The Diary of a Baby
Author: Barry Pain
Date: 1905-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Humor; diary
Description: “This alleged diary is set down as being ‘a free record of the unconscious thought of Rosalys Ysolde Smith, aged one year.’ … the narrative is warranted to kill any attack of the blues …” (review contemporary to the first edition) ~ ~ ~ ~ Miss Rosalys is, of course, a naive infant, becoming acquainted with her new world, but completely capable of pronouncements worthy of a snobbish middle-aged socialite. You might never look at a toddler in the same way again. ~ ~ ~ ~ Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 Sep. 1864 – 05 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer. During his lifetime, h
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA

THE DIARY
OF A BABY

BEING A FREE RECORD OF THE
UNCONSCIOUS THOUGHT OF
ROSALYS  YSOLDE  SMITH
AGED ONE YEAR

BARRY PAIN

MobileRead Edition
2022

“This alleged diary is set down as being ‘a free record of the unconscious thought of Rosalys Ysolde Smith, aged one year.’
… the narrative is warranted to kill any attack of the blues …”
(review contemporary to the first edition)

Miss Rosalys is, of course, a naive infant, becoming acquainted with her new world, but completely capable of pronouncements worthy of a snobbish middle-aged socialite. You might never look at a toddler in the same way again.

Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 Sep. 1864 – 05 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer. During his lifetime, he was perhaps best known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories, but now is also noted for his tales touched with fantasy, horror, and the supernatural. He also wrote stories of mystery and suspense. His humor has been characterized by some modern critics as “a surreal forerunner to Monty Python.”

The Diary of a Baby was first serialized in The Delineator magazine Sep. – Dec. 1906; published in hardback in 1907. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA.

THE DIARY
OF A BABY

BEING A FREE RECORD OF THE
UNCONSCIOUS THOUGHT OF
ROSALYS  YSOLDE  SMITH
AGED ONE YEAR

1

I am one year old today.

Another year passed, as papa sometimes says.

It seems not so long ago that I was a kid in long clothes. That was a happy, thoughtless time. Sleep and eat—eat and sleep—that was life’s simple round. Only a vaccination or a misplaced safety-pin broke the monotony. Time brings more hair, and an occasional tooth, but it brings its responsibilities and disappointments as well.

There’s my uncle and godfather, Templeton Pratt, for instance. Last year he gave me a silver cup and other articles to the value of five or six pounds perhaps. This year he gave me a hygienic wool ball and a rotten cheap musical box—not four shillings the lot at any fancy toy-repository. I suppose next year he’ll give me nothing; and the year after, if I’m fool enough to get left alone in a room with him, he’ll try to sneak my coral necklace. Well, I shall make a bit of a fight for it.

Bless you, yes, this is a world where you have got to look out for yourself a bit! One day last year I was out with the old nurse—not the smart one that I’ve got now—when an elderly lady, with her eyes framed and glazed, stopped to look at me. “What a sweet little thing!” she said. Well, I put up with that, though I can’t say I cared for it, and she went on. “How old is it?” she said. She called me it—it—IT!

I looked round to see if my nurse were going to do anything about it. Apparently not.

So I took my own line. Overcoming my natural modesty, I drew back my right leg, and kicked out hard. I got well home on the pane of glass over the lady’s right eye, and she had to put into our house for repairs. Made me laugh a bit, I must confess. It was papa who interviewed her. He is a tall, handsome man, but he is inclined to be vague. They fetched him out of his studio in the garden, and he said how sorry he was; but I fancy that he must have been thinking about something else at the time, for he used such queer expressions. He said I had never bitten anybody before, and he supposed somebody must have been teasing me.

I should have liked to have seen how the thing ended, but mamma rushed in and carried me off. She wanted to see if I had hurt my foot. Not likely! I wish I could remember whether the old lady lost the sight of that eye or not. I was told; but I’ve forgotten.

There was a bit of an argument between mamma and papa about me, while they were at breakfast this morning. I was crawling on the hearth-rug at the time. I always was partial to fur.

“So it’s the popsy-doodlecum’s first birthday!” said mamma.

“No, dear,” said papa. “Her first birthday was the day when she was born. This is her second birthday.”

“But that’s the same as saying that she’s two years old, and she isn’t.”

“I suppose not. Still, this is certainly her second birthday, and so it looks as if she must be two years old, whether we like it or whether we don’t. I’m not much at arithmetic, but I know my governor gave me a gold watch on my twenty-first birthday, and that I was twenty-one then—at least everybody said so.”

“Now, look here, Peter, I’ll put you just one question that settles it.” She leaned forward, looking very earnest and pretty, the loose sleeves of her breakfast-gown falling back to her elbows. “If Rosalys is two years old today, when was she one year old?”

“Of course I know that she’s only one, really. All I say is that if you stick to the figures and go by them, as a matter of fact she’s two.”

“Well, figures can’t be wrong, so you must be wrong about the figures. Angel, you’re not to lick that fender. Naughty!”

How are you to know what a thing tastes like if you don’t taste it? However, I stopped. The fender was not up to much, and I wanted to hear the rest of the talk.

“But how can I be wrong about the figures? If this is her first birthday, what was the day on which she was born?”

“Why, her nonth birthday.”

“I never heard of such a thing before, but I daresay you’re right. By the way, I’ve got a model at ten. I must be off.”

So he went across to the studio and I did my best to to amuse mamma until I felt tired.

Papa has not given me any actual present, but I gather that he has paid money into an account in my name at the Bank. I hope it’s all right. In any case, it would not be delicate for me to do anything about it. Mamma gave me a doll; but she is always giving me things. It is one of the things she is there for. A placid and uneventful birthday.

2

This has been very largely a day of experiments.

I was brought down at breakfast-time as usual, and occupied my accustomed place on the rug. When mamma went out to interview the cook she told papa to ring for my nurse to take me upstairs. Papa forgot. He always forgets everything; mamma and I often laugh about it. So he went off to the studio, and left me in undisturbed possession of the room. It was only a question of what it would be best to try first. I found that the door of a cupboard in the sideboard was open, so I crawled inside that, and discovered a sugar basin. I have always had a weakness for sugar. I got through a good deal of it, using simple and primitive methods of helping myself.

Then my nurse discovered me, and said I was very naughty. She carried me upstairs, and lectured me the whole way. She said I was a little thief. She said it was not my sugar to take. Very likely not. I can truthfully say I returned most of it. This may have been conscience, but it is not a pleasant subject to dwell upon.

The afternoon was fine and hot. Nurse spread a rug on the lawn, and put me on it, and told me to be sure to stop there. Then the gardener whistled, and she went away to see him for a moment. She seems fond of flowers. So I got off the rug and clawed along the grass, to see if I could find anything of interest. The first thing I saw was something like the tube of a feeding-bottle, except that it was alive. It kept squirming about, and did not seem to get on very fast. It looked to me as if there were some disagreement between the middle of it and the two ends as to the direction which was to be taken. I could not be quite sure that it was not the tube of a feeding-bottle, so I picked it up, and put one end of it into my mouth to try. It was brackish and tough, and had not the usual milk-annexe. So I threw it away. It lay in a heap for a little while, and then slithered down a hole in the ground, as if it were in a hurry to get away.

After that I crawled to the edge of the lawn, and sucked a stone from the gravel path for some time. That was much better, though the taste was slightly medicinal. I should say that it possessed tonic properties. What was really extraordinary about it was that, though I sucked it for quite a long time, it never got any smaller. I was still busy with it when nurse found me, and made me put it back. After all, I suppose it was not my gravel. There’s nothing much that is really mine, when you come to think about it.

She said I was very naughty. Whenever she finds me doing anything that anyone naturally would do, she says I am very naughty; and she says it several times. There’s a bit too much of it, as the gardener says.

This is my new nurse. I can remember the old one. She was a good, fat woman; but she gave me the impression of not being quite my class. This one is much younger. She is all fluttering strings, and proud, cold beauty. I don’t mean to say that I find her stand-offish at all. On the contrary, she is a bit too familiar. She is not altogether a reasonable woman either. She often says to me, “You kick out, my little beauty,” when there is nothing whatever to kick. It’s too damsilly, as papa says.

3

I’m a bit bothered in my mind on the question of talking. Shall I talk, or shall I not? I suppose it has got to be one way or the other.

In the place from which I came, the Herebefore, there was no talking. I remember that distinctly, though the rest of my recollections of the Herebefore are getting unaccountably vague. In my happy younger days, when I was a fortnight old, I could have told you everything about the Herebefore, but most of it has slipped my mind now. I suppose one’s memory fails with advancing age. Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe [everything gets weary, everything breaks, everything passes], as papa says when his motor-car goes wrong.

Still, I remember distinctly that in the Herebefore we never talked. Why should we have talked? We understood one another perfectly, without making noises. Even now I could hold a long discussion with a babe of my own age or younger, without making sounds. The trouble is with the grown-up people—they seem to have lost the knack of it. They can’t say things without talking.

There seems to be no other babe in these parts. I’ve got no brothers or sisters. I am a first attempt, and a great credit to all concerned. I do not want any brothers or sisters.

If any should arrive they will have to be kept in the kennel in the garden, otherwise I shall certainly bite their toes. I am not going to have any other baby messing about with my mamma. She is my own, and I have got to look after her; and I am not the kind of girl to shirk a responsibility. No, another baby would cause unpleasantness; yet, as there is no other baby, there is no conversation, not in the sense in which we understood it in the Herebefore.

I can understand the grown-up people when they talk, as a rule. Mamma says I understand every word that is said, but that is exaggeration. For instance, I do not always understand Templeton Pratt—the man that I employ as an uncle and a godfather. He is an austere old man of about twenty-eight. He was talking to papa the other day, and he said that he would adopt a periphrasis. Nice language to use when there is a young unmarried girl crawling under the table at the time and listening to every word! I’m proud to say that I have been too well brought up to understand such words. I am not satisfied with Templeton Pratt at all. I did not like the way he slackened in the matter of presents last birthday. He wants a sharp lesson, and one of these days I shall give it him.

The real difficulty is that, though I generally understand the grown-up people, I often cannot make them understand me. If I approve of what they are doing, I make a dove-noise, and they know what that means. If I want anything, I throw myself on my back and make an engine-noise. That is less satisfactory. They know that I want something, but they do not always know what it is. Nurse, for instance, has yet to learn that there are just one or two things in this world besides milk and sponge-rusks. Mamma is better. She takes pains, and she is improving; it is a pleasure to me to see her intelligence unfolding, as Uncle Templeton says. Still, even mamma sometimes misses the point of my observations.

Yes, I shall have to talk. If you do not express what you think, grown-up people suppose that you can think of nothing to express. I must make a few experiments.

The experiments would be easier if the grown-up people would only talk to me as they talk to one another, but that rarely happens. As a rule, they use a special language for me. Papa is an exception. He always calls me Rosalys, and speaks to me as if I were a lady of his own age. “Rosalys,” he said the other day, “you look very grave. If you are reflecting upon our national decadence or the trouble with the alien, I should like to hear your opinions.” Then he picked me up and carried me on his shoulder into the studio. There is a big bear-skin in the studio, and the hair comes out if you pull hard; I am doing what I can with it. Mamma never calls me Rosalys, and seems to prefer some distortion or elaboration of the word “duck.” She has called me a duckletina—which sounds something like a musical instrument and something like a new disease. She has also called me a duckly-doodle-doo, which suggests some weird sort of fowl. I wonder if we had a bird of that kind in the Herebefore? It is funny that I cannot remember. I know that mamma ought not to talk in this way. It is not right, and I should certainly correct her. Yet I cannot bring myself to do it.

It’s my belief that I spoil that woman.

Nurse calls me Miss Rosalys before mamma or visitors of importance. She refers to me in conversation with the gardener as Her Royal Highness. She addresses me in private as. Popsikins. Anybody might think I had never been christened. But I have, and my arm was bad for weeks after it.

4

Thank you, O Destiny! I am pleased with myself and with other things. I have given Uncle Templeton his lesson. Mamma says I have been a very naughty girl. Uncle Templeton said that too. Nurse said it. So did the gardener when she told him about it. I wonder they don’t train the dog to say it. But that does not matter. If I employ a man as uncle and godfather, and he tries to do my birthday on one-and-fourpence, and also displeases me in other ways, then I have got a right to act. I have acted quite a good deal.

Uncle Templeton arrived last night. He has a thin face, and looks as if a pin were scratching him. He is too austere and much too old. At breakfast he inquired for me, and I was brought down to see him. I was very fragrant and bedecked. I wore my slightly plaintive expression, and I was extremely angelic and kissy-kissy. As soon as I saw Uncle Templeton I stretched out my hands to him and gave an ecstatic coo. He did not want to take me, and he had never taken me before, because he is a coward, but this time public opinion was too strong for him. He balanced me on his knee with one arm round me, and I stroked his face and made some more dove-noises. He called me a remarkably forward young lady, but he was secretly pleased. “I always think,” said mamma, “that the best test of a man’s character is to see whether babies take to him or not.” I said nothing. I was simply biding my time.

And he did it—he did the very thing that I knew he would do. He pulled out his watch.

You may take it from me—and I am a baby of some experience—that whenever a man is suddenly called upon to tackle a strange baby, he always pulls out his watch. He lets the baby hear it go tick-tick. He touches the spring and shows how the lid flies open. He opens it further and exhibits the mysterious moving wheels. And he does it to amuse the baby—that is the tragedy of it. Let me be perfectly fair. The first once or twice the watch entertainment may be interesting enough. But when you get to my time of life and have been shown that little game some sixty or seventy times, you feel that you do not want any more of it. You could do with a change. Also, it was quite plain to me that Uncle Templeton was under the impression that he was being generous and original, and this was still harder to bear.

Yet I bore it all. I looked where I was told to look, and I listened to the tick-tick, and I did it all with a shy, sweet smile that might have come out of a picture-book. Then I held out my hand for the watch.

“Don’t give it to her,” said mamma.

“Just for a few seconds,” said Mr. Templeton Pratt. “I’ll keep an eye on it.”

There he flattered himself. I did not wait; I started the first moment that I got the watch in my hands. One quick jerk and it flew over my head into the fireplace. At the same time, with a sideways scoop of my right foot I sent his cup of tea over his light spring trousering, and, before he could recover, a good drive with my left caught him clean on the point of the jaw. The careless beggar nearly dropped me. Then everybody at the table intervened, and the great thing seemed to be to get me out of the room. Uncle Templeton’s principal idea was to get his watch out of the grate, and his secondary idea was to get the tea out of the trousering,

I met him later in the garden. He was dressed in a darker suit, and he was taking a small parcel to the post office for registration. It was a good watch, and he was quite right to send it to the firm that made it for the necessary repairs. He looked as if that pin were pricking him worse than ever. I waved one hand vigorously to him, and produced the bright, silvery laugh that mamma likes so much. He never took the slightest notice. Such manners! When he had gone, my nurse, who was carrying me, said to me, “Look here, my Topsywops, do you know what you are? You’re a Holy Terror.”

I have not the slightest notion what my christening cost, but it seems to have been money simply thrown away. If the names Rosalys Ysolde Smith were not written in the Bible that was given me by my second best godmother, I should begin to doubt if they were really mine at all. People call me just anything. However, it was on the whole a most satisfactory morning.

Later in the day I considered very seriously the question of my education. I must not only talk, but I must talk correctly. The few intelligible sounds that I make at present are not English, and have to be translated. For instance, “oom” signifies “mamma,” and “der” signifies “papa.” If I say “ta” once, it means “thank you.” If I say it twice, it means “farewell” or “au plaisir de vous revoir,” or something of that kind. That is my entire vocabulary, and, speaking candidly, it does not amount to much. It did very well when I was young, but the time has come for an advance.

I have decided to take a short. English word and practise it in solitude until I can pronounce it in the grown-up manner. I shall begin with the word that I heard the gardener say when he found what the pigeons had been doing to the early peas. I do not know what it means yet, but I daresay I shall find out as soon as I try it in public. It will be quite a pleasant surprise for everybody. It will show that I am not quite the frivolous, ignorant girl for whom some people seem to mistake me.

5

At breakfast-time this morning mamma said to papa, “Peter, you’re a fraud. You’ve not even begun that portrait yet.”

“No, dear,” said Peter. “I’ve got one or two other things on hand, and—”

“You can’t have got anything as important as the portrait of your own daughter which is to be a birthday present to me. Morning after morning you take her over to the studio. What’s the sense of it, if you don’t begin to paint her?”

“Well, my idea was to learn her by heart and then see if I couldn’t do something from memory. There’s a lot of chaps can work it that way, but I’m blest if I can. Unless I have the thing bang in front of me I’m done.”

“Then why don’t you paint her when she is there—instead of waiting till she has gone, and then grumbling because you can’t paint from memory? You’re not practical, Peter, and you never were, and you never will be.”

Papa shook his head. “You don’t know, my child. It’s not easy. When she’s awake, she’s never still for two seconds. And when she’s asleep—”

“Well, she looks too absolutely charming when she’s asleep. Why don’t you try that way?”

“When she’s asleep she hasn’t—she doesn’t seem to have—any face.”

“How dare you tell such outrageous—”

“What I mean is that when she’s asleep you lose the eyes, and there isn’t much else to go by.”

“It’s true she’s got the loveliest blue eyes in the world. It was really too clever of her to have blue eyes and dark hair. Wait, I’ll tell you what to do. Get a good photographer to take a snapshot of her. Then he can enlarge it until it is as big as you want the picture to be. And you can paint over the top of it. How would that be?”

Papa smiled sadly. “It would be beastly—but I am ashamed to say that I had thought of something of the kind. Leave it to me, my dear. I’ve got to think it out. I’ll fake up something or other.”

He took me over to the studio again, and sat and stared at me for a long time. I don’t know whether papa is aware of it, but if he does not get that portrait of me finished very soon there won’t be any more hair left on that bear-skin rug of his. I’m getting on with it very fast, and he never seems to notice. What a row there would be if nurse or mamma knew! The trouble with papa is that he never sees anything except what he is looking at, and he never looks at anything except what he wants to see.

Many ladies came to see mamma, and I was brought down at their request. I daresay they meant well, and I fear that mamma encourages them, but I wish they could look at the thing more from my point of view. The exhibitions mean a lot of extra work for me. I am made far cleaner than there is any real necessity for, and my hair gets brushed more than is good for it. I have to put on gorgeous raiment. I am patted and stroked, and handed about from one to another. It’s very tiring, and I’m beginning to get a bit sick of society.

“Can’t she talk?” said one beautifully dressed imbecile.

“Not very much,” said mamma; “but then she’s got such expressive eyes.”

No; I could not talk very much. I should be sorry to talk quite so much as some of those beautiful ladies were doing. Still, by this time I was completely master of that one grown-up English word, and I thought this would be a good opportunity for it to make its first appearance.

One of the ladies obtained permission to offer me a small piece of sponge-cake. I accepted it, though it was all inside, and I prefer the brown part.

“And what do you say for that?” asked mamma.

She expected me to say “Ta,” which is the infant abbreviation for “I am much obliged.”. But I had a different idea. I closed my eyes, as I generally do when I wish to concentrate my mind completely. Then I said the word the gardener used when he saw what the pigeons had done to the early peas. I said it very loudly and distinctly, and well.

“No, sweetheart,” said mamma; “jam wouldn’t be good for you.”

Now the word I had learned and had just said was not “jam,” and I had no intention of being misunderstood, so I repeated it several times. I also sang it to a sort of pibroch of my own composition. Nurse kept saying “Hush, hush, Miss Rosalys!” and hurried me upstairs again. Well, it seemed as good a way as any other of getting taken back to the congenial atmosphere of the nursery. And it certainly seemed to amuse the ladies downstairs, except the vicar’s wife. So one might have thought it was all right. But it seems that it was all wrong.

Nurse says it was naughty. So does mamma. I am never, never to say that word again. It’s just like my luck. The only real word I’ve ever learned is apparently the only word that I may never use. I shall simply have to go back and start life again. There are many difficulties in the way of self-education. I suppose I shall have to take lessons. I wonder how the first person who ever talked managed to learn it?

6

A boy of about the same age as myself came this morning to spend the day with me. His name is Tommy. I could see that mamma was not nearly so fond of him as she is of me, so I did not have to kill him, as at first seemed probable. On the contrary, I began to like him, and I can see now that this liking may merge into a warmer feeling on both sides. He brought a nurse with him, who was just as proud and cold as my nurse, but they became friends, and sat on chairs in the orchard and talked about what they liked to eat, and what illnesses they had had, and about young men. Tommy and I crawled on a big rug at their feet.

Tommy looked somewhat stolid, and it would be absurd to say that he was beautiful. Looking back down the vista of the past hours, I can see that what won me to him was partly his thoughtful eyes, and even more his piece of blue chalk. My papa is an artist, but even with that advantage I have never been able to get a piece of blue chalk to myself. Considering the nature of the prize, Tommy was very generous about it. We took alternate sucks at it, and I found the flavour something quite new, Then, while it was wet, we made marks on each other’s faces with it. It was a splendid blue—deeper and more beautiful than the blue of the sky. Quite suddenly, and in the most simple and manly way, Tommy presented me with what was left of the chalk as a token of his affection.

I said shyly that I did not think I ought to take it. Then my nurse pounced down upon me, and she seemed to be of the same opinion. Also Tommy’s nurse pounced on him. They said we were very naughty children, and took us indoors and washed our faces. Wash, wash, wash! I can enjoy a daily bath as well as any girl. But this endless and hopeless struggle with the natural accretion of foreign matter on the skin gets a bit wearisome. If you take the marks of blue chalk off a face, other things will come in time, and then you have got to begin over again. Besides, what did those nurses think we put the blue chalk marks on for if we did not want them to stop there? Tommy bore it all with that philosophical and apathetic air which is one of his characteristics. Personally, I think I protested slightly; at any rate, nurse said that I might have been heard ten miles off, and anybody might have thought she was murdering me.

We retired for our usual siesta after luncheon. I awoke before Tommy did, but I felt serenely comfortable, and made no sound. I heard the two nurses talking.

“Well,” said Tommy’s nurse, “I suppose you’re going to be Mrs. Barnes, then?”

“That’s more than I can say at present. He’s a good class of a man, or I shouldn’t listen to him for a moment. George is a man with talents, given to reading, and, as he says, he’s only here until he can better himself. Here we have Mr. Barker indoors, and also the ‘shover’ for the governor’s motor, but the garden’s single-handed. I should like him to be in some big place, where he was second or third, with a good chance coming on. So he ought to be, for there’s nothing against him, except that he’s so young. He knows everything about it, I can tell you. He’ll give you the Latin name of any flower just as easy as kiss.”

“Oh, what funny things you do say!” said Tommy’s nurse.

“You know what I mean. And that’s how it is. It’s all sotto voce and up in the clouds at present, but anything might happen.”

“And I only hope it will,” said Tommy’s nurse genially.

At this point I gave the usual intimation that I was now awake. I have not much idea what they were talking about, but George Barnes is the name of our gardener.

Later in the afternoon I had a long and most interesting conversation with Tommy, It was conducted on the Herebefore system that is, without the use of spoken words. It appears that we are both in the same case. We have both forgotten almost everything about the Herebefore. It is his opinion that we shall very soon forget the secret of wordless conversation as well, and for that reason we shall have to learn to talk. He has already found it necessary in his business to learn to say “sugar,” and he intends to add the other two or three words that really matter, as soon as possible.

I confessed to him that in days of depression, when the wind was in the east, and I was not permitted to go out, I sometimes doubted whether there ever was a Herebefore.

He told me rather sternly not to be profane. It was impossible to believe that anything came from nothing, and we were indisputably something. His own general impression was that he was merely on a visit to this world, and that his actual home was elsewhere. Some of the clouds of glory rested on us still, in the first few weeks here; but they faded away. Really, Tommy is far more poetical than one would suppose from looking at him. This was a period of change. We knew what we were, but not what we should be.

I agreed with him that this was a period of change, and told him that I had often noticed it myself. For instance, though I could still pick up things with my toes, I had noticed in myself a distinct tendency to make less and less use of them. In fact, I often found myself using my fingers when my toes would really have been more convenient.

He had had the same experience, and it was like another bond of union between us. We were quite in agreement, too, about the difficulty of discovering what grown-up people really do want. We even doubted if the grown-up people knew it themselves. We do our best to humour them and please them, and yet they often turn fractious. Tommy, for instance, told me that from his earliest youth he had been instructed to love everybody and everything, and to signify the same in the usual manner. Yet when he had attempted to kiss a large black slug that he had found in the garden, he had been called dirty, and had been forcibly removed. He gave a sardonic laugh as he told me about it.

We could have said much more, but the time had come for him to go. Mamma kissed him then, and at first I thought I should like to pull out one of his eyes with my fingers. But I reflected that she had probably done it merely from civility. Besides, by this time I had a real affection for Tommy. We kissed one another, in fact. I wondered whether I could with propriety make him some small present.

He had given me a piece of real blue chalk. It is true that it had been taken away long before I had done with it; but that was not his fault. Besides, it is my experience that everything gets taken away long before you have done with it. So I gave him a small piece of crust that I had been using during the afternoon, and he clasped it to his heart, where it made a beautiful brown mark—though one could do better with blue chalk, if one only had it. As this offering was such a success, I also tried to give him the scissors out of nurse’s work-basket; but this met with so much opposition that it had to be cancelled.

Tommy’s nurse and mine must be tremendous friends. My nurse gave the other one a bottle of scent of a beautiful green colour, and the other thanked her warmly, and put a few drops of it on her handkerchief. I never smelled anything like it before, and I hope I never shall again. Tommy told me that her essences turned the live air sick. Yes, he is really far more of a poet than he looks.

I lie and think of Tommy, now that he is gone. He and I will be married one of these days. That is one of the things that has to be. We shall have lots of babies, and we shall understand them very much better than anybody understands us. We shall have heaps of other things as well. I shall get very many motor-cars, just like papa’s, and make them all run into one another bang smash, while Tommy and I shout with all our might. And there will be plenty of blue chalk, and sponge-cake, and no green scent, and the nursery scissors—and—and—and I do believe I’m getting sleepy.

7

It is all over. They talked about Tommy at breakfast this morning, and I know all. He is not a boy. I mean, she is a girl. The real name is Thomasine. I suppose, when people lay traps for you like that, they think they are being funny.

It practically means that I have got to begin life all over again. It was just the same when I learned to speak that one, real, grown-up English word. Whatever it is that I start upon, I always get pulled up short, and have to go back. Luckily, as I do not talk, I have not given myself away to the grown-up people. They will never know that I was taken in by their silly catch. It is just one more illusion gone. All those beautiful dreams of our happy married life can never come true now. I may come to love another, but it will never be quite the same thing. O Tommy—or rather, O Thomasine—why could not you have had the simple manliness to own at once what you really were? What good could the wretched masquerade do you? Unless it was that, being somewhat plain, even for a boy, you trembled at my possible estimate of your looks if I knew that you were a girl. It was not brave of you.

Parents, with children to be christened, I implore you to see that all goods are marked in plain figures. Do not christen your child Wilhelmina, and afterwards call her Willie. It must create confusion. It may even break a heart.

Yes, I admit that I am depressed. I suffer acutely. Papa, as he watched me this morning, said, “Rosalys, you look as if you had a feeling of physical malaise in your middle distance.”

He was not absolutely mistaken. Perhaps I was wrong to give way to that blue chalk. In pleasant society one may almost unconsciously get carried beyond the limits of discretion. Still, as far as I remember, I only took three sucks at it, and Thomasine had many more. Personally, I am inclined to put it down to the milk. I am almost certain I noticed a queer taste about that milk. I wonder what I ought to do about the crust that I gave Thomasine.

It was given under a total misapprehension. Yet I do not feel as if I wanted it back again just now. I doubt also if I could get it back. Thomasine may be all that my parents say, but her appetite was distinctly masculine—not to say brutal. It was not for the colour of it that she took that crust, nor for the love of the girl who gave it. It was for the low, mean nutriment of the thing. I feel sure of it. Yet what does it matter? What does anything matter?

No, I am not intending to do anything rash. I must simply gather up the broken threads of my life and try to weave them together again. I must make up my mind what my attitude is to be when I meet Thomasine again. It appears that she is some sort of a cousin of mine, and will be here again soon. Later on we are to be at the seaside together. O Thomasine, why did you ever come into my life? And if you had to come into my life, why were you such a donkey as to bring that piece of blue chalk with you? But it is much more likely to have been the milk.

It seems to me that the only self-respecting course will be to say that I knew she was a girl all the time, and at first to make very little difference in my manner towards her. Then, as time goes on, I can gradually grow a little colder and a little colder, until we get to the final break.

Another way would be to beat her face with the smaller of my Noah’s arks, and then pull out what hair she has got, much as if she were a bear-skin rug. There is something to be said for it, perhaps, but it is wanting in repose and dignity. Besides, I should say she was rather the bigger girl of the two. One thing must be absolutely settled—mamma can kiss Thomasine once when she comes and once when she goes, since hospitality seems to demand it, but no more. She must not call her any of the make-up words that she calls me. Anything in the nature of hugging or hair-stroking is strictly prohibited. If these rules are obeyed, I intend to act like a lady. If they are disobeyed, I shall completely forget myself. Of course, I have no certain means of letting mamma know that I have made these rules at all; but she is wonderfully clever at guessing. She almost always knows what I want. She is a valuable mamma, and I should be sorry to part with her.

So, if all is well, Thomasine will meet with a guardedly cordial reception from me. There may be slight and subtle changes, but she will never detect them. And to think that this girl is a boy with whom but yesterday I felt that my future was inevitably linked!

Ah, Thomasine! If you had to bring that blue chalk with you, why on earth couldn’t you have kept it to yourself?

I think I will see if nurse has got anything that is good for it.

8

I have been quite all right again for a long time now, thank you. The even tenor of my life is resumed. It is not a monotonously even tenor either, for something fresh seems to turn up pretty well every day. I suppose by the time I’m five or six that will be different.

Lately I’ve been thinking a good deal about jokes. I cannot understand the grown-up joke. What led me to think about them was this.

Papa has been seriously starting on thinking about making a beginning of painting my portrait. It was for this reason, I have gathered, that he bought a cheap gramophone and had it placed in the studio.

He has many good ideas, but they do not work out well. This was one of them. The idea was that as soon as I heard the music being churned out I should stare up at the machine and remain still for two or three minutes with an entranced expression on my face. The operation would be repeated, and during these moments of immobility he would be able to get to work on the portrait.

“Observe, Rosalys,” said papa, “we are now going to start the engine.” It is characteristic of papa that he always speaks to me as if I were about the same age as himself, and that he always—perhaps unintentionally—mixes up one thing with another.

The machine began. It went scurr-rurr-rurr-rurr. I looked at it nervously. It seemed to me that the trumpet-shaped thing might go off any moment. I glanced round for some place where I could take cover.

“And now the music begins,” said papa reassuringly. “It is a selection of old English airs played by a brass band.”

And the music did begin. I screamed and howled with rage, shame, and terror. I tried to wrap the bear-skin round me as a protection.

“I’ll stop her,” said papa, and he did. Then he picked me up and comforted me.

Yes, it was music, and that was what was so awful about it. It was dead music—music that had died and had been pickled in a glass bottle with parchment over the top. And it was being played by tortured ghosts under highly immoral conditions. It was a filthy mechanical orgy. The gaiety of the first tune added to the hideous bizarre effect. It was not a thing to exhibit to a baby who loved music as much as I do.

Papa took me over to the big trumpet bursting out like some monstrous and diseased flower. “That’s the criminal,” he said cheerfully. I was not crying any more, because when papa catches hold of you, you know that everything is quite safe. “You can slap it if you like; best exercise moderation,” he said. “If you slap it too hard, you may hurt your hands.”

I slapped it hard. Even if I did hurt my hands, it was well worth while.

“I entirely agree with you, Rosalys,” said papa. “Tinned music is nearly as deadly as tinned lobster.”

Now I was watching papa’s face as he said this. It wore an expression that I had seen somewhere before. It was the expression of a hen who has just laid an egg.

Yes, that was it. Then I knew that papa had just laid a joke. He did not cluck, but he looked very much as if he would have liked to cluck, if his self-respect had not stopped him.

If that had been all, I should have forgotten it and thought no more about it. But that was not all.

The next morning at breakfast-time papa was telling mamma about the gramophone failure.

“You might have known,” said mamma, “that the duckletina would never stand it.”

“True,” said papa. “Tinned music is nearly as deadly as tinned lobster.”

“That’s rather good, Peter,” said mamma. Papa seemed to be trying not to seem pleased. I looked up from my hearth-rug and tried to catch his eye. He kept his head studiously turned away from me.

A little later, a party of ladies came over to the studio, where I was putting the last touches to the bear-skin rug. Papa had just finished the portrait of one of those ladies, and they had all come to inspect it. He does not like these incursions into the studio, but it appears that sometimes they are necessary, and then he does his best. Of course, some of the ladies flew at me and began to paw me about, interrupting me in my work. I cooed and stroked their faces. I was rather bored really, but for perfect manners I am ready to back myself against any baby of the same age and weight in the United Kingdom.

One of the ladies strayed round to the gramophone. “I say,” she said, “what on earth did you get this thing for?”

“It was a mistake of mine—an experiment that failed,” said papa. “I am coming to the conclusion—”

I could hardly believe my ears. I broke loose from the lady who was holding me and sat back upright on my rug. Papa went straight on without one blush of shame.

“I am coming to the conclusion that tinned music is nearly as deadly as tinned lobster.”

The ladies laughed.

This time papa looked frankly—not to say idiotically gratified. It was not to be endured. I pointed an accusing forefinger at him and called loudly to him. He was compelled to meet my eye now, and his look of gratification was struck dead by lightning.

“What does the child want?” somebody asked.

“I don’t know,” said papa feebly. He knew perfectly well, but one act of dishonesty often leads to another.

The hen is not an intelligent or even an educated animal. Its ethical system is, I believe, deplorable. It has no virtue except that of early rising, and it frequently leads a sedentary life, which cannot be healthy. The hen has not our advantages, of course. But even a hen does not try to lay the same egg three times over.

Papa has some vestiges of conscience left. When we were once more alone together, and he was working on his first attempt at my portrait, he said, “Rosalys, you are correct. I admit it. I have repeated myself. This hideous secret must perish with us. I could plead various things in extenuation (Rosalys, by the love of all that you hold dear, including sponge-cake and your mother, I implore you not to suck your thumb at the precise moment when I am trying to put in your mouth!), I could plead a concurrence of temptation and opportunity. I could plead that as an artist I am compelled occasionally to paint a replica. It is a professional habit or a trade custom, whichever you like. Anyhow, I have often repeated myself before, and I shall probably often repeat myself again. For which reason, m’lud, I will ask to be dealt with under the First Offenders Act. Rosalys, if you are not careful, when you grow up you’ll be uncommonly beautiful.”

When we are alone in the studio, papa generally talks the whole time that he is painting, and it is hardly ever any better sense than the above sample.

One thing is quite clear to me—it is the man who makes the joke who gets most of the enjoyment. He swells out and feels superior. I should say that the making of jokes was based principally on vanity and selfishness.

The people who hear the joke do occasionally laugh. I wonder why. I also laugh, but never for the same reasons as grown up people. I laughed the first time that I saw a red rose. I often laugh when I see the sunlight sparkling on a puddle in the street; it excites me, and I want to go and splash in the brightness. I always laugh when I wake up in the morning and feel good all over.

Grown-up people never do that. Perhaps when grown-up people wake up in the morning they don’t feel good all over. Perhaps there’s no particular reason why they should.

9

Miss Pobling has come into my life.

Miss Pobling is the doll that mamma gave me on my last birthday. She is alive really, and a most extraordinary woman, too, but I don’t tell everybody that.

At first I neglected her. Sometimes I would take her up for a few minutes and pull some of her yellow hair out or throw her across the room, but I often left her alone for days together. One’s life was so full, and there was not time for everything. She seemed to be a little too fashionable and conventional for my taste. Perhaps I was inclined to misjudge her by her dress. That is quite changed now; she wears a piece of an old duster, some white tape, and a thing that came out of a bonbon—her own choice entirely. And I love her. She is almost everything to me.

I do not know how she came to be called Miss Pobling. Everybody in the house calls her that, and nobody knows how it first began. It is part of the general mystery which hangs over her. Certainly she was never christened. I suppose we call her that because it is naturally her name; nobody who saw her could possibly call her anything else. Papa says, “And how’s Miss Pobling?” when he meets me in the morning. Mamma rings the bell and tells Barker to ask nurse if she will kindly bring Miss Pobling down for Miss Rosalys. The gardener says to my nurse, “I found Miss Pobling lying under a bush”—it’s remarkable the passion that she has for lying under bushes—“and, seeing that rain was coming on, I thought I’d better hand her over, lest she should spoil her beauty.” She simply had to be Miss Pobling; it was instantaneously seen and accepted.

“And what’s her other name?” asked Uncle Templeton in one of his austere attempts to be playful.

Idiot! Miss Pobling has no other name. Never had.

Uncle Templeton held her up and surveyed her grimly. “Seems a bit of a wreck,” he said; “I suppose we’ve got to spoil our toys before we can really love them.”

I wish I could speak. There are several plain things that I want to say to that man. As a matter of fact, I have never spoiled Miss Pobling. Naturally, when she is good I reward her. I hold her tight by one leg and wave her about while I sing. It may seem a funny taste to you or me, but that happens to be what she enjoys most. When she is bad, I play tunes on her face with a big spoon. I had to do it only last night. She would keep bothering me to give her a piece of blue chalk, though I had told her twice that it would not be good for her. So I gave her the National Anthem hard, right on her nose. After that I had no more trouble with her.

She converses with me on the wordless system of the Herebefore. She is the only woman I know who can do it. But, as the gardener says, she is a fair knock-out. She sleeps with me every night, tucked under my neck and chin to keep them comfortable, and she always wakes when I do. She does not join me in my bath. In fact, she has never washed—does not seem to care about it. She eats flies whenever she can catch them, and I am trying to break her of the habit.

I made papa take her out in the motor-car one day. I do not think he much wanted to take her, and I am afraid that he put her under one of the seats in the tonneau which was not too polite, considering that he knew her very slightly at the time. But when he came back he said that he had never known the car do so well before, and he was convinced that it was all through Miss Pobling. He said that he was sure she was a motor-mascot, and that it was not the first instance of the kind that he had known. He has taken her out often since, and she has always brought him luck. The other day by accident he had started out for a long run without her, and he turned round and came back.

“Why don’t you have the courage of your opinions, Peter?” said mamma. “If you do really believe in Miss Pobling, why don’t you make her sit on your knee, instead of stuffing her under one of the seats?”

“Because,” said papa, “the lady would get in my way while I was driving. Also, her rare shy beauty would disturb the neighbourhood. Likewise her mystic influence, I have found from experience, works best from underneath one of the seats. Besides—”

“I haven’t got the patience to listen to anything so preposterous,” said mamma. “A man who is as superstitious as that isn’t fit to drive a sewing-machine.”

“Quite right,” said papa. “That’s why I don’t.”

Then mamma laughed, so I suppose papa had laid another joke. She always laughs at his jokes. She is very kind-hearted, and does not much mind what she does for people.

She came into the studio the other day, when papa was starting his second attempt at a portrait of me, and she saw the state that the bear-skin rug was in. I knew she would.

“I don’t blame that poor angel,” she said; “I blame you.”

Mamma is splendid at hitting the right nail on the head.

“You ought to have stopped her,” she went on. “You are spoiling her, and teaching her to destroy things. Besides, it was such a beautiful bear-skin until she pulled the hair all out.”

“Well,” said papa, “if the hair’s all out, it must be a bare skin still.”

“Peter,” said mamma, “that is too imbecile, and I shall not laugh at it.”

But she did. The self-abnegation of a good married woman is a wonderful thing. I did not laugh. On the contrary, I frowned severely. I am sorry to add that the frown was carelessly and quite incorrectly diagnosed as evidence of indigestion, and that I was made to take something for it.

10

These days are splendid and hot, and I go squirming all over the lawn, and take Miss Pobling with me. I can walk a little now, with something to hold on by; but it is far better to squirm. Miss Pobling has found a wonderful place at the end of the lawn. You fight your way through a thick forest of three laurels, and then you come to a small open space. It is quite pleasant to sit there and see the light coming through the green leaves. The floor is all covered with sand, and in one place there is a piece of an old orange that somebody who did not want it threw in here. I picked it up, to see if I could do anything with it, but the smell of it was not nice, so I put it back again. Every now and then herds of rather small black lions come and try to eat that orange, and Miss Pobling and I shoo them away. Sometimes she sits and tells me stories, how one little pig went to market, and another little pig took a totally different line of conduct; or about the time when she used to be able to fly. (I think I have already pointed out that Miss Pobling is no ordinary woman.) We also play at hide-and-seek, and Miss Pobling is not very good at it. I can always find her, and she can hardly ever find me.

This is the place, too, where I take Miss Pobling when I have to speak to her seriously about her conduct. She is not a thoroughly bad woman, but she has her faults. She gave some trouble over the nursery scissors. Then, too, she is not always quite nice with her Uncle Templeton, though he is her godfather, and gave her a cheap musical box, which broke after the third day. Once she spilled a lot of milk all over him, and did it on purpose. I have told her that she must love everybody, especially those whom she naturally dislikes.

Toot-toot! The car stands shivering and buzzing at the front door, like a very cold and impatient bluebottle. Papa comes out, drawing on his gloves. Mamma is with him, all in white, without a hat, just to see him start. The driver’s hand goes up to the right-hand side of his cap.

“You put that spare inner tube in?” asks papa.

“Yes, sir,” says the driver.

“Right,” says papa. Then he turns to mamma: “I say, where’s Miss Pobling?”

“No, you don’t,” says mamma firmly. “I won’t have you driving that lady about all over the country day after day. It’s making a lot of talk in the village, as it is.”

Papa grinned as he climbed into his place. Has mamma laid a joke too? Must they all do it? The driver never grinned. Perhaps he is paid not to grin.

Mamma waves her hand as the car moves off. Then she pounces down on me, and lifts me up off the grass and holds me high in the air. Now, that is more amusing. This time I laugh myself.

Thomasine came here today with her nurse. She was here once before, and I fancy that there was some kind of a misunderstanding—she mistook me for a boy, I believe. It was nothing of any real importance. I remember distinctly that she had a piece of blue chalk, and would put it in her mouth, and that my nurse gave her nurse a bottle of green scent. If I shut my eyes and try hard, I can still smell that scent. So I do not shut my eyes and try hard.

Tommy—as she is generally called—is five weeks older than I am, and consequently she has a far wider experience and knowledge of the world. She is distinctly a plain child, and knows it, and does not seem to care much. She is making a collection of the different things that kind polite people say about her, when they first see her. Here are some of them:

1. What a dear, quaint little thing!

2, Such a funny, amusing little face, isn’t it?

3. Look at that forehead. That means brain.

4. Now that’s a face with character in it.

5. Well, it’s not the prettiest children that are the best-looking when they grow up.

When she tells me these things she gives her sardonic laugh. It sounds something like a duck quacking. She is really clever, and can speak quite a lot of words, so that grown-up people can understand her. She could say “sugar” the last time when she was here, and now she can say “more,” and “not enough,” and other useful things. She told me that she generally said “not enough” when she was given anything to eat or drink, and that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. In the case of her nurse it never worked, and Tommy had found that it saved friction to substitute “thank you.”

I inquired about that green scent, and hoped she had not suffered much from it.

“Of course not,” said Tommy. “She put a few drops on her handkerchief that time, out of kindness to your nurse. She has never used it since.”

“Now I come to think of it, my nurse never used it either. Yes, and she has got another bottle of pink scent, and she has not even unfastened the little riband over the glass stopper. Doesn’t it seem queer?”

“Not at all,” said Tommy, “as perhaps you will understand when you get to be as old as I am. It is in strict accordance with the Law of Domestic Servants, as regarding the Use of Perfumes. No social class has so many laws, or keeps them so strictly, as the better kind of domestic servant.”

“How do you get to know these things?”

“Age, experience, and the habit of observation. Besides, I’ve been thrown a good deal with servants—papa being in India, and mamma being dead, and the aunt I live with having nerves. The law about bottles of scent is that they may be given as presents, where some evidence of refinement and gentility seems indicated. For similar reasons, and as an ornament to the bedroom, they may be kept. But the scent must not be used.”

“Why not?”

“Because you cannot eat your cake and have it. If you use the scent, then you have no longer got a bottle of scent to serve as a present. My nurse gave that bottle of green scent away three days after she got it, to a sister-in-law, who was going to South Africa. You may be sure the sister-in-law planted it on some friend before she sailed. To the good domestic servant, the bottle of scent is a present, and nothing more.”

“What is South Africa?” I asked.

“It is a place to which the sister-in-law of one’s nurse sometimes goes.”

Really, Thomasine seems to know everything.

Finding that she was to stay for the night, I thought it as well to drop a hint or two to Thomasine. I explained that mamma was my own, and that she could not be a mamma to anybody else, however attractive and charming anybody might be. Thomasine took it quite philosophically.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I’d sooner be fed than kissed any day.”

She still converses with me in the wordless language of the Herebefore, unless it happens to be something for which she knows the grown-up spoken word. For instance, when I have got Miss Pobling, and Tommy would like to take a turn at her, she does not intimate, after the manner of the Herebefore, that it would give her much pleasure if I could spare Miss Pobling for a little while. She just makes a firm grab at Miss Pobling’s face, and shouts “Me!” like any well-bred woman of society. But I suppose I shall learn all this kind of thing in time.

In the garden, in the afternoon, Tommy’s nurse and my nurse sat and sewed things, and talked together. I overheard some of it.

“Seems a pity to have left a place like that,” said my nurse.

“So it was a pity. Taking it every way, it was most comfortable—far more than where I am now. I’m sure that kid there makes more work than any two ordinary children. So masterful and independent, you can’t ever take your eye off her. Yes, I often wish I was back. But what was I to do? My father went and married again, you see, and I got a telegram one morning, and those things always make me come over faint-like. So, of course, I had to give notice. Put it on to my sister’s health, which perhaps I shouldn’t have done, as I haven’t got any sister, but one had to say something. Anyhow, there it was.”

“Yes, I see now,” said my nurse, sucking a long blade of grass meditatively. She looks so proud and cold that you would hardly think she would suck grass, but she does it frequently.

I had hardly followed the argument, and asked Tommy about it.

“Perfectly simple,” said Tommy, frowning in a superior way. “It is all explained by the Law of Domestic Servants as regarding Notice. It is definitely laid down that in any time of emotional stress the first step to take is to give notice. If your young man is late for his appointment with you, give notice. If your father gets thrown out of work, give notice. You will be one more for him to feed out of nothing, but if you are upset you must give notice. If another servant calls you the fool which you probably are, or if your new hat does not suit you, give notice.”

“But it doesn’t seem sense.”

“It’s not. The Law is above anything of that kind. The same Law enjoins that any reason may be alleged for giving notice except the real one.”

“What’s the reason for that?”

“Foxiness. Natural reserve, if you like.”

“And, Tommy, why does my nurse suck grass?”

Tommy pondered. “I never knew any of the others to do that, and there’s no law about it. I should say it was because she had nothing else to suck.”

Tommy’s nurse directed my nurse’s attention to us.

“Just look at them two, staring at one another as if they were holding some sort of learned discussion.”

“Ah!” said my nurse, “and see how they look up as soon as you begin to talk about them. I shouldn’t wonder if they know a lot more than some folks think. But you go on. What did she say then?”

“Well,” said Tommy’s nurse, “I took my Bible oath I’d never tell a soul; but, of course, you won’t let it go any further. What she said was—”

I never knew what it was, or what she said, for at this moment Tommy gave her sardonic and duck-quacking laugh. Tommy explained that she was merely thinking of the Law of the Domestic Servant as regarding Secrets.

11

As soon as my portrait is quite finished, we are going down to the seaside. There will be mamma and Tommy’s aunt, and both nurses, and Tommy, and myself. Papa will motor over sometimes, and perhaps he will bring Uncle Templeton, and perhaps Uncle Templeton will fall into the sea and get drowned—one never knows.

Only Miss Pobling and I have seen the portrait yet. Papa says he lets us look at it because we cannot say what we think of it. The smell is the worst part of it. It smells of oils and things, and that is not true to life. Then he has made the mistake of painting me with hardly any clothes on. That may be all right for this time of the year, but what is my picture going to feel like in the winter, when it freezes? Otherwise, I think it will do.

Papa says it won’t do; but it has got to do. When he is in a good temper with it, he says it is not quite such a rotten Christmas number as it was; but that is not often. If Tommy were here, I should be able to ask what Christmas numbers were, and why they rot.

I have always taken Miss Pobling over to the studio with me, but papa has not put her into the picture at all. When I saw the picture, I pointed to it and then to Miss Pobling, and nodded and grunted. That was clear enough for any man, and papa thoroughly understood it.

“Quite true, Rosalys, I have not painted Miss Pobling. As a motor-mascot she is really great, but she is not paintable.”

I shook my head and frowned.

“Well, I’m sorry too,” said papa, and he held Miss Pobling out at arm’s length and looked at her.

“You see, Rosalys,” he said, “since you knocked off what was left of her nose, there has been something wild and other-world about her beauty that I should fail to catch.”

Since then I have had a great deal of trouble with Miss Pobling. She is an extraordinary woman. She does not say much, but she will do simply anything. She is angry because I have had my portrait painted and she has not. I have explained to her that I asked papa to paint her too; but that does not pacify her. She is jealous.

It is naughty to be jealous. It is naughty for little girls to kick and scream because their mammas kiss other little girls. I had these generalisations from nurse, and I think she meant them to have a special application. That is all right. I am applying them, especially to Miss Pobling.

I pointed out to her how wicked she was, and she simply climbed a tree. After a time, she tumbled out of the tree, and I picked her up and kicked her face. Then I pointed it all out to her over again. She never said a word. Well, there was nothing to be done. I took her to bed with me that night, and tucked her under my neck as usual.

What I am about to relate may seem hardly credible. I doubt if I could have believed it myself if Miss Pobling had not confessed it. While I was asleep, Miss Pobling got through the night-nursery window. She climbed down the rose trees and walked to the village. There she climbed up a house, and went all the way down the street on the roofs of the houses. She might have broken her neck. It was all pure temper, of course. She got back all right, and it is a solemn fact that when I awoke in the morning she was still tucked under my neck, just as if she had never moved. I never suspected anything until breakfast time, when she refused to eat a small piece of coal—as a rule there is nothing she likes better.

“Miss Pobling,” I said, “you are not yourself. What the deuce have you been up to, as the gardener says?”

She was rather frightened, burst into tears, and told me all. I had to punish her. I told her that I was sorry to do it, but that it was necessary for her good. By the time I had finished, she had only got one eye left.

In spite of all I had done for her, that very night she went out on the tiles again. And that is not the worst. This time she took the nursery scissors with her. Not only might she have broken her neck, she might have cut herself, and, which is still more serious, she might have lost the scissors.

Well, once more I found out all about it. I could not go on beating her face with a spoon, or she would have had no face left at all.

“This time,” I said, “it is very serious. I have quite made up my mind what to do. When I go to the seaside I shall not take you with me.”

Then she was very sorry, of course. So I was just like nurse, and said she should have thought of that before. I think I have mentioned that there is an enormous forest of three laurels at the end of our lawn. I crawled into the forest with Miss Pobling and jabbed her into a fork of one of the trees. There she may stop until I get back from the seaside. She may have the rain to drink, if there happens to be any, and she may eat laurel leaves, or one of the black lions that come after the piece of decayed orange, if she can catch one.

When I fixed her there she said the word that one must not say—the first real word that I ever learned—the word that the gardener said when he saw what the pigeons had done to the early peas. That does not look as if she were really very sorry.

Papa was going to take mamma out for a long run on the motor-car in the afternoon.

“And this time,” he said, “I must have Miss Pobling, and no nonsense about it. The last time I went out without her I got a burst tyre, and was hung up on the road no end of a time.”

Everybody tried to find Miss Pobling. Mamma tried, and nurse tried. The gardener went to see if she was on the rubbish heap at the back, where I sometimes let her sit when she is good. Papa went to see if I had left her in the studio. All the time the driver stood by the car and never smiled. The way that man never smiles almost makes me frightened.

I smiled quite a good deal myself. In fact, I chuckled. I began to think that I must have laid a joke. Papa caught me at it, when he came back from the studio.

“Rosalys,” he said, “you know where Miss Pobling is. Either you produce her, or I place the matter in the hands of my solicitors.”

I frowned, and shook my head very fast indeed, so that my hair went wiggle-waggle.

He said that I was a heartless and unnatural child. But they had to start without Miss Pobling. I do not know whether they enjoyed the run or not, but they came back in a cab, and papa seemed depressed.

So nobody except myself knows where Miss Pobling is, and I am never, never, never going to tell anybody. I shall not even say, “Of course, you won’t let it go any further,” like the nurses.

The car came back four days afterwards, and papa said he would have backed himself to do the whole job inside three hours, and that apparently anybody who had got a screwdriver, an old bicycle, and a lot of ignorance, started as a motor-car repairer nowadays.

Mamma had brought me out, and papa turned to me solemnly.

“Once for all, Rosalys,” he said, “are you going to produce Miss Pobling, or do you wish to ruin my life?”

I chuckled.

Yes, it was quite accidental; but it does look very much as if I had laid a joke.

12

We are at the seaside. The place has got another name, but the name is ugly. We came in a train, and perhaps someone will kindly explain why the grown-ups all say “train” when they are talking to one another, but say “puff-puff” [*] when they are talking to Tommy or me. Anybody would think that we did not know what trains were, and as a matter of fact we know everything that there is to know about them. Our nurses have explained them scores of times.

I did not enjoy the journey. Trains and motor-cars have what might be called a marine effect upon me. Nurse says I shall get over it as I get older. All I can say is that I wish I had got older a week ago.

Tommy’s aunt is the only new person in our group. When she has nerves she is shut up alone in her room, with all the blinds down, and lives, so Tommy informs me, on sal volatile and sympathy. When she has not nerves, she is very thin and elegant, and makes up new refining influences for Tommy. Every now and then she reads poetry aloud to Tommy, who can’t understand it, in order to attune the child’s ear to sweet cadences—those are her own words. Perhaps that is how it is that Tommy picks up these beautiful phrases which (in the Herebefore manner) she repeats to me.

When we saw the sea quite close for the first time, Tommy said, “England, with all thy faults I love thee still!” But I did not think so.

I was disappointed in that sea. The waves were not what they are represented to be in the picture-books. They all looked as if they had had their hair cut. Then again, there is far too much of the sea. The front part of it is useful for children, and there might be a small strip at the back, to keep shrimps and other things in. That would be quite enough. The whole thing seems to me to be completely overdone.

The arrangement of wooden breakwaters along the beach, for nurses and mammas to lean against, is good and serves its purpose; but why call them breakwaters? Tides, too, are quite a mistake. I like to have things fixed and settled. You find the front part of the sea at one place one time, and a quarter of a mile away the next time. You never know where you are with things like that going on; it is all so restless. Seaweed is pretty good, but not so good as flowers, and its smell is calamitous; and though the shells that sing when you hold them to your ear are lovely, there are not nearly enough of them. My nurse has only found two so far, and one of those she sneaked for herself.

I don’t want to say anything impolite at all about the sea; but I had been shown so many pictures, and heard so much said, that I expected things to be in more satisfactory working order than they were. So far as the waves were concerned, they got very much better, for a time, a few days after our arrival. One night they smashed up two bathing-machines and part of the Parade. I never saw it, as I was asleep at the time. Of course, all good children go to sleep when they are told, but I fancy they miss a lot of things in consequence. Even next morning the waves were greatly improved. They had far longer hair, jumped higher, and roared louder. So I was not allowed to bathe in them that day. I wanted to bathe in them, and I am inclined to think that nurses do these things on purpose.

The nurses sit on the sand, and lean against a breakwater (it ought to be called a nurse-backer, really), and discuss things. Tommy and I dig holes. Small wooden spades have been provided, but they are clumsy, and we do much better with our hands. We also slosh water over one another. We are dressed in things that do not matter, and Tommy says that is the way she would always like to be dressed. Personally, I prefer a little more elegance on proper occasions. According to my nurse, I have been drowned, as near as a toucher, three times. According to Tommy’s nurse, Tommy has been drowned, as near dammit, five times. But then, Tommy is older than I am. The last time that Tommy was rescued, it was a providence that her nurse and rescuer did not get her feet wet in the act; she said so herself.

When we are not digging, sloshing, getting drowned, eating sponge-rusks, or sleeping, we can listen to what the nurses are saying. Considering that they have admitted that we know a great deal more than people think, they do not seem to mind much what they say. One of their favourite subjects is whether Tommy’s Aunt Maud (whose other name is Miss Herald) is cracked, or whether she is not. After going over the evidence on both sides, they have come to the conclusion that she is cracked, of course; but not nearly so cracked as you might suppose. I have heard a good deal about Tommy’s aunt, and as she and the sea are the two principal novelties for me here, I must try to remember some of it.

Tommy’s aunt is happiest when she is subscribing to a course of twelve lectures on Infant Hygiene, or Ethics of the Nursery, or The Lesser Child-Influences. When she has paid her money and got her tickets, Tommy’s nurse says that nobody could be pleasanter. The lectures are either given by a spinster of forty, with square toes, or by a pimply young man, with gilt-rimmed spectacles and a foreign degree; they are never by any chance given by anybody who is the father or mother of children. One lecturer never agrees with any other lecturer; so when you pay for any course, you are certain to get on to something fresh. And the consequence is that you can prove that anything which you do for the child is all wrong; or, if you have a hopeful disposition, you can prove that anything which you do for the child is all right. And it is the same with anything you don’t do.

Tommy’s aunt never attends more than three lectures out of each set of twelve. On the other nine occasions either she has nerves, or she does not feel like it, and sends Tommy’s nurse instead. “Which, strictly speaking,” said Tommy’s nurse, “is no part of my work, and not what I am paid for; but luckily I’m not one to make a fuss.”

I am to call Tommy’s aunt, Aunt Maud, and I have been taught to speak it with great success, in the grown-up manner; but then I can speak several words now, and mamma teaches me. Aunt Maud is the sister of the man who married a cousin of my mamma’s. That does not seem to me to make much of a relationship, and when I get a bit older I shall have to reconsider it. Very likely I shall find out that Uncle Templeton is not really my uncle. In that case, if I have any voice in the matter, he will definitely have to go.

It must not be supposed that I dis like Aunt Maud, though. She wears most beautiful clothes, and has a soft voice, and is very gentle. Also, the last lot of lectures said that Nature was our best guide, and so at present Aunt Maud is by way of letting every child do everything it likes.. That is all right. Sometimes, though, she has a look in her plaintive eye as though she might be going to read poetry to me. That is as it should be with Tommy, because she has charge of Tommy; but it will not do with me. My ears are all right, and I am not going to have them attuned to any sweet cadences. I wonder from which of the pimply lecturers she got that beautiful idea.

“Yes,” says Tommy’s nurse, “her notion is, of course, to make Tommy just as refined as ever she can, whereas the child is naturally quite healthy.”

I suppose everybody has notions of some kind. Perhaps I have got some myself, though I can’t remember what they are. My own nurse had a funny notion. She used to tell me that little drops of water, taken in conjunction with little grains of sand, made the mighty ocean and the beauteous land. She is so certain of it that she said it several times over. She even went so far as to sing it.

It will not do of course. Little drops of water may make up the sea; if they do, it must take no end of a lot of them, but we can pass that part. The other part must have been made up by somebody who did not know the difference between earth and sand. Take our garden at home, for instance. The only sand there is kept in the potting shed, and it has to be brought there in sacks; the rest of the garden is all plain earth.

People ought not to say to children things which are quite obviously untrue. The children are bound to find it out, and that must tend to sap their confidence in their elders.

[*] puff-puff? whatever happened to choo-choo?
—ecm

13

Among the interesting objects of the sea shore one finds donkeys.

They stand in rows, waiting for the chance of taking children for a ride. Sometimes when a donkey has found a child that is willing to ride it, it gets so bashful that it hardly likes to start. But the donkey-boys encourage it.

Tommy and I ride the same donkey. It has got a basket on each side, one for each of us, and we are strapped into them. One nurse leads it, one nurse walks by the side, and the donkey-boy keeps tight hold of its tail. It sounds a dare- devil performance, but Tommy and I are quite used to it now; in fact we enjoy it. The arrangements about the donkeys are most liberal. One has to pay for riding them, but no charge is made for feeding them. The other day when we started out after breakfast, Tommy took a lump of sugar for the donkey, and my nurse took it a carrot. The donkey got the carrot.

Another donkey stretched out its neck and ate part of a little girl’s hat. The girl’s nurse was rather angry. “But what do you expect?” asked the donkey-boy. “You go and stick a lot of straw and green-stuff right under the animal’s nose, and that’s his natural food, ain’t it? You ought to be more careful. Pay for the hat? Not us. Don’t you think it. No, the boot’s on the other leg, my lady. That stuff on the child’s hat weren’t what my pore moke thought. It were artificial, cotton and such, coloured with chemicals. As like as not he’ll die of poison, and then it’s you as will have to pay.” But after a lot more talk he let the little girl have a threepenny ride for two pence. Tommy tells me that this is what is called a compromise.

Talking about these things reminds me that Uncle Templeton has been here. Papa brought him on the motor-car, and I was very glad to see papa. They stayed for two nights, and Uncle Templeton slept in the day-nursery. I always knew he would steal something of mine one of these days.

I suppose it was not entirely his fault, because this house is not so big as our own house, and there was no other room in which he could sleep. Tommy tells me that when one has a holiday it is always like that. One is not nearly so comfortable as when one is at home, and one has to pay a lot more for it. That is the rule, and the reason for it is that it makes one more satisfied with one’s ordinary kind of life. It is astonishing what Tommy knows about all these things.

Uncle Templeton brought me a present of a dying pig. You blow it out till it is quite hard, and it sits up and looks like a pig. Then it gets limper and limper, till it rolls over on one side, and gives a lovesick grunt. It is very funny, and I can say “pig” just like a grown-up person. Nurse said to me, “What do you say to your uncle for that beautiful present?” I said “Thank you,” of course, because I am almost always polite; but it was against my better judgement, and, as events turned out, I need not have thanked him very much.

Either a thing belongs to you, or it does not. That is only common sense. So when Uncle Templeton gave me the dying pig, it was my pig, and it was not his pig. Very well.

He borrowed my pig without asking my leave, to show to the grown-up people at their luncheon. I was attending to a drink of milk at the time he took it, or otherwise I should have had something to say about it. He exhibited the performance of the pig several times at luncheon, and I understand from the servants that it was a great success. Everybody was much amused, particularly Tommy’s aunt. I was surprised that Tommy’s aunt cared about it, because she is very elegant, and the noise the pig makes when it dies is not the kind of thing to attune her ear to sweet cadences.

She has surprised me in other ways, too. Uncle Templeton takes a scientific interest in the things you find in the pools that the tide leaves on the seashore. He will go nosing about after them for the whole of an afternoon. Tommy and I take a scientific interest in them too, as well as in everything else. But Tommy’s aunt never did until Uncle Templeton came. They were standing together, looking into one of the pools, and Tommy dropped a stone into it and splashed their faces. I laughed so much that I rolled off my nurse’s lap on to the sand; but I was sorry, really—sorry, I mean that I had not thought of doing it myself. However, Tommy is older than I am.

But I was going to tell you about my pig, which was really mine, of course, and not Uncle Templeton’s. It is a pretty easy thing to steal a child’s toys when the child is asleep, and that is what Uncle Templeton did. He took my pig again, without my leave, and played with it at dinner-time. And this time he blew it up so hard that it burst, and stayed dead; so you cannot make it die any more, and it is no use to anybody.

He was all apologies, of course, the next morning. He has promised to send me two more dying pigs, just like what the other one was before it burst, so that I can race them, and sees which dies first. That is all very well, so far as it goes, if his word is to be trusted; and it looks as if he were behaving better than the donkey-boy did when the donkey ate the little girl’s hat. All the same, I have been told by many grown-up people, including Uncle Templeton, that I must not touch things which are not mine. Nurse has told me, too, that if I give anybody a present, I must not try to take it back again. Why can’t Uncle. Templeton obey his own rules? If I had the control of him, he would go to bed an hour earlier tonight, and he would know what it was for. Dying pigs are very attractive, of course, but if he could not bear to part with his old pig he ought not to have pretended to give it to me.

I have hopes that Aunt Maud has told him some of his faults. She never had one attack of nerves, or one drop of sal volatile, while he was here. And I noticed that they looked very serious when they were talking alone together. It may have been about the interesting things that they found in those pools; but I hope she was repeating bits of lecture to him, and showing him how he might rise on his dead self to higher things, as Tommy said the other day.

Well, the days drift on very pleasantly, and tomorrow we shall be home again. Home will find me a changed girl. I say a lot of grown-up words, and I learn more from mamma every day. I can almost walk. I have ridden a donkey many times. And I have turned brown.

Tommy went out in a real boat with her nurse this morning. I did not accompany them, as nurse, who knows my constitution, thought it would be better not, though the sea was really quite smooth. Tommy told me on leaving that she particularly requested that there might be no moaning at the bar when she put out to sea. So far as I could see, there was absolutely no disturbance, either then or an hour later, when she returned.

This afternoon we took our last donkey ride together. “So one day more I am deified,” said Tommy to me as she was being lifted into the basket. She is a remarkable child, and knows almost everything, and can explain it; also, she never minds explaining a thing, even when she doesn’t know anything about it. I reverence both her intellect and her appetite, and I shall be sorry to part from her.

14

I have got back home, and I was not at all ill in the train, which shows that I am getting older very fast now.

I have got a new accomplishment. I can cough like a grown-up person. I found it out this morning, when I awoke with a nasty kind of hot, yellow-coloured feeling in my throat. I laughed the first two or three times I coughed, because it was so new and funny a sound to make. But I do not think it is much of an accomplishment, really. With other accomplishments, such as speaking, or eating with a spoon, you do it just when you want to do it. But in coughing you’ve got to do it when the cough wants you to. That makes a lot of difference.

Nurse said, “Why, I do believe you’ve took a cold. Your hand is as hot and dry as anything. How did you come to get that?”

I did not know the answer to that one. So on chance I made a baa-lamb sound, till the cough came and interfered.

“Oh no, it wasn’t,” said nurse. “That wasn’t no little baa-lamb gave you that. That’s the worst of mixing up with Lord-knows-who at those beastly seaside places. Never know what you may catch. Here, just you hold still there, my popsy, for half a minute, while I go and talk to your mamma.”

Mamma came in quickly, smiling, and took hold of my hands, and petted me, and said the rhyme about the little pig that went to market. Then she turned to nurse and said, “Put her back to bed again.”

I did not actually cry, but I was thinking about it, when mamma turned to me and explained that it was not because I was naughty, and that I was not in the least naughty. It was because if I stayed in bed my cough would go away much quicker, and it was not a very good thing for angels to have coughs. And I was to get well again, ever, and ever, and ever so quick.

That being so, I did not make any objection. But this new accomplishment of mine looks like being a bit of a mistake. In fact, I’ve not got the new accomplishment: the new accomplishment has got me, and I can feel its paws on my chest.

First papa came to see me, and then the doctor came. I have seen the doctor once or twice before, and I am not at all frightened of him. He is a nice grey-haired man, with a kind face. He looks as if he were rather slow; but when he is doing anything to you his hands move like light, as if they worked by themselves, and he did not have to direct them. He began to tell me about a horse of his, that was afraid of a steam-roller, and would never go past one if it could possibly help it. Fancy a great big thing like a horse being such a baby! I’ve seen lots and lots of steam-rollers, and nurse has told me all about them, and I am not afraid of them in the very least. As a matter of fact, I always wave my hand to any steam-roller that I happen to meet.

All the time that the doctor talked he was doing things with me, and some of them I did not like a bit. But he kept on telling me such interesting things about that horse that I did not want to interrupt him. When he had finished with me, he said, “Then there was another horse of mine—but I haven’t got time to tell you about him now. I’ll tell you about him tonight. In fact, I’ll come back about seven o’clock on purpose.”

He said he had got no time, but yet he was in the house for a long while after that. He was in the library with papa and mamma. It is just under the nursery, and I could recognise their voices. But I heard the actual words just at the end, when the library door was opened. The doctor was saying, “Can’t tell you exactly at this stage. I shall know more about that tomorrow.”

Then mamma said something in a low voice, and then I heard the doctor again distinctly: “At present, not the slightest.”

I spent most of the morning in trying to get up again, and mamma and nurse spent most of the morning in putting me back. Nurse said, “If only you’d be a good little girl, just think what a good little girl you’d be.” This did not seem to me to be a very clever remark. The rest of the time I was coughing.

In the afternoon the two dying pigs came from Uncle Templeton. Nurse blew them out for me, and I played with them for a little time; but I kept on wanting to get on to something else, and I did not know what the something else was to be. I would make up my mind to lie on one side for quite a long time, and as soon as I started I had to scriggle over to the other side, and then back again. And back again: and back again. And I coughed, and I am not sure that I did not cry a little.

The doctor came again in the evening, and his story was about a horse of his that loved to take medicine. It was not worth while to come back again to tell me that, and I do not think it was really true. So I tossed backwards and forwards again, until mamma told me a wonderful thing—she is going to be in my room all night, and she will be in the easy-chair instead of going to bed. That ought to be awful fun for her and for me too.

Yes, it ought to be awful fun, but my eyes have caught fire. I can feel them burning. I saw them for a moment in the looking glass, and they blazed. So I can’t sleep, and sometimes mamma is not mamma at all, but gets mixed up with other people. I want the other people to go away, so that I can get at mamma.

I fancy the doctor came back still another time. I don’t know. I have heard papa’s voice behind the screen in front of the door. The screen keeps jumping about, and I don’t want to see it. I want to go to sleep—just to stop coughing and to go to sleep.

Yes, I want to go to sleep. Still, nobody has called me naughty all day—not even nurse—not even when I cried—and that’s something, considering the way that I have behaved.

15

I think I must have been ill for weeks and weeks. I don’t know how long it has been. But otherwise I am quite good now. I do not struggle to get up any more, and I don’t toss about, and I don’t shout for things. My voice has shrunk up and got small; I seem to be smaller all over. All I want is to lie quite still.

I am tired of it all; but some of it was interesting at first. I liked to see the coal in the coal-scuttle all done up in little packets, so that it could be put on the fire at night without waking me. There was a kettle, too, which was rather good, for it had the very longest spout I ever saw in my life. Papa and the doctor talked in low voices behind the screen, and sometimes I heard what they said, and wondered what it all meant. Then a new nurse came to help my usual nurse, and she was interesting too. If I happened to be awake at night, I could see the light from the fire dancing about on the gold pattern on the screen, and that was very pretty, and always changing. The room then would always be so quiet, except for the purr of the long-spouted kettle, that you might have thought that there was nobody there; but I always knew better. I only had to make the tiniest little cry, and then I would see a noiseless flash of blue dressing gown against the night-light, and a big shadow would jump across the ceiling, and in a moment mamma would be bending over me, ready to do anything for me; or if I did not know what I wanted, she would say over the rhymes that I liked to hear, and would hush me to sleep again.

Yes, mamma has always been there, and she is there still, and that is my greatest comfort. I do not know when she eats or sleeps. Perhaps she has given that kind of thing up. She is always smiling and cheerful with me, too, and that is an encouragement. They all smile—the two nurses, and papa, and the doctor. But they do not do it so well as mamma. The only things wrong with her are that her eyes look queer, and have got smudges under them, and her face is all white,

My cough has gone away now. They don’t have the kettle with the very long spout any more. They say I ought to be getting better. But then they don’t know how tired I am.

This morning nurse was sponging my face and my arms and hands. It bothered me, but I didn’t feel awake enough to be really naughty. Besides, mamma was there too, watching and helping. Suddenly nurse put down the sponge, and stood up, and the smile on her face twisted about.

“She’s—she’s got so thin,” she said. Then she turned her back to me, and put one hand over her eyes, and her shoulders went like the motor-car when it stands waiting at the front door. Mamma hurried nurse out of the room, and I thought mamma was angry. She certainly said, “Hush! Stop that! Do you want to frighten the child?” But when she came back again, without nurse, she was smiling, and singing one of my favourite tunes, and she finished washing me all by herself, and she did not take a moment longer than could be helped over it.

After that, I went into a kind of dream, with my eyes half shut. I had got lots of things to play with, that papa has bought for me; but I do not care much about playing now; some of the things I have not even taken out of the boxes. Every now and then somebody raised me, and gave me something out of a spoon. That did not make any difference; the funny kind of dream went on through it all.

I was out in the garden with Tommy, crawling on the lawn; but it was night, and up in the sky there were the moon and stars. I was explaining to Tommy that the moon was fixed, and did not take down, and that therefore I could not give her it. “All right,” said Tommy, “then I’ll have a star. A star’s good enough for me.” I believed the stars were fixed there just as the moon was, and I told her so; but I could not be quite certain, because nurse had never told me.

There was one star which was very low down in the sky, and Tommy said that was the one she meant to pick. She was sure she could reach it if we stood just underneath. The only trouble was that it would be such a long way to go before we could get just underneath it. Tommy said that she should pick it with a very long stalk, and wear it in her hair, and she would lend it to me for Christmas-time if I would come with her. So first we walked a little way, and then I tumbled over, and after that we crawled.

We crawled on and on, though I felt too weary and out of breath to go any farther, and we went through a dark forest of trees. There were dolls sitting on the branches of the trees, and Tommy said that they had climbed up there because they were afraid of the steam-roller. Just then the sides of the moon fell in, and it collapsed with a mournful grunt, and the light went out. So Tommy said that it was only one of those dying pigs, that you can buy for a penny, and that we should have to crawl ever so much faster, or the stars would all have gone too.

But by this time we had crawled on to a sea-beach, and the shingle cut my hands and knees. And presently there was a sea much too large, as usual—right in front of us. “This is not as I expected,” said Tommy, but her voice had changed to the voice of my doctor.

In a flash I was awake. I knew by the feel in the air that it was quite late at night. Voices came from behind the screen.

First it was the doctor’s voice. “Not as I expected—very perceptibly weaker.”

Then came my papa’s voice, with the very polite tone that it only has when he has lost his temper. “I see. And now, will you give me the number in Harley Street?”

“Sir Henry’s number? Certainly,” said our doctor. “Or, as we’ve no telephone service, and the last train has gone, I’ll telegraph for you in the morning.”

“Most kind of you; but I am going there on the car immediately, and I am going to bring him back with me.”

“But you can’t get there before two in the morning! And really it’s a little—”

“Thanks so much,” said papa; “if you would write it down, and also the name and address of the next best man, in case I cannot get Sir Henry. I shall have the car round in less than a minute, if you would be kind enough to have it ready. Bar accidents, I shall be in Harley Street a little after one.”

The door closed gently, and papa and the doctor had gone.

Then I heard the car throbbing outside. I heard it going steadily out through our gates, and then the gathering rush as it swept faster and faster down the road.

I fell asleep again, and the next time that I awoke mamma was bending over me. I made no sound, and my eyes were open such a little way that mamma did not know I could see her. She was not smiling. She looked as if she were being whipped and tortured. That made my interest in things come flickering back again. I did not want her to look like that. I wanted her to look happy again. I wondered what was the matter. So I began to say over some of the grown-up words that she taught me; that always used to make her laugh, I suppose because I did not say them quite right. Then she slipped away from me.

When I looked I saw that she was kneeling on the floor by the big chair, with her head on her hands, and she was saying in quick whispers, “Oh, I can’t bear it! I can’t! I can’t!” I did not like it, and I called her.

She came to me at once. There were tears in her eyes, and she breathed quickly, as if she had been running; but she smiled now. “It’s all right,” she said; “that was nothing, just a game. Don’t you mind it a bit.” She saw my eyes fixed on her hand, and put it behind her; but I had seen where she had bitten it. “Try to go to sleep again, before the new doctor comes. He’s coming from London now in the motor-car, and he’s going to make you quite well and strong again, because—because he must. See? Now I’ll sing you to sleep again.”

So she sang “I saw three ships” quite softly, and not very well, because her voice shook; but I was soon asleep.

The next time I awoke, the old doctor and the new doctor were both in the room. The new doctor was a big red-faced man. He was looking at me with half-closed eyes, and the old doctor was telling him things quickly, in a low voice. “Yes, quite right,” said the new doctor. “Very proper. Yes, yes. Now I’ve got a thing here. Where the deuce is that bag of mine? Ah! thank you.”

The new doctor looked like a butcher—a butcher who had made up his mind about everything in the world, and knew why. He did not leave the house till the first train after breakfast, and by that time I had got to be quite friends with him. Yet he did not tell me stories, or try to make me laugh. He offended the new nurse, he offended our cook, I think he offended the old doctor, and he actually made mamma go to bed for a few hours. I think I liked him because he was simply the master of everybody.

16

“Well, I declare!” said my nurse, as she was giving me my bath yesterday morning. “Why, you’re getting fatter than you were before.”

These personal remarks did not seem to me to be in the best of taste. I have always been taught never to make any personal remarks myself. I wonder if it will ever occur to grown-up people that it might be as well for them sometimes to take some of the advice themselves that they are so ready to give to the young.

It will be gathered from the above that I am well again. Yes, thank you, I am quite well. It seems to me years and years since that night when papa started out on the motor-car and brought the doctor who mastered everybody, from London. It must be quite a month, for I am almost two years—nurse says so.

I am glad to say that papa is not savagely polite to the old doctor any more. In fact, they’re quite good friends. The other morning papa brought the doctor into the studio to see my portrait. I was there; but I was not crawling on the bear-skin rug. I almost always walk nowadays. Besides, I should not think of pulling the hair out of a rug now; I’ve got a bit too old for that kind of thing. Also, that old rug is not there any more.

I was seated on quite a different kind of rug, carefully posed for a picture, to be called “Baby’s Day-dream,” which papa never painted, and never even wanted to paint.

Papa jerked his thumb in my direction. “Look at her,” he said; “a bit of difference from what she was then, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said the doctor, as he selected a cigar. “Yes, she is. Well, it’s the old story. Child falls ill. Local man’s called in. He attends her and cures the disease. But the recovery’s slow, child seems to be going back a bit. The neurotic father, which you are—”

“Which I’m hanged if I am,” said papa, as he lit his pipe.

“The neurotic father flies off to the specialist. Well, Sir Henry’s the best man we’ve got in that line—everybody knows that. By the time the specialist arrives, the child’s already on the mend. Of course, she recovers, and of course the specialist, who’s come in when the work’s all done, gets all the credit.”

“Look here,” said papa, “if you remind me any more of that infernal night, I shall do something rash—paint your portrait, perhaps. By the way, what do you think of this?” He wheeled round the easel, with the picture of me on it.

“Good,” said the doctor. “Couldn’t have done it much better myself.”

It was of no use for me to go on maintaining the absolutely correct pose for a picture to be entitled “Baby’s Day-dream” if no notice whatever was to be taken of it. So I bestirred myself, and upset the coal-scuttle, which took a bit of doing. That attracted plenty of attention, but, unfortunately, led to my being removed.

Cook is still very bitter about the London doctor. “Oh yes,” she said to my nurse, “that’s all right, of course. Of course I do need a doctor to come down from London to tell me things that I knew more about than ever he will, when I was a kitchen-maid twenty years ago! I should think him and me had better change places altogether. I should like to see him sending up a nice little eight-course dinner. That would be as good as week at the seaside to me, that would. Meantime, I could make his pills for him, and I daresay they wouldn’t do half the harm that he does with those he makes himself.”

My nurse ventured to point out that the specialists of Harley Street were not largely engaged in the manufacture of pills, and that Sir Henry did have the reputation of being a clever man; but cook would not hear of it.

“Don’t you tell me,” she said. “When a man goes poking of his nose in, and interfering with another person’s business, that’s a sure and certain sign that he knows precious little about his own.”

The new nurse, who has been gone a long time now, was very particularly sniffy about Sir Henry. “A man,” she said, “who ventures to address me as ‘Lazybones’ may be a doctor, but he cannot possibly be considered a gentleman.”

But mamma’s view is rather different. “If,” she said, “he wanted me to cut all my hair off, and make it into a doormat for him, I’d do it joyfully.”

“I should wait till he asks,” said papa. “It’s rather good hair, and I have an impression that it would make a rotten bad doormat.”

Mamma laughed. I hope papa is not going to get into the habit of laying jokes again. They are generally rather difficult for me to follow; and we have already seen how they tend to lead him into self-repetition, which is dishonest.

I saw Tommy today for the first time since my illness. She brought her aunt and nurse with her. Uncle Templeton also came today. I was very careful not to look as if I expected anything from him, and that is just as well. He did bring a beautifully bound copy of Imaginary Portraits with him; but I suppose he changed his mind; anyhow, he did not give it to me, he gave it to Aunt. Maud. Something will have to be done to remind that man that he has got a little god daughter. I am told that he sent telegrams when I was ill; I should admire that more if I could eat telegrams, or play games with them.

It has been too cold to go out, but Tommy and I have had a most interesting talk in front of the nursery fire. I gather from Tommy that she was sorry to hear that I was ill, and that she sent me immediately one part of a seidlitz powder and a clockwork lizard. Either from an accident in the post, or from interference on the part of my medical advisers, these luxuries never reached me; but I appreciated the kind intention.

Tommy tells me that she notices great changes in her establishment. Her aunt has practically given up nerves. Tommy says that she does not suppose one commercial carboy of sal volatile has been consumed in the place in the last six months. Lectures seem to have lost ground, too. Aunt Maud was asked to subscribe to a series, ten only this time, on “The Child’s Ideals: and How we may Mould them,” and she said she was too busy for that kind of thing. Poetry, on the other hand, has got much worse. There is more of it, and, as Tommy says, you never know when you may come up against it. Aunt Maud has even taken to reading it aloud while Tommy is having dinner. Tommy says that this is not right, and believes that it causes acidity of the waist band. It is all right to be read to sleep with poetry; that is sound practice, and it works quicker than anything else. Tommy’s only time when she is absolutely safe from having her ear attuned to sweet cadences is when Aunt Maud is busy with the dressmaker. Fortunately, she has been very frequently busy with the dressmaker of late.

Tommy was much impressed with the heaps and heaps of toys that I had from papa while I was ill. She questioned me also as to other privileges accorded to invalids, and more particularly as to diet during convalescence. Then she seemed to get very thoughtful. “Yes,” she said, “that doesn’t sound bad. I wonder I never thought of going in for it. Well, one can but try. Would you oblige me by showing me how you used to cough?”

I did my best. As I have already pointed out, a cough is about the most perverse thing in nature. It comes when you don’t want it. Similarly, when you do want it, it doesn’t come. Tommy listened attentively, and practised the sound once or twice, but with no great success. “Never mind,” she said, “I’ll just play it for what it’s worth.”

So presently Tommy went up to her nurse and did a cough. Her nurse went on talking in whispers to my nurse, as if nothing had happened. Tommy coughed again, louder, with one hand on the throat, and the eyeballs turned upwards.“Look here, you, Miss Thomasine,” said her nurse, “when you see two people talking, don’t you come and interrupt. Just you stop making them stupid noises, and go and play with that pretty little girl.”

Tommy said that even while she was doing it, she felt that it was not quite right. The imitation of an imitation rarely succeeds. She supposed she would have to try some other disease. Could I tell her anything about those measles that people seem to think such a lot of? I could not. “Pity,” said Tommy. “I believe I could do a pretty good measle, if anybody would show me what it sounded like. Never mind. It’s just my luck.”

Uncle Templeton was going back to London this evening. I thought I would say good-bye to him. There was just a thousand-to-one chance that he might have brought something for me after all, and then have forgotten about it. I came across papa, and said, “Uncle Templeton.” Nurse herself says it is surprising how well I speak those words.

“If you want your Uncle Templeton,” said papa, “I regret to have to tell you, Rosalys, that I don’t know where he is. Neither do I know where your Aunt Maud is. Curious ain’t it? I should advise you to go and look for your Aunt Maud; if you are successful, you will also have found your Uncle Templeton, and you will have got yourself disliked.” Then he grinned.

It is quite evident that there is something up. Can Uncle Templeton have gone mad, and be mistaking Aunt Maud for me? He comes to see me, at any rate he comes to my house. He does not bring me a present, and he does not play with me. But he does play with Aunt Maud, and he does bring her a present. Tommy says that this idea must be wrong, because if Uncle Templeton were mad, he would certainly be kept chained up to a post. Possibly Tommy is right; she is older than I am, and doubtless knows more of the modern treatment of insanity. Besides. if he were really mad, papa would not have grinned. From the way they look at one another sometimes, I am inclined to think that papa and mamma have some private and mystic joke between them.

What were our two nurses whispering about this afternoon?

Yes, there is certainly some mystery about. I can feel it. Tommy says the air is heavy with approaching doom; but I think that this is an exaggeration.

17

Well, of course, it is just exactly as I foresaw all along. Uncle Templeton is going to marry Aunt Maud, and the wedding is to be next week.

I’ve thought the thing over, and I’ve decided not to make any fuss about it. I hope he understands that he has certain definite duties towards me, and that marriage does not release him from them. If he thinks that in future he can give everything to Aunt Maud, and nothing to me, he is in error. I shall wait and see.

Already it looks as if the natural order of things was to be reversed, for I understand that I am presenting Uncle Templeton on the occasion of his marriage with a silver tea service. When I was first told this, I said “No,” very emphatically, and several times over. But it has since been explained to me that mamma will choose the tea-service, and papa will pay for it, and in consequence I have withdrawn my opposition. Indeed, I hope that this act of generosity on my part may awaken his conscience.

Aunt Maud is to be married from her uncle’s house in London. I did not know before that aunts could also be nieces, but so they tell me; one lives and learns. Mamma and papa are going to be at the wedding, and Tommy and I will stop here with our nurses.

This brings me to the really important part. Tommy is not going to live with Aunt Maud any more; she’s going to live with us. This is splendid news. It is true that mamma does kiss Tommy rather more than I feel to be absolutely necessary; but then I am getting used to that now. And Tommy is always somebody to play with and mess about with, and she is always telling me things I did not know before, and some of them are quite true. So I’m glad, and Tommy says she’s most awfully glad. This really was the principal reason why I decided not to make any fuss about the marriage.

In fact, I am rather sorry for some things, that I am not to be at the wedding. But I do not want to go in a train or a motor-car, because I am not sufficiently certain about the effect they may have on me. Put brutally, there are very few things that are worth being sick for. Tommy is quite stolid about it, and says that she does not care much either way; on the whole, she would sooner stop here and keep me company. She says that weddings are no great catch anyway. One would be mauled about by strangers, and have to see them eat a whole lot of things that one was not allowed to eat oneself. But my best wishes will be with Uncle Templeton and Aunt Maud on this solemn occasion, even if I cannot be actually present to see the clergyman sprinkle the water on their heads.

Papa and mamma will go up to London the day before on the motor-car. “And this time,” papa said to me, “you’ll have to lend us Miss Pobling. By the way, we haven’t seen her for an age. What have you done with her? Buried her?”

I laughed and shook my head. I laughed because I remember distinctly that there was a joke about Miss Pobling and that it was my joke. I remember, too, that she was a doll. I used to be very fond of her at one time. I was very young then, before I had ever seen the sea, or started playing at railway-trains with Tommy. What I positively cannot remember is what on earth I did with Miss Pobling. But it doesn’t matter; I’ve got lots of other dolls now.

“Yes,” said my nurse, as she talked to Tommy’s nurse, “you may be sure he didn’t miss making his allusions to that.”

“What did he say?” asked Tommy’s nurse.

“He said he’d heard the news, and I said there was nothing wonderful in that, because everybody had heard it now, and if I’d chosen to have opened my mouth he might have known it some time before. So he said that seeing it was to be, we’d better join them and make a double event of it. Oh, he has got a cheek, that man has. You know, he makes me laugh, somehow, even when I’m angry with him.”

“And what did you say?” asked Tommy’s nurse.

“Oh, something saucy, I forget what. Yes, I know. I told him I’d wait a year or two, till he was properly grown up. So he began talking about his money, how he hadn’t spent half his wages for the last two years. ‘Perhaps not,’ I says, ‘and perhaps somebody else doesn’t spend quite all she makes either. And if we wait another two years,’ I says, ‘there’ll be all the more to start on, won’t there?’ So he said he thought I’d better take and marry Rothschild, and I told him I believed I might do worse.”

“I say, you do go on, you two,” said Tommy’s nurse. “And what did he say then?”

“It wasn’t so much what he said. I’ve told him that I won’t have anything of that kind till we’re properly engaged; but what’s the good of making rules? He was too quick for me that time. I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself.”

“I suppose you never—”

“Practically never. And I shan’t either, till it’s all fixed. If you don’t respect yourself, who’s going to respect you? That’s what my old mother always said.”

“True words, too.”

“And that ain’t the only reason for waiting. Mind you, I know what I’m going to tell you sounds idiotic. It is idiotic, too. But I’ve got so used to that kid there, and I know her ways better than any stranger would, and somehow or other I don’t care about handing of her over until she’s a bit older. Of course, when you come to look at it sensibly, there’s no reason in it; but there it is.”

Then she turned suddenly to me.

“And what are you staring for, Miss Good-for-nothing? Thought I was talking about you, did you? Well, I just wasn’t. And I’ll tell you what, my popsy, if you don’t stop sucking that riband, you’ll get a spanking from me, and double quick, too.”

I do not know how you are to discover whether the colour will come out of a riband or not unless you do suck it. I have got into the habit of carrying on most of my researches with my mouth. However, I put the riband down. This was not because I feared the prestissimo form of physical correction which had been threatened, but because I am a nice, good little girl. In fact, I do not know why nurse should be rather ashamed of being fond of me. It seems to me myself to be perfectly natural.

Marriage being so much in the air, I had some discussion on the subject with Tommy. Sooner or later I shall be having to make my own arrangements in this respect.

Tommy said that, owing to her circumstances, she had never been able to keep any married couple under close observation, and was therefore dependent for what she knew on second-hand evidence. But from what she had heard, marriage was very much like that clockwork lizard that she sent me when I was ill—sometimes it went all right, and sometimes it didn’t.

Things would be much simpler for me if it were not for the pedantic and arbitrary custom which prescribes that women must marry men. Otherwise, I think, Tommy and I would get on very well together. Even as it is, I do not dismiss the notion from my mind altogether. Tommy has got a man’s name, She is plain enough to be a man. She would only have to learn how to smoke and to sign cheques, and she is particularly quick at picking up anything—her own nurse says so. However, I am not going to decide too quickly. There are, I understand, a good many other people in this world, and I shall insist on seeing all of them before I make my final choice.

When that time comes, the wedding presents should be rich and costly. If a little girl of my age can give Uncle Templeton a silver tea service, I think the least he can do when I come to get married will be to give me a silver dinner-service, because he is so much older than I am. Tommy has already expressed an intention of presenting me with a large gold motor-car, which certainly sounds handsome. I shall not be married in white. The fact is I have been wearing white so much these last few years that I have got rather tired of it. I shall be married in pale blue, because that was the colour of mamma’s dressing-gown when she never left me all those long nights when I was ill; and so I got to love it. My carriage will be drawn by six spotty horses, and there will certainly be a brass band, and perhaps elephants, and I—

But I must discontinue these observations, because Tommy wants me. She says that I am to be up and doing with a heart for any fate. From this I gather that we are to play at railway-trains, and that Tommy intends to be the engine. This renders the position of the baby that has to be the Smoking Compartment peculiarly perilous—Tommy is such a very spirited engine.

EPILOGUE

I am six years old today. Presents of a bicycle from papa, a desk from mamma, and a pencil-box (opening in three different places) from Tommy, were received and gratefully acknowledged early this morning. By the second post came a bound copy of The Child’s Wordsworth, from Uncle Templeton and Aunt Maud. This is most kind of them, and will look very well on my own bookshelf in my own room. I have peeped into it, and from what I have seen I think it quite likely that I shall read it one of these days, when I have not got anything else to read. The book I really wanted is Cecilia Martin; or, Sunny Days at School, which Elsie James says is awfully good. But, of course, I could not mention that, unless I had been definitely asked what I wanted, and I am not so vulgar as to grumble about a present. Elsie brought me a most delightful present of a pencil, which also contains a knife, a corkscrew, and a view of the earthquake at Lisbon, that you can really see when you hold it up to the light and look through a little hole. She bought it with her own money, and did not say how much it was, which is quite right of her.

Elsie is coming to my birthday party this afternoon. So are Marjorie, Christine, and Norah. Elsie said she knew of three other presents coming to me, but she was not to say anything about them. I do not allow my mind to dwell much on the question of presents, and I did not press her to tell me any more.

Aunt Maud’s baby is also coming to the party with its nurse. Mamma wanted me to ask it, and both Tommy and I, after talking it over, decided that we could not very well get out of it. It is a nice little thing, nearly two; and they have called it William, after Wordsworth, Thackeray, Shakespeare, and Morris, and a few other people. The plumber here is also named William; but I do not think he was included.

Of course Tommy and I intend to be quite nice to the poor little mite, but one cannot pretend that it is any companion for people of the age of myself and my friends. It cannot play our games. It cannot even eat our food, and I hope it will not make a scene at tea-time by any misplaced efforts in this direction.

I have seen the cake. It will have six candles on it, of course. It has got a border of roses and lilies on it, and two figures of angels. After the party was over, I had meant to give one of the angels to Tommy and to keep one myself. But I think I shall give Aunt Maud’s baby my angel. Other wise, I don’t see what fun it is to get out of the party.

What fun can children of that age possibly get out of life? I often wonder. I try to imagine what I can have been like myself when I was young, and I simply cannot do it. Papa and mamma sometimes tell me about the things I used to do then, and they all seem rather silly things.

A long time ago I was playing about in the garden, and I found an old doll stuck into a little laurel bush at one end of the lawn. It had got no hair, and none of its right clothes. It was dressed in a filthy bit of old rag, tied round it with tape. It must have been very roughly and badly treated, because it had only got one eye, and most of its face had been knocked away. Well, I wondered what it was, and talked about it at dinner-time, which is the downstairs luncheon, of course.

“Wait,” said papa, “it comes back to my memory. It must be Miss Pobling. Oh, this is too much, as they say on the stage. Bring her to me.”

So I got down and fetched her.

“It is, it is Miss Pobling!” said papa. Then he pretended to weep, and said, “Excuse my emotion.”

When I could get him to be more serious, he told me all about Miss Pobling, and I am afraid that I must have been even sillier than most babies. But papa does not seem to have been very sensible himself, for it looks as if he really did believe that it brought him luck to take Miss Pobling out on the motor

Mamma says she is sure he believed it. And it looks as if he still believed it. For he has taken that horrible old doll, and done her up with brown paper into a very small parcel, and packed her with the tools on the new car.

Tommy and I have given up dolls altogether. We prefer such games as tennis, croquet, or rounders, and we can both ride bicycles. Indoors, we often play a very difficult patience, and we rarely, if ever, cheat. After tea at my party today we are going to act charades. It seems difficult to believe that a child who does all these things, and is acknowledged by her governess to be in advance of her years, can have done all the silly things that I did when I was a baby. Tommy says that when we are twenty, we shall not think much of what we were at six; and when we’re forty, we shan’t think much of what we were at twenty; and when we’re dead we shan’t think much of any of it. Well, I don’t know.

But I do know it is time for Tommy and myself to hurry up and put on our dresses for the party. Tommy’s is a wistful kind of colour, that her Aunt Maud gave her. Mine’s pale blue. And I do declare, another post has brought me a present from my dear nurse—the one that married the gardener. It is a beautiful bottle of green scent.