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THE GIRLS AND I
[Illustration: 'We ran over the fields by a short cut to a stile on to
the road, where we could see her pass, and there we shouted out again
all our messages.'--c. xi. p. 168.]
THE GIRLS AND I: A
Veracious History
[Illustration]
BY MRS MOLESWORTH
Illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke
London Macmillan & Co.
MDCCCXCII
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I OURSELVES 1
CHAPTER II THE DIAMOND ORNAMENT 16
CHAPTER III WORK FOR THE TOWN-CRIER 30
CHAPTER IV AT THE DANCING CLASS 46
CHAPTER V RODNEY SQUARE 63
CHAPTER VI THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 79
CHAPTER VII FOUR 'IF'S' AND A COINCIDENCE 95
CHAPTER VIII MOSSMOOR FARM 110
CHAPTER IX SPYING THE LAND 125
CHAPTER X A LONG AGO ADVENTURE 140
CHAPTER XI MISCHIEF IN THE AIR 157
CHAPTER XII MISS CROSS-AT-FIRST'S FUR CAPE 173
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
'JACK, DO HELP ME TO FASTEN THIS BRACELET' 24
'I'D GIVE ANYTHING, I'D ALMOST GIVE MYSELF, TO FIND IT' 48
'THE DOOR OPENED A LITTLE WIDER, AND TWO FACES APPEARED' 74
'I JUST STOOD STILL ... AND LOOKED WELL ROUND AT THE VIEW AND
EVERYTHING' 130
'HER GRANDMOTHER ... WENT QUIETLY OUT OF THE PEW WITHOUT A
NOTION BUT THAT THE CHILD WAS BESIDE HER' 153
'WE RAN OVER THE FIELDS BY A SHORT CUT TO A STILE ON TO THE
ROAD, WHERE WE COULD SEE HER PASS, AND THERE WE SHOUTED OUT
AGAIN ALL OUR MESSAGES' 168
'WE ALL THREE SAT LISTENING AND LISTENING' 175
CHAPTER I
OURSELVES
I'm Jack. I've always been Jack, ever since I can remember at least,
though I suppose I must have been called 'Baby' for a bit before Serena
came. But she's only a year and a half younger than me, and Maud's only
a year and a quarter behind her, so I can scarcely remember even Serena
being 'Baby'; and Maud's always been so very grown up for her age that
you couldn't fancy her anything but 'Maud.'
My real name isn't John though, as you might fancy. It's a much queerer
name, but there's always been one of it in our family ever since some
grandfather or other married a German girl, who called her eldest son
after her own father. So we're accustomed to it, and it doesn't seem so
queer to us as to other people. It's 'Joachim.' 'Jock' seems a better
short for it than 'Jack,' doesn't it? and I believe mother once meant to
call me 'Jock.' But when Serry and Maud came I _had_ to be Jack, for
with Anne and Hebe in front of me, and the two others behind, of course
I was 'Jack-in-the-middle.' There's never been any more of us, and even
if there had I'd have stayed Jack, once I'd got settled into it, you
see.
I'm eleven. I'm writing this in the holidays; and if I don't get it
finished before they're done I'll keep adding on to it till I've told
all there is to tell.
It's a sort of comfort to me to write about everything, for one way and
another I've had a good deal to put up with, all because of--_girls_.
And I have to be good-tempered and nice just because they _are_ girls.
And besides that, I'm really very fond of them; and they're not bad. But
no one who hasn't tried it knows in the least what it is to be one boy
among a lot of girls, 'specially when some of them are rather boy-ey
girls, and when you yourself are just a little perhaps--just a very
little--the other way.
I don't think I'm a baby. Honestly I don't, and I'm not going to write
down anything I don't _quite_ think. But I do like to be quiet, and I
like to have things tidy and regular. I like rules, and keeping to them;
and I hate racket and mess. Anne, now, drives me nearly wild with her
rushy, helter-skelter ways. You wouldn't think it, would you,
considering that she's fourteen, and the eldest, and that she's been the
eldest all her life?--eldests _should_ be steady and good examples. And
her name sounds steady and neat, doesn't it? and yet of all the untidy,
unpunctual--no, I mustn't let myself go like that. Besides, it's quite
true, as Hebe says, Anne has got a very good heart, and she's very
particular in some _mind_ ways; she never says a word that isn't quite
true--she doesn't even exaggerate. I have noticed that rather tiresome,
careless people often have very good hearts. I wish they could see how
much nicer it would be for other people if they'd put some of their good
hearts into their tiresome ways.
On the whole, it's Hebe that suits the best with me. She
particular--_much_ more particular than Anne, though not quite as
particular as _I'd_ like her to be, and then she is really awfully
sweet. That makes her a little worrying sometimes, for she will take
sides. If I am in a great state at finding our postage stamps all
muddled, for instance--Anne and Hebe and I have a collection together, I
am sorry to say--and _I_ know who's been at them and say something--who
could help saying something if they found a lot of carefully-sorted ones
ready to gum in, all pitched into the unsorted box with Uncle Brian's
last envelopeful that I haven't looked over?--up flies Hebe in Anne's
defence.
'Poor Anne, she was in such a hurry, she never meant it'; or 'she only
wanted to help you, Jack; she didn't know you had sorted these.'
Now, isn't that rather trying? For it makes me feel as if I was horrid;
and if Hebe would just say, 'Yes, it _is_ awfully tiresome,' I'd feel I
had a sort of right to be vexed, and when you feel that, the vexedness
often goes away.
Still, there's no doubt Hebe _is_ sweet, and I daresay she flies up for
me just as she does for the others when I am the one not there.
We're all very fond of Hebe. She and Serena are rather like each other;
they have fair fluffy hair and rosy cheeks, but they're not a bit like
each other in themselves. Serena is a terrible tomboy--worse than Anne,
for she really never thinks at all. Anne does mean to think, but she
does it the wrong way; she gets her head so full of some one thing that
she forgets everything else, and then she's awfully sorry. But Serry
just doesn't think at all, though she's very good-natured, and, of
course, when it comes to really vexing or hurting any one, she's sorry
too--for about a minute and a half!
And then there's Maud. It is very funny about Maud, the oddest thing
about us, though we are rather a topsy-turvy family. Maud is only eight
and a half, but she's the oldest of us all.
'She's that terrible old-fashioned,' mother's old nurse said when she
came to pay us a visit once, 'she's scarce canny.'
They call _me_ old-fashioned sometimes, but I'm nothing to Maud. Why,
bless you (I learnt that from old nurse, and I like it, and nobody can
say it's naughty to bless anybody), compared to Maud I'm careless, and
untidy, and unpunctual, and heedless, and everything of these kinds that
I shouldn't be. And yet she and I don't get on as well as Hebe and I do,
and in some ways even not as well as Anne and I do. But Maud and Anne
get on very well-- I never saw anything like it. She tidies for Anne;
she reminds her of things she's going to forget; she seems to think she
was sent into the world to take care of her big sister. Anne is big--at
least she's tall--tall and thin, and with rather smooth dark hair. My
goodness! if she'd had fluffy hair like us three middle ones--for even
mine is rather a bother, it grows so fast and is so curly--what _would_
she have looked like? She seems meant to be neat, and till you know her,
and go her all over pretty closely, you'd never guess how untidy she
is--pins all over, even though Sophy is _always_ mending her frocks and
things. And Maud is dark too, though her hair is curly like ours; she's
like a gipsy, people say, but she's not a bit gipsy in her _ways_--oh
dear, no!
We live in London--mostly, that's to say. We've got a big dark old house
that really belongs to grandfather, but he's so little there that he
lets us use it, for father has to be in London a lot. We're always there
in winter; that's the time grandfather's generally in France or Egypt,
or somewhere warm. Now and then, if he's later of going away than usual,
or sooner of coming back, he's with us a while in London. We don't like
it much.
That sounds unkind. I don't mean to be unkind. I'm just writing
everything down because I want to practise myself at it. Father writes
books--very clever ones, though they're stories. I've read bits, but I
didn't understand them much, only I know they're very clever by the fuss
that's made about them. And people wonder how ever he gets time to write
them with all the Government things he does too. He _must_ be very
clever; that's what put it in my head that _perhaps_ some day I might be
clever that way too. For I don't want to be either a soldier or a
sailor, or a lawyer like father was before he got into Government
things, and I'm sure I'm not good enough to be a parson, though I think
I'd rather like it; and so sometimes I really get frightened that I'll
be no good at anything at all, and a boy must be something.
I think father and mother would be pleased if I were a great writer.
And then we really have had some adventures: that makes it more
interesting to make out a story about ourselves, for I think a book just
about getting up and going to bed, and breakfast, and dinner, and tea,
would be very stupid--though, all the same, in story-books I do like
rather to know what the children have to eat, and something about the
place they live in too.
To go back about grandfather. The reason we don't much like his being
with us isn't exactly that we don't care for him. He's not bad. But
father's his only child, and our grandmother died a good while ago, and
I think she must have been a very giving-in sort of person, and that's
bad training for any one. When I'm grown up, _if_ ever I marry, I shall
settle with my wife before we start that she mustn't give in to me too
much, and I'll stick to it once it's settled. For I've got rather a
nasty temper, and I feel in me that if I was to get too much of my own
way it would get horrid. It's perhaps because of that that it's been a
good thing for me to have four sisters, for they're _nearly_ as bad as
four wives sometimes. I don't get too much of my own way at present, I
can tell you.
I often think I'm rather like grandfather. P'raps if he'd had four
sisters or a not-too-giving-in wife he'd have been better. Now, I hope
that's not rude? I don't mean it to be; I'm rather excusing him. And I
can't put down what isn't true, even though nobody should ever see this
'veracious history'--that's what I'm going to put on the
title-page--except myself. And the truth is that grandfather expects
everybody and everything to give in to him. Not _always_ father, for he
does see how grand and clever father is, and that he can't be expected
to come and go, and do things, and give up things, just like a baby.
But oh, as for poor little mums!--that's mother--her life's not her own
when gran's with us. And it isn't that she's silly a bit. She's awfully
sensible; something like Hebe and Maud mixed together, though to look at
her she's more like Anne. It's real goodness makes _her_ give in.
'He's getting old, dears, you know,' she says, 'and practically he's so
very good to us.'
I'm not quite sure that I understand quite what 'practically' means. I
think it's to do with the house--or the houses, for we've got two--and
money. For father, though he's so clever, wouldn't be _rich_ without
grandfather, I don't think. Perhaps it means presents too.
He--grandfather--isn't bad about presents. He never forgets birthdays or
Christmases--oh dear, no, he's got an _awfully_ good memory. Sometimes
_some_ of us would almost rather be worse off for presents if only he'd
forget some other things.
I'm like him about remembering too. I think my mind is rather tidy, as
well as my outside ways. I've got things very neat inside; I often feel
as if it was a cupboard, and I like to know exactly which shelf to go to
for anything I want. Mums says, 'That's all very well so far as it
goes, Jack, but don't stop short at that, or you will be in danger of
growing narrow-minded and self-satisfied.'
And I think I know what she means. There are some things now about Anne,
for all her tiresome ways, that I know are _grander_ than about me, or
even perhaps than about Hebe, only Hebe's sweetness makes up for
everything. But Anne would give anything in a moment to do any one a
good turn. And I--well, I'd think about it. I didn't at all like having
to tear up my nice pocket-handkerchief even the day we found the poor
little boy with his leg bleeding so dreadfully in the Park, and Anne had
hers in strips in a moment. And she'll lend her very best things to any
one of us. And she's got feelings I don't understand. Beautiful church
music makes her want so _dreadfully_ to be good, she says. I _like_ it
very much, but I don't think I feel it that way. I just feel nice and
quiet, and almost a little sleepy if it goes on a good while.
I was telling about our house in London. It's big, and rather grand in a
dull sort of way, but dark and gloomy. Long ago, when they built big
houses, I think they fancied it was the proper thing to make them dark.
It's nice in winter when it's shut up for the night, and the gas
lighted in the hall and on the staircases, and with the lamps in the
dining-room and drawing-rooms and library--it is very warm and
comfortable then, and though the furniture's old-fashioned, and not a
pretty kind of old-fashioned, it looks grand in a way. But when the
spring comes, and the bright days show up all the dinginess, poor
mother, how she does sigh!
'I would so like to have a pretty house,' she says. 'The curtains are
all so dark, you can scarcely see they're any colour at all, and those
dreadful heavy gilt frames to the mirrors in the drawing-rooms! Oh,
Alan'--Alan is father--'don't you think gran would let us refurnish even
the third drawing-room? I could make it a sort of boudoir, you know, and
I could have my own friends in there in the daytime. The rooms don't
look so bad at night.'
But father shakes his head.
'I'm afraid he wouldn't like it,' he says.
So I suppose even father gives in a good deal to gran.
Mums isn't a bit selfish. The brightest rooms in the house have always
been ours. They're two floors over the drawing-rooms, which are really
_very_ big rooms. We have a nursery, and on one side of it a
dressing-room--that's mine--and two other rooms, with two beds each for
the girls. We do our lessons in the study--a little room in front of the
dining-room, very jolly, for it looks to the front, and the street is
wide, and we can see all the barrel-organs and monkeys, and Punch and
Judys, and bands, when we're doing our lessons. I don't mean when we're
_having_ our lessons; that's different. My goodness! I'd like to see
even Serry try to look out of the window when Miss Stirling is there!
Miss Stirling's our governess. She comes, you know; she's not a
living-in-the-house one, and she's pretty strict, so we like her best
the way she is. But _doing_ our lessons is when we're learning them.
Most days, in winter anyway, we go a walk till four, or a quarter to,
and then we learn for an hour, and then we have tea; and if we're not
finished, we come down again till half-past six or so, and then we dress
to go into the drawing-room to mums.
She nearly always dresses for dinner early, so we have an hour with her.
The little ones, Serena and Maud, never have much to learn. It's Anne
and Hebe and me. We all do Latin-- I mean we three do. And twice a week
Miss Stirling takes Anne and Hebe to French and German classes for
'advanced pupils.' I'm not an advanced pupil, so those mornings I work
alone for two hours, and then I've not much to do in the evening those
days. And Miss Stirling gives me French and German the days that the
girls are at their music with Mrs. Meux, their music-teacher.
That's how we've done for a long time--ages. But next year I'm going to
school.
I'm to go when I'm twelve. My birthday comes in November. It's just
been; that's how I said 'I'm eleven,' not eleven and a quarter, or
eleven and a half--just eleven. And I'm to go at the end of the
Christmas holidays after that. I don't much mind; at least I don't think
I do. I'll have more lessons and more games in a regular way, and I'll
have less worries, anyway at first. For I shall be counted a small boy,
of course, and I shan't have to look after others and be blamed for
them, the way I have to look after the girls at home. It'll really be a
sort of rest. I've had such a lot of looking after other people. I
really have.
Mums says so herself sometimes. She even says I have to look after her.
And it's true. She's awfully good--she's almost an angel--but she's a
tiny bit like Anne. She's rather untidy. Not to look at, ever. She's as
neat as a pin, and then she's very pretty; but she's careless--she says
so herself. She so often loses things, because she's got a trick of
putting them down anywhere she happens to be. Often and often I go to
her room when she's dressing, and tap at the door and say--
'Have you lost something, mums?'
And ten to one she'll call back--
'Yes, my dear town-crier, I have.' ('My gloves,' or 'my card-case,' or
'my keys,' or, oh! almost anything.) 'But I wasn't worrying about it; I
knew you'd find it, Jack.'
And Maud does finder for Anne, just the same way, only _her_ finding
sometimes gets me into trouble. Just fancy that. If Anne loses
something, and Maud is hunting away and doesn't find it all at once,
they'll turn upon me--they truly will--and say--
'You _might_ help her, Jack, you really might, poor little thing! It's
no trouble to you to run up and down stairs, and she's so little.'
When that sort of thing happens, I do feel that I've got a rather nasty
temper.
I've begun about losing things, because our adventures had to do with a
very big losing. The first adventure came straight from it, and the
rest had to do with it.
It's funny how things hang together like that. You think of something
that's come, and you remember what made it happen, and then you go back
to the beginning of _that_, and you see it came from something else; and
you go on feeling it out like, till you're quite astonished to find what
a perfectly different thing had started it all from what you would have
thought.
I think this will be a good place for ending the first chapter, which
isn't really like a story--only an explanation of us.
And in the next I'll begin about our adventures.