§ 1
So for a time this contest of the newer England of free thought, sentimental1 socialism, and invested profits (so far as it was embodied2 in the Stubland sisters) and the traditional landowning, church-going Tory England (so far that is as Lady Charlotte Sydenham was able to represent it), for the upbringing of Joan and Peter was suspended, and the Stubland sisters remained in control of these fortunate heirs of the ages. The two ladies determined4 to make the most of their opportunity to train the children to be, as Aunt Phœbe put it, “free and simple, but fearlessly advanced, unbiassed and yet exquisitely6 cultivated, inheritors of the treasure of the past purged7 of all ancient defilement8, sensuous9, passionate10, determined, forerunners11 of a superhumanity”—for already the phrases at least of Nietzsche were trickling12 into the restricted but turbid13 current of British thought.
In their design the Stubland sisters were greatly aided by the sudden appearance of Miss Murgatroyd in the neighbourhood, and the rapid and emphatic14 establishment of the School of Saint George and the Venerable Bede within two miles of The Ingle-Nook door.
Miss Murgatroyd was a sturdy, rufous lady with a resentful manner, as though she felt that everything and everybody were deliberately15 getting in her way, and an effort of tension that passed very readily from anger to enthusiasm and from enthusiasm to anger. Her place was in the van. She did not mind very much where the van was going so long as she was in it. She was a born teacher, too, and so overpoweringly moved to teach that what she taught was a 113secondary consideration. She wanted to do something for mankind—it hardly mattered what. In America she would have been altogether advanced and new, but it was a peculiarity17 of middle-class British liberalism at the end of the nineteenth century just as it was of middle-class French liberalism a hundred years before, that it was strongly reactionary18 in colour. In the place of Rousseau and his demand for a return to the age of innocence19, we English had Ruskin and Morris, who demanded a return to the Middle Ages. And in Miss Murgatroyd there was Rousseau as well as Ruskin; she wanted, she said, the best of everything; she was very comprehensive; she epitomized the movements of her time.
A love disappointment—the man had fled inexplicably20 to the ends of the earth and vanished—had exacerbated21 in Miss Murgatroyd a passion for the plastic affections of children; she had resolved to give herself wholly to the creation of a new sort of school embodying23 all the best ideals of the time. She saw herself a richly-robed, creative prophetess among the clustering and adoring young.
She had had a certain amount of capital available, and this she had expended24 upon the adaptation of a pleasant, many-roomed, modern house that looked out bravely over the valley of the Weald about a mile and three-quarters from The Ingle-Nook, to the necessities of a boarding-school, and here she presently accumulated her scholars. She furnished it very brightly in art colours and Morris patterns; wherever possible the woodwork was stained a pleasing green and perforated with heart-shaped holes; there were big, flat, obscurely symbolical25 colour-prints by Walter Crane, reproductions in bright colours of the works of Rossetti and Burne Jones and Botticelli, and a full-size cast of the Venus of Milo. The name was Ruskinian in spirit with a touch of J. R. Green’s Short History of the English People.
Miss Murgatroyd was indiscriminately receptive of new educational ideas; she meant to miss nothing; and some of these ideas were quite good and some were quite silly; and nearly every holiday she went off with a large notebook and much enthusiasm to educational congresses and conferences and summer schools and got some more. One that she acquired quite early, soon after the battle of Omdurman, was 114to put all her girls and most of her boys into Djibbahs—loose, pretty garments that were imitated from and named after the Dervish form of shirt. Hers was one of the first of those numerous “djibbah schools” that still flourish in England.
Also she had a natural proclivity26 towards bare legs and sandals and hatlessness, and only a certain respect for the parents kept the school from waves of pure vegetarianism27. And she did all she could to carry her classes out of the class-rooms and into the open air....
The end of the nineteenth century was a happy and beautiful time for the bodies of the children of the more prosperous classes. Children had become precious. Among such people as the Stublands one never heard of such a thing as the death of a child; all their children lived and grew up. It was a point upon which Arthur had never tired of insisting. Whenever he had felt bored and wanting a brief holiday he had been accustomed to go off with a knapsack to study church architecture, and he had never failed to note the lists of children on the monuments. “There you are again,” he would say. “Look at that one: ‘and of Susan his wife by whom he had issue eleven children of whom three survived him.’ That’s the universal story of a woman’s life in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Nowadays it would read, ‘by whom he had issue three children who all survived him.’ And you see here, she died first, worn out, and he married again. And here are five more children, and three die in infancy29 and childhood. There was a frightful30 boom in dying in those days; dying was a career in itself for two-thirds of the children born. They made an art of early death. They were trained to die in an edifying31 manner. Parents wrote books about their little lost saints. Instead of rearing them——”....
Miss Murgatroyd’s school was indeed healthy and pretty and full of physical happiness, but the teaching and mental training that went on in it was of a lower quality. Mental strength and mental balance do not show in quite the same way as their physical equivalents. Minds do not grow as bodies do, through leaving the windows open and singing in the sun.
115
§ 2
Aunt Phœbe was an old acquaintance of Miss Murgatroyd. They had met at Adelboden during one of the early Fabian excursions in Switzerland. Afterwards Miss Murgatroyd had been charmed by Aunt Phœbe’s first book, a little thin volume of bold ideas in grey covers and a white back, called, By-thoughts of a Stitchwoman. In it Aunt Phœbe represented herself rather after the fashion of one of those richly conceived women who sit and stitch in the background of Sir Frederick Leighton’s great wall paintings at South Kensington, “The Industrial Arts applied33 to Peace” and “The Industrial Arts Applied to War” (her needlework was really very bad indeed) and while she stitched she thought. She thought outrageously35; that was the idea; and she represented all the quiet stitching sex as thinking as outrageously. Miss Murgatroyd had a kindred craving36 for outrageous34 thinking, and the book became the link of a great intellectual friendship. They vied with one another in the extremity37 of their opinions and the mystical extravagance of their expressions. They maintained a tumescent flow of thought that was mostly feeling and feeling that was mostly imitation, far over the heads of the nice little children, who ran about the bright and airy school premises39 free from most of the current infections of body and spirit, and grew as children do grow under favourable40 circumstances, after the manner of Nature in her better moods, that is to say after the manner of Nature ploughed and weeded and given light and air.
So far as Aunt Phœbe was concerned, the great thoughts were confined to one or two intimates and—a rather hypothetical circle—her readers. Her mental galumphings were a thing apart. A kind of shyness prevented her with strangers and children. But Miss Murgatroyd was impelled41 by a sense of duty to build up the character of her children by discourse42, more particularly on Sundays. On Sunday mornings the whole school went to church; in the afternoon it had a decorous walk, or it read or talked, and Miss Mills, the junior assistant, read aloud to the little ones; in the evening it read or it drew and painted, except for a special half hour when Miss Murgatroyd built its character up. That 116was her time. Thus, for example, she built it up about Truth.
“Girls,” she began, “I want to talk to you a little this evening about Truth. I want you to think about Truth, to concentrate your minds upon it and see just all it means and can mean to us. You know we must all tell the Truth, but has it ever occurred to you to ask why we must tell the Truth? I want you to ask that. I want you to be aware of why you have to be good in this way and that. I do not want you to be unthinkingly good. I want you to be
’Not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife43!’
or a heroine as the case may be. And so, why do we tell the Truth? Is it because if we did not do so people would be deceived and things go wrong? Partly. Is it because if we did not do so, people would not trust us? Also yes, partly. But the real reason, girls and boys, is this, the real reason is that Lying Lips are an Abomination to the Lord, they are disgusting to Him, and so they ought to be disgusting to us. That is the real reason why we should tell the truth. Because it is a thing offensive and disgraceful, and if we did not do so, then we should tell a Lie.
(“Doris, do stop plaiting your sister’s hair, please. There is a time for all things.)
“I hope there is no one here who can bear to think calmly of telling a Lie; and yet every time you do not tell the Truth manfully and bravely you do that. It is an offence so dreadful that we are told in Scripture44 that whosoever calleth his brother a liar—no doubt without sufficient evidence—is in danger of Hell Fire. I hope you will think of that if ever you should be tempted45 at any time to tell a Lie.
“But now I want you to think a little of what is Truth. It is clear you cannot tell the truth unless you know what truth is. Well, what is truth? One thing, I think, will occur to you all at once as part at least of the answer. Truth is straightness. When we say a ruler is true we mean that it is straight, and when we say a wall or a corner is out of truth we mean that it isn’t straight. And, in vulgar parlance46, when we say a man is a straight man we mean one 117whose acts and words are true. And another thing of which our great teacher Ruskin so often reminds us is, that Truth is Simplicity47. True people are always simple, and simple people are usually too simple to be anything but true. Truth never explains. It never argues. When I have to ask a girl—and sometimes I have to ask a girl—did she or did she not do this or that, then if she answers me simply and straightly Yes or No, I feel I am getting the truth, but if she answers back, ’that depends,’ or ’Please, Miss Murgatroyd, may I explain just how it was?’ then I know that there is something coming—something else coming, and not the straight and simple, the homespun, simple, valiant49 English Truth at all. Yes and No are the true words, because as Plato and Aristotle and the Greek philosophers generally taught us in the Science of Logic50 long ago, and taught it to us for all time, a thing either is or else it is not; it is no good explaining or trying to explain, nothing can ever alter that now for ever. Either you did do the thing or you didn’t do the thing. There is no other choice. That is the very essence of Logic; it would be impossible to have Logic without it.”...
So Miss Murgatroyd building up in her pupils’ minds by precept51 and example, the wonderful art and practice of English ratiocination52.
§ 3
At first Joan and Peter did not see very much of Miss Murgatroyd. She moved about at the back of things, very dignified53 and remote, decorative54 and vaguely55 terrible. Their business lay chiefly with Miss Mills.
Miss Mills was also an educational enthusiast56, but of a milder, gentler type than Miss Murgatroyd; she lacked Miss Murgatroyd’s confidence and boldness; she sometimes doubted whether everything wasn’t almost too difficult to teach. She was no blind disciple57 of her employer. She had a suppressed sense of academic humour that she had acquired by staying with an aunt who kept a small Berlin-wool shop in Oxford58, and once or twice she had thought of the most dreadful witticisms59 about Miss Murgatroyd. 118Though she had told them to no one, they had kept her ears hot for days. Often she wanted quite badly to titter at the school; it was so different from an ordinary school. Yet she liked wearing a djibbah and sandals. That was fun. She had no educational qualifications, but year by year she was slowly taking the diploma of Associate of the London College of Preceptors. It is a kindly60 college; the examinations for the diploma may be taken subject by subject over a long term of years. She used to enjoy going up to London for her diploma at Christmas and Midsummer. Her great difficulty was the arithmetic. The sums never came right.
Miss Murgatroyd was usually very severe upon what she called the Fetish of Examinations; she herself had neither degree nor diploma, it was a moral incapacity, and she admitted that she could as soon steal as pass an examination; but it was understood that Miss Mills pursued this qualification with no idea whatever of passing but merely “for the sake of the stimulus62.” She made a point of never preparing at all (“cramming” that is) for any of the papers she “took.” This put the thing on a higher level altogether.
She had already done the Theory and Practice of Education part of the diploma. For that she had read parts of Leonard and Gertrude, and she had attended five lectures upon Froebel. Those were days long before the Montessori System, which is now so popular with our Miss Millses; the prevalent educational vogues63 in the ’nineties were Kindergarten and Swedish drill (the Ling System). Miss Mills was an enthusiast for the Kindergarten. She began teaching Joan and Peter queer little practices with paper mats and paper-pattern folding, and the stringing of beads64. As Joan and Peter had been doing such things for a year or so at home as “play,” their ready teachability impressed her very favourably66. All the children who fell under Miss Mills got a lot of Kindergarten, even though some of them were as old as nine or ten. They had lots of little songs that she made them sing with appropriate action. All these little songs dealt with the familiar daily life—as it was lived in South Germany four score years ago. The children pretended to be shoemakers, foresters, and woodcutters and hunters and cowherds and masons and students 119wandering about the country, and they imitated the hammering of shoes, the sawing of stone or the chopping down of trees, and so forth67. It had never dawned upon Miss Mills that such types as these were rare objects upon the Surrey countryside. In the country about her there were no masons because there was no stone, no cowherds because there were no cows on the hills and the cows below grazed in enclosed fields, trees and wood were handled wholesale68 by machinery69, and people’s boots came from Northampton or America, and were repaired in London. If any one had suggested songs about golf caddies, jobbing gardeners, or traction-engines, or steam-ploughs, or sawmills, or rate-collectors, or grocers’ boys, or season-ticket holders70, or stockbrokers71 from London stealing rights-of-way, or carpenters putting up fences and trespass-notice boards, she would have thought it a very vulgar suggestion indeed.
Kindergarten did not occupy all the time-table of Miss Mills. She regarded kindergarten as a special subject. She also taught her class to read, she taught them to write, she imparted the elements of history and geography, she did not so much lay the foundations of mathematics as accumulate a sort of rubble72 on which Mr. Beldame, the visiting mathematical master (Tuesdays and Thursdays), was afterwards to build. Here again Joan and Peter were fortunate. Peter had learnt his alphabet before he was two; Joan had not been much later with it, and both of them could read easy little stories already before they came under Miss Mills’ guidance. That English spelling was entirely73 illogical, had not troubled them in the least. Insistence74 upon logical consistency75 comes later in life. Miss Mills never discovered their previous knowledge. She had heard of a method of teaching to read which was called the “Look and Say Method,” and the essence of it was that you never learnt your letters. It was devised for the use of those older children who go to elementary schools from illiterate76 homes, and who are beginning to think for themselves a little. From the first by this method the pupils learnt the letters in combination.
“Now, Peter,” Miss Mills would say, “this is ’to.’ Look and say—to.”
120“To,” said Peter.
“Now I put this little squiggle to it.”
(“P,” said Peter privately77).
“And it is ’top’.”
“Top,” said Peter.
“And now this is ’co.’ What is this? Look and say.”
Peter regarded “cop” for a moment. He knew c-o-p was the signal for “cop,” just as S.O.S. is the signal for “help urgently needed,” but he knew also it was forbidden to read out the letters of the signal.
“Cop,” said Peter, after going through the necessary process of thought.
His inmost feeling about the matter was that Miss Mills did not know her letters, but had some queer roundabout way of reading of her own, and that he was taking an agreeable advantage of her....
Then Miss Mills taught Peter to add and subtract and multiply and divide. She had once heard some lectures upon teaching arithmetic by graphic78 methods that had pleased her very much. They had seemed so clear. The lecturer had suggested that for a time easy sums might be shown in the concrete as well as in figures. You would first of all draw your operation or express it by wood blocks, and then you would present it in figures. You would draw an addition of 3 to 4, thus:
3 added to 4 makes this heap 7 And then when your pupil had counted it and verified it you would write it down:
3 + 4 = 7
But Miss Mills, when she made her notes, had had no time to draw all the parallelograms; she had just put down one and a number over it in each case, and then her memory 121had muddled79 the idea. So she taught Joan and Peter thus: “See,” she said, “I will make it perfectly80 plain to you. Perfectly plain. You take three—so,” and she drew
“and then you take four—so,” and she drew
“and then you see three plus four makes seven—so:
“Do you see now how it must be so, Peter?”
Peter tried to feel that he did.
Peter quite agreed that it was nice to draw frames about the figures in this way. Afterwards he tried a variation that looked like the face of old Chester Drawers:
But for some reason Miss Mills would not see the beauty of that. Instead of laughing, she said: “Oh, no, that’s quite wrong!” which seemed to Peter just selfishly insisting on her own way.
Well, one had to let her have her own way. She was a grown-up. If it had been Joan, Peter would have had his way....
Both Joan and Peter were much addicted81 to drawing when they went to the School of St. George and the Venerable 122Bede. They had picked it up from Dolly. They produced sketches83 that were something between a scribble84 and an inspired sketch82. They drew three-legged horses that really kicked and men who really struck hard with arms longer than themselves, terrific blows. If Peter wanted to make a soldier looking very fierce in profile, he drew an extra eye aglare beyond the tip of the man’s nose. If Joan wanted to do a pussy-cat curled up, she curled it up into long spirals like a snake. Any intelligent person could be amused by the sketches of Joan and Peter. But Miss Mills discovered they were all “out of proportion,” and Miss Murgatroyd said that this sort of thing was “mere61 scribbling85.” She called Peter’s attention to the strong, firm outlines of various drawings by Walter Crane. She said that what the hands of Joan and Peter wanted was discipline. She said that a drawing wasn’t a drawing until it was “lined in.” She set the two children drawing pages and pages of firm, straight lines. She related a wonderful fable86 of how Giotto’s one aim in life was to draw a perfect freehand circle. She held out hopes that some day they might draw “from models,” cones87 and cubes and suchlike stirring objects. But she did not think they would ever draw well enough to draw human beings. Neither Miss Mills nor Miss Murgatroyd thought it was possible for any one, not being a professional artist, to draw a human being in motion. They knew it took years and years of training. Even then it was very exhausting to the model. They thought it was impertinent for any one young to attempt it.
So Joan and Peter got through their “drawing lessons” by being as inattentive as possible, and in secret they practised drawing human beings as a vice88, as something forbidden and detrimental89 and delightful90. They drew them kicking about and doing all sorts of things. They drew them with squinting91 eyes and frightful noses. Sometimes they would sort of come like people they knew. They made each other laugh. Peter would draw nonsense things to amuse the older girls. When he found difficulties with hands or feet or horses’ legs he would look secretly at pictures to see how they were done. He thought it was wrong to do this, but he did it. He wanted to make his pictures alive-er and 123liker every time; he was unscrupulous how he did it. So gradually the two children became caricaturists. But in their school reports there was never anything about their drawing except “Untidy,” or, in the case of Joan, “Could do better if she would try.”
Peter was rather good at arithmetic, in spite of Miss Mills’ instruction. He got sums right. It was held to be a gift. Joan was less fortunate. Like most people who have been badly taught, Miss Mills had one or two foggy places in her own arithmetical equipment. She was not clear about seven sevens and eight eights; she had a confused, irregular tendency to think that they might amount in either case to fifty-six, and also she had a trick of adding seven to nine as fifteen, although she always got from nine to seven correctly as sixteen. Every learner of arithmetic has a tendency to start little local flaws of this sort, standing92 sources of error, and every good, trained teacher looks out for them, knows how to test for them and set them right. Once they have been faced in a clear-headed way, such flaws can be cured in an hour or so. But few teachers in upper and middle-class schools in England, in those days, knew even the elements of their business; and it was the custom to let the baffling influence of such flaws develop into the persuasion93 that the pupil had not “the gift for mathematics.” Very few women indeed of the English “educated” classes to this day can understand a fraction or do an ordinary multiplication94 sum. They think computation is a sort of fudging—in which some people are persistently95 lucky enough to guess right—“the gift for mathematics”—or impudent96 enough to carry their points. That was Miss Mills’ secret and unformulated conviction, a conviction with which she was infecting a large proportion of the youngsters committed to her care. Joan became a mathematical gambler of the wildest description. But there was a guiding light in Peter’s little head that made him grip at last upon the conviction that seven sevens make always forty-nine, and eight eights always sixty-four, and that when this haunting fifty-six flapped about in the sums it was because Miss Mills, grown-up teacher though she was, was wrong.
124Mr. Robert Mond, who has done admirable things for the organized study and organized rearing of infants, once told me that a baby was the hardest thing in the world to kill. If it were not, he said, there would be no grown-up people at all. “But a lot,” he added, “get their digestions97 spoilt, mind you, or grow up rickety.”... Still harder is it to kill a child’s intelligence. There is something heroic about the fight that every infant mind has to make against the bad explanations, the misleading suggestions, the sheer foolishness in which we adults entangle98 it. The dawning intelligence of Peter, like a young Hercules, fought with the serpentine99 muddle-headedness of Miss Mills in its cradle, and escaped—remarkably undamaged.... Joan’s, too, fought and escaped, except perhaps for a slight serpentine infection. She was feminine and flexible; she lacked a certain brutality100 of conviction that Peter possessed101.
§ 4
But the regular teaching was the least important thing in the life of the School of St. George and the Venerable Bede. It existed largely in order to be put on one side.
Miss Murgatroyd had the temperament102 of a sensational103 editor. Her school was a vehicle for Booms. Every term there was at least one fundamental change.
The year when Joan and Peter joined the school was the year of the Diamond Jubilee104, and Miss Murgatroyd had a season of loyalty105. The “Empire” and a remarkable106 work called Sixty Years a Queen dominated the school; Victoria, that poor little old panting German widow, was represented as building up a great fabric107 of liberty and order, as reconciling nations, as showing what a woman’s heart, a mother’s instinct, could do for mankind. She was, Miss Murgatroyd conveyed, the instigator108 of such inventions as the electric light and the telephone; she spread railways over the world as one spreads bread with butter; she inspired Tennyson and Dickens, Carlyle and William Morris to their remarkable efforts. The whole world revered109 her. All this glow of personal loyalty vanished from the school before the year was out; the Queen ceased to be mentioned and the theme of Hand Industry replaced her. Everything 125was to be taught by hand and no books were to be used. Education had become too bookish. “Rote learning” was forbidden throughout the establishment and “textbooks” were to be replaced by simple note-books made by the children themselves. Then two bright girls came to the school whose father was French, and, by a happy accident, a little boy also joined up who had been very well trained by a French governess. All three spoke110 French extremely well. Miss Murgatroyd was inspired to put the school French on a colloquial111 footing, and the time-table was reconstructed with a view to the production of Le Bourgeois112 Gentilhomme on St. George’s Day, the anniversary day of the school.
A parent who could paint was requisitioned as a scene-painter, the stage was put up in the main schoolroom, and those who could take no other part were set to help make the costumes and distribute programs at the performance....
These things happened over the heads of Joan and Peter very much as the things in the newspaper used to happen over our heads before the Great War got hold of us. They went about their small lives amidst these things and with a vast indifference113 to all such things. They played their little parts in them—the realities of life were not there.
To begin with, Mary used to take them to school; but after a year and a half of that it occurred to Aunt Phyllis that it would cultivate self-reliance if they went alone. So Mary only went to fetch them when there was need of an umbrella or some such serious occasion. The path ran up through the bushes to the high road past the fence of Master’s paddock where Peter had once covered himself with tar28. Then they had to go along the high road with a pine-wood to the right—a winding114 path amidst the trees ran parallel to the road—and presently with a pine-wood to the left, which hid the hollow in which the parents of young Cuspard had made their abode115 and out of which young Cuspard would sometimes appear, a ginger-haired, hard-breathing youngster, bareheaded and barefooted and altogether very advanced, and so to the little common where there would be geese or a tethered pony116. Joan and Peter crossed this obliquely117 by the path, which was often boggy118 126in wet weather, and went along by the Sheldrick’s holly22 hedge to the open crest119 of heather from which one could run down to the school. One could see the playground and games going on long before one could get down to them. And if it were not too stormy the school flag with its red St. George and the Dragon on white would be flying. There were no indications of the Venerable Bede on the Flag, but Joan had concluded privately that he was represented by the red knob at the top of the flagstaff. For a year and more Joan thought that the Venerable Bede was really a large old bead65 of profound mystical significance.
Joan and Peter varied120 with the seasons, but except when Joan wore a djibbah they were dressed almost alike; in high summer with bare legs and brown smocks and Heidelberg sandals, and in winter like rolls of green wool stuck on leather gaiters. When they grew beyond the smock stage, then they both wore art green blouses with the school emblem121 of St. George on the pockets, but Joan wore a dark blue gym skirt and Peter had dark blue knickerbockers simply. The walk altered a little every day. Now the trees were dark and the brambles by the roadside wet and wilted122, now all the world was shooting green buds except for the pines, now the pines were taking up the spring brightness, now all the world was hot and dusty and full of the smell of resin123, and now again it was wet and misty124 and with a thousand sorts of brightly coloured fungus125 among the pine stems. Joan and Peter learnt by experience that throwing pine-cones hurts, and reserved them for the Cuspard boy who had never mastered this lesson. Peter started a “Mooseum” of fungi126 in the playroom, and made a great display of specimens127 that presently dried up or deliquesced and stank128. When the snow came in the winter the Cuspard boy waylaid129 them at the corner with a prepared heap of snowballs and fell upon them with shrieks130 of excitement, throwing so fast and wildly and playing the giddy windmill so completely that it was quite easy for Joan and Peter to close in and capture his heap. Whereupon he fled toward the school weeping loudly that it was his heap and refusing to be comforted.
But afterwards all three of them made common cause 127against a treacherous131 ambuscade behind the Sheldrick holly hedge.
It was on these journeyings that Joan began to hear first of the marvellous adventures of Uncle Nobby and Bungo Peter. She most liked Bungo Peter because he had such a satisfying name; Peter never told her he was really the newel knob at home, but she always understood him to be something very large and round and humorous and richly coloured. Sometimes he was as big as the world and sometimes he was a suitable playmate for little children. He was the one constant link in a wandering interminable Saga132 that came like a spider’s thread endlessly out of Peter’s busy brain. It was a story of quests and wanderings, experiments and tasks and feuds133 and wars; Nobby was almost always in it, kind and dreadfully brave and always having narrow escapes and being rescued by Bungo Peter. Daddy and Mummy came in and went out again, Peter and Joan joined in. For a time Bungo Peter had a Wonderful Cat that would have shamed Puss-in-boots. Sometimes the story would get funny, so funny that the two children would roll along the road, drunken with laughter. As for example when Bungo Peter had hiccups134 and couldn’t say anything else whatever you asked him.
After a time Joan learned the trick of the Saga and would go on with it in her own mind as a day-dream. She invented that really and truly Bungo Peter loved her desperately135 and that she loved Bungo Peter; but she knew, though she knew not why nor wherefore, that this was a thing Peter must never be told.
Sometimes she would try to cut in and make some of the saga herself. “Lemme tell you, Petah,” she used to squeal136. “You just lemme tell you.” But it was a rare thing for Peter to give way to her; sometimes he would not listen at all to what she had to say about Bungo Peter; he would smite137 her down with “No, he didn’t do nuffin of the sort, not reely,” and sometimes when she had thought of a really good thing to tell about him, Peter would take it away from her and go on telling about it himself, as for instance when she thought of “Lightning-slick,” that Bungo Peter used to put on his heels.
128Peter listened to her poor speeding-up with “Lightning-slick” for a while.
Then he said: “And after that, Joan, after that——”
“Oh! lemme go on, Petah. Do lemme go on. The fird time he was runned after by anyfing it was this.”
“He put it on his bicycle wheels,” said Peter, getting bored by her, “instead of oil.”
“He put it on his bicycle wheels instead of oil,” said Joan, accepting the idea, “and along came a Tiger.” (She had already done a Mad Dog and a Bear.)
But after that Peter took over altogether while she was waving about rather helplessly and breathlessly with “the Forf time Bungo Peter used Lightning-slick, the forf time—” and hesitating whether to make it a snake or an elephant, Peter could stand it no longer.
“But you don’t know what Bungo Peter did the Forf time, Joan—you don’t reely and I do. Bungo Peter told me. Bungo Peter wanted the holidays to come, so Bungo Peter went and put Lightning-slick on the axles of the Erf.”
“What good was that?”
“It went fast. It went faster and faster. The Erf. It regular spun48 round. And the sun rose and the sun set jest in an hour or so. ’Cos it would, Joan. It would. Yes, it would. There wasn’t any time for anyfing. People got up and had their breckfus—and it was bedtime. People went out for walks and got b’nighted. Then when the holidays came Bungo Peter just put a stick in the place and stopped it going fast any more.”
“Put a stick in what place?”
“Where the Erf goes round. And then, then the days were as long as long. They lasted—oo, ’undreds of ’ours, heaps.”
“Didn’t they get ’ungry?” said Joan, overcome by this magnificent invention.
“They ’ad free dinners every day, sometimes four, and ’s many teas as they wanted. Out-of-doors. Only you see they didn’t ’ave to go to bed, ’ardly ever. See, Joan?...”
There had to be a pause of blissful contemplation before their minds could go on to any further invention.
129“I believe if I had the fings I could make Lightning-slick,” said Peter with a rising inflection of the voice.
He did believe. As soon as it was really said he believed it. Joan, round-eyed with admiration138, believed too....
This Saga of Bungo Peter did not so much end as die out, when Aunt Phyllis got little bicycles for her charges after Joan’s seventh birthday, and they began to ride to school. You cannot tell legends on a bicycle.
§ 5
Mr. Sheldrick was a large, loose painter man held together by a very hairy tweed suit, and the Sheldricks were a large, loose family not so much born and brought up as negligently139 let loose into the world at the slightest provocation140 by a small facetious141 mother. It was Mr. Sheldrick who painted the scenery for the school play productions, and it was the Sheldricks who first put it into Miss Murgatroyd’s head that children could be reasonably expected to act. The elder Sheldricks were so to speak the camels and giraffes of Miss Murgatroyd’s school, but the younger ones came down to dimensions that made them practicable playmates for Joan and Peter. Every now and then there would be a Sheldrick birthday (and once Mr. Sheldrick sold a picture) and then there would be a children’s tea-party. It was always a dressing-up tea-party at the Sheldricks. The Sheldrick household possessed a big chest full of pieces of coloured stuff, cloaks, fragmentary wigs142, tinsel, wooden swords and the like; this chest stood on the big landing outside the studio and it was called the “dressing-up box.” It was an inexhaustible source of joy and a liberal education to the Sheldricks and their friends.
There were grades of experience in these dressing-up parties. At the lowest, when you were just a “little darling” fit only for gusty143 embraces—Joan was that to begin with and Peter by dint144 of a resolute145 angularity was but battling his way out of it—you put on a preposterous146 hat or something and ran about yelling, “Look at meeeeee!” Then 130you rose—Peter rose almost at once and saw to it that Joan rose too, to Dumb Crambo.
In Dumb Crambo one half of the party, the bored half, is “in.” It chooses a word, such as “sleep,” it tells the “outs” that it rhymes with “sneep,” and the “outs” then prepare and act as rapidly as possible, “deep,” “creep,” “sheep,” and so on until they hit upon the right word. There was always much rushing about upon the landing, a great fermentation of ideas, a perpetual “I say, let’s——,” imagination, contrivance, co-operation. So rapidly, joyfully147 and abundantly, with a disarming148 effect of confusion, the Sheldricks at their tea-parties did exactly what Miss Mills believed she was doing in her slow, elaborate, remote-spirited Kindergarten lessons, in which she was perpetually saying, “No; no, dear, that isn’t right!” or “Now let us all do it over again just once more and get it perfect.” It was Peter who discovered that these strange ritual-exercises of Miss Mills’ were really a rigid149 version of the Sheldrick entertainments, and tried to introduce novelties of gesture and facial play and slight but pleasing variations in the verses. He got a laugh or so. But Miss Mills soon put a stop to these experiments.
From Dumb Crambo the Sheldrick dressing-up games rose to scenes from history and charades150. Then Mrs. Sheldrick was moved to write a children’s play about fairies and bluebells151 and butterflies and an angel-child who had died untimely, a play that broke out into a wild burlesque152 of itself even at its first rehearsals153. Then came a wave of Shakespearian enthusiasm that was started by the two elder Sheldricks and skilfully154 fostered by Daddy Sheldrick, who was getting bored by Dumb Crambo and charades. After a little resistance the younger ones fell in with the new movement and an auspicious155 beginning was made with selections from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Miss Murgatroyd was first made aware of this new development by a case of discipline. The second Sheldrick girl was charged with furtively156 learning passages of Shakespeare by heart instead of pretending to attend to Miss Mills’ display of a total inability to explain the method used in the extraction of the square root. Had it been any other playwright157 than 131Shakespeare, things might have gone hard with the Sheldrick girl, but “Shakespeare is different.”
Miss Murgatroyd, perceiving there was more in this than a mere question of discipline, came to see one of the Sheldrick performances, was converted, and annexed158 the whole thing. The next term of school life she made a Shakespeare Boom, and she astonished the world and herself by an altogether charming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In those days the histrionic possibilities of young children were unsuspected by the parents and schoolmasters who walked over them. Romeo was still played in England by elderly men with time-worn jowls and reverberating159 voices, and Juliet by dear old actresses for whom the theatre-going public had a genuine filial affection. England had forgotten how young she was in the days of good Queen Elizabeth.
Both Joan and Peter took a prominent part in Miss Murgatroyd’s production because, in spite of nearly four years of Miss Mills, they still had wonderfully good memories. Peter made a dignified Oberon and also a delightfully160 quaint32 Thisbe, and Joan was Puck. She danced a dance. She danced in front of the Queen Titania after the Fairy song. It was a dance in which she ceased to be human and became a little brown imp5 with flashing snake’s eyes and hair like a thunder-cloud. It had been invented years ago by poor dead and drowned Dolly, and the Sheldricks had picked it up again from Joan and developed and improved it for her.
§ 6
But the Sheldricks were not always acting161 Shakespeare. There were phases in those tea-parties when a kind of wildness came into their blood and the blood of those they entertained that called for something more violent than dressing-up or acting. Then in summertime they had a great scampering162 and hiding in the garden, it was the sort of garden where you can run across the beds and charge through the shrubs163, and in winter they played “Ogre” or “Darkness Ogre” indoors. In Ogre some one—it was usually Mr. Sheldrick—was Ogre, and the little corner room out of the hall was his Den3. And you hid. In the Sheldrick’s 132house you could hide anywhere except in the studio or the pantry and china closet; you could hide in Mrs. Sheldrick’s wardrobe or in the linen164 cupboard over the hot-water pipes (until it got too hot for you) or under anybody’s bed in anybody’s room. And the Ogre came after you and caught you—often by the foot you had left out carelessly beyond the counterpane—and took you to his Den, and there you were a prisoner until some brave soul came careering across the hall to touch your hand and rescue you and set you free again. The Ogre was never safe against rescues until every one was caught, and everybody never was caught; sooner or later came a gaol165 delivery, and so the game began all over again and went on until a meal or something released the Ogre or the Ogre struck work. Nobody was so good an Ogre as Mr. Sheldrick; there was such a nice terribleness about him, and he had a way of chanting “Yumpty-Ow. Yumpty-Ow,” as he came after you.
Of course every house is not suitable for Ogre. Intelligent children who understand the delights of Ogre classify homes into two sorts. There are the commonplace homes we most of us inhabit with one staircase, and there are the glorious homes with two, so that you can sneak166 down one while the Ogre hunts for you up the other. The Sheldrick home had two entirely separate staircases and a long passage between them, and a sort of loop-line arrangement of communicating bedrooms. And also, though this has nothing to do with Ogre, it was easy to get out upon the Sheldrick roof.
“Darkness Ogre” was more exciting in a dreadful kind of way than Ogre. It was only played in winter, and all the blinds and curtains were drawn167 and all the lights put out. You didn’t need to hide. You just got into a corner and stood still, holding your breath. And the Ogre took off his boots and put on felt slippers168, and all the noise he made was a rustle169 and a creak, and you were never sure that it was him—unless he betrayed himself by whispering “Yumpty-Ow.” He creaked rather more than most, but that was a matter for delicate perceptions. There were frightful moments when you could hear him moving about and feeling about in the very room where you stood frozen, 133getting nearer and nearer to you. You had to bite your knuckles170 not to scream.
Once when they were playing Darkness Ogre, Peter was in a corner of Mrs. Sheldrick’s room with Sydney Sheldrick, the third of the Sheldrick sisters, and they were crowding up very close together. And suddenly Sydney put her arms round Peter and began to kiss his ears and cheek. Peter resisted, pushed her away from him. “Ssh,” said Sydney. “You be my little sweetheart.” Peter resisted this proposal with vigour171. Then they heard the Ogre creaking down the passage. Sydney drew Peter closer to her, but Peter struggled away from her and made a dash for the further door. He was almost caught. He escaped because somebody else started into flight from the corner of the landing outside the studio and drew the Ogre off the scent38.
Afterwards Peter avoided secluded172 corners when Sydney was about.
But somehow he could not forget what had happened. He kept on thinking of Sydney for a time, and after that she seemed always to be a little more important than the rest of his older schoolmates. Perhaps it was because she took more notice of him. She wanted to help his work, and she would ruffle173 his hair or pinch his ear as she went past him. She wore a peculiar16 long jersey174 so that you could distinguish her from the others quite a long way off. She had level brows and a radiant smile, her shoulders were strong and her legs and feet were very pretty. He noted175 how well she walked. She always seemed to be looking at Peter. When he shut his eyes and thought of her he could remember her better than he could other people. He did not know whether he liked her or disliked her more than the others; but he perceived that she had in some way become exceptional.
§ 7
Young Winterbaum was another of Miss Murgatroyd’s pupils who made a lasting176 impression on Peter. He was dark-eyed and fuzzy-haired, the contour of his face had a curious resemblance to that of a sheep, and his head was fixed177 on in a different way so that he looked more skyward 134and down his face at you. His expression was one of placid178 self-satisfaction; his hands twisted about, and ever and again he pranced179 as he walked. He had a superfluity of gesture, and his voice was a fat voice with the remotest possible hint of a lisp. He had two little round, jolly, frizzy, knock-about sisters who ousted180 Joan and Peter from their position as the little darlings of the school. The only boy in the school who at all resembled him was young Cuspard, but young Cuspard had not the same bold lines either in his face or conduct; he was red-haired, his nose was a snout instead of a hook, and instead of rather full, well-modelled lips he had that sort of loose mouth that blows. Young Winterbaum said his nose had the Norman arch, and that it showed he was aristocratic and one of the conquerors181 of England. He was second cousin to a peer, Lord Contango. It was only slowly that Peter came to apprehend182 the full peculiarity of young Winterbaum.
The differences in form and gesture of the two boys were only the outward and visible signs of profound differences between their imaginations. For example, the heroes of Peter’s romancings were wonderful humorous persons, Nobbys and Bungo Peters, and his themes adventures, struggles, quests that left them neither richer nor poorer than before in a limitless, undisciplined, delightful world, but young Winterbaum’s hero was himself, and he thought in terms of achievement and acquisition. He was a King and the strongest and bravest and richest of all Kings. He had wonderful horses, wonderful bicycles, wonderful catapults and an astonishing army. He counted these things. He walked from the other direction to school, and though no one knew it but himself, he walked in procession. Guards went before him and behind him, and ancient councillors walked beside him. And always he was going on to fresh triumphs and possessions.
He had a diplomatic side to him. He was prepared to negotiate upon the matter of kingship. One day he reached the crest above the school while it was still early, and found Joan and Peter sitting and surveying the playground, waiting for the first bell before they ran down. He stood beside Peter.
135“All this is my Kingdom,” he said, waving both his arms about over the Weald. “I am King of all this, I have a great army.”
“Not over this part,” said Peter modestly but firmly.
“You be King up to here,” said young Winterbaum. “You have an army too.”
“I want a kingdom too,” said Joan.
Young Winterbaum proposed a fair division of Peter’s kingdom between Joan and Peter.
Peter let Joan have what young Winterbaum gave her. It took some moments to grasp this new situation. “My kingdom,” he said suddenly, “goes right over to those ponds there and up to the church.”
“You can’t,” said young Winterbaum. “I’ve claimed that.”
Peter grunted183. It did not seem worth while to have a kingdom unless those ponds were included.
“But if you like I’ll give your people permission to go over all that country whenever they like.”
Peter still felt there was a catch in it somewhere.
“I’ve got a hundred and seven soldiers,” said young Winterbaum. “And six guns that shoot.”
Joan was surprised and shocked to hear that Peter had five hundred soldiers.
“Each of my soldiers, each one, counts as a thousand men,” said young Winterbaum, getting ahead again.
Then the first bell rang and suspended the dispute. But Peter went down to the school with a worried feeling. He wished he had thought of claiming all Surrey as his kingdom first. It was a lamentable184 oversight185. He was disposed to ask the eldest186 Sheldrick girl whether young Winterbaum really had a right to claim all the Weald. There was a reason in these things....
Young Winterbaum had an extraordinary knack187 of accentuating188 possessions. Joan and Peter were very pleased and proud to have bicycles; the first time they arrived upon them at the school young Winterbaum took possession of them and examined them thoroughly189. They were really good bicycles, excellent bicycles, he explained, and new, not second-hand190; but they were not absolutely the best sort. 136The best sort nowadays had wood rims191. He was going to have a bicycle with wood rims. And there ought to be a Bowden brake in front as well as behind; the one in front was only a spoon brake. It was a pity to have a spoon brake; it would injure the tyre. He doubted if the tubing was helical tubing. And the bell wasn’t a “King of the Road.” It was no good for Peter to pretend it had a good sound, “the King of the Road” had a better sound. When young Winterbaum got his bicycle his bell was going to be a “King of the Road, 1902 pattern.”...
Young Winterbaum was always doing this with things, bringing them up into the foreground of life, grading them, making them competitive and irritating. There was no getting ahead of him. He made Peter feel that the very dust in the Winterbaum dustbin was Grade A. Standard I. while The Ingle-Nook was satisfied with any old makeshift stuff.
Young Winterbaum’s clothes were made by Samuelson’s, the best boys’ tailor in London; there was no disputing it because there was an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph that said as much; he was in trousers and Peter had knickerbockers; he wore sock suspenders, and he had his name in gold letters inside his straw hat. Also he had a pencil-case like no other pencil-case in the school. He was always proposing a comparison of pencil-cases.
His imagination turned precociously192 and easily to romance and love and the beauty of women. He read a number of novelettes that he had borrowed from his sister’s nurse. He imparted to Peter the idea of a selective pairing off of the species, an idea for which A Midsummer Night’s Dream had already prepared a favourable soil. It was after he had seen Joan dance her dance when that play was performed and heard the unstinted applause that greeted her, that he decided193 to honour her above all the school with his affections. Previously194 he had wavered between the eldest Sheldrick girl because she was the biggest, tallest and heaviest girl in the school (though a formidable person to approach) and little Minnie Restharrow who was top in so many classes. But now he knew that Joan was “it,” and that he was in love with her.
137But some instinct told him that Peter had to be dealt with.
He approached Peter in this manner.
“Who’s your girl, Peter?” said young Winterbaum. “Who is your own true love? You’ve got to have some one.”
Peter drew a bow at a venture, and subconscious195 processes guided the answer. “Sydney Sheldrick,” he said.
Young Winterbaum seemed to snatch even before Peter had done speaking. “I’m going to have Joan,” he said. “She dances better than any one. She’s going to be, oh!—a lovely woman.”
Peter was dimly aware of an error. He had forgotten Joan. “I’m going to have Joan too,” he said.
“You can’t have two sweethearts,” said young Winterbaum.
“I can. I’m going to. I’m different.”
“But Joan’s mine already.”
“Get out,” said Peter indignantly. “You can’t have her.”
“But she’s mine.”
“Shut it,” said Peter vulgarly.
“I’ll fight you a duel196 for her. We will fight a real duel for her.”
“You hadn’t better begin,” said Peter.
“But I mean—you know—a duel, Peter.”
“Let’s fight one now,” said Peter, “’f you think you’re going to have Joan for your girl.”
“We will fight with swords.”
“Sticks.”
“Yes, but call them swords. And we shall have to have seconds and a doctor.”
“Joan’s my second.”
“You can’t have Joan. My second’s the Grand Duke of Surrey-Sussex.”
“Then mine’s Bungo-Peter.”
“But we’ve got no sticks.”
“I know where there’s two sticks,” said Peter. “Under the stairs. And we can fight in the shrubbery over by the fence.”
138The sticks were convenient little canes197. “They ought to have hilts,” said young Winterbaum. “You ever fenced?”
“Not much,” said Peter guardedly.
“I’ve often fenced with my cousin, the honourable198 Ralph—you know. Like this—guard. One. Two. You’ve got to have a wrist.”
They repaired to the field of battle. “We stand aside while the seconds pace out the ground,” explained young Winterbaum. “Now we shake hands. Now we take our places.”
They proceeded to strike fencer-like attitudes. Young Winterbaum suddenly became one of the master swordsmen of the world, but Peter was chiefly intent on where he should hit young Winterbaum. He had got to hit him and hurt him a lot, or else he would get Joan. They crossed swords. Then young Winterbaum feinted and Peter hit him hard on the arm. Then young Winterbaum thrust Peter in the chest, and began to explain at once volubly that Peter was now defeated and dead and everything conclusively199 settled.
But nobody was going to take away Peter’s Joan on such easy terms. Peter, giving his antagonist200 no time to complete his explanation, slashed201 him painfully on the knuckles. “I’m not dead,” said Peter, slashing202 again. “I’m not dead. See? Come on!”
Whereupon young Winterbaum cried out, as it were with a trumpet203, in a loud and grief-stricken voice. “Now I shall hurt you. That’s too much,” and swiped viciously at Peter’s face and raised a weal on Peter’s cheek. Whereupon Peter, feeling that Joan was slipping from him, began to rain blows upon young Winterbaum wherever young Winterbaum might be supposed to be tender, and young Winterbaum began to dance about obliquely and cry out, “Mustn’t hit my legs. Mustn’t hit my legs. Not fair. Oo-oh! my knuckles!” And after one or two revengeful slashes204 at Peter’s head which Peter—who had had his experiences with Joan in a rage—parried with an uplifted arm, young Winterbaum turned and ran—ran into the arms of Miss Murgatroyd, who had been attracted to the shrubbery by his cries....
It was the first fight that had ever happened in the school of St. George and the Venerable Bede since its foundation.
“He said I couldn’t fight him,” said Peter.
139“He went on fighting after I’d pinked him,” said young Winterbaum.
Neither of them said a word about Joan.
So Miss Murgatroyd made a great session of the school, and the two combatants, flushed and a little heroic, sat on either side of her discourse. She said that this was the first time she had ever had to reprove any of her pupils for fighting. She hoped that never again would it be necessary for her to do so. She said that nothing we could do was quite so wicked as fighting because nothing was so flatly contradictory205 to our Lord’s commandment that we should love one another. The only fight we might fight with a good conscience was the good fight. In that sense we were all warriors206. We were fighters for righteousness. In a sense every one was a knight207 and a fighter, every girl as well as every boy. Because there was no more reason why girls should not fight as well as boys. Some day she hoped this would be recognized, and girls would be given knighthoods and wear their spurs as proudly as the opposite sex. Earth was a battlefield, and none of us must be dumb driven cattle or submit to injustice208 or cruelty. We must not think that life was made for silken ease or self-indulgence. Let us think rather of the Red Indian perpetually in training for conflict, lean and vigorous and breathing only through his nose. No one who breathed through his or her open mouth would ever be a fighter.
At this point Miss Murgatroyd seemed to hesitate for a time. Breathing was a very attractive topic to her, and it was drawing her away from her main theme. She was, so to speak, dredging for her lost thread in the swift undertow of hygienic doctrine209 as one might dredge for a lost cable. She got it presently, and concluded by hoping that this would be a lesson to Philip and Peter and that henceforth they would learn that great lesson of Prince Kropotkin’s that co-operation is better than conflict.
Neither of the two combatants listened very closely to this discourse. Peter was wrestling with the question whether a hot red weal across one’s cheek is compatible with victory, and young Winterbaum with the still more subtle difficulty of whether he had been actually running away or merely 140stepping back when he had collided with Miss Murgatroyd, and what impression this apparently210 retrograde movement had made on her mind and upon the mind of Peter. Did they understand that sometimes a swordsman had to go back and could go back without the slightest discredit211?...
§ 8
After this incident the disposal of Joan ceased to be a topic for conversation between young Winterbaum and Peter, and presently young Winterbaum conveyed to Peter in an offhand212 manner that he adored Minnie Restharrow as the cleverest and most charming girl in the school. She was indeed absolutely the best thing to be got in that way. She was, he opined, cleverer even than Miss Murgatroyd. He was therefore, he intimated, in love with Minnie Restharrow. It was a great passion.
So far as Peter was concerned, he gathered, it might be.
All the canons of romance required that Peter, having fought for and won Joan, should thereupon love Joan and her only until he was of an age to marry her. As a matter of fact, having disposed of this invader213 of his private ascendancy214 over Joan, he thought no more of her in that relationship. He decided, however, that if young Winterbaum was going to have a sweetheart he must have one too, and mysterious processes of his mind indicated Sydney Sheldrick as the only possible person. It was not that Peter particularly wanted a sweetheart, but he was not going to let young Winterbaum come it over him—any more than he was going to let young Winterbaum be King of more than half of Surrey. He was profoundly bored by all this competitiveness, but obscure instincts urged him to keep his end up.
One day Miss Murgatroyd was expatiating215 to the mother of a prospective216 pupil upon the wonderful effects of coeducation in calming the passions. “The boys and girls grow up together, get used to each other, and there’s never any nonsense between them.”
“And don’t they—well, take an interest in each other?”
“Not in that way. Not in any undesirable217 way. Such as they would if they had been morbidly218 separated.”
141“But it seems almost unnatural219 for them not to take an interest.”
“Experience, I can assure you, shows otherwise,” said Miss Murgatroyd conclusively.
At that moment two figures, gravely conversing220 together, passed across the lawn in the middle distance; one was a well-grown girl of thirteen in a short-skirted gymnasium dress, the other a nice-looking boy of ten, knickerbockered, bare-legged, sandalled, and wearing the art green blouse of the school. They looked the most open-air and unsophisticated children of modernity it was possible to conceive. This is what they were saying:
“Sydney, when I grow up I’m going to marry you. You got to be my sweetheart. See?”
“You darling! Is that what you have to tell me? I didn’t think you loved me a little bit.”
“I’m going to marry you,” said Peter, sticking to the facts of the case.
“I’d hug you. Only old Muggy221 is looking out of the window. But the very first chance I get I’ll kiss you. And you’ll have to kiss me back, mind, Peter.”
“Where some one can’t see us,” Peter stipulated222.
“Oh! I love spooning,” said the ardent223 Sydney. “’Member when I kissed you before?...”
“The girls refine the boys and the whole atmosphere is just a family atmosphere,” Miss Murgatroyd was explaining at the window.
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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imp
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| n.顽童 | |
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exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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purged
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| 清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响 | |
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defilement
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| n.弄脏，污辱，污秽 | |
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sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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forerunners
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| n.先驱( forerunner的名词复数 )；开路人；先兆；前兆 | |
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trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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turbid
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| adj.混浊的，泥水的，浓的 | |
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emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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peculiar
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peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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reactionary
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| n.反动者，反动主义者；adj.反动的，反动主义的，反对改革的 | |
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innocence
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inexplicably
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| adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是 | |
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exacerbated
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| v.使恶化，使加重( exacerbate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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holly
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| n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
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embodying
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| v.表现( embody的现在分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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expended
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symbolical
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| a.象征性的 | |
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proclivity
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vegetarianism
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tar
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| n.柏油，焦油；vt.涂或浇柏油/焦油于 | |
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29
infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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30
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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31
edifying
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| adj.有教训意味的，教训性的，有益的v.开导，启发( edify的现在分词 ) | |
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32
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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33
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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34
outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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35
outrageously
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| 凶残地； 肆无忌惮地； 令人不能容忍地； 不寻常地 | |
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36
craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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37
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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38
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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39
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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40
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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41
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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43
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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44
scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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45
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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46
parlance
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| n.说法；语调 | |
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47
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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48
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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49
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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50
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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51
precept
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| n.戒律；格言 | |
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52
ratiocination
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| n.推理；推断 | |
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53
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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54
decorative
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| adj.装饰的，可作装饰的 | |
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55
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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56
enthusiast
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| n.热心人，热衷者 | |
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57
disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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58
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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59
witticisms
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| n.妙语，俏皮话( witticism的名词复数 ) | |
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60
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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61
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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62
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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63
vogues
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| n.时兴，时尚，流行的样式( vogue的名词复数 )v.时兴，时尚，流行的样式( vogue的第三人称单数 )；流行的，时髦的 | |
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64
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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65
bead
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| n.念珠；(pl.)珠子项链；水珠 | |
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66
favourably
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| adv. 善意地，赞成地 =favorably | |
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67
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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68
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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69
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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70
holders
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| 支持物( holder的名词复数 )； 持有者； （支票等）持有人； 支托（或握持）…之物 | |
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71
stockbrokers
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| n.股票经纪人( stockbroker的名词复数 ) | |
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72
rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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73
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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74
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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75
consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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76
illiterate
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|
| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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77
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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78
graphic
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| adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的 | |
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79
muddled
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|
| adj.混乱的；糊涂的；头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的过去式)；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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80
perfectly
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|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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81
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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82
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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83
sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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84
scribble
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| v.潦草地书写，乱写，滥写；n.潦草的写法，潦草写成的东西，杂文 | |
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85
scribbling
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| n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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86
fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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87
cones
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| n.（人眼）圆锥细胞；圆锥体( cone的名词复数 )；球果；圆锥形东西；（盛冰淇淋的）锥形蛋卷筒 | |
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88
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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89
detrimental
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| adj.损害的，造成伤害的 | |
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90
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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91
squinting
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| 斜视( squint的现在分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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92
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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93
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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94
multiplication
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| n.增加，增多，倍增；增殖，繁殖；乘法 | |
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95
persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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96
impudent
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| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
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97
digestions
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| n.消化能力( digestion的名词复数 )；消化，领悟 | |
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98
entangle
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| vt.缠住，套住；卷入，连累 | |
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99
serpentine
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| adj.蜿蜒的，弯曲的 | |
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100
brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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101
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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102
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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103
sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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104
jubilee
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| n.周年纪念；欢乐 | |
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105
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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106
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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107
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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108
instigator
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| n.煽动者 | |
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109
revered
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| v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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110
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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111
colloquial
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| adj.口语的，会话的 | |
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112
bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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113
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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114
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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115
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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116
pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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117
obliquely
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| adv.斜； 倾斜； 间接； 不光明正大 | |
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118
boggy
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| adj.沼泽多的 | |
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119
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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120
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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121
emblem
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| n.象征，标志；徽章 | |
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122
wilted
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| （使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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123
resin
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| n.树脂，松香，树脂制品；vt.涂树脂 | |
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124
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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125
fungus
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| n.真菌，真菌类植物 | |
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126
fungi
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| n.真菌，霉菌 | |
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127
specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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128
stank
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| n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
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129
waylaid
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| v.拦截，拦路( waylay的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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130
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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131
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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132
saga
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| n.(尤指中世纪北欧海盗的)故事，英雄传奇 | |
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133
feuds
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| n.长期不和，世仇( feud的名词复数 ) | |
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134
hiccups
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| n.嗝( hiccup的名词复数 )；连续地打嗝；暂时性的小问题；短暂的停顿v.嗝( hiccup的第三人称单数 )；连续地打嗝；暂时性的小问题；短暂的停顿 | |
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135
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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136
squeal
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| v.发出长而尖的声音；n.长而尖的声音 | |
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137
smite
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| v.重击；彻底击败；n.打；尝试；一点儿 | |
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138
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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139
negligently
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140
provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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141
facetious
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| adj.轻浮的，好开玩笑的 | |
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142
wigs
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| n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 ) | |
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143
gusty
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| adj.起大风的 | |
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144
dint
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| n.由于，靠；凹坑 | |
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145
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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146
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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147
joyfully
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| adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地 | |
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148
disarming
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| adj.消除敌意的，使人消气的v.裁军( disarm的现在分词 )；使息怒 | |
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149
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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150
charades
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| n.伪装( charade的名词复数 )；猜字游戏 | |
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151
bluebells
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| n.圆叶风铃草( bluebell的名词复数 ) | |
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152
burlesque
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| v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿 | |
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153
rehearsals
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| n.练习( rehearsal的名词复数 )；排练；复述；重复 | |
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154
skilfully
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| adv. (美skillfully)熟练地 | |
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155
auspicious
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| adj.吉利的；幸运的，吉兆的 | |
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156
furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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157
playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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158
annexed
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| [法] 附加的，附属的 | |
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159
reverberating
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| 回响，回荡( reverberate的现在分词 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射 | |
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160
delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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161
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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162
scampering
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| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的现在分词 ) | |
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163
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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164
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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165
gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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166
sneak
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| vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行 | |
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167
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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168
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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169
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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170
knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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171
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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172
secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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173
ruffle
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| v.弄皱，弄乱；激怒，扰乱；n.褶裥饰边 | |
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174
jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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175
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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176
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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177
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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178
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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179
pranced
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| v.（马）腾跃( prance的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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180
ousted
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| 驱逐( oust的过去式和过去分词 )； 革职； 罢黜； 剥夺 | |
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181
conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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182
apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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183
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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184
lamentable
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| adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的 | |
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185
oversight
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| n.勘漏，失察，疏忽 | |
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186
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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187
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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188
accentuating
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| v.重读( accentuate的现在分词 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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189
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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190
second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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191
rims
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| n.（圆形物体的）边( rim的名词复数 )；缘；轮辋；轮圈 | |
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192
precociously
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| Precociously | |
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193
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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194
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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195
subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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196
duel
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| n./v.决斗；(双方的)斗争 | |
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197
canes
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| n.（某些植物，如竹或甘蔗的）茎( cane的名词复数 )；（用于制作家具等的）竹竿；竹杖 | |
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198
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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199
conclusively
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| adv.令人信服地，确凿地 | |
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200
antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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201
slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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202
slashing
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| adj.尖锐的；苛刻的；鲜明的；乱砍的v.挥砍( slash的现在分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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203
trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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204
slashes
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| n.（用刀等）砍( slash的名词复数 )；（长而窄的）伤口；斜杠；撒尿v.挥砍( slash的第三人称单数 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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205
contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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206
warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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207
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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208
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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209
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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210
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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211
discredit
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| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
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212
offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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213
invader
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| n.侵略者，侵犯者，入侵者 | |
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214
ascendancy
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| n.统治权，支配力量 | |
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215
expatiating
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| v.详述，细说( expatiate的现在分词 ) | |
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216
prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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217
undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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218
morbidly
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| adv.病态地 | |
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219
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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220
conversing
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
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221
muggy
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| adj.闷热的；adv.（天气）闷热而潮湿地；n.（天气）闷热而潮湿 | |
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222
stipulated
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| vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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223
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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