went by the feeling of each one was that he was carrying
+the apprehension of his own unworthiness too far.&nbsp; They gave
+him encouragement, provided for him &ldquo;openings,&rdquo; till
+the wonder grew upon them how any woman ever did get
+married.&nbsp; At the end of their resources, they consulted
+bosom friends.&nbsp; In several instances the bosom friend turned
+out to be the bosom friend of more than one of them.&nbsp; The
+bosom friends began to take a hand in it.&nbsp; Some of them came
+to him with quite a little list, insisting&mdash;playfully at
+first&mdash;on his making up his mind what he was going to take
+and what he was going to leave; offering, as reward for prompt
+decision, to make things as easy for him as possible with the
+remainder of the column.</p>
+<p>It was then he saw that his good intentions were likely to end
+in catastrophe.&nbsp; He would not tell the truth: that the whole
+scheme had been conceived out of charity towards all
+ill-constructed or dilapidated ladies; that personally he
+didn&rsquo;t care a hang for any of them; had only taken them on,
+vulgarly speaking, to give them a treat, and because nobody else
+would.&nbsp; That wasn&rsquo;t going to be a golden memory,
+colouring their otherwise drab existence.&nbsp; He explained that
+it was not love&mdash;not the love that alone would justify a
+man&rsquo;s asking of a woman that she should give herself to him
+for life&mdash;that he felt and always should feel for them, but
+merely admiration and deep esteem; and seventeen of them thought
+that would be sufficient to start with, and offered to chance the
+rest.</p>
+<p>The truth had to come out.&nbsp; Friends who knew his noble
+nature could not sit by and hear him denounced as a heartless and
+eccentric profligate.&nbsp; Ladies whose beauty and popularity
+were beyond dispute thought it a touching and tender thing for
+him to have done; but every woman to whom he had ever addressed a
+kind word wanted to wring his neck.</p>
+<p>He did the most sensible thing he could, under all the
+circumstances; changed his address to Aberdeen, where he had an
+aunt living.&nbsp; But the story followed him.&nbsp; No woman
+would be seen speaking to him.&nbsp; One admiring glance from
+Hapgood would send the prettiest girls home weeping to their
+mothers.&nbsp; Later on he fell in love&mdash;hopelessly, madly
+in love.&nbsp; But he dared not tell her&mdash;dared not let a
+living soul guess it.&nbsp; That was the only way he could show
+it.&nbsp; It is not sufficient, in this world, to want to do
+good; there&rsquo;s got to be a knack about it.</p>
+<p>There was a man I met in Colorado, one Christmas-time.&nbsp; I
+was on a lecturing tour.&nbsp; His idea was to send a loving
+greeting to his wife in New York.&nbsp; He had been married
+nineteen years, and this was the first time he had been separated
+from his family on Christmas Day.&nbsp; He pictured them round
+the table in the little far-away New England parlour; his wife,
+his sister-in-law, Uncle Silas, Cousin Jane, Jack and Willy, and
+golden-haired Lena.&nbsp; They would be just sitting down to
+dinner, talking about him, most likely; wishing he were among
+them.&nbsp; They were a nice family and all fond of him.&nbsp;
+What joy it would give them to know that he was safe and sound;
+to hear the very tones of his loved voice speaking to them!&nbsp;
+Modern science has made possible these miracles.&nbsp; True, the
+long-distance telephone would cost him five dollars; but what is
+five dollars weighed against the privilege of wafting happiness
+to an entire family on Christmas Day!&nbsp; We had just come back
+from a walk.&nbsp; He slammed the money down, and laughed aloud
+at the thought of the surprise he was about to give them all.</p>
+<p>The telephone bell rang out clear and distinct at the precise
+moment when his wife, with knife and fork in hand, was preparing
+to carve the turkey.&nbsp; She was a nervous lady, and twice that
+week had dreamed that she had seen her husband without being able
+to get to him.&nbsp; On the first occasion she had seen him enter
+a dry-goods store in Broadway, and hastening across the road had
+followed him in.&nbsp; He was hardly a dozen yards in front of
+her, but before she could overtake him all the young lady
+assistants had rushed from behind their counters and, forming a
+circle round her, had refused to let her pass, which in her dream
+had irritated her considerably.&nbsp; On the next occasion he had
+boarded a Brooklyn car in which she was returning home.&nbsp; She
+had tried to attract his attention with her umbrella, but he did
+not seem to see her; and every time she rose to go across to him
+the car gave a jerk and bumped her back into her seat.&nbsp; When
+she did get over to him it was not her husband at all, but the
+gentleman out of the Quaker Oats advertisement.&nbsp; She went to
+the telephone, feeling&mdash;as she said herself
+afterwards&mdash;all of a tremble.</p>
+<p>That you could speak from Colorado to New York she would not
+then have believed had you told her.&nbsp; The thing was in its
+early stages, which may also have accounted for the voice
+reaching her strange and broken.&nbsp; I was standing beside him
+while he spoke.&nbsp; We were in the vestibule of the Savoy Hotel
+at Colorado Springs.&nbsp; It was five o&rsquo;clock in the
+afternoon, which would be about seven in New York.&nbsp; He told
+her he was safe and well, and that she was not to fret about
+him.&nbsp; He told her he had been that morning for a walk in the
+Garden of the Gods, which is the name given to the local park;
+they do that sort of thing in Colorado.&nbsp; Also that he had
+drunk from the silicial springs abounding in that favoured
+land.&nbsp; I am not sure that &ldquo;silicial&rdquo; was the
+correct word.&nbsp; He was not sure himself: added to which he
+pronounced it badly.&nbsp; Whatever they were, he assured her
+they had done him good.&nbsp; He sent a special message to his
+Cousin Jane&mdash;a maiden lady of means&mdash;to the effect that
+she could rely upon seeing him soon.&nbsp; She was a touchy old
+lady, and liked to be singled out for special attention.&nbsp; He
+made the usual kind enquiries about everybody, sent them all his
+blessing, and only wished they could be with him in this
+delectable land where it seemed to be always sunshine and balmy
+breezes.&nbsp; He could have said more, but his time being up the
+telephone people switched him off; and feeling he had done a good
+and thoughtful deed, he suggested a game of billiards.</p>
+<p>Could he have been a witness of events at the other end of the
+wire, his condition would have been one of less
+self-complacence.&nbsp; Long before the end of the first sentence
+his wife had come to the conclusion that this was a message from
+the dead.&nbsp; Why through a telephone did not greatly worry
+her.&nbsp; It seemed as reasonable a medium as any other she had
+ever heard of&mdash;indeed a trifle more so.&nbsp; Later, when
+she was able to review the matter calmly, it afforded her some
+consolation to reflect that things might have been worse.&nbsp;
+That &ldquo;garden,&rdquo; together with the &ldquo;silicial
+springs&rdquo;&mdash;which she took to be
+&ldquo;celestial,&rdquo; there was not much difference the way he
+pronounced it&mdash;was distinctly reassuring.&nbsp; The
+&ldquo;eternal sunshine&rdquo; and the &ldquo;balmy
+breezes&rdquo; likewise agreed with her knowledge of heavenly
+topography as derived from the Congregational Hymn-Book.&nbsp;
+That he should have needed to enquire concerning the health of
+herself and the children had puzzled her.&nbsp; The only
+explanation was that they didn&rsquo;t know everything, not even
+up.&nbsp; There&mdash;may be, not the new-comers.&nbsp; She had
+answered as coherently as her state of distraction would permit,
+and had then dropped limply to the floor.&nbsp; It was the sound
+of her falling against the umbrella-stand and upsetting it that
+brought them all trooping out from the dining-room.</p>
+<p>It took her some time to get the thing home to them; and when
+she had finished, her brother Silas, acting on the impulse of the
+moment, rang up the Exchange, with some vague idea of getting
+into communication with St. Peter and obtaining further
+particulars, but recollected himself in time to explain to the
+&ldquo;hulloa girl&rdquo; that he had made a mistake.</p>
+<p>The eldest boy, a practical youth, pointed out, very sensibly,
+that nothing could be gained by their not going on with their
+dinner, but was bitterly reproached for being able to think of
+any form of enjoyment at a moment when his poor dear father was
+in heaven.&nbsp; It reminded his mother of the special message to
+Cousin Jane, who up to that moment had been playing the part of
+comforter.&nbsp; With the collapse of Cousin Jane, dramatic in
+its suddenness, conversation disappeared.&nbsp; At nine
+o&rsquo;clock the entire family went dinnerless to bed.</p>
+<p>The eldest boy&mdash;as I have said, a practical
+youth&mdash;had the sense to get up early the next morning and
+send a wire, which brought the glad news back to them that their
+beloved one was not in heaven, but was still in Colorado.&nbsp;
+But the only reward my friend got for all his tender
+thoughtfulness was the vehement injunction never for the
+remainder of his life to play such a fool&rsquo;s trick
+again.</p>
+<p>There were other cases I could have recited showing the ill
+recompense that so often overtakes the virtuous action; but, as I
+explained to Bute, it would have saddened me to dwell upon the
+theme.</p>
+<p>It was quite a large party assembled at the St.
+Leonards&rsquo;, including one or two county people, and I should
+have liked, myself, to have made a better entrance.&nbsp; A large
+lady with a very small voice seemed to be under the impression
+that I had arranged the whole business on purpose.&nbsp; She said
+it was &ldquo;so dramatic.&rdquo;&nbsp; One good thing came out
+of it: Janie, in her quiet, quick way, saw to it that Ethelbertha
+and Robina slipped into the house unnoticed by way of the
+dairy.&nbsp; When they joined the other guests, half an hour
+later, they had had a cup of tea and a rest, and were feeling
+calm and cool, with their hair nicely done; and Ethelbertha
+remarked to Robina on the way home what a comfort it must be to
+Mrs. St. Leonard to have a daughter so capable, one who knew just
+the right thing to do, and did it without making a fuss and a
+disturbance.</p>
+<p>Everyone was very nice.&nbsp; Of course we made the usual
+mistake: they talked to me about books and plays, and I gave them
+my views on agriculture and cub-hunting.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not
+quite sure what fool it was who described a bore as a man who
+talked about himself.&nbsp; As a matter of fact it is the only
+subject the average man knows sufficiently well to make
+interesting.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a man I know; he makes a fortune
+out of a patent food for infants.&nbsp; He began life as a dairy
+farmer, and hit upon it quite by accident.&nbsp; When he talks
+about the humours of company promoting and the tricks of the
+advertising agent he is amusing.&nbsp; I have sat at his table,
+when he was a bachelor, and listened to him by the hour with
+enjoyment.&nbsp; The mistake he made was marrying a broad-minded,
+cultured woman, who ruined him&mdash;conversationally, I
+mean.&nbsp; He is now well-informed and tiresome on most
+topics.&nbsp; That is why actors and actresses are always such
+delightful company: they are not ashamed to talk about
+themselves.&nbsp; I remember a dinner-party once: our host was
+one of the best-known barristers in London.&nbsp; A famous lady
+novelist sat on his right, and a scientist of world-wide
+reputation had the place of honour next our hostess, who herself
+had written a history of the struggle for nationality in South
+America that serves as an authority to all the Foreign Offices in
+Europe.&nbsp; Among the remaining guests were a bishop, the
+editor-in-chief of a London daily newspaper, a man who knew the
+interior of China as well as most men know their own club, a
+Russian revolutionist just escaped from Siberia, a leading
+dramatist, a Cabinet Minister, and a poet whose name is a
+household word wherever the English tongue is spoken.&nbsp; And
+for two hours we sat and listened to a wicked-looking little
+woman who from the boards of a Bowery music-hall had worked her
+way up to the position of a star in musical comedy.&nbsp;
+Education, as she observed herself without regret, had not been
+compulsory throughout the waterside district of Chicago in her
+young days; and, compelled to earn her own living from the age of
+thirteen, opportunity for supplying the original deficiency had
+been wanting.&nbsp; But she knew her subject, which was
+Herself&mdash;her experiences, her reminiscences: and bad sense
+enough to stick to it.&nbsp; Until the moment when she took
+&ldquo;the liberty of chipping in,&rdquo; to use her own
+expression, the amount of twaddle talked had been
+appalling.&nbsp; The bishop had told us all he had learnt about
+China during a visit to San Francisco, while the man who had
+spent the last twenty years of his life in the country was busy
+explaining his views on the subject of the English drama.&nbsp;
+Our hostess had been endeavouring to make the scientist feel at
+home by talking to him about radium.&nbsp; The dramatist had
+explained at some length his views of the crisis in Russia.&nbsp;
+The poet had quite spoilt his dinner trying to suggest to the
+Cabinet Minister new sources of taxation.&nbsp; The Russian
+revolutionist had told us what ought to have been a funny story
+about a duck; and the lady novelist and the Cabinet Minister had
+discussed Christian Science for a quarter of an hour, each under
+the mistaken impression that the other one was a believer in
+it.&nbsp; The editor had been explaining the attitude of the
+Church towards the New Theology; and our host, one of the
+wittiest men at the Bar, had been talking chiefly to the
+butler.&nbsp; The relief of listening to anybody talking about
+something they knew was like finding a match-box to a man who has
+been barking his shins in the dark.&nbsp; For the rest of the
+dinner we clung to her.</p>
+<p>I could have made myself quite interesting to these good
+squires and farmers talking to them about theatres and the
+literary celebrities I have met; and they could have told me dog
+stories and given me useful information as to the working of the
+Small Holdings Act.&nbsp; They said some very charming things
+about my books&mdash;mostly to the effect that they read and
+enjoyed them when feeling ill or suffering from mental
+collapse.&nbsp; I gathered that had they always continued in a
+healthy state of mind and body it would not have occurred to them
+to read me.&nbsp; One man assured me I had saved his life.&nbsp;
+It was his brain, he told me.&nbsp; He had been so upset by
+something that had happened to him that he had almost lost his
+reason.&nbsp; There were times when he could not even remember
+his own name; his mind seemed an absolute blank.&nbsp; And then
+one day by chance&mdash;or Providence, or whatever you choose to
+call it&mdash;he had taken up a book of mine.&nbsp; It was the
+only thing he had been able to read for months and months!&nbsp;
+And now, whenever he felt himself run down&mdash;his brain like a
+squeezed orange (that was his simile)&mdash;he would put
+everything else aside and read a book of mine&mdash;any one: it
+didn&rsquo;t matter which.&nbsp; I suppose one ought to be glad
+that one has saved somebody&rsquo;s life; but I should like to
+have the choosing of them myself.</p>
+<p>I am not sure that Ethelbertha is going to like Mrs. St.
+Leonard; and I don&rsquo;t think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like
+Ethelbertha.&nbsp; I have gathered that Mrs. St. Leonard
+doesn&rsquo;t like anybody much&mdash;except, of course, when it
+is her duty.&nbsp; She does not seem to have the time.&nbsp; Man
+is born to trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself
+accustomed to the feeling.&nbsp; But Mrs. St. Leonard has given
+herself up to the pursuit of trouble to the exclusion of all
+other interests in life.&nbsp; She appears to regard it as the
+only calling worthy a Christian woman.&nbsp; I found her alone
+one afternoon.&nbsp; Her manner was preoccupied; I asked if I
+could be of any assistance.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I am merely trying to
+think what it can be that has been worrying me all the
+morning.&nbsp; It has clean gone out of my head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She remembered it a little later with a glad sigh.</p>
+<p>St. Leonard himself, Ethelbertha thinks charming.&nbsp; We are
+to go again on Sunday for her to see the children.&nbsp; Three or
+four people we met I fancy we shall be able to fit in with.&nbsp;
+We left at half-past six, and took Bute back with us to
+supper.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">She&rsquo;s</span> a good
+woman,&rdquo; said Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s a good woman?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s trying, I expect; although he is an old
+dear: to live with, I mean,&rdquo; continued Robina, addressing
+apparently the rising moon.&nbsp; &ldquo;And then there are all
+those children.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are thinking of Mrs. St. Leonard,&rdquo; I
+suggested.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There seems no way of making her happy,&rdquo;
+explained Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;On Thursday I went round early in
+the morning to help Janie pack the baskets for the picnic.&nbsp;
+It was her own idea, the picnic.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Speaking of picnics,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You might have thought,&rdquo; went on Robina,
+&ldquo;that she was dressing for her own funeral.&nbsp; She said
+she knew she was going to catch her death of cold, sitting on the
+wet grass.&nbsp; Something told her.&nbsp; I reminded her it
+hadn&rsquo;t rained for three weeks, and that everything was as
+dry as a bone, but she said that made no difference to
+grass.&nbsp; There is always a moisture in grass, and that
+cushions and all that only helped to draw it out.&nbsp; Not that
+it mattered.&nbsp; The end had to come, and so long as the others
+were happy&mdash;you know her style.&nbsp; Nobody ever thought of
+her.&nbsp; She was to be dragged here, dragged there.&nbsp; She
+talked about herself as if she were some sacred image.&nbsp; It
+got upon my nerves at last, so that I persuaded Janie to let me
+offer to stop at home with her.&nbsp; I wasn&rsquo;t too keen
+about going myself; not by that time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When our desires leave us, says Rochefoucauld,&rdquo; I
+remarked, &ldquo;we pride ourselves upon our virtue in having
+overcome them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it was her fault, anyhow,&rdquo; retorted Robina;
+&ldquo;and I didn&rsquo;t make a virtue of it.&nbsp; I told her
+I&rsquo;d just as soon not go, and that I felt sure the others
+would be all right without her, so that there was no need for her
+to be dragged anywhere.&nbsp; And then she burst into
+tears.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She said,&rdquo; I suggested, &ldquo;that it was hard
+on her to have children who could wish to go to a picnic and
+leave their mother at home; that it was little enough enjoyment
+she had in her life, heaven knows; that if there was one thing
+she had been looking forward to it was this day&rsquo;s outing;
+but still, of course, if everybody would be happier without
+her&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Something of the sort,&rdquo; admitted Robina;
+&ldquo;only there was a lot of it.&nbsp; We had to all fuss round
+her, and swear that without her it wouldn&rsquo;t be worth
+calling a picnic.&nbsp; She brightened up on the way
+home.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The screech-owl in the yew-tree emitted a blood-curdling
+scream.&nbsp; He perches there each evening on the extreme end of
+the longest bough.&nbsp; Dimly outlined against the night, he has
+the appearance of a friendly hobgoblin.&nbsp; But I wish he
+didn&rsquo;t fancy himself as a vocalist.&nbsp; It is against his
+own interests, I am sure, if he only knew it.&nbsp; That American
+college yell of his must have the effect of sending every living
+thing within half a mile back into its hole.&nbsp; Maybe it is a
+provision of nature for clearing off the very old mice who have
+become stone deaf and would otherwise be a burden on their
+relatives.&nbsp; The others, unless out for suicide, must, one
+thinks, be tolerably safe.&nbsp; Ethelbertha is persuaded he is a
+sign of death; but seeing there isn&rsquo;t a square quarter of a
+mile in this county without its screech-owl, there can hardly by
+this time be a resident that an Assurance Society would look
+at.&nbsp; Veronica likes him.&nbsp; She even likes his
+screech.&nbsp; I found her under the tree the other night,
+wrapped up in a shawl, trying to learn it.&nbsp; As if one of
+them were not enough!&nbsp; It made me quite cross with
+her.&nbsp; Besides, it wasn&rsquo;t a bit like it, as I told
+her.&nbsp; She said it was better than I could do, anyhow; and I
+was idiot enough to take up the challenge.&nbsp; It makes me
+angry now, when I think of it: a respectable, middle-aged
+literary man, standing under a yew-tree trying to screech like an
+owl.&nbsp; And the bird was silly enough to encourage us.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She was a charming girl,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;seven-and-twenty years ago, when St. Leonard fell in love
+with her.&nbsp; She had those dark, dreamy eyes so suggestive of
+veiled mysteries; and her lips must have looked bewitching when
+they pouted.&nbsp; I expect they often did.&nbsp; They do so
+still; but the pout of a woman of forty-six no longer
+fascinates.&nbsp; To a pretty girl of nineteen a spice of temper,
+an illogical unreasonableness, are added attractions: the scratch
+of a blue-eyed kitten only tempts us to tease her the more.&nbsp;
+Young Hubert St. Leonard&mdash;he had curly brown hair, with a
+pretty trick of blushing, and was going to conquer the
+world&mdash;found her fretfulness, her very selfishness adorable:
+and told her so, kneeling before her, gazing into her bewildering
+eyes&mdash;only he called it her waywardness, her imperiousness;
+begged her for his sake to be more capricious.&nbsp; Told her how
+beautiful she looked when displeased.&nbsp; So, no doubt, she
+did&mdash;at nineteen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t tell you all that, did he?&rdquo;
+demanded Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not a word,&rdquo; I reassured her, &ldquo;except that
+she was acknowledged by all authorities to have been the most
+beautiful girl in Tunbridge Wells, and that her father had been
+ruined by a rascally solicitor.&nbsp; No, I was merely, to use
+the phrase of the French police courts, &lsquo;reconstructing the
+crime.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It may be all wrong,&rdquo; grumbled Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It may be,&rdquo; I agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;But why?&nbsp;
+Does it strike you as improbable?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We were sitting in the porch, waiting for Dick to come by the
+white path across the field.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;It all sounds
+very probable.&nbsp; I wish it didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You must remember,&rdquo; I continued, &ldquo;that I am
+an old playgoer.&nbsp; I have sat out so many of this
+world&rsquo;s dramas.&nbsp; It is as easy to reconstruct them
+backwards as forwards.&nbsp; We are witnessing the last act of
+the St. Leonard drama: that unsatisfactory last act that merely
+fills out time after the play is ended!&nbsp; The intermediate
+acts were probably more exciting, containing &lsquo;passionate
+scenes&rsquo; played with much earnestness; chiefly for the
+amusement of the servants.&nbsp; But the first act, with the
+Kentish lanes and woods for a back-cloth, must have been
+charming.&nbsp; Here was the devout lover she had heard of,
+dreamed of.&nbsp; It is delightful to be regarded as
+perfection&mdash;not absolute perfection, for that might put a
+strain upon us to live up to, but as so near perfection that to
+be more perfect would just spoil it.&nbsp; The spots upon us,
+that unappreciative friends and relations would magnify into
+blemishes, seen in their true light: artistic shading relieving a
+faultlessness that might otherwise prove too glaring.&nbsp; Dear
+Hubert found her excellent just as she was in every detail.&nbsp;
+It would have been a crime against Love for her to seek to change
+herself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, it was his fault,&rdquo; argued
+Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;If he was silly enough to like her faults,
+and encourage her in them&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What could he have done,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;even if
+he had seen them?&nbsp; A lover does not point out his
+mistress&rsquo;s shortcomings to her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Much the more sensible plan if he did,&rdquo; insisted
+Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;Then if she cared for him she could set to
+work to cure herself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You would like it?&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;you would
+appreciate it in your own case?&nbsp; Can you imagine young
+Bute&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why young Bute?&rdquo; demanded Robina;
+&ldquo;what&rsquo;s he got to do with it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;except that he
+happens to be the first male creature you have ever come across
+since you were six that you haven&rsquo;t flirted
+with.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t flirt with them,&rdquo; said Robina;
+&ldquo;I merely try to be nice to them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With the exception of young Bute,&rdquo; I
+persisted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He irritates me,&rdquo; Robina explained.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was reading,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the other day, an
+account of the marriage customs prevailing among the Lower
+Caucasians.&nbsp; The lover takes his stand beneath his
+lady&rsquo;s window, and, having attracted her attention,
+proceeds to sing.&nbsp; And if she seems to like it&mdash;if she
+listens to it without getting mad, that means she doesn&rsquo;t
+want him.&nbsp; But if she gets upset about it&mdash;slams down
+the window and walks away, then it&rsquo;s all right.&nbsp; I
+think it&rsquo;s the Lower Caucasians.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Must be a very silly people,&rdquo; said Robina;
+&ldquo;I suppose a pail of water would be the highest proof of
+her affection he could hope for.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A complex being, man,&rdquo; I agreed.&nbsp; &ldquo;We
+will call him X.&nbsp; Can you imagine young X coming to you and
+saying: &lsquo;My dear Robina, you have many excellent
+qualities.&nbsp; You can be amiable&mdash;so long as you are
+having your own way in everything; but thwarted you can be just
+horrid.&nbsp; You are very kind&mdash;to those who are willing
+for you to be kind to them in your own way, which is not always
+their way.&nbsp; You can be quite unselfish&mdash;when you happen
+to be in an unselfish mood, which is far from frequent.&nbsp; You
+are capable and clever, but, like most capable and clever people,
+impatient and domineering; highly energetic when not feeling
+lazy; ready to forgive the moment your temper is exhausted.&nbsp;
+You are generous and frank, but if your object could only be
+gained through meanness or deceit you would not hesitate a moment
+longer than was necessary to convince yourself that the
+circumstances justified the means.&nbsp; You are sympathetic,
+tender-hearted, and have a fine sense of justice; but I can see
+that tongue of yours, if not carefully watched, wearing decidedly
+shrewish.&nbsp; You have any amount of grit.&nbsp; A man might go
+tiger-hunting with you&mdash;with no one better; but you are
+obstinate, conceited, and exacting.&nbsp; In short, to sum you
+up, you have all the makings in you of an ideal wife combined
+with faults sufficient to make a Socrates regret he&rsquo;d ever
+married you.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I would!&rdquo; said Robina, springing to her
+feet.&nbsp; I could not see her face, but I knew there was the
+look upon it that made Primgate want to paint her as Joan of Arc;
+only it would never stop long enough.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d love
+him for talking like that.&nbsp; And I&rsquo;d respect him.&nbsp;
+If he was that sort of man I&rsquo;d pray God to help me to be
+the sort of woman he wanted me to be.&nbsp; I&rsquo;d try.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;d try all day long.&nbsp; I would!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; Robina had surprised
+me.&nbsp; I admit it.&nbsp; I thought I knew the sex better.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Any girl would,&rdquo; said Robina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;d be worth it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It would be a new idea,&rdquo; I mused.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;<i>Gott im Himmel</i>! what a new world might it not
+create!&rdquo;&nbsp; The fancy began to take hold of me.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Love no longer blind.&nbsp; Love refusing any more to be
+the poor blind fool&mdash;sport of gods and men.&nbsp; Love no
+longer passion&rsquo;s slave.&nbsp; His bonds broken, the
+senseless bandage flung aside.&nbsp; Love helping life instead of
+muddling it.&nbsp; Marriage, the foundation of civilisation, no
+longer reared upon the sands of lies and illusions, but grappled
+to the rock of truth&mdash;reality.&nbsp; Have you ever read
+&lsquo;Tom Jones?&rsquo;&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Robina; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always
+heard it wasn&rsquo;t a nice book.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Man
+isn&rsquo;t a nice animal, not all of him.&nbsp; Nor woman
+either.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a deal of the beast in man.&nbsp;
+What can you expect?&nbsp; Till a few paltry thousands of years
+ago he <i>was</i> a beast, fighting with other beasts, his fellow
+denizens of the woods and caves; watching for his prey, crouched
+in the long grass of the river&rsquo;s bank, tearing it with
+claws and teeth, growling as he ate.&nbsp; So he lived and died
+through the dim unnamed ages, transmitting his beast&rsquo;s
+blood, his bestial instincts, to his offspring, growing ever
+stronger, fiercer, from generation to generation, while the rocks
+piled up their strata and the oceans shaped their beds.&nbsp;
+Moses!&nbsp; Why, Lord Rothschild&rsquo;s great-grandfather, a
+few score times removed, must have known Moses, talked with
+him.&nbsp; Babylon!&nbsp; It is a modern city, fallen into disuse
+for the moment, owing to alteration of traffic routes.&nbsp;
+History! it is a tale of to-day.&nbsp; Man was crawling about the
+world on all fours, learning to be an animal for millions of
+years before the secret of his birth was whispered to him.&nbsp;
+It is only during the last few centuries that he has been trying
+to be a man.&nbsp; Our modern morality!&nbsp; Why, compared with
+the teachings of nature, it is but a few days old.&nbsp; What do
+you expect?&nbsp; That he shall forget the lessons of the
+&aelig;ons at the bidding of the hours?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then you advise me to read &lsquo;Tom
+Jones&rsquo;?&rdquo; said Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I do.&nbsp; I should not if
+I thought you were still a child, knowing only blind trust, or
+blind terror.&nbsp; The sun is not extinguished because
+occasionally obscured by mist; the scent of the rose is not dead
+because of the worm in the leaf.&nbsp; A healthy rose can afford
+a few worms&mdash;has got to, anyhow.&nbsp; All men are not Tom
+Joneses.&nbsp; The standard of masculine behaviour continues to
+go up: many of us make fine efforts to conform to it, and some of
+us succeed.&nbsp; But the Tom Jones is there in all of us who are
+not an&aelig;mic or consumptive.&nbsp; And there&rsquo;s no sense
+at all in getting cross with us about it, because we cannot help
+it.&nbsp; We are doing our best.&nbsp; In another hundred
+thousand years or so, provided all goes well, we shall be the
+perfect man.&nbsp; And seeing our early training, I flatter
+myself that, up to the present, we have done remarkably
+well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing like being satisfied with oneself,&rdquo; said
+Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not satisfied,&rdquo; I said;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m only hopeful.&nbsp; But it irritates me when I
+hear people talk as though man had been born a white-souled angel
+and was making supernatural efforts to become a sinner.&nbsp;
+That seems to me the way to discourage him.&nbsp; What he wants
+is bucking up; somebody to say to him, &lsquo;Bravo! why, this is
+splendid!&nbsp; Just think, my boy, what you were, and that not
+so very long ago&mdash;an unwashed, hairy savage; your law that
+of the jungle, your morals those of the rabbit-warren.&nbsp; Now
+look at yourself&mdash;dressed in your little shiny hat, your
+trousers neatly creased, walking with your wife to church on
+Sunday!&nbsp; Keep on&mdash;that&rsquo;s all you&rsquo;ve got to
+do.&nbsp; In a few more centuries your own mother Nature
+won&rsquo;t know you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You women,&rdquo; I continued; &ldquo;why, a handful of
+years ago we bought and sold you, kept you in cages, took the
+stick to you when you were not spry in doing what you were
+told.&nbsp; Did you ever read the history of Patient
+Griselda?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;I have.&rdquo;&nbsp; I
+gathered from her tone that the Joan of Arc expression had
+departed.&nbsp; Had Primgate wanted to paint her at that
+particular moment I should have suggested Katherine&mdash;during
+the earlier stages&mdash;listening to a curtain lecture from
+Petruchio.&nbsp; &ldquo;Are you suggesting that all women should
+take her for a model?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not.&nbsp; Though
+were we living in Chaucer&rsquo;s time I might; and you would not
+think it even silly.&nbsp; What I&rsquo;m impressing upon you is
+that the human race has yet a little way to travel before the
+average man can be regarded as an up-to-date edition of King
+Arthur&mdash;the King Arthur of the poetical legend, I
+mean.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t be too impatient with him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thinking what a beast he has been ought to make him
+impatient himself with himself,&rdquo; considered Robina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He ought to be feeling so ashamed of himself as to be
+willing to do anything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The owl in the old yew screamed, whether with indignation or
+amusement I cannot tell.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And woman,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;had the power been
+hers, would she have used it to sweeter purpose?&nbsp; Where is
+your evidence?&nbsp; Your Cleopatras, Pompadours, Jezebels; your
+Catherines of Russia, late Empresses of China; your Faustines of
+all ages and all climes; your Mother Brownriggs; your Lucretia
+Borgias, Salomes&mdash;I could weary you with names.&nbsp; Your
+Roman task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house slaveys;
+your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages;
+your modern dames of fashion, decked with the plumage of the
+tortured grove.&nbsp; There have been other women
+also&mdash;noble women, their names like beacon-lights studding
+the dark waste of history.&nbsp; So there have been noble
+men&mdash;saints, martyrs, heroes.&nbsp; The sex-line divides us
+physically, not morally.&nbsp; Woman has been man&rsquo;s
+accomplice in too many crimes to claim to be his judge.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Male and female created He them&rsquo;&mdash;like and
+like, for good and evil.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By good fortune I found a loose match.&nbsp; I lighted a fresh
+cigar.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dick, I suppose, is the average man,&rdquo; said
+Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Most of us are,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;when we are at
+home.&nbsp; Carlyle was the average man in the little front
+parlour in Cheyne Row, though, to hear fools talk, you might
+think no married couple outside literary circles had ever been
+known to exchange a cross look.&nbsp; So was Oliver Cromwell in
+his own palace with the door shut.&nbsp; Mrs. Cromwell must have
+thought him monstrous silly, placing sticky sweetmeats for his
+guests to sit on&mdash;told him so, most likely.&nbsp; A cheery,
+kindly man, notwithstanding, though given to moods.&nbsp; He and
+Mrs. Cromwell seem to have rubbed along, on the whole, pretty
+well together.&nbsp; Old Sam Johnson&mdash;great, God-fearing,
+lovable, cantankerous old brute!&nbsp; Life with him, in a small
+house on a limited income, must have had its ups and downs.&nbsp;
+Milton and Frederick the Great were, one hopes, a little below
+the average.&nbsp; Did their best, no doubt; lacked
+understanding.&nbsp; Not so easy as it looks, living up to the
+standard of the average man.&nbsp; Very clever people, in
+particular, find it tiring.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall never marry,&rdquo; said Robina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;At least, I hope I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why &lsquo;hope&rsquo;?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because I hope I shall never be idiot enough,&rdquo;
+she answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;I see it all so clearly.&nbsp; I wish
+I didn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; Love! it&rsquo;s only an ugly thing with a
+pretty name.&nbsp; It will not be me that he will fall in love
+with.&nbsp; He will not know me until it is too late.&nbsp; How
+can he?&nbsp; It will be merely with the outside of me&mdash;my
+pink-and-white skin, my rounded arms.&nbsp; I feel it sometimes
+when I see men looking at me, and it makes me mad.&nbsp; And at
+other times the admiration in their eyes pleases me.&nbsp; And
+that makes me madder still.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The moon had slipped behind the wood.&nbsp; She had risen,
+and, leaning against the porch, was standing with her hands
+clasped.&nbsp; I fancy she had forgotten me.&nbsp; She seemed to
+be talking to the night.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s only a trick of Nature to make fools of
+us,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;He will tell me I am all the
+world to him; that his love will outlive the stars&mdash;will
+believe it himself at the time, poor fellow!&nbsp; He will call
+me a hundred pretty names, will kiss my feet and hands.&nbsp; And
+if I&rsquo;m fool enough to listen to him, it may
+last&rdquo;&mdash;she laughed; it was rather an ugly
+laugh&mdash;&ldquo;six months; with luck perhaps a year, if
+I&rsquo;m careful not to go out in the east wind and come home
+with a red nose, and never let him catch me in curl papers.&nbsp;
+It will not be me that he will want: only my youth, and the
+novelty of me, and the mystery.&nbsp; And when that is
+gone&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She turned to me.&nbsp; It was a strange face I saw then in
+the pale light, quite a fierce little face.&nbsp; She laid her
+hands upon my shoulders, and I felt them cold.&nbsp; &ldquo;What
+comes when it is dead?&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;What
+follows?&nbsp; You must know.&nbsp; Tell me.&nbsp; I want the
+truth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her vehemence had arisen so suddenly.&nbsp; The little girl I
+had set out to talk with was no longer there.&nbsp; To my
+bewilderment, it was a woman that was questioning me.</p>
+<p>I drew her down beside me.&nbsp; But the childish face was
+still stern.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I want the truth,&rdquo; she said; so that I answered
+very gravely:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When the passion is passed; when the glory and the
+wonder of Desire&mdash;Nature&rsquo;s eternal ritual of marriage,
+solemnising, sanctifying it to her commands&mdash;is ended; when,
+sooner or later, some grey dawn finds you wandering bewildered in
+once familiar places, seeking vainly the lost palace of
+youth&rsquo;s dreams; when Love&rsquo;s frenzy is faded, like the
+fragrance of the blossom, like the splendour of the dawn; there
+will remain to you, just what was there before&mdash;no more, no
+less.&nbsp; If passion was all you had to give to one another,
+God help you.&nbsp; You have had your hour of madness.&nbsp; It
+is finished.&nbsp; If greed of praise and worship was your
+price&mdash;well, you have had your payment.&nbsp; The bargain is
+complete.&nbsp; If mere hope to be made happy was your lure, one
+pities you.&nbsp; We do not make each other happy.&nbsp;
+Happiness is the gift of the gods, not of man.&nbsp; The secret
+lies within you, not without.&nbsp; What remains to you will
+depend not upon what you <i>thought</i>, but upon what you
+<i>are</i>.&nbsp; If behind the lover there was the
+man&mdash;behind the impossible goddess of his love-sick brain
+some honest, human woman, then life lies not behind you, but
+before you.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Life is giving, not getting.&nbsp; That is the mistake
+we most of us set out with.&nbsp; It is the work that is the joy,
+not the wages; the game, not the score.&nbsp; The lover&rsquo;s
+delight is to yield, not to claim.&nbsp; The crown of motherhood
+is pain.&nbsp; To serve the State at cost of ease and leisure; to
+spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is the
+man&rsquo;s ambition.&nbsp; Life is doing, not having.&nbsp; It
+is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it.&nbsp;
+Fools marry thinking what they are going to get out of it: good
+store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence,
+eternal soft caresses&mdash;the wages of the wanton.&nbsp; The
+rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility&mdash;manhood,
+womanhood.&nbsp; Love&rsquo;s baby talk you will have
+outgrown.&nbsp; You will no longer be his &lsquo;Goddess,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Angel,&rsquo; &lsquo;Popsy Wopsy,&rsquo; &lsquo;Queen of
+his heart.&rsquo;&nbsp; There are finer names than these: wife,
+mother, priestess in the temple of humanity.&nbsp; Marriage is
+renunciation, the sacrifice of Self upon the altar of the
+race.&nbsp; &lsquo;A trick of Nature&rsquo; you call it.&nbsp;
+Perhaps.&nbsp; But a trick of Nature compelling you to surrender
+yourself to the purposes of God.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I fancy we must have sat in silence for quite a long while;
+for the moon, creeping upward past the wood, had flooded the
+fields again with light before Robina spoke.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then all love is needless,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;we
+could do better without it, choose with more discretion.&nbsp; If
+it is only something that worries us for a little while and then
+passes, what is the sense of it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You could ask the same question of Life itself,&rdquo;
+I said; &ldquo;&lsquo;something that worries us for a little
+while, then passes.&rsquo;&nbsp; Perhaps the &lsquo;worry,&rsquo;
+as you call it, has its uses.&nbsp; Volcanic upheavals are
+necessary to the making of a world.&nbsp; Without them the ground
+would remain rock-bound, unfitted for its purposes.&nbsp; That
+explosion of Youth&rsquo;s pent-up forces that we term Love
+serves to the making of man and woman.&nbsp; It does not die, it
+takes new shape.&nbsp; The blossom fades as the fruit
+forms.&nbsp; The passion passes to give place to peace.&nbsp; The
+trembling lover has become the helper, the comforter, the
+husband.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the failures,&rdquo; Robina persisted; &ldquo;I do
+not mean the silly or the wicked people; but the people who begin
+by really loving one another, only to end in
+disliking&mdash;almost hating one another.&nbsp; How do
+<i>they</i> get there?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and I will tell you a
+story.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once upon a time there was a girl, and a boy who loved
+her.&nbsp; She was a clever, brilliant girl, and she had the face
+of an angel.&nbsp; They lived near to one another, seeing each
+other almost daily.&nbsp; But the boy, awed by the difference of
+their social position, kept his secret, as he thought, to
+himself; dreaming, as youth will, of the day when fame and wealth
+would bridge the gulf between them.&nbsp; The kind look in her
+eyes, the occasional seeming pressure of her hand, he allowed to
+feed his hopes; and on the morning of his departure for London an
+incident occurred that changed his vague imaginings to set
+resolve.&nbsp; He had sent on his scanty baggage by the carrier,
+intending to walk the three miles to the station.&nbsp; It was
+early in the morning, and he had not expected to meet a
+soul.&nbsp; But a mile from the village he overtook her.&nbsp;
+She was reading a book, but she made no pretence that the meeting
+was accidental, leaving him to form what conclusions he
+would.&nbsp; She walked with him some distance, and he told her
+of his plans and hopes; and she answered him quite simply that
+she should always remember him, always be more glad than she
+could tell to hear of his success.&nbsp; Near the end of the lane
+they parted, she wishing him in that low sweet woman&rsquo;s
+voice of hers all things good.&nbsp; He turned, a little farther
+on, and found that she had also turned.&nbsp; She waved her hand
+to him, smiling.&nbsp; And through the long day&rsquo;s journey
+and through many days to come there remained with him that
+picture of her, bringing with it the scent of the pine-woods: her
+white hand waving to him, her sweet eyes smiling wistfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But fame and fortune are not won so quickly as boys
+dream, nor is life as easy to live bravely as it looks in
+visions.&nbsp; It was nearly twenty years before they met
+again.&nbsp; Neither had married.&nbsp; Her people were dead and
+she was living alone; and to him the world at last had opened her
+doors.&nbsp; She was still beautiful.&nbsp; A gracious, gentle
+lady, she had grown; clothed with that soft sweet dignity that
+Time bestows upon rare women, rendering them fairer with the
+years.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To the man it seemed a miracle.&nbsp; The dream of
+those early days came back to him.&nbsp; Surely there was nothing
+now to separate them.&nbsp; Nothing had changed but the years,
+bringing to them both wider sympathies, calmer, more enduring
+emotions.&nbsp; She welcomed him again with the old kind smile, a
+warmer pressure of the hand; and, allowing a little time to pass
+for courtesy&rsquo;s sake, he told her what was the truth: that
+he had never ceased to love her, never ceased to keep the vision
+of her fair pure face before him, his ideal of all that man could
+find of help in womanhood.&nbsp; And her answer, until years
+later he read the explanation, remained a mystery to him.&nbsp;
+She told him that she loved him, that she had never loved any
+other man and never should; that his love, for so long as he
+chose to give it to her, she should always prize as the greatest
+gift of her life.&nbsp; But with that she prayed him to remain
+content.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He thought perhaps it was a touch of woman&rsquo;s
+pride, of hurt dignity that he had kept silent so long, not
+trusting her; that perhaps as time went by she would change her
+mind.&nbsp; But she never did; and after awhile, finding that his
+persistence only pained her, he accepted the situation.&nbsp; She
+was not the type of woman about whom people talk scandal, nor
+would it have troubled her much had they done so.&nbsp; Able now
+to work where he would, he took a house in a neighbouring
+village, where for the best part of the year he lived, near to
+her.&nbsp; And to the end they remained lovers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think I understand,&rdquo; said Robina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I will tell you afterwards if I am wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told the story to a woman many years ago,&rdquo; I
+said, &ldquo;and she also thought she understood.&nbsp; But she
+was only half right.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We will see,&rdquo; said Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;Go
+on.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She left a letter, to be given to him after her death,
+in case he survived her; if not, to be burned unopened.&nbsp; In
+it she told him her reason, or rather her reasons, for having
+refused him.&nbsp; It was an odd letter.&nbsp; The
+&lsquo;reasons&rsquo; sounded so pitiably insufficient.&nbsp;
+Until one took the pains to examine them in the cold light of
+experience.&nbsp; And then her letter struck one, not as foolish,
+but as one of the grimmest commentaries upon marriage that
+perhaps had ever been penned.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was because she had wished always to remain his
+ideal; to keep their love for one another to the end,
+untarnished; to be his true helpmeet in all things, that she had
+refused to marry him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Had he spoken that morning she had waited for him in
+the lane&mdash;she had half hoped, half feared it&mdash;she might
+have given her promise: &lsquo;For Youth,&rsquo; so she wrote,
+&lsquo;always dreams it can find a new way.&rsquo;&nbsp; She
+thanked God that he had not.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Sooner or later,&rsquo; so ran the letter,
+&lsquo;you would have learned, Dear, that I was neither saint nor
+angel; but just a woman&mdash;such a tiresome, inconsistent
+creature; she would have exasperated you&mdash;full of a thousand
+follies and irritabilities that would have marred for you all
+that was good in her.&nbsp; I wanted you to have of me only what
+was worthy, and this seemed the only way.&nbsp; Counting the
+hours to your coming, hating the pain of your going, I could
+always give to you my best.&nbsp; The ugly words, the whims and
+frets that poison speech&mdash;they could wait; it was my
+lover&rsquo;s hour.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;And you, Dear, were always so tender, so
+gay.&nbsp; You brought me joy with both your hands.&nbsp; Would
+it have been the same, had you been my husband?&nbsp; How could
+it?&nbsp; There were times, even as it was, when you vexed
+me.&nbsp; Forgive me, Dear, I mean it was my fault&mdash;ways of
+thought and action that did not fit in with my ways, that I was
+not large-minded enough to pass over.&nbsp; As my lover, they
+were but as spots upon the sun.&nbsp; It was easy to control the
+momentary irritation that they caused me.&nbsp; Time was too
+precious for even a moment of estrangement.&nbsp; As my husband,
+the jarring note would have been continuous, would have widened
+into discord.&nbsp; You see, Dear, I was not great enough to love
+<i>all</i> of you.&nbsp; I remember, as a child, how indignant I
+always felt with God when my nurse told me He would not love me
+because I was naughty, that He only loved good children.&nbsp; It
+seemed such a poor sort of love, that.&nbsp; Yet that is
+precisely how we men and women do love; taking only what gives us
+pleasure, repaying the rest with anger.&nbsp; There would have
+arisen the unkind words that can never be recalled; the ugly
+silences; the gradual withdrawing from one another.&nbsp; I dared
+not face it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It was not all selfishness.&nbsp; Truthfully I
+can say I thought more of you than of myself.&nbsp; I wanted to
+keep the shadows of life away from you.&nbsp; We men and women
+are like the flowers.&nbsp; It is in sunshine that we come to our
+best.&nbsp; You were my hero.&nbsp; I wanted you to be
+great.&nbsp; I wanted you to be surrounded by lovely
+dreams.&nbsp; I wanted your love to be a thing holy, helpful to
+you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was a long letter.&nbsp; I have given you the gist
+of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again there was a silence between us.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You think she did right?&rdquo; asked Robina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot say,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;there are no
+rules for Life, only for the individual.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have read it somewhere,&rdquo; said
+Robina&mdash;&ldquo;where was it?&mdash;&lsquo;Love suffers all
+things, and rejoices.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe in old Thomas Kempis.&nbsp; I am not sure,&rdquo;
+I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; said Robina, &ldquo;that the
+explanation lies in that one sentence of hers: &lsquo;I was not
+great enough to love <i>all</i> of you.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that the whole
+art of marriage is the art of getting on with the other
+fellow.&nbsp; It means patience, self-control, forbearance.&nbsp;
+It means the laying aside of our self-conceit and admitting to
+ourselves that, judged by eyes less partial than our own, there
+may be much in us that is objectionable, that calls for
+alteration.&nbsp; It means toleration for views and opinions
+diametrically opposed to our most cherished convictions.&nbsp; It
+means, of necessity, the abandonment of many habits and
+indulgences that however trivial have grown to be important to
+us.&nbsp; It means the shaping of our own desires to the needs of
+others; the acceptance often of surroundings and conditions
+personally distasteful to us.&nbsp; It means affection deep and
+strong enough to bear away the ugly things of life&mdash;its
+quarrels, wrongs, misunderstandings&mdash;swiftly and silently
+into the sea of forgetfulness.&nbsp; It means courage, good
+humour, commonsense.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is what I am saying,&rdquo; explained
+Robina.&nbsp; &ldquo;It means loving him even when he&rsquo;s
+naughty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dick came across the fields.&nbsp; Robina rose and slipped
+into the house.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are looking mighty solemn, Dad,&rdquo; said
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thinking of Life, Dick,&rdquo; I confessed.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Of the meaning and the explanation of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s a problem, Life,&rdquo; admitted
+Dick.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A bit of a teaser,&rdquo; I agreed.</p>
+<p>We smoked in silence for awhile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Loving a good woman must be a tremendous help to a
+man,&rdquo; said Dick.</p>
+<p>He looked very handsome, very gallant, his boyish face
+flashing challenge to the Fates.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tremendous, Dick,&rdquo; I agreed.</p>
+<p>Robina called to him that his supper was ready.&nbsp; He
+knocked the ashes from his pipe, and followed her into the
+house.&nbsp; Their laughing voices came to me broken through the
+half-closed doors.&nbsp; From the night around me rose a strange
+low murmur.&nbsp; It seemed to me as though above the silence I
+heard the far-off music of the Mills of God.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">fancy</span> Veronica is going to be an
+authoress.&nbsp; Her mother thinks this may account for many
+things about her that have been troubling us.&nbsp; The story
+never got far.&nbsp; It was laid aside for the more alluring work
+of play-writing, and apparently forgotten.&nbsp; I came across
+the copy-book containing her &ldquo;Rough Notes&rdquo; the other
+day.&nbsp; There is decided flavour about them.&nbsp; I
+transcribe selections; the spelling, as before, being my own.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The scene is laid in the Moon.&nbsp; But everything is
+just the same as down here.&nbsp; With one exception.&nbsp; The
+children rule.&nbsp; The grown-ups do not like it.&nbsp; But they
+cannot help it.&nbsp; Something has happened to them.&nbsp; They
+don&rsquo;t know what.&nbsp; And the world is as it used to
+be.&nbsp; In the sweet old story-books.&nbsp; Before sin
+came.&nbsp; There are fairies that dance o&rsquo; nights.&nbsp;
+And Witches.&nbsp; That lure you.&nbsp; And then turn you into
+things.&nbsp; And a dragon who lives in a cave.&nbsp; And springs
+out at people.&nbsp; And eats them.&nbsp; So that you have to be
+careful.&nbsp; And all the animals talk.&nbsp; And there are
+giants.&nbsp; And lots of magic.&nbsp; And it is the children who
+know everything.&nbsp; And what to do for it.&nbsp; And they have
+to teach the grown-ups.&nbsp; And the grown-ups don&rsquo;t
+believe half of it.&nbsp; And are far too fond of arguing.&nbsp;
+Which is a sore trial to the children.&nbsp; But they have
+patience, and are just.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course the grown-ups have to go to school.&nbsp;
+They have much to learn.&nbsp; Poor things!&nbsp; And they hate
+it.&nbsp; They take no interest in fairy lore.&nbsp; And what
+would happen to them if they got wrecked on a Desert Island they
+don&rsquo;t seem to care.&nbsp; And then there are
+languages.&nbsp; What they will need when they come to be
+children.&nbsp; And have to talk to all the animals.&nbsp; And
+magic.&nbsp; Which is deep.&nbsp; And they hate it.&nbsp; And say
+it is rot.&nbsp; They are full of tricks.&nbsp; One catches them
+reading trashy novels.&nbsp; Under the desk.&nbsp; All about
+love.&nbsp; Which is wasting their children&rsquo;s money.&nbsp;
+And God knows it is hard enough to earn.&nbsp; But the children
+are not angry with them.&nbsp; Remembering how they felt
+themselves.&nbsp; When they were grown up.&nbsp; Only firm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The children give them plenty of holidays.&nbsp;
+Because holidays are good for everyone.&nbsp; They freshen you
+up.&nbsp; But the grown-ups are very stupid.&nbsp; And do not
+care for sensible games.&nbsp; Such as Indians.&nbsp; And
+Pirates.&nbsp; What would sharpen their faculties.&nbsp; And so
+fit them for the future.&nbsp; They only care to play with a
+ball.&nbsp; Which is of no help.&nbsp; To the stern realities of
+life.&nbsp; Or talk.&nbsp; Lord, how they talk!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is one grown-up.&nbsp; Who is very clever.&nbsp;
+He can talk about everything.&nbsp; But it leads to
+nothing.&nbsp; And spoils the party.&nbsp; So they send him to
+bed.&nbsp; And there are two grown-ups.&nbsp; A male and a
+female.&nbsp; And they talk love.&nbsp; All the time.&nbsp; Even
+on fine days.&nbsp; Which is maudlin.&nbsp; But the children are
+patient with them.&nbsp; Knowing it takes all sorts.&nbsp; To
+make a world.&nbsp; And trusting they will grow out of it.&nbsp;
+And of course there are grown-ups who are good.&nbsp; And a
+comfort to their children.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And everything the children like is good.&nbsp; And
+wholesome.&nbsp; And everything the grown-ups like is bad for
+them.&nbsp; <i>And they mustn&rsquo;t have it</i>.&nbsp; They
+clamour for tea and coffee.&nbsp; What undermines their nervous
+system.&nbsp; And waste their money in the tuck shop.&nbsp; Upon
+chops.&nbsp; And turtle soup.&nbsp; And the children have to put
+them to bed.&nbsp; And give them pills.&nbsp; Till they feel
+better.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is a little girl named Prue.&nbsp; Who lives with
+a little boy named Simon.&nbsp; They mean well.&nbsp; But
+haven&rsquo;t much sense.&nbsp; They have two grown-ups.&nbsp; A
+male and a female.&nbsp; Named Peter and Martha.&nbsp;
+Respectively.&nbsp; They are just the ordinary grown-ups.&nbsp;
+Neither better nor worse.&nbsp; And much might be done with
+them.&nbsp; By kindness.&nbsp; But Prue and Simon <i>go the wrong
+way to work</i>.&nbsp; It is blame blame all day long.&nbsp; But
+as for praise.&nbsp; Oh never!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One summer&rsquo;s day Prue and Simon take Peter for a
+walk.&nbsp; In the country.&nbsp; And they meet a cow.&nbsp; And
+they think this a good opportunity.&nbsp; To test Peter&rsquo;s
+knowledge.&nbsp; Of languages.&nbsp; So they tell him to talk to
+the cow.&nbsp; And he talks to the cow.&nbsp; And the cow
+don&rsquo;t understand him.&nbsp; And he don&rsquo;t understand
+the cow.&nbsp; And they are mad with him.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is
+the use,&rsquo; they say.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of our paying expensive
+fees.&nbsp; To have you taught the language.&nbsp; By a
+first-class cow.&nbsp; And when you come out into the
+country.&nbsp; You can&rsquo;t talk it.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he says
+he did talk it.&nbsp; But they will not listen to him.&nbsp; But
+go on raving.&nbsp; And in the end it turns out.&nbsp; <i>It was
+a Jersey cow</i>!&nbsp; What talked a dialect.&nbsp; So of course
+he couldn&rsquo;t understand it.&nbsp; But did they
+apologise?&nbsp; Oh dear no.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Another time.&nbsp; One morning at breakfast.&nbsp;
+Martha didn&rsquo;t like her raspberry vinegar.&nbsp; So she
+didn&rsquo;t drink it.&nbsp; And Simon came into the
+nursery.&nbsp; And he saw that Martha hadn&rsquo;t drunk her
+raspberry vinegar.&nbsp; And he asked her why.&nbsp; And she said
+she didn&rsquo;t like it.&nbsp; Because it was nasty.&nbsp; And
+he said it wasn&rsquo;t nasty.&nbsp; And that she <i>ought</i> to
+like it.&nbsp; And how it was shocking.&nbsp; The way grown-ups
+nowadays grumbled.&nbsp; At good wholesome food.&nbsp; Provided
+for them by their too-indulgent children.&nbsp; And how when
+<i>he</i> was a grown-up.&nbsp; He would never have dared.&nbsp;
+And so on.&nbsp; All in the usual style.&nbsp; And to prove it
+wasn&rsquo;t nasty.&nbsp; He poured himself out a cupful.&nbsp;
+And drank it off.&nbsp; In a gulp.&nbsp; And he said it was
+delicious.&nbsp; And turned pale.&nbsp; And left the room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And Prue came into the nursery.&nbsp; And she saw that
+Martha hadn&rsquo;t drunk her raspberry vinegar.&nbsp; And she
+asked her why.&nbsp; And Martha told her how she didn&rsquo;t
+like it.&nbsp; Because it was nasty.&nbsp; And Prue told her she
+ought to be ashamed of herself.&nbsp; For not liking it.&nbsp;
+Because it was good for her.&nbsp; And really very nice.&nbsp;
+And anyhow she&rsquo;d <i>got</i> to like it.&nbsp; And not get
+stuffing herself up with messy tea and coffee.&nbsp; Because she
+wouldn&rsquo;t have it.&nbsp; And there was an end of it.&nbsp;
+And so on.&nbsp; And to prove it was all right.&nbsp; She poured
+herself out a cupful.&nbsp; And drank it off.&nbsp; In a
+gulp.&nbsp; And she said there was nothing wrong with it.&nbsp;
+Nothing whatever.&nbsp; And turned pale.&nbsp; And left the
+room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And it wasn&rsquo;t raspberry vinegar.&nbsp; But just
+red ink.&nbsp; What had got put into the raspberry vinegar
+decanter.&nbsp; By an oversight.&nbsp; And they needn&rsquo;t
+have been ill at all.&nbsp; If only they had listened.&nbsp; To
+poor old Martha.&nbsp; But no.&nbsp; That was their fixed
+idea.&nbsp; That grown-ups hadn&rsquo;t any sense.&nbsp; At
+all.&nbsp; What is a mistake.&nbsp; As one perceives.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Other characters had been sketched, some of them to be
+abandoned after a few bold touches: the difficulty of avoiding
+too close a portraiture to the living original having apparently
+proved irksome.&nbsp; Against one such, evidently an attempt to
+help Dick see himself in his true colours, I find this marginal,
+note in pencil: &ldquo;Better not.&nbsp; Might make him
+ratty.&rdquo;&nbsp; Opposite to another&mdash;obviously of Mrs.
+St. Leonard, and with instinct for alliteration&mdash;is
+scribbled; &ldquo;Too terribly true.&nbsp; She&rsquo;d twig
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Another character is that of a gent: &ldquo;With a certain
+gift.&nbsp; For telling stories.&nbsp; Some of them <i>not
+bad</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; A promising party, on the whole.&nbsp;
+Indeed, one might say, judging from description, a quite rational
+person: &ldquo;<i>When not on the rantan</i>.&nbsp; But
+inconsistent.&rdquo;&nbsp; He is the grown-up of a little girl:
+&ldquo;Not beautiful.&nbsp; But strangely attractive.&nbsp; Whom
+we will call Enid.&rdquo; One gathers that if all the children
+had been Enids, then surely the last word in worlds had been
+said.&nbsp; She has only this one grown-up of her very own; but
+she makes it her business to adopt and reform all the
+incorrigible old folk the other children have despaired of.&nbsp;
+It is all done by kindness.&nbsp; &ldquo;She is <i>ever</i>
+patient.&nbsp; And just.&rdquo;&nbsp; Prominent among her
+numerous <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;es</i> is a military man, an
+elderly colonel; until she took him in hand, the awful example of
+what a grown-up might easily become, left to the care of
+incompetent infants.&nbsp; He defies his own child, a virtuous
+youth, but &ldquo;lacking in sympathy;&rdquo; is rude to his
+little nephews and nieces; a holy terror to his governess.&nbsp;
+He uses wicked words, picked up from retired pirates.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Of course without understanding.&nbsp; Their terrible
+significance.&rdquo;&nbsp; He steals the Indian&rsquo;s
+fire-water.&nbsp; &ldquo;What few can partake of.&nbsp; With
+impunity.&rdquo;&nbsp; Certainly not the Colonel.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Can this be he!&nbsp; This gibbering wreck!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He hides cigars in a hollow tree, and smokes on the sly.&nbsp; He
+plays truant.&nbsp; Lures other old gentlemen away from their
+lessons to join him.&nbsp; They are discovered in the woods, in a
+cave, playing whist for sixpenny points.</p>
+<p>Does Enid storm and bullyrag; threaten that if ever she
+catches him so much as looking at a card again she will go
+straight out and tell the dragon, who will in his turn be so
+shocked that in all probability he will decide on coming back
+with her to kill and eat the Colonel on the spot?&nbsp; No.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Such are not her methods.&rdquo;&nbsp; Instead she smiles:
+&ldquo;indulgently.&rdquo;&nbsp; She says it is only natural for
+grown-ups to like playing cards.&nbsp; She is not angry with
+him.&nbsp; And there is no need for him to run away and hide in a
+nasty damp cave.&nbsp; &ldquo;<i>She herself will play whist with
+him</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; The effect upon the Colonel is immediate:
+he bursts into tears.&nbsp; She plays whist with him in the
+garden: &ldquo;After school hours.&nbsp; When he has been
+<i>good</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; Double dummy, one presumes.&nbsp; One
+leaves the Colonel, in the end, cured of his passion for
+whist.&nbsp; Whether as the consequence of her play or her
+influence the &ldquo;Rough Notes&rdquo; give no indication.</p>
+<p>In the play, I am inclined to think, Veronica received
+assistance.&nbsp; The house had got itself finished early in
+September.&nbsp; Young Bute has certainly done wonders.&nbsp; We
+performed it in the empty billiard-room, followed by a one-act
+piece of my own.&nbsp; The occasion did duty as a
+house-warming.&nbsp; We had quite a crowd, and ended up with a
+dance.&nbsp; Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, except young
+Bertie St. Leonard, who played the Prince, and could not get out
+of his helmet in time for supper.&nbsp; It was a good helmet, but
+had been fastened clumsily; and inexperienced people trying to
+help had only succeeded in jambing all the screws.&nbsp; Not only
+wouldn&rsquo;t it come off, it would not even open for a
+drink.&nbsp; All thought it an excellent joke, with the exception
+of young Herbert St. Leonard.&nbsp; Our Mayor, a cheerful little
+man and very popular, said that it ought to be sent to
+<i>Punch</i>.&nbsp; The local reporter reminded him that the late
+John Leech had already made use of precisely the same incident
+for a comic illustration, afterwards remembering that it was not
+Leech, but the late Phil May.&nbsp; He seemed to think this ended
+the matter.&nbsp; St. Leonard and the Vicar, who are rival
+authorities upon the subject, fell into an argument upon armour
+in general, with special reference to the fourteenth
+century.&nbsp; Each used the boy&rsquo;s head to confirm his own
+theory, passing it triumphantly from one to the other.&nbsp; We
+had to send off young Hopkins in the donkey-cart for the
+blacksmith.&nbsp; I have found out, by the way, how it is young
+Hopkins makes our donkey go.&nbsp; Young Hopkins argues it is far
+less brutal than whacking him, especially after experience has
+proved that he evidently does not know why you are whacking
+him.&nbsp; I am not at all sure the boy is not right.</p>
+<p>Janie played the Fairy Godmamma in a white wig and
+panniers.&nbsp; She will make a beautiful old lady.&nbsp; The
+white hair gives her the one thing that she lacks:
+distinction.&nbsp; I found myself glancing apprehensively round
+the room, wishing we had not invited so many eligible
+bachelors.&nbsp; Dick is making me anxious.&nbsp; The sense of
+his own unworthiness, which has come to him quite suddenly, and
+apparently with all the shock of a new discovery, has completely
+unnerved him.&nbsp; It is a healthy sentiment, and does him
+good.&nbsp; But I do not want it carried to the length of losing
+her.&nbsp; The thought of what he might one day bring home has
+been a nightmare to me ever since he left school.&nbsp; I suppose
+it is to most fathers.&nbsp; Especially if one thinks of the
+women one loved oneself when in the early twenties.&nbsp; A large
+pale-faced girl, who served in a bun-shop in the Strand, is the
+first I can recollect.&nbsp; How I trembled when by chance her
+hand touched mine!&nbsp; I cannot recall a single attraction
+about her except her size, yet for nearly six months I lunched
+off pastry and mineral waters merely to be near her.&nbsp; To
+this very day an attack of indigestion will always recreate her
+image in my mind.&nbsp; Another was a thin, sallow girl, but with
+magnificent eyes, I met one afternoon in the South Kensington
+Museum.&nbsp; She was a brainless, vixenish girl, but the memory
+of her eyes would always draw me back to her.&nbsp; More than
+two-thirds of our time together we spent in violent quarrels; and
+all my hopes of eternity I would have given to make her my
+companion for life.&nbsp; But for Luck, in the shape of a
+well-to-do cab proprietor, as great an idiot as myself I might
+have done it.&nbsp; The third was a chorus girl: on the whole,
+the best of the bunch.&nbsp; Her father was a coachman, and she
+had ten brothers and sisters, most of them doing well in
+service.&nbsp; And she was succeeded&mdash;if I have the order
+correct&mdash;by the ex-wife of a solicitor, a sprightly lady;
+according to her own account the victim of complicated
+injustice.&nbsp; I daresay there were others, if I took the time
+to think; but not one of them can I remember without returning
+thanks to Providence for having lost her.&nbsp; What is one to
+do?&nbsp; There are days in springtime when a young man ought not
+to be allowed outside the house.&nbsp; Thank Heaven and
+Convention it is not the girls who propose!&nbsp; Few women, who
+would choose the right moment to put their hands upon a young
+man&rsquo;s shoulders, and, looking into his eyes, ask him to
+marry them next week, would receive No for an answer.&nbsp; It is
+only our shyness that saves us.&nbsp; A wise friend of mine, who
+has observed much, would have all those marrying under
+five-and-twenty divorced by automatic effluxion of time at forty,
+leaving the few who had chosen satisfactorily to be reunited if
+they wished: his argument being that to condemn grown men and
+women to abide by the choice of inexperienced boys and girls is
+unjust and absurd.&nbsp; There were nice girls I could have
+fallen in love with.&nbsp; They never occurred to me.&nbsp; It
+would seem as if a man had to learn taste in women as in all
+other things, namely, by education.&nbsp; Here and there may
+exist the born connoisseur.&nbsp; But with most of us our first
+instincts are towards vulgarity.&nbsp; It is Barrie, I think, who
+says that if only there were silly women enough to go round, good
+women would never get a look in.&nbsp; It is certainly
+remarkable, the number of sweet old maids one meets.&nbsp; Almost
+as remarkable as the number of stupid, cross-grained wives.&nbsp;
+As I tell Dick, I have no desire for a daughter-in-law of whom he
+feels himself worthy.&nbsp; If he can&rsquo;t do better than that
+he had best remain single.&nbsp; Janie and he, if I know anything
+of life, are just suited for one another.&nbsp; Helpful people
+take their happiness in helping.&nbsp; I knew just such another,
+once: a sweet, industrious, sensible girl.&nbsp; She made the
+mistake of marrying a thoroughly good man.&nbsp; There was
+nothing for her to do.&nbsp; She ended by losing all interest in
+him, devoting herself to a Home in the East End for the
+reformation of newsboys.&nbsp; It was a pitiful waste: so many
+women would have been glad of him; while to the ordinary sinful
+man she would have been a life-long comfort.&nbsp; I must have a
+serious talk to Dick.&nbsp; I shall point out what a good thing
+it will be for her.&nbsp; I can see Dick keeping her busy and
+contented for the rest of her days.</p>
+<p>Veronica played the Princess,&mdash;with little boy
+Foy&mdash;&ldquo;Sir Robert of the Curse&rdquo;&mdash;as her
+page.&nbsp; Anything more dignified has, I should say, rarely
+been seen upon the English stage.&nbsp; Among her wedding
+presents were: Two Votes for Women, presented by the local Fire
+Brigade; a Flying Machine of &ldquo;proved stability.&nbsp; Might
+be used as a bathing tent;&rdquo; a National Theatre, &ldquo;with
+Cold Water Douche in Basement for reception of English
+Dramatists;&rdquo; Recipe for building a Navy, without paying for
+it, &ldquo;Gift of that great Financial Expert, Sir Hocus
+Pocus;&rdquo; one Conscientious Income Taxpayer, &ldquo;has been
+driven by a Lady;&rdquo; two Socialists in agreement as to what
+it means, &ldquo;smaller one slightly damaged;&rdquo; one
+Contented Farmer, &ldquo;Babylonian Period;&rdquo; and one
+extra-sized bottle, &ldquo;Solution of the Servant
+Problem.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dick played the &ldquo;Dragon without a Tail.&rdquo;&nbsp; We
+had to make him without a tail owing to the smallness of the
+stage.&nbsp; He had once had a tail.&nbsp; But that was a long
+story: added to which there was not time to tell it.&nbsp; Little
+Sally St. Leonard played his wife, and Robina was his
+mother-in-law.&nbsp; So much depends upon one&rsquo;s mood.&nbsp;
+What an ocean of boredom might be saved if science could but give
+us a barometer foretelling us our changes of temperament!&nbsp;
+How much more to our comfort we could plan our lives, knowing
+that on Monday, say, we should be feeling frivolous; on Saturday
+&ldquo;dull to bad-tempered.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I took a man once to see <i>The Private Secretary</i>.&nbsp; I
+began by enjoying myself, and ended by feeling ashamed of myself
+and vexed with the scheme of creation.&nbsp; That authors should
+write such plays, that actors should be willing to degrade our
+common nature by appearing in them was explainable, he supposed,
+by the law of supply and demand.&nbsp; What he could not
+understand was how the public could contrive to extract amusement
+from them.&nbsp; What was there funny in seeing a poor gentleman
+shut up in a box?&nbsp; Why should everybody roar with laughter
+when he asked for a bun?&nbsp; People asked for buns every
+day&mdash;people in railway refreshment rooms, in aerated bread
+shops.&nbsp; Where was the joke?&nbsp; A month later I found
+myself by chance occupying the seat just behind him at the
+pantomime.&nbsp; The low comedian was bathing a baby, and tears
+of merriment were rolling down his cheeks.&nbsp; To me the whole
+business seemed painful and revolting.&nbsp; We were being asked
+to find delight in the spectacle of a father&mdash;scouring down
+an infant of tender years with a scrubbing-brush.&nbsp; How
+women&mdash;many of them mothers&mdash;could remain through such
+an exhibition without rising in protest appeared to me an
+argument against female suffrage.&nbsp; A lady entered, the wife,
+so the programme informed me, of a Baron!&nbsp; All I can say is
+that a more vulgar, less prepossessing female I never wish to
+meet.&nbsp; I even doubted her sobriety.&nbsp; She sat down plump
+upon the baby.&nbsp; She must have been a woman rising sixteen
+stone, and for one minute fifteen seconds by my watch the whole
+house rocked with laughter.&nbsp; That the thing was only a stage
+property I felt was no excuse.&nbsp; The humour&mdash;heaven save
+the mark&mdash;lay in the supposition that what we were
+witnessing was the agony and death&mdash;for no child could have
+survived that woman&rsquo;s weight&mdash;of a real baby.&nbsp;
+Had I been able to tap myself beforehand I should have learned
+that on that particular Saturday I was going to be
+&ldquo;set-serious.&rdquo;&nbsp; Instead of booking a seat for
+the pantomime I should have gone to a lecture on Egyptian pottery
+which was being given by a friend of mine at the London Library,
+and have had a good time.</p>
+<p>Children could tap their parents, warn each other that father
+was &ldquo;going down;&rdquo; that mother next week was likely to
+be &ldquo;gusty.&rdquo;&nbsp; Children themselves might hang out
+their little barometers.&nbsp; I remember a rainy day in a
+country house during the Christmas holidays.&nbsp; We had among
+us a Member of Parliament: a man of sunny disposition, extremely
+fond of children.&nbsp; He said it was awfully hard lines on the
+little beggars cooped up in a nursery; and borrowing his
+host&rsquo;s motor-coat, pretended he was a bear.&nbsp; He
+plodded round on his hands and knees and growled a good deal, and
+the children sat on the sofa and watched him.&nbsp; But they
+didn&rsquo;t seem to be enjoying it, not much; and after a
+quarter of an hour or so he noticed this himself.&nbsp; He
+thought it was, maybe, that they were tired of bears, and fancied
+that a whale might rouse them.&nbsp; He turned the table upside
+down and placed the children in it on three chairs, explaining to
+them that they were ship-wrecked sailors on a raft, and that they
+must be careful the whale did not get underneath it and upset
+them.&nbsp; He draped a sheet over the towel-horse to represent
+an iceberg, and rolled himself up in a mackintosh and flopped
+about the floor on his stomach, butting his head occasionally
+against the table in order to suggest to them their danger.&nbsp;
+The attitude of the children still remained that of polite
+spectators.&nbsp; True, the youngest boy did make the suggestion
+of borrowing the kitchen toasting-fork, and employing it as a
+harpoon; but even this appeared to be the outcome rather of a
+desire to please than of any warmer interest; and, the whale
+objecting, the idea fell through.&nbsp; After that he climbed up
+on the dresser and announced to them that he was an
+ourang-outang.&nbsp; They watched him break a soup-tureen, and
+then the eldest boy, stepping out into the middle of the room,
+held up his arm, and the Member of Parliament, somewhat
+surprised, sat down on the dresser and listened.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir,&rdquo; said the eldest boy,
+&ldquo;we&rsquo;re awfully sorry.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s awfully good
+of you, sir.&nbsp; But somehow we&rsquo;re not feeling in the
+mood for wild beasts this afternoon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Member of Parliament brought them down into the
+drawing-room, where we had music; and the children, at their own
+request, were allowed to sing hymns.&nbsp; The next day they came
+of their own accord, and asked the Member of Parliament to play
+at beasts with them; but it seemed he had letters to write.</p>
+<p>There are times when jokes about mothers-in-law strike me as
+lacking both in taste and freshness.&nbsp; On this particular
+evening they came to me bringing with them all the fragrance of
+the days that are no more.&nbsp; The first play I ever saw dealt
+with the subject of the mother-in-law&mdash;the
+&ldquo;Problem&rdquo; I think it was called in those days.&nbsp;
+The occasion was an amateur performance given in aid of the local
+Ragged School.&nbsp; A cousin of mine, lately married, played the
+wife; and my aunt, I remember, got up and walked out in the
+middle of the second act.&nbsp; Robina, in spectacles and an
+early Victorian bonnet, reminded me of her.&nbsp; Young Bute
+played a comic cabman.&nbsp; It was at the old Haymarket, in
+Buckstone&rsquo;s time, that I first met the cabman of art and
+literature.&nbsp; Dear bibulous, becoated creature, with
+ever-wrathful outstretched palm and husky
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Ere!&nbsp; Wot&rsquo;s this?&rdquo;&nbsp; How good
+it was to see him once again!&nbsp; I felt I wanted to climb over
+the foot-lights and shake him by the hand.&nbsp; The twins played
+a couple of Young Turks, much concerned about their
+constitutions; and made quite a hit with a topical duet to the
+refrain: &ldquo;And so you see The reason he Is not the Boss for
+us.&rdquo;&nbsp; We all agreed it was a pun worthy of Tom Hood
+himself.&nbsp; The Vicar thought he had heard it before, but this
+seemed improbable.&nbsp; There was a unanimous call for Author,
+giving rise to sounds of discussion behind the curtain.&nbsp;
+Eventually the whole company appeared, with Veronica in the
+centre.&nbsp; I had noticed throughout that the centre of the
+stage appeared to be Veronica&rsquo;s favourite spot.&nbsp; I can
+see the makings of a leading actress in Veronica.</p>
+<p>In my own piece, which followed, Robina and Bute played a
+young married couple who do not know how to quarrel.&nbsp; It has
+always struck me how much more satisfactorily people quarrel on
+the stage than in real life.&nbsp; On the stage the man, having
+made up his mind&mdash;to have it out, enters and closes the
+door.&nbsp; He lights a cigarette; if not a teetotaller mixes
+himself a brandy-and-soda.&nbsp; His wife all this time is
+careful to remain silent.&nbsp; Quite evident it is that he is
+preparing for her benefit something unpleasant, and chatter might
+disturb him.&nbsp; To fill up the time she toys with a novel or
+touches softly the keys of the piano until he is quite
+comfortable and ready to begin.&nbsp; He glides into his subject
+with the studied calm of one with all the afternoon before
+him.&nbsp; She listens to him in rapt attention.&nbsp; She does
+not dream of interrupting him; would scorn the suggestion of
+chipping in with any little notion of her own likely to
+disarrange his train of thought.&nbsp; All she does when he
+pauses, as occasionally he has to for the purpose of taking
+breath, is to come to his assistance with short encouraging
+remarks, such, for instance, as: &ldquo;Well.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You think that.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;And if I
+did?&rdquo;&nbsp; Her object seems to be to help him on.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; she says from time to time, bitterly.&nbsp;
+And he goes on.&nbsp; Towards the end, when he shows signs of
+easing up, she puts it to him as one sportsman to another: Is he
+quite finished?&nbsp; Is that all?&nbsp; Sometimes it
+isn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; As often as not he has been saving the pick of
+the basket for the last.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;that is not all.&nbsp; There
+is something else!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That is quite enough for her.&nbsp; That is all she wanted to
+know.&nbsp; She merely asked in case there might be.&nbsp; As it
+appears there is, she re-settles herself in her chair and is
+again all ears.</p>
+<p>When it does come&mdash;when he is quite sure there is nothing
+he has forgotten, no little point that he has overlooked, she
+rises.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have listened patiently,&rdquo; she begins, &ldquo;to
+all that you have said.&rdquo;&nbsp; (The devil himself could not
+deny this.&nbsp; &ldquo;Patience&rdquo; hardly seems the
+word.&nbsp; &ldquo;Enthusiastically&rdquo; she might almost have
+said).&nbsp; &ldquo;Now&rdquo;&mdash;with rising
+inflection&mdash;&ldquo;you listen to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The stage husband&mdash;always the
+gentleman&mdash;bows;&mdash;stiffly maybe, but quite politely;
+and prepares in his turn to occupy the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of dumb
+but dignified defendant.&nbsp; To emphasise the coming change in
+their positions, the lady most probably crosses over to what has
+hitherto been his side of the stage; while he, starting at the
+same moment, and passing her about the centre, settles himself
+down in what must be regarded as the listener&rsquo;s end of the
+room.&nbsp; We then have the whole story over again from her
+point of view; and this time it is the gentleman who would bite
+off his tongue rather than make a retort calculated to put the
+lady off.</p>
+<p>In the end it is the party who is in the right that
+conquers.&nbsp; Off the stage this is more or less of a toss-up;
+on the stage, never.&nbsp; If justice be with the husband, then
+it is his voice that, gradually growing louder and louder, rings
+at last triumphant through the house.&nbsp; The lady sees herself
+that she has been to blame, and wonders why it did not occur to
+her before&mdash;is grateful for the revelation, and asks to be
+forgiven.&nbsp; If, on the other hand, it was the husband who was
+at fault, then it is the lady who will be found eventually
+occupying the centre of the stage; the miserable husband who,
+morally speaking, will be trying to get under the table.</p>
+<p>Now, in real life things don&rsquo;t happen quite like
+this.&nbsp; What the quarrel in real life suffers from is want of
+system.&nbsp; There is no order, no settled plan.&nbsp; There is
+much too much go-as-you-please about the quarrel in real life,
+and the result is naturally pure muddle.&nbsp; The man, turning
+things over in the morning while shaving, makes up his mind to
+have this matter out and have done with it.&nbsp; He knows
+exactly what he is going to say.&nbsp; He repeats it to himself
+at intervals during the day.&nbsp; He will first say This, and
+then he will go on to That; while he is about it he will perhaps
+mention the Other.&nbsp; He reckons it will take him a quarter of
+an hour.&nbsp; Which will just give him time to dress for
+dinner.</p>
+<p>After it is over, and he looks at his watch, he finds it has
+taken him longer than that.&nbsp; Added to which he has said next
+to nothing&mdash;next to nothing, that is, of what he meant to
+say.&nbsp; It went wrong from the very start.&nbsp; As a matter
+of fact there wasn&rsquo;t any start.&nbsp; He entered the room
+and closed the door.&nbsp; That is as far as he got.&nbsp; The
+cigarette he never even lighted.&nbsp; There ought to have been a
+box of matches on the mantelpiece behind the photo-frame.&nbsp;
+And of course there were none there.&nbsp; For her to fly into a
+temper merely because he reminded her that he had spoken about
+this very matter at least a hundred times before, and accuse him
+of going about his own house &ldquo;stealing&rdquo; his own
+matches was positively laughable.&nbsp; They had quarrelled for
+about five minutes over those wretched matches, and then for
+another ten because he said that women had no sense of humour,
+and she wanted to know how he knew.&nbsp; After that there had
+cropped up the last quarter&rsquo;s gas-bill, and that by a
+process still mysterious to him had led them into the subject of
+his behaviour on the night of the Hockey Club dance.&nbsp; By an
+effort of almost supernatural self-control he had contrived at
+length to introduce the subject he had come home half an hour
+earlier than usual on purpose to discuss.&nbsp; It didn&rsquo;t
+interest her in the least.&nbsp; What she was full of by this
+time was a girl named Arabella Jones.&nbsp; She got in quite a
+lot while he was vainly trying to remember where he had last seen
+the damned girl.&nbsp; He had just succeeded in getting back to
+his own topic when the Cuddiford girl from next door dashed in
+without a hat to borrow a tuning-fork.&nbsp; It had been quite a
+business finding the tuning-fork, and when she was gone they had
+to begin all over again.&nbsp; They had quarrelled about the
+drawing-room carpet; about her sister Florrie&rsquo;s birthday
+present; and the way he drove the motor-car.&nbsp; It had taken
+them over an hour and a half, and rather than waste the tickets
+for the theatre, they had gone without their dinner.&nbsp; The
+matter of the cold chisel still remained to be thrashed out.</p>
+<p>It had occurred to me that through the medium of the drama I
+might show how the domestic quarrel could so easily be
+improved.&nbsp; Adolphus Goodbody, a worthy young man deeply
+attached to his wife, feels nevertheless that the dinners she is
+inflicting upon him are threatening with permanent damage his
+digestive system.&nbsp; He determines, come what may, to insist
+upon a change.&nbsp; Elvira Goodbody, a charming girl, admiring
+and devoted to her husband, is notwithstanding a trifle <i>en
+t&ecirc;te</i>, especially when her domestic arrangements happen
+to be the theme of discussion.&nbsp; Adolphus, his courage
+screwed to the sticking-point, broaches the difficult subject;
+and for the first half of the act my aim was to picture the
+progress of the human quarrel, not as it should be, but as it
+is.&nbsp; They never reach the cook.&nbsp; The first mention of
+the word &ldquo;dinner&rdquo; reminds Elvira (quick to perceive
+that argument is brewing, and alive to the advantage of getting
+in first) that twice the month before he had dined out, not
+returning till the small hours of the morning.&nbsp; What she
+wants to know is where this sort of thing is going to end?&nbsp;
+If the purpose of Freemasonry is the ruin of the home and the
+desertion of women, then all she has to say&mdash;it turns out to
+be quite a good deal.&nbsp; Adolphus, when able to get in a word,
+suggests that eleven o&rsquo;clock at the latest can hardly be
+described as the &ldquo;small hours of the morning&rdquo;: the
+fault with women is that they never will confine themselves to
+the simple truth.&nbsp; From that point onwards, as can be
+imagined, the scene almost wrote itself.&nbsp; They have passed
+through all the customary stages, and are planning, with
+exaggerated calm, arrangements for the separation which each now
+feels to be inevitable, when a knock comes to the front-door, and
+there enters a mutual friend.</p>
+<p>Their hasty attempts to cover up the traces of mental disorder
+with which the atmosphere is strewed do not deceive him.&nbsp;
+There has been, let us say, a ripple on the waters of perfect
+agreement.&nbsp; Come!&nbsp; What was it all about?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;About!&rdquo;&nbsp; They look from one to the
+other.&nbsp; Surely it would be simpler to tell him what it had
+<i>not</i> been about.&nbsp; It had been about the parrot, about
+her want of punctuality, about his using the butter-knife for the
+marmalade, about a pair of slippers he had lost at Christmas,
+about the education question, and her dressmaker&rsquo;s bill,
+and his friend George, and the next-door dog&mdash;</p>
+<p>The mutual friend cuts short the catalogue.&nbsp; Clearly
+there is nothing for it but to begin the quarrel all over again;
+and this time, if they will put themselves into his hands, he
+feels sure he can promise victory to whichever one is in the
+right.</p>
+<p>Elvira&mdash;she has a sweet, impulsive nature&mdash;throws
+her arms around him: that is all she wants.&nbsp; If only
+Adolphus could be brought to see!&nbsp; Adolphus grips him by the
+hand.&nbsp; If only Elvira would listen to sense!</p>
+<p>The mutual friend&mdash;he is an old
+stage-manager&mdash;arranges the scene: Elvira in easy-chair by
+fire with crochet.&nbsp; Enter Adolphus.&nbsp; He lights a
+cigarette; flings the match on the floor; with his hands in his
+pockets paces up and down the room; kicks a footstool out of his
+way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me when I am to begin,&rdquo; says Elvira.</p>
+<p>The mutual friend promises to give her the right cue.</p>
+<p>Adolphus comes to a halt in the centre of the room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am sorry, my dear,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;but there
+is something I must say to you&mdash;something that may not be
+altogether pleasant for you to hear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To which Elvira, still crocheting, replies, &ldquo;Oh,
+indeed.&nbsp; And pray what may that be?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was not Elvira&rsquo;s own idea.&nbsp; Springing from her
+chair, she had got as far as: &ldquo;Look here.&nbsp; If you have
+come home early merely for the purpose of making a
+row&mdash;&rdquo; before the mutual friend could stop her.&nbsp;
+The mutual friend was firm.&nbsp; Only by exacting strict
+obedience could he guarantee a successful issue.&nbsp; What she
+had got to say was, &ldquo;Oh, indeed.&nbsp;
+Etcetera.&rdquo;&nbsp; The mutual friend had need of all his tact
+to prevent its becoming a quarrel of three.</p>
+<p>Adolphus, allowed to proceed, explained that the subject about
+which he wished to speak was the subject of dinner.&nbsp; The
+mutual friend this time was beforehand.&nbsp; Elvira&rsquo;s
+retort to that was: &ldquo;Dinner!&nbsp; You complain of the
+dinners I provide for you?&rdquo; enabling him to reply,
+&ldquo;Yes, madam, I do complain,&rdquo; and to give
+reasons.&nbsp; It seemed to Elvira that the mutual friend had
+lost his senses.&nbsp; To tell her to &ldquo;wait&rdquo;; that
+&ldquo;her time would come&rdquo;; of what use was that!&nbsp;
+Half of what she wanted to say would be gone out of her
+head.&nbsp; Adolphus brought to a conclusion his criticism of
+Elvira&rsquo;s kitchen; and then Elvira, incapable of restraining
+herself further, rose majestically.</p>
+<p>The mutual friend was saved the trouble of suppressing
+Adolphus.&nbsp; Until Elvira had finished Adolphus never got an
+opening.&nbsp; He grumbled at their dinners.&nbsp; He! who can
+dine night after night with his precious Freemasons.&nbsp; Does
+he think she likes them any better?&nbsp; She, doomed to stay at
+home and eat them.&nbsp; What does he take her for?&nbsp; An
+ostrich?&nbsp; Whose fault is it that they keep an incompetent
+cook too old to learn and too obstinate to want to?&nbsp; Whose
+old family servant was she?&nbsp; Not Elvira&rsquo;s.&nbsp; It
+has been to please Adolphus that she has suffered the
+woman.&nbsp; And this is her reward.&nbsp; This!&nbsp; She breaks
+down.&nbsp; Adolphus is astonished and troubled.&nbsp; Personally
+he never liked the woman.&nbsp; Faithful she may have been, but a
+cook never.&nbsp; His own idea, had he been consulted, would have
+been a small pension.&nbsp; Elvira falls upon his neck.&nbsp; Why
+did he not say so before?&nbsp; Adolphus presses her to his
+bosom.&nbsp; If only he had known!&nbsp; They promise the mutual
+friend never to quarrel again without his assistance.</p>
+<p>The acting all round was quite good.&nbsp; Our curate, who is
+a bachelor, said it taught a lesson.&nbsp; Veronica had tears in
+her eyes.&nbsp; She whispered to me that she thought it
+beautiful.&nbsp; There is more in Veronica than people think.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">am</span> sorry the house is
+finished.&nbsp; There is a proverb: &ldquo;Fools build houses for
+wise men to live in.&rdquo;&nbsp; It depends upon what you are
+after.&nbsp; The fool gets the fun, and the wise men the bricks
+and mortar.&nbsp; I remember a whimsical story I picked up at the
+bookstall of the Gare de Lyon.&nbsp; I read it between Paris and
+Fontainebleau many years ago.&nbsp; Three friends, youthful
+Bohemians, smoking their pipes after the meagre dinner of a cheap
+restaurant in the Latin Quarter, fell to thinking of their
+poverty, of the long and bitter struggle that lay before
+them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My themes are so original,&rdquo; sighed the
+Musician.&nbsp; &ldquo;It will take me a year of
+<i>f&ecirc;te</i> days to teach the public to understand them,
+even if ever I do succeed.&nbsp; And meanwhile I shall live
+unknown, neglected; watching the men without ideals passing me by
+in the race, splashed with the mud from their carriage-wheels as
+I beat the pavements with worn shoes.&nbsp; It is really a most
+unjust world.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An abominable world,&rdquo; agreed the Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But think of me!&nbsp; My case is far harder than
+yours.&nbsp; Your gift lies within you.&nbsp; Mine is to
+translate what lies around me; and that, for so far ahead as I
+can see, will always be the shadow side of life.&nbsp; To develop
+my genius to its fullest I need the sunshine of existence.&nbsp;
+My soul is being starved for lack of the beautiful things of
+life.&nbsp; A little of the wealth that vulgar people waste would
+make a great poet for France.&nbsp; It is not only of myself that
+I am thinking.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Painter laughed.&nbsp; &ldquo;I cannot soar to your
+heights,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Frankly speaking, it is
+myself that chiefly appeals to me.&nbsp; Why not?&nbsp; I give
+the world Beauty, and in return what does it give me?&nbsp; This
+dingy restaurant, where I eat ill-flavoured food off hideous
+platters, a foul garret giving on to chimney-pots.&nbsp; After
+long years of ill-requited labour I may&mdash;as others have
+before me&mdash;come into my kingdom: possess my studio in the
+Champs Elys&eacute;es, my fine house at Neuilly; but the prospect
+of the intervening period, I confess, appals me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Absorbed in themselves, they had not noticed that a stranger,
+seated at a neighbouring table, had been listening with
+attention.&nbsp; He rose and, apologising with easy grace for
+intrusion into a conversation he could hardly have avoided
+overhearing, requested permission to be of service.&nbsp; The
+restaurant was dimly lighted; the three friends on entering had
+chosen its obscurest corner.&nbsp; The Stranger appeared to be
+well-dressed; his voice and bearing suggested the man of affairs;
+his face&mdash;what feeble light there was being behind
+him&mdash;remained in shadow.</p>
+<p>The three friends eyed him furtively: possibly some rich but
+eccentric patron of the arts; not beyond the bounds of
+speculation that he was acquainted with their work, had read the
+Poet&rsquo;s verses in one of the minor magazines, had stumbled
+upon some sketch of the Painter&rsquo;s while bargain-hunting
+among the dealers of the Quartier St. Antoine, been struck by the
+beauty of the Composer&rsquo;s Nocturne in F heard at some
+student&rsquo;s concert; having made enquiries concerning their
+haunts, had chosen this method of introducing himself.&nbsp; The
+young men made room for him with feelings of hope mingled with
+curiosity.&nbsp; The affable Stranger called for liqueurs, and
+handed round his cigar-case.&nbsp; And almost his first words
+brought them joy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Before we go further,&rdquo; said the smiling Stranger,
+&ldquo;it is my pleasure to inform you that all three of you are
+destined to become great.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The liqueurs to their unaccustomed palates were proving
+potent.&nbsp; The Stranger&rsquo;s cigars were singularly
+aromatic.&nbsp; It seemed the most reasonable thing in the world
+that the Stranger should be thus able to foretell to them their
+future.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fame, fortune will be yours,&rdquo; continued the
+agreeable Stranger.&nbsp; &ldquo;All things delightful will be to
+your hand: the adoration of women, the honour of men, the incense
+of Society, joys spiritual and material, beauteous surroundings,
+choice foods, all luxury and ease, the world your
+pleasure-ground.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The stained walls of the dingy restaurant were fading into
+space before the young men&rsquo;s eyes.&nbsp; They saw
+themselves as gods walking in the garden of their hearts&rsquo;
+desires.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But, alas,&rdquo; went on the Stranger&mdash;and with
+the first note of his changed voice the visions vanished, the
+dingy walls came back&mdash;&ldquo;these things take time.&nbsp;
+You will, all three, be well past middle-age before you will reap
+the just reward of your toil and talents.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile&mdash;&rdquo; the sympathetic Stranger shrugged his
+shoulders&mdash;&ldquo;it is the old story: genius spending its
+youth battling for recognition against indifference, ridicule,
+envy; the spirit crushed by its sordid environment, the drab
+monotony of narrow days.&nbsp; There will be winter nights when
+you will tramp the streets, cold, hungry, forlorn; summer days
+when you will hide in your attics, ashamed of the sunlight on
+your ragged garments; chill dawns when you will watch wild-eyed
+the suffering of those you love, helpless by reason of your
+poverty to alleviate their pain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Stranger paused while the ancient waiter replenished the
+empty glasses.&nbsp; The three friends drank in silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I propose,&rdquo; said the Stranger, with a pleasant
+laugh, &ldquo;that we pass over this customary period of
+probation&mdash;that we skip the intervening years&mdash;arrive
+at once at our true destination.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Stranger, leaning back in his chair, regarded the three
+friends with a smile they felt rather than saw.&nbsp; And
+something about the Stranger&mdash;they could not have told
+themselves what&mdash;made all things possible.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A quite simple matter,&rdquo; the Stranger assured
+them.&nbsp; &ldquo;A little sleep and a forgetting, and the years
+lie behind us.&nbsp; Come, gentlemen.&nbsp; Have I your
+consent?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It seemed a question hardly needing answer.&nbsp; To escape at
+one stride the long, weary struggle; to enter without fighting
+into victory!&nbsp; The young men looked at one another.&nbsp;
+And each one, thinking of his gain, bartered the battle for the
+spoil.</p>
+<p>It seemed to them that suddenly the lights went out; and a
+darkness like a rushing wind swept past them, filled with many
+sounds.&nbsp; And then forgetfulness.&nbsp; And then the coming
+back of light.</p>
+<p>They were seated at a table, glittering with silver and dainty
+chinaware, to which the red wine in Venetian goblets, the varied
+fruit and flowers, gave colour.&nbsp; The room, furnished too
+gorgeously for taste, they judged to be a private cabinet in one
+of the great restaurants.&nbsp; Of such interiors they had
+occasionally caught glimpses through open windows on summer
+nights.&nbsp; It was softly illuminated by shaded lamps.&nbsp;
+The Stranger&rsquo;s face was still in shadow.&nbsp; But what
+surprised each of the three most was to observe opposite him two
+more or less bald-headed gentlemen of somewhat flabby appearance,
+whose features, however, in some mysterious way appeared
+familiar.&nbsp; The Stranger had his wine-glass raised in his
+hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our dear Paul,&rdquo; the Stranger was saying,
+&ldquo;has declined, with his customary modesty, any public
+recognition of his triumph.&nbsp; He will not refuse three old
+friends the privilege of offering him their heartiest
+congratulations.&nbsp; Gentlemen, I drink not only to our dear
+Paul, but to the French Academy, which in honouring him has
+honoured France.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Stranger, rising from his chair, turned his piercing
+eyes&mdash;the only part of him that could be clearly
+seen&mdash;upon the astonished Poet.&nbsp; The two elderly
+gentlemen opposite, evidently as bewildered as Paul himself,
+taking their cue from the Stranger, drained their glasses.&nbsp;
+Still following the Stranger&rsquo;s lead, leant each across the
+table and shook him warmly by the hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I beg pardon,&rdquo; said the Poet, &ldquo;but really I
+am afraid I must have been asleep.&nbsp; Would it sound rude to
+you&rdquo;&mdash;he addressed himself to the Stranger: the faces
+of the elderly gentlemen opposite did not suggest their being of
+much assistance to him&mdash;&ldquo;if I asked you where I
+was?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again there flickered across the Stranger&rsquo;s face the
+smile that was felt rather than seen.&nbsp; &ldquo;You are in a
+private room of the Caf&eacute; Pretali,&rdquo; he
+answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;We are met this evening to celebrate your
+recent elevation into the company of the Immortals.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the Poet, &ldquo;thank you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Academy,&rdquo; continued the Stranger, &ldquo;is
+always a little late in these affairs.&nbsp; Myself, I could have
+wished your election had taken place ten years ago, when all
+France&mdash;all France that counts, that is&mdash;was talking of
+you.&nbsp; At fifty-three&rdquo;&mdash;the Stranger touched
+lightly with his fingers the Poet&rsquo;s fat
+hand&mdash;&ldquo;one does not write as when the sap was running
+up, instead of down.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Slowly, memory of the dingy <i>caf&eacute;</i> in the Rue St.
+Louis, of the strange happening that took place there that night
+when he was young, crept back into the Poet&rsquo;s brain.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Would you mind,&rdquo; said the Poet, &ldquo;would it
+be troubling you too much to tell me something of what has
+occurred to me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not in the least,&rdquo; responded the agreeable
+Stranger.&nbsp; &ldquo;Your career has been most
+interesting&mdash;for the first few years chiefly to
+yourself.&nbsp; You married Marguerite.&nbsp; You remember
+Marguerite?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Poet remembered her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A mad thing to do, so most people would have
+said,&rdquo; continued the Stranger.&nbsp; &ldquo;You had not a
+sou between you.&nbsp; But, myself, I think you were
+justified.&nbsp; Youth comes to us but once.&nbsp; And at
+twenty-five our business is to live.&nbsp; Undoubtedly the
+marriage helped you.&nbsp; You lived an idyllic existence, for a
+time, in a tumble-down cottage at Suresnes, with a garden that
+went down to the river.&nbsp; Poor, of course you were; poor as
+church mice.&nbsp; But who fears poverty when hope and love are
+singing on the bough!&nbsp; I really think quite your best work
+was done during those years at Suresnes.&nbsp; Ah, the sweetness,
+the tenderness of it!&nbsp; There has been nothing like it in
+French poetry.&nbsp; It made no mark at the time; but ten years
+later the public went mad about it.&nbsp; She was dead
+then.&nbsp; Poor child, it had been a hard struggle.&nbsp; And,
+as you may remember, she was always fragile.&nbsp; Yet even in
+her death I think she helped you.&nbsp; There entered a new note
+into your poetry, a depth that had hitherto been wanting.&nbsp;
+It was the best thing that ever came to you, your love for
+Marguerite.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Stranger refilled his glass, and passed the
+decanter.&nbsp; But the Poet left the wine unheeded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And then, ah, yes, then followed that excursion into
+politics.&nbsp; Those scathing articles you wrote for <i>La
+Libert&eacute;</i>!&nbsp; It is hardly an exaggeration to say
+that they altered the whole aspect of French political
+thought.&nbsp; Those wonderful speeches you made during your
+election campaign at Angers.&nbsp; How the people worshipped
+you!&nbsp; You might have carried your portfolio had you
+persisted.&nbsp; But you poets are such restless fellows.&nbsp;
+And after all, I daresay you have really accomplished more by
+your plays.&nbsp; You remember&mdash;no, of course, how could
+you?&mdash;the first night of <i>La Conqu&ecirc;tte</i>.&nbsp;
+Shall I ever forget it!&nbsp; I have always reckoned that the
+crown of your career.&nbsp; Your marriage with Madame
+Deschenelle&mdash;I do not think it was for the public
+good.&nbsp; Poor Deschenelle&rsquo;s millions&mdash;is it not
+so?&nbsp; Poetry and millions interfere with one another.&nbsp;
+But a thousand pardons, my dear Paul.&nbsp; You have done so
+much.&nbsp; It is only right you should now be taking your
+ease.&nbsp; Your work is finished.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Poet does not answer.&nbsp; Sits staring before him with
+eyes turned inward.&nbsp; The Painter, the Musician: what did the
+years bring to them?&nbsp; The Stranger tells them also of all
+that they have lost: of the griefs and sorrows, of the hopes and
+fears they have never tasted, of their tears that ended in
+laughter, of the pain that gave sweetness to joy, of the triumphs
+that came to them in the days before triumph had lost its savour,
+of the loves and the longings and fervours they would never
+know.&nbsp; All was ended.&nbsp; The Stranger had given them what
+he had promised, what they had desired: the gain without the
+getting.</p>
+<p>Then they break out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it to me,&rdquo; cries the Painter, &ldquo;that
+I wake to find myself wearing the gold medal of the Salon, robbed
+of the memory of all by which it was earned?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Stranger points out to him that he is illogical; such
+memories would have included long vistas of meagre dinners in
+dingy restaurants, of attic studios, of a life the chief part of
+which had been passed amid ugly surroundings.&nbsp; It was to
+escape from all such that he had clamoured.&nbsp; The Poet is
+silent.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I asked but for recognition,&rdquo; cries the Musician,
+&ldquo;that men might listen to me; not for my music to be taken
+from me in exchange for the recompense of a successful
+tradesman.&nbsp; My inspiration is burnt out; I feel it.&nbsp;
+The music that once filled my soul is mute.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was born of the strife and anguish,&rdquo; the
+Stranger tells him, &ldquo;of the loves that died, of the hopes
+that faded, of the beating of youth&rsquo;s wings against the
+bars of sorrow, of the glory and madness and torment called Life,
+of the struggle you shrank from facing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Poet takes up the tale.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have robbed us of Life,&rdquo; he cries.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You tell us of dead lips whose kisses we have never felt,
+of songs of victory sung to our deaf ears.&nbsp; You have taken
+our fires, you have left us but the ashes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The fires that scorch and sear,&rdquo; the Stranger
+adds, &ldquo;the lips that cried in their pain, the victory
+bought of wounds.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is not yet too late,&rdquo; the Stranger tells
+them.&nbsp; &ldquo;All this can be but a troubled dream, growing
+fainter with each waking moment.&nbsp; Will you buy back your
+Youth at the cost of ease?&nbsp; Will you buy back Life at the
+price of tears?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They cry with one voice, &ldquo;Give us back our Youth with
+its burdens, and a heart to bear them!&nbsp; Give us back Life
+with its mingled bitter and sweet!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then suddenly the Stranger stands revealed before them.&nbsp;
+They see that he is Life&mdash;Life born of battle, Life made
+strong by endeavour, Life learning song from suffering.</p>
+<p>There follows more talk; which struck me, when I read the
+story, as a mistake; for all that he tells them they have now
+learnt: that life to be enjoyed must be lived; that victory to be
+sweet must be won.</p>
+<p>They awake in the dingy <i>caf&eacute;</i> in the Rue St.
+Louis.&nbsp; The ancient waiter is piling up the chairs
+preparatory to closing the shutters.&nbsp; The Poet draws forth
+his small handful of coins; asks what is to pay.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; the waiter answers.&nbsp; A stranger who
+sat with them and talked awhile before they fell asleep has paid
+the bill.&nbsp; They look at one another, but no one speaks.</p>
+<p>The streets are empty.&nbsp; A thin rain is falling.&nbsp;
+They turn up the collars of their coats; strike out into the
+night.&nbsp; And as their footsteps echo on the glistening
+pavement it comes to each of them that they are walking with a
+new, brave step.</p>
+<p>I feel so sorry for Dick&mdash;for the tens of thousands of
+happy, healthy, cared-for lads of whom Dick is the type.&nbsp;
+There must be millions of youngsters in the world who have never
+known hunger, except as an appetiser to their dinner; who have
+never felt what it was to be tired, without the knowledge that a
+comfortable bed was awaiting them.</p>
+<p>To the well-to-do man or woman life is one perpetual
+nursery.&nbsp; They are wakened in the morning&mdash;not too
+early, not till the nursery has been swept out and made ready,
+and the fire lighted&mdash;awakened gently with a cup of tea to
+give them strength and courage for this great business of getting
+up&mdash;awakened with whispered words, lest any sudden start
+should make their little heads ache&mdash;the blinds carefully
+arranged to exclude the naughty sun, which otherwise might shine
+into their little eyes and make them fretful.&nbsp; The water,
+with the nasty chill off, is put ready for them; they wash their
+little hands and faces, all by themselves!&nbsp; Then they are
+shaved and have their hair done; their little hands are
+manicured, their little corns cut for them.&nbsp; When they are
+neat and clean, they toddle into breakfast; they are shown into
+their little chairs, their little napkins handed to them; the
+nice food that is so good for them is put upon their little
+plates; the drink is poured out for them into their cups.&nbsp;
+If they want to play, there is the day nursery.&nbsp; They have
+only to tell kind nurse what game it is they fancy.&nbsp; The
+toys are at once brought out.&nbsp; The little gun is put into
+their hand; the little horse is dragged forth from its corner,
+their little feet carefully placed in the stirrups.&nbsp; The
+little ball and bat is taken from its box.</p>
+<p>Or they will take the air, as the wise doctor has
+ordered.&nbsp; The little carriage will be ready in five minutes;
+the nice warm cloak is buttoned round them, the footstool placed
+beneath their feet, the cushion at their back.</p>
+<p>The day is done.&nbsp; The games have been played; the toys
+have been taken from their tired hands, put back into the
+cupboard.&nbsp; The food that is so good for them, that makes
+them strong little men and women, has all been eaten.&nbsp; They
+have been dressed for going out into the pretty Park, undressed
+and dressed again for going out to tea with the little boys and
+girls next door; undressed and dressed again for the party.&nbsp;
+They have read their little book? have seen a little play, have
+looked at pretty pictures.&nbsp; The kind gentleman with the long
+hair has played the piano to them.&nbsp; They have danced.&nbsp;
+Their little feet are really quite tired.&nbsp; The footman
+brings them home.&nbsp; They are put into their little
+nighties.&nbsp; The candle is blown out, the nursery door is
+softly closed.</p>
+<p>Now and again some restless little man, wearying of the smug
+nursery, will run out past the garden gate, and down the long
+white road; will find the North Pole or, failing that, the South
+Pole, or where the Nile rises, or how it feels to fly; will climb
+the Mountains of the Moon&mdash;do anything, go anywhere, to
+escape from Nurse Civilisation&rsquo;s everlasting apron
+strings.</p>
+<p>Or some queer little woman, wondering where the people come
+from, will run and run till she comes to the great town, watch in
+wonder the strange folk that sweat and groan&mdash;the peaceful
+nursery, with the toys, the pretty frocks never quite the same
+again to her.</p>
+<p>But to the nineteen-twentieths of the well-to-do the world
+beyond the nursery is an unknown land.&nbsp; Terrible things
+occur out there to little men and women who have no pretty
+nursery to live in.&nbsp; People push and shove you about, will
+even tread on your toes if you are not careful.&nbsp; Out there
+is no kind, strong Nurse Bank-Balance to hold one&rsquo;s little
+hand, and see that no harm comes to one.&nbsp; Out there, one has
+to fight one&rsquo;s own battles.&nbsp; Often one is cold and
+hungry, out there.</p>
+<p>One has to fend for oneself, out there; earn one&rsquo;s
+dinner before one eats it, never quite sure of the week after
+next.&nbsp; Terrible things take place, out there: strain and
+contest and fierce endeavour; the ways are full of dangers and
+surprises; folk go up, folk go down; you have to set your teeth
+and fight.&nbsp; Well-to-do little men and women shudder.&nbsp;
+Draw down the nursery blinds.</p>
+<p>Robina had a little dog.&nbsp; It led the usual dog&rsquo;s
+life: slept in a basket on an eiderdown cushion, sheltered from
+any chance draught by silk curtains; its milk warmed and
+sweetened; its cosy chair reserved for it, in winter, near the
+fire; in summer, where the sun might reach it; its three meals a
+day that a gourmet might have eaten gladly; its very fleas taken
+off its hands.</p>
+<p>And twice a year still extra care was needed, lest it should
+wantonly fling aside its days and nights of luxurious ease, claim
+its small share of the passion and pain that go to the making of
+dogs and men.&nbsp; For twice a year there came a wind, salt with
+the brine of earth&rsquo;s ceaseless tides, whispering to it of a
+wondrous land whose sharpest stones are sweeter than the silken
+cushions of all the world without.</p>
+<p>One winter&rsquo;s night there was great commotion.&nbsp;
+Babette was nowhere to be found.&nbsp; We were living in the
+country, miles away from everywhere.&nbsp; &ldquo;Babette,
+Babette,&rdquo; cried poor frenzied Robina; and for answer came
+only the laughter of the wind, pausing in his game of romps with
+the snow-flakes.</p>
+<p>Next morning an old woman from the town four miles away
+brought back Babette at the end of a string.&nbsp; Oh, such a
+soaked, bedraggled Babette!&nbsp; The old woman had found her
+crouching in a doorway, a bewildered little heap of palpitating
+femininity; and, reading the address upon her collar, and may be
+scenting a not impossible reward, had thought she might as well
+earn it for herself.</p>
+<p>Robina was shocked, disgusted.&nbsp; To think that
+Babette&mdash;dainty, petted, spoilt Babette&mdash;should have
+chosen of her own accord to go down into the mud and darkness of
+the vulgar town; to leave her curtained eiderdown to tramp the
+streets like any drab!&nbsp; Robina, to whom Babette had hitherto
+been the ideal dog, moved away to hide her tears of
+vexation.&nbsp; The old dame smiled.&nbsp; She had borne her good
+man eleven, so she told us.&nbsp; It had been a hard struggle,
+and some had gone down, and some were dead; but some, thank God,
+were doing well.</p>
+<p>The old dame wished us good day; but as she turned to go an
+impulse seized her.&nbsp; She crossed to where Babette, ashamed,
+yet half defiant, sat a wet, woeful little image on the
+hearthrug, stooped and lifted the little creature in her thin,
+worn arms.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s trouble you&rsquo;ve brought
+yourself,&rdquo; said the old dame.&nbsp; &ldquo;You
+couldn&rsquo;t help it, could you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Babette&rsquo;s little pink tongue stole out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We understand, we know&mdash;we Mothers,&rdquo; they
+seemed to be saying to one another.</p>
+<p>And so the two kissed.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>I think the terrace will be my favourite spot.&nbsp;
+Ethelbertha thinks, too, that on sunny days she will like to sit
+there.&nbsp; From it, through an opening I have made in the
+trees, I can see the cottage just a mile away at the edge of the
+wood.&nbsp; Young Bute tells me it is the very place he has been
+looking for.&nbsp; Most of his time, of course, he has to pass in
+town, but his Fridays to Mondays he likes to spend in the
+country.&nbsp; Maybe I shall hand it over to him.&nbsp; St.
+Leonard&rsquo;s chimneys we can also see above the trees.&nbsp;
+Dick tells me he has quite made up his mind to become a
+farmer.&nbsp; He thinks it would be a good plan, for a beginning,
+to go into partnership with St. Leonard.&nbsp; It is not unlikely
+that St. Leonard&rsquo;s restless temperament may prompt him
+eventually to tire of farming.&nbsp; He has a brother in Canada
+doing well in the lumber business, and St. Leonard often talks of
+the advantages of the colonies to a man who is bringing up a
+large family.&nbsp; I shall be sorry to lose him as a neighbour;
+though I see the advantages, under certain possibilities, of Mrs.
+St. Leonard&rsquo;s address being Manitoba.</p>
+<p>Veronica also thinks the terrace may come to be her favourite
+resting-place.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said Veronica, &ldquo;that if
+anything was to happen to Robina, everything would fall on
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It would be a change, Veronica,&rdquo; I
+suggested.&nbsp; &ldquo;Hitherto it is you who have done most of
+the falling.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose I&rsquo;ve got to see about growing up,&rdquo;
+said Veronica.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE
+END.</span></p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEY AND I***</p>
+<pre>
+
+
+***** This file should be named 2437-h.htm or 2437-h.zip******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/2437
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+</pre></body>
+</html>
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24fa496
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #2437 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2437)
diff --git a/old/theyi10.txt b/old/theyi10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05343d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/theyi10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7682 @@
+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of They and I, by Jerome K. Jerome*
+#23 in our series by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+They and I
+
+by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+December, 2000 [Etext #2437]
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of They and I, by Jerome K. Jerome
+*****This file should be named theyi10.txt or theyi10.zip*****
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, theyi11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, theyi10a.txt
+
+
+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1909 Bernhard Tauchnitz edition.
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we do usually do NOT! keep
+these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
+files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
+from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
+assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
+more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
+don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email.
+
+******
+
+To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
+to view http://promo.net/pg.  This site lists Etexts by
+author and by title, and includes information about how
+to get involved with Project Gutenberg.  You could also
+download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here.  This
+is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
+for a more complete list of our various sites.
+
+To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
+Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
+sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
+at http://promo.net/pg).
+
+Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
+
+Example FTP session:
+
+ftp sunsite.unc.edu
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+***
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1909 Bernhard Tauchnitz edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+THEY AND I
+
+by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+"It is not a large house," I said.  "We don't want a large house.
+Two spare bedrooms, and the little three-cornered place you see
+marked there on the plan, next to the bathroom, and which will just
+do for a bachelor, will be all we shall require--at all events, for
+the present.  Later on, if I ever get rich, we can throw out a wing.
+The kitchen I shall have to break to your mother gently.  Whatever
+the original architect could have been thinking of--"
+
+"Never mind the kitchen," said Dick:  "what about the billiard-room?"
+
+The way children nowadays will interrupt a parent is nothing short of
+a national disgrace.  I also wish Dick would not sit on the table,
+swinging his legs.  It is not respectful.  "Why, when I was a boy,"
+as I said to him, "I should as soon have thought of sitting on a
+table, interrupting my father--"
+
+"What's this thing in the middle of the hall, that looks like a
+grating?" demanded Robina.
+
+"She means the stairs," explained Dick.
+
+"Then why don't they look like stairs?" commented Robina.
+
+"They do," replied Dick, "to people with sense."
+
+"They don't," persisted Robina, "they look like a grating."  Robina,
+with the plan spread out across her knee, was sitting balanced on the
+arm of an easy-chair.  Really, I hardly see the use of buying chairs
+for these people.  Nobody seems to know what they are for--except it
+be one or another of the dogs.  Perches are all they want.
+
+"If we threw the drawing-room into the hall and could do away with
+the stairs," thought Robina, "we should be able to give a dance now
+and then."
+
+"Perhaps," I suggested, "you would like to clear out the house
+altogether, leaving nothing but the four bare walls.  That would give
+us still more room, that would.  For just living in, we could fix up
+a shed in the garden; or--"
+
+"I'm talking seriously," said Robina:  "what's the good of a drawing-
+room?  One only wants it to show the sort of people into that one
+wishes hadn't come.  They'd sit about, looking miserable, just as
+well anywhere else.  If we could only get rid of the stairs--"
+
+"Oh, of course! we could get rid of the stairs," I agreed.  "It would
+be a bit awkward at first, when we wanted to go to bed.  But I
+daresay we should get used to it.  We could have a ladder and climb
+up to our rooms through the windows.  Or we might adopt the Norwegian
+method and have the stairs outside."
+
+"I wish you would be sensible," said Robin.
+
+"I am trying to be," I explained; "and I am also trying to put a
+little sense into you.  At present you are crazy about dancing.  If
+you had your way, you would turn the house into a dancing-saloon with
+primitive sleeping-accommodation attached.  It will last six months,
+your dancing craze.  Then you will want the house transformed into a
+swimming-bath, or a skating-rink, or cleared out for hockey.  My idea
+may be conventional.  I don't expect you to sympathise with it.  My
+notion is just an ordinary Christian house, not a gymnasium.  There
+are going to be bedrooms in this house, and there's going to be a
+staircase leading to them.  It may strike you as sordid, but there is
+also going to be a kitchen:  though why when building the house they
+should have put the kitchen -
+
+"Don't forget the billiard-room," said Dick.
+
+"If you thought more of your future career and less about billiards,"
+Robin pointed out to him, "perhaps you'd get through your Little-go
+in the course of the next few years.  If Pa only had sense--I mean if
+he wasn't so absurdly indulgent wherever you are concerned, he would
+not have a billiard-table in the house."
+
+"You talk like that," retorted Dick, "merely because you can't play."
+
+"I can beat you, anyhow," retorted Robin.
+
+"Once," admitted Dick--"once in six weeks."
+
+"Twice," corrected Robin.
+
+"You don't play," Dick explained to her; "you just whack round and
+trust to Providence."
+
+"I don't whack round," said Robin; "I always aim at something.  When
+you try and it doesn't come off, you say it's 'hard luck;' and when I
+try and it does come off, you say it's fluking.  So like a man."
+
+"You both of you," I said, "attach too much importance to the score.
+When you try for a cannon off the white and hit it on the wrong side
+and send it into a pocket, and your own ball travels on and makes a
+losing hazard off the red, instead of being vexed with yourselves--"
+
+"If you get a really good table, governor," said Dick, "I'll teach
+you billiards."
+
+I do believe Dick really thinks he can play.  It is the same with
+golf.  Beginners are invariably lucky.  "I think I shall like it,"
+they tell you; "I seem to have the game in me, if you understand."
+
+'There is a friend of mine, an old sea-captain.  He is the sort of
+man that when the three balls are lying in a straight line, tucked up
+under the cushion, looks pleased; because then he knows he can make a
+cannon and leave the red just where he wants it.  An Irish youngster
+named Malooney, a college chum of Dick's, was staying with us; and
+the afternoon being wet, the Captain said he would explain it to
+Malooney, how a young man might practise billiards without any danger
+of cutting the cloth.  He taught him how to hold the cue, and he told
+him how to make a bridge.  Malooney was grateful, and worked for
+about an hour.  He did not show much promise.  He is a powerfully
+built young man, and he didn't seem able to get it into his head that
+he wasn't playing cricket.  Whenever he hit a little low the result
+was generally lost ball.  To save time--and damage to furniture--Dick
+and I fielded for him.  Dick stood at long-stop, and I was short
+slip.  It was dangerous work, however, and when Dick had caught him
+out twice running, we agreed that we had won, and took him in to tea.
+In the evening--none of the rest of us being keen to try our luck a
+second time--the Captain said, that just for the joke of the thing he
+would give Malooney eighty-five and play him a hundred up.  To
+confess the truth, I find no particular fun myself in playing
+billiards with the Captain.  The game consists, as far as I am
+concerned, in walking round the table, throwing him back the balls,
+and saying "Good!"  By the time my turn comes I don't seem to care
+what happens:  everything seems against me.  He is a kind old
+gentleman and he means well, but the tone in which he says "Hard
+lines!" whenever I miss an easy stroke irritates me.  I feel I'd like
+to throw the balls at his head and fling the table out of window.  I
+suppose it is that I am in a fretful state of mind, but the mere way
+in which he chalks his cue aggravates me.  He carries his own chalk
+in his waistcoat pocket--as if our chalk wasn't good enough for him--
+and when he has finished chalking, he smooths the tip round with his
+finger and thumb and taps the cue against the table.  "Oh! go on with
+the game," I want to say to him; "don't be so full of tricks."
+
+
+The Captain led off with a miss in baulk.  Malooney gripped his cue,
+drew in a deep breath, and let fly.  The result was ten:  a cannon
+and all three balls in the same pocket.  As a matter of fact he made
+the cannon twice; but the second time, as we explained to him, of
+course did not count.
+
+"Good beginning!" said the Captain.
+
+Malooney seemed pleased with himself, and took off his coat.
+
+Malooney's ball missed the red on its first journey up the table by
+about a foot, but found it later on and sent it into a pocket.
+
+"Ninety-nine plays nothing," said Dick, who was marking.  "Better
+make it a hundred and fifty, hadn't we, Captain?"
+
+"Well, I'd like to get in a shot," said the Captain, "before the game
+is over.  Perhaps we had better make it a hundred and fifty, if Mr.
+Malooney has no objection."
+
+"Whatever you think right, sir," said Rory Malooney.
+
+Malooney finished his break for twenty-two, leaving himself hanging
+over the middle pocket and the red tucked up in baulk.
+
+"Nothing plays a hundred and eight," said Dick.
+
+"When I want the score," said the Captain, "I'll ask for it."
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," said Dick.
+
+"I hate a noisy game," said the Captain.
+
+The Captain, making up his mind without much waste of time, sent his
+ball under the cushion, six inches outside baulk.
+
+"What will I do here?" asked Malooney.
+
+"I don't know what you will do," said the Captain; "I'm waiting to
+see."
+
+Owing to the position of the ball, Malooney was unable to employ his
+whole strength.  All he did that turn was to pocket the Captain's
+ball and leave himself under the bottom cushion, four inches from the
+red.  The Captain said a nautical word, and gave another miss.
+Malooney squared up to the balls for the third time.  They flew
+before him, panic-stricken.  They banged against one another, came
+back and hit one another again for no reason whatever.  The red, in
+particular, Malooney had succeeded apparently in frightening out of
+its wits.  It is a stupid ball, generally speaking, our red--its one
+idea to get under a cushion and watch the game.  With Malooney it
+soon found it was safe nowhere on the table.  Its only hope was
+pockets.  I may have been mistaken, my eye may have been deceived by
+the rapidity of the play, but it seemed to me that the red never
+waited to be hit.  When it saw Malooney's ball coming for it at the
+rate of forty miles an hour, it just made for the nearest pocket.  It
+rushed round the table looking for pockets.  If in its excitement, it
+passed an empty pocket, it turned back and crawled in.  There were
+times when in its terror it jumped the table and took shelter under
+the sofa or behind the sideboard.  One began to feel sorry for the
+red.
+
+The Captain had scored a legitimate thirty-eight, and Malooney had
+given him twenty-four, when it really seemed as if the Captain's
+chance had come.  I could have scored myself as the balls were then.
+
+"Sixty-two plays one hundred and twenty-eight.  Now then, Captain,
+game in your hands," said Dick.
+
+We gathered round.  The children left their play.  It was a pretty
+picture:  the bright young faces, eager with expectation, the old
+worn veteran squinting down his cue, as if afraid that watching
+Malooney's play might have given it the squirms.
+
+"Now follow this," I whispered to Malooney.  "Don't notice merely
+what he does, but try and understand why he does it.  Any fool--after
+a little practice, that is--can hit a ball.  But why do you hit it?
+What happens after you've hit it?  What--"
+
+"Hush," said Dick.
+
+The Captain drew his cue back and gently pushed it forward.
+
+"Pretty stroke," I whispered to Malooney; "now, that's the sort--"
+
+I offer, by way of explanation, that the Captain by this time was
+probably too full of bottled-up language to be master of his nerves.
+The ball travelled slowly past the red.  Dick said afterwards that
+you couldn't have put so much as a sheet of paper between them.  It
+comforts a man, sometimes, when you tell him this; and at other times
+it only makes him madder.  It travelled on and passed the white--you
+could have put quite a lot of paper between it and the white--and
+dropped with a contented thud into the top left-hand pocket.
+
+"Why does he do that?" Malooney whispered.  Malooney has a singularly
+hearty whisper.
+
+Dick and I got the women and children out of the room as quickly as
+we could, but of course Veronica managed to tumble over something on
+the way--Veronica would find something to tumble over in the desert
+of Sahara; and a few days later I overheard expressions, scorching
+their way through the nursery door, that made my hair rise up.  I
+entered, and found Veronica standing on the table.  Jumbo was sitting
+upon the music-stool.  The poor dog himself was looking scared,
+though he must have heard a bit of language in his time, one way and
+another.
+
+"Veronica," I said, "are you not ashamed of yourself?  You wicked
+child, how dare you--"
+
+"It's all right," said Veronica.  "I don't really mean any harm.
+He's a sailor, and I have to talk to him like that, else he don't
+know he's being talked to."
+
+I pay hard-working, conscientious ladies to teach this child things
+right and proper for her to know.  They tell her clever things that
+Julius Caesar said; observations made by Marcus Aurelius that,
+pondered over, might help her to become a beautiful character.  She
+complains that it produces a strange buzzy feeling in her head; and
+her mother argues that perhaps her brain is of the creative order,
+not intended to remember much--thinks that perhaps she is going to be
+something.  A good round-dozen oaths the Captain must have let fly
+before Dick and I succeeded in rolling her out of the room.  She had
+only heard them once, yet, so far as I could judge, she had got them
+letter perfect.
+
+The Captain, now no longer under the necessity of employing all his
+energies to suppress his natural instincts, gradually recovered form,
+and eventually the game stood at one hundred and forty-nine all,
+Malooney to play.  The Captain had left the balls in a position that
+would have disheartened any other opponent than Malooney.  To any
+other opponent than Malooney the Captain would have offered
+irritating sympathy.  "Afraid the balls are not rolling well for you
+to-night," the Captain would have said; or, "Sorry, sir, I don't seem
+to have left you very much."  To-night the Captain wasn't feeling
+playful.
+
+"Well, if he scores off that!" said Dick.
+
+"Short of locking up the balls and turning out the lights, I don't
+myself see how one is going to stop him," sighed the Captain.
+
+The Captain's ball was in hand.  Malooney went for the red and hit--
+perhaps it would be more correct to say, frightened--it into a
+pocket.  Malooney's ball, with the table to itself, then gave a solo
+performance, and ended up by breaking a window.  It was what the
+lawyers call a nice point.  What was the effect upon the score?
+
+Malooney argued that, seeing he had pocketed the red before his own
+ball left the table, his three should be counted first, and that
+therefore he had won.  Dick maintained that a ball that had ended up
+in a flower-bed couldn't be deemed to have scored anything.  The
+Captain declined to assist.  He said that, although he had been
+playing billiards for upwards of forty years, the incident was new to
+him.  My own feeling was that of thankfulness that we had got through
+the game without anybody being really injured.  We agreed that the
+person to decide the point would be the editor of The Field.
+
+It remains still undecided.  The Captain came into my study the next
+morning.  He said:  "If you haven't written that letter to The Field,
+don't mention my name.  They know me on The Field.  I would rather it
+did not get about that I have been playing with a man who cannot keep
+his ball within the four walls of a billiard-room."
+
+"Well," I answered, "I know most of the fellows on The Field myself.
+They don't often get hold of anything novel in the way of a story.
+When they do, they are apt to harp upon it.  My idea was to keep my
+own name out of it altogether."
+
+"It is not a point likely to crop up often," said the Captain.  "I'd
+let it rest if I were you."
+
+I should like to have had it settled.  In the end, I wrote the editor
+a careful letter, in a disguised hand, giving a false name and
+address.  But if any answer ever appeared I must have missed it.
+
+Myself I have a sort of consciousness that somewhere inside me there
+is quite a good player, if only I could persuade him to come out.  He
+is shy, that is all.  He does not seem able to play when people are
+looking on.  The shots he misses when people are looking on would
+give you a wrong idea of him.  When nobody is about, a prettier game
+you do not often see.  If some folks who fancy themselves could see
+me when there is nobody about, it might take the conceit out of them.
+Only once I played up to what I feel is my real form, and then it led
+to argument.  I was staying at an hotel in Switzerland, and the
+second evening a pleasant-spoken young fellow, who said he had read
+all my books--later, he appeared surprised on learning I had written
+more than two--asked me if I would care to play a hundred up.  We
+played even, and I paid for the table.  The next evening he said he
+thought it would make a better game if he gave me forty and I broke.
+It was a fairly close finish, and afterwards he suggested that I
+should put down my name for the handicap they were arranging.
+
+"I am afraid," I answered, "that I hardly play well enough.  Just a
+quiet game with you is one thing; but in a handicap with a crowd
+looking on--"
+
+"I should not let that trouble you," he said; "there are some here
+who play worse than you--just one or two.  It passes the evening."
+
+It was merely a friendly affair.  I paid my twenty marks, and was
+given plus a hundred.  I drew for my first game a chatty type of man,
+who started minus twenty.  We neither of us did much for the first
+five minutes, and then I made a break of forty-four.
+
+There was not a fluke in it from beginning to end.  I was never more
+astonished in my life.  It seemed to me it was the cue was doing it.
+
+Minus Twenty was even more astonished.  I heard him as I passed:
+
+"Who handicapped this man?" he asked.
+
+"I did," said the pleasant-spoken youngster.
+
+"Oh," said Minus Twenty--"friend of yours, I presume?"
+
+There are evenings that seem to belong to you.  We finished that two
+hundred and fifty under the three-quarters of an hour.  I explained
+to Minus Twenty--he was plus sixty-three at the end--that my play
+that night had been exceptional.  He said that he had heard of cases
+similar.  I left him talking volubly to the committee.  He was not a
+nice man at all.
+
+After that I did not care to win; and that of course was fatal.  The
+less I tried, the more impossible it seemed for me to do wrong.  I
+was left in at the last with a man from another hotel.  But for that
+I am convinced I should have carried off the handicap.  Our hotel
+didn't, anyhow, want the other hotel to win.  So they gathered round
+me, and offered me sound advice, and begged me to be careful; with
+the natural result that I went back to my usual form quite suddenly.
+
+Never before or since have I played as I played that week.  But it
+showed me what I could do.  I shall get a new table, with proper
+pockets this time.  There is something wrong about our pockets.  The
+balls go into them and then come out again.  You would think they had
+seen something there to frighten them.  They come out trembling and
+hold on to the cushion.
+
+I shall also get a new red ball.  I fancy it must be a very old ball,
+our red.  It seems to me to be always tired.
+
+"The billiard-room," I said to Dick, "I see my way to easily enough.
+Adding another ten feet to what is now the dairy will give us twenty-
+eight by twenty.  I am hopeful that will be sufficient even for your
+friend Malooney.  The drawing-room is too small to be of any use.  I
+may decide--as Robina has suggested--to 'throw it into the hall.'
+But the stairs will remain.  For dancing, private theatricals--things
+to keep you children out of mischief--I have an idea I will explain
+to you later on.  The kitchen--"
+
+"Can I have a room to myself?" asked Veronica.
+
+Veronica was sitting on the floor, staring into the fire, her chin
+supported by her hand.  Veronica, in those rare moments when she is
+resting from her troubles, wears a holy, far-away expression apt to
+mislead the stranger.  Governesses, new to her, have their doubts
+whether on these occasions they are justified in dragging her back to
+discuss mere dates and tables.  Poets who are friends of mine, coming
+unexpectedly upon Veronica standing by the window, gazing upward at
+the evening star, have thought it was a vision, until they got closer
+and found that she was sucking peppermints.
+
+"I should so like to have a room all to myself," added Veronica.
+
+"It would be a room!" commented Robin.
+
+"It wouldn't have your hairpins sticking up all over the bed,
+anyhow," murmured Veronica dreamily.
+
+"I like that!" said Robin; "why--"
+
+"You're harder than I am," said Veronica.
+
+"I should wish you to have a room, Veronica," I said.  "My fear is
+that in place of one untidy bedroom in the house--a room that makes
+me shudder every time I see it through the open door; and the door,
+in spite of all I can say, generally is wide open--"
+
+"I'm not untidy," said Robin, "not really.  I know where everything
+is in the dark--if people would only leave them alone."
+
+"You are.  You're about the most untidy girl I know," said Dick.
+
+"I'm not," said Robin; "you don't see other girls' rooms.  Look at
+yours at Cambridge.  Malooney told us you'd had a fire, and we all
+believed him at first."
+
+"When a man's working--" said Dick.
+
+"He must have an orderly place to work in," suggested Robin.
+
+Dick sighed.  "It's never any good talking to you," said Dick.  "You
+don't even see your own faults."
+
+"I can," said Robin; "I see them more than anyone.  All I claim is
+justice."
+
+"Show me, Veronica," I said, "that you are worthy to possess a room.
+At present you appear to regard the whole house as your room.  I find
+your gaiters on the croquet lawn.  A portion of your costume--an
+article that anyone possessed of the true feelings of a lady would
+desire to keep hidden from the world--is discovered waving from the
+staircase window."
+
+"I put it out to be mended," explained Veronica.
+
+"You opened the door and flung it out.  I told you of it at the
+time," said Robin.  "You do the same with your boots."
+
+"You are too high-spirited for your size," explained Dick to her.
+"Try to be less dashing."
+
+"I could also wish, Veronica," I continued, "that you shed your back
+comb less easily, or at least that you knew when you had shed it.  As
+for your gloves--well, hunting your gloves has come to be our leading
+winter sport."
+
+"People look in such funny places for them," said Veronica.
+
+"Granted.  But be just, Veronica," I pleaded.  "Admit that it is in
+funny places we occasionally find them.  When looking for your things
+one learns, Veronica, never to despair.  So long as there remains a
+corner unexplored inside or outside the house, within the half-mile
+radius, hope need not be abandoned."
+
+Veronica was still gazing dreamily into the fire.
+
+"I suppose," said Veronica, "it's reditty."
+
+"It's what?" I said.
+
+"She means heredity," suggested Dick--"cheeky young beggar!  I wonder
+you let her talk to you the way she does."
+
+"Besides," added Robin, "as I am always explaining to you, Pa is a
+literary man.  With him it is part of his temperament."
+
+"It's hard on us children," said Veronica.
+
+We were all agreed--with the exception of Veronica--that it was time
+Veronica went to bed.  As chairman I took it upon myself to closure
+the debate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+"Do you mean, Governor, that you have actually bought the house?"
+demanded Dick, "or are we only talking about it?"
+
+"This time, Dick," I answered, "I have done it."
+
+Dick looked serious.  "Is it what you wanted?" he asked.
+
+"No, Dick," I replied, "it is not what I wanted.  I wanted an old-
+fashioned, picturesque, rambling sort of a place, all gables and ivy
+and oriel windows."
+
+"You are mixing things up," Dick interrupted, "gables and oriel
+windows don't go together."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Dick," I corrected him, "in the house I wanted,
+they do.  It is the style of house you find in the Christmas number.
+I have never seen it anywhere else, but I took a fancy to it from the
+first.  It is not too far from the church, and it lights up well at
+night.  'One of these days,' I used to say to myself when a boy,
+'I'll be a clever man and live in a house just like that.'  It was my
+dream."
+
+"And what is this place like?" demanded Robin, "this place you have
+bought."
+
+"The agent," I explained, "claims for it that it is capable of
+improvement.  I asked him to what school of architecture he would say
+it belonged; he said he thought that it must have been a local
+school, and pointed out--what seems to be the truth--that nowadays
+they do not build such houses."
+
+"Near to the river?" demanded Dick.
+
+"Well, by the road," I answered, "I daresay it may be a couple of
+miles."
+
+"And by the shortest way?" questioned Dick.
+
+"That is the shortest way," I explained; "there's a prettier way
+through the woods, but that is about three miles and a half."
+
+"But we had decided it was to be near the river," said Robin.
+
+"We also decided," I replied, "that it was to be on sandy soil, with
+a south-west aspect.  Only one thing in this house has a south-west
+aspect, and that's the back door.  I asked the agent about the sand.
+He advised me, if I wanted it in any quantity, to get an estimate
+from the Railway Company.  I wanted it on a hill.  It is on a hill,
+with a bigger hill in front of it.  I didn't want that other hill.  I
+wanted an uninterrupted view of the southern half of England.  I
+wanted to take people out on the step, and cram them with stories
+about our being able on clear days to see the Bristol Channel.  They
+might not have believed me, but without that hill I could have stuck
+to it, and they could not have been certain--not dead certain--I was
+lying.
+
+"Personally, I should have liked a house where something had
+happened.  I should have liked, myself, a blood-stain--not a fussy
+blood-stain, a neat unobtrusive blood-stain that would have been
+content, most of its time, to remain hidden under the mat, shown only
+occasionally as a treat to visitors.  I had hopes even of a ghost.  I
+don't mean one of those noisy ghosts that doesn't seem to know it is
+dead.  A lady ghost would have been my fancy, a gentle ghost with
+quiet, pretty ways.  This house--well, it is such a sensible-looking
+house, that is my chief objection to it.  It has got an echo.  If you
+go to the end of the garden and shout at it very loudly, it answers
+you back.  This is the only bit of fun you can have with it.  Even
+then it answers you in such a tone you feel it thinks the whole thing
+silly--is doing it merely to humour you.  It is one of those houses
+that always seems to be thinking of its rates and taxes."
+
+"Any reason at all for your having bought it?" asked Dick.
+
+"Yes, Dick," I answered.  "We are all of us tired of this suburb.  We
+want to live in the country and be good.  To live in the country with
+any comfort it is necessary to have a house there.  This being
+admitted, it follows we must either build a house or buy one.  I
+would rather not build a house.  Talboys built himself a house.  You
+know Talboys.  When I first met him, before he started building, he
+was a cheerful soul with a kindly word for everyone.  The builder
+assures him that in another twenty years, when the colour has had
+time to tone down, his house will be a picture.  At present it makes
+him bilious, the mere sight of it.  Year by year, they tell him, as
+the dampness wears itself away, he will suffer less and less from
+rheumatism, ague, and lumbago.  He has a hedge round the garden; it
+is eighteen inches high.  To keep the boys out he has put up barbed-
+wire fencing.  But wire fencing affords no real privacy.  When the
+Talboys are taking coffee on the lawn, there is generally a crowd
+from the village watching them.  There are trees in the garden; you
+know they are trees--there is a label tied to each one telling you
+what sort of tree it is.  For the moment there is a similarity about
+them.  Thirty years hence, Talboys estimates, they will afford him
+shade and comfort; but by that time he hopes to be dead.  I want a
+house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the
+rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house."
+
+"But why this particular house?" urged Robin, "if, as you say, it is
+not the house you wanted."
+
+"Because, my dear girl," I answered, "it is less unlike the house I
+wanted than other houses I have seen.  When we are young we make up
+our minds to try and get what we want; when we have arrived at years
+of discretion we decide to try and want what we can get.  It saves
+time.  During the last two years I have seen about sixty houses, and
+out of the lot there was only one that was really the house I wanted.
+Hitherto I have kept the story to myself.  Even now, thinking about
+it irritates me.  It was not an agent who told me of it.  I met a man
+by chance in a railway carriage.  He had a black eye.  If ever I meet
+him again I'll give him another.  He accounted for it by explaining
+that he had had trouble with a golf ball, and at the time I believed
+him.  I mentioned to him in conversation I was looking for a house.
+He described this place to me, and it seemed to me hours before the
+train stopped at a station.  When it did I got out and took the next
+train back.  I did not even wait for lunch.  I had my bicycle with
+me, and I went straight there.  It was--well, it was the house I
+wanted.  If it had vanished suddenly, and I had found myself in bed,
+the whole thing would have seemed more reasonable.  The proprietor
+opened the door to me himself.  He had the bearing of a retired
+military man.  It was afterwards I learnt he was the proprietor.
+
+"I said, 'Good afternoon; if it is not troubling you, I would like to
+look over the house.'  We were standing in the oak-panelled hall.  I
+noticed the carved staircase about which the man in the train had
+told me, also the Tudor fireplaces.  That is all I had time to
+notice.  The next moment I was lying on my back in the middle of the
+gravel with the door shut.  I looked up.  I saw the old maniac's head
+sticking out of a little window.  It was an evil face.  He had a gun
+in his hand.
+
+"'I'm going to count twenty,' he said.  'If you are not the other
+side of the gate by then, I shoot.'
+
+"I ran over the figures myself on my way to the gate.  I made it
+eighteen.
+
+"I had an hour to wait for the train.  I talked the matter over with
+the station-master.
+
+"'Yes,' he said, 'there'll be trouble up there one of these days.'
+
+"I said, 'It seems to me to have begun.'
+
+"He said, 'It's the Indian sun.  It gets into their heads.  We have
+one or two in the neighbourhood.  They are quiet enough till
+something happens.'
+
+"'If I'd been two seconds longer,' I said, 'I believe he'd have done
+it.'
+
+"'It's a taking house,' said the station-master; 'not too big and not
+too little.  It's the sort of house people seem to be looking for.'
+
+"'I don't envy,' I said, 'the next person that finds it.'
+
+"'He settled himself down here,' said the station-master, 'about ten
+years ago.  Since then, if one person has offered to take the house
+off his hands, I suppose a thousand have.  At first he would laugh at
+them good-temperedly--explain to them that his idea was to live there
+himself, in peace and quietness, till he died.  Two out of every
+three of them would express their willingness to wait for that, and
+suggest some arrangement by which they might enter into possession,
+say, a week after the funeral.  The last few months it has been worse
+than ever.  I reckon you're about the eighth that has been up there
+this week, and to-day only Thursday.  There's something to be said,
+you know, for the old man.'"
+
+"And did he," asked Dick--"did he shoot the next party that came
+along?"
+
+"Don't be so silly, Dick," said Robin; "it's a story.  Tell us
+another, Pa."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Robina, by a story," I said.  "If you
+mean to imply--"
+
+Robina said she didn't; but I know quite well she did.  Because I am
+an author, and have to tell stories for my living, people think I
+don't know any truth.  It is vexing enough to be doubted when one is
+exaggerating; to have sneers flung at one by one's own kith and kin
+when one is struggling to confine oneself to bald, bare narrative--
+well, where is the inducement to be truthful?  There are times when I
+almost say to myself that I will never tell the truth again.
+
+"As it happens," I said, "the story is true, in many places.  I pass
+over your indifference to the risk I ran; though a nice girl at the
+point where the gun was mentioned would have expressed alarm.
+Anyhow, at the end you might have said something more sympathetic
+than merely, 'Tell us another.'  He did not shoot the next party that
+arrived, for the reason that the very next day his wife, alarmed at
+what had happened, went up to London and consulted an expert--none
+too soon, as it turned out.  The poor old fellow died six months
+later in a private lunatic asylum; I had it from the station-master
+on passing through the junction again this spring.  The house fell
+into the possession of his nephew, who is living in it now.  He is a
+youngish man with a large family, and people have learnt that the
+place is not for sale.  It seems to me rather a sad story.  The
+Indian sun, as the station-master thinks, may have started the
+trouble; but the end was undoubtedly hastened by the annoyance to
+which the unfortunate gentleman had been subjected; and I myself
+might have been shot.  The only thing that comforts me is thinking of
+that fool's black eye--the fool that sent me there."
+
+"And none of the other houses," suggested Dick, "were any good at
+all?"
+
+"There were drawbacks, Dick," I explained.  "There was a house in
+Essex; it was one of the first your mother and I inspected.  I nearly
+shed tears of joy when I read the advertisement.  It had once been a
+priory.  Queen Elizabeth had slept there on her way to Greenwich.  A
+photograph of the house accompanied the advertisement.  I should not
+have believed the thing had it been a picture.  It was under twelve
+miles from Charing Cross.  The owner, it was stated, was open to
+offers."
+
+"All humbug, I suppose," suggested Dick.
+
+"The advertisement, if anything," I replied, "had under-estimated the
+attractiveness of that house.  All I blame the advertisement for is
+that it did not mention other things.  It did not mention, for
+instance, that since Queen Elizabeth's time the neighbourhood had
+changed.  It did not mention that the entrance was between a public-
+house one side of the gate and a fried-fish shop on the other; that
+the Great Eastern Railway-Company had established a goods depot at
+the bottom of the garden; that the drawing-room windows looked out on
+extensive chemical works, and the dining-room windows, which were
+round the corner, on a stonemason's yard.  The house itself was a
+dream."
+
+"But what is the sense of it?" demanded Dick.  "What do house agents
+think is the good of it?  Do they think people likely to take a house
+after reading the advertisement without ever going to see it?"
+
+"I asked an agent once that very question," I replied.  "He said they
+did it first and foremost to keep up the spirits of the owner--the
+man who wanted to sell the house.  He said that when a man was trying
+to part with a house he had to listen to so much abuse of it from
+people who came to see it that if somebody did not stick up for the
+house--say all that could be said for it, and gloss over its defects-
+-he would end by becoming so ashamed of it he would want to give it
+away, or blow it up with dynamite.  He said that reading the
+advertisement in the agent's catalogue was the only thing that
+reconciled him to being the owner of the house.  He said one client
+of his had been trying to sell his house for years--until one day in
+the office he read by chance the agent's description of it.  Upon
+which he went straight home, took down the board, and has lived there
+contentedly ever since.  From that point of view there is reason in
+the system; but for the house-hunter it works badly.
+
+"One agent sent me a day's journey to see a house standing in the
+middle of a brickfield, with a view of the Grand Junction Canal.  I
+asked him where was the river he had mentioned.  He explained it was
+the other side of the canal, but on a lower level; that was the only
+reason why from the house you couldn't see it.  I asked him for his
+picturesque scenery.  He explained it was farther on, round the bend.
+He seemed to think me unreasonable, expecting to find everything I
+wanted just outside the front-door.  He suggested my shutting out the
+brickfield--if I didn't like the brickfield--with trees.  He
+suggested the eucalyptus-tree.  He said it was a rapid grower.  He
+also told me that it yielded gum.
+
+"Another house I travelled down into Dorsetshire to see.  It
+contained, according to the advertisement, 'perhaps the most perfect
+specimen of Norman arch extant in Southern England.'  It was to be
+found mentioned in Dugdale, and dated from the thirteenth century.  I
+don't quite know what I expected.  I argued to myself that there must
+have been ruffians of only moderate means even in those days.  Here
+and there some robber baron who had struck a poor line of country
+would have had to be content with a homely little castle.  A few
+such, hidden away in unfrequented districts, had escaped destruction.
+More civilised descendants had adapted them to later requirements.  I
+had in my mind, before the train reached Dorchester, something
+between a miniature Tower of London and a mediaeval edition of Ann
+Hathaway's cottage at Stratford.  I pictured dungeons and a
+drawbridge, perhaps a secret passage.  Lamchick has a secret passage,
+leading from behind a sort of portrait in the dining-room to the back
+of the kitchen chimney.  They use it for a linen closet.  It seems to
+me a pity.  Of course originally it went on farther.  The vicar, who
+is a bit of an antiquarian, believes it comes out somewhere in the
+churchyard.  I tell Lamchick he ought to have it opened up, but his
+wife doesn't want it touched.  She seems to think it just right as it
+is.  I have always had a fancy for a secret passage.  I decided I
+would have the drawbridge repaired and made practicable.  Flanked on
+each side with flowers in tubs, it would have been a novel and
+picturesque approach."
+
+"Was there a drawbridge?" asked Dick.
+
+"There was no drawbridge," I explained.  "The entrance to the house
+was through what the caretaker called the conservatory.  It was not
+the sort of house that goes with a drawbridge."
+
+"Then what about the Norman arches?" argued Dick.
+
+"Not arches," I corrected him; "Arch.  The Norman arch was downstairs
+in the kitchen.  It was the kitchen, that had been built in the
+thirteenth century--and had not had much done to it since,
+apparently.  Originally, I should say, it had been the torture
+chamber; it gave you that idea.  I think your mother would have
+raised objections to the kitchen--anyhow, when she came to think of
+the cook.  It would have been necessary to put it to the woman before
+engaging her:-
+
+"'You don't mind cooking in a dungeon in the dark, do you?'
+
+"Some cooks would.  The rest of the house was what I should describe
+as present-day mixed style.  The last tenant but one had thrown out a
+bathroom in corrugated iron."
+
+"Then there was a house in Berkshire that I took your mother to see,
+with a trout stream running through the grounds.  I imagined myself
+going out after lunch, catching trout for dinner; inviting swagger
+friends down to 'my little place in Berkshire' for a few days' trout-
+fishing.  There is a man I once knew who is now a baronet.  He used
+to be keen on fishing.  I thought maybe I'd get him.  It would have
+looked well in the Literary Gossip column:  'Among the other
+distinguished guests'--you know the sort of thing.  I had the
+paragraph already in my mind.  The wonder is I didn't buy a rod."
+
+"Wasn't there any trout stream?" questioned Robin.
+
+"There was a stream," I answered; "if anything, too much stream.  The
+stream was the first thing your mother noticed.  She noticed it a
+quarter of an hour before we came to it--before we knew it was the
+stream.  We drove back to the town, and she bought a smelling-bottle,
+the larger size.
+
+"It gave your mother a headache, that stream, and made me mad.  The
+agent's office was opposite the station.  I allowed myself half an
+hour on my way back to tell him what I thought of him, and then I
+missed the train.  I could have got it in if he had let me talk all
+the time, but he would interrupt.  He said it was the people at the
+paper-mill--that he had spoken to them about it more than once; he
+seemed to think sympathy was all I wanted.  He assured me, on his
+word as a house-agent, that it had once been a trout stream.  The
+fact was historical.  Isaac Walton had fished there--that was prior
+to the paper-mill.  He thought a collection of trout, male and
+female, might be bought and placed in it; preference being given to
+some hardy breed of trout, accustomed to roughing it.  I told him I
+wasn't looking for a place where I could play at being Noah; and left
+him, as I explained to him, with the intention of going straight to
+my solicitors and instituting proceedings against him for talking
+like a fool; and he put on his hat and went across to his solicitors
+to commence proceedings against me for libel.
+
+"I suppose that, with myself, he thought better of it in the end.
+But I'm tired of having my life turned into one perpetual first of
+April.  This house that I have bought is not my heart's desire, but
+about it there are possibilities.  We will put in lattice windows,
+and fuss-up the chimneys.  Maybe we will let in a tablet over the
+front-door, with a date--always looks well:  it is a picturesque
+figure, the old-fashioned five.  By the time we have done with it--
+for all practical purposes--it will be a Tudor manor-house.  I have
+always wanted an old Tudor manor-house.  There is no reason, so far
+as I can see, why there should not be stories connected with this
+house.  Why should not we have a room in which Somebody once slept?
+We won't have Queen Elizabeth.  I'm tired of Queen Elizabeth.
+Besides, I don't believe she'd have been nice.  Why not Queen Anne?
+A quiet, gentle old lady, from all accounts, who would not have given
+trouble.  Or, better still, Shakespeare.  He was constantly to and
+fro between London and Stratford.  It would not have been so very
+much out of his way.  'The room where Shakespeare slept!'  Why, it's
+a new idea.  Nobody ever seems to have thought of Shakespeare.  There
+is the four-post bedstead.  Your mother never liked it.  She will
+insist, it harbours things.  We might hang the wall with scenes from
+his plays, and have a bust of the old gentleman himself over the
+door.  If I'm left alone and not worried, I'll probably end by
+believing that he really did sleep there."
+
+"What about cupboards?" suggested Dick.  "The Little Mother will
+clamour for cupboards."
+
+It is unexplainable, the average woman's passion for cupboards.  In
+heaven, her first request, I am sure, is always, "Can I have a
+cupboard?"  She would keep her husband and children in cupboards if
+she had her way:  that would be her idea of the perfect home,
+everybody wrapped up with a piece of camphor in his or her own proper
+cupboard.  I knew a woman once who was happy--for a woman.  She lived
+in a house with twenty-nine cupboards:  I think it must have been
+built by a woman.  They were spacious cupboards, many of them, with
+doors in no way different from other doors.  Visitors would wish each
+other good-night and disappear with their candles into cupboards,
+staggering out backwards the next moment, looking scared.  One poor
+gentleman, this woman's husband told me, having to go downstairs
+again for something he had forgotten, and unable on his return to
+strike anything else but cupboards, lost heart and finished up the
+night in a cupboard.  At breakfast-time guests would hurry down, and
+burst open cupboard doors with a cheery "Good-morning."  When that
+woman was out, nobody in that house ever knew where anything was; and
+when she came home she herself only knew where it ought to have been.
+Yet once, when one of those twenty-nine cupboards had to be cleared
+out temporarily for repairs, she never smiled, her husband told me,
+for more than three weeks--not till the workmen were out of the
+house, and that cupboard in working order again.  She said it was so
+confusing, having nowhere to put her things.
+
+The average woman does not want a house, in the ordinary sense of the
+word.  What she wants is something made by a genii.  You have found,
+as you think, the ideal house.  You show her the Adams fireplace in
+the drawing-room.  You tap the wainscoting of the hall with your
+umbrella:  "Oak," you impress upon her, "all oak."  You draw her
+attention to the view:  you tell her the local legend.  By fixing her
+head against the window-pane she can see the tree on which the man
+was hanged.  You dwell upon the sundial; you mention for a second
+time the Adams fireplace.
+
+"It's all very nice," she answers, "but where are the children going
+to sleep?"
+
+It is so disheartening.
+
+If it isn't the children, it's the water.  She wants water--wants to
+know where it comes from.  You show her where it comes from.
+
+"What, out of that nasty place!" she exclaims.
+
+She is equally dissatisfied whether it be drawn from a well, or
+whether it be water that has fallen from heaven and been stored in
+tanks.  She has no faith in Nature's water.  A woman never believes
+that water can be good that does not come from a water-works.  Her
+idea appears to be that the Company makes it fresh every morning from
+some old family recipe.
+
+If you do succeed in reconciling her to the water, then she feels
+sure that the chimneys smoke; they look as if they smoked.  Why--as
+you tell her--the chimneys are the best part of the house.  You take
+her outside and make her look at them.  They are genuine sixteenth-
+century chimneys, with carving on them.  They couldn't smoke.  They
+wouldn't do anything so inartistic.  She says she only hopes you are
+right, and suggests cowls, if they do.
+
+After that she wants to see the kitchen--where's the kitchen?  You
+don't know where it is.  You didn't bother about the kitchen.  There
+must be a kitchen, of course.  You proceed to search for the kitchen.
+When you find it she is worried because it is the opposite end of the
+house to the dining-room.  You point out to her the advantage of
+being away from the smell of the cooking.  At that she gets personal:
+tells you that you are the first to grumble when the dinner is cold;
+and in her madness accuses the whole male sex of being impractical.
+The mere sight of an empty house makes a woman fretful.
+
+Of course the stove is wrong.  The kitchen stove always is wrong.
+You promise she shall have a new one.  Six months later she will want
+the old one back again:  but it would be cruel to tell her this.  The
+promise of that new stove comforts her.  The woman never loses hope
+that one day it will come--the all-satisfying kitchen stove, the
+stove of her girlish dreams.
+
+The question of the stove settled, you imagine you have silenced all
+opposition.  At once she begins to talk about things that nobody but
+a woman or a sanitary inspector can talk about without blushing.
+
+It calls for tact, getting a woman into a new house.  She is nervous,
+suspicious.
+
+"I am glad, my dear Dick," I answered; "that you have mentioned
+cupboards.  It is with cupboards that I am hoping to lure your
+mother.  The cupboards, from her point of view, will be the one
+bright spot; there are fourteen of them.  I am trusting to cupboards
+to tide me over many things.  I shall want you to come with me, Dick.
+Whenever your mother begins a sentence with:  'But now to be
+practical, dear,' I want you to murmur something about cupboards--not
+irritatingly as if it had been prearranged:  have a little gumption."
+
+"Will there be room for a tennis court?" demanded Dick.
+
+"An excellent tennis court already exists," I informed him.  "I have
+also purchased the adjoining paddock.  We shall be able to keep our
+own cow.  Maybe we'll breed horses."
+
+"We might have a croquet lawn," suggested Robin.
+
+"We might easily have a croquet lawn," I agreed.  "On a full-sized
+lawn I believe Veronica might be taught to play.  There are natures
+that demand space.  On a full-sized lawn, protected by a stout iron
+border, less time might be wasted exploring the surrounding scenery
+for Veronica's lost ball."
+
+"No chance of a golf links anywhere in the neighbourhood?" feared
+Dick.
+
+"I am not so sure," I answered.  "Barely a mile away there is a
+pretty piece of gorse land that appears to be no good to anyone.  I
+daresay for a reasonable offer--"
+
+"I say, when will this show be ready?" interrupted Dick.
+
+"I propose beginning the alterations at once," I explained.  "By luck
+there happens to be a gamekeeper's cottage vacant and within
+distance.  The agent is going to get me the use of it for a year--a
+primitive little place, but charmingly situate on the edge of a wood.
+I shall furnish a couple of rooms; and for part of every week I shall
+make a point of being down there, superintending.  I have always been
+considered good at superintending.  My poor father used to say it was
+the only work I seemed to take an interest in.  By being on the spot
+to hurry everybody on I hope to have the 'show,' as you term it,
+ready by the spring."
+
+"I shall never marry," said Robin.
+
+"Don't be so easily discouraged," advised Dick; "you are still
+young."
+
+"I don't ever want to get married," continued Robin.  "I should only
+quarrel with my husband, if I did.  And Dick will never do anything--
+not with his head."
+
+"Forgive me if I am dull," I pleaded, "but what is the connection
+between this house, your quarrels with your husband if you ever get
+one, and Dick's head?"
+
+By way of explanation, Robin sprang to the ground, and before he
+could stop her had flung her arms around Dick's neck.
+
+"We can't help it, Dick dear," she told him.  "Clever parents always
+have duffing children.  But we'll be of some use in the world after
+all, you and I."
+
+The idea was that Dick, when he had finished failing in examinations,
+should go out to Canada and start a farm, taking Robin with him.
+They would breed cattle, and gallop over the prairies, and camp out
+in the primeval forest, and slide about on snow-shoes, and carry
+canoes on their backs, and shoot rapids, and stalk things--so far as
+I could gather, have a sort of everlasting Buffalo-Bill's show all to
+themselves.  How and when the farm work was to get itself done was
+not at all clear.  The Little Mother and myself were to end our days
+with them.  We were to sit about in the sun for a time, and then pass
+peacefully away.  Robin shed a few tears at this point, but regained
+her spirits, thinking of Veronica, who was to be lured out on a visit
+and married to some true-hearted yeoman:  which is not at present
+Veronica's ambition.  Veronica's conviction is that she would look
+well in a coronet:  her own idea is something in the ducal line.
+Robina talked for about ten minutes.  By the time she had done she
+had persuaded Dick that life in the backwoods of Canada had been his
+dream from infancy.  She is that sort of girl.
+
+I tried talking reason, but talking to Robin when she has got a
+notion in her head is like trying to fix a halter on a two-year-old
+colt.  This tumble-down, six-roomed cottage was to be the saving of
+the family.  An ecstatic look transfigured Robina's face even as she
+spoke of it.  You might have fancied it a shrine.  Robina would do
+the cooking.  Robina would rise early and milk the cow, and gather
+the morning egg.  We would lead the simple life, learn to fend for
+ourselves.  It would be so good for Veronica.  The higher education
+could wait; let the higher ideals have a chance.  Veronica would make
+the beds, dust the rooms.  In the evening Veronica, her little basket
+by her side, would sit and sew while I talked, telling them things,
+and Robina moved softly to and fro about her work, the household
+fairy.  The Little Mother, whenever strong enough, would come to us.
+We would hover round her, tending her with loving hands.  The English
+farmer must know something, in spite of all that is said.  Dick could
+arrange for lessons in practical farming.  She did not say it
+crudely; but hinted that, surrounded by example, even I might come to
+take an interest in honest labour, might end by learning to do
+something useful.
+
+Robina talked, I should say, for a quarter of an hour.  By the time
+she had done, it appeared to me rather a beautiful idea.  Dick's
+vacation had just commenced.  For the next three months there would
+be nothing else for him to do but--to employ his own expressive
+phrase--"rot round."  In any event, it would be keeping him out of
+mischief.  Veronica's governess was leaving.  Veronica's governess
+generally does leave at the end of about a year.  I think sometimes
+of advertising for a lady without a conscience.  At the end of a
+year, they explain to me that their conscience will not allow them to
+remain longer; they do not feel they are earning their salary.  It is
+not that the child is not a dear child, it is not that she is stupid.
+Simply it is--as a German lady to whom Dick had been giving what he
+called finishing lessons in English, once put it--that she does not
+seem to be "taking any."  Her mother's idea is that it is "sinking
+in."  Perhaps if we allowed Veronica to lie fallow for awhile,
+something might show itself.  Robina, speaking for herself, held that
+a period of quiet usefulness, away from the society of other silly
+girls and sillier boys, would result in her becoming a sensible
+woman.  It is not often that Robina's yearnings take this direction:
+to thwart them, when they did, seemed wrong.
+
+We had some difficulty with the Little Mother.  That these three
+babies of hers will ever be men and women capable of running a six-
+roomed cottage appears to the Little Mother in the light of a
+fantastic dream.  I explained to her that I should be there, at all
+events for two or three days in every week, to give an eye to things.
+Even that did not content her.  She gave way eventually on Robina's
+solemn undertaking that she should be telegraphed for the first time
+Veronica coughed.
+
+On Monday we packed a one-horse van with what we deemed essential.
+Dick and Robina rode their bicycles.  Veronica, supported by assorted
+bedding, made herself comfortable upon the tailboard.  I followed
+down by train on the Wednesday afternoon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+It was the cow that woke me the first morning.  I did not know it was
+our cow--not at the time.  I didn't know we had a cow.  I looked at
+my watch; it was half-past two.  I thought maybe she would go to
+sleep again, but her idea was that the day had begun.  I went to the
+window, the moon was at the full.  She was standing by the gate, her
+head inside the garden; I took it her anxiety was lest we might miss
+any of it.  Her neck was stretched out straight, her eyes towards the
+sky; which gave to her the appearance of a long-eared alligator.  I
+have never had much to do with cows.  I don't know how you talk to
+them.  I told her to "be quiet," and to "lie down"; and made pretence
+to throw a boot at her.  It seemed to cheer her, having an audience;
+she added half a dozen extra notes.  I never knew before a cow had so
+much in her.  There is a thing one sometimes meets with in the
+suburbs--or one used to; I do not know whether it is still extant,
+but when I was a boy it was quite common.  It has a hurdy-gurdy fixed
+to its waist and a drum strapped on behind, a row of pipes hanging
+from its face, and bells and clappers from most of its other joints.
+It plays them all at once, and smiles.  This cow reminded me of it--
+with organ effects added.  She didn't smile; there was that to be
+said in her favour.
+
+I hoped that if I made believe to be asleep she would get
+discouraged.  So I closed the window ostentatiously, and went back to
+bed.  But it only had the effect of putting her on her mettle.  "He
+did not care for that last," I imagined her saying to herself, "I
+wasn't at my best.  There wasn't feeling enough in it."  She kept it
+up for about half an hour, and then the gate against which, I
+suppose, she had been leaning, gave way with a crash.  That
+frightened her, and I heard her gallop off across the field.  I was
+on the point of dozing off again when a pair of pigeons settled on
+the window-sill and began to coo.  It is a pretty sound when you are
+in the mood for it.  I wrote a poem once--a simple thing, but
+instinct with longing--while sitting under a tree and listening to
+the cooing of a pigeon.  But that was in the afternoon.  My only
+longing now was for a gun.  Three times I got out of bed and "shoo'd"
+them away.  The third time I remained by the window till I had got it
+firmly into their heads that I really did not want them.  My
+behaviour on the former two occasions they had evidently judged to be
+mere playfulness.  I had just got back to bed again when an owl began
+to screech.  That is another sound I used to think attractive--so
+weird, so mysterious.  It is Swinburne, I think, who says that you
+never get the desired one and the time and the place all right
+together.  If the beloved one is with you, it is the wrong place or
+at the wrong time; and if the time and the place happen to be right,
+then it is the party that is wrong.  The owl was all right:  I like
+owls.  The place was all right.  He had struck the wrong time, that
+was all.  Eleven o'clock at night, when you can't see him, and
+naturally feel that you want to, is the proper time for an owl.
+Perched on the roof of a cow-shed in the early dawn he looks silly.
+He clung there, flapping his wings and screeching at the top of his
+voice.  What it was he wanted I am sure I don't know; and anyhow it
+didn't seem the way to get it.  He came to this conclusion himself at
+the end of twenty minutes, and shut himself up and went home.  I
+thought I was going to have at last some peace, when a corncrake--a
+creature upon whom Nature has bestowed a song like to the tearing of
+calico-sheets mingled with the sharpening of saws--settled somewhere
+in the garden and set to work to praise its Maker according to its
+lights.  I have a friend, a poet, who lives just off the Strand, and
+spends his evenings at the Garrick Club.  He writes occasional verse
+for the evening papers, and talks about the "silent country, drowsy
+with the weight of languors."  One of these times I'll lure him down
+for a Saturday to Monday and let him find out what the country really
+is--let him hear it.  He is becoming too much of a dreamer:  it will
+do him good, wake him up a bit.  The corncrake after awhile stopped
+quite suddenly with a jerk, and for quite five minutes there was
+silence.
+
+"If this continues for another five," I said to myself, "I'll be
+asleep."  I felt it coming over me.  I had hardly murmured the words
+when the cow turned up again.  I should say she had been somewhere
+and had had a drink.  She was in better voice than ever.
+
+It occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to make a few
+notes on the sunrise.  The literary man is looked to for occasional
+description of the sunrise.  The earnest reader who has heard about
+this sunrise thirsts for full particulars.  Myself, for purposes of
+observation, I have generally chosen December or the early part of
+January.  But one never knows.  Maybe one of these days I'll want a
+summer sunrise, with birds and dew-besprinkled flowers:  it goes well
+with the rustic heroine, the miller's daughter, or the girl who
+brings up chickens and has dreams.  I met a brother author once at
+seven o'clock in the morning in Kensington Gardens.  He looked half
+asleep and so disagreeable that I hesitated for awhile to speak to
+him:  he is a man that as a rule breakfasts at eleven.  But I
+summoned my courage and accosted him.
+
+"This is early for you," I said.
+
+"It's early for anyone but a born fool," he answered.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.  "Can't you sleep?"
+
+"Can't I sleep?" he retorted indignantly.  "Why, I daren't sit down
+upon a seat, I daren't lean up against a tree.  If I did I'd be
+asleep in half a second."
+
+"What's the idea?" I persisted.  "Been reading Smiles's 'Self Help
+and the Secret of Success'?  Don't be absurd," I advised him.
+"You'll be going to Sunday school next and keeping a diary.  You have
+left it too late:  we don't reform at forty.  Go home and go to bed."
+I could see he was doing himself no good.
+
+"I'm going to bed," he answered, "I'm going to bed for a month when
+I've finished this confounded novel that I'm on.  Take my advice," he
+said--he laid his hand upon my shoulder--"Never choose a colonial
+girl for your heroine.  At our age it is simple madness."
+
+"She's a fine girl," he continued, "and good.  Has a heart of gold.
+She's wearing me to a shadow.  I wanted something fresh and
+unconventional.  I didn't grasp what it was going to do.  She's the
+girl that gets up early in the morning and rides bare-back--the
+horse, I mean, of course; don't be so silly.  Over in New South Wales
+it didn't matter.  I threw in the usual local colour--the eucalyptus-
+tree and the kangaroo--and let her ride.  It is now that she is over
+here in London that I wish I had never thought of her.  She gets up
+at five and wanders about the silent city.  That means, of course,
+that I have to get up at five in order to record her impressions.  I
+have walked six miles this morning.  First to St. Paul's Cathedral;
+she likes it when there's nobody about.  You'd think it wasn't big
+enough for her to see if anybody else was in the street.  She thinks
+of it as of a mother watching over her sleeping children; she's full
+of all that sort of thing.  And from there to Westminster Bridge.
+She sits on the parapet and reads Wordsworth, till the policeman
+turns her off.  This is another of her favourite spots."  He
+indicated with a look of concentrated disgust the avenue where we
+were standing.  "This is where she likes to finish up.  She comes
+here to listen to a blackbird."
+
+"Well, you are through with it now," I said to console him.  "You've
+done it; and it's over."
+
+"Through with it!" he laughed bitterly.  "I'm just beginning it.
+There's the entire East End to be done yet:  she's got to meet a
+fellow there as big a crank as herself.  And walking isn't the worst.
+She's going to have a horse; you can guess what that means.--Hyde
+Park will be no good to her.  She'll find out Richmond and Ham
+Common.  I've got to describe the scenery and the mad joy of the
+thing."
+
+"Can't you imagine it?" I suggested.
+
+"I'm going to imagine all the enjoyable part of it," he answered.  "I
+must have a groundwork to go upon.  She's got to have feelings come
+to her upon this horse.  You can't enter into a rider's feelings when
+you've almost forgotten which side of the horse you get up."
+
+I walked with him to the Serpentine.  I had been wondering how it was
+he had grown stout so suddenly.  He had a bath towel round him
+underneath his coat.
+
+"It'll give me my death of cold, I know it will," he chattered while
+unlacing his boots.
+
+"Can't you leave it till the summer-time," I suggested, "and take her
+to Ostend?"
+
+"It wouldn't be unconventional," he growled.  "She wouldn't take an
+interest in it."
+
+"But do they allow ladies to bathe in the Serpentine?" I persisted.
+
+"It won't be the Serpentine," he explained.  "It's going to be the
+Thames at Greenwich.  But it must be the same sort of feeling.  She's
+got to tell them all about it during a lunch in Queen's Gate, and
+shock them all.  That's all she does it for, in my opinion."
+
+He emerged a mottled blue.  I helped him into his clothes, and he was
+fortunate enough to find an early cab.  The book appeared at
+Christmas.  The critics agreed that the heroine was a delightful
+creation.  Some of them said they would like to have known her.
+
+Remembering my poor friend, it occurred to me that by going out now
+and making a few notes about the morning, I might be saving myself
+trouble later on.  I slipped on a few things--nothing elaborate--put
+a notebook in my pocket, opened the door and went down.
+
+Perhaps it would be more correct to say "opened the door and was
+down."  It was my own fault, I admit.  We had talked this thing over
+before going to bed, and I myself had impressed upon Veronica the
+need for caution.  The architect of the country cottage does not
+waste space.  He dispenses with landings; the bedroom door opens on
+to the top stair.  It does not do to walk out of your bedroom, for
+the reason there is nothing outside to walk on.  I had said to
+Veronica, pointing out this fact to her:
+
+"Now don't, in the morning, come bursting out of the room in your
+usual volcanic style, because if you do there will be trouble.  As
+you perceive, there is no landing.  The stairs commence at once; they
+are steep, and they lead down to a brick floor.  Open the door
+quietly, look where you are going, and step carefully."
+
+Dick had added his advice to mine.  "I did that myself the first
+morning," Dick had said.  "I stepped straight out of the bedroom into
+the kitchen; and I can tell you, it hurts.  You be careful, young
+'un.  This cottage doesn't lend itself to dash."
+
+Robina had fallen down with a tray in her hand.  She said that never
+should she forget the horror of that moment, when, sitting on the
+kitchen floor, she had cried to Dick--her own voice sounding to her
+as if it came from somewhere quite far off:  "Is it broken?  Tell me
+the truth.  Is it broken anywhere?" and Dick had replied:  "Broken!
+why, it's smashed to atoms.  What did you expect?"  Robina had asked
+the question with reference to her head, while Dick had thought she
+was alluding to the teapot.  In that moment, had said Robina, her
+whole life had passed before her.  She let Veronica feel the bump.
+
+Veronica was disappointed with the bump, having expected something
+bigger, but had promised to be careful.  We had all agreed that if in
+spite of our warnings she forgot, and came blundering down in the
+morning, it would serve her right.  It was thinking of all this that,
+as I lay upon the floor, made me feel angry with everybody.  I hate
+people who can sleep through noises that wake me up.  Why was I the
+only person in the house to be disturbed?  Dick's room was round the
+corner; there was some excuse for him.  But Robina and Veronica's
+window looked straight down upon the cow.  If Robina and Veronica
+were not a couple of logs, the cow would have aroused them.  We
+should have discussed the matter with the door ajar.  Robina would
+have said, "Whatever you do, be careful of the stairs, Pa," and I
+should have remembered.  The modern child appears to me to have no
+feeling for its parent.
+
+I picked myself up and started for the door.  The cow continued
+bellowing steadily.  My whole anxiety was to get to her quickly and
+to hit her.  But the door took more finding than I could have
+believed possible.  The shutters were closed and the whole place was
+in pitch darkness.  The idea had been to furnish this cottage only
+with things that were absolutely necessary, but the room appeared to
+me to be overcrowded.  There was a milking-stool, which is a thing
+made purposely heavy so that it may not be easily upset.  If I
+tumbled over it once I tumbled over it a dozen times.  I got hold of
+it at last and carried it about with me.  I thought I would use it to
+hit the cow--that is, when I had found the front-door.  I knew it led
+out of the parlour, but could not recollect its exact position.  I
+argued that if I kept along the wall I should be bound to come to it.
+I found the wall, and set off full of hope.  I suppose the
+explanation was that, without knowing it, I must have started with
+the door, not the front-door, the other door, leading into the
+kitchen.  I crept along, carefully feeling my way, and struck quite
+new things altogether--things I had no recollection of and that hit
+me in fresh places.  I climbed over what I presumed to be a beer-
+barrel and landed among bottles; there were dozens upon dozens of
+them.  To get away from these bottles I had to leave the wall; but I
+found it again, as I thought, and I felt along it for another half a
+dozen yards or so and then came again upon bottles:  the room
+appeared to be paved with bottles.  A little farther on I rolled over
+another beer-barrel:  as a matter of fact it was the same beer-
+barrel, but I did not know this.  At the time it seemed to me that
+Robina had made up her mind to run a public-house.  I found the
+milking-stool again and started afresh, and before I had gone a dozen
+steps was in among bottles again.  Later on, in the broad daylight,
+it was easy enough to understand what had happened.  I had been
+carefully feeling my way round and round a screen.  I got so sick of
+these bottles and so tired of rolling over these everlasting beer-
+barrels, that I abandoned the wall and plunged boldly into space.
+
+I had barely started, when, looking up, I saw the sky above me:  a
+star was twinkling just above my head.  Had I been wide awake, and
+had the cow stopped bellowing for just one minute, I should have
+guessed that somehow or another I had got into a chimney.  But as
+things were, the wonder and the mystery of it all appalled me.
+"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" would have appeared to me, at that
+moment, in the nature of a guide to travellers.  Had a rocking-horse
+or a lobster suddenly appeared to me I should have sat and talked to
+it; and if it had not answered me I should have thought it sulky and
+been hurt.  I took a step forward and the star disappeared, just as
+if somebody had blown it out.  I was not surprised in the least.  I
+was expecting anything to happen.
+
+I found a door and it opened quite easily.  A wood was in front of
+me.  I couldn't see any cow anywhere, but I still heard her.  It all
+seemed quite natural.  I would wander into the wood; most likely I
+should meet her there, and she would be smoking a pipe.  In all
+probability she would know some poetry.
+
+With the fresh air my senses gradually came back to me, and I began
+to understand why it was I could not see the cow.  The reason was
+that the house was between us.  By some mysterious process I had been
+discharged into the back garden.  I still had the milking-stool in my
+hand, but the cow no longer troubled me.  Let her see if she could
+wake Veronica by merely bellowing outside the door; it was more than
+I had ever been able to do.
+
+I sat down on the stool and opened my note-book.  I headed the page:
+"Sunrise in July:  observations and emotions," and I wrote down at
+once, lest I should forget it, that towards three o'clock a faint
+light is discernible, and added that this light gets stronger as the
+time goes on.
+
+It sounded footling even to myself, but I had been reading a novel of
+the realistic school that had been greatly praised for its actuality.
+There is a demand in some quarters for this class of observation.  I
+likewise made a note that the pigeon and the corncrake appear to be
+among the earliest of Nature's children to welcome the coming day;
+and added that the screech-owl may be heard, perhaps at its best, by
+anyone caring to rise for the purpose, some quarter of an hour before
+the dawn.  That was all I could think of just then.  As regards
+emotions, I did not seem to have any.
+
+I lit a pipe and waited for the sun.  The sky in front of me was
+tinged with a faint pink.  Every moment it flushed a deeper red.  I
+maintain that anyone, not an expert, would have said that was the
+portion of the horizon on which to keep one's eye.  I kept my eye
+upon it, but no sun appeared.  I lit another pipe.  The sky in front
+of me was now a blaze of glory.  I scribbled a few lines, likening
+the scattered clouds to brides blushing at the approach of the
+bridegroom.  That would have been all right if later on they hadn't
+begun to turn green:  it seemed the wrong colour for a bride.  Later
+on still they went yellow, and that spoilt the simile past hope.  One
+cannot wax poetical about a bride who at the approach of the
+bridegroom turns first green and then yellow:  you can only feel
+sorry for her.  I waited some more.  The sky in front of me grew
+paler every moment.  I began to fear that something had happened to
+that sun.  If I hadn't known so much astronomy I should have said
+that he had changed his mind and had gone back again.  I rose with
+the idea of seeing into things.  He had been up apparently for hours:
+he had got up at the back of me.  It seemed to be nobody's fault.  I
+put my pipe into my pocket and strolled round to the front.  The cow
+was still there; she was pleased to see me, and started bellowing
+again.
+
+I heard a sound of whistling.  It proceeded from a farmer's boy.  I
+hailed him, and he climbed a gate and came to me across the field.
+He was a cheerful youth.  He nodded to the cow and hoped she had had
+a good night:  he pronounced it "nihet."
+
+"You know the cow?" I said.
+
+"Well," he explained, "we don't precisely move in the sime set.  Sort
+o' business relytionship more like--if you understand me?"
+
+Something about this boy was worrying me.  He did not seem like a
+real farmer's boy.  But then nothing seemed quite real this morning.
+My feeling was to let things go.
+
+"Whose cow is it?" I asked.
+
+He stared at me.
+
+"I want to know to whom it belongs," I said.  "I want to restore it
+to him."
+
+"Excuse me," said the boy, "but where do you live?"
+
+He was making me cross.  "Where do I live?" I retorted.  "Why, in
+this cottage.  You don't think I've got up early and come from a
+distance to listen to this cow?  Don't talk so much.  Do you know
+whose cow it is, or don't you?"
+
+"It's your cow," said the boy.
+
+It was my turn to stare.
+
+"But I haven't got a cow," I told him.
+
+"Yus you have," he persisted; "you've got that cow."
+
+She had stopped bellowing for a moment.  She was not the cow I felt I
+could ever take a pride in.  At some time or another, quite recently,
+she must have sat down in some mud.
+
+"How did I get her?" I demanded.
+
+"The young lydy," explained the boy, "she came rahnd to our plice on
+Tuesday--"
+
+I began to see light.  "An excitable young lady--talks very fast--
+never waits for the answer?"
+
+"With jolly fine eyes," added the boy approvingly.
+
+"And she ordered a cow?"
+
+"Didn't seem to 'ave strength enough to live another dy withaht it."
+
+"Any stipulation made concerning the price of the cow?"
+
+"Any what?"
+
+"The young lady with the eyes--did she think to ask the price of the
+cow?"
+
+"No sordid details was entered into, so far as I could 'ear," replied
+the boy.
+
+They would not have been--by Robina.
+
+"Any hint let fall as to what the cow was wanted for?"
+
+"The lydy gives us to understand," said the boy, "that fresh milk was
+'er idea."
+
+That surprised me:  that was thoughtful of Robina.  "And this is the
+cow?"
+
+"I towed her rahnd last night.  I didn't knock at the door and tell
+yer abaht 'er, cos, to be quite frank with yer, there wasn't anybody
+in."
+
+"What is she bellowing for?" I asked.
+
+"Well," said the boy, "it's only a theory, o' course, but I should
+sy, from the look of 'er, that she wanted to be milked."
+
+"But it started bellowing at half-past two," I argued.  "It doesn't
+expect to be milked at half-past two, does it?"
+
+"Meself," said the boy, "I've given up looking for sense in cows."
+
+In some unaccountable way this boy was hypnotising me.  Everything
+had suddenly become out of place.
+
+The cow had suddenly become absurd:  she ought to have been a milk-
+can.  The wood struck me as neglected:  there ought to have been
+notice-boards about, "Keep off the Grass," "Smoking Strictly
+Prohibited":  there wasn't a seat to be seen.  The cottage had surely
+got itself there by accident:  where was the street?  The birds were
+all out of their cages; everything was upside down.
+
+"Are you a real farmer's boy?" I asked him.
+
+"O' course I am," he answered.  "What do yer tike me for--a hartist
+in disguise?"
+
+It came to me.  "What is your name?"
+
+"'Enery--'Enery 'Opkins."
+
+"Where were you born?"
+
+"Camden Tahn."
+
+Here was a nice beginning to a rural life!  What place could be the
+country while this boy Hopkins was about?  He would have given to the
+Garden of Eden the atmosphere of an outlying suburb.
+
+"Do you want to earn an occasional shilling?" I put it to him.
+
+"I'd rather it come reggler," said Hopkins.  "Better for me
+kerrickter."
+
+"You drop that Cockney accent and learn Berkshire, and I'll give you
+half a sovereign when you can talk it," I promised him.  "Don't, for
+instance, say 'ain't,'" I explained to him.  "Say 'bain't.'  Don't
+say 'The young lydy, she came rahnd to our plice;' say 'The missy,
+'er coomed down; 'er coomed, and 'er ses to the maister, 'er ses . .
+. '  That's the sort of thing I want to surround myself with here.
+When you informed me that the cow was mine, you should have said:
+'Whoi, 'er be your cow, surelie 'er be.'"
+
+"Sure it's Berkshire?" demanded Hopkins.  "You're confident about
+it?"  There is a type that is by nature suspicious.
+
+"It may not be Berkshire pure and undefiled," I admitted.  "It is
+what in literature we term 'dialect.'  It does for most places
+outside the twelve-mile radius.  The object is to convey a feeling of
+rustic simplicity.  Anyhow, it isn't Camden Town."
+
+I started him with a shilling then and there to encourage him.  He
+promised to come round in the evening for one or two books, written
+by friends of mine, that I reckoned would be of help to him; and I
+returned to the cottage and set to work to rouse Robina.  Her tone
+was apologetic.  She had got the notion into her head that I had been
+calling her for quite a long time.  I explained that this was not the
+case.
+
+"How funny!" she answered.  "I said to Veronica more than an hour
+ago:  'I'm sure that's Pa calling us.'  I suppose I must have been
+dreaming."
+
+"Well, don't dream any more," I suggested.  "Come down and see to
+this confounded cow of yours."
+
+"Oh," said Veronica, "has it come?"
+
+"It has come," I told her.  "As a matter of fact, it has been here
+some time.  It ought to have been milked four hours ago, according to
+its own idea."
+
+Robina said she would be down in a minute.
+
+She was down in twenty-five, which was sooner than I had expected.
+She brought Veronica with her.  She said she would have been down
+sooner if she had not waited for Veronica.  It appeared that this was
+just precisely what Veronica had been telling her.  I was feeling
+irritable.  I had been up half a day, and hadn't had my breakfast.
+
+"Don't stand there arguing," I told them.  "For goodness' sake let's
+get to work and milk this cow.  We shall have the poor creature dying
+on our hands if we're not careful."
+
+Robina was wandering round the room.
+
+"You haven't come across a milking-stool anywhere, have you, Pa?"
+asked Robina.
+
+"I have come across your milking-stool, I estimate, some thirteen
+times," I told her.  I fetched it from where I had left it, and gave
+it to her; and we filed out in procession; Veronica with a galvanised
+iron bucket bringing up the rear.
+
+The problem that was forcing itself upon my mind was:  did Robina
+know how to milk a cow?  Robina, I argued, the idea once in her mind,
+would immediately have ordered a cow, clamouring for it--as Hopkins
+had picturesquely expressed it--as though she had not strength to
+live another day without a cow.  Her next proceeding would have been
+to buy a milking-stool.  It was a tasteful milking-stool, this one
+she had selected, ornamented with the rough drawing of a cow in poker
+work:  a little too solid for my taste, but one that I should say
+would wear well.  The pail she had not as yet had time to see about.
+This galvanised bucket we were using was, I took it, a temporary
+makeshift.  When Robina had leisure she would go into the town and
+purchase something at an art stores.  That, to complete the scheme,
+she would have done well to have taken a few practical lessons in
+milking would come to her, as an inspiration, with the arrival of the
+cow.  I noticed that Robina's steps as we approached the cow were
+less elastic.  Just outside the cow Robina halted.
+
+"I suppose," said Robina, "there's only one way of milking a cow?"
+
+"There may be fancy ways," I answered, "necessary to you if later on
+you think of entering a competition.  This morning, seeing we are
+late, I shouldn't worry too much about style.  If I were you, this
+morning I should adopt the ordinary unimaginative method, and aim
+only at results."
+
+Robina sat down and placed her bucket underneath the cow.
+
+"I suppose," said Robina, "it doesn't matter which--which one I begin
+with?"
+
+It was perfectly plain she hadn't the least notion how to milk a cow.
+I told her so, adding comments.  Now and then a little fatherly talk
+does good.  As a rule I have to work myself up for these occasions.
+This morning I was feeling fairly fit:  things had conspired to this
+end.  I put before Robina the aims and privileges of the household
+fairy as they appeared, not to her, but to me.  I also confided to
+Veronica the result of many weeks' reflections concerning her and her
+behaviour.  I also told them both what I thought about Dick.  I do
+this sort of thing once every six months:  it has an excellent effect
+for about three days.
+
+Robina wiped away her tears, and seized the first one that came to
+her hand.  The cow, without saying a word, kicked over the empty
+bucket, and walked away, disgust expressed in every hair of her body.
+Robina, crying quietly, followed her.  By patting her on her neck,
+and letting her wipe her nose upon my coat--which seemed to comfort
+her--I persuaded her to keep still while Robina worked for ten
+minutes at high pressure.  The result was about a glassful and a
+half, the cow's capacity, to all appearance, being by this time some
+five or six gallons.
+
+Robina broke down, and acknowledged she had been a wicked girl.  If
+the cow died, so she said, she should never forgive herself.
+Veronica at this burst into tears also; and the cow, whether moved
+afresh by her own troubles or by theirs, commenced again to bellow.
+I was fortunately able to find an elderly labourer smoking a pipe and
+eating bacon underneath a tree; and with him I bargained that for a
+shilling a day he should milk the cow till further notice.
+
+We left him busy, and returned to the cottage.  Dick met us at the
+door with a cheery "Good morning."  He wanted to know if we had heard
+the storm.  He also wanted to know when breakfast would be ready.
+Robina thought that happy event would be shortly after he had boiled
+the kettle and made the tea and fried the bacon, while Veronica was
+laying the table.
+
+"But I thought--"
+
+Robina said that if he dared to mention the word "household-fairy"
+she would box his ears, and go straight up to bed, and leave
+everybody to do everything.  She said she meant it.
+
+Dick has one virtue:  it is philosophy.  "Come on, young 'un," said
+Dick to Veronica.  "Trouble is good for us all."
+
+"Some of us," said Veronica, "it makes bitter."
+
+We sat down to breakfast at eight-thirty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+Our architect arrived on Friday afternoon, or rather, his assistant.
+
+I felt from the first I was going to like him.  He is shy, and that,
+of course, makes him appear awkward.  But, as I explained to Robina,
+it is the shy young men who, generally speaking, turn out best:  few
+men could have been more painfully shy up to twenty-five than myself.
+
+Robina said that was different:  in the case of an author it did not
+matter.  Robina's attitude towards the literary profession would not
+annoy me so much were it not typical.  To be a literary man is, in
+Robina's opinion, to be a licensed idiot.  It was only a week or two
+ago that I overheard from my study window a conversation between
+Veronica and Robina upon this very point.  Veronica's eye had caught
+something lying on the grass.  I could not myself see what it was, in
+consequence of an intervening laurel bush.  Veronica stooped down and
+examined it with care.  The next instant, uttering a piercing whoop,
+she leapt into the air; then, clapping her hands, began to dance.
+Her face was radiant with a holy joy.  Robina, passing near, stopped
+and demanded explanation.
+
+"Pa's tennis racket!" shouted Veronica--Veronica never sees the use
+of talking in an ordinary tone of voice when shouting will do just as
+well.  She continued clapping her hands and taking little bounds into
+the air.
+
+"Well, what are you going on like that for?" asked Robina.  "It
+hasn't bit you, has it?"
+
+"It's been out all night in the wet," shouted Veronica.  "He forgot
+to bring it in."
+
+"You wicked child!" said Robina severely.  "It's nothing to be
+pleased about."
+
+"Yes, it is," explained Veronica.  "I thought at first it was mine.
+Oh, wouldn't there have been a talk about it, if it had been!  Oh my!
+wouldn't there have been a row!"  She settled down to a steady
+rhythmic dance, suggestive of a Greek chorus expressing satisfaction
+with the gods.
+
+Robina seized her by the shoulders and shook her back into herself.
+"If it had been yours," said Robina, "you would deserve to have been
+sent to bed."
+
+"Well, then, why don't he go to bed?" argued Veronica.
+
+Robina took her by the arm and walked her up and down just underneath
+my window.  I listened, because the conversation interested me.
+
+"Pa, as I am always explaining to you," said Robina, "is a literary
+man.  He cannot help forgetting things."
+
+"Well, I can't help forgetting things," insisted Veronica.
+
+"You find it hard," explained Robina kindly; "but if you keep on
+trying you will succeed.  You will get more thoughtful.  I used to be
+forgetful and do foolish things once, when I was a little girl."
+
+"Good thing for us if we was all literary," suggested Veronica.
+
+"If we 'were' all literary," Robina corrected her.  "But you see we
+are not.  You and I and Dick, we are just ordinary mortals.  We must
+try and think, and be sensible.  In the same way, when Pa gets
+excited and raves--I mean, seems to rave--it's the literary
+temperament.  He can't help it."
+
+"Can't you help doing anything when you are literary?" asked
+Veronica.
+
+"There's a good deal you can't help," answered Robina.  "It isn't
+fair to judge them by the ordinary standard."
+
+They drifted towards the kitchen garden--it was the time of
+strawberries--and the remainder of the talk I lost.  I noticed that
+for some days afterwards Veronica displayed a tendency to shutting
+herself up in the schoolroom with a copybook, and that lead pencils
+had a way of disappearing from my desk.  One in particular that had
+suited me I determined if possible to recover.  A subtle instinct
+guided me to Veronica's sanctum.  I found her thoughtfully sucking
+it.  She explained to me that she was writing a little play.
+
+"You get things from your father, don't you?" she enquired of me.
+
+"You do," I admitted; "but you ought not to take them without asking.
+I am always telling you of it.  That pencil is the only one I can
+write with."
+
+"I didn't mean the pencil," explained Veronica.  "I was wondering if
+I had got your literary temper."
+
+It is puzzling, when you come to think of it, this estimate accorded
+by the general public to the litterateur.  It stands to reason that
+the man who writes books, explaining everything and putting everybody
+right, must be himself an exceptionally clever man; else how could he
+do it!  The thing is pure logic.  Yet to listen to Robina and her
+like you might think we had not sense enough to run ourselves, as the
+saying is--let alone running the universe.  If I would let her,
+Robina would sit and give me information by the hour.
+
+"The ordinary girl . . . " Robina will begin, with the air of a
+University Extension Lecturer.
+
+It is so exasperating.  As if I did not know all there is to be known
+about girls!  Why, it is my business.  I point this out to Robina.
+
+"Yes, I know," Robina will answer sweetly.  "But I was meaning the
+real girl."
+
+It would make not the slightest difference were I even quite a high-
+class literary man--Robina thinks I am:  she is a dear child.  Were I
+Shakespeare himself, and could I in consequence say to her:
+"Methinks, child, the creator of Ophelia and Juliet, and Rosamund and
+Beatrice, must surely know something about girls," Robina would still
+make answer:
+
+"Of course, Pa dear.  Everybody knows how clever you are.  But I was
+thinking for the moment of real girls."
+
+I wonder to myself sometimes, Is literature to the general reader
+ever anything more than a fairy-tale?  We write with our heart's
+blood, as we put it.  We ask our conscience, Is it right thus to lay
+bare the secrets of our souls?  The general reader does not grasp
+that we are writing with our heart's blood:  to him it is just ink.
+He does not believe we are laying bare the secrets of our souls:  he
+takes it we are just pretending.  "Once upon a time there lived a
+girl named Angelina who loved a party by the name of Edwin."  He
+imagines--he, the general reader--when we tell him all the wonderful
+thoughts that were inside Angelina, that it was we who put them
+there.  He does not know, he will not try to understand, that
+Angelina is in reality more real than is Miss Jones, who rides up
+every morning in the 'bus with him, and has a pretty knack of
+rendering conversation about the weather novel and suggestive.  As a
+boy I won some popularity among my schoolmates as a teller of
+stories.  One afternoon, to a small collection with whom I was homing
+across Regent's Park, I told the story of a beautiful Princess.  But
+she was not the ordinary Princess.  She would not behave as a
+Princess should.  I could not help it.  The others heard only my
+voice, but I was listening to the wind.  She thought she loved the
+Prince--until he had wounded the Dragon unto death and had carried
+her away into the wood.  Then, while the Prince lay sleeping, she
+heard the Dragon calling to her in its pain, and crept back to where
+it lay bleeding, and put her arms about its scaly neck and kissed it;
+and that healed it.  I was hoping myself that at this point it would
+turn into a prince itself, but it didn't; it just remained a dragon--
+so the wind said.  Yet the Princess loved it:  it wasn't half a bad
+dragon, when you knew it.  I could not tell them what became of the
+Prince:  the wind didn't seem to care a hang about the Prince.
+
+Myself, I liked the story, but Hocker, who was a Fifth Form boy,
+voicing our little public, said it was rot, so far, and that I had
+got to hurry up and finish things rightly.
+
+"But that is all," I told them.
+
+"No, it isn't," said Hocker.  "She's got to marry the Prince in the
+end.  He'll have to kill the Dragon again; and mind he does it
+properly this time.  Whoever heard of a Princess leaving a Prince for
+a Dragon!"
+
+"But she wasn't the ordinary sort of Princess," I argued.
+
+"Then she's got to be," criticised Hocker.  "Don't you give yourself
+so many airs.  You make her marry the Prince, and be slippy about it.
+I've got to catch the four-fifteen from Chalk Farm station."
+
+"But she didn't," I persisted obstinately.  "She married the Dragon
+and lived happy ever afterwards."
+
+Hocker adopted sterner measures.  He seized my arm and twisted it
+behind me.
+
+"She married who?" demanded Hocker:  grammar was not Hocker's strong
+point.
+
+"The Dragon," I growled.
+
+"She married who?" repeated Hocker.
+
+"The Dragon," I whined.
+
+"She married who?" for the third time urged Hocker.
+
+Hocker was strong, and the tears were forcing themselves into my eyes
+in spite of me.  So the Princess in return for healing the Dragon
+made it promise to reform.  It went back with her to the Prince, and
+made itself generally useful to both of them for the rest of the
+tour.  And the Prince took the Princess home with him and married
+her; and the Dragon died and was buried.  The others liked the story
+better, but I hated it; and the wind sighed and died away.
+
+The little crowd becomes the reading public, and Hocker grows into an
+editor; he twists my arm in other ways.  Some are brave, so the crowd
+kicks them and scurries off to catch the four-fifteen.  But most of
+us, I fear, are slaves to Hocker.  Then, after awhile, the wind grows
+sulky and will not tell us stories any more, and we have to make them
+up out of our own heads.  Perhaps it is just as well.  What were
+doors and windows made for but to keep out the wind.
+
+He is a dangerous fellow, this wandering Wind; he leads me astray.  I
+was talking about our architect.
+
+He made a bad start, so far as Robina was concerned, by coming in at
+the back-door.  Robina, in a big apron, was washing up.  He
+apologised for having blundered into the kitchen, and offered to go
+out again and work round to the front.  Robina replied, with
+unnecessary severity as I thought, that an architect, if anyone,
+might have known the difference between the right side of a house and
+the wrong; but presumed that youth and inexperience could always be
+pleaded as excuse for stupidity.  I cannot myself see why Robina
+should have been so much annoyed.  Labour, as Robina had been
+explaining to Veronica only a few hours before, exalts a woman.  In
+olden days, ladies--the highest in the land--were proud, not ashamed,
+of their ability to perform domestic duties.  This, later on, I
+pointed out to Robina.  Her answer was that in olden days you didn't
+have chits of boys going about, calling themselves architects, and
+opening back-doors without knocking; or if they did knock, knocking
+so that nobody on earth could hear them.
+
+Robina wiped her hands on the towel behind the door, and brought him
+into the front-room, where she announced him, coldly, as "The young
+man from the architect's office."  He explained--but quite modestly--
+that he was not exactly Messrs. Spreight's young man, but an
+architect himself, a junior member of the firm.  To make it clear he
+produced his card, which was that of Mr. Archibald T. Bute,
+F.R.I.B.A.  Practically speaking, all this was unnecessary.  Through
+the open door I had, of course, heard every word; and old Spreight
+had told me of his intention to send me one of his most promising
+assistants, who would be able to devote himself entirely to my work.
+I put matters right by introducing him formally to Robina.  They
+bowed to one another rather stiffly.  Robina said that if he would
+excuse her she would return to her work; and he answered "Charmed,"
+and also that he didn't mean it.  As I have tried to get it into
+Robina's head, the young fellow was confused.  He had meant--it was
+self-evident--that he was charmed at being introduced to her, not at
+her desire to return to the kitchen.  But Robina appears to have
+taken a dislike to him.
+
+I gave him a cigar, and we started for the house.  It lies just a
+mile from this cottage, the other side of the wood.  One excellent
+trait in him I soon discovered--he is intelligent without knowing
+everything.
+
+I confess it to my shame, but the young man who knows everything has
+come to pall upon me.  According to Emerson, this is a proof of my
+own intellectual feebleness.  The strong man, intellectually,
+cultivates the society of his superiors.  He wants to get on, he
+wants to learn things.  If I loved knowledge as one should, I would
+have no one but young men about me.  There was a friend of Dick's, a
+gentleman from Rugby.  At one time he had hopes of me; I felt he had.
+But he was too impatient.  He tried to bring me on too quickly.  You
+must take into consideration natural capacity.  After listening to
+him for an hour or two my mind would wander.  I could not help it.
+The careless laughter of uninformed middle-aged gentlemen and ladies
+would creep to me from the croquet lawn or from the billiard-room.  I
+longed to be among them.  Sometimes I would battle with my lower
+nature.  What did they know?  What could they tell me?  More often I
+would succumb.  There were occasions when I used to get up and go
+away from him, quite suddenly.
+
+I talked with young Bute during our walk about domestic architecture
+in general.  He said he should describe the present tendency in
+domestic architecture as towards corners.  The desire of the British
+public was to go into a corner and live.  A lady for whose husband
+his firm had lately built a house in Surrey had propounded to him a
+problem in connection with this point.  She agreed it was a charming
+house; no house in Surrey had more corners, and that was saying much.
+But she could not see how for the future she was going to bring up
+her children.  She was a humanely minded lady.  Hitherto she had
+punished them, when needful, by putting them in the corner; the shame
+of it had always exercised upon them a salutary effect.  But in the
+new house corners are reckoned the prime parts of every room.  It is
+the honoured guest who is sent into the corner.  The father has a
+corner sacred to himself, with high up above his head a complicated
+cupboard, wherein with the help of a step-ladder, he may keep his
+pipes and his tobacco, and thus by slow degrees cure himself of the
+habit of smoking.  The mother likewise has her corner, where stands
+her spinning-wheel, in case the idea comes to her to weave sheets and
+underclothing.  It also has a book-shelf supporting thirteen volumes,
+arranged in a sloping position to look natural; the last one
+maintained at its angle of forty-five degrees by a ginger-jar in old
+blue Nankin.  You are not supposed to touch them, because that would
+disarrange them.  Besides which, fooling about, you might upset the
+ginger-jar.  The consequence of all this is the corner is no longer
+disgraceful.  The parent can no more say to the erring child:
+
+"You wicked boy!  Go into the cosy corner this very minute!"
+
+In the house of the future the place of punishment will have to be
+the middle of the room.  The angry mother will exclaim:
+
+"Don't you answer me, you saucy minx!  You go straight into the
+middle of the room, and don't you dare to come out of it till I tell
+you!"
+
+The difficulty with the artistic house is finding the right people to
+put into it.  In the picture the artistic room never has anybody in
+it.  There is a strip of art embroidery upon the table, together with
+a bowl of roses.  Upon the ancient high-backed settee lies an item of
+fancy work, unfinished--just as she left it.  In the "study" an open
+book, face downwards, has been left on a chair.  It is the last book
+he was reading--it has never been disturbed.  A pipe of quaint design
+is cold upon the lintel of the lattice window.  No one will ever
+smoke that pipe again:  it must have been difficult to smoke at any
+time.  The sight of the artistic room, as depicted in the furniture
+catalogue, always brings tears to my eyes.  People once inhabited
+these rooms, read there those old volumes bound in vellum, smoked--or
+tried to smoke--these impracticable pipes; white hands, that someone
+maybe had loved to kiss, once fluttered among the folds of these
+unfinished antimacassars, or Berlin wool-work slippers, and went
+away, leaving the things about.
+
+One takes it that the people who once occupied these artistic rooms
+are now all dead.  This was their "Dining-Room."  They sat on those
+artistic chairs.  They could hardly have used the dinner service set
+out upon the Elizabethan dresser, because that would have left the
+dresser bare:  one assumes they had an extra service for use, or else
+that they took their meals in the kitchen.  The "Entrance Hall" is a
+singularly chaste apartment.  There is no necessity for a door-mat:
+people with muddy boots, it is to be presumed, were sent round to the
+back.  A riding-cloak, the relic apparently of a highwayman, hangs
+behind the door.  It is the sort of cloak you would expect to find
+there--a decorative cloak.  An umbrella or a waterproof cape would be
+fatal to the whole effect.
+
+Now and again the illustrator of the artistic room will permit a
+young girl to come and sit there.  But she has to be a very carefully
+selected girl.  To begin with, she has got to look and dress as
+though she had been born at least three hundred years ago.  She has
+got to have that sort of clothes, and she has got to have her hair
+done just that way.
+
+She has got to look sad; a cheerful girl in the artistic room would
+jar one's artistic sense.  One imagines the artist consulting with
+the proud possessor of the house.
+
+"You haven't got such a thing as a miserable daughter, have you?
+Some fairly good-looking girl who has been crossed in love, or is
+misunderstood.  Because if so, you might dress her up in something
+out of the local museum and send her along.  A little thing like that
+gives verisimilitude to a design."
+
+She must not touch anything.  All she may do is to read a book--not
+really read it, that would suggest too much life and movement:  she
+sits with the book in her lap and gazes into the fire, if it happens
+to be the dining-room:  or out of the window if it happens to be a
+morning-room, and the architect wishes to call attention to the
+window-seat.  Nothing of the male species, as far as I have been able
+to ascertain, has ever entered these rooms.  I once thought I had
+found a man who had been allowed into his own "Smoking-Den," but on
+closer examination it turned out he was only a portrait.
+
+Sometimes one is given "Vistas."  Doors stand open, and you can see
+right away through "The Nook" into the garden.  There is never a
+living soul about the place.  The whole family has been sent out for
+a walk or locked up in the cellars.  This strikes you as odd until
+you come to think the matter out.  The modern man and woman is not
+artistic.  I am not artistic--not what I call really artistic.  I
+don't go well with Gobelin tapestry and warming-pans.  I feel I
+don't.  Robina is not artistic, not in that sense.  I tried her once
+with a harpsichord I picked up cheap in Wardour Street, and a
+reproduction of a Roman stool.  The thing was an utter failure.  A
+cottage piano, with a photo-frame and a fern upon, it is what the
+soul cries out for in connection with Robina.  Dick is not artistic.
+Dick does not go with peacocks' feathers and guitars.  I can see Dick
+with a single peacock's feather at St. Giles's Fair, when the
+bulldogs are not looking; but the decorative panel of peacock's
+feathers is too much for him.  I can imagine him with a banjo--but a
+guitar decorated with pink ribbons!  To begin with he is not dressed
+for it.  Unless a family be prepared to make themselves up as
+troubadours or cavaliers and to talk blank verse, I don't see how
+they can expect to be happy living in these fifteenth-century houses.
+The modern family--the old man in baggy trousers and a frock-coat he
+could not button if he tried to; the mother of figure distinctly
+Victorian; the boys in flannel suits and collars up to their ears;
+the girls in motor caps--are as incongruous in these mediaeval
+dwellings as a party of Cook's tourists drinking bottled beer in the
+streets of Pompeii.
+
+The designer of "The Artistic Home" is right in keeping to still
+life.  In the artistic home--to paraphrase Dr. Watts--every prospect
+pleases and only man is inartistic.  In the picture, the artistic
+bedroom, "in apple green, the bedstead of cherry-wood, with a touch
+of turkey-red throughout the draperies," is charming.  It need hardly
+be said the bed is empty.  Put a man or woman in that cherry-wood
+bed--I don't care how artistic they may think themselves--the charm
+would be gone.  The really artistic party, one supposes, has a little
+room behind, where he sleeps and dresses himself.  He peeps in at the
+door of this artistic bedroom, maybe occasionally enters to change
+the roses.
+
+Imagine the artistic nursery five minutes after the real child had
+been let loose in it.  I know a lady who once spent hundreds of
+pounds on an artistic nursery.  She showed it to her friends with
+pride.  The children were allowed in there on Sunday afternoons.  I
+did an equally silly thing myself not long ago.  Lured by a furniture
+catalogue, I started Robina in a boudoir.  I gave it to her as a
+birthday-present.  We have both regretted it ever since.  Robina
+reckons she could have had a bicycle, a diamond bracelet, and a
+mandoline, and I should have saved money.  I did the thing well.  I
+told the furniture people I wanted it just as it stood in the
+picture:  "Design for bedroom and boudoir combined, suitable for
+young girl, in teak, with sparrow blue hangings."  We had everything:
+the antique fire arrangements that a vestal virgin might possibly
+have understood; the candlesticks, that were pictures in themselves,
+until we tried to put candles in them; the book-case and writing-desk
+combined, that wasn't big enough to write on, and out of which it was
+impossible to get a book until you had abandoned the idea of writing
+and had closed the cover; the enclosed washstand, that shut down and
+looked like an old bureau, with the inevitable bowl of flowers upon
+it that had to be taken off and put on the floor whenever you wanted
+to use the thing as a washstand; the toilet-table, with its cunning
+little glass, just big enough to see your nose in; the bedstead,
+hidden away behind the "thinking corner," where the girl couldn't get
+at it to make it.  A prettier room you could not have imagined, till
+Robina started sleeping in it.  I think she tried.  Girl friends of
+hers, to whom she had bragged about it, would drop in and ask to be
+allowed to see it.  Robina would say, "Wait a minute," and would run
+up and slam the door; and we would hear her for the next half-hour or
+so rushing round opening and shutting drawers and dragging things
+about.  By the time it was a boudoir again she was exhausted and
+irritable.  She wants now to give it up to Veronica, but Veronica
+objects to the position, which is between the bathroom and my study.
+Her idea is a room more removed, where she would be able to shut
+herself in and do her work, as she explains, without fear of
+interruption.
+
+Young Bute told me that a friend of his, a well-to-do young fellow,
+who lived in Piccadilly, had had the whim to make his flat the
+reproduction of a Roman villa.  There were of course no fires, the
+rooms were warmed by hot air from the kitchen.  They had a cheerless
+aspect on a November afternoon, and nobody knew exactly where to sit.
+Light was obtained in the evening from Grecian lamps, which made it
+easy to understand why the ancient Athenians, as a rule, went to bed
+early.  You dined sprawling on a couch.  This was no doubt
+practicable when you took your plate into your hand and fed yourself
+with your fingers; but with a knife and fork the meal had all the
+advantages of a hot picnic.  You did not feel luxurious or even
+wicked:  you only felt nervous about your clothes.  The thing lacked
+completeness.  He could not expect his friends to come to him in
+Roman togas, and even his own man declined firmly to wear the costume
+of a Roman slave.  The compromise was unsatisfactory, even from the
+purely pictorial point of view.  You cannot be a Roman patrician of
+the time of Antoninus when you happen to live in Piccadilly at the
+opening of the twentieth century.  All you can do is to make your
+friends uncomfortable and spoil their dinner for them.  Young Bute
+said that, so far as he was concerned, he would always rather have
+spent the evening with his little nephews and nieces, playing at
+horses; it seemed to him a more sensible game.
+
+Young Bute said that, speaking as an architect, he of course admired
+the ancient masterpieces of his art.  He admired the Erechtheum at
+Athens; but Spurgeon's Tabernacle in the Old Kent Road built upon the
+same model would have irritated him.  For a Grecian temple you wanted
+Grecian skies and Grecian girls.  He said that, even as it was,
+Westminster Abbey in the season was an eyesore to him.  The Dean and
+Choir in their white surplices passed muster, but the congregation in
+its black frock-coats and Paris hats gave him the same sense of
+incongruity as would a banquet of barefooted friars in the dining-
+hall of the Cannon Street Hotel.
+
+It struck me there was sense in what he said.  I decided not to
+mention my idea of carving 1553 above the front-door.
+
+He said he could not understand this passion of the modern house-
+builder for playing at being a Crusader or a Canterbury Pilgrim.  A
+retired Berlin boot-maker of his acquaintance had built himself a
+miniature Roman Castle near Heidelberg.  They played billiards in the
+dungeon, and let off fireworks on the Kaiser's birthday from the roof
+of the watch-tower.
+
+Another acquaintance of his, a draper at Holloway, had built himself
+a moated grange.  The moat was supplied from the water-works under
+special arrangement, and all the electric lights were imitation
+candles.  He had done the thing thoroughly.  He had even designed a
+haunted chamber in blue, and a miniature chapel, which he used as a
+telephone closet.  Young Bute had been invited down there for the
+shooting in the autumn.  He said he could not be sure whether he was
+doing right or wrong, but his intention was to provide himself with a
+bow and arrows.
+
+A change was coming over this young man.  We had talked on other
+subjects and he had been shy and deferential.  On this matter of
+bricks and mortar he spoke as one explaining things.
+
+I ventured to say a few words in favour of the Tudor house.  The
+Tudor house, he argued, was a fit and proper residence for the Tudor
+citizen--for the man whose wife rode behind him on a pack-saddle, who
+conducted his correspondence by the help of a moss-trooper.  The
+Tudor fireplace was designed for folks to whom coal was unknown, and
+who left their smoking to their chimneys.  A house that looked
+ridiculous with a motor-car before the door, where the electric bell
+jarred upon one's sense of fitness every time one heard it, was out
+of date, he maintained.
+
+"For you, sir," he continued, "a twentieth-century writer, to build
+yourself a Tudor House would be as absurd as for Ben Jonson to have
+planned himself a Norman Castle with a torture-chamber underneath the
+wine-cellar, and the fireplace in the middle of the dining-hall.  His
+fellow cronies of the Mermaid would have thought him stark, staring
+mad."
+
+There was reason in what he was saying.  I decided not to mention my
+idea of altering the chimneys and fixing up imitation gables,
+especially as young Bute seemed pleased with the house, which by this
+time we had reached.
+
+"Now, that is a good house," said young Bute.  "That is a house where
+a man in a frock-coat and trousers can sit down and not feel himself
+a stranger from another age.  It was built for a man who wore a
+frock-coat and trousers--on weekdays, maybe, gaiters and a shooting-
+coat.  You can enjoy a game of billiards in that house without the
+feeling that comes to you when playing tennis in the shadow of the
+Pyramids."
+
+We entered, and I put before him my notions--such of them as I felt
+he would approve.  We were some time about the business, and when we
+looked at our watches young Bute's last train to town had gone.
+There still remained much to talk about, and I suggested he should
+return with me to the cottage and take his luck.  I could sleep with
+Dick and he could have my room.  I told him about the cow, but he
+said he was a practised sleeper and would be delighted, if I could
+lend him a night-shirt, and if I thought Miss Robina would not be put
+out.  I assured him that it would be a good thing for Robina; the
+unexpected guest would be a useful lesson to her in housekeeping.
+Besides, as I pointed out to him, it didn't really matter even if
+Robina were put out.
+
+"Not to you, sir, perhaps," he answered, with a smile.  "It is not
+with you that she will be indignant."
+
+"That will be all right, my boy," I told him; "I take all
+responsibility."
+
+"And I shall get all the blame," he laughed.
+
+But, as I pointed out to him, it really didn't matter whom Robina
+blamed.  We talked about women generally on our way back.  I told
+him--impressing upon him there was no need for it to go farther--that
+I personally had come to the conclusion that the best way to deal
+with women was to treat them all as children.  He agreed it might be
+a good method, but wanted to know what you did when they treated you
+as a child.
+
+I know a most delightful couple:  they have been married nearly
+twenty years, and both will assure you that an angry word has never
+passed between them.  He calls her his "Little One," although she
+must be quite six inches taller than himself, and is never tired of
+patting her hand or pinching her ear.  They asked her once in the
+drawing-room--so the Little Mother tells me--her recipe for domestic
+bliss.  She said the mistake most women made was taking men too
+seriously.
+
+"They are just overgrown children, that's all they are, poor dears,"
+she laughed.
+
+There are two kinds of love:  there is the love that kneels and looks
+upward, and the love that looks down and pats.  For durability I am
+prepared to back the latter.
+
+The architect had died out of young Bute; he was again a shy young
+man during our walk back to the cottage.  My hand was on the latch
+when he stayed me.
+
+"Isn't this the back-door again, sir?" he enquired.
+
+It was the back-door; I had not noticed it.
+
+"Hadn't we better go round to the front, sir, don't you think?" he
+said.
+
+"It doesn't matter--" I began.
+
+But he had disappeared.  So I followed him, and we entered by the
+front.  Robina was standing by the table, peeling potatoes.
+
+"I have brought Mr. Bute back with me," I explained.  "He is going to
+stop the night."
+
+Robina said:  "If ever I go to live in a cottage again it will have
+one door."  She took her potatoes with her and went upstairs.
+
+"I do hope she isn't put out," said young Bute.
+
+"Don't worry yourself," I comforted him.  "Of course she isn't put
+out.  Besides, I don't care if she is.  She's got to get used to
+being put out; it's part of the lesson of life."
+
+I took him upstairs, meaning to show him his bedroom and take my own
+things out of it.  The doors of the two bedrooms were opposite one
+another.  I made a mistake and opened the wrong door.  Robina, still
+peeling potatoes, was sitting on the bed.
+
+I explained we had made a mistake.  Robina said it was of no
+consequence whatever, and, taking the potatoes with her, went
+downstairs again.  Looking out of the window, I saw her making
+towards the wood.  She was taking the potatoes with her.
+
+"I do wish we hadn't opened the door of the wrong room," groaned
+young Bute.
+
+"What a worrying chap you are!" I said to him.  "Look at the thing
+from the humorous point of view.  It's funny when you come to think
+of it.  Wherever the poor girl goes, trying to peel her potatoes in
+peace and quietness, we burst in upon her.  What we ought to do now
+is to take a walk in the wood.  It is a pretty wood.  We might say we
+had come to pick wild flowers."
+
+But I could not persuade him.  He said he had letters to write, and,
+if I would allow him, would remain in his room till dinner was ready.
+
+Dick and Veronica came in a little later.  Dick had been to see Mr.
+St. Leonard to arrange about lessons in farming.  He said he thought
+I should like the old man, who wasn't a bit like a farmer.  He had
+brought Veronica back in one of her good moods, she having met there
+and fallen in love with a donkey.  Dick confided to me that, without
+committing himself, he had hinted to Veronica that if she would
+remain good for quite a long while I might be induced to buy it for
+her.  It was a sturdy little animal, and could be made useful.
+Anyhow, it would give Veronica an object in life--something to strive
+for--which was just what she wanted.  He is a thoughtful lad at
+times, is Dick.
+
+The dinner was more successful than I had hoped for.  Robina gave us
+melon as a hors d'oeuvre, followed by sardines and a fowl, with
+potatoes and vegetable marrow.  Her cooking surprised me.  I had
+warned young Bute that it might be necessary to regard this dinner
+rather as a joke than as an evening meal, and was prepared myself to
+extract amusement from it rather than nourishment.  My disappointment
+was agreeable.  One can always imagine a comic dinner.
+
+I dined once with a newly married couple who had just returned from
+their honeymoon.  We ought to have sat down at eight o'clock; we sat
+down instead at half-past ten.  The cook had started drinking in the
+morning; by seven o'clock she was speechless.  The wife, giving up
+hope at a quarter to eight, had cooked the dinner herself.  The other
+guests were sympathised with, but all I got was congratulation.
+
+"He'll write something so funny about this dinner," they said.
+
+You might have thought the cook had got drunk on purpose to oblige
+me.  I have never been able to write anything funny about that
+dinner; it depresses me to this day, merely thinking of it.
+
+We finished up with a cold trifle and some excellent coffee that
+Robina brewed over a lamp on the table while Dick and Veronica
+cleared away.  It was one of the jolliest little dinners I have ever
+eaten; and, if Robina's figures are to be trusted, cost exactly six-
+and-fourpence for the five of us.  There being no servants about, we
+talked freely and enjoyed ourselves.  I began once at a dinner to
+tell a good story about a Scotchman, when my host silenced me with a
+look.  He is a kindly man, and had heard the story before.  He
+explained to me afterwards, over the walnuts, that his parlourmaid
+was Scotch and rather touchy.  The talk fell into the discussion of
+Home Rule, and again our host silenced us.  It seemed his butler was
+an Irishman and a violent Parnellite.  Some people can talk as though
+servants were mere machines, but to me they are human beings, and
+their presence hampers me.  I know my guests have not heard the story
+before, and from one's own flesh and blood one expects a certain
+amount of sacrifice.  But I feel so sorry for the housemaid who is
+waiting; she must have heard it a dozen times.  I really cannot
+inflict it upon her again.
+
+After dinner we pushed the table into a corner, and Dick extracted a
+sort of waltz from Robina's mandoline.  It is years since I danced;
+but Veronica said she would rather dance with me any day than with
+some of the "lumps" you were given to drag round by the dancing-
+mistress.  I have half a mind to take it up again.  After all, a man
+is only as old as he feels.
+
+Young Bute, it turned out, was a capital dancer, and could even
+reverse, which in a room fourteen feet square is of advantage.
+Robina confided to me after he was gone that while he was dancing she
+could just tolerate him.  I cannot myself see rhyme or reason in
+Robina's objection to him.  He is not handsome, but he is good-
+looking, as boys go, and has a pleasant smile.  Robina says it is his
+smile that maddens her.  Dick agrees with me that there is sense in
+him; and Veronica, not given to loose praise, considers his
+performance of a Red Indian, both dead and alive, the finest piece of
+acting she has ever encountered.  We wound up the evening with a
+little singing.  The extent of Dick's repertoire surprised me;
+evidently he has not been so idle at Cambridge as it seemed.  Young
+Bute has a baritone voice of some richness.  We remembered at
+quarter-past eleven that Veronica ought to have gone to bed at eight.
+We were all of us surprised at the lateness of the hour.
+
+"Why can't we always live in a cottage and do just as we like?  I'm
+sure it's much jollier," Veronica put it to me as I kissed her good
+night.
+
+"Because we are idiots, most of us, Veronica," I answered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+I started the next morning to call upon St. Leonard.  Near to the
+house I encountered young Hopkins on a horse.  He was waving a
+pitchfork over his head and reciting "The Charge of the Light
+Brigade."  The horse looked amused.  He told me I should find "the
+gov'nor" up by the stables.  St. Leonard is not an "old man."  Dick
+must have seen him in a bad light.  I should describe him as about
+the prime of life, a little older than myself, but nothing to speak
+of.  Dick was right, however, in saying he was not like a farmer.  To
+begin with, "Hubert St. Leonard" does not sound like a farmer.  One
+can imagine a man with a name like that writing a book about farming,
+having theories on this subject.  But in the ordinary course of
+nature things would not grow for him.  He does not look like a
+farmer.  One cannot say precisely what it is, but there is that about
+a farmer that tells you he is a farmer.  The farmer has a way of
+leaning over a gate.  There are not many ways of leaning over a gate.
+I have tried all I could think of, but it was never quite the right
+way.  It has to be in the blood.  A farmer has a way of standing on
+one leg and looking at a thing that isn't there.  It sounds simple,
+but there is knack in it.  The farmer is not surprised it is not
+there.  He never expected it to be there.  It is one of those things
+that ought to be, and is not.  The farmer's life is full of such.
+Suffering reduced to a science is what the farmer stands for.  All
+his life he is the good man struggling against adversity.  Nothing
+his way comes right.  This does not seem to be his planet.
+Providence means well, but she does not understand farming.  She is
+doing her best, he supposes; that she is a born muddler is not her
+fault.  If Providence could only step down for a month or two and
+take a few lessons in practical farming, things might be better; but
+this being out of the question there is nothing more to be said.
+From conversation with farmers one conjures up a picture of
+Providence as a well-intentioned amateur, put into a position for
+which she is utterly unsuited.
+
+"Rain," says Providence, "they are wanting rain.  What did I do with
+that rain?"
+
+She finds the rain and starts it, and is pleased with herself until
+some Wandering Spirit pauses on his way and asks her sarcastically
+what she thinks she's doing.
+
+"Raining," explains Providence.  "They wanted rain--farmers, you
+know, that sort of people."
+
+"They won't want anything for long," retorts the Spirit.  "They'll be
+drowned in their beds before you've done with them."
+
+"Don't say that!" says Providence.
+
+"Well, have a look for yourself if you won't believe me," says the
+Spirit.  "You've spoilt that harvest again, you've ruined all the
+fruit, and you are rotting even the turnips.  Don't you ever learn by
+experience?"
+
+"It is so difficult," says Providence, "to regulate these things just
+right."
+
+"So it seems--for you," retorts the Spirit.  "Anyhow, I should not
+rain any more, if I were you.  If you must, at least give them time
+to build another ark."  And the Wandering Spirit continues on his
+way.
+
+"The place does look a bit wet, now I come to notice it," says
+Providence, peeping down over the edge of her star.  "Better turn on
+the fine weather, I suppose."
+
+She starts with she calls "set fair," and feeling now that she is
+something like a Providence, composes herself for a doze.  She is
+startled out of her sleep by the return of the Wandering Spirit.
+
+"Been down there again?" she asks him pleasantly.
+
+"Just come back," explains the Wandering Spirit.
+
+"Pretty spot, isn't it?" says Providence.  "Things nice and dry down
+there now, aren't they?"
+
+"You've hit it," he answers.  "Dry is the word.  The rivers are dried
+up, the wells are dried up, the cattle are dying, the grass is all
+withered.  As for the harvest, there won't be any harvest for the
+next two years!  Oh, yes, things are dry enough."
+
+One imagines Providence bursting into tears.  "But you suggested
+yourself a little fine weather."
+
+"I know I did," answers the Spirit.  "I didn't suggest a six months'
+drought with the thermometer at a hundred and twenty in the shade.
+Doesn't seem to me that you've got any sense at all."
+
+"I do wish this job had been given to someone else," says Providence.
+
+"Yes, and you are not the only one to wish it," retorts the Spirit
+unfeelingly.
+
+"I do my best," urges Providence, wiping her eyes with her wings.  "I
+am not fitted for it."
+
+"A truer word you never uttered," retorts the Spirit.
+
+"I try--nobody could try harder," wails Providence.  "Everything I do
+seems to be wrong."
+
+"What you want," says the Spirit, "is less enthusiasm and a little
+commonsense in place of it.  You get excited, and then you lose your
+head.  When you do send rain, ten to one you send it when it isn't
+wanted.  You keep back your sunshine--just as a duffer at whist keeps
+back his trumps--until it is no good, and then you deal it out all at
+once."
+
+"I'll try again," said Providence.  "I'll try quite hard this time."
+
+"You've been trying again," retorts the Spirit unsympathetically,
+"ever since I have known you.  It is not that you do not try.  It is
+that you have not got the hang of things.  Why don't you get yourself
+an almanack?"
+
+The Wandering Spirit takes his leave.  Providence tells herself she
+really must get that almanack.  She ties a knot in her handkerchief.
+It is not her fault:  she was made like it.  She forgets altogether
+for what reason she tied that knot.  Thinks it was to remind her to
+send frosts in May, or Scotch mists in August.  She is not sure
+which, so sends both.  The farmer has ceased even to be angry with
+her--recognises that affliction and sorrow are good for his immortal
+soul, and pursues his way in calmness to the Bankruptcy Court.
+
+Hubert St. Leonard, of Windrush Bottom Farm, I found to be a worried-
+looking gentleman.  He taps his weather-glass, and hopes and fears,
+not knowing as yet that all things have been ordered for his ill.  It
+will be years before his spirit is attuned to that attitude of
+tranquil despair essential to the farmer:  one feels it.  He is tall
+and thin, with a sensitive, mobile face, and a curious trick of
+taking his head every now and again between his hands, as if to be
+sure it is still there.  When I met him he was on the point of
+starting for his round, so I walked with him.  He told me that he had
+not always been a farmer.  Till a few years ago he had been a
+stockbroker.  But he had always hated his office; and having saved a
+little, had determined when he came to forty to enjoy the rare luxury
+of living his own life.  I asked him if he found that farming paid.
+He said:
+
+"As in everything else, it depends upon the price you put upon
+yourself.  Now, as a casual observer, what wage per annum would you
+say I was worth?"
+
+It was an awkward question.
+
+"You are afraid that if you spoke candidly you would offend me," he
+suggested.  "Very well.  For the purpose of explaining my theory let
+us take, instead, your own case.  I have read all your books, and I
+like them.  Speaking as an admirer, I should estimate you at five
+hundred a year.  You, perhaps, make two thousand, and consider
+yourself worth five."
+
+The whimsical smile with which he accompanied the speech disarmed me.
+
+"What we most of us do," he continued, "is to over-capitalise
+ourselves.  John Smith, honestly worth a hundred a year, claims to be
+worth two.  Result:  difficulty of earning dividend, over-work, over-
+worry, constant fear of being wound up.  Now, there is that about
+your work that suggests to me you would be happier earning five
+hundred a year than you ever will be earning two thousand.  To pay
+your dividend--to earn your two thousand--you have to do work that
+brings you no pleasure in the doing.  Content with five hundred, you
+could afford to do only that work that does give you pleasure.  This
+is not a perfect world, we must remember.  In the perfect world the
+thinker would be worth more than the mere jester.  In the perfect
+world the farmer would be worth more than the stockbroker.  In making
+the exchange I had to write myself down.  I earn less money, but get
+more enjoyment out of life.  I used to be able to afford champagne,
+but my liver was always wrong, and I dared not drink it.  Now I
+cannot afford champagne, but I enjoy my beer.  That is my theory,
+that we are all of us entitled to payment according to our market
+value, neither more nor less.  You can take it all in cash.  I used
+to.  Or you can take less cash and more fun:  that is what I am
+getting now."
+
+"It is delightful," I said, "to meet with a philosopher.  One hears
+about them, of course; but I had got it into my mind they were all
+dead."
+
+"People laugh at philosophy," he said.  "I never could understand
+why.  It is the science of living a free, peaceful, happy existence.
+I would give half my remaining years to be a philosopher."
+
+"I am not laughing at philosophy," I said.  "I honestly thought you
+were a philosopher.  I judged so from the way you talked."
+
+"Talked!" he retorted.  "Anybody can talk.  As you have just said, I
+talk like a philosopher."
+
+"But you not only talk," I insisted, "you behave like a philosopher.
+Sacrificing your income to the joy of living your own life!  It is
+the act of a philosopher."
+
+I wanted to keep him in good humour.  I had three things to talk to
+him about:  the cow, the donkey, and Dick.
+
+"No, it wasn't," he answered.  "A philosopher would have remained a
+stockbroker and been just as happy.  Philosophy does not depend upon
+environment.  You put the philosopher down anywhere.  It is all the
+same to him, he takes his philosophy with him.  You can suddenly tell
+him he is an emperor, or give him penal servitude for life.  He goes
+on being a philosopher just as if nothing had happened.  We have an
+old tom-cat.  The children lead it an awful life.  It does not seem
+to matter to the cat.  They shut it up in the piano:  their idea is
+that it will make a noise and frighten someone.  It doesn't make a
+noise; it goes to sleep.  When an hour later someone opens the piano,
+the poor thing is lying there stretched out upon the keyboard purring
+to itself.  They dress it up in the baby's clothes and take it out in
+the perambulator:  it lies there perfectly contented looking round at
+the scenery--takes in the fresh air.  They haul it about by its tail.
+You would think, to watch it swinging gently to and fro head
+downwards, that it was grateful to them for giving it a new
+sensation.  Apparently it looks on everything that comes its way as
+helpful experience.  It lost a leg last winter in a trap:  it goes
+about quite cheerfully on three.  Seems to be rather pleased, if
+anything, at having lost the fourth--saves washing.  Now, he is your
+true philosopher, that cat; never minds what happens to him, and is
+equally contented if it doesn't."
+
+I found myself becoming fretful.  I know a man with whom it is
+impossible to disagree.  Men at the Club--new-comers--have been lured
+into taking bets that they could on any topic under the sun find
+themselves out of sympathy with him.  They have denounced Mr. Lloyd
+George as a traitor to his country.  This man has risen and shaken
+them by the hand, words being too weak to express his admiration of
+their outspoken fearlessness.  You might have thought them Nihilists
+denouncing the Russian Government from the steps of the Kremlin at
+Moscow.  They have, in the next breath, abused Mr. Balfour in terms
+transgressing the law of slander.  He has almost fallen on their
+necks.  It has transpired that the one dream of his life was to hear
+Mr. Balfour abused.  I have talked to him myself for a quarter of an
+hour, and gathered that at heart he was a peace-at-any-price man,
+strongly in favour of Conscription, a vehement Republican, with a
+deep-rooted contempt for the working classes.  It is not bad sport to
+collect half a dozen and talk round him.  At such times he suggests
+the family dog that six people from different parts of the house are
+calling to at the same time.  He wants to go to them all at once.
+
+I felt I had got to understand this man, or he would worry me.
+
+"We are going to be neighbours," I said, "and I am inclined to think
+I shall like you.  That is, if I can get to know you.  You commence
+by enthusing on philosophy:  I hasten to agree with you.  It is a
+noble science.  When my youngest daughter has grown up, when the
+other one has learnt a little sense, when Dick is off my hands, and
+the British public has come to appreciate good literature, I am
+hoping to be a bit of a philosopher myself.  But before I can explain
+to you my views you have already changed your own, and are likening
+the philosopher to an old tom-cat that seems to be weak in his head.
+Soberly now, what are you?"
+
+"A fool," he answered promptly; "a most unfortunate fool.  I have the
+mind of a philosopher coupled to an intensely irritable temperament.
+My philosophy teaches me to be ashamed of my irritability, and my
+irritability makes my philosophy appear to be arrant nonsense to
+myself.  The philosopher in me tells me it does not matter when the
+twins fall down the wishing-well.  It is not a deep well.  It is not
+the first time they have fallen into it:  it will not be the last.
+Such things pass:  the philosopher only smiles.  The man in me calls
+the philosopher a blithering idiot for saying it does not matter when
+it does matter.  Men have to be called away from their work to haul
+them out.  We all of us get wet.  I get wet and excited, and that
+always starts my liver.  The children's clothes are utterly spoilt.
+Confound them,"--the blood was mounting to his head--"they never care
+to go near the well except they are dressed in their best clothes.
+On other days they will stop indoors and read Foxe's 'Book of
+Martyrs.'  There is something uncanny about twins.  What is it?  Why
+should twins be worse than other children?  The ordinary child is not
+an angel, Heaven knows.  Take these boots of mine.  Look at them; I
+have had them for over two years.  I tramp ten miles a day in them;
+they have been soaked through a hundred times.  You buy a boy a pair
+of boots--"
+
+"Why don't you cover over the well?" I suggested.
+
+"There you are again," he replied.  "The philosopher in me--the
+sensible man--says, 'What is the good of the well?  It is nothing but
+mud and rubbish.  Something is always falling into it--if it isn't
+the children it's the pigs.  Why not do away with it?'"
+
+"Seems to be sound advice," I commented.
+
+"It is," he agreed.  "No man alive has more sound commonsense than I
+have, if only I were capable of listening to myself.  Do you know why
+I don't brick in that well?  Because my wife told me I would have to.
+It was the first thing she said when she saw it.  She says it again
+every time anything does fall into it.  'If only you would take my
+advice'--you know the sort of thing.  Nobody irritates me more than
+the person who says, 'I told you so.'  It's a picturesque old ruin:
+it used to be haunted.  That's all been knocked on the head since we
+came.  What self-respecting nymph can haunt a well into which
+children and pigs are for ever flopping?"
+
+He laughed; but before I could join him he was angry again.  "Why
+should I block up an historic well, that is an ornament to the
+garden, because a pack of fools can't keep a gate shut?  As for the
+children, what they want is a thorough good whipping, and one of
+these days--"
+
+A voice crying to us to stop interrupted him.
+
+"Am on my round.  Can't come," he shouted.
+
+"But you must," explained the voice.
+
+He turned so quickly that he almost knocked me over.  "Bother and
+confound them all!" he said.  "Why don't they keep to the time-table?
+There's no system in this place.  That is what ruins farming--want of
+system."
+
+He went on grumbling as he walked.  I followed him.  Halfway across
+the field we met the owner of the voice.  She was a pleasant-looking
+lass, not exactly pretty--not the sort of girl one turns to look at
+in a crowd--yet, having seen her, it was agreeable to continue
+looking at her.  St. Leonard introduced me to her as his eldest
+daughter, Janie, and explained to her that behind the study door, if
+only she would take the trouble to look, she would find a time-table
+-
+
+"According to which," replied Miss Janie, with a smile, "you ought at
+the present moment to be in the rick-yard, which is just where I want
+you."
+
+"What time is it?" he asked, feeling his waistcoat for a watch that
+appeared not to be there.
+
+"Quarter to eleven," I told him.
+
+He took his head between his hands.  "Good God!" he cried, "you don't
+say that!"
+
+The new binder, Miss Janie told us, had just arrived.  She was
+anxious her father should see it was in working order before the men
+went back.  "Otherwise," so she argued, "old Wilkins will persist it
+was all right when he delivered it, and we shall have no remedy."
+
+We turned towards the house.
+
+"Speaking of the practical," I said, "there were three things I came
+to talk to you about.  First and foremost, that cow."
+
+"Ah, yes, the cow," said St. Leonard.  He turned to his daughter.
+"It was Maud, was it not?"
+
+"No," she answered, "it was Susie."
+
+"It is the one," I said, "that bellows most all night and three parts
+of the day.  Your boy Hopkins thinks maybe she's fretting."
+
+"Poor soul!" said St. Leonard.  "We only took her calf away from her-
+-when did we take her calf away from her?" he asked of Janie.
+
+"On Thursday morning," returned Janie; "the day we sent her over."
+
+"They feel it so at first," said St. Leonard sympathetically.
+
+"It sounds a brutal sentiment," I said, "but I was wondering if by
+any chance you happened to have by you one that didn't feel it quite
+so much.  I suppose among cows there is no class that corresponds to
+what we term our 'Smart Set'--cows that don't really care for their
+calves, that are glad to get away from them?"
+
+Miss Janie smiled.  When she smiled, you felt you would do much to
+see her smile again.
+
+"But why not keep it up at your house, in the paddock," she
+suggested, "and have the milk brought down?  There is an excellent
+cowshed, and it is only a mile away."
+
+It struck me there was sense in this idea.  I had not thought of
+that.  I asked St. Leonard what I owed him for the cow.  He asked
+Miss Janie, and she said sixteen pounds.  I had been warned that in
+doing business with farmers it would be necessary always to bargain;
+but there was that about Miss Janie's tone telling me that when she
+said sixteen pounds she meant sixteen pounds.  I began to see a
+brighter side to Hubert St. Leonard's career as a farmer.
+
+"Very well," I said; "we will regard the cow as settled."
+
+I made a note:  "Cow, sixteen pounds.  Have the cowshed got ready,
+and buy one of those big cans on wheels."
+
+"You don't happen to want milk?" I put it to Miss Janie.  "Susie
+seems to be good for about five gallons a day.  I'm afraid if we
+drink it all ourselves we'll get too fat."
+
+"At twopence halfpenny a quart, delivered at the house, as much as
+you like," replied Miss Janie.
+
+I made a note of that also.  "Happen to know a useful boy?" I asked
+Miss Janie.
+
+"What about young Hopkins," suggested her father.
+
+"The only male thing on this farm--with the exception of yourself, of
+course, father dear--that has got any sense," said Miss Janie.  "He
+can't have Hopkins."
+
+"The only fault I have to find with Hopkins," said St. Leonard, "is
+that he talks too much."
+
+"Personally," I said, "I should prefer a country lad.  I have come
+down here to be in the country.  With Hopkins around, I don't somehow
+feel it is the country.  I might imagine it a garden city:  that is
+as near as Hopkins would allow me to get.  I should like myself
+something more suggestive of rural simplicity."
+
+"I think I know the sort of thing you mean," smiled Miss Janie.  "Are
+you fairly good-tempered?"
+
+"I can generally," I answered, "confine myself to sarcasm.  It
+pleases me, and as far as I have been able to notice, does neither
+harm nor good to anyone else."
+
+"I'll send you up a boy," promised Miss Janie.
+
+I thanked her.  "And now we come to the donkey."
+
+"Nathaniel," explained Miss Janie, in answer to her father's look of
+enquiry.  "We don't really want it."
+
+"Janie," said Mr. St. Leonard in a tone of authority, "I insist upon
+being honest."
+
+"I was going to be honest," retorted Miss Janie, offended.
+
+"My daughter Veronica has given me to understand," I said, "that if I
+buy her this donkey it will be, for her, the commencement of a new
+and better life.  I do not attach undue importance to the bargain,
+but one never knows.  The influences that make for reformation in
+human character are subtle and unexpected.  Anyhow, it doesn't seem
+right to throw a chance away.  Added to which, it has occurred to me
+that a donkey might be useful in the garden."
+
+"He has lived at my expense for upwards of two years," replied St.
+Leonard.  "I cannot myself see any moral improvement he has brought
+into my family.  What effect he may have upon your children, I cannot
+say.  But when you talk about his being useful in a garden--"
+
+"He draws a cart," interrupted Miss Janie.
+
+"So long as someone walks beside him feeding him with carrots.  We
+tried fixing the carrot on a pole six inches beyond his reach.  That
+works all right in the picture:  it starts this donkey kicking."
+
+"You know yourself," he continued with growing indignation, "the very
+last time your mother took him out she used up all her carrots
+getting there, with the result that he and the cart had to be hauled
+home behind a trolley."
+
+We had reached the yard.  Nathaniel was standing with his head
+stretched out above the closed half of his stable door.  I noticed
+points of resemblance between him and Veronica herself:  there was
+about him a like suggestion of resignation, of suffering virtue
+misunderstood; his eye had the same wistful, yearning expression with
+which Veronica will stand before the window gazing out upon the
+purple sunset, while people are calling to her from distant parts of
+the house to come and put her things away.  Miss Janie, bending over
+him, asked him to kiss her.  He complied, but with a gentle,
+reproachful look that seemed to say, "Why call me back again to
+earth?"
+
+It made me mad with him.  I was wrong in thinking Miss Janie not a
+pretty girl.  Hers is that type of beauty that escapes attention by
+its own perfection.  It is the eccentric, the discordant, that
+arrests the roving eye.  To harmony one has to attune oneself.
+
+"I believe," said Miss Janie, as she drew away, wiping her cheek,
+"one could teach that donkey anything."
+
+Apparently she regarded willingness to kiss her as indication of
+exceptional amiability.
+
+"Except to work," commented her father.  "I'll tell you what I'll
+do," he said.  "If you take that donkey off my hands and promise not
+to send it back again, why, you can have it."
+
+"For nothing?" demanded Janie woefully.
+
+"For nothing," insisted her father.  "And if I have any argument,
+I'll throw in the cart."
+
+Miss Janie sighed and shrugged her shoulders.  It was arranged that
+Hopkins should deliver Nathaniel into my keeping some time the next
+day.  Hopkins, it appeared, was the only person on the farm who could
+make the donkey go.
+
+"I don't know what it is," said St. Leonard, "but he has a way with
+him."
+
+"And now," I said, "there remains but Dick."
+
+"The lad I saw yesterday?" suggested St. Leonard.  "Good-looking
+young fellow."
+
+"He is a nice boy," I said.  "I don't really think I know a nicer boy
+than Dick; and clever, when you come to understand him.  There is
+only one fault I have to find with Dick:  I don't seem able to get
+him to work."
+
+Miss Janie was smiling.  I asked her why.
+
+"I was thinking," she answered, "how close the resemblance appears to
+be between him and Nathaniel."
+
+It was true.  I had not thought of it.
+
+"The mistake," said St. Leonard, "is with ourselves.  We assume every
+boy to have the soul of a professor, and every girl a genius for
+music.  We pack off our sons to cram themselves with Greek and Latin,
+and put our daughters down to strum at the piano.  Nine times out of
+ten it is sheer waste of time.  They sent me to Cambridge, and said I
+was lazy.  I was not lazy.  I was not intended by nature for a Senior
+Wrangler.  I did not see the good of being a Senior Wrangler.  Who
+wants a world of Senior Wranglers?  Then why start every young man
+trying?  I wanted to be a farmer.  If intelligent lads were taught
+farming as a business, farming would pay.  In the name of common-
+sense--"
+
+"I am inclined to agree with you," I interrupted him.  "I would
+rather see Dick a good farmer than a third-rate barrister, anyhow.
+He thinks he could take an interest in farming.  There are ten weeks
+before he need go back to Cambridge, sufficient time for the
+experiment.  Will you take him as a pupil?"
+
+St. Leonard grasped his head between his hands and held it firmly.
+"If I consent," he said, "I must insist on being honest"
+
+I saw the woefulness again in Janie's eyes.
+
+"I think," I said, "it is my turn to be honest.  I have got the
+donkey for nothing; I insist on paying for Dick.  They are waiting
+for you in the rick-yard.  I will settle the terms with Miss Janie."
+
+He regarded us both suspiciously.
+
+"I will promise to be honest," laughed Miss Janie.
+
+"If it's more than I'm worth," he said, "I'll send him home again.
+My theory is--"
+
+He stumbled over a pig which, according to the time-table, ought not
+to have been there.  They went off hurriedly together, the pig
+leading, both screaming.
+
+Miss Janie said she would show me the short cut across the fields; we
+could talk as we went.  We walked in silence for awhile.
+
+"You must not think," she said, "I like being the one to do all the
+haggling.  I feel a little sore about it very often.  But somebody,
+of course, must do it; and as for father, poor dear--"
+
+I looked at her.  Her's is the beauty to which a touch of sadness
+adds a charm.
+
+"How old are you?" I asked her.
+
+"Twenty," she answered, "next birthday."
+
+"I judged you to be older," I said.
+
+"Most people do," she answered.
+
+"My daughter Robina," I said, "is just the same age--according to
+years; and Dick is twenty-one.  I hope you will be friends with them.
+They have got sense, both of them.  It comes out every now and again
+and surprises you.  Veronica, I think, is nine.  I am not sure how
+Veronica is going to turn out.  Sometimes things happen that make us
+think she has a beautiful character, and then for quite long periods
+she seems to lose it altogether.  The Little Mother--I don't know why
+we always call her Little Mother--will not join us till things are
+more ship-shape.  She does not like to be thought an invalid, and if
+we have her about anywhere near work that has to be done, and are not
+always watching her, she gets at it and tires herself."
+
+"I am glad we are going to be neighbours," said Miss Janie.  "There
+are ten of us altogether.  Father, I am sure, you will like; clever
+men always like father.  Mother's day is Friday.  As a rule it is the
+only day no one ever calls."  She laughed.  The cloud had vanished.
+"They come on other days and find us all in our old clothes.  On
+Friday afternoon we sit in state and nobody comes near us, and we
+have to eat the cakes ourselves.  It makes her so cross.  You will
+try and remember Fridays, won't you?"
+
+I made a note of it then and there.
+
+"I am the eldest," she continued, "as I think father told you.  Harry
+and Jack came next; but Jack is in Canada and Harry died, so there is
+somewhat of a gap between me and the rest.  Bertie is twelve and Ted
+eleven; they are home just now for the holidays.  Sally is eight, and
+then there come the twins.  People don't half believe the tales that
+are told about twins, but I am sure there is no need to exaggerate.
+They are only six, but they have a sense of humour you would hardly
+credit.  One is a boy, and the other a girl.  They are always
+changing clothes, and we are never quite sure which is which.
+Wilfrid gets sent to bed because Winnie has not practised her scales,
+and Winnie is given syrup of squills because Wilfried has been eating
+green gooseberries.  Last spring Winnie had the measles.  When the
+doctor came on the fifth day he was as pleased as punch; he said it
+was the quickest cure he had ever known, and that really there was no
+reason why she might not get up.  We had our suspicions, and they
+were right.  Winnie was hiding in the cupboard, wrapped up in a
+blanket.  They don't seem to mind what trouble they get into,
+provided it isn't their own.  The only safe plan, unless you happen
+to catch them red-handed, is to divide the punishment between them,
+and leave them to settle accounts between themselves afterwards.
+Algy is four; till last year he was always called the baby.  Now, of
+course, there is no excuse; but the name still clings to him in spite
+of his indignant protestations.  Father called upstairs to him the
+other day:  'Baby, bring me down my gaiters.'  He walked straight up
+to the cradle and woke up the baby.  'Get up,' I heard him say--I was
+just outside the door--'and take your father down his gaiters.  Don't
+you hear him calling you?'  He is a droll little fellow.  Father took
+him to Oxford last Saturday.  He is small for his age.  The ticket-
+collector, quite contented, threw him a glance, and merely as a
+matter of form asked if he was under three.  'No,' he shouted before
+father could reply; 'I 'sists on being honest.  I'se four.'  It is
+father's pet phrase."
+
+"What view do you take of the exchange," I asked her, "from
+stockbroking with its larger income to farming with its smaller?"
+
+"Perhaps it was selfish," she answered, "but I am afraid I rather
+encouraged father.  It seems to me mean, making your living out of
+work that does no good to anyone.  I hate the bargaining, but the
+farming itself I love.  Of course, it means having only one evening
+dress a year and making that myself.  But even when I had a lot I
+always preferred wearing the one that I thought suited me the best.
+As for the children, they are as healthy as young savages, and
+everything they want to make them happy is just outside the door.
+The boys won't go to college; but seeing they will have to earn their
+own living, that, perhaps, is just as well.  It is mother, poor dear,
+that worries so."  She laughed again.  "Her favourite walk is to the
+workhouse.  She came back quite excited the other day because she had
+heard the Guardians intend to try the experiment of building separate
+houses for old married couples.  She is convinced she and father are
+going to end their days there."
+
+"You, as the business partner," I asked her, "are hopeful that the
+farm will pay?"
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered, "it will pay all right--it does pay, for the
+matter of that.  We live on it and live comfortably.  But, of course,
+I can see mother's point of view, with seven young children to bring
+up.  And it is not only that."  She stopped herself abruptly.  "Oh,
+well," she continued with a laugh, "you have got to know us.  Father
+is trying.  He loves experiments, and a woman hates experiments.
+Last year it was bare feet.  I daresay it is healthier.  But children
+who have been about in bare feet all the morning--well, it isn't
+pleasant when they sit down to lunch; I don't care what you say.  You
+can't be always washing.  He is so unpractical.  He was quite angry
+with mother and myself because we wouldn't.  And a man in bare feet
+looks so ridiculous.  This summer it is short hair and no hats; and
+Sally had such pretty hair.  Next year it will be sabots or turbans--
+something or other suggesting the idea that we've lately escaped from
+a fair.  On Mondays and Thursdays we talk French.  We have got a
+French nurse; and those are the only days in the week on which she
+doesn't understand a word that's said to her.  We can none of us
+understand father, and that makes him furious.  He won't say it in
+English; he makes a note of it, meaning to tell us on Tuesday or
+Friday, and then, of course, he forgets, and wonders why we haven't
+done it.  He's the dearest fellow alive.  When I think of him as a
+big boy, then he is charming, and if he really were only a big boy
+there are times when I would shake him and feel better for it."
+
+She laughed again.  I wanted her to go on talking, because her laugh
+was so delightful.  But we had reached the road, and she said she
+must go back:  there were so many things she had to do.
+
+"We have not settled about Dick," I reminded her.
+
+"Mother took rather a liking to him," she murmured.
+
+"If Dick could make a living," I said, "by getting people to like
+him, I should not be so anxious about his future--lazy young devil!"
+
+"He has promised to work hard if you let him take up farming," said
+Miss Janie.
+
+"He has been talking to you?" I said.
+
+She admitted it.
+
+"He will begin well," I said.  "I know him.  In a month he will have
+tired of it, and be clamouring to do something else."
+
+"I shall be very disappointed in him if he does," she said.
+
+"I will tell him that," I said, "it may help.  People don't like
+other people to be disappointed in them."
+
+"I would rather you didn't," she said.  "You could say that father
+will be disappointed in him.  Father formed rather a good opinion of
+him, I know."
+
+"I will tell him," I suggested, "that we shall all be disappointed in
+him."
+
+She agreed to that, and we parted.  I remembered, when she was gone,
+that after all we had not settled terms.
+
+Dick overtook me a little way from home.
+
+"I have settled your business," I told him.
+
+"It's awfully good of you," said Dick.
+
+"Mind," I continued, "it's on the understanding that you throw
+yourself into the thing and work hard.  If you don't, I shall be
+disappointed in you, I tell you so frankly."
+
+"That's all right, governor," he answered cheerfully.  "Don't you
+worry."
+
+"Mr. St. Leonard will also be disappointed in you, Dick," I informed
+him.  "He has formed a very high opinion of you.  Don't give him
+cause to change it."
+
+"I'll get on all right with him," answered Dick.  "Jolly old duffer,
+ain't he?"
+
+"Miss Janie will also be disappointed in you," I added.
+
+"Did she say that?" he asked.
+
+"She mentioned it casually," I explained:  "though now I come to
+think of it she asked me not to say so.  What she wanted me to
+impress upon you was that her father would be disappointed in you."
+
+Dick walked beside me in silence for awhile.
+
+"Sorry I've been a worry to you, dad," he said at last
+
+"Glad to hear you say so," I replied.
+
+"I'm going to turn over a new leaf, dad," he said.  "I'm going to
+work hard."
+
+"About time," I said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+We had cold bacon for lunch that day.  There was not much of it.  I
+took it to be the bacon we had not eaten for breakfast.  But on a
+clean dish with parsley it looked rather neat.  It did not suggest,
+however, a lunch for four people, two of whom had been out all the
+morning in the open air.  There was some excuse for Dick.
+
+"I never heard before," said Dick, "of cold fried bacon as a hors
+d'oeuvre."
+
+"It is not a hors d'oeuvre," explained Robina.  "It is all there is
+for lunch."  She spoke in the quiet, passionless voice of one who has
+done with all human emotion.  She added that she should not be
+requiring any herself, she having lunched already.
+
+Veronica, conveying by her tone and bearing the impression of
+something midway between a perfect lady and a Christian martyr,
+observed that she also had lunched.
+
+"Wish I had," growled Dick.
+
+I gave him a warning kick.  I could see he was on the way to getting
+himself into trouble.  As I explained to him afterwards, a woman is
+most dangerous when at her meekest.  A man, when he feels his temper
+rising, takes every opportunity of letting it escape.  Trouble at
+such times he welcomes.  A broken boot-lace, or a shirt without a
+button, is to him then as water in the desert.  An only collar-stud
+that will disappear as if by magic from between his thumb and finger
+and vanish apparently into thin air is a piece of good fortune sent
+on these occasions only to those whom the gods love.  By the time he
+has waddled on his hands and knees twice round the room, broken the
+boot-jack raking with it underneath the wardrobe, been bumped and
+slapped and kicked by every piece of furniture that the room
+contains, and ended up by stepping on that stud and treading it flat,
+he has not a bitter or an angry thought left in him.  All that
+remains of him is sweet and peaceful.  He fastens his collar with a
+safety-pin, humming an old song the while.
+
+Failing the gifts of Providence, the children--if in health--can
+generally be depended upon to afford him an opening.  Sooner or later
+one or another of them will do something that no child, when he was a
+boy, would have dared--or dreamed of daring--to even so much as think
+of doing.  The child, conveying by expression that the world, it is
+glad to say, is slowly but steadily growing in sense, and pity it is
+that old-fashioned folks can't bustle up and keep abreast of it,
+points out that firstly it has not done this thing, that for various
+reasons--a few only of which need be dwelt upon--it is impossible it
+could have done this thing; that secondly it has been expressly
+requested to do this thing, that wishful always to give satisfaction,
+it has--at sacrifice of all its own ideas--gone out of its way to do
+this thing; that thirdly it can't help doing this thing, strive
+against fate as it will.
+
+He says he does not want to hear what the child has got to say on the
+subject--nor on any other subject, neither then nor at any other
+time.  He says there's going to be a new departure in this house, and
+that things all round are going to be very different.  He suddenly
+remembers every rule and regulation he has made during the past ten
+years for the guidance of everybody, and that everybody, himself
+included, has forgotten.  He tries to talk about them all at once, in
+haste lest he should forget them again.  By the time he has succeeded
+in getting himself, if nobody else, to understand himself, the
+children are swarming round his knees extracting from him promises
+that in his sober moments he will be sorry that he made.
+
+I knew a woman--a wise and good woman she was--who when she noticed
+that her husband's temper was causing him annoyance, took pains to
+help him to get rid of it.  To relieve his sufferings I have known
+her search the house for a last month's morning paper and, ironing it
+smooth, lay it warm and neatly folded on his breakfast plate.
+
+"One thing in this world to be thankful for, at all events, and that
+is that we don't live in Ditchley-in-the-Marsh," he would growl ten
+minutes later from the other side of it.
+
+"Sounds a bit damp," the good woman would reply.
+
+"Damp!" he would grunt, "who minds a bit of damp!  Good for you.
+Makes us Englishmen what we are.  Being murdered in one's bed about
+once a week is what I should object to."
+
+"Do they do much of that sort of thing down there?" the good woman
+would enquire.
+
+"Seems to be the chief industry of the place.  Do you mean to say you
+don't remember that old maiden lady being murdered by her own
+gardener and buried in the fowl-run?  You women! you take no interest
+in public affairs."
+
+"I do remember something about it, now you mention it, dear," the
+good woman would confess.  "Always seems such an innocent type of
+man, a gardener."
+
+"Seems to be a special breed of them at Ditchley-in-the-Marsh," he
+answers.  "Here again last Monday," he continues, reading with
+growing interest.  "Almost the same case--even to the pruning knife.
+Yes, hanged if he doesn't!--buries her in the fowl-run.  This is most
+extraordinary."
+
+"It must be the imitative instinct asserting itself," suggests the
+good woman.  "As you, dear, have so often pointed out, one crime
+makes another."
+
+"I have always said so," he agrees; "it has always been a theory of
+mine."
+
+He folds the paper over.  "Dull dogs, these political chaps!" he
+says.  "Here's the Duke of Devonshire, speaking last night at
+Hackney, begins by telling a funny story he says he has just heard
+about a parrot.  Why, it's the same story somebody told a month ago;
+I remember reading it.  Yes--upon my soul--word for word, I'd swear
+to it.  Shows you the sort of men we're governed by."
+
+"You can't expect everyone, dear, to possess your repertoire," the
+good woman remarks.
+
+"Needn't say he's just heard it that afternoon, anyhow," responds the
+good man.
+
+He turns to another column.  "What the devil!  Am I going off my
+head?"  He pounces on the eldest boy.  "When was the Oxford and
+Cambridge Boat-race?" he fiercely demands.
+
+"The Oxford and Cambridge Boat-race!" repeats the astonished youth.
+"Why, it's over.  You took us all to see it, last month.  The
+Saturday before--"
+
+The conversation for the next ten minutes he conducts himself,
+unaided.  At the end he is tired, maybe a trifle hoarse.  But all his
+bad temper is gone.  His sorrow is there was not sufficient of it.
+He could have done with more.
+
+Woman knows nothing of simple mechanics.  A woman thinks you can get
+rid of steam by boxing it up and sitting on the safety-valve.
+
+"Feeling as I do this morning, that I'd like to wring everybody's
+neck for them," the average woman argues to herself; "my proper
+course--I see it clearly--is to creep about the house, asking of
+everyone that has the time to spare to trample on me."
+
+She coaxes you to tell her of her faults.  When you have finished she
+asks for more--reminds you of one or two you had missed out.  She
+wonders why it is that she is always wrong.  There must be a reason
+for it; if only she could discover it.  She wonders how it is that
+people can put up with her--thinks it so good of them.
+
+At last, of course, the explosion happens.  The awkward thing is that
+neither she herself nor anyone else knows when it is coming.  A
+husband cornered me one evening in the club.  It evidently did him
+good to talk.  He told me that, finding his wife that morning in one
+of her rare listening moods, he had seized the opportunity to mention
+one or two matters in connection with the house he would like to have
+altered; that was, if she had no objection.  She had--quite
+pleasantly--reminded him the house was his, that he was master there.
+She added that any wish of his of course was law to her.
+
+He was a young and inexperienced husband; it seemed to him a hopeful
+opening.  He spoke of quite a lot of things--things about which he
+felt that he was right and she was wrong.  She went and fetched a
+quire of paper, and borrowed his pencil and wrote them down.
+
+Later on, going through his letters in the study, he found an
+unexpected cheque; and ran upstairs and asked her if she would not
+like to come out with him and get herself a new hat.
+
+"I could have understood it," he moaned, "if she had dropped on me
+while I was--well, I suppose, you might say lecturing her.  She had
+listened to it like a lamb--hadn't opened her mouth except to say
+'yes, dear,' or 'no, dear.'  Then, when I only asked her if she'd
+like a new hat, she goes suddenly raving mad.  I never saw a woman go
+so mad."
+
+I doubt if there be anything in nature quite as unexpected as a
+woman's temper, unless it be tumbling into a hole.  I told all this
+to Dick.  I have told it him before.  One of these days he will know
+it.
+
+"You are right to be angry with me," Robina replied meekly; "there is
+no excuse for me.  The whole thing is the result of my own folly."
+
+Her pathetic humility should have appealed to him.  He can be
+sympathetic, when he isn't hungry.  Just then he happened to be
+hungry.
+
+"I left you making a pie," he said.  "It looked to me a fair-sized
+pie.  There was a duck on the table, with a cauliflower and potatoes;
+Veronica was up to her elbows in peas.  It made me hungry merely
+passing through the kitchen.  I wouldn't have anything to eat in the
+town for fear of spoiling my appetite.  Where is it all?  You don't
+mean to say that you and Veronica have eaten the whole blessed lot!"
+
+There is one thing--she admits it herself--that exhausts Veronica's
+patience:  it is unjust suspicion.
+
+"Do I look as if I'd eaten anything for hours and hours?" Veronica
+demanded.  "You can feel my waistband if you don't believe me."
+
+"You said just now you had had your lunch," Dick argued.
+
+"I know I did," Veronica admitted.  "One minute you are told that it
+is wicked to tell lies; the next--"
+
+"Veronica!" Robina interrupted threateningly.
+
+"It's easy for you," retorted Veronica.  "You are not a growing
+child.  You don't feel it."
+
+"The least you can do," said Robina, "is to keep silence."
+
+"What's the good," said Veronica--not without reason.  "You'll tell
+them when I've gone to bed, and can't put in a word for myself.
+Everything is always my fault.  I wish sometimes that I was dead."
+
+"That I were dead," I corrected her.  "The verb 'to wish,' implying
+uncertainty, should always be followed by the conditional mood."
+
+"You ought," said Robina, "to be thankful to Providence that you're
+not dead."
+
+"People are sorry when you're dead," said Veronica.
+
+"I suppose there's some bread-and-cheese in the house," suggested
+Dick.
+
+"The baker, for some reason or another, has not called this morning,"
+Robina answered sweetly.  "Neither unfortunately has the grocer.
+Everything there is to eat in the house you see upon the table."
+
+"Accidents will happen," I said.  "The philosopher--as our friend St.
+Leonard would tell us--only smiles."
+
+"I could smile," said Dick, "if it were his lunch."
+
+"Cultivate," I said, "a sense of humour.  From a humorous point of
+view this lunch is rather good."
+
+"Did you have anything to eat at the St. Leonards'?" he asked.
+
+"Just a glass or so of beer and a sandwich or two," I admitted.
+"They brought it out to us while we were talking in the yard.  To
+tell the truth, I was feeling rather peckish."
+
+Dick made no answer, but continued to chew bacon-rind.  Nothing I
+could say seemed to cheer him.  I thought I would try religion.
+
+"A dinner of herbs--the sentiment applies equally to lunch--and
+contentment therewith is better," I said, "than a stalled ox."
+
+"Don't talk about oxen," he interrupted fretfully.  "I feel I could
+just eat one--a plump one."
+
+There is a man I know.  I confess he irritates me.  His argument is
+that you should always rise from a meal feeling hungry.  As I once
+explained to him, you cannot rise from a meal feeling hungry without
+sitting down to a meal feeling hungry; which means, of course, that
+you are always hungry.  He agreed with me.  He said that was the
+idea--always ready.
+
+"Most people," he said, "rise from a meal feeling no more interest in
+their food.  That was a mental attitude injurious to digestion.  Keep
+it always interested; that was the proper way to treat it."
+
+"By 'it' you mean . . . ?" I said.
+
+"Of course," he answered; "I'm talking about it."
+
+"Now I myself;" he explained--"I rise from breakfast feeling eager
+for my lunch.  I get up from my lunch looking forward to my dinner.
+I go to bed just ready for my breakfast."
+
+Cheerful expectancy, he said, was a wonderful aid to digestion.  "I
+call myself;" he said, "a cheerful feeder."
+
+"You don't seem to me," I said, "to be anything else.  You talk like
+a tadpole.  Haven't you any other interest in life?  What about home,
+and patriotism, and Shakespeare--all those sort of things?  Why not
+give it a square meal, and silence it for an hour or two; leave
+yourself free to think of something else."
+
+"How can you think of anything," he argued, "when your stomach's out
+of order?"
+
+"How can you think of anything," I argued, "when it takes you all
+your time to keep it in order?  You are not a man; you are a nurse to
+your own stomach."  We were growing excited, both of us, forgetting
+our natural refinement.  "You don't get even your one afternoon a
+week.  You are healthy enough, I admit it.  So are the convicts at
+Portland.  They never suffer from indigestion.  I knew a doctor once
+who prescribed for a patient two years' penal servitude as the only
+thing likely to do him permanent good.  Your stomach won't let you
+smoke.  It won't let you drink--not when you are thirsty.  It allows
+you a glass of Apenta water at times when you don't want it, assuming
+there could ever be a time when you did want it.  You are deprived of
+your natural victuals, and made to live upon prepared food, as though
+you were some sort of a prize chicken.  You are sent to bed at
+eleven, and dressed in hygienic clothing that makes no pretence to
+fit you.  Talk of being hen-pecked!  Why, the mildest husband living
+would run away or drown himself, rather than remain tied for the rest
+of his existence to your stomach."
+
+"It is easy to sneer," he said.
+
+"I am not sneering," I said; "I am sympathising with you."
+
+He said he did not want any sympathy.  He said if only I would give
+up over-eating and drinking myself, it would surprise me how bright
+and intelligent I should become.
+
+I thought this man might be of use to us on the present occasion.
+Accordingly I spoke of him and of his theory.  Dick seemed impressed.
+
+"Nice sort of man?" he asked.
+
+"An earnest man," I replied.  "He practises what he preaches, and
+whether because, or in spite of it, the fact remains that a chirpier
+soul I am sure does not exist."
+
+"Married?" demanded Dick.
+
+"A single man," I answered.  "In all things an idealist.  He has told
+me he will never marry until he can find his ideal woman."
+
+"What about Robina here!" suggested Dick.  "Seem to have been made
+for one another."
+
+Robina smiled.  It was a wan, pathetic smile.
+
+"Even he," thought Robina, "would want his beans cooked to time, and
+to feel that a reasonable supply of nuts was always in the house.  We
+incompetent women never ought to marry."
+
+We had finished the bacon.  Dick said he would take a stroll into the
+town.  Robina suggested he might take Veronica with him, that perhaps
+a bun and a glass of milk would do the child no harm.
+
+Veronica for a wonder seemed to know where all her things were.
+Before Dick had filled his pipe she was ready dressed and waiting for
+him.  Robina said she would give them a list of things they might
+bring back with them.  She also asked Dick to get together a plumber,
+a carpenter, a bricklayer, a glazier, and a civil engineer, and to
+see to it that they started off at once.  She thought that among them
+they might be able to do all that was temporarily necessary, but the
+great thing was that the work should be commenced without delay.
+
+"Why, what on earth's the matter, old girl?" asked Dick.  "Have you
+had an accident?"
+
+Then it was that Robina exploded.  I had been wondering when it would
+happen.  To Dick's astonishment it happened then.
+
+Yes, she answered, there had been an accident.  Did he suppose that
+seven scrimpy scraps of bacon was her notion of a lunch between four
+hungry persons?  Did he, judging from himself, imagine that our
+family yielded only lunatics?  Was it kind--was it courteous to his
+parents, to the mother he pretended to love, to the father whose grey
+hairs he was by his general behaviour bringing down in sorrow to the
+grave--to assume without further enquiry that their eldest daughter
+was an imbecile?  (My hair, by-the-bye, is not grey.  There may be a
+suggestion of greyness here and there, the natural result of deep
+thinking.  To describe it in the lump as grey is to show lack of
+observation.  And at forty-eight--or a trifle over--one is not going
+down into the grave, not straight down.  Robina when excited uses
+exaggerated language.  I did not, however, interrupt her; she meant
+well.  Added to which, interrupting Robina, when--to use her own
+expression--she is tired of being a worm, is like trying to stop a
+cyclone with an umbrella.)  Had his attention been less concentrated
+on the guzzling of cold bacon (he had only had four mouthfuls, poor
+fellow)--had he noticed the sweet patient child starving before his
+very eyes (this referred to Veronica)--his poor elder sister, worn
+out with work and worry, pining for nourishment herself, it might
+have occurred to even his intelligence that there had been an
+accident.  The selfishness, the egotism of men it was that staggered,
+overwhelmed Robina, when she came to think of it.
+
+Robina paused.  Not for want of material, I judged, so much as want
+of breath.  Veronica performed a useful service by seizing the moment
+to express a hope that it was not early-closing day.  Robina felt a
+conviction that it was:  it would be just like Dick to stand there
+dawdling in a corner till it was too late to do anything.
+
+"I have been trying to get out of this corner for the last five
+minutes," explained Dick, with that angelic smile of his that I
+confess is irritating.  "If you have done talking, and will give me
+an opening, I will go."
+
+Robina told him that she had done talking.  She gave him her reasons
+for having done talking.  If talking to him would be of any use she
+would often have felt it her duty to talk to him, not only with
+regard to his stupidity and selfishness and general aggravatingness,
+but with reference to his character as a whole.  Her excuse for not
+talking to him was the crushing conviction of the hopelessness of
+ever effecting any improvement in him.  Were it otherwise -
+
+"Seriously speaking," said Dick, now escaped from his corner,
+"something, I take it, has gone wrong with the stove, and you want a
+sort of general smith."
+
+He opened the kitchen door and looked in.
+
+"Great Scott!" he said.  "What was it--an earthquake?"
+
+I looked in over his shoulder.
+
+"But it could not have been an earthquake," I said.  "We should have
+felt it."
+
+"It is not an earthquake," explained Robina.  "It is your youngest
+daughter's notion of making herself useful."
+
+Robina spoke severely.  I felt for the moment as if I had done it all
+myself.  I had an uncle who used to talk like that.  "Your aunt," he
+would say, regarding me with a reproachful eye, "your aunt can be,
+when she likes, the most trying woman to live with I have ever
+known."  It would depress me for days.  I would wonder whether I
+ought to speak to her about it, or whether I should be doing only
+harm.
+
+"But how did she do it?" I demanded.  "It is impossible that a mere
+child--where is the child?"
+
+The parlour contained but Robina.  I hurried to the door; Dick was
+already half across the field.  Veronica I could not see.
+
+"We are making haste," Dick shouted back, "in case it is early-
+closing day."
+
+"I want Veronica!" I shouted.
+
+"What?" shouted Dick.
+
+"Veronica!" I shouted with my hands to my mouth.
+
+"Yes!" shouted Dick.  "She's on ahead."
+
+It was useless screaming any more.  He was now climbing the stile.
+
+"They always take each other's part, those two," sighed Robina.
+
+"Yes, and you are just as bad," I told her; "if he doesn't, you do.
+And then if it's you they take your part.  And you take his part.
+And he takes both your parts.  And between you all I am just getting
+tired of bringing any of you up."  (Which is the truth.)  "How did
+this thing happen?"
+
+"I had got everything finished," answered Robina.  "The duck was in
+the oven with the pie; the peas and potatoes were boiling nicely.  I
+was feeling hot, and I thought I could trust Veronica to watch the
+things for awhile.  She promised not to play King Alfred."
+
+"What's that?" I asked.
+
+"You know," said Robina--"King Alfred and the cakes.  I left her one
+afternoon last year when we were on the houseboat to watch some buns.
+When I came back she was sitting in front of the fire, wrapped up in
+the table-cloth, with Dick's banjo on her knees and a cardboard crown
+upon her head.  The buns were all burnt to a cinder.  As I told her,
+if I had known what she wanted to be up to I could have given her
+some extra bits of dough to make believe with.  But oh, no! if you
+please, that would not have suited her at all.  It was their being
+real buns, and my being real mad, that was the best part of the game.
+She is an uncanny child."
+
+"What was the game this time?" I asked.
+
+"I don't think it was intended for a game--not at first," answered
+Robina.  "I went into the wood to pick some flowers for the table.  I
+was on my way back, still at some distance from the house, when I
+heard quite a loud report.  I took it for a gun, and wondered what
+anyone would be shooting in July.  It must be rabbits, I thought.
+Rabbits never seem to have any time at all to themselves, poor
+things.  And in consequence I did not hurry myself.  It must have
+been about twenty minutes later when I came in sight of the house.
+Veronica was in the garden deep in confabulation with an awful-
+looking boy, dressed in nothing but rags.  His face and hands were
+almost black.  You never saw such an object.  They both seemed very
+excited.  Veronica came to meet me; and with a face as serious as
+mine is now, stood there and told me the most barefaced pack of lies
+you ever heard.  She said that a few minutes after I had gone,
+robbers had come out of the wood--she talked about them as though
+there had been hundreds--and had with the most awful threats demanded
+to be admitted into the house.  Why they had not lifted the latch and
+walked in, she did not explain.  It appeared this cottage was their
+secret rendezvous, where all their treasure lies hidden.  Veronica
+would not let them in, but shouted for help:  and immediately this
+awful-looking boy, to whom she introduced me as 'Sir Robert'
+something or another, had appeared upon the scene; and then there had
+followed--well, I have not the patience to tell you the whole of the
+rigmarole they had concocted.  The upshot of it was that the robbers,
+defeated in their attempt to get into the house, had fired a secret
+mine, which had exploded in the kitchen.  If I did not believe them I
+could go into the kitchen and see for myself.  Say what I would, that
+is the story they both stuck to.  It was not till I had talked to
+Veronica for a quarter of an hour, and had told her that you would
+most certainly communicate with the police, and that she would have
+to convince a judge and jury of the truth of her story, that I got
+any sense at all out of her."
+
+"What was the sense you did get out of her?" I asked.
+
+"Well, I am not sure even now that it is the truth," said Robina--
+"the child does not seem to possess a proper conscience.  What she
+will grow up like, if something does not happen to change her, it is
+awful to think."
+
+"I don't want to appear a hustler," I said, "and maybe I am mistaken
+in the actual time, but it feels to me like hours since I asked you
+how the catastrophe really occurred."
+
+"I am telling you," explained Robina, hurt.  "She was in the kitchen
+yesterday when I mentioned to Harry's mother, who had looked in to
+help me wash up, that the kitchen chimney smoked:  and then she said-
+-"
+
+"Who said?" I asked.
+
+"Why, she did," answered Robina, "Harry's mother.  She said that very
+often a pennyworth of gunpowder--"
+
+"Now at last we have begun," I said.  "From this point I may be able
+to help you, and we will get on.  At the word 'gunpowder' Veronica
+pricked up her ears.  The thing by its very nature would appeal to
+Veronica's sympathies.  She went to bed dreaming of gunpowder.  Left
+in solitude before the kitchen fire, other maidens might have seen
+pictured in the glowing coals, princes, carriages, and balls.
+Veronica saw visions of gunpowder.  Who knows?--perhaps even she one
+day will have gunpowder of her own!  She looks up from her reverie:
+a fairy godmamma in the disguise of a small boy--it was a small boy,
+was it not?"
+
+"Rather a nice little boy, he gave me the idea of having been,
+originally," answered Robina; "the child, I should say, of well-to-do
+parents.  He was dressed in a little Lord Fauntleroy suit--or rather,
+he had been."
+
+"Did Veronica know how he was--anything about him?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing that I could get out of her," replied Robina; "you know her
+way--how she chums on with anybody and everybody.  As I told her, if
+she had been attending to her duties instead of staring out of the
+window, she would not have seen him.  He happened to be crossing the
+field just at the time."
+
+"A boy born to ill-luck, evidently," I observed.  "To Veronica of
+course he seemed like the answer to a prayer.  A boy would surely
+know where gunpowder could be culled."
+
+"They must have got a pound of it from somewhere," said Robina,
+"judging from the result."
+
+"Any notion where they got it from?" I asked.
+
+"No," explained Robina.  "All Veronica can say is that he told her he
+knew where he could get some, and was gone about ten minutes.  Of
+course they must have stolen it--even that did not seem to trouble
+her."
+
+"It came to her as a gift from the gods, Robina," I explained.  "I
+remember how I myself used to feel about these things, at ten.  To
+have enquired further would have seemed to her impious.  How was it
+they were not both killed?"
+
+"Providence," was Robina's suggestion:  it seemed to be the only one
+possible.  "They lifted off one of the saucepans and just dropped the
+thing in--fortunately wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, which gave
+them both time to get out of the house.  At least Veronica got clear
+off.  For a change it was not she who fell over the mat, it was the
+boy."
+
+I looked again into the kitchen; then I returned and put my hands on
+Robina's shoulders.  "It is a most amusing incident--as it has turned
+out," I said.
+
+"It might have turned out rather seriously," thought Robina.
+
+"It might," I agreed:  "she might be lying upstairs."
+
+"She is a wicked, heartless child," said Robina; "she ought to be
+punished."
+
+I lent Robina my handkerchief; she never has one of her own.
+
+"She is going to be punished," I said; "I will think of something."
+
+"And so ought I," said Robina; "it was my fault, leaving her, knowing
+what she's like.  I might have murdered her.  She doesn't care.
+She's stuffing herself with cakes at this very moment."
+
+"They will probably give her indigestion," I said.  "I hope they do."
+
+"Why didn't you have better children?" sobbed Robina; "we are none of
+us any good to you."
+
+"You are not the children I wanted, I confess," I answered.
+
+"That's a nice kind thing to say!" retorted Robina indignantly.
+
+"I wanted such charming children," I explained--"my idea of charming
+children:  the children I had imagined for myself.  Even as babies
+you disappointed me."
+
+Robina looked astonished.
+
+"You, Robina, were the most disappointing," I complained.  "Dick was
+a boy.  One does not calculate upon boy angels; and by the time
+Veronica arrived I had got more used to things.  But I was so excited
+when you came.  The Little Mother and I would steal at night into the
+nursery.  'Isn't it wonderful,' the Little Mother would whisper, 'to
+think it all lies hidden there:  the little tiresome child, the
+sweetheart they will one day take away from us, the wife, the
+mother?'  'I am glad it is a girl,' I would whisper; 'I shall be able
+to watch her grow into womanhood.  Most of the girls one comes across
+in books strike one as not perhaps quite true to life.  It will give
+me such an advantage having a girl of my own.  I shall keep a note-
+book, with a lock and key, devoted to her.'"
+
+"Did you?" asked Robina.
+
+"I put it away," I answered; "there were but a few pages written on.
+It came to me quite early in your life that you were not going to be
+the model heroine.  I was looking for the picture baby, the clean,
+thoughtful baby, with its magical, mystical smile.  I wrote poetry
+about you, Robina, but you would slobber and howl.  Your little nose
+was always having to be wiped, and somehow the poetry did not seem to
+fit you.  You were at your best when you were asleep, but you would
+not even sleep when it was expected of you.  I think, Robina, that
+the fellows who draw the pictures for the comic journals of the man
+in his night-shirt with the squalling baby in his arms must all be
+single men.  The married man sees only sadness in the design.  It is
+not the mere discomfort.  If the little creature were ill or in pain
+we should not think of that.  It is the reflection that we, who meant
+so well, have brought into the world just an ordinary fretful human
+creature with a nasty temper of its own:  that is the tragedy,
+Robina.  And then you grew into a little girl.  I wanted the soulful
+little girl with the fathomless eyes, who would steal to me at
+twilight and question me concerning life's conundrums.
+
+"But I used to ask you questions," grumbled Robina, "and you would
+tell me not to be silly."
+
+"Don't you understand, Robina?" I answered.  "I am not blaming you, I
+am blaming myself.  We are like children who plant seeds in a garden,
+and then are angry with the flowers because they are not what we
+expected.  You were a dear little girl; I see that now, looking back.
+But not the little girl I had in my mind.  So I missed you, thinking
+of the little girl you were not.  We do that all our lives, Robina.
+We are always looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by,
+trampling underfoot, the blossoms round about us.  It was the same
+with Dick.  I wanted a naughty boy.  Well, Dick was naughty, no one
+can say that he was not.  But it was not my naughtiness.  I was
+prepared for his robbing orchards.  I rather hoped he would rob
+orchards.  All the high-spirited boys in books rob orchards, and
+become great men.  But there were not any orchards handy.  We
+happened to be living in Chelsea at the time he ought to have been
+robbing orchards:  that, of course, was my fault.  I did not think of
+that.  He stole a bicycle that a lady had left outside the tea-room
+in Battersea Park, he and another boy, the son of a common barber,
+who shaved people for three-halfpence.  I am a Republican in theory,
+but it grieved me that a son of mine could be drawn to such
+companionship.  They contrived to keep it for a week--till the police
+found it one night, artfully hidden behind bushes.  Logically, I do
+not see why stealing apples should be noble and stealing bicycles
+should be mean, but it struck me that way at the time.  It was not
+the particular steal I had been hoping for.
+
+"I wanted him wild; the hero of the book was ever in his college days
+a wild young man.  Well, he was wild.  It cost me three hundred
+pounds to keep that breach of promise case out of Court; I had never
+imagined a breach of promise case.  Then he got drunk, and bonneted a
+bishop in mistake for a 'bull-dog.'  I didn't mind the bishop.  That
+by itself would have been wholesome fun.  But to think that a son of
+mine should have been drunk!"
+
+"He has never been drunk since," pleaded Robina.  "He had only three
+glasses of champagne and a liqueur:  it was the liqueur--he was not
+used to it.  He got into the wrong set.  You cannot in college belong
+to the wild set without getting drunk occasionally."
+
+"Perhaps not," I admitted.  "In the book the wild young man drinks
+without ever getting drunk.  Maybe there is a difference between life
+and the book.  In the book you enjoy your fun, but contrive somehow
+to escape the licking:  in life the licking is the only thing sure.
+It was the wild young man of fiction I was looking for, who, a
+fortnight before the exam., ties a wet towel round his head, drinks
+strong tea, and passes easily with honours.  He tried the wet towel,
+he tells me.  It never would keep in its place.  Added to which it
+gave him neuralgia; while the strong tea gave him indigestion.  I
+used to picture myself the proud, indulgent father lecturing him for
+his wildness--turning away at some point in the middle of my tirade
+to hide a smile.  There was never any smile to hide.  I feel that he
+has behaved disgracefully, wasting his time and my money."
+
+"He is going to turn over a new leaf;" said Robina:  "I am sure he
+will make an excellent farmer."
+
+"I did not want a farmer," I explained; "I wanted a Prime Minister.
+Children, Robina, are very disappointing.  Veronica is all wrong.  I
+like a mischievous child.  I like reading stories of mischievous
+children:  they amuse me.  But not the child who puts a pound of
+gunpowder into a red-hot fire, and escapes with her life by a
+miracle."
+
+"And yet, I daresay," suggested Robina, "that if one put it into a
+book--I mean that if you put it into a book, it would read
+amusingly."
+
+"Likely enough," I agreed.  "Other people's troubles can always be
+amusing.  As it is, I shall be in a state of anxiety for the next six
+months, wondering, every moment that she is out of my sight, what new
+devilment she is up to.  The Little Mother will be worried out of her
+life, unless we can keep it from her."
+
+"Children will be children," murmured Robina, meaning to be
+comforting.
+
+"That is what I am complaining of, Robina.  We are always hoping that
+ours won't be.  She is full of faults, Veronica, and they are not
+always nice faults.  She is lazy--lazy is not the word for it."
+
+"She is lazy," Robina was compelled to admit.
+
+"There are other faults she might have had and welcome," I pointed
+out; "faults I could have taken an interest in and liked her all the
+better for.  You children are so obstinate.  You will choose your own
+faults.  Veronica is not truthful always.  I wanted a family of
+little George Washingtons, who could not tell a lie.  Veronica can.
+To get herself out of trouble--and provided there is any hope of
+anybody believing her--she does."
+
+"We all of us used to when we were young," Robina maintained; "Dick
+used to, I used to.  It is a common fault with children."
+
+"I know it is," I answered.  "I did not want a child with common
+faults.  I wanted something all my own.  I wanted you, Robina, to be
+my ideal daughter.  I had a girl in my mind that I am sure would have
+been charming.  You are not a bit like her.  I don't say she was
+perfect, she had her failings, but they were such delightful
+failings--much better than yours, Robina.  She had a temper--a woman
+without a temper is insipid; but it was that kind of temper that made
+you love her all the more.  Yours doesn't, Robina.  I wish you had
+not been in such a hurry, and had left me to arrange your temper for
+you.  We should all of us have preferred mine.  It had all the
+attractions of temper without the drawbacks of the ordinary temper."
+
+"Couldn't use it up, I suppose, for yourself, Pa?" suggested Robina.
+
+"It was a lady's temper," I explained.  "Besides," as I asked her,
+"what is wrong with the one I have?"
+
+"Nothing," answered Robina.  Yet her tone conveyed doubt.  "It seems
+to me sometimes that an older temper would suit you better, that was
+all."
+
+"You have hinted as much before, Robina," I remarked, "not only with
+reference to my temper, but with reference to things generally.  One
+would think that you were dissatisfied with me because I am too
+young."
+
+"Not in years perhaps," replied Robina, "but--well, you know what I
+mean.  One wants one's father to be always great and dignified."
+
+"We cannot change our ego," I explained to her.  "Some daughters
+would appreciate a father youthful enough in temperament to
+sympathise with and to indulge them.  The solemn old fogey you have
+in your mind would have brought you up very differently.  Let me tell
+you that, my girl.  You would not have liked him, if you had had
+him."
+
+"Perhaps not," Robina agreed.  "You are awfully good in some ways."
+
+"What we have got to do in this world, Robina," I said, "is to take
+people as they are, and make the best of them.  We cannot expect
+everybody to be just as we would have them, and maybe we should not
+like them any better if they were.  Don't bother yourself about how
+much nicer they might be; think how nice they are."
+
+Robina said she would try.  I have hopes of making Robina a sensible
+woman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+Dick and Veronica returned laden with parcels.  They explained that
+"Daddy Slee," as it appeared he was generally called, a local builder
+of renown, was following in his pony-cart, and was kindly bringing
+the bulkier things with him.
+
+"I tried to hustle him," said Dick, "but coming up after he had
+washed himself and had his tea seemed to be his idea of hustling.  He
+has got the reputation of being an honest old Johnny, slow but sure;
+the others, they tell me, are slower.  I thought you might care,
+later on, to talk to him about the house."
+
+Veronica took off her things and put them away, each one in its
+proper place.  She said, if no one wanted her, she would read a
+chapter of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and retired upstairs.  Robina
+and I had an egg with our tea; Mr. Slee arrived as we had finished,
+and I took him straight into the kitchen.  He was a large man, with a
+dreamy expression and a habit of sighing.  He sighed when he saw our
+kitchen.
+
+"There's four days' work for three men here," he said, "and you'll
+want a new stove.  Lord! what trouble children can be!"
+
+Robina agreed with him.
+
+"Meanwhile," she demanded, "how am I to cook?"
+
+"Myself, missie," sighed Mr. Slee, "I don't see how you are going to
+cook."
+
+"We'll all have to tramp home again," thought Dick.
+
+"And tell Little Mother the reason, and frighten her out of her
+life!" retorted Robina indignantly.
+
+Robina had other ideas.  Mr. Slee departed, promising that work
+should be commenced at seven o'clock on Monday morning.  Robina, the
+door closed, began to talk.
+
+"Let Pa have a sandwich," said Robina, "and catch the six-fifteen."
+
+"We might all have a sandwich," suggested Dick; "I could do with one
+myself."
+
+"Pa can explain," said Robina, "that he has been called back to town
+on business.  That will account for everything, and Little Mother
+will not be alarmed."
+
+"She won't believe that business has brought him back at nine o'clock
+on a Saturday night," argued Dick; "you think that Little Mother
+hasn't any sense.  She'll see there's something up, and ask a hundred
+questions.  You know what she is."
+
+"Pa," said Robina, "will have time while in the train to think out
+something plausible; that's where Pa is clever.  With Pa off my hands
+I sha'n't mind.  We three can live on cold ham and things like that.
+By Thursday we will be all right, and then he can come down again."
+
+I pointed out to Robina, kindly but firmly, the utter absurdity of
+her idea.  How could I leave them, three helpless children, with no
+one to look after them?  What would the Little Mother say?  What
+might not Veronica be up to in my absence?  There were other things
+to be considered.  The donkey might arrive at any moment--no
+responsible person there to receive him--to see to it that his simple
+wants would be provided for.  I should have to interview Mr. St.
+Leonard again to fix up final details as regarded Dick.  Who was
+going to look after the cow, about to be separated from us?  Young
+Bute would be down again with plans.  Who was going to take him over
+the house, explain things to him intelligibly?  The new boy might
+turn up--this simple son of the soil Miss Janie had promised to dig
+out and send along.  He would talk Berkshire.  Who would there be to
+understand him--to reply to him in dialect?  What was the use of her
+being impetuous and talking nonsense?
+
+She went on cutting sandwiches.  She said they were not helpless
+children.  She said if she and Dick at forty-two hadn't grit enough
+to run a six-roomed cottage it was time they learned.
+
+"Who's forty-two?" I demanded.
+
+"We are," explained Robina, "Dick and I--between us.  We shall be
+forty-two next birthday.  Nearly your own age."
+
+"Veronica," she continued, "for the next few days won't be a child at
+all.  She knows nothing of the happy medium.  She is either herself
+or she goes to the opposite extreme, and tries to be an angel.  Till
+about the end of the week it will be like living with a vision.  As
+for the donkey, we'll try and make him feel as much at home as if you
+were here."
+
+"I don't mean to be rude, Pa," Robina explained, "but from the way
+you put it you evidently regard yourself as the only one among us
+capable of interesting him.  I take it he won't mind for a night or
+two sharing the shed with the cow.  If he looks shocked at the
+suggestion, Dick can knock up a partition.  I'd rather for the
+present, till you come down again, the cow stopped where she was.
+She helps to wake me in the morning.  You may reckon you have settled
+everything as far as Dick is concerned.  If you talk to St. Leonard
+again for an hour it will be about the future of the Yellow Races or
+the possibility of life in Jupiter.  If you mention terms he will be
+insulted, and if he won't let you then you will be insulted, and the
+whole thing will be off.  Let me talk to Janie.  We've both of us got
+sense.  As for Mr. Bute, I know all your ideas about the house, and I
+sha'n't listen to any of his silly arguments.  What that young man
+wants is someone to tell him what he's got to do, and then let there
+be an end of it.  And the sooner that handy boy turns up the better.
+I don't mind what he talks.  All I want him to do is to clean knives
+and fetch water and chop wood.  At the worst I'll get that home to
+him by pantomime.  For conversation he can wait till you come down."
+
+That is the gist of what she said.  It didn't run exactly as I have
+put it down.  There were points at which I interrupted, but Robina
+never listens; she just talks on, and at the end she assumes that, as
+a matter of course, you have come round to her point of view, and
+persuading her that you haven't means beginning the whole thing over
+again.
+
+She said I hadn't time to talk, and that she would write and tell me
+everything.  Dick also said he would write and tell me everything;
+and that if I felt moved to send them down a hamper--the sort of
+thing that, left to themselves, Fortnum & Mason would put together
+for a good-class picnic, say, for six persons--I might rely upon it
+that nothing would be wasted.
+
+Veronica, by my desire, walked with me to the end of the lane.  I
+talked to her very seriously.  Her difficulty was that she had not
+been blown up.  Had she been blown up, then she would have known
+herself she had done wrong.  In the book it is the disobedient child
+that is tossed by the bull.  The child that has been sent with the
+little basket to visit the sick aunt may be right in the bull's way.
+That is a bit of bad luck for the bull.  The poor bull is compelled
+to waste valuable time working round carefully, so as not to upset
+the basket.  If the wicked child had sense (which in the book does
+not happen), it would, while the bull was dodging to get past the
+good child, seize the opportunity to move itself quickly.  The wicked
+child never looks round, but pegs along steadily; and when the bull
+arrives it is sure to be in the most convenient position for
+receiving moral lessons.  The good child, whatever its weight,
+crosses the ice in safety.  The bad child may turn the scale at two
+stone lighter; the ice will have none of him.  "Don't you talk to me
+about relative pressure to the square inch," says the indignant ice.
+"You were unkind to your little baby brother the week before last:
+in you go."  Veronica's argument, temperately and courteously
+expressed, I admit, came practically to this:
+
+"I may have acted without sufficient knowledge to guide me.  My
+education has not, perhaps, on the whole, been ordered wisely.
+Subjects that I feel will never be of the slightest interest or
+consequence to me have been insisted upon with almost tiresome
+reiteration.  Matters that should be useful and helpful to me--
+gunpowder, to take but one example--I have been left in ignorance
+concerning.  About all that I say nothing; people have done their
+best according to their lights, no doubt.  When, however, we come to
+purity of motives, singleness of intention, then, I maintain, I am
+above reproach.  The proof of this is that Providence has bestowed
+upon me the seal of its approval:  I was not blown up.  Had my
+conduct been open to censure--as in certain quarters has been
+suggested--should I be walking besides you now, undamaged--not a hair
+turned, as the saying is?  No.  Discriminating Fate--that is, if any
+reliance at all is to be placed on literature for the young--would
+have made it her business that at least I was included in the debris.
+Instead, what do we notice!--a shattered chimney, a ruined stove,
+broken windows, a wreckage of household utensils; I, alone of all
+things, miraculously preserved.  I do not wish to press the point
+offensively, but really it would almost seem that it must be you
+three--you, my dear parent, upon whom will fall the bill for repairs;
+Dick, apt to attach too much importance, maybe, to his victuals, and
+who for the next few days will be compelled to exist chiefly upon
+tinned goods; Robina, by nature of a worrying disposition, certain
+till things get straight again to be next door to off her head--who
+must, by reason of conduct into which I do not enquire, have merited
+chastisement at the hands of Providence.  The moral lesson would
+certainly appear to be between you three.  I--it grows clear to me--
+have been throughout but the innocent instrument."
+
+Admit the premise that to be virtuous is to escape whipping, the
+argument is logical.  I felt that left uncombated it might lead us
+into yet further trouble.
+
+"Veronica," I said, "the time has come to reveal to you a secret:
+literature is not always a safe guide to life."
+
+"You mean--" said Veronica.
+
+"I mean," I said, "that the writer of books is, generally speaking,
+an exceptionally moral man.  That is what leads him astray:  he is
+too good.  This world does not come up to his ideas.  It is not the
+world as he would have made it himself.  To satisfy his craving for
+morality he sets to work to make a world of his own.  It is not this
+world.  It is not a bit like this world.  In a world as it should be,
+Veronica, you would undoubtedly have been blown up--if not
+altogether, at all events partially.  What you have to do, Veronica,
+is, with a full heart, to praise Heaven that this is not a perfect
+world.  If it were I doubt very much, Veronica, your being here.
+That you are here happy and thriving proves that all is not as it
+should be.  The bull of this world, feeling he wants to toss
+somebody, does not sit upon himself, so to speak, till the wicked
+child comes by.  He takes the first child that turns up, and thanks
+God for it.  A hundred to one it is the best child for miles around.
+The bull does not care.  He spoils that pattern child.  He'd spoil a
+bishop, feeling as he does that morning.  Your little friend in the
+velvet suit who did get himself blown up, at all events as regards
+the suit-- Which of you was it that thought of that gunpowder, you or
+he?"
+
+Veronica claimed that the inspiration had been hers.
+
+"I can easily believe it.  And was he anxious to steal the gunpowder
+and put it on the fire, or did he have to be persuaded?"
+
+Veronica admitted that in the qualities of a first-class hero he was
+wanting.  Not till it had been suggested to him that he must at heart
+be a cowardy cowardy custard had he been moved to take a hand in the
+enterprise.
+
+"A lad, clearly," I continued, "that left to himself would be a
+comfort to his friends.  And the story of the robbers--your invention
+or his?"
+
+Veronica was generously of opinion that he might have thought of it
+had he not been chiefly concerned at the moment with the idea of
+getting home to his mother.  As it was, the clothing with romance of
+incidents otherwise bald and uninteresting had fallen upon her.
+
+"The good child of the story.  The fact stands out at every point.
+His one failing an amiable weakness.  Do you not see it for yourself;
+Veronica?  In the book, you, not he, would have tumbled over the mat.
+In this wicked world it is the wicked who prosper.  He, the innocent,
+the virtuous, is torn into rags.  You, the villain of the story,
+escape."
+
+"I see," said Veronica; "then whenever nothing happens to you that
+means that you're a wrong 'un."
+
+"I don't go so far as to say that, Veronica.  And I wish you wouldn't
+use slang.  Dick is a man, and a man--well, never mind about a man.
+You, Veronica, must never forget that you're a lady.  Justice must
+not be looked for in this world.  Sometimes the wicked get what they
+deserve.  More often they don't.  There seems to be no rule.  Follow
+the dictates of your conscience, Veronica, and blow--I mean be
+indifferent to the consequences.  Sometimes you'll come out all
+right, and sometimes you won't.  But the beautiful sensation will
+always be with you:  I did right.  Things have turned out
+unfortunately:  but that's not my fault.  Nobody can blame me."
+
+"But they do," said Veronica, "they blame you just as if you'd meant
+to go and do it."
+
+"It does not matter, Veronica," I pointed out, "the opinion of the
+world.  The good man disregards it."
+
+"But they send you to bed," persisted Veronica.
+
+"Let them," I said.  "What is bed so long as the voice of the inward
+Monitor consoles us with the reflection--"
+
+"But it don't," interrupted Veronica; "it makes you feel all the
+madder.  It does really."
+
+"It oughtn't to," I told her.
+
+"Then why does it?" argued Veronica.  "Why don't it do what it ought
+to?"
+
+The trouble about arguing with children is that they will argue too.
+
+"Life's a difficult problem, Veronica," I allowed.  "Things are not
+as they ought to be, I admit it.  But one must not despair.
+Something's got to be done."
+
+"It's jolly hard on some of us," said Veronica.  "Strive as you may,
+you can't please everyone.  And if you just as much as stand up for
+yourself, oh, crikey!"
+
+"The duty of the grown-up person, Veronica," I said, "is to bring up
+the child in the way that it should go.  It isn't easy work, and
+occasionally irritability may creep in."
+
+"There's such a lot of 'em at it," grumbled Veronica.  "There are
+times, between 'em all, when you don't know whether you're standing
+on your head or your heels."
+
+"They mean well, Veronica," I said.  "When I was a little boy I used
+to think just as you do.  But now--"
+
+"Did you ever get into rows?" interrupted Veronica.
+
+"Did I ever?--was never out of them, so far as I can recollect.  If
+it wasn't one thing, then it was another."
+
+"And didn't it make you wild?" enquired Veronica, "when first of all
+they'd ask what you'd got to say and why you'd done it, and then,
+when you tried to explain things to them, wouldn't listen to you?"
+
+"What used to irritate me most, Veronica," I replied--"I can remember
+it so well--was when they talked steadily for half an hour
+themselves, and then, when I would attempt with one sentence to put
+them right about the thing, turn round and bully-rag me for being
+argumentative."
+
+"If they would only listen," agreed Veronica, "you might get them to
+grasp things.  But no, they talk and talk, till at the end they don't
+know what they are talking about themselves, and then they pretend
+it's your fault for having made them tired."
+
+"I know," I said, "they always end up like that.  'I am tired of
+talking to you,' they say--as if we were not tired of listening to
+them!"
+
+"And then when you think," said Veronica, "they say you oughtn't to
+think.  And if you don't think, and let it out by accident, then they
+say 'why don't you think?'  It don't seem as though we could do
+right.  It makes one almost despair."
+
+"And it isn't even as if they were always right themselves," I
+pointed out to her.  "When they knock over a glass it is, 'Who put
+that glass there?'  You'd think that somebody had put it there on
+purpose and made it invisible.  They are not expected to see a glass
+six inches in front of their nose, in the place where the glass ought
+to be.  The way they talk you'd suppose that a glass had no business
+on a table.  If I broke it, then it was always, 'Clumsy little devil!
+ought to have his dinner in the nursery.'  If they mislay their
+things and can't find them, it's, 'Who's been interfering with my
+things?  Who's been in here rummaging about?'  Then when they find it
+they want to know indignantly who put it there.  If I could not find
+a thing, for the simple reason that somebody had taken it away and
+put it somewhere else, then wherever they had put it was the right
+place for it, and I was a little idiot for not knowing it."
+
+"And of course you mustn't say anything," commented Veronica.  "Oh,
+no!  If they do something silly and you just point it out to them,
+then there is always a reason for it that you wouldn't understand.
+Oh, yes!  And if you make just the slightest mistake, like what is
+natural to all of us, that is because you are wicked and unfeeling
+and don't want to be anything else."
+
+"I will tell you what we will do, Veronica," I said; "we will write a
+book.  You shall help me.  And in it the children shall be the wise
+and good people who never make mistakes, and they shall boss the
+show--you know what I mean--look after the grown-up people and bring
+them up properly.  And everything the grown-up people do, or don't
+do, will be wrong."
+
+Veronica clapped her hands.  "No, will you really?" she said.  "Oh,
+do."
+
+"I will really," I answered.  "We will call it a moral tale for
+parents; and all the children will buy it and give it to their
+fathers and mothers and such-like folk for their birthdays, with
+writing on the title-page, 'From Johnny, or Jenny, to dear Papa, or
+to dear Aunty, with every good wish for his or her improvement!'"
+
+"Do you think they will read it?" doubted Veronica.
+
+"We will put in it something shocking," I suggested, "and get some
+paper to denounce it as a disgrace to English literature.  And if
+that won't do it we will say it is a translation from the Russian.
+The children shall stop at home and arrange what to have for dinner,
+and the grown-up people shall be sent to school.  We will start them
+off each morning with a little satchel.  They shall be made to read
+'Grimm's Fairy Tales' in the original German, with notes; and learn
+'Old Mother Hubbard' by heart and explain the grammar."
+
+"And go to bed early," suggested Veronica.
+
+"We will have them all in bed by eight o'clock, Veronica, and they
+will go cheerfully, as if they liked it, or we will know the reason
+why.  We will make them say their prayers.  Between ourselves,
+Veronica, I don't believe they always do.  And no reading in bed, and
+no final glass of whisky toddy, or any nonsense of that sort.  An
+Abernethy biscuit and perhaps if they are good a jujube, and then
+'Good night,' and down with their head on the pillow.  And no calling
+out, and no pretending they have got a pain in their tummy and
+creeping downstairs in their night-shirts and clamouring for brandy.
+We will be up to all their tricks."
+
+"And they'll have to take their medicine," Veronica remembered.
+
+"The slightest suggestion of sulkiness, the first intimation that
+they are not enjoying themselves, will mean cod liver oil in a
+tablespoon, Veronica."
+
+"And we will ask them why they never use their commonsense," chirped
+Veronica.
+
+"That will be our trouble, Veronica; that they won't have any sense
+of any sort--not what we shall deem sense.  But, nevertheless, we
+will be just.  We will always give them a reason why they have got to
+do everything they don't want to do, and nothing that they want to
+do.  They won't understand it and they won't agree that it is a
+reason; but they will keep that to themselves, if they are wise."
+
+"And of course they must not argue," Veronica insisted.
+
+"If they answer back, Veronica, that will show they are cursed with
+an argumentative temperament which must be rooted out at any cost," I
+agreed; "and if they don't say anything, that will prove them
+possessed of a surly disposition which must be checked at once,
+before it develops into a vice."
+
+"And whatever we do to them we will tell them it's for their own
+good," Veronica chortled.
+
+"Of course it will be for their own good," I answered.  "That will be
+our chief pleasure--making them good and happy.  It won't be their
+pleasure, but that will be owing to their ignorance."
+
+"They will be grateful to us later on," gurgled Veronica.
+
+"With that assurance we will comfort them from time to time," I
+answered.  "We will be good to them in all ways.  We will let them
+play games--not stupid games, golf and croquet, that do you no good
+and lead only to language and dispute--but bears and wolves and
+whales; educational sort of games that will aid them in acquiring
+knowledge of natural history.  We will show them how to play Pirates
+and Red Indians and Ogres--sensible play that will help them to
+develop their imaginative faculties.  That is why grown-up people are
+so dull; they are never made to think.  But now and then," I
+continued, "we will let them play their own games, say on Wednesday
+and Saturday afternoons.  We will invite other grown-ups to come to
+tea with them, and let them flirt in the garden, or if wet make love
+in the dining-room, till nurse comes for them.  But we, of course,
+must choose their friends for them--nice, well-behaved ladies and
+gentlemen, the parents of respectable children; because left to
+themselves--well, you know what they are!  They would just as likely
+fall in love with quite undesirable people--men and women we could
+not think of having about the house.  We will select for them
+companions we feel sure will be the most suitable for them; and if
+they don't like them--if Uncle William says he can't bear the girl we
+have invited up to love him--that he positively hates her, we till
+tell him that it is only his wilful temper, and that he's got to like
+her because she's good for him; and don't let us have any of his
+fretfulness.  And if Grandmamma pouts and says she won't love old man
+Jones merely because he's got a red nose, or a glass eye, or some
+silly reason of that sort, we will say to her:  'All right, my lady,
+you will play with Mr. Jones and be nice to him, or you will spend
+the afternoon putting your room tidy; make up your mind.'  We will
+let them marry (on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons), and play at
+keeping house.  And if they quarrel we will shake them and take the
+babies away from them, and lock them up in drawers, and tell them
+they sha'n't have them again till they are good."
+
+"And the more they try to be good, the more it will turn out that
+they ain't been good," Veronica reflected.
+
+"Their goodness and their badness will depend upon us in more senses
+than one, Veronica," I explained.  "When Consols are down, when the
+east wind has touched up our liver, they will be surprised how bad
+they are."
+
+"And they mustn't ever forget what they've ever been once told,"
+crowed Veronica.  "We mustn't have to tell 'em the same thing over
+and over again, like we was talking to brick walls."
+
+"And if we meant to tell them and forgot to tell them," I added, "we
+will tell them that they ought not to want us to tell them a simple
+thing like that, as if they were mere babies.  We must remember all
+these points."
+
+"And if they grumble we'll tell them that's 'cos they don't know how
+happy they are.  And we'll tell them how good we used to be when--I
+say, don't you miss your train, or I shall get into a row."
+
+"Great Scott!  I'd forgotten all about that train, Veronica," I
+admitted.
+
+"Better run," suggested Veronica.
+
+It sounded good advice.
+
+"Keep on thinking about that book," shouted Veronica.
+
+"Make a note of things as they occur to you," I shouted back.
+
+"What shall we call it?" Veronica screamed.
+
+"'Why the Man in the Moon looks sat upon,'" I shrieked.
+
+When I turned again she was sitting on the top rail of the stile
+conducting an imaginary orchestra with one of her own shoes.  The
+six-fifteen was fortunately twenty minutes late.
+
+
+I thought it best to tell Ethelbertha the truth; that things had gone
+wrong with the kitchen stove.
+
+"Let me know the worst," she said.  "Is Veronica hurt?"
+
+"The worst," I said, "is that I shall have to pay for a new range.
+Why, when anything goes amiss, poor Veronica should be assumed as a
+matter of course to be in it, appears to me unjust."
+
+"You are sure she's all right?" persisted Ethelbertha.
+
+"Honest Injun--confound those children and their slang--I mean
+positively," I answered.  The Little Mother looked relieved.
+
+I told her all the trouble we had had in connection with the cow.
+Her sympathies were chiefly with the cow.  I told her I had hopes of
+Robina's developing into a sensible woman.  We talked quite a deal
+about Robina.  We agreed that between us we had accomplished
+something rather clever.
+
+"I must get back as soon as I can," I said.  "I don't want young Bute
+getting wrong ideas into his head."
+
+"Who is young Bute?" she asked.
+
+"The architect," I explained.
+
+"I thought he was an old man," said Ethelbertha.
+
+"Old Spreight is old enough," I said.  "Young Bute is one of his
+young men; but he understands his work, and seems intelligent."
+
+"What's he like?" she asked.
+
+"Personally, an exceedingly nice young fellow.  There's a good deal
+of sense in him.  I like a boy who listens."
+
+"Good-looking?" she asked.
+
+"Not objectionably so," I replied.  "A pleasant face--particularly
+when he smiles."
+
+"Is he married?" she asked.
+
+"Really, it did not occur to me to ask him," I admitted.  "How
+curious you women are!  No, I don't think so.  I should say not."
+
+"Why don't you think so?" she demanded.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  He doesn't give you the idea of a married man.
+You'll like him.  Seems so fond of his sister."
+
+"Shall we be seeing much of him?" she asked.
+
+"A goodish deal," I answered.  "I expect he will be going down on
+Monday.  Very annoying, this stove business."
+
+"What is the use of his being there without you?" Ethelbertha wanted
+to know.
+
+"Oh, he'll potter round," I suggested, "and take measurements.  Dick
+will be about to explain things to him.  Or, if he isn't, there's
+Robina--awkward thing is, Robina seems to have taken a dislike to
+him."
+
+"Why has she taken a dislike to him?" asked Ethelbertha.
+
+"Oh, because he mistook the back of the house for the front, or the
+front of the house for the back," I explained; "I forget which now.
+Says it's his smile that irritates her.  She owns herself there's no
+real reason."
+
+"When will you be going down again?" Ethelbertha asked.
+
+"On Thursday next," I told her; "stove or no stove."
+
+She said she would come with me.  She felt the change would do her
+good, and promised not to do anything when she got there.  And then I
+told her all that I had done for Dick.
+
+"The ordinary farmer," I pointed out to her, "is so often a haphazard
+type of man with no ideas.  If successful, it is by reason of a
+natural instinct which cannot be taught.  St. Leonard has studied the
+theory of the thing.  From him Dick will learn all that can be learnt
+about farming.  The selection, I felt, demanded careful judgment."
+
+"But will Dick stick to it?" Ethelbertha wondered.
+
+"There, again," I pointed out to her, "the choice was one calling for
+exceptional foresight.  The old man--as a matter of fact, he isn't
+old at all; can't be very much older than myself; I don't know why
+they all call him the old man--has formed a high opinion of Dick.
+His daughter told me so, and I have taken care to let Dick know it.
+The boy will not care to disappoint him.  Her mother--"
+
+"Whose mother?" interrupted Ethelbertha.
+
+"Janie's mother, Mrs. St. Leonard," I explained.  "She also has
+formed a good opinion of him.  The children like him.  Janie told me
+so."
+
+"She seems to do a goodish deal of talking, this Miss Janie,"
+remarked Ethelbertha.
+
+"You will like her," I said.  "She is a charming girl--so sensible,
+and good, and unselfish, and--"
+
+"Who told you all this about her?" interrupted Ethelbertha.
+
+"You can see it for yourself," I answered.  "The mother appears to be
+a nonentity, and St. Leonard himself--well, he is not a business man.
+It is Janie who manages everything--keeps everything going."
+
+"What is she like?" asked Ethelbertha.
+
+"I am telling you," I said.  "She is so practical, and yet at the
+same time--"
+
+"In appearance, I mean," explained Ethelbertha.
+
+"How you women," I said, "do worry about mere looks!  What does it
+matter?  If you want to know, it is that sort of face that grows upon
+you.  At first you do not notice how beautiful it is, but when you
+come to look into it--"
+
+"And has she also formed a high opinion of Dick?" interrupted
+Ethelbertha.
+
+"She will be disappointed in him," I said, "if he does not work hard
+and stick to it.  They will all be disappointed in him."
+
+"What's it got to do with them?" demanded Ethelbertha.
+
+"I'm not thinking about them," I said.  "What I look at is--"
+
+"I don't like her," said Ethelbertha.  "I don't like any of them."
+
+"But--"  She didn't seem to be listening.
+
+"I know that class of man," she said; "and the wife appears, if
+anything, to be worse.  As for the girl--"
+
+"When you come to know them--" I said.
+
+She said she didn't want to know them.  She wanted to go down on
+Monday, early.
+
+I got her to see--it took some little time--the disadvantages of
+this.  We should only be adding to Robina's troubles; and change of
+plan now would unsettle Dick's mind.
+
+"He has promised to write me," I said, "and tell me the result of his
+first day's experience.  Let us wait and hear what he says."
+
+She said that whatever could have possessed her to let me take those
+poor unfortunate children away from her, and muddle up everything
+without her, was a mystery to herself.  She hoped that, at least, I
+had done nothing irrevocable in the case of Veronica.
+
+"Veronica," I said, "is really wishful, I think, to improve.  I have
+bought her a donkey."
+
+"A what?" exclaimed Ethelbertha.
+
+"A donkey," I repeated.  "The child took a fancy to it, and we all
+agreed it might help to steady her--give her a sense of
+responsibility."
+
+"I somehow felt you hadn't overlooked Veronica," said Ethelbertha.
+
+I thought it best to change the conversation.  She seemed in a
+fretful mood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+Robina's letter was dated Monday evening, and reached us Tuesday
+morning.
+
+"I hope you caught your train," she wrote.  "Veronica did not get
+back till half-past six.  She informed me that you and she had found
+a good deal to talk about, and that 'one thing had led to another.'
+She is a quaint young imp, but I think your lecture must have done
+her good.  Her present attitude is that of gentle forbearance to all
+around her--not without its dignity.  She has not snorted once, and
+at times is really helpful.  I have given her an empty scribbling
+diary we found in your desk, and most of her spare time she remains
+shut up with it in the bedroom.  She tells me you and she are writing
+a book together.  I asked her what about.  She waved me aside with
+the assurance that I would know 'all in good time,' and that it was
+going to do good.  I caught sight of just the title-page last night.
+It was lying open on the dressing-table:  'Why the Man in the Moon
+looks sat upon.'  It sounds like a title of yours.  But I would not
+look further, though tempted.  She has drawn a picture underneath.
+It is really not bad.  The old gentleman really does look sat upon,
+and intensely disgusted.
+
+"'Sir Robert'--his name being Theodore, which doesn't seem to suit
+him--turns out to be the only son of a widow, a Mrs. Foy, our next-
+door neighbour to the south.  We met her coming out of church on
+Sunday morning.  She was still crying.  Dick took Veronica on ahead,
+and I walked part of the way home with them.  Her grandfather, it
+appears, was killed many years ago by the bursting of a boiler; and
+she is haunted, poor lady, by the conviction that Theodore is the
+inheritor of an hereditary tendency to getting himself blown up.  She
+attaches no blame to us, seeing in Saturday's catastrophe only the
+hand of the Family Curse.  I tried to comfort her with the idea that
+the Curse having spent itself upon a futile effort, nothing further
+need now be feared from it; but she persists in taking the gloomier
+view that in wrecking our kitchen, Theodore's 'Doom,' as she calls
+it, was merely indulging in a sort of dress rehearsal; the finishing
+performance may be relied upon to follow.  It sounds ridiculous, but
+the poor woman was so desperately in earnest that when an unlucky
+urchin, coming out of a cottage we were passing, tripped on the
+doorstep and let fall a jug, we both screamed at the same time, and
+were equally surprised to find 'Sir Robert' still between us and all
+in one piece.  I thought it foolish to discuss all this before the
+child himself; but did not like to stop her.  As a result, he regards
+himself evidently as the chosen foe of Heaven, and is not,
+unnaturally, proud of himself.  She called here this (Monday)
+afternoon to leave cards; and, at her request, I showed her the
+kitchen and the mat over which he had stumbled.  She seemed surprised
+that the 'Doom' had let slip so favourable a chance of accomplishing
+its business, and gathered from the fact added cause for anxiety.
+Evidently something much more thorough is in store for Master
+Theodore.  It was only half a pound of gunpowder, she told me.
+Doctor Smallboy's gardener had bought it for the purpose of raising
+the stump of an old elm-tree, and had left it for a moment on the
+grass while he had returned to the house for more brown paper.  She
+seemed pleased with the gardener, who, as she said, might, if
+dishonestly inclined, have charged her for a pound.  I wanted to pay
+for--at all events--our share, but she would not take a penny.  Her
+late lamented grandfather she regards as the person responsible for
+the entire incident, and perhaps it may be as well not to disturb her
+view.  Had I suggested it, I feel sure she would have seen the
+justice of her providing us with a new kitchen range.
+
+"Wildly exaggerated accounts of the affair are flying round the
+neighbourhood; and my chief fear is that Veronica may discover she is
+a local celebrity.  Your sudden disappearance is supposed to have
+been heavenward.  An old farm labourer who saw you pass on your way
+to the station speaks of you as 'the ghost of the poor gentleman
+himself;' and fragments of clothing found anywhere within a radius of
+two miles are being preserved, I am told, as specimens of your
+remains.  Boots would appear to have been your chief apparel.  Seven
+pairs have already been collected from the surrounding ditches.
+Among the more public-spirited there is talk of using you to start a
+local museum."
+
+
+These first three paragraphs I did not read to Ethelbertha.
+Fortunately they just filled the first sheet, which I took an
+opportunity of slipping into my pocket unobserved.
+
+
+"The new boy arrived on Sunday morning," she continued.  "His name--
+if I have got it right--is William.  Anyhow, that is the nearest I
+can get to it.  His other name, if any, I must leave you to extract
+from him yourself.  It may be Berkshire that he talks, but it sounds
+more like barking.  Please excuse the pun; but I have just been
+talking to him for half an hour, trying to make him understand that I
+want him to go home, and maybe, as a result, I am feeling a little
+hysterical.  Anything more rural I cannot imagine.  But he is anxious
+to learn, and a fairly wide field is in front of him.  I caught him
+after our breakfast on Sunday calmly throwing everything left over
+onto the dust-heap.  I pointed out to him the wickedness of wasting
+nourishing food, and impressed upon him that the proper place for
+victuals was inside us.  He never answers.  He stands stock still,
+with his mouth as wide open as it will go--which is saying a good
+deal--and one trusts that one's words are entering into him.  All
+Sunday afternoon he was struggling valiantly against an almost
+supernatural sleepiness.  After tea he got worse, and I began to
+think he would be no use to me.  We none of us ate much supper; and
+Dick, who appears able to understand him, helped him to carry the
+things out.  I heard them talking, and then Dick came back and closed
+the door behind him.  'He wants to know,' said Dick, 'if he can leave
+the corned beef over till tomorrow.  Because, if he eats it all to-
+night, he doesn't think he will be able to walk home.'
+
+"Veronica takes great interest in him.  She has evidently a motherly
+side to her character, for which we none of us have given her credit.
+She says she is sure there is good in him.  She sits beside him while
+he chops wood, and tells him carefully selected stories, calculated,
+she argues, to develop his intelligence.  She is careful, moreover,
+not to hurt his feelings by any display of superiority.  'Of course,
+anyone leading a useful life, such as yours,' I overheard her saying
+to him this morning, 'don't naturally get much time for reading.
+I've nothing else to do, you see, 'cept to improve myself.'
+
+"The donkey arrived this afternoon while I was out--galloping, I am
+given to understand, with 'Opkins on his back.  There seems to be
+some secret between those two.  We have tried him with hay, and we
+have tried him with thistles; but he seems to prefer bread-and-
+butter.  I have not been able as yet to find out whether he takes tea
+or coffee in the morning.  But he is an animal that evidently knows
+his own mind, and fortunately both are in the house.  We are putting
+him up for to-night with the cow, who greeted him at first with
+enthusiasm and wanted to adopt him, but has grown cold to him since
+on discovering that he is not a calf.  I have been trying to make
+friends with her, but she is so very unresponsive.  She doesn't seem
+to want anything but grass, and prefers to get that for herself.  She
+doesn't seem to want to be happy ever again.
+
+"A funny thing happened in church.  I was forgetting to tell you.
+The St. Leonards occupy two pews at the opposite end from the door.
+They were all there when we arrived, with the exception of the old
+gentleman himself.  He came in just before the 'Dearly Beloved,' when
+everybody was standing up.  A running fire of suppressed titters
+followed him up the aisle, and some of the people laughed outright.
+I could see no reason why.  He looked a dignified old gentleman in
+his grey hair and tightly buttoned frock coat, which gives him a
+somewhat military appearance.  But when he came level with our pew I
+understood.  Hurrying back from his morning round, and with no one
+there to superintend him, the dear old absent-minded thing had
+forgotten to change his breeches.  From a little above the knee
+upward he was a perfect Christian; but his legs were just those of a
+disreputable sinner.
+
+"'What's the joke?' he whispered to me as he passed--I was in the
+corner seat.  'Have I missed it?'
+
+"We called round on them after lunch, and at once I was appealed to
+for my decision.
+
+"'Now, here's a plain sensible girl,' exclaimed the old gentleman the
+moment I entered the room.'  (You will notice I put no comma after
+'plain.'  I am taking it he did not intend one.  You can employ one
+adjective to qualify another, can't you?)  'And I will put it to her,
+What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church in
+trousers or in breeches?'
+
+"'I do not see,' retorted Mrs. St. Leonard somewhat coldly, 'that
+Miss Robina is in any better position than myself to speak with
+authority on the views of the Almighty'--which I felt was true.  'If
+it makes no difference to the Almighty, then why not, for my sake,
+trousers?'
+
+"'The essential thing,' he persisted, 'is a contrite heart.'  He was
+getting very cross.
+
+"'It may just as well be dressed respectably,' was his wife's
+opinion.  He left the room, slamming the door.
+
+"I do like Janie the more and more I see of her.  I do hope she will
+let me get real chums with her.  She does me so much good.  (I read
+that bit twice over to Ethelbertha, pretending I had lost the place.)
+I suppose it is having rather a silly mother and an unpractical
+father that has made her so capable.  If you and Little Mother had
+been proper sort of parents I might have been quite a decent sort of
+girl.  But it's too late finding fault with you now.  I suppose I
+must put up with you.  She works so hard, and is so unselfish.  But
+she is not like some good people, who make you feel it is hopeless
+your trying to be good.  She gets cross and impatient; and then she
+laughs at herself, and gets right again that way.  Poor Mrs. St.
+Leonard!  I cannot help feeling sorry for her.  She would have been
+so happy as the wife of a really respectable City man, who would have
+gone off every morning with a flower in his buttonhole and have worn
+a white waistcoat on Sundays.  I don't believe what they say:  that
+husbands and wives should be the opposite of one another.  Mr. St.
+Leonard ought to have married a brainy woman, who would have
+discussed philosophy with him, and have been just as happy drinking
+beer out of a tea-cup:  you know the sort I mean.  If ever I marry it
+will be a short-tempered man who loves music and is a good dancer;
+and if I find out too late that he's clever I'll run away from him.
+
+"Dick has not yet come home--nearly eight o'clock.  Veronica is
+supposed to be in bed, but I can hear things falling.  Poor boy!  I
+expect he'll be tired; but today is an exception.  Three hundred
+sheep have had to be brought all the way from Ilsley, and must be
+'herded'--I fancy it is called--before anybody can think of supper.
+I saw to it that he had a good dinner.
+
+"And now to come to business.  Young Bute has been here all day, and
+has only just left.  He is coming down again on Friday--which, by the
+way, don't forget is Mrs. St. Leonard's 'At Home' day.  She hopes she
+may then have the pleasure of making your acquaintance, and thinks
+that possibly there may be present one or two people we may like to
+know.  From which I gather that half the neighbourhood has been
+specially invited to meet you.  So mind you bring a frock-coat; and
+if Little Mother can put her hand easily on my pink muslin with the
+spots--it is either in my wardrobe or else in the bottom drawer in
+Veronica's room, if it isn't in the cardboard box underneath mother's
+bed--you might slip it into your bag.  But whatever you do don't
+crush it.  The sash I feel sure mother put away somewhere herself.
+He sees no reason--I'm talking now about young Bute,--if you approve
+his plans, why work should not be commenced immediately.  Shall I
+write old Slee to meet you at the house on Friday?  From all accounts
+I don't think you'll do better.  He is on the spot, and they say he
+is most reasonable.  But you have to get estimates, don't you?  He
+suggests--Mr. Bute, I mean--throwing what used to be the dairy into
+the passage, which will make a hall big enough for anything.  We
+might even give a dance in it, he thinks.  But all this you will be
+able to discuss with him on Friday.  He has evidently taken a great
+deal of pains, and some of his suggestions sound sensible.  But of
+course he must fully understand that it is what we want, not what he
+thinks, that is important.  I told him you said I could have my room
+exactly as I liked it myself; and I have explained to him my ideas.
+He seemed at first to be under the impression that I didn't know what
+I was talking about, so I made it quite clear to him that I did, with
+the result that he has consented to carry out my instructions, on
+condition that I put them down in black and white--which I think just
+as well, as then there can be no excuse afterwards for argument.  I
+like him better than I did the first time.  About everything else he
+can be fairly amiable.  It is when he talks about 'frontal
+elevations' and 'ground plans' that he irritates me.  Tell Little
+Mother that I'll write her to-morrow.  Couldn't she come down with
+you on Friday?  Everything will be ship-shape by then; and--"
+
+The remainder was of a nature more private.  She concluded with a
+postscript, which also I did not read to Ethelbertha.
+
+"Thought I had finished telling you everything, when quite a stylish
+rat-tat sounded on the door.  I placed an old straw hat of Dick's in
+a prominent position, called loudly to an imaginary 'John' not to go
+without the letters, and then opened it.  He turned out to be the
+local reporter.  I need not have been alarmed.  He was much the more
+nervous of the two, and was so full of excuses that had I not come to
+his rescue I believe he would have gone away forgetting what he'd
+come for.  Nothing save an overwhelming sense of duty to the Public
+(with a capital P) could have induced him to inflict himself upon me.
+Could I give him a few details which would enable him to set rumour
+right?  I immediately saw visions of headlines:  'Domestic Tragedy!'
+'Eminent Author blown up by his own Daughter!'  'Once Happy Home now
+a Mere Wreck!'  It seemed to me our only plan was to enlist this
+amiable young man upon our side; I hope I did not overdo it.  My idea
+was to convey the impression that one glance at him had convinced me
+he was the best and noblest of mankind; that I felt I could rely upon
+his wit and courage to save us from a notoriety that, so far as I was
+concerned, would sadden my whole life; and that if he did so eternal
+gratitude and admiration would be the least I could lay at his feet.
+I can be nice when I try.  People have said so.  We parted with only
+a pressure of the hand, and I hope he won't get into trouble, but I
+see The Berkshire Courier is going to be deprived of its prey.  Dick
+has just come in.  He promises to talk when he has finished eating."
+
+
+Dick's letter, for which Ethelbertha seemed to be strangely
+impatient, reached us on Wednesday morning.
+
+"If ever you want to find out, Dad, what hard work really means, you
+try farming," wrote Dick; "and yet I believe you would like it.
+Hasn't some old Johnny somewhere described it as the poetry of the
+ploughshare?  Why did we ever take to bothering about anything else--
+shutting ourselves up in stuffy offices, worrying ourselves to death
+about a lot of rubbish that isn't any good to anybody?  I wish I
+could put it properly, Dad; you would see just what I mean.  Why
+don't we live in simply-built houses and get most everything we want
+out of the land:  which we easily could?  You take a dozen poor
+devils away from walking behind the plough and put them down into
+coal-mines, and set them running about half-naked among a lot of
+roaring furnaces, and between them they turn out a machine that does
+the ploughing for them.  What is the sense of it?  Of course some
+things are useful.  I would like a motor-car, and railways and
+steamboats are all right; but it seems to me that half the fiddle-
+faddles we fancy we want we'd be just as well, if not better,
+without, and there would be all that time and energy to spare for the
+sort of things that everybody ought to have.  It's everywhere just
+like it was at school.  They kept us so hard at it, studying Greek
+roots, we hadn't time to learn English grammar.  Look at young Dennis
+Yewbury.  He's got two thousand acres up in Scotland.  He could lead
+a jolly life turning the place into some real use.  Instead of which
+he lets it all run to waste for nothing but to breed a few hundred
+birds that wouldn't keep a single family alive; while he works from
+morning till night at humbugging people in a beastly hole in the
+City, just to fill his house with a host of silly gim-cracks and
+dress up himself and his women-folk like peacocks.  Of course we
+would always want clever chaps like you to tell us stories; and
+doctors we couldn't do without, though I guess if we were leading
+sensible lives we'd be able to get along with about half of them.  It
+seems to me that what we want is a comfortable home, enough to eat
+and drink, and a few fal-lal sort of things to make the girls look
+pretty; and that all the rest is rot.  We would all of us have time
+then to think and play a bit, and if we were all working fairly at
+something really useful and were contented with our own share,
+there'd be enough for everybody.
+
+"I suppose this is all nonsense, but I wish it wasn't.  Anyway, it's
+what I mean to do myself; and I'm awfully much obliged to you, Dad,
+for giving me this chance.  You've hit the right nail on the head
+this time.  Farming was what I was meant for; I feel it.  I would
+have hated being a barrister, setting people by the ears and making
+my living out of other people's troubles.  Being a farmer you feel
+that in doing good to yourself you are doing good all round.  Miss
+Janie agrees with all I say.  I think she is one of the most sensible
+girls I have ever come across, and Robin likes her awfully.  So is
+the old man:  he's a brick.  I think he has taken a liking to me, and
+I know I have to him.  He's the dearest old fellow imaginable.  The
+very turnips he seems to think of as though they were so many rows of
+little children.  And he makes you see the inside of things.  Take
+fields now, for instance.  I used to think a field was just a field.
+You scraped it about and planted it with seeds, and everything else
+depended on the weather.  Why, Dad, it's alive!  There are good
+fields that want to get on--that are grateful for everything you do
+for them, and take a pride in themselves.  And there are brutes of
+fields that you feel you want to kick.  You can waste a hundred
+pounds' worth of manure on them, and it only makes them more stupid
+than they were before.  One of our fields--a wizened-looking eleven-
+acre strip bordering the Fyfield road--he has christened Mrs.
+Gummidge:  it seems to feel everything more than any other field.
+From whatever point of the compass the wind blows that field gets the
+most harm from it.  You would think to look at it after a storm that
+there hadn't been any rain in any other field--that that 'particular
+field must have got it all; while two days' sunshine has the effect
+upon it that a six weeks' drought would on any other field.  His
+theory (he must have a theory to account for everything; it comforts
+him.  He has just hit upon a theory that explains why twins are born
+with twice as much original sin as other children, and doesn't seem
+to mind now what they do) is that each odd corner of the earth has
+gained a character of its own from the spirits of the countless dead
+men buried in its bosom.  'Robbers and thieves,' he will say, kicking
+the sod of some field all stones and thistles; 'silly fighting men
+who thought God built the world merely to give them the fun of
+knocking it about.  Look at them, the fools! stones and thistles--
+thistles and stones:  that is their notion of a field.'  Or, leaning
+over the gate of some field of rich-smelling soil, he will stretch
+out his arms as though to caress it:  'Brave lads!' he will say;
+'kindly honest fellows who loved the poor peasant folk.'  I fancy he
+has not got much sense of humour; or if he has, it is a humour he
+leaves you to find out for yourself.  One does not feel one wants to
+laugh, listening even to his most whimsical ideas; and anyhow it is a
+fact that of two fields quite close to one another, one will be worth
+ten pounds an acre and the other dear at half a crown, and there
+seems to be nothing to explain it.  We have a seven-acre patch just
+halfway up the hill.  He says he never passes it without taking off
+his hat to it.  Whatever you put in it does well; while other fields,
+try them with what you will, it is always the very thing they did not
+want.  You might fancy them fractious children, always crying for the
+other child's bun.  There is really no reason for its being such a
+good field, except its own pluck.  It faces the east, and the wood
+for half the day hides it from the sun; but it makes the best of
+everything, and even on the greyest day it seems to be smiling at
+you.  'Some happy-hearted Mother Thing--a singer of love songs the
+while she toiled,' he will have it, must lie sleeping there.  By-the-
+bye, what a jolly field Janie would make!  Don't you think so, Dad?
+
+"What the dickens, Dad, have you done to Veronica?  She wanders about
+everywhere with an exercise book in her hand, and when you say
+anything to her, instead of answering you back, she sits plump down
+wherever she is and writes for all she's worth.  She won't say what
+she's up to.  She says it's a private matter between you and her, and
+that later on things are going to be seen in their true light.  I
+told her this morning what I thought of her for forgetting to feed
+the donkey.  I was prepared, of course, for a hundred explanations:
+First, that she had meant to feed the donkey; secondly, that it
+wasn't her place to feed the donkey; thirdly, that the donkey would
+have been fed if circumstances over which she had no control had not
+arisen rendering it impossible for her to feed the donkey; fourthly,
+that the morning wasn't the proper time to feed the donkey, and so
+on.  Instead of which, out she whips this ridiculous book and asks me
+if I would mind saying it over again.
+
+"I keep forgetting to ask Janie what it is he has been accustomed to.
+We have tried him with thistles, and we've tried him with hay.  The
+thistles he scratches himself against; but for the hay he appears to
+have no use whatever.  Robin thinks his idea is to save us trouble.
+We are not to get in anything especially for him--whatever we may
+happen to be having ourselves he will put up with.  Bread-and-butter
+cut thick, or a slice of cake with an apple seems to be his notion of
+a light lunch; and for drink he fancies tea out of a slop-basin, with
+two knobs of sugar and plenty of milk.  Robin says it's waste of time
+taking his meals out to him.  She says she is going to train him to
+come in when he hears the gong.  We use the alarm clock at present
+for a gong.  I don't know what I shall do when the cow goes away.
+She wakes me every morning punctually at half-past four, but I'm in a
+blue funk that one of these days she will oversleep herself.  It is
+one of those clocks you read about.  You wrote something rather funny
+about one once yourself, but I always thought you had invented it.  I
+bought it because they said it was an extra loud one, and so it is.
+The thing that's wrong about it is that, do what you will, you can't
+get it to go off before six o'clock in the morning.  I set it on
+Sunday evening for half-past four--we farmers do have to work, I can
+tell you.  But it's worth it.  I had no idea that the world was so
+beautiful.  There is a light you never see at any other time, and the
+whole air seems to be full of fluttering song.  You feel--but you
+must get up and come out with me, Dad.  I can't describe it.  If it
+hadn't been for the good old cow, Lord knows what time I'd have been
+up.  The clock went off at half-past four in the afternoon, just as
+they were sitting down to tea, and frightened them all out of their
+skins.  We have fiddled about with it all we know, but there's no
+getting it to do anything between six p.m. and six am.  Anything you
+want of it in the daytime it is quite agreeable to.  But it seems to
+have fixed its own working hours, and isn't going to be bustled out
+of its proper rest.  I got so mad with it myself I wanted to pitch it
+out of the window, but Robin thought we ought to keep it till you
+came, that perhaps you might be able to do something with it--writing
+something about it, she means.  I said I thought alarm clocks were
+pretty well played out by this time; but, as she says, there is
+always a new generation coming along to whom almost everything must
+be fresh.  Anyhow, the confounded thing cost seven and six, and seems
+to be no good for anything else.
+
+"Whatever was it that you really did say to Robin about her room?
+Young Bute came round to me on Monday quite upset about it.  He says
+it is going to be all windows, and will look, when finished, like an
+incorrect copy of the Eddystone lighthouse.  He says there will be no
+place for the bed, and if there is to be a fireplace at all it will
+have to be in the cupboard, and that the only way, so far as he can
+see, of her getting in and out of it will be by a door through the
+bathroom.  She said that you said she could have it entirely to her
+own idea, and that he was just to carry out her instructions; but, as
+he points out, you can't have a room in a house as if the rest of the
+house wasn't there, even if it is your own room.  Nobody, it seems,
+will be able to have a bath without first talking it over with her,
+and arranging a time mutually convenient.  I told him I was sure you
+never meant him to do anything absurd; and that his best plan would
+be to go straight back to her, explain to her that she'd been talking
+like a silly goat--he could have put it politely, of course--and that
+he wasn't going to pay any attention to her.  You might have thought
+I had suggested his walking into a den of lions and pulling all their
+tails.  I don't know what Robin has done to him, but he seems quite
+frightened of her.  I had to promise that I would talk to her.  He'd
+better have done it himself.  I only told her just what he said, and
+off she went in one of her tantrums.  You know her style:  If she
+liked to live in a room where she could see to do her hair that was
+no business of his, and if he couldn't design a plain, simple bedroom
+that wasn't going to look ridiculous and make her the laughing-stock
+of all the neighbourhood, then the Royal Institute of British
+Architects must have strange notions of the sort of person entitled
+to go about the country building houses; that if he thought the
+proper place for a fire was in a cupboard, she didn't; that his duty
+was to carry out the instructions of his employers, and if he
+imagined for a moment she was going to consent to remain shut up in
+her room till everybody in the house had finished bathing it would be
+better for us to secure the services of somebody possessed of a
+little commonsense; that next time she met him she would certainly
+tell him what she thought of him, also that she should certainly
+decline to hold any further communication with him again; that she
+doesn't want a bedroom now of any sort--perhaps she may be permitted
+a shakedown in the pantry, or perhaps Veronica will allow her an
+occasional night's rest with her, and if not it doesn't matter.
+You'll have to talk to her yourself.  I'm not going to say any more.
+
+"Don't forget that Friday is the St. Leonards' 'At Home' day.  I've
+promised Janie that you shall be there in all your best clothes.
+(Don't tell her I'm calling her Janie.  It might offend her.  But
+nobody calls her Miss St. Leonard.)  Everybody is coming, and all the
+children are having their hair washed.  You will have it all your own
+way down here.  There's no other celebrity till you get to Boss
+Croker, the Tammany man, the other side of Ilsley Downs.  Artists
+they don't count.  The rumour was all round the place last week that
+you were here incognito in the person of a dismal-looking Johnny,
+staying at the 'Fisherman's Retreat,' who used to sit all day in a
+punt up the backwater drinking whisky.  It made me rather mad when I
+saw him.  I suppose it was the whisky that suggested the idea to
+them.  They have got the notion in these parts that a literary man is
+a sort of inspired tramp.  A Mrs. Jaggerswade--or some such name--
+whom I met here on Sunday and who is coming on Friday, took me aside
+and asked me 'what sort of things' you said when you talked?  She
+said she felt sure it would be so clever, and, herself, she was
+looking forward to it; but would I--'quite between ourselves'--advise
+her to bring the children.
+
+"I say, you will have to talk seriously to Veronica.  Country life
+seems to agree with her.  She's taken to poaching already--she and
+the twins.  It was the one sin that hitherto they had never
+committed, and I fancy the old man was feeling proud of this.
+Luckily I caught them coming home--with ten dead rabbits strung on a
+pole, the twins carrying it between them on their shoulders,
+suggesting the picture of the spies returning from the promised land
+with that bunch of grapes--Veronica scouting on ahead with, every ten
+yards, her ear to the ground, listening for hostile footsteps.  The
+thing that troubled her most was that she hadn't heard me coming; she
+seemed to fear that something had gone wrong with the laws of Nature.
+They had found the whole collection hanging from a tree, and had
+persuaded themselves that Providence must have been expecting them.
+I insisted on their going back with me and showing me the tree, much
+to their disgust.  And fortunately the keeper wasn't about--they are
+men that love making a row.  I talked some fine moral sentiment to
+her.  But she says you have told her that it doesn't matter whether
+you are good or bad, things happen to you just the same; and this
+being so she feels she may as well enjoy herself.  I asked her why
+she never seemed able to enjoy herself being good--I believe if  I'd
+always had a kid to bring up I'd have been a model chap myself by
+this time.  Her answer was that she supposed she was born bad.  I
+pointed out to her that was a reflection on you and Little Mother;
+and she answered she guessed she must be a 'throw-back.'  Old Slee's
+got a dog that ought to have been a fox-terrier, but isn't, and he
+seems to have been explaining things to her.
+
+"A thing that will trouble you down here, Dad, is the cruelty of the
+country.  They catch these poor little wretches in traps, leaving
+them sometimes for days suffering what must be to them nothing short
+of agony--to say nothing of the terror and the hunger.  I tried
+putting my finger in one of the beastly things and keeping it there
+for just two minutes by my watch.  It seemed like twenty.  The pain
+grows more intense with every second, and I'm not a soft, as you
+know.  I've lain half an hour with a broken leg, and that wasn't as
+bad.  One hears the little creatures screaming, but cannot find them.
+Of course when one draws near they keep silent.  It makes one quite
+dislike country people.  They are so callous.  When you speak to them
+about it they only grin.  Janie goes nearly mad about it.  Mr. St.
+Leonard tried to get the clergyman to say something on the subject,
+but he answered that he thought it better 'for the Church to confine
+herself to the accomplishment of her own great mission.'  Ass!
+
+"Bring Little Mother down; we want to show her off on Friday.  And
+make her put on something pretty.  Ask her if she's got that lilac
+thing with lace she wore at Cambridge for the May Week the year
+before last.  Tell her not to be silly; it wasn't a bit too young.
+Nash said she looked like something out of an old picture, and he's
+going to be an artist.  Don't let her dress herself.  She doesn't
+understand it.  And will you get me a gun--"
+
+The remainder of the letter was taken up with instructions concerning
+the gun.  It seemed a complicated sort of gun.  I wished I hadn't
+read about the gun to Ethelbertha.  It made her nervous for the rest
+of the day.
+
+
+Veronica's letter followed on Thursday morning.  I read it going down
+in the train.  In transcribing I have thought it better, as regards
+the spelling, to adopt the more conventional forms.
+
+
+"You will be pleased to hear," Veronica wrote, "that we are all quite
+well.  Robin works very hard.  But I think it does her good.  And of
+course I help her.  All I can.  I am glad she has got a boy.  To do
+the washing-up.  I think that was too much for her.  It used to make
+her cross.  One cannot blame her.  It is trying work.  And it makes
+you mucky.  He is a good boy.  But has been neglected.  So doesn't
+know much.  I am teaching him grammar.  He says 'you was' and 'her
+be.'  But is getting better.  He says he went to school.  But they
+couldn't have taken any trouble with him.  Could they?  The system, I
+suppose, was rotten.  Robina says I mustn't overdo it.  Because you
+want him to talk Berkshire.  So I propose confining our attention to
+the elementary rules.  He had never heard of Robinson Crusoe.  What a
+life!  We went to church on Sunday.  I could not find my gloves.  And
+Robina was waxy.  But Mr. St. Leonard came without his trousers.
+Which was worse.  We found them in the evening.  The little boy that
+blew up our stove was there with his mother.  But I didn't speak to
+her.  He's got a doom.  That's what made him blow it up.  He couldn't
+help it.  So you see it wasn't my fault.  After all.  His grandfather
+was blown up.  And he's going to be blown up again.  Later on.  But
+he is very brave.  And is going to make a will.  I like all the St.
+Leonards very much.  We went there to tea on Sunday.  And Mr. St.
+Leonard said I was bright.  I think Miss Janie very beautiful.  And
+so does Dick.  She makes me think of angels.  So she does Dick.  And
+he says she is so kind to her little brothers and sisters.  It is a
+good sign.  I think she ought to marry Dick.  It would steady him.
+He works very hard.  But I think it does him good.  We have breakfast
+at seven.  And I lay the table.  It is very beautiful in the morning.
+When you are once up.  Mrs. St. Leonard has twins.  They are a great
+anxiety to her.  But she would not part from them.  She has had much
+trouble.  And is sometimes very sad.  I like the girl best.  Her name
+is Winnie.  She is more like a boy.  His name is Wilfrid.  But
+sometimes they change clothes.  Then you're done.  They are only
+nearly seven.  But they know a lot.  They are going to teach me
+swimming.  Is it not kind of them?  The two older boys are at home
+for their holidays.  But they give themselves a lot of airs.  And
+they called me a flapper.  I told him he'd be sorry.  When he was a
+man.  Because perhaps I'd grow up beautiful.  And then he'd fall in
+love with me.  But he said he wouldn't.  So I let him see what I
+thought of him.  The little girl is very nice.  She is about my own
+age.  Her name is Sally.  We are going to write a play.  But we
+sha'n't let Bertie act in it.  Unless he turns over a new leaf.  I'm
+going to be a princess that doesn't know it.  But only feels it.  And
+she's going to be a wicked witch.  What wants me to marry her son.
+What's a sight.  But I won't, because I'd rather die first.  And am
+in love with a swineherd.  That is a genius.  Only nobody suspects
+it.  I wear a crown in the last act.  And everybody rejoices.  Except
+her.  I think it will be good.  We have nearly finished the first
+act.  She writes very well.  And has a sense of atmosphere.  And I
+tell her what to say.  Miss Janie is going to make me a dress with a
+train.  And gold spangles.  And Robina is going to lend me her blue
+necklace.  Anything will do of course for the old witch.  So it won't
+be much trouble to anyone.  Mr. Bute is going to paint us some
+scenery.  And we are going to invite everybody.  He is very nice.
+Robina says he thinks too much of himself.  By a long chalk.  But she
+is very critical where men are concerned.  She admits it.  She says
+she can't help it.  I find him very affable.  And so does Dick.  We
+think Robina will get over it.  And he has promised not to be angry
+with her.  Because I have told him that she does not mean it.  It is
+only her way.  She says she feels it is unjust of her.  Because
+really he is rather charming.  I told him that.  And he said I was a
+dear little girl.  He is going to get me a real crown.  Robina says
+he has nice eyes.  I told him that.  And he laughed.  There is a
+gentleman comes here that I think is in love with Robina.  But I
+shouldn't say anything to her about it.  If I was you.  She is very
+snappy about it.  He is not handsome.  But he looks good.  He writes
+for the papers.  But I don't think he is rich.  And Robina is very
+nice to him.  Until he's gone.  Then she gets mad.  It all began with
+the explosion.  So perhaps it was fate.  He is going to keep it out
+of the papers.  As much as he can.  But of course he owes a duty to
+the public.  I am going to decline to see him.  I think it better.
+Mr. Slee says everything will be in apple-pie order to-morrow.  So
+you can come down.  And we are going to have Irish stew.  And roly-
+poly pudding.  It will be a change.  He is very nice.  And says he
+was always in trouble himself when he was a little boy.  It's all
+experience.  We are all going on Friday to a party at Mr. St.
+Leonard's.  And you have got to come too.  Robina says I can wear my
+new frock.  But we can't find the sash.  It is very strange.  Because
+I remember having seen it.  You didn't take it for anything, did you?
+We shall have to get a new one, I suppose.  It is very annoying.  My
+new shoes have also not worn well.  And they ought to have.  Because
+Robina says they were expensive.  The donkey has come.  And he is
+sweet.  He eats out of my hand.  And lets me kiss him.  But he won't
+go.  He goes a little when you shout at him.  Very loud.  Me and
+Robina went for a drive yesterday after tea.  And Dick ran beside.
+And shouted.  But he got hoarse.  And then he wouldn't go no more.
+And Robina did not like it.  Because Dick shouted swear words.  He
+says they come naturally to you when you shout.  And Robina said it
+was horrible.  And that people would hear him.  So we got out.  And
+pushed him home.  But he is very strong.  And we were all very tired.
+And Robina says she hates him.  Dick is going to give Mr. 'Opkins
+half a crown.  To tell him how he makes him go.  Because Mr. 'Opkins
+makes him gallop.  Robina says it must be hypnotism.  But Dick thinks
+it might be something simpler.  I think Mr. 'Opkins very nice.  He
+says you promised to lend him a book.  What would help him to talk
+like a real country boy.  So I have lent him a book about a window.
+By Mr. Bane.  What came to see us last year.  It has a lot of funny
+words in it.  And he is going to learn them up.  But he don't know
+what they mean.  No more do I.  I have written a lot of the book.  It
+promises to be very interesting.  It is all a dream.  He is just the
+ordinary grown-up father.  Neither better nor worse.  And he goes up
+and up.  It is a pleasant sensation.  Till he reaches the moon.  And
+there everything is different.  It is the children that know
+everything.  And are always right.  And the grown-ups have to do all
+what they tell them.  They are kind but firm.  It is very good for
+him.  And when he wakes up he is a better man.  I put down everything
+that occurs to me.  Like you suggested.  There is quite a lot of it.
+And it makes you see how unjustly children are treated.  They said I
+was to feed the donkey.  Because it was my donkey.  And I fed him.
+And there wasn't enough supper for Dick.  And Dick said I was an
+idiot.  And Robina said I wasn't to feed him.  And in the morning
+there wasn't anything to feed him on.  Because he won't eat anything
+but bread-and-butter.  And the baker hadn't come.  And he wasn't
+there.  Because the man that comes to milk the cow had left the door
+open.  And I was distracted.  And Dick asked had I fed him.  And of
+course I hadn't fed him.  And lord how Dick talked.  Never waited to
+hear anything, mind you.  I let him talk.  But it just shows you.  We
+are all very happy.  But shall be pleased to see you.  Once again.
+The peppermint creams down here are not good.  And are very dear.
+Compared with London prices.  Isn't this a good letter?  You said I
+was to always write just as I thought.  So I'm doing it.  I think
+that's all."
+
+I read selections from this letter aloud to Ethelbertha.  She said
+she was glad she had decided to come down with me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+Had all things gone as ordered, our arrival at the St. Leonards' on
+Friday afternoon would have been imposing.  It was our entrance, so
+to speak, upon the local stage; and Robina had decided it was a case
+where small economies ought not to be considered.  The livery stable
+proprietor had suggested a brougham, but that would have necessitated
+one of us riding outside.  I explained to Robina that, in the
+country, this was usual; and Robina had replied that much depended
+upon first impressions.  Dick would, in all probability, claim the
+place for himself; and, the moment we were started, stick a pipe in
+his mouth.  She selected an open landau of quite an extraordinary
+size, painted yellow.  It looked to me an object more appropriate to
+a Lord Mayor's show than to the requirements of a Christian family;
+but Robina seemed touchy on the subject, and I said no more.  It
+certainly was roomy.  Old Glossop had turned it out well, with a pair
+of greys--seventeen hands, I judged them.  The only thing that seemed
+wrong was the coachman.  I can't explain why, but he struck me as the
+class of youth one associates with a milk-cart.
+
+We set out at a gentle trot.  Veronica, who had been in trouble most
+of the morning, sat stiffly on the extreme edge of her seat, clothed
+in the attitude of one dead to the world; Dick, in lavender gloves
+that Robina had thoughtfully bought for him, next to her.
+Ethelbertha, Robina, and myself sat perched on the back seat; to have
+leaned back would have been to lie down.  Ethelbertha, having made up
+her mind she was going to dislike the whole family of the St.
+Leonards, seemed disinclined for conversation.  Myself I had
+forgotten my cigar-case.  I have tried the St. Leonard cigar.  He
+does not smoke himself; but keeps a box for his friends.  He tells me
+he fancies men are smoking cigars less than formerly.  I did not see
+how I was going to get a smoke for the next three hours.  Nothing
+annoys me more than being bustled and made to forget things.  Robina,
+who has recently changed her views on the subject of freckles, shared
+a parasol with her mother.  They had to hold it almost horizontally
+in front of them, and this obscured their view.  I could not myself
+understand why people smiled as we went by.  Apart from the carriage,
+which they must have seen before, we were not, I should have said, an
+exhilarating spectacle.  A party of cyclists laughed outright.
+Robina said there was one thing we should have to be careful about,
+living in the country, and that was that the strong air and the
+loneliness combined didn't sap our intellect.  She said she had
+noticed it--the tendency of country people to become prematurely
+silly.  I did not share her fears, as I had by this time divined what
+it was that was amusing folks.  Dick had discovered behind the
+cushions--remnant of some recent wedding, one supposes--a large and
+tastefully bound Book of Common Prayer.  He and Veronica sat holding
+it between them.  Looking at their faces one could almost hear the
+organ pealing.
+
+Dick kept one eye on the parasol; and when, on passing into shade, it
+was lowered, he and Veronica were watching with rapt ecstasy the
+flight of swallows.  Robina said she should tell Mr. Glossop of the
+insults to which respectable people were subject when riding in his
+carriage.  She thought he ought to take steps to prevent it.  She
+likewise suggested that the four of us, leaving the Little Mother in
+the carriage, should walk up the hill.  Ethelbertha said that she
+herself would like a walk.  She had been balancing herself on the
+edge of a cushion with her feet dangling for two miles, and was
+tired.  She herself would have preferred a carriage made for
+ordinary-sized people.  Our coachman called attention to the heat of
+the afternoon and the length of the hill, and recommended our
+remaining where we were; but his advice was dismissed as exhibiting
+want of feeling.  Robina is, perhaps, a trifle over-sympathetic where
+animals are concerned.  I remember, when they were children, her
+banging Dick over the head with the nursery bellows because he would
+not agree to talk in a whisper for fear of waking the cat.  You can,
+of course, overdo kindness to animals, but it is a fault on the right
+side; and, as a rule, I do not discourage her.  Veronica was allowed
+to remain, owing to her bad knee.  It is a most unfortunate
+affliction.  It comes on quite suddenly.  There is nothing to be
+seen; but the child's face while she is suffering from it would move
+a heart of stone.  It had been troubling her, so it appeared, all the
+morning; but she had said nothing, not wishing to alarm her mother.
+Ethelbertha, who thinks it may be hereditary--she herself having had
+an aunt who had suffered from contracted ligament--fixed her up as
+comfortably as the pain would permit with cushions in the centre of
+the back seat; and the rest of us toiled after the carriage.
+
+I should not like to say for certain that horses have a sense of
+humour, but I sometimes think they must.  I had a horse years ago who
+used to take delight in teasing girls.  I can describe it no other
+way.  He would pick out a girl a quarter of a mile off; always some
+haughty, well-dressed girl who was feeling pleased with herself.  As
+we approached he would eye her with horror and astonishment.  It was
+too marked to escape notice.  A hundred yards off he would be walking
+sideways, backing away from her; I would see the poor lady growing
+scarlet with the insult and annoyance of it.  Opposite to her, he
+would shy the entire width of the road, and make pretence to bolt.
+Looking back I would see her vainly appealing to surrounding nature
+for a looking-glass to see what it was that had gone wrong with her.
+
+"What is the matter with me," she would be crying to herself; "that
+the very beasts of the field should shun me?  Do they take me for a
+gollywog?"
+
+Halfway up the hill, the off-side grey turned his head and looked at
+us.  We were about a couple of hundred yards behind; it was a hot and
+dusty day.  He whispered to the near-side grey, and the near-side
+grey turned and looked at us also.  I knew what was coming.  I've
+been played the same trick before.  I shouted to the boy, but it was
+too late.  They took the rest of the hill at a gallop and disappeared
+over the brow.  Had there been an experienced coachman behind them, I
+should not have worried.  Dick told his mother not to be alarmed, and
+started off at fifteen miles an hour.  I calculated I was doing about
+ten, which for a gentleman past his first youth, in a frock suit
+designed to disguise rather than give play to the figure, I consider
+creditable.  Robina, undecided whether to go on ahead with Dick or
+remain to assist her mother, wasted vigour by running from one to the
+other.  Ethelbertha's one hope was that she might reach the wreckage
+in time to receive Veronica's last wishes.
+
+It was in this order that we arrived at the St. Leonards'.  Veronica,
+under an awning, sipping iced sherbet, appeared to be the centre of
+the party.  She was recounting her experiences with a modesty that
+had already won all hearts.  The rest of us, she had explained, had
+preferred walking, and would arrive later.  She was evidently pleased
+to see me, and volunteered the information that the greys, to all
+seeming, had enjoyed their gallop.
+
+I sent Dick back to break the good news to his mother.  Young Bute
+said he would go too.  He said he was fresher than Dick, and would
+get there first.  As a matter of history he did, and was immediately
+sorry that he had.
+
+This is not a well-ordered world, or it would not be our good deeds
+that would so often get us into trouble.  Robina's insistence on our
+walking up the hill had been prompted by tender feeling for dumb
+animals:  a virtuous emotion that surely the angels should have
+blessed.  The result had been to bring down upon her suffering and
+reproach.  It is not often that Ethelbertha loses her temper.  When
+she does she makes use of the occasion to perform what one might
+describe as a mental spring-cleaning.  All loose odds and ends of
+temper that may be lying about in her mind--any scrap of indignation
+that has been reposing peacefully, half forgotten, in a corner of her
+brain, she ferrets out and brushes into the general heap.  Small
+annoyances of the year before last--little things she hadn't noticed
+at the time--incidents in your past life that, so far as you are
+concerned, present themselves as dim visions connected maybe with
+some previous existence, she whisks triumphantly into her pan.  The
+method has its advantages.  It leaves her, swept and garnished,
+without a scrap of ill-feeling towards any living soul.  For quite a
+long period after one of these explosions it is impossible to get a
+cross word out of her.  One has to wait sometimes for months.  But
+while the clearing up is in progress the atmosphere round about is
+disturbing.  The element of the whole thing is its comprehensive
+swiftness.  Before they had reached the summit of the hill, Robina
+had acquired a tolerably complete idea of all she had done wrong
+since Christmas twelvemonth:  the present afternoon's proceedings--
+including as they did the almost certain sacrificing of a sister to a
+violent death, together with the probable destruction of a father, no
+longer of an age to trifle with apoplexy--being but a fit and proper
+complement to what had gone before.  It would be long, as Robina
+herself that evening bitterly declared, before she would again give
+ear to the promptings of her better nature.
+
+To take next the sad case of Archibald Bute:  his sole desire had
+been to relieve, at the earliest moment possible, the anxieties of a
+sister and a mother.  Robina's new hat, not intended for sport, had
+broken away from its fastenings.  With it, it had brought down her
+hair.  There is a harmless contrivance for building up the female
+hair called, I am told, a pad.  It can be made of combings, and then,
+of course, is literally the girl's own hair.  He came upon Robina at
+the moment when, retracing her steps and with her back towards him,
+she was looking for it.  With his usual luck, he was the first to
+find it.  Ethelbertha thanked him for his information concerning
+Veronica, but seemed chiefly anxious to push on and convince herself
+that it was true.  She took Dick's arm, and left Robina to follow on
+with Bute.
+
+As I explained to him afterwards, had he stopped to ask my advice I
+should have counselled his leaving the job to Dick, who, after all,
+was only thirty seconds behind him.  As regarded himself, I should
+have suggested his taking a walk in the opposite direction,
+returning, say, in half an hour, and pretending to have just arrived.
+By that time Robina, with the assistance of Janie's brush and comb,
+and possibly her powder-puff, would have been feeling herself again.
+He could have listened sympathetically to an account of the affair
+from Robina herself--her version, in which she would have appeared to
+advantage.  Give her time, and she has a sense of humour.  She would
+have made it bright and whimsical.  Without asserting it in so many
+words, she would have conveyed the impression--I know her way--that
+she alone, throughout the whole commotion, had remained calm and
+helpful.  "Dear old Dick" and "Poor dear papa"--I can hear her saying
+it--would have supplied the low comedy, and Veronica, alluded to with
+affection free from sentimentality, would have furnished the dramatic
+interest.  It is not that Robina intends to mislead, but she has the
+artistic instinct.  It would have made quite a charming story; Robina
+always the central figure.  She would have enjoyed telling it, and
+would have been pleased with the person listening.  All this--which
+would have been the reward of subterfuge--he had missed.  Virtuous
+intention had gained for him nothing but a few scattered observations
+from Robina concerning himself; the probable object of his Creator in
+fashioning him--his relation to the scheme of things in general:
+observations all of which he had felt to be unjust.
+
+We compared experiences over a pipe that same evening; and he told me
+of a friend of his, a law student, who had shared diggings with him
+in Edinburgh.  A kinder-hearted young man, Bute felt sure, could
+never have breathed; nor one with a tenderer, more chivalrous regard
+for women; and the misery this brought him, to say nothing of the
+irritation caused to quite a number of respectable people, could
+hardly be imagined, so young Bute assured me, by anyone not
+personally acquainted with the parties.  It was the plain and snappy
+girl, and the less attractive type of old maid, for whom he felt the
+most sorrow.  He could not help thinking of all they had missed, and
+were likely to go on missing; the rapture--surely the woman's
+birthright--of feeling herself adored, anyhow, once in her life; the
+delight of seeing the lover's eye light up at her coming.  Had he
+been a Mormon he would have married them all.  They too--the
+neglected that none had invited to the feast of love--they also
+should know the joys of home, feel the sweet comfort of a husband's
+arm.  Being a Christian, his power for good was limited.  But at
+least he could lift from them the despairing conviction that they
+were outside the pale of masculine affection.  Not one of them, so
+far as he could help it, but should be able to say:
+
+"I--even I had a lover once.  No, dear, we never married.  It was one
+of those spiritual loves; a formal engagement with a ring would have
+spoiled it--coarsened it.  No; it was just a beautiful thing that
+came into my life and passed away again, leaving behind it a
+fragrance that has sweetened all my days."
+
+That is how he imagined they would talk about it, years afterwards,
+to the little niece or nephew, asking artless questions--how they
+would feel about it themselves.  Whether law circles are peculiarly
+rich in unattractive spinsters, or whether it merely happened to be
+an exceptional season for them, Bute could not say; but certain it
+was that the number of sour-faced girls and fretful old maids in
+excess of the demand seemed to be greater than usual that winter in
+Edinburgh, with the result that young Hapgood had a busy time of it.
+He made love to them, not obtrusively, which might have laid them
+open to ridicule--many of them were old enough to have been his
+mother--but more by insinuation, by subtle suggestion.  His feelings,
+so they gathered, were too deep for words; but the adoring eyes with
+which he would follow their every movement, the rapt ecstasy with
+which he would drink in their lightest remark about the weather, the
+tone of almost reverential awe with which he would enquire of them
+concerning their lesser ailments--all conveyed to their sympathetic
+observation the message that he dared not tell.  He had no
+favourites.  Sufficient it was that a woman should be unpleasant, for
+him to pour out at her feet the simulated passion of a lifetime.  He
+sent them presents--nothing expensive--wrapped in pleasing pretence
+of anonymity; valentines carefully selected for their compromising
+character.  One carroty-headed old maid with warts he had kissed upon
+the brow.
+
+All this he did out of his great pity for them.  It was a beautiful
+idea, but it worked badly.  They did not understand--never got the
+hang of the thing:  not one of them.  They thought he was really gone
+on them.  For a time his elusiveness, his backwardness in coming to
+the point, they attributed to a fit and proper fear of his fate; but
+as the months went by the feeling of each one was that he was
+carrying the apprehension of his own unworthiness too far.  They gave
+him encouragement, provided for him "openings," till the wonder grew
+upon them how any woman ever did get married.  At the end of their
+resources, they consulted bosom friends.  In several instances the
+bosom friend turned out to be the bosom friend of more than one of
+them.  The bosom friends began to take a hand in it.  Some of them
+came to him with quite a little list, insisting--playfully at first--
+on his making up his mind what he was going to take and what he was
+going to leave; offering, as reward for prompt decision, to make
+things as easy for him as possible with the remainder of the column.
+
+It was then he saw that his good intentions were likely to end in
+catastrophe.  He would not tell the truth:  that the whole scheme had
+been conceived out of charity towards all ill-constructed or
+dilapidated ladies; that personally he didn't care a hang for any of
+them; had only taken them on, vulgarly speaking, to give them a
+treat, and because nobody else would.  That wasn't going to be a
+golden memory, colouring their otherwise drab existence.  He
+explained that it was not love--not the love that alone would justify
+a man's asking of a woman that she should give herself to him for
+life--that he felt and always should feel for them, but merely
+admiration and deep esteem; and seventeen of them thought that would
+be sufficient to start with, and offered to chance the rest.
+
+The truth had to come out.  Friends who knew his noble nature could
+not sit by and hear him denounced as a heartless and eccentric
+profligate.  Ladies whose beauty and popularity were beyond dispute
+thought it a touching and tender thing for him to have done; but
+every woman to whom he had ever addressed a kind word wanted to wring
+his neck.
+
+He did the most sensible thing he could, under all the circumstances;
+changed his address to Aberdeen, where he had an aunt living.  But
+the story followed him.  No woman would be seen speaking to him.  One
+admiring glance from Hapgood would send the prettiest girls home
+weeping to their mothers.  Later on he fell in love--hopelessly,
+madly in love.  But he dared not tell her--dared not let a living
+soul guess it.  That was the only way he could show it.  It is not
+sufficient, in this world, to want to do good; there's got to be a
+knack about it.
+
+There was a man I met in Colorado, one Christmas-time.  I was on a
+lecturing tour.  His idea was to send a loving greeting to his wife
+in New York.  He had been married nineteen years, and this was the
+first time he had been separated from his family on Christmas Day.
+He pictured them round the table in the little far-away New England
+parlour; his wife, his sister-in-law, Uncle Silas, Cousin Jane, Jack
+and Willy, and golden-haired Lena.  They would be just sitting down
+to dinner, talking about him, most likely; wishing he were among
+them.  They were a nice family and all fond of him.  What joy it
+would give them to know that he was safe and sound; to hear the very
+tones of his loved voice speaking to them!  Modern science has made
+possible these miracles.  True, the long-distance telephone would
+cost him five dollars; but what is five dollars weighed against the
+privilege of wafting happiness to an entire family on Christmas Day!
+We had just come back from a walk.  He slammed the money down, and
+laughed aloud at the thought of the surprise he was about to give
+them all.
+
+The telephone bell rang out clear and distinct at the precise moment
+when his wife, with knife and fork in hand, was preparing to carve
+the turkey.  She was a nervous lady, and twice that week had dreamed
+that she had seen her husband without being able to get to him.  On
+the first occasion she had seen him enter a dry-goods store in
+Broadway, and hastening across the road had followed him in.  He was
+hardly a dozen yards in front of her, but before she could overtake
+him all the young lady assistants had rushed from behind their
+counters and, forming a circle round her, had refused to let her
+pass, which in her dream had irritated her considerably.  On the next
+occasion he had boarded a Brooklyn car in which she was returning
+home.  She had tried to attract his attention with her umbrella, but
+he did not seem to see her; and every time she rose to go across to
+him the car gave a jerk and bumped her back into her seat.  When she
+did get over to him it was not her husband at all, but the gentleman
+out of the Quaker Oats advertisement.  She went to the telephone,
+feeling--as she said herself afterwards--all of a tremble.
+
+That you could speak from Colorado to New York she would not then
+have believed had you told her.  The thing was in its early stages,
+which may also have accounted for the voice reaching her strange and
+broken.  I was standing beside him while he spoke.  We were in the
+vestibule of the Savoy Hotel at Colorado Springs.  It was five
+o'clock in the afternoon, which would be about seven in New York.  He
+told her he was safe and well, and that she was not to fret about
+him.  He told her he had been that morning for a walk in the Garden
+of the Gods, which is the name given to the local park; they do that
+sort of thing in Colorado.  Also that he had drunk from the silicial
+springs abounding in that favoured land.  I am not sure that
+"silicial" was the correct word.  He was not sure himself:  added to
+which he pronounced it badly.  Whatever they were, he assured her
+they had done him good.  He sent a special message to his Cousin
+Jane--a maiden lady of means--to the effect that she could rely upon
+seeing him soon.  She was a touchy old lady, and liked to be singled
+out for special attention.  He made the usual kind enquiries about
+everybody, sent them all his blessing, and only wished they could be
+with him in this delectable land where it seemed to be always
+sunshine and balmy breezes.  He could have said more, but his time
+being up the telephone people switched him off; and feeling he had
+done a good and thoughtful deed, he suggested a game of billiards.
+
+Could he have been a witness of events at the other end of the wire,
+his condition would have been one of less self-complacence.  Long
+before the end of the first sentence his wife had come to the
+conclusion that this was a message from the dead.  Why through a
+telephone did not greatly worry her.  It seemed as reasonable a
+medium as any other she had ever heard of--indeed a trifle more so.
+Later, when she was able to review the matter calmly, it afforded her
+some consolation to reflect that things might have been worse.  That
+"garden," together with the "silicial springs"--which she took to be
+"celestial," there was not much difference the way he pronounced it--
+was distinctly reassuring.  The "eternal sunshine" and the "balmy
+breezes" likewise agreed with her knowledge of heavenly topography as
+derived from the Congregational Hymn-Book.  That he should have
+needed to enquire concerning the health of herself and the children
+had puzzled her.  The only explanation was that they didn't know
+everything, not even up.  There--may be, not the new-comers.  She had
+answered as coherently as her state of distraction would permit, and
+had then dropped limply to the floor.  It was the sound of her
+falling against the umbrella-stand and upsetting it that brought them
+all trooping out from the dining-room.
+
+It took her some time to get the thing home to them; and when she had
+finished, her brother Silas, acting on the impulse of the moment,
+rang up the Exchange, with some vague idea of getting into
+communication with St. Peter and obtaining further particulars, but
+recollected himself in time to explain to the "hulloa girl" that he
+had made a mistake.
+
+The eldest boy, a practical youth, pointed out, very sensibly, that
+nothing could be gained by their not going on with their dinner, but
+was bitterly reproached for being able to think of any form of
+enjoyment at a moment when his poor dear father was in heaven.  It
+reminded his mother of the special message to Cousin Jane, who up to
+that moment had been playing the part of comforter.  With the
+collapse of Cousin Jane, dramatic in its suddenness, conversation
+disappeared.  At nine o'clock the entire family went dinnerless to
+bed.
+
+The eldest boy--as I have said, a practical youth--had the sense to
+get up early the next morning and send a wire, which brought the glad
+news back to them that their beloved one was not in heaven, but was
+still in Colorado.  But the only reward my friend got for all his
+tender thoughtfulness was the vehement injunction never for the
+remainder of his life to play such a fool's trick again.
+
+There were other cases I could have recited showing the ill
+recompense that so often overtakes the virtuous action; but, as I
+explained to Bute, it would have saddened me to dwell upon the theme.
+
+It was quite a large party assembled at the St. Leonards', including
+one or two county people, and I should have liked, myself, to have
+made a better entrance.  A large lady with a very small voice seemed
+to be under the impression that I had arranged the whole business on
+purpose.  She said it was "so dramatic."  One good thing came out of
+it:  Janie, in her quiet, quick way, saw to it that Ethelbertha and
+Robina slipped into the house unnoticed by way of the dairy.  When
+they joined the other guests, half an hour later, they had had a cup
+of tea and a rest, and were feeling calm and cool, with their hair
+nicely done; and Ethelbertha remarked to Robina on the way home what
+a comfort it must be to Mrs. St. Leonard to have a daughter so
+capable, one who knew just the right thing to do, and did it without
+making a fuss and a disturbance.
+
+Everyone was very nice.  Of course we made the usual mistake:  they
+talked to me about books and plays, and I gave them my views on
+agriculture and cub-hunting.  I'm not quite sure what fool it was who
+described a bore as a man who talked about himself.  As a matter of
+fact it is the only subject the average man knows sufficiently well
+to make interesting.  There's a man I know; he makes a fortune out of
+a patent food for infants.  He began life as a dairy farmer, and hit
+upon it quite by accident.  When he talks about the humours of
+company promoting and the tricks of the advertising agent he is
+amusing.  I have sat at his table, when he was a bachelor, and
+listened to him by the hour with enjoyment.  The mistake he made was
+marrying a broad-minded, cultured woman, who ruined him--
+conversationally, I mean.  He is now well-informed and tiresome on
+most topics.  That is why actors and actresses are always such
+delightful company:  they are not ashamed to talk about themselves.
+I remember a dinner-party once:  our host was one of the best-known
+barristers in London.  A famous lady novelist sat on his right, and a
+scientist of world-wide reputation had the place of honour next our
+hostess, who herself had written a history of the struggle for
+nationality in South America that serves as an authority to all the
+Foreign Offices in Europe.  Among the remaining guests were a bishop,
+the editor-in-chief of a London daily newspaper, a man who knew the
+interior of China as well as most men know their own club, a Russian
+revolutionist just escaped from Siberia, a leading dramatist, a
+Cabinet Minister, and a poet whose name is a household word wherever
+the English tongue is spoken.  And for two hours we sat and listened
+to a wicked-looking little woman who from the boards of a Bowery
+music-hall had worked her way up to the position of a star in musical
+comedy.  Education, as she observed herself without regret, had not
+been compulsory throughout the waterside district of Chicago in her
+young days; and, compelled to earn her own living from the age of
+thirteen, opportunity for supplying the original deficiency had been
+wanting.  But she knew her subject, which was Herself--her
+experiences, her reminiscences:  and bad sense enough to stick to it.
+Until the moment when she took "the liberty of chipping in," to use
+her own expression, the amount of twaddle talked had been appalling.
+The bishop had told us all he had learnt about China during a visit
+to San Francisco, while the man who had spent the last twenty years
+of his life in the country was busy explaining his views on the
+subject of the English drama.  Our hostess had been endeavouring to
+make the scientist feel at home by talking to him about radium.  The
+dramatist had explained at some length his views of the crisis in
+Russia.  The poet had quite spoilt his dinner trying to suggest to
+the Cabinet Minister new sources of taxation.  The Russian
+revolutionist had told us what ought to have been a funny story about
+a duck; and the lady novelist and the Cabinet Minister had discussed
+Christian Science for a quarter of an hour, each under the mistaken
+impression that the other one was a believer in it.  The editor had
+been explaining the attitude of the Church towards the New Theology;
+and our host, one of the wittiest men at the Bar, had been talking
+chiefly to the butler.  The relief of listening to anybody talking
+about something they knew was like finding a match-box to a man who
+has been barking his shins in the dark.  For the rest of the dinner
+we clung to her.
+
+I could have made myself quite interesting to these good squires and
+farmers talking to them about theatres and the literary celebrities I
+have met; and they could have told me dog stories and given me useful
+information as to the working of the Small Holdings Act.  They said
+some very charming things about my books--mostly to the effect that
+they read and enjoyed them when feeling ill or suffering from mental
+collapse.  I gathered that had they always continued in a healthy
+state of mind and body it would not have occurred to them to read me.
+One man assured me I had saved his life.  It was his brain, he told
+me.  He had been so upset by something that had happened to him that
+he had almost lost his reason.  There were times when he could not
+even remember his own name; his mind seemed an absolute blank.  And
+then one day by chance--or Providence, or whatever you choose to call
+it--he had taken up a book of mine.  It was the only thing he had
+been able to read for months and months!  And now, whenever he felt
+himself run down--his brain like a squeezed orange (that was his
+simile)--he would put everything else aside and read a book of mine--
+any one:  it didn't matter which.  I suppose one ought to be glad
+that one has saved somebody's life; but I should like to have the
+choosing of them myself.
+
+I am not sure that Ethelbertha is going to like Mrs. St. Leonard; and
+I don't think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like Ethelbertha.  I have
+gathered that Mrs. St. Leonard doesn't like anybody much--except, of
+course, when it is her duty.  She does not seem to have the time.
+Man is born to trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself
+accustomed to the feeling.  But Mrs. St. Leonard has given herself up
+to the pursuit of trouble to the exclusion of all other interests in
+life.  She appears to regard it as the only calling worthy a
+Christian woman.  I found her alone one afternoon.  Her manner was
+preoccupied; I asked if I could be of any assistance.
+
+"No," she answered, "I am merely trying to think what it can be that
+has been worrying me all the morning.  It has clean gone out of my
+head."
+
+She remembered it a little later with a glad sigh.
+
+St. Leonard himself, Ethelbertha thinks charming.  We are to go again
+on Sunday for her to see the children.  Three or four people we met I
+fancy we shall be able to fit in with.  We left at half-past six, and
+took Bute back with us to supper.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+"She's a good woman," said Robina.
+
+"Who's a good woman?" I asked.
+
+"He's trying, I expect; although he is an old dear:  to live with, I
+mean," continued Robina, addressing apparently the rising moon.  "And
+then there are all those children."
+
+"You are thinking of Mrs. St. Leonard," I suggested.
+
+"There seems no way of making her happy," explained Robina.  "On
+Thursday I went round early in the morning to help Janie pack the
+baskets for the picnic.  It was her own idea, the picnic."
+
+"Speaking of picnics," I said.
+
+"You might have thought," went on Robina, "that she was dressing for
+her own funeral.  She said she knew she was going to catch her death
+of cold, sitting on the wet grass.  Something told her.  I reminded
+her it hadn't rained for three weeks, and that everything was as dry
+as a bone, but she said that made no difference to grass.  There is
+always a moisture in grass, and that cushions and all that only
+helped to draw it out.  Not that it mattered.  The end had to come,
+and so long as the others were happy--you know her style.  Nobody
+ever thought of her.  She was to be dragged here, dragged there.  She
+talked about herself as if she were some sacred image.  It got upon
+my nerves at last, so that I persuaded Janie to let me offer to stop
+at home with her.  I wasn't too keen about going myself; not by that
+time."
+
+"When our desires leave us, says Rochefoucauld," I remarked, "we
+pride ourselves upon our virtue in having overcome them."
+
+"Well, it was her fault, anyhow," retorted Robina; "and I didn't make
+a virtue of it.  I told her I'd just as soon not go, and that I felt
+sure the others would be all right without her, so that there was no
+need for her to be dragged anywhere.  And then she burst into tears."
+
+"She said," I suggested, "that it was hard on her to have children
+who could wish to go to a picnic and leave their mother at home; that
+it was little enough enjoyment she had in her life, heaven knows;
+that if there was one thing she had been looking forward to it was
+this day's outing; but still, of course, if everybody would be
+happier without her--"
+
+"Something of the sort," admitted Robina; "only there was a lot of
+it.  We had to all fuss round her, and swear that without her it
+wouldn't be worth calling a picnic.  She brightened up on the way
+home."
+
+The screech-owl in the yew-tree emitted a blood-curdling scream.  He
+perches there each evening on the extreme end of the longest bough.
+Dimly outlined against the night, he has the appearance of a friendly
+hobgoblin.  But I wish he didn't fancy himself as a vocalist.  It is
+against his own interests, I am sure, if he only knew it.  That
+American college yell of his must have the effect of sending every
+living thing within half a mile back into its hole.  Maybe it is a
+provision of nature for clearing off the very old mice who have
+become stone deaf and would otherwise be a burden on their relatives.
+The others, unless out for suicide, must, one thinks, be tolerably
+safe.  Ethelbertha is persuaded he is a sign of death; but seeing
+there isn't a square quarter of a mile in this county without its
+screech-owl, there can hardly by this time be a resident that an
+Assurance Society would look at.  Veronica likes him.  She even likes
+his screech.  I found her under the tree the other night, wrapped up
+in a shawl, trying to learn it.  As if one of them were not enough!
+It made me quite cross with her.  Besides, it wasn't a bit like it,
+as I told her.  She said it was better than I could do, anyhow; and I
+was idiot enough to take up the challenge.  It makes me angry now,
+when I think of it:  a respectable, middle-aged literary man,
+standing under a yew-tree trying to screech like an owl.  And the
+bird was silly enough to encourage us.
+
+"She was a charming girl," I said, "seven-and-twenty years ago, when
+St. Leonard fell in love with her.  She had those dark, dreamy eyes
+so suggestive of veiled mysteries; and her lips must have looked
+bewitching when they pouted.  I expect they often did.  They do so
+still; but the pout of a woman of forty-six no longer fascinates.  To
+a pretty girl of nineteen a spice of temper, an illogical
+unreasonableness, are added attractions:  the scratch of a blue-eyed
+kitten only tempts us to tease her the more.  Young Hubert St.
+Leonard--he had curly brown hair, with a pretty trick of blushing,
+and was going to conquer the world--found her fretfulness, her very
+selfishness adorable:  and told her so, kneeling before her, gazing
+into her bewildering eyes--only he called it her waywardness, her
+imperiousness; begged her for his sake to be more capricious.  Told
+her how beautiful she looked when displeased.  So, no doubt, she did-
+-at nineteen."
+
+"He didn't tell you all that, did he?" demanded Robina.
+
+"Not a word," I reassured her, "except that she was acknowledged by
+all authorities to have been the most beautiful girl in Tunbridge
+Wells, and that her father had been ruined by a rascally solicitor.
+No, I was merely, to use the phrase of the French police courts,
+'reconstructing the crime.'"
+
+"It may be all wrong," grumbled Robina.
+
+"It may be," I agreed.  "But why?  Does it strike you as improbable?"
+
+We were sitting in the porch, waiting for Dick to come by the white
+path across the field.
+
+"No," answered Robina.  "It all sounds very probable.  I wish it
+didn't."
+
+"You must remember," I continued, "that I am an old playgoer.  I have
+sat out so many of this world's dramas.  It is as easy to reconstruct
+them backwards as forwards.  We are witnessing the last act of the
+St. Leonard drama:  that unsatisfactory last act that merely fills
+out time after the play is ended!  The intermediate acts were
+probably more exciting, containing 'passionate scenes' played with
+much earnestness; chiefly for the amusement of the servants.  But the
+first act, with the Kentish lanes and woods for a back-cloth, must
+have been charming.  Here was the devout lover she had heard of,
+dreamed of.  It is delightful to be regarded as perfection--not
+absolute perfection, for that might put a strain upon us to live up
+to, but as so near perfection that to be more perfect would just
+spoil it.  The spots upon us, that unappreciative friends and
+relations would magnify into blemishes, seen in their true light:
+artistic shading relieving a faultlessness that might otherwise prove
+too glaring.  Dear Hubert found her excellent just as she was in
+every detail.  It would have been a crime against Love for her to
+seek to change herself."
+
+"Well, then, it was his fault," argued Robina.  "If he was silly
+enough to like her faults, and encourage her in them--"
+
+"What could he have done," I asked, "even if he had seen them?  A
+lover does not point out his mistress's shortcomings to her."
+
+"Much the more sensible plan if he did," insisted Robina.  "Then if
+she cared for him she could set to work to cure herself."
+
+"You would like it?" I said; "you would appreciate it in your own
+case?  Can you imagine young Bute--?"
+
+"Why young Bute?" demanded Robina; "what's he got to do with it?"
+
+"Nothing," I answered; "except that he happens to be the first male
+creature you have ever come across since you were six that you
+haven't flirted with."
+
+"I don't flirt with them," said Robina; "I merely try to be nice to
+them."
+
+"With the exception of young Bute," I persisted.
+
+"He irritates me," Robina explained.
+
+"I was reading," I said, "the other day, an account of the marriage
+customs prevailing among the Lower Caucasians.  The lover takes his
+stand beneath his lady's window, and, having attracted her attention,
+proceeds to sing.  And if she seems to like it--if she listens to it
+without getting mad, that means she doesn't want him.  But if she
+gets upset about it--slams down the window and walks away, then it's
+all right.  I think it's the Lower Caucasians."
+
+"Must be a very silly people," said Robina; "I suppose a pail of
+water would be the highest proof of her affection he could hope for."
+
+"A complex being, man," I agreed.  "We will call him X.  Can you
+imagine young X coming to you and saying:  'My dear Robina, you have
+many excellent qualities.  You can be amiable--so long as you are
+having your own way in everything; but thwarted you can be just
+horrid.  You are very kind--to those who are willing for you to be
+kind to them in your own way, which is not always their way.  You can
+be quite unselfish--when you happen to be in an unselfish mood, which
+is far from frequent.  You are capable and clever, but, like most
+capable and clever people, impatient and domineering; highly
+energetic when not feeling lazy; ready to forgive the moment your
+temper is exhausted.  You are generous and frank, but if your object
+could only be gained through meanness or deceit you would not
+hesitate a moment longer than was necessary to convince yourself that
+the circumstances justified the means.  You are sympathetic, tender-
+hearted, and have a fine sense of justice; but I can see that tongue
+of yours, if not carefully watched, wearing decidedly shrewish.  You
+have any amount of grit.  A man might go tiger-hunting with you--with
+no one better; but you are obstinate, conceited, and exacting.  In
+short, to sum you up, you have all the makings in you of an ideal
+wife combined with faults sufficient to make a Socrates regret he'd
+ever married you.'"
+
+"Yes, I would!" said Robina, springing to her feet.  I could not see
+her face, but I knew there was the look upon it that made Primgate
+want to paint her as Joan of Arc; only it would never stop long
+enough.  "I'd love him for talking like that.  And I'd respect him.
+If he was that sort of man I'd pray God to help me to be the sort of
+woman he wanted me to be.  I'd try.  I'd try all day long.  I would!"
+
+"I wonder," I said.  Robina had surprised me.  I admit it.  I thought
+I knew the sex better.
+
+"Any girl would," said Robina.  "He'd be worth it."
+
+"It would be a new idea," I mused.  "Gott im Himmel! what a new world
+might it not create!"  The fancy began to take hold of me.  "Love no
+longer blind.  Love refusing any more to be the poor blind fool--
+sport of gods and men.  Love no longer passion's slave.  His bonds
+broken, the senseless bandage flung aside.  Love helping life instead
+of muddling it.  Marriage, the foundation of civilisation, no longer
+reared upon the sands of lies and illusions, but grappled to the rock
+of truth--reality.  Have you ever read 'Tom Jones?'" I said.
+
+"No," answered Robina; "I've always heard it wasn't a nice book."
+
+"It isn't," I said.  "Man isn't a nice animal, not all of him.  Nor
+woman either.  There's a deal of the beast in man.  What can you
+expect?  Till a few paltry thousands of years ago he WAS a beast,
+fighting with other beasts, his fellow denizens of the woods and
+caves; watching for his prey, crouched in the long grass of the
+river's bank, tearing it with claws and teeth, growling as he ate.
+So he lived and died through the dim unnamed ages, transmitting his
+beast's blood, his bestial instincts, to his offspring, growing ever
+stronger, fiercer, from generation to generation, while the rocks
+piled up their strata and the oceans shaped their beds.  Moses!  Why,
+Lord Rothschild's great-grandfather, a few score times removed, must
+have known Moses, talked with him.  Babylon!  It is a modern city,
+fallen into disuse for the moment, owing to alteration of traffic
+routes.  History! it is a tale of to-day.  Man was crawling about the
+world on all fours, learning to be an animal for millions of years
+before the secret of his birth was whispered to him.  It is only
+during the last few centuries that he has been trying to be a man.
+Our modern morality!  Why, compared with the teachings of nature, it
+is but a few days old.  What do you expect?  That he shall forget the
+lessons of the aeons at the bidding of the hours?"
+
+"Then you advise me to read 'Tom Jones'?" said Robina.
+
+"Yes," I said, "I do.  I should not if I thought you were still a
+child, knowing only blind trust, or blind terror.  The sun is not
+extinguished because occasionally obscured by mist; the scent of the
+rose is not dead because of the worm in the leaf.  A healthy rose can
+afford a few worms--has got to, anyhow.  All men are not Tom Joneses.
+The standard of masculine behaviour continues to go up:  many of us
+make fine efforts to conform to it, and some of us succeed.  But the
+Tom Jones is there in all of us who are not anaemic or consumptive.
+And there's no sense at all in getting cross with us about it,
+because we cannot help it.  We are doing our best.  In another
+hundred thousand years or so, provided all goes well, we shall be the
+perfect man.  And seeing our early training, I flatter myself that,
+up to the present, we have done remarkably well."
+
+"Nothing like being satisfied with oneself," said Robina.
+
+"I'm not satisfied," I said; "I'm only hopeful.  But it irritates me
+when I hear people talk as though man had been born a white-souled
+angel and was making supernatural efforts to become a sinner.  That
+seems to me the way to discourage him.  What he wants is bucking up;
+somebody to say to him, 'Bravo! why, this is splendid!  Just think,
+my boy, what you were, and that not so very long ago--an unwashed,
+hairy savage; your law that of the jungle, your morals those of the
+rabbit-warren.  Now look at yourself--dressed in your little shiny
+hat, your trousers neatly creased, walking with your wife to church
+on Sunday!  Keep on--that's all you've got to do.  In a few more
+centuries your own mother Nature won't know you.
+
+"You women," I continued; "why, a handful of years ago we bought and
+sold you, kept you in cages, took the stick to you when you were not
+spry in doing what you were told.  Did you ever read the history of
+Patient Griselda?"
+
+"Yes," said Robina, "I have."  I gathered from her tone that the Joan
+of Arc expression had departed.  Had Primgate wanted to paint her at
+that particular moment I should have suggested Katherine--during the
+earlier stages--listening to a curtain lecture from Petruchio.  "Are
+you suggesting that all women should take her for a model?"
+
+"No," I said, "I'm not.  Though were we living in Chaucer's time I
+might; and you would not think it even silly.  What I'm impressing
+upon you is that the human race has yet a little way to travel before
+the average man can be regarded as an up-to-date edition of King
+Arthur--the King Arthur of the poetical legend, I mean.  Don't be too
+impatient with him."
+
+"Thinking what a beast he has been ought to make him impatient
+himself with himself," considered Robina.  "He ought to be feeling so
+ashamed of himself as to be willing to do anything."
+
+The owl in the old yew screamed, whether with indignation or
+amusement I cannot tell.
+
+"And woman," I said, "had the power been hers, would she have used it
+to sweeter purpose?  Where is your evidence?  Your Cleopatras,
+Pompadours, Jezebels; your Catherines of Russia, late Empresses of
+China; your Faustines of all ages and all climes; your Mother
+Brownriggs; your Lucretia Borgias, Salomes--I could weary you with
+names.  Your Roman task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house
+slaveys; your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle
+Ages; your modern dames of fashion, decked with the plumage of the
+tortured grove.  There have been other women also--noble women, their
+names like beacon-lights studding the dark waste of history.  So
+there have been noble men--saints, martyrs, heroes.  The sex-line
+divides us physically, not morally.  Woman has been man's accomplice
+in too many crimes to claim to be his judge.  'Male and female
+created He them'--like and like, for good and evil."
+
+By good fortune I found a loose match.  I lighted a fresh cigar.
+
+"Dick, I suppose, is the average man," said Robina.
+
+"Most of us are," I said, "when we are at home.  Carlyle was the
+average man in the little front parlour in Cheyne Row, though, to
+hear fools talk, you might think no married couple outside literary
+circles had ever been known to exchange a cross look.  So was Oliver
+Cromwell in his own palace with the door shut.  Mrs. Cromwell must
+have thought him monstrous silly, placing sticky sweetmeats for his
+guests to sit on--told him so, most likely.  A cheery, kindly man,
+notwithstanding, though given to moods.  He and Mrs. Cromwell seem to
+have rubbed along, on the whole, pretty well together.  Old Sam
+Johnson--great, God-fearing, lovable, cantankerous old brute!  Life
+with him, in a small house on a limited income, must have had its ups
+and downs.  Milton and Frederick the Great were, one hopes, a little
+below the average.  Did their best, no doubt; lacked understanding.
+Not so easy as it looks, living up to the standard of the average
+man.  Very clever people, in particular, find it tiring."
+
+"I shall never marry," said Robina.  "At least, I hope I sha'n't."
+
+"Why 'hope'?" I asked.
+
+"Because I hope I shall never be idiot enough," she answered.  "I see
+it all so clearly.  I wish I didn't.  Love! it's only an ugly thing
+with a pretty name.  It will not be me that he will fall in love
+with.  He will not know me until it is too late.  How can he?  It
+will be merely with the outside of me--my pink-and-white skin, my
+rounded arms.  I feel it sometimes when I see men looking at me, and
+it makes me mad.  And at other times the admiration in their eyes
+pleases me.  And that makes me madder still."
+
+The moon had slipped behind the wood.  She had risen, and, leaning
+against the porch, was standing with her hands clasped.  I fancy she
+had forgotten me.  She seemed to be talking to the night.
+
+"It's only a trick of Nature to make fools of us," she said.  "He
+will tell me I am all the world to him; that his love will outlive
+the stars--will believe it himself at the time, poor fellow!  He will
+call me a hundred pretty names, will kiss my feet and hands.  And if
+I'm fool enough to listen to him, it may last"--she laughed; it was
+rather an ugly laugh--"six months; with luck perhaps a year, if I'm
+careful not to go out in the east wind and come home with a red nose,
+and never let him catch me in curl papers.  It will not be me that he
+will want:  only my youth, and the novelty of me, and the mystery.
+And when that is gone--"
+
+She turned to me.  It was a strange face I saw then in the pale
+light, quite a fierce little face.  She laid her hands upon my
+shoulders, and I felt them cold.  "What comes when it is dead?" she
+said.  "What follows?  You must know.  Tell me.  I want the truth."
+
+Her vehemence had arisen so suddenly.  The little girl I had set out
+to talk with was no longer there.  To my bewilderment, it was a woman
+that was questioning me.
+
+I drew her down beside me.  But the childish face was still stern.
+
+"I want the truth," she said; so that I answered very gravely:
+
+"When the passion is passed; when the glory and the wonder of Desire-
+-Nature's eternal ritual of marriage, solemnising, sanctifying it to
+her commands--is ended; when, sooner or later, some grey dawn finds
+you wandering bewildered in once familiar places, seeking vainly the
+lost palace of youth's dreams; when Love's frenzy is faded, like the
+fragrance of the blossom, like the splendour of the dawn; there will
+remain to you, just what was there before--no more, no less.  If
+passion was all you had to give to one another, God help you.  You
+have had your hour of madness.  It is finished.  If greed of praise
+and worship was your price--well, you have had your payment.  The
+bargain is complete.  If mere hope to be made happy was your lure,
+one pities you.  We do not make each other happy.  Happiness is the
+gift of the gods, not of man.  The secret lies within you, not
+without.  What remains to you will depend not upon what you THOUGHT,
+but upon what you ARE.  If behind the lover there was the man--behind
+the impossible goddess of his love-sick brain some honest, human
+woman, then life lies not behind you, but before you.
+
+"Life is giving, not getting.  That is the mistake we most of us set
+out with.  It is the work that is the joy, not the wages; the game,
+not the score.  The lover's delight is to yield, not to claim.  The
+crown of motherhood is pain.  To serve the State at cost of ease and
+leisure; to spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is
+the man's ambition.  Life is doing, not having.  It is to gain the
+peak the climber strives, not to possess it.  Fools marry thinking
+what they are going to get out of it:  good store of joys and
+pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses--
+the wages of the wanton.  The rewards of marriage are toil, duty,
+responsibility--manhood, womanhood.  Love's baby talk you will have
+outgrown.  You will no longer be his 'Goddess,' 'Angel,' 'Popsy
+Wopsy,' 'Queen of his heart.'  There are finer names than these:
+wife, mother, priestess in the temple of humanity.  Marriage is
+renunciation, the sacrifice of Self upon the altar of the race.  'A
+trick of Nature' you call it.  Perhaps.  But a trick of Nature
+compelling you to surrender yourself to the purposes of God."
+
+I fancy we must have sat in silence for quite a long while; for the
+moon, creeping upward past the wood, had flooded the fields again
+with light before Robina spoke.
+
+"Then all love is needless," she said, "we could do better without
+it, choose with more discretion.  If it is only something that
+worries us for a little while and then passes, what is the sense of
+it?"
+
+"You could ask the same question of Life itself," I said; "'something
+that worries us for a little while, then passes.'  Perhaps the
+'worry,' as you call it, has its uses.  Volcanic upheavals are
+necessary to the making of a world.  Without them the ground would
+remain rock-bound, unfitted for its purposes.  That explosion of
+Youth's pent-up forces that we term Love serves to the making of man
+and woman.  It does not die, it takes new shape.  The blossom fades
+as the fruit forms.  The passion passes to give place to peace.  The
+trembling lover has become the helper, the comforter, the husband."
+
+"But the failures," Robina persisted; "I do not mean the silly or the
+wicked people; but the people who begin by really loving one another,
+only to end in disliking--almost hating one another.  How do THEY get
+there?"
+
+"Sit down," I said, "and I will tell you a story.
+
+"Once upon a time there was a girl, and a boy who loved her.  She was
+a clever, brilliant girl, and she had the face of an angel.  They
+lived near to one another, seeing each other almost daily.  But the
+boy, awed by the difference of their social position, kept his
+secret, as he thought, to himself; dreaming, as youth will, of the
+day when fame and wealth would bridge the gulf between them.  The
+kind look in her eyes, the occasional seeming pressure of her hand,
+he allowed to feed his hopes; and on the morning of his departure for
+London an incident occurred that changed his vague imaginings to set
+resolve.  He had sent on his scanty baggage by the carrier, intending
+to walk the three miles to the station.  It was early in the morning,
+and he had not expected to meet a soul.  But a mile from the village
+he overtook her.  She was reading a book, but she made no pretence
+that the meeting was accidental, leaving him to form what conclusions
+he would.  She walked with him some distance, and he told her of his
+plans and hopes; and she answered him quite simply that she should
+always remember him, always be more glad than she could tell to hear
+of his success.  Near the end of the lane they parted, she wishing
+him in that low sweet woman's voice of hers all things good.  He
+turned, a little farther on, and found that she had also turned.  She
+waved her hand to him, smiling.  And through the long day's journey
+and through many days to come there remained with him that picture of
+her, bringing with it the scent of the pine-woods:  her white hand
+waving to him, her sweet eyes smiling wistfully.
+
+"But fame and fortune are not won so quickly as boys dream, nor is
+life as easy to live bravely as it looks in visions.  It was nearly
+twenty years before they met again.  Neither had married.  Her people
+were dead and she was living alone; and to him the world at last had
+opened her doors.  She was still beautiful.  A gracious, gentle lady,
+she had grown; clothed with that soft sweet dignity that Time bestows
+upon rare women, rendering them fairer with the years.
+
+"To the man it seemed a miracle.  The dream of those early days came
+back to him.  Surely there was nothing now to separate them.  Nothing
+had changed but the years, bringing to them both wider sympathies,
+calmer, more enduring emotions.  She welcomed him again with the old
+kind smile, a warmer pressure of the hand; and, allowing a little
+time to pass for courtesy's sake, he told her what was the truth:
+that he had never ceased to love her, never ceased to keep the vision
+of her fair pure face before him, his ideal of all that man could
+find of help in womanhood.  And her answer, until years later he read
+the explanation, remained a mystery to him.  She told him that she
+loved him, that she had never loved any other man and never should;
+that his love, for so long as he chose to give it to her, she should
+always prize as the greatest gift of her life.  But with that she
+prayed him to remain content.
+
+"He thought perhaps it was a touch of woman's pride, of hurt dignity
+that he had kept silent so long, not trusting her; that perhaps as
+time went by she would change her mind.  But she never did; and after
+awhile, finding that his persistence only pained her, he accepted the
+situation.  She was not the type of woman about whom people talk
+scandal, nor would it have troubled her much had they done so.  Able
+now to work where he would, he took a house in a neighbouring
+village, where for the best part of the year he lived, near to her.
+And to the end they remained lovers."
+
+"I think I understand," said Robina.  "I will tell you afterwards if
+I am wrong."
+
+"I told the story to a woman many years ago," I said, "and she also
+thought she understood.  But she was only half right."
+
+"We will see," said Robina.  "Go on."
+
+"She left a letter, to be given to him after her death, in case he
+survived her; if not, to be burned unopened.  In it she told him her
+reason, or rather her reasons, for having refused him.  It was an odd
+letter.  The 'reasons' sounded so pitiably insufficient.  Until one
+took the pains to examine them in the cold light of experience.  And
+then her letter struck one, not as foolish, but as one of the
+grimmest commentaries upon marriage that perhaps had ever been
+penned.
+
+"It was because she had wished always to remain his ideal; to keep
+their love for one another to the end, untarnished; to be his true
+helpmeet in all things, that she had refused to marry him.
+
+"Had he spoken that morning she had waited for him in the lane--she
+had half hoped, half feared it--she might have given her promise:
+'For Youth,' so she wrote, 'always dreams it can find a new way.'
+She thanked God that he had not.
+
+"'Sooner or later,' so ran the letter, 'you would have learned, Dear,
+that I was neither saint nor angel; but just a woman--such a
+tiresome, inconsistent creature; she would have exasperated you--full
+of a thousand follies and irritabilities that would have marred for
+you all that was good in her.  I wanted you to have of me only what
+was worthy, and this seemed the only way.  Counting the hours to your
+coming, hating the pain of your going, I could always give to you my
+best.  The ugly words, the whims and frets that poison speech--they
+could wait; it was my lover's hour.
+
+"'And you, Dear, were always so tender, so gay.  You brought me joy
+with both your hands.  Would it have been the same, had you been my
+husband?  How could it?  There were times, even as it was, when you
+vexed me.  Forgive me, Dear, I mean it was my fault--ways of thought
+and action that did not fit in with my ways, that I was not large-
+minded enough to pass over.  As my lover, they were but as spots upon
+the sun.  It was easy to control the momentary irritation that they
+caused me.  Time was too precious for even a moment of estrangement.
+As my husband, the jarring note would have been continuous, would
+have widened into discord.  You see, Dear, I was not great enough to
+love ALL of you.  I remember, as a child, how indignant I always felt
+with God when my nurse told me He would not love me because I was
+naughty, that He only loved good children.  It seemed such a poor
+sort of love, that.  Yet that is precisely how we men and women do
+love; taking only what gives us pleasure, repaying the rest with
+anger.  There would have arisen the unkind words that can never be
+recalled; the ugly silences; the gradual withdrawing from one
+another.  I dared not face it.
+
+"'It was not all selfishness.  Truthfully I can say I thought more of
+you than of myself.  I wanted to keep the shadows of life away from
+you.  We men and women are like the flowers.  It is in sunshine that
+we come to our best.  You were my hero.  I wanted you to be great.  I
+wanted you to be surrounded by lovely dreams.  I wanted your love to
+be a thing holy, helpful to you.'
+
+"It was a long letter.  I have given you the gist of it."
+
+Again there was a silence between us.
+
+"You think she did right?" asked Robina.
+
+"I cannot say," I answered; "there are no rules for Life, only for
+the individual."
+
+"I have read it somewhere," said Robina--"where was it?--'Love
+suffers all things, and rejoices.'"
+
+"Maybe in old Thomas Kempis.  I am not sure," I said.
+
+"It seems to me," said Robina, "that the explanation lies in that one
+sentence of hers:  'I was not great enough to love ALL of you.'"
+
+"It seems to me," I said, "that the whole art of marriage is the art
+of getting on with the other fellow.  It means patience, self-
+control, forbearance.  It means the laying aside of our self-conceit
+and admitting to ourselves that, judged by eyes less partial than our
+own, there may be much in us that is objectionable, that calls for
+alteration.  It means toleration for views and opinions diametrically
+opposed to our most cherished convictions.  It means, of necessity,
+the abandonment of many habits and indulgences that however trivial
+have grown to be important to us.  It means the shaping of our own
+desires to the needs of others; the acceptance often of surroundings
+and conditions personally distasteful to us.  It means affection deep
+and strong enough to bear away the ugly things of life--its quarrels,
+wrongs, misunderstandings--swiftly and silently into the sea of
+forgetfulness.  It means courage, good humour, commonsense."
+
+"That is what I am saying," explained Robina.  "It means loving him
+even when he's naughty."
+
+Dick came across the fields.  Robina rose and slipped into the house.
+
+"You are looking mighty solemn, Dad," said Dick.
+
+"Thinking of Life, Dick," I confessed.  "Of the meaning and the
+explanation of it."
+
+"Yes, it's a problem, Life," admitted Dick.
+
+"A bit of a teaser," I agreed.
+
+We smoked in silence for awhile.
+
+"Loving a good woman must be a tremendous help to a man," said Dick.
+
+He looked very handsome, very gallant, his boyish face flashing
+challenge to the Fates.
+
+"Tremendous, Dick," I agreed.
+
+Robina called to him that his supper was ready.  He knocked the ashes
+from his pipe, and followed her into the house.  Their laughing
+voices came to me broken through the half-closed doors.  From the
+night around me rose a strange low murmur.  It seemed to me as though
+above the silence I heard the far-off music of the Mills of God.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+
+I fancy Veronica is going to be an authoress.  Her mother thinks this
+may account for many things about her that have been troubling us.
+The story never got far.  It was laid aside for the more alluring
+work of play-writing, and apparently forgotten.  I came across the
+copy-book containing her "Rough Notes" the other day.  There is
+decided flavour about them.  I transcribe selections; the spelling,
+as before, being my own.
+
+"The scene is laid in the Moon.  But everything is just the same as
+down here.  With one exception.  The children rule.  The grown-ups do
+not like it.  But they cannot help it.  Something has happened to
+them.  They don't know what.  And the world is as it used to be.  In
+the sweet old story-books.  Before sin came.  There are fairies that
+dance o' nights.  And Witches.  That lure you.  And then turn you
+into things.  And a dragon who lives in a cave.  And springs out at
+people.  And eats them.  So that you have to be careful.  And all the
+animals talk.  And there are giants.  And lots of magic.  And it is
+the children who know everything.  And what to do for it.  And they
+have to teach the grown-ups.  And the grown-ups don't believe half of
+it.  And are far too fond of arguing.  Which is a sore trial to the
+children.  But they have patience, and are just.
+
+"Of course the grown-ups have to go to school.  They have much to
+learn.  Poor things!  And they hate it.  They take no interest in
+fairy lore.  And what would happen to them if they got wrecked on a
+Desert Island they don't seem to care.  And then there are languages.
+What they will need when they come to be children.  And have to talk
+to all the animals.  And magic.  Which is deep.  And they hate it.
+And say it is rot.  They are full of tricks.  One catches them
+reading trashy novels.  Under the desk.  All about love.  Which is
+wasting their children's money.  And God knows it is hard enough to
+earn.  But the children are not angry with them.  Remembering how
+they felt themselves.  When they were grown up.  Only firm.
+
+"The children give them plenty of holidays.  Because holidays are
+good for everyone.  They freshen you up.  But the grown-ups are very
+stupid.  And do not care for sensible games.  Such as Indians.  And
+Pirates.  What would sharpen their faculties.  And so fit them for
+the future.  They only care to play with a ball.  Which is of no
+help.  To the stern realities of life.  Or talk.  Lord, how they
+talk!
+
+"There is one grown-up.  Who is very clever.  He can talk about
+everything.  But it leads to nothing.  And spoils the party.  So they
+send him to bed.  And there are two grown-ups.  A male and a female.
+And they talk love.  All the time.  Even on fine days.  Which is
+maudlin.  But the children are patient with them.  Knowing it takes
+all sorts.  To make a world.  And trusting they will grow out of it.
+And of course there are grown-ups who are good.  And a comfort to
+their children.
+
+"And everything the children like is good.  And wholesome.  And
+everything the grown-ups like is bad for them.  AND THEY MUSTN'T HAVE
+IT.  They clamour for tea and coffee.  What undermines their nervous
+system.  And waste their money in the tuck shop.  Upon chops.  And
+turtle soup.  And the children have to put them to bed.  And give
+them pills.  Till they feel better.
+
+"There is a little girl named Prue.  Who lives with a little boy
+named Simon.  They mean well.  But haven't much sense.  They have two
+grown-ups.  A male and a female.  Named Peter and Martha.
+Respectively.  They are just the ordinary grown-ups.  Neither better
+nor worse.  And much might be done with them.  By kindness.  But Prue
+and Simon GO THE WRONG WAY TO WORK.  It is blame blame all day long.
+But as for praise.  Oh never!
+
+"One summer's day Prue and Simon take Peter for a walk.  In the
+country.  And they meet a cow.  And they think this a good
+opportunity.  To test Peter's knowledge.  Of languages.  So they tell
+him to talk to the cow.  And he talks to the cow.  And the cow don't
+understand him.  And he don't understand the cow.  And they are mad
+with him.  'What is the use,' they say.  'Of our paying expensive
+fees.  To have you taught the language.  By a first-class cow.  And
+when you come out into the country.  You can't talk it.'  And he says
+he did talk it.  But they will not listen to him.  But go on raving.
+And in the end it turns out.  IT WAS A JERSEY COW!  What talked a
+dialect.  So of course he couldn't understand it.  But did they
+apologise?  Oh dear no.
+
+"Another time.  One morning at breakfast.  Martha didn't like her
+raspberry vinegar.  So she didn't drink it.  And Simon came into the
+nursery.  And he saw that Martha hadn't drunk her raspberry vinegar.
+And he asked her why.  And she said she didn't like it.  Because it
+was nasty.  And he said it wasn't nasty.  And that she OUGHT to like
+it.  And how it was shocking.  The way grown-ups nowadays grumbled.
+At good wholesome food.  Provided for them by their too-indulgent
+children.  And how when HE was a grown-up.  He would never have
+dared.  And so on.  All in the usual style.  And to prove it wasn't
+nasty.  He poured himself out a cupful.  And drank it off.  In a
+gulp.
+
+And he said it was delicious.  And turned pale.  And left the room.
+
+"And Prue came into the nursery.  And she saw that Martha hadn't
+drunk her raspberry vinegar.  And she asked her why.  And Martha told
+her how she didn't like it.  Because it was nasty.  And Prue told her
+she ought to be ashamed of herself.  For not liking it.  Because it
+was good for her.  And really very nice.  And anyhow she'd GOT to
+like it.  And not get stuffing herself up with messy tea and coffee.
+Because she wouldn't have it.  And there was an end of it.  And so
+on.  And to prove it was all right.  She poured herself out a cupful.
+And drank it off.  In a gulp.  And she said there was nothing wrong
+with it.  Nothing whatever.  And turned pale.  And left the room.
+
+"And it wasn't raspberry vinegar.  But just red ink.  What had got
+put into the raspberry vinegar decanter.  By an oversight.  And they
+needn't have been ill at all.  If only they had listened.  To poor
+old Martha.  But no.  That was their fixed idea.  That grown-ups
+hadn't any sense.  At all.  What is a mistake.  As one perceives."
+
+Other characters had been sketched, some of them to be abandoned
+after a few bold touches:  the difficulty of avoiding too close a
+portraiture to the living original having apparently proved irksome.
+Against one such, evidently an attempt to help Dick see himself in
+his true colours, I find this marginal, note in pencil:  "Better not.
+Might make him ratty."  Opposite to another--obviously of Mrs. St.
+Leonard, and with instinct for alliteration--is scribbled; "Too
+terribly true.  She'd twig it."
+
+Another character is that of a gent:  "With a certain gift.  For
+telling stories.  Some of them NOT BAD."  A promising party, on the
+whole.  Indeed, one might say, judging from description, a quite
+rational person:  "WHEN NOT ON THE RANTAN.  But inconsistent."  He is
+the grown-up of a little girl:  "Not beautiful.  But strangely
+attractive.  Whom we will call Enid." One gathers that if all the
+children had been Enids, then surely the last word in worlds had been
+said.  She has only this one grown-up of her very own; but she makes
+it her business to adopt and reform all the incorrigible old folk the
+other children have despaired of.  It is all done by kindness.  "She
+is EVER patient.  And just."  Prominent among her numerous PROTEGEES
+is a military man, an elderly colonel; until she took him in hand,
+the awful example of what a grown-up might easily become, left to the
+care of incompetent infants.  He defies his own child, a virtuous
+youth, but "lacking in sympathy;" is rude to his little nephews and
+nieces; a holy terror to his governess.  He uses wicked words, picked
+up from retired pirates.  "Of course without understanding.  Their
+terrible significance."  He steals the Indian's fire-water.  "What
+few can partake of.  With impunity."  Certainly not the Colonel.
+"Can this be he!  This gibbering wreck!"  He hides cigars in a hollow
+tree, and smokes on the sly.  He plays truant.  Lures other old
+gentlemen away from their lessons to join him.  They are discovered
+in the woods, in a cave, playing whist for sixpenny points.
+
+Does Enid storm and bullyrag; threaten that if ever she catches him
+so much as looking at a card again she will go straight out and tell
+the dragon, who will in his turn be so shocked that in all
+probability he will decide on coming back with her to kill and eat
+the Colonel on the spot?  No.  "Such are not her methods."  Instead
+she smiles:  "indulgently."  She says it is only natural for grown-
+ups to like playing cards.  She is not angry with him.  And there is
+no need for him to run away and hide in a nasty damp cave.  "SHE
+HERSELF WILL PLAY WHIST WITH HIM."  The effect upon the Colonel is
+immediate:  he bursts into tears.  She plays whist with him in the
+garden:  "After school hours.  When he has been GOOD."  Double dummy,
+one presumes.  One leaves the Colonel, in the end, cured of his
+passion for whist.  Whether as the consequence of her play or her
+influence the "Rough Notes" give no indication.
+
+In the play, I am inclined to think, Veronica received assistance.
+The house had got itself finished early in September.  Young Bute has
+certainly done wonders.  We performed it in the empty billiard-room,
+followed by a one-act piece of my own.  The occasion did duty as a
+house-warming.  We had quite a crowd, and ended up with a dance.
+Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, except young Bertie St.
+Leonard, who played the Prince, and could not get out of his helmet
+in time for supper.  It was a good helmet, but had been fastened
+clumsily; and inexperienced people trying to help had only succeeded
+in jambing all the screws.  Not only wouldn't it come off, it would
+not even open for a drink.  All thought it an excellent joke, with
+the exception of young Herbert St. Leonard.  Our Mayor, a cheerful
+little man and very popular, said that it ought to be sent to PUNCH.
+The local reporter reminded him that the late John Leech had already
+made use of precisely the same incident for a comic illustration,
+afterwards remembering that it was not Leech, but the late Phil May.
+He seemed to think this ended the matter.  St. Leonard and the Vicar,
+who are rival authorities upon the subject, fell into an argument
+upon armour in general, with special reference to the fourteenth
+century.  Each used the boy's head to confirm his own theory, passing
+it triumphantly from one to the other.  We had to send off young
+Hopkins in the donkey-cart for the blacksmith.  I have found out, by
+the way, how it is young Hopkins makes our donkey go.  Young Hopkins
+argues it is far less brutal than whacking him, especially after
+experience has proved that he evidently does not know why you are
+whacking him.  I am not at all sure the boy is not right.
+
+Janie played the Fairy Godmamma in a white wig and panniers.  She
+will make a beautiful old lady.  The white hair gives her the one
+thing that she lacks:  distinction.  I found myself glancing
+apprehensively round the room, wishing we had not invited so many
+eligible bachelors.  Dick is making me anxious.  The sense of his own
+unworthiness, which has come to him quite suddenly, and apparently
+with all the shock of a new discovery, has completely unnerved him.
+It is a healthy sentiment, and does him good.  But I do not want it
+carried to the length of losing her.  The thought of what he might
+one day bring home has been a nightmare to me ever since he left
+school.  I suppose it is to most fathers.  Especially if one thinks
+of the women one loved oneself when in the early twenties.  A large
+pale-faced girl, who served in a bun-shop in the Strand, is the first
+I can recollect.  How I trembled when by chance her hand touched
+mine!  I cannot recall a single attraction about her except her size,
+yet for nearly six months I lunched off pastry and mineral waters
+merely to be near her.  To this very day an attack of indigestion
+will always recreate her image in my mind.  Another was a thin,
+sallow girl, but with magnificent eyes, I met one afternoon in the
+South Kensington Museum.  She was a brainless, vixenish girl, but the
+memory of her eyes would always draw me back to her.  More than two-
+thirds of our time together we spent in violent quarrels; and all my
+hopes of eternity I would have given to make her my companion for
+life.  But for Luck, in the shape of a well-to-do cab proprietor, as
+great an idiot as myself I might have done it.  The third was a
+chorus girl:  on the whole, the best of the bunch.  Her father was a
+coachman, and she had ten brothers and sisters, most of them doing
+well in service.  And she was succeeded--if I have the order correct-
+-by the ex-wife of a solicitor, a sprightly lady; according to her
+own account the victim of complicated injustice.  I daresay there
+were others, if I took the time to think; but not one of them can I
+remember without returning thanks to Providence for having lost her.
+What is one to do?  There are days in springtime when a young man
+ought not to be allowed outside the house.  Thank Heaven and
+Convention it is not the girls who propose!  Few women, who would
+choose the right moment to put their hands upon a young man's
+shoulders, and, looking into his eyes, ask him to marry them next
+week, would receive No for an answer.  It is only our shyness that
+saves us.  A wise friend of mine, who has observed much, would have
+all those marrying under five-and-twenty divorced by automatic
+effluxion of time at forty, leaving the few who had chosen
+satisfactorily to be reunited if they wished:  his argument being
+that to condemn grown men and women to abide by the choice of
+inexperienced boys and girls is unjust and absurd.  There were nice
+girls I could have fallen in love with.  They never occurred to me.
+It would seem as if a man had to learn taste in women as in all other
+things, namely, by education.  Here and there may exist the born
+connoisseur.  But with most of us our first instincts are towards
+vulgarity.  It is Barrie, I think, who says that if only there were
+silly women enough to go round, good women would never get a look in.
+It is certainly remarkable, the number of sweet old maids one meets.
+Almost as remarkable as the number of stupid, cross-grained wives.
+As I tell Dick, I have no desire for a daughter-in-law of whom he
+feels himself worthy.  If he can't do better than that he had best
+remain single.  Janie and he, if I know anything of life, are just
+suited for one another.  Helpful people take their happiness in
+helping.  I knew just such another, once:  a sweet, industrious,
+sensible girl.  She made the mistake of marrying a thoroughly good
+man.  There was nothing for her to do.  She ended by losing all
+interest in him, devoting herself to a Home in the East End for the
+reformation of newsboys.  It was a pitiful waste:  so many women
+would have been glad of him; while to the ordinary sinful man she
+would have been a life-long comfort.  I must have a serious talk to
+Dick.  I shall point out what a good thing it will be for her.  I can
+see Dick keeping her busy and contented for the rest of her days.
+
+Veronica played the Princess,--with little boy Foy--"Sir Robert of
+the Curse"--as her page.  Anything more dignified has, I should say,
+rarely been seen upon the English stage.  Among her wedding presents
+were:  Two Votes for Women, presented by the local Fire Brigade; a
+Flying Machine of "proved stability.  Might be used as a bathing
+tent;" a National Theatre, "with Cold Water Douche in Basement for
+reception of English Dramatists;" Recipe for building a Navy, without
+paying for it, "Gift of that great Financial Expert, Sir Hocus
+Pocus;" one Conscientious Income Taxpayer, "has been driven by a
+Lady;" two Socialists in agreement as to what it means, "smaller one
+slightly damaged;" one Contented Farmer, "Babylonian Period;" and one
+extra-sized bottle, "Solution of the Servant Problem."
+
+Dick played the "Dragon without a Tail."  We had to make him without
+a tail owing to the smallness of the stage.  He had once had a tail.
+But that was a long story:  added to which there was not time to tell
+it.  Little Sally St. Leonard played his wife, and Robina was his
+mother-in-law.  So much depends upon one's mood.  What an ocean of
+boredom might be saved if science could but give us a barometer
+foretelling us our changes of temperament!  How much more to our
+comfort we could plan our lives, knowing that on Monday, say, we
+should be feeling frivolous; on Saturday "dull to bad-tempered."
+
+I took a man once to see The Private Secretary.  I began by enjoying
+myself, and ended by feeling ashamed of myself and vexed with the
+scheme of creation.  That authors should write such plays, that
+actors should be willing to degrade our common nature by appearing in
+them was explainable, he supposed, by the law of supply and demand.
+What he could not understand was how the public could contrive to
+extract amusement from them.  What was there funny in seeing a poor
+gentleman shut up in a box?  Why should everybody roar with laughter
+when he asked for a bun?  People asked for buns every day--people in
+railway refreshment rooms, in aerated bread shops.  Where was the
+joke?  A month later I found myself by chance occupying the seat just
+behind him at the pantomime.  The low comedian was bathing a baby,
+and tears of merriment were rolling down his cheeks.  To me the whole
+business seemed painful and revolting.  We were being asked to find
+delight in the spectacle of a father--scouring down an infant of
+tender years with a scrubbing-brush.  How women--many of them
+mothers--could remain through such an exhibition without rising in
+protest appeared to me an argument against female suffrage.  A lady
+entered, the wife, so the programme informed me, of a Baron!  All I
+can say is that a more vulgar, less prepossessing female I never wish
+to meet.  I even doubted her sobriety.  She sat down plump upon the
+baby.  She must have been a woman rising sixteen stone, and for one
+minute fifteen seconds by my watch the whole house rocked with
+laughter.  That the thing was only a stage property I felt was no
+excuse.  The humour--heaven save the mark--lay in the supposition
+that what we were witnessing was the agony and death--for no child
+could have survived that woman's weight--of a real baby.  Had I been
+able to tap myself beforehand I should have learned that on that
+particular Saturday I was going to be "set-serious."  Instead of
+booking a seat for the pantomime I should have gone to a lecture on
+Egyptian pottery which was being given by a friend of mine at the
+London Library, and have had a good time.
+
+Children could tap their parents, warn each other that father was
+"going down;" that mother next week was likely to be "gusty."
+Children themselves might hang out their little barometers.  I
+remember a rainy day in a country house during the Christmas
+holidays.  We had among us a Member of Parliament:  a man of sunny
+disposition, extremely fond of children.  He said it was awfully hard
+lines on the little beggars cooped up in a nursery; and borrowing his
+host's motor-coat, pretended he was a bear.  He plodded round on his
+hands and knees and growled a good deal, and the children sat on the
+sofa and watched him.  But they didn't seem to be enjoying it, not
+much; and after a quarter of an hour or so he noticed this himself.
+He thought it was, maybe, that they were tired of bears, and fancied
+that a whale might rouse them.  He turned the table upside down and
+placed the children in it on three chairs, explaining to them that
+they were ship-wrecked sailors on a raft, and that they must be
+careful the whale did not get underneath it and upset them.  He
+draped a sheet over the towel-horse to represent an iceberg, and
+rolled himself up in a mackintosh and flopped about the floor on his
+stomach, butting his head occasionally against the table in order to
+suggest to them their danger.  The attitude of the children still
+remained that of polite spectators.  True, the youngest boy did make
+the suggestion of borrowing the kitchen toasting-fork, and employing
+it as a harpoon; but even this appeared to be the outcome rather of a
+desire to please than of any warmer interest; and, the whale
+objecting, the idea fell through.  After that he climbed up on the
+dresser and announced to them that he was an ourang-outang.  They
+watched him break a soup-tureen, and then the eldest boy, stepping
+out into the middle of the room, held up his arm, and the Member of
+Parliament, somewhat surprised, sat down on the dresser and listened.
+
+"Please, sir," said the eldest boy, "we're awfully sorry.  It's
+awfully good of you, sir.  But somehow we're not feeling in the mood
+for wild beasts this afternoon."
+
+The Member of Parliament brought them down into the drawing-room,
+where we had music; and the children, at their own request, were
+allowed to sing hymns.  The next day they came of their own accord,
+and asked the Member of Parliament to play at beasts with them; but
+it seemed he had letters to write.
+
+There are times when jokes about mothers-in-law strike me as lacking
+both in taste and freshness.  On this particular evening they came to
+me bringing with them all the fragrance of the days that are no more.
+The first play I ever saw dealt with the subject of the mother-in-
+law--the "Problem" I think it was called in those days.  The occasion
+was an amateur performance given in aid of the local Ragged School.
+A cousin of mine, lately married, played the wife; and my aunt, I
+remember, got up and walked out in the middle of the second act.
+Robina, in spectacles and an early Victorian bonnet, reminded me of
+her.  Young Bute played a comic cabman.  It was at the old Haymarket,
+in Buckstone's time, that I first met the cabman of art and
+literature.  Dear bibulous, becoated creature, with ever-wrathful
+outstretched palm and husky "'Ere!  Wot's this?"  How good it was to
+see him once again!  I felt I wanted to climb over the foot-lights
+and shake him by the hand.  The twins played a couple of Young Turks,
+much concerned about their constitutions; and made quite a hit with a
+topical duet to the refrain:  "And so you see The reason he Is not
+the Boss for us."  We all agreed it was a pun worthy of Tom Hood
+himself.  The Vicar thought he had heard it before, but this seemed
+improbable.  There was a unanimous call for Author, giving rise to
+sounds of discussion behind the curtain.  Eventually the whole
+company appeared, with Veronica in the centre.  I had noticed
+throughout that the centre of the stage appeared to be Veronica's
+favourite spot.  I can see the makings of a leading actress in
+Veronica.
+
+In my own piece, which followed, Robina and Bute played a young
+married couple who do not know how to quarrel.  It has always struck
+me how much more satisfactorily people quarrel on the stage than in
+real life.  On the stage the man, having made up his mind--to have it
+out, enters and closes the door.  He lights a cigarette; if not a
+teetotaller mixes himself a brandy-and-soda.  His wife all this time
+is careful to remain silent.  Quite evident it is that he is
+preparing for her benefit something unpleasant, and chatter might
+disturb him.  To fill up the time she toys with a novel or touches
+softly the keys of the piano until he is quite comfortable and ready
+to begin.  He glides into his subject with the studied calm of one
+with all the afternoon before him.  She listens to him in rapt
+attention.  She does not dream of interrupting him; would scorn the
+suggestion of chipping in with any little notion of her own likely to
+disarrange his train of thought.  All she does when he pauses, as
+occasionally he has to for the purpose of taking breath, is to come
+to his assistance with short encouraging remarks, such, for instance,
+as:  "Well."  "You think that."  "And if I did?"  Her object seems to
+be to help him on.  "Go on," she says from time to time, bitterly.
+And he goes on.  Towards the end, when he shows signs of easing up,
+she puts it to him as one sportsman to another:  Is he quite
+finished?  Is that all?  Sometimes it isn't.  As often as not he has
+been saving the pick of the basket for the last.
+
+"No," he says, "that is not all.  There is something else!"
+
+That is quite enough for her.  That is all she wanted to know.  She
+merely asked in case there might be.  As it appears there is, she re-
+settles herself in her chair and is again all ears.
+
+When it does come--when he is quite sure there is nothing he has
+forgotten, no little point that he has overlooked, she rises.
+
+"I have listened patiently," she begins, "to all that you have said."
+(The devil himself could not deny this.  "Patience" hardly seems the
+word.  "Enthusiastically" she might almost have said).  "Now"--with
+rising inflection--"you listen to me."
+
+The stage husband--always the gentleman--bows;--stiffly maybe, but
+quite politely; and prepares in his turn to occupy the role of dumb
+but dignified defendant.  To emphasise the coming change in their
+positions, the lady most probably crosses over to what has hitherto
+been his side of the stage; while he, starting at the same moment,
+and passing her about the centre, settles himself down in what must
+be regarded as the listener's end of the room.  We then have the
+whole story over again from her point of view; and this time it is
+the gentleman who would bite off his tongue rather than make a retort
+calculated to put the lady off.
+
+In the end it is the party who is in the right that conquers.  Off
+the stage this is more or less of a toss-up; on the stage, never.  If
+justice be with the husband, then it is his voice that, gradually
+growing louder and louder, rings at last triumphant through the
+house.  The lady sees herself that she has been to blame, and wonders
+why it did not occur to her before--is grateful for the revelation,
+and asks to be forgiven.  If, on the other hand, it was the husband
+who was at fault, then it is the lady who will be found eventually
+occupying the centre of the stage; the miserable husband who, morally
+speaking, will be trying to get under the table.
+
+Now, in real life things don't happen quite like this.  What the
+quarrel in real life suffers from is want of system.  There is no
+order, no settled plan.  There is much too much go-as-you-please
+about the quarrel in real life, and the result is naturally pure
+muddle.  The man, turning things over in the morning while shaving,
+makes up his mind to have this matter out and have done with it.  He
+knows exactly what he is going to say.  He repeats it to himself at
+intervals during the day.  He will first say This, and then he will
+go on to That; while he is about it he will perhaps mention the
+Other.  He reckons it will take him a quarter of an hour.  Which will
+just give him time to dress for dinner.
+
+After it is over, and he looks at his watch, he finds it has taken
+him longer than that.  Added to which he has said next to nothing--
+next to nothing, that is, of what he meant to say.  It went wrong
+from the very start.  As a matter of fact there wasn't any start.  He
+entered the room and closed the door.  That is as far as he got.  The
+cigarette he never even lighted.  There ought to have been a box of
+matches on the mantelpiece behind the photo-frame.  And of course
+there were none there.  For her to fly into a temper merely because
+he reminded her that he had spoken about this very matter at least a
+hundred times before, and accuse him of going about his own house
+"stealing" his own matches was positively laughable.  They had
+quarrelled for about five minutes over those wretched matches, and
+then for another ten because he said that women had no sense of
+humour, and she wanted to know how he knew.  After that there had
+cropped up the last quarter's gas-bill, and that by a process still
+mysterious to him had led them into the subject of his behaviour on
+the night of the Hockey Club dance.  By an effort of almost
+supernatural self-control he had contrived at length to introduce the
+subject he had come home half an hour earlier than usual on purpose
+to discuss.  It didn't interest her in the least.  What she was full
+of by this time was a girl named Arabella Jones.  She got in quite a
+lot while he was vainly trying to remember where he had last seen the
+damned girl.  He had just succeeded in getting back to his own topic
+when the Cuddiford girl from next door dashed in without a hat to
+borrow a tuning-fork.  It had been quite a business finding the
+tuning-fork, and when she was gone they had to begin all over again.
+They had quarrelled about the drawing-room carpet; about her sister
+Florrie's birthday present; and the way he drove the motor-car.  It
+had taken them over an hour and a half, and rather than waste the
+tickets for the theatre, they had gone without their dinner.  The
+matter of the cold chisel still remained to be thrashed out.
+
+It had occurred to me that through the medium of the drama I might
+show how the domestic quarrel could so easily be improved.  Adolphus
+Goodbody, a worthy young man deeply attached to his wife, feels
+nevertheless that the dinners she is inflicting upon him are
+threatening with permanent damage his digestive system.  He
+determines, come what may, to insist upon a change.  Elvira Goodbody,
+a charming girl, admiring and devoted to her husband, is
+notwithstanding a trifle en tete, especially when her domestic
+arrangements happen to be the theme of discussion.  Adolphus, his
+courage screwed to the sticking-point, broaches the difficult
+subject; and for the first half of the act my aim was to picture the
+progress of the human quarrel, not as it should be, but as it is.
+They never reach the cook.  The first mention of the word "dinner"
+reminds Elvira (quick to perceive that argument is brewing, and alive
+to the advantage of getting in first) that twice the month before he
+had dined out, not returning till the small hours of the morning.
+What she wants to know is where this sort of thing is going to end?
+If the purpose of Freemasonry is the ruin of the home and the
+desertion of women, then all she has to say--it turns out to be quite
+a good deal.  Adolphus, when able to get in a word, suggests that
+eleven o'clock at the latest can hardly be described as the "small
+hours of the morning":  the fault with women is that they never will
+confine themselves to the simple truth.  From that point onwards, as
+can be imagined, the scene almost wrote itself.  They have passed
+through all the customary stages, and are planning, with exaggerated
+calm, arrangements for the separation which each now feels to be
+inevitable, when a knock comes to the front-door, and there enters a
+mutual friend.
+
+Their hasty attempts to cover up the traces of mental disorder with
+which the atmosphere is strewed do not deceive him.  There has been,
+let us say, a ripple on the waters of perfect agreement.  Come!  What
+was it all about?
+
+"About!"  They look from one to the other.  Surely it would be
+simpler to tell him what it had NOT been about.  It had been about
+the parrot, about her want of punctuality, about his using the
+butter-knife for the marmalade, about a pair of slippers he had lost
+at Christmas, about the education question, and her dressmaker's
+bill, and his friend George, and the next-door dog -
+
+The mutual friend cuts short the catalogue.  Clearly there is nothing
+for it but to begin the quarrel all over again; and this time, if
+they will put themselves into his hands, he feels sure he can promise
+victory to whichever one is in the right.
+
+Elvira--she has a sweet, impulsive nature--throws her arms around
+him:  that is all she wants.  If only Adolphus could be brought to
+see!  Adolphus grips him by the hand.  If only Elvira would listen to
+sense!
+
+The mutual friend--he is an old stage-manager--arranges the scene:
+Elvira in easy-chair by fire with crochet.  Enter Adolphus.  He
+lights a cigarette; flings the match on the floor; with his hands in
+his pockets paces up and down the room; kicks a footstool out of his
+way.
+
+"Tell me when I am to begin," says Elvira.
+
+The mutual friend promises to give her the right cue.
+
+Adolphus comes to a halt in the centre of the room.
+
+"I am sorry, my dear," he says, "but there is something I must say to
+you--something that may not be altogether pleasant for you to hear."
+
+To which Elvira, still crocheting, replies, "Oh, indeed.  And pray
+what may that be?"
+
+This was not Elvira's own idea.  Springing from her chair, she had
+got as far as:  "Look here.  If you have come home early merely for
+the purpose of making a row--" before the mutual friend could stop
+her.  The mutual friend was firm.  Only by exacting strict obedience
+could he guarantee a successful issue.  What she had got to say was,
+"Oh, indeed.  Etcetera."  The mutual friend had need of all his tact
+to prevent its becoming a quarrel of three.
+
+Adolphus, allowed to proceed, explained that the subject about which
+he wished to speak was the subject of dinner.  The mutual friend this
+time was beforehand.  Elvira's retort to that was:  "Dinner!  You
+complain of the dinners I provide for you?" enabling him to reply,
+"Yes, madam, I do complain," and to give reasons.  It seemed to
+Elvira that the mutual friend had lost his senses.  To tell her to
+"wait"; that "her time would come"; of what use was that!  Half of
+what she wanted to say would be gone out of her head.  Adolphus
+brought to a conclusion his criticism of Elvira's kitchen; and then
+Elvira, incapable of restraining herself further, rose majestically.
+
+The mutual friend was saved the trouble of suppressing Adolphus.
+Until Elvira had finished Adolphus never got an opening.  He grumbled
+at their dinners.  He! who can dine night after night with his
+precious Freemasons.  Does he think she likes them any better?  She,
+doomed to stay at home and eat them.  What does he take her for?  An
+ostrich?  Whose fault is it that they keep an incompetent cook too
+old to learn and too obstinate to want to?  Whose old family servant
+was she?  Not Elvira's.  It has been to please Adolphus that she has
+suffered the woman.  And this is her reward.  This!  She breaks down.
+Adolphus is astonished and troubled.  Personally he never liked the
+woman.  Faithful she may have been, but a cook never.  His own idea,
+had he been consulted, would have been a small pension.  Elvira falls
+upon his neck.  Why did he not say so before?  Adolphus presses her
+to his bosom.  If only he had known!  They promise the mutual friend
+never to quarrel again without his assistance.
+
+The acting all round was quite good.  Our curate, who is a bachelor,
+said it taught a lesson.  Veronica had tears in her eyes.  She
+whispered to me that she thought it beautiful.  There is more in
+Veronica than people think.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+
+I am sorry the house is finished.  There is a proverb:  "Fools build
+houses for wise men to live in."  It depends upon what you are after.
+The fool gets the fun, and the wise men the bricks and mortar.  I
+remember a whimsical story I picked up at the bookstall of the Gare
+de Lyon.  I read it between Paris and Fontainebleau many years ago.
+Three friends, youthful Bohemians, smoking their pipes after the
+meagre dinner of a cheap restaurant in the Latin Quarter, fell to
+thinking of their poverty, of the long and bitter struggle that lay
+before them.
+
+"My themes are so original," sighed the Musician.  "It will take me a
+year of fete days to teach the public to understand them, even if
+ever I do succeed.  And meanwhile I shall live unknown, neglected;
+watching the men without ideals passing me by in the race, splashed
+with the mud from their carriage-wheels as I beat the pavements with
+worn shoes.  It is really a most unjust world."
+
+"An abominable world," agreed the Poet.  "But think of me!  My case
+is far harder than yours.  Your gift lies within you.  Mine is to
+translate what lies around me; and that, for so far ahead as I can
+see, will always be the shadow side of life.  To develop my genius to
+its fullest I need the sunshine of existence.  My soul is being
+starved for lack of the beautiful things of life.  A little of the
+wealth that vulgar people waste would make a great poet for France.
+It is not only of myself that I am thinking."
+
+The Painter laughed.  "I cannot soar to your heights," he said.
+"Frankly speaking, it is myself that chiefly appeals to me.  Why not?
+I give the world Beauty, and in return what does it give me?  This
+dingy restaurant, where I eat ill-flavoured food off hideous
+platters, a foul garret giving on to chimney-pots.  After long years
+of ill-requited labour I may--as others have before me--come into my
+kingdom:  possess my studio in the Champs Elysees, my fine house at
+Neuilly; but the prospect of the intervening period, I confess,
+appals me."
+
+Absorbed in themselves, they had not noticed that a stranger, seated
+at a neighbouring table, had been listening with attention.  He rose
+and, apologising with easy grace for intrusion into a conversation he
+could hardly have avoided overhearing, requested permission to be of
+service.  The restaurant was dimly lighted; the three friends on
+entering had chosen its obscurest corner.  The Stranger appeared to
+be well-dressed; his voice and bearing suggested the man of affairs;
+his face--what feeble light there was being behind him--remained in
+shadow.
+
+The three friends eyed him furtively:  possibly some rich but
+eccentric patron of the arts; not beyond the bounds of speculation
+that he was acquainted with their work, had read the Poet's verses in
+one of the minor magazines, had stumbled upon some sketch of the
+Painter's while bargain-hunting among the dealers of the Quartier St.
+Antoine, been struck by the beauty of the Composer's Nocturne in F
+heard at some student's concert; having made enquiries concerning
+their haunts, had chosen this method of introducing himself.  The
+young men made room for him with feelings of hope mingled with
+curiosity.  The affable Stranger called for liqueurs, and handed
+round his cigar-case.  And almost his first words brought them joy.
+
+"Before we go further," said the smiling Stranger, "it is my pleasure
+to inform you that all three of you are destined to become great."
+
+The liqueurs to their unaccustomed palates were proving potent.  The
+Stranger's cigars were singularly aromatic.  It seemed the most
+reasonable thing in the world that the Stranger should be thus able
+to foretell to them their future.
+
+"Fame, fortune will be yours," continued the agreeable Stranger.
+"All things delightful will be to your hand:  the adoration of women,
+the honour of men, the incense of Society, joys spiritual and
+material, beauteous surroundings, choice foods, all luxury and ease,
+the world your pleasure-ground."
+
+The stained walls of the dingy restaurant were fading into space
+before the young men's eyes.  They saw themselves as gods walking in
+the garden of their hearts' desires.
+
+"But, alas," went on the Stranger--and with the first note of his
+changed voice the visions vanished, the dingy walls came back--"these
+things take time.  You will, all three, be well past middle-age
+before you will reap the just reward of your toil and talents.
+Meanwhile--" the sympathetic Stranger shrugged his shoulders--"it is
+the old story:  genius spending its youth battling for recognition
+against indifference, ridicule, envy; the spirit crushed by its
+sordid environment, the drab monotony of narrow days.  There will be
+winter nights when you will tramp the streets, cold, hungry, forlorn;
+summer days when you will hide in your attics, ashamed of the
+sunlight on your ragged garments; chill dawns when you will watch
+wild-eyed the suffering of those you love, helpless by reason of your
+poverty to alleviate their pain."
+
+The Stranger paused while the ancient waiter replenished the empty
+glasses.  The three friends drank in silence.
+
+"I propose," said the Stranger, with a pleasant laugh, "that we pass
+over this customary period of probation--that we skip the intervening
+years--arrive at once at our true destination."
+
+The Stranger, leaning back in his chair, regarded the three friends
+with a smile they felt rather than saw.  And something about the
+Stranger--they could not have told themselves what--made all things
+possible.
+
+"A quite simple matter," the Stranger assured them.  "A little sleep
+and a forgetting, and the years lie behind us.  Come, gentlemen.
+Have I your consent?"
+
+It seemed a question hardly needing answer.  To escape at one stride
+the long, weary struggle; to enter without fighting into victory!
+The young men looked at one another.  And each one, thinking of his
+gain, bartered the battle for the spoil.
+
+It seemed to them that suddenly the lights went out; and a darkness
+like a rushing wind swept past them, filled with many sounds.  And
+then forgetfulness.  And then the coming back of light.
+
+They were seated at a table, glittering with silver and dainty
+chinaware, to which the red wine in Venetian goblets, the varied
+fruit and flowers, gave colour.  The room, furnished too gorgeously
+for taste, they judged to be a private cabinet in one of the great
+restaurants.  Of such interiors they had occasionally caught glimpses
+through open windows on summer nights.  It was softly illuminated by
+shaded lamps.  The Stranger's face was still in shadow.  But what
+surprised each of the three most was to observe opposite him two more
+or less bald-headed gentlemen of somewhat flabby appearance, whose
+features, however, in some mysterious way appeared familiar.  The
+Stranger had his wine-glass raised in his hand.
+
+"Our dear Paul," the Stranger was saying, "has declined, with his
+customary modesty, any public recognition of his triumph.  He will
+not refuse three old friends the privilege of offering him their
+heartiest congratulations.  Gentlemen, I drink not only to our dear
+Paul, but to the French Academy, which in honouring him has honoured
+France."
+
+The Stranger, rising from his chair, turned his piercing eyes--the
+only part of him that could be clearly seen--upon the astonished
+Poet.  The two elderly gentlemen opposite, evidently as bewildered as
+Paul himself, taking their cue from the Stranger, drained their
+glasses.  Still following the Stranger's lead, leant each across the
+table and shook him warmly by the hand.
+
+"I beg pardon," said the Poet, "but really I am afraid I must have
+been asleep.  Would it sound rude to you"--he addressed himself to
+the Stranger:  the faces of the elderly gentlemen opposite did not
+suggest their being of much assistance to him--"if I asked you where
+I was?"
+
+Again there flickered across the Stranger's face the smile that was
+felt rather than seen.  "You are in a private room of the Cafe
+Pretali," he answered.  "We are met this evening to celebrate your
+recent elevation into the company of the Immortals."
+
+"Oh," said the Poet, "thank you."
+
+"The Academy," continued the Stranger, "is always a little late in
+these affairs.  Myself, I could have wished your election had taken
+place ten years ago, when all France--all France that counts, that
+is--was talking of you.  At fifty-three"--the Stranger touched
+lightly with his fingers the Poet's fat hand--"one does not write as
+when the sap was running up, instead of down."
+
+Slowly, memory of the dingy cafe in the Rue St. Louis, of the strange
+happening that took place there that night when he was young, crept
+back into the Poet's brain.
+
+"Would you mind," said the Poet, "would it be troubling you too much
+to tell me something of what has occurred to me?"
+
+"Not in the least," responded the agreeable Stranger.  "Your career
+has been most interesting--for the first few years chiefly to
+yourself.  You married Marguerite.  You remember Marguerite?"
+
+The Poet remembered her.
+
+"A mad thing to do, so most people would have said," continued the
+Stranger.  "You had not a sou between you.  But, myself, I think you
+were justified.  Youth comes to us but once.  And at twenty-five our
+business is to live.  Undoubtedly the marriage helped you.  You lived
+an idyllic existence, for a time, in a tumble-down cottage at
+Suresnes, with a garden that went down to the river.  Poor, of course
+you were; poor as church mice.  But who fears poverty when hope and
+love are singing on the bough!  I really think quite your best work
+was done during those years at Suresnes.  Ah, the sweetness, the
+tenderness of it!  There has been nothing like it in French poetry.
+It made no mark at the time; but ten years later the public went mad
+about it.  She was dead then.  Poor child, it had been a hard
+struggle.  And, as you may remember, she was always fragile.  Yet
+even in her death I think she helped you.  There entered a new note
+into your poetry, a depth that had hitherto been wanting.  It was the
+best thing that ever came to you, your love for Marguerite."
+
+The Stranger refilled his glass, and passed the decanter.  But the
+Poet left the wine unheeded.
+
+"And then, ah, yes, then followed that excursion into politics.
+Those scathing articles you wrote for La Liberte!  It is hardly an
+exaggeration to say that they altered the whole aspect of French
+political thought.  Those wonderful speeches you made during your
+election campaign at Angers.  How the people worshipped you!  You
+might have carried your portfolio had you persisted.  But you poets
+are such restless fellows.  And after all, I daresay you have really
+accomplished more by your plays.  You remember--no, of course, how
+could you?--the first night of La Conquette.  Shall I ever forget it!
+I have always reckoned that the crown of your career.  Your marriage
+with Madame Deschenelle--I do not think it was for the public good.
+Poor Deschenelle's millions--is it not so?  Poetry and millions
+interfere with one another.  But a thousand pardons, my dear Paul.
+You have done so much.  It is only right you should now be taking
+your ease.  Your work is finished."
+
+The Poet does not answer.  Sits staring before him with eyes turned
+inward.  The Painter, the Musician:  what did the years bring to
+them?  The Stranger tells them also of all that they have lost:  of
+the griefs and sorrows, of the hopes and fears they have never
+tasted, of their tears that ended in laughter, of the pain that gave
+sweetness to joy, of the triumphs that came to them in the days
+before triumph had lost its savour, of the loves and the longings and
+fervours they would never know.  All was ended.  The Stranger had
+given them what he had promised, what they had desired:  the gain
+without the getting.
+
+Then they break out.
+
+"What is it to me," cries the Painter, "that I wake to find myself
+wearing the gold medal of the Salon, robbed of the memory of all by
+which it was earned?"
+
+The Stranger points out to him that he is illogical; such memories
+would have included long vistas of meagre dinners in dingy
+restaurants, of attic studios, of a life the chief part of which had
+been passed amid ugly surroundings.  It was to escape from all such
+that he had clamoured.  The Poet is silent.
+
+"I asked but for recognition," cries the Musician, "that men might
+listen to me; not for my music to be taken from me in exchange for
+the recompense of a successful tradesman.  My inspiration is burnt
+out; I feel it.  The music that once filled my soul is mute."
+
+"It was born of the strife and anguish," the Stranger tells him, "of
+the loves that died, of the hopes that faded, of the beating of
+youth's wings against the bars of sorrow, of the glory and madness
+and torment called Life, of the struggle you shrank from facing."
+
+The Poet takes up the tale.
+
+"You have robbed us of Life," he cries.  "You tell us of dead lips
+whose kisses we have never felt, of songs of victory sung to our deaf
+ears.  You have taken our fires, you have left us but the ashes."
+
+"The fires that scorch and sear," the Stranger adds, "the lips that
+cried in their pain, the victory bought of wounds."
+
+"It is not yet too late," the Stranger tells them.  "All this can be
+but a troubled dream, growing fainter with each waking moment.  Will
+you buy back your Youth at the cost of ease?  Will you buy back Life
+at the price of tears?"
+
+They cry with one voice, "Give us back our Youth with its burdens,
+and a heart to bear them!  Give us back Life with its mingled bitter
+and sweet!"
+
+Then suddenly the Stranger stands revealed before them.  They see
+that he is Life--Life born of battle, Life made strong by endeavour,
+Life learning song from suffering.
+
+There follows more talk; which struck me, when I read the story, as a
+mistake; for all that he tells them they have now learnt:  that life
+to be enjoyed must be lived; that victory to be sweet must be won.
+
+They awake in the dingy cafe in the Rue St. Louis.  The ancient
+waiter is piling up the chairs preparatory to closing the shutters.
+The Poet draws forth his small handful of coins; asks what is to pay.
+"Nothing," the waiter answers.  A stranger who sat with them and
+talked awhile before they fell asleep has paid the bill.  They look
+at one another, but no one speaks.
+
+The streets are empty.  A thin rain is falling.  They turn up the
+collars of their coats; strike out into the night.  And as their
+footsteps echo on the glistening pavement it comes to each of them
+that they are walking with a new, brave step.
+
+I feel so sorry for Dick--for the tens of thousands of happy,
+healthy, cared-for lads of whom Dick is the type.  There must be
+millions of youngsters in the world who have never known hunger,
+except as an appetiser to their dinner; who have never felt what it
+was to be tired, without the knowledge that a comfortable bed was
+awaiting them.
+
+To the well-to-do man or woman life is one perpetual nursery.  They
+are wakened in the morning--not too early, not till the nursery has
+been swept out and made ready, and the fire lighted--awakened gently
+with a cup of tea to give them strength and courage for this great
+business of getting up--awakened with whispered words, lest any
+sudden start should make their little heads ache--the blinds
+carefully arranged to exclude the naughty sun, which otherwise might
+shine into their little eyes and make them fretful.  The water, with
+the nasty chill off, is put ready for them; they wash their little
+hands and faces, all by themselves!  Then they are shaved and have
+their hair done; their little hands are manicured, their little corns
+cut for them.  When they are neat and clean, they toddle into
+breakfast; they are shown into their little chairs, their little
+napkins handed to them; the nice food that is so good for them is put
+upon their little plates; the drink is poured out for them into their
+cups.  If they want to play, there is the day nursery.  They have
+only to tell kind nurse what game it is they fancy.  The toys are at
+once brought out.  The little gun is put into their hand; the little
+horse is dragged forth from its corner, their little feet carefully
+placed in the stirrups.  The little ball and bat is taken from its
+box.
+
+Or they will take the air, as the wise doctor has ordered.  The
+little carriage will be ready in five minutes; the nice warm cloak is
+buttoned round them, the footstool placed beneath their feet, the
+cushion at their back.
+
+The day is done.  The games have been played; the toys have been
+taken from their tired hands, put back into the cupboard.  The food
+that is so good for them, that makes them strong little men and
+women, has all been eaten.  They have been dressed for going out into
+the pretty Park, undressed and dressed again for going out to tea
+with the little boys and girls next door; undressed and dressed again
+for the party.  They have read their little book? have seen a little
+play, have looked at pretty pictures.  The kind gentleman with the
+long hair has played the piano to them.  They have danced.  Their
+little feet are really quite tired.  The footman brings them home.
+They are put into their little nighties.  The candle is blown out,
+the nursery door is softly closed.
+
+Now and again some restless little man, wearying of the smug nursery,
+will run out past the garden gate, and down the long white road; will
+find the North Pole or, failing that, the South Pole, or where the
+Nile rises, or how it feels to fly; will climb the Mountains of the
+Moon--do anything, go anywhere, to escape from Nurse Civilisation's
+everlasting apron strings.
+
+Or some queer little woman, wondering where the people come from,
+will run and run till she comes to the great town, watch in wonder
+the strange folk that sweat and groan--the peaceful nursery, with the
+toys, the pretty frocks never quite the same again to her.
+
+But to the nineteen-twentieths of the well-to-do the world beyond the
+nursery is an unknown land.  Terrible things occur out there to
+little men and women who have no pretty nursery to live in.  People
+push and shove you about, will even tread on your toes if you are not
+careful.  Out there is no kind, strong Nurse Bank-Balance to hold
+one's little hand, and see that no harm comes to one.  Out there, one
+has to fight one's own battles.  Often one is cold and hungry, out
+there.
+
+One has to fend for oneself, out there; earn one's dinner before one
+eats it, never quite sure of the week after next.  Terrible things
+take place, out there:  strain and contest and fierce endeavour; the
+ways are full of dangers and surprises; folk go up, folk go down; you
+have to set your teeth and fight.  Well-to-do little men and women
+shudder.  Draw down the nursery blinds.
+
+Robina had a little dog.  It led the usual dog's life:  slept in a
+basket on an eiderdown cushion, sheltered from any chance draught by
+silk curtains; its milk warmed and sweetened; its cosy chair reserved
+for it, in winter, near the fire; in summer, where the sun might
+reach it; its three meals a day that a gourmet might have eaten
+gladly; its very fleas taken off its hands.
+
+And twice a year still extra care was needed, lest it should wantonly
+fling aside its days and nights of luxurious ease, claim its small
+share of the passion and pain that go to the making of dogs and men.
+For twice a year there came a wind, salt with the brine of earth's
+ceaseless tides, whispering to it of a wondrous land whose sharpest
+stones are sweeter than the silken cushions of all the world without.
+
+One winter's night there was great commotion.  Babette was nowhere to
+be found.  We were living in the country, miles away from everywhere.
+"Babette, Babette," cried poor frenzied Robina; and for answer came
+only the laughter of the wind, pausing in his game of romps with the
+snow-flakes.
+
+Next morning an old woman from the town four miles away brought back
+Babette at the end of a string.  Oh, such a soaked, bedraggled
+Babette!  The old woman had found her crouching in a doorway, a
+bewildered little heap of palpitating femininity; and, reading the
+address upon her collar, and may be scenting a not impossible reward,
+had thought she might as well earn it for herself.
+
+Robina was shocked, disgusted.  To think that Babette--dainty,
+petted, spoilt Babette--should have chosen of her own accord to go
+down into the mud and darkness of the vulgar town; to leave her
+curtained eiderdown to tramp the streets like any drab!  Robina, to
+whom Babette had hitherto been the ideal dog, moved away to hide her
+tears of vexation.  The old dame smiled.  She had borne her good man
+eleven, so she told us.  It had been a hard struggle, and some had
+gone down, and some were dead; but some, thank God, were doing well.
+
+The old dame wished us good day; but as she turned to go an impulse
+seized her.  She crossed to where Babette, ashamed, yet half defiant,
+sat a wet, woeful little image on the hearthrug, stooped and lifted
+the little creature in her thin, worn arms.
+
+"It's trouble you've brought yourself," said the old dame.  "You
+couldn't help it, could you?"
+
+Babette's little pink tongue stole out.
+
+"We understand, we know--we Mothers," they seemed to be saying to one
+another.
+
+And so the two kissed.
+
+
+I think the terrace will be my favourite spot.  Ethelbertha thinks,
+too, that on sunny days she will like to sit there.  From it, through
+an opening I have made in the trees, I can see the cottage just a
+mile away at the edge of the wood.  Young Bute tells me it is the
+very place he has been looking for.  Most of his time, of course, he
+has to pass in town, but his Fridays to Mondays he likes to spend in
+the country.  Maybe I shall hand it over to him.  St. Leonard's
+chimneys we can also see above the trees.  Dick tells me he has quite
+made up his mind to become a farmer.  He thinks it would be a good
+plan, for a beginning, to go into partnership with St. Leonard.  It
+is not unlikely that St. Leonard's restless temperament may prompt
+him eventually to tire of farming.  He has a brother in Canada doing
+well in the lumber business, and St. Leonard often talks of the
+advantages of the colonies to a man who is bringing up a large
+family.  I shall be sorry to lose him as a neighbour; though I see
+the advantages, under certain possibilities, of Mrs. St. Leonard's
+address being Manitoba.
+
+Veronica also thinks the terrace may come to be her favourite
+resting-place.
+
+"I suppose," said Veronica, "that if anything was to happen to
+Robina, everything would fall on me."
+
+"It would be a change, Veronica," I suggested.  "Hitherto it is you
+who have done most of the falling."
+
+"Suppose I've got to see about growing up," said Veronica.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of They and I, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
diff --git a/old/theyi10.zip b/old/theyi10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f729019
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/theyi10.zip