"Nurse. Please. Fasten it," he said impatiently.

"And that's not the way to speak, Master Jeremy, and well you know it," she said. "'Ave you cleaned your teeth?"

"Yes," he answered without hesitation. It was not until the word was spoken that he realised that he had not. He flushed. The Jampot eyed him with a sudden sharp suspicion. He was then and ever afterwards a very bad hand at a lie...

He would have taken the word back, he wanted to take it back—but something held him as though a stronger than he had placed his hand over his mouth. His face flamed.

"You've truly cleaned them?" she said.

"Yes, truly," he answered, his eyes on the ground. Never was there a more obvious liar in all the world.

She said no more; he moved to the fireplace. His joy was gone. There was a cold clammy sensation about his heart. Slowly, very slowly, the consciousness stole upon him that he was a liar. He had not thought it a lie when he had first spoken, now he knew.

Still there was time. Had he turned round and spoken, all might still have been well. But now obstinacy held him. He was not going to give the Jampot an opportunity for triumphing over him. After all, he would clean them so soon as she went to brush Helen's hair. In a moment what he had said would be true.

But he was miserable. Hamlet came up from the nether regions where he had spent the night, showing his teeth, wagging his tail, and even rolling on the cockatoos. Jeremy paid no attention. The weight in his heart grew heavier and heavier. He watched, from under his eyelids, the Jampot. In a moment she must go into Helen's room. But she did not. She stayed for a little arranging the things on the breakfast-table—then suddenly, without a word, she turned into Jeremy's bedchamber. His heart began to hammer. There was an awful pause; he heard from miles away Mary's voice: "Do do that button, Helen, I can't get it!" and Helen's "Oh, bother!"

Then, like Judgment, the Jampot appeared again. She stood in the doorway, looking across at him.

"You 'ave not cleaned your teeth, Master Jeremy," she said. "The glass isn't touched, nor your toothbrush... You wicked, wicked boy. So it's a liar you've become, added on to all your other wickedness."

"I forgot," he muttered sullenly. "I thought I had."

She smiled the smile of approaching triumph.

"No, you did not," she said. "You knew you'd told a lie. It was in your face. All of a piece—all of a piece."

The way she said this, like a pirate counting over his captured treasure, was enraging. Jeremy could feel the wild fury at himself, at her, at the stupid blunder of the whole business rising to his throat.

"If you think I'm going to let this pass you're making a mighty mistake," she continued, "which I wouldn't do not if you paid me all the gold in the kingdom. I mayn't be good enough to keep my place and look after such as you, but anyways I'm able to stop your lying for another week or two. I know my duty even though there's them as thinks I don't."

She positively snorted, and the excitement of her own vindication and the just condemnation of Jeremy was such that her hands trembled.

"I don't care what you do," Jeremy shouted. "You can tell anyone you like. I don't care what you do. You're a beastly woman."

She turned upon him, her face purple. "That's enough, Master Jeremy," she said, her voice low and trembling. "I'm not here to be called names by such as you. You'll be sorry for this before you're much older.... You see."

There was then an awful and sickly pause. Jeremy seemed to himself to be sinking lower and lower into a damp clammy depth of degradation. What must this world be that it could change itself so instantly from a place of gay and happy pleasure into a dim groping room of punishment and dismay?

His feelings were utterly confused. He supposed that he was terribly wicked. But he did not feel wicked. He only felt miserable, sick and defiant. Mary and Helen came in, their eyes open to a crisis, their bodies tuned sympathetically to the atmosphere of sin and crime that they discerned around them.

Then Mr. Cole came in as was his daily habit—for a moment before his breakfast.

"Well, here are you all," he cried. "Ready for to-night? No breakfast yet? Why, now...?"

Then perceiving, as all practised fathers instantly must, that the atmosphere was sinful, he changed his voice to that of the Children's Sunday Afternoon Service—a voice well known in his family.

"Please, sir," began the Jampot, "I'm sorry to 'ave to tell you, sir, that Master Jeremy's not been at all good this morning."

"Well, Jeremy," he said, turning to his son, "what is it?"

Jeremy's face, raised to his father's, was hard and set and sullen.

"I've told a lie," he said; "I said I'd cleaned my teeth when I hadn't. Nurse went and looked, and then I called her a beastly woman."

The Jampot's face expressed a grieved and at the same time triumphant confirmation of this.

"You told a lie?" Mr. Cole's voice was full of a lingering sorrow.

"Yes," said Jeremy.

"Are you sorry?"

"I'm sorry that I told a lie, but I'm not sorry I called Nurse a beastly woman."

"Jeremy!"

"No, I'm not. She is a beastly woman."

Mr. Cole was always at a loss when anyone defied him, even though it were only a small boy of eight. He took refuge now in his ecclesiastical and parental authority.

"I'm very distressed—very distressed indeed. I hope that punishment, Jeremy, will show you how wrong you have been. I'm afraid you cannot come with us to the Pantomime to-night."

At that judgement a quiver for an instant held Jeremy's face, turning it, for that moment, into something shapeless and old. His heart had given a wild leap of terror and dismay. But he showed no further sign. He simply stood there waiting.

Mr. Cole was baffled, as he always was by Jeremy's moods, so he continued:

"And until you've apologised to Nurse for your rudeness you must remain by yourself. I shall forbid your sisters to speak to you. Mary and Helen, you are not to speak to your brother until he has apologised to Nurse."

"Yes, Father," said Helen

"Oh, Father, mayn't he come to-night?" said Mary.

"No, Mary, I'm afraid not."

A tear rolled down her cheek. "It won't be any fun without Jeremy," she said. She wished to make the further sacrifice of saying that she would not go unless Jeremy did, but some natural caution restrained her.

Mr. Cole, his face heavy with sorrow, departed. At the dumb misery of Jeremy's face the Jampot's hear—in reality a kind and even sentimental heart—repented her.

"There, Master Jeremy, you be a good boy all day, and I dare say your father will take you, after all; and we won't think no more about what you said to me in the 'eat of the moment."

But Jeremy answered nothing; nor did he respond to the smell of bacon, nor the advances of Hamlet, nor the flood of sunlight that poured into the room from the frosty world outside.

A complete catastrophe. They none of them had wanted to see this thing with the urgent excitement that he had felt. They had not dreamt of it for days and nights and nights and days, as he had done. Their whole future existence did not depend upon their witnessing this, as did his.

During that morning he was a desperate creature, like something caged and tortured. Do happy middle-aged philosophers assure us that children are light-hearted and unfeeling animals? Let them realise something of the agony which Jeremy suffered that day. His whole world had gone.

He was wicked, an outcast; his word could never be trusted again; he would be pointed at, as the boy who had told a lie... And he would not meet Dick Whittington.

The eternity of his punishment hung around his neck like an iron chain. Childhood's tragedies are terrible tragedies, because a child has no sense of time; a moment's dismay is eternal; a careless word from an elder is a lasting judgment; an instant's folly is a lifetime's mistake.

The day dragged its weary length along, and he scarcely moved from his corner by the fire. He did not attempt conversation with anyone. Once or twice the Jampot tried to penetrate behind that little mask of anger and dismay.

"Come, now, things aren't so bad as all that. You be a good boy, and go and tell your father you're sorry..." or "Well, then, Master Jeremy, there'll be another time, I dare say, you can go to the the-ayter..."

But she found no response. If there was one thing that she hated, it was sulks. Here they were, sulks of the worst—and so, like many wiser than herself, she covered up with a word a situation that she did not understand, and left it at that.

The evening came on; the curtains were drawn. Tea arrived; still Jeremy sat there, not speaking, not raising his eyes, a condemned creature. Mary and Helen and Hamlet had had a wretched day. They all sympathised with him.

The girls went to dress. Seven o'clock struck. They were taken downstairs by Nurse, who had her evening out. Rose, the housemaid, would sit with Master Jeremy.

Doors closed, doors opened, voices echoed, carriage-wheels were heard.

Jeremy and Hamlet were left to themselves...



III

The last door had closed, and the sudden sense that everyone had gone and that he might behave now as he pleased, removed the armour in which all day he had encased himself.

He raised his head, looked about the deserted nursery, and then, with the sudden consciousness of that other lighted and busied place where Whittington was pursuing his adventures, he burst into tears. He sobbed, his head down upon his arms, and his body squeezed together so that his knees were close to his nose and his hair in his boots. Hamlet restored him to himself. Instead of assisting his master's grief, as a sentimental dog would have done, by sighing or sniffing or howling, he yawned, stretched himself, and rolled on the carpet. He did not believe in giving way to feelings, and he was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, at Jeremy's lack of restraint.

Jeremy felt this, and in a little while sobs came very slowly, and at last were only little shudders, rather pleasant and healthy. He looked about him, rubbed his red nose with a hideously dirty handkerchief, and felt immensely sleepy.

No, he would not cry any more. Rose would shortly appear, and he did not intend to cry before housemaids. Nevertheless, his desolation was supreme. He was a liar. He had told lies before, but they had not been discovered, and so they were scarcely lies... Now, in some strange way, the publication of his lie had shown him what truly impossible things lies were. He had witnessed this effect upon the general public; he had not believed that he was so wicked. He did not even now feel really wicked, but he saw quite clearly that there was one world for liars and one for truthful men. He wanted, terribly badly, someone to tell him that he was still in the right world...

And then, on the other side, the thought that Mary and Helen were at this very moment witnessing the coloured history of Dick Whittinglon, the history that he had pursued ceaselessly during all these days and nights—that picture of them all in the lighted theatre—once more nearly overcame him. But he pulled himself together.

He sniffed, left his dirty handkerchief, and went slowly and sorrowfully to drag out his toy village from its corner and see whether anything could be done with it.... After all, he was going to school in September. His punishment could not be quite limitless. Hamlet had just shown his approval of this manly conduct by strolling up and sniffing at the Noah family, who were, as usual, on their way to church, when the door suddenly opened, and in came Uncle Samuel.

Jeremy had forgotten his uncle, and now blinked up at him from the floor, where he was squatting, rather ashamed of his swollen eyes and red nose.

Uncle Samuel, however, had no time for details; he was apparently in a hurry. He did not wear his blue painting-smock, but was in a comparatively clean black suit, and on the back of his head was a squashy brown hat.

"Come on," he said, "or we shall be too late."

Jeremy choked. "Too late?" he repeated.

"You're coming, aren't you—to the Pantomime? They sent me back for you."

The room suddenly got on to its legs, like the food and the families during Alice's feast in the "Looking Glass," and swung round, lurching from side to side, and causing the fire to run into the gas and the gas to fly out of the window.

"I—don't—understand," Jeremy stammered.

"Well, if you don't understand in half a shake," said Uncle Samuel, "you won't see any of the show at all. Go on. Wash your face. There are streaks of dirt all down it as though you were a painted Indian; stick on your cap and coat and boots and come along."

Exactly as one moves in sleep so Jeremy now moved. He had once had a wonderful dream, in which he had been at a meal that included every thing that he had most loved—fish-cakes, sausages, ices, strawberry jam, sponge-cake, chocolates, and scrambled eggs—and he had been able to eat, and eat, and had never been satisfied, and had never felt sick—a lovely dream.

He often thought of it. And now in the same bewildering fashion he found his boots and cap and coat and then, deliberately keeping from him the thought of the Pantomime lest he should suddenly wake up, he said:

"I'm ready, Uncle."

Samuel Trefusia looked at him.

"You're a strange kid," he said; "you take everything so quietly—but, thank God, I don't understand children."

"There's Hamlet," said Jeremy, wondering whether perhaps the dream would extend to his friend. "I suppose he can't come too."

"No, he certainly can't," said Uncle Samuel grimly.

"And there's Rose. She'll wonder where I've gone."

"I've told her. Don't you worry. What a conscientious infant you are. Just like your father. Anything else?"

"No," said Jeremy breathlessly, and nearly murdered himself going downstairs because he shut his eyes in order to continue the dream so long as it was possible. Then in the cold night air, grasping his uncle's hand with a feverish hold, he stammered:

"Is it really true? Are we going—really?"

"Of course we're going. Come on—step out or you'll miss the Giant."

"But—but—oh!" he drew a deep breath. "Then they don't think me a liar any more?"

"They—who?"

"Father and Mother and everyone."

"Don't you think about them. You'd better enjoy yourself."

"But you said you wouldn't go to the Pantomime—not for anything?"

"Well, I've changed my mind. Don't talk so much. You know I hate you children chattering. Always got something to say."

So Jeremy was silent. They raced down Orange Street, Jeremy being almost carried off his feet. This was exactly like a dream. This rushing movement and the way that the lamp-posts ran up to you as though they were going to knock you down, and the way that the stars crackled and sputtered and trembled overhead. But Uncle Samuel's hand was flesh and blood, and the heel of Jeremy's right shoe hurt him and he felt the tickle of his sailor-collar at the back of his neck, just as he did when he was awake.

Then there they were at the Assembly Rooms door, Jeremy having become so breathless that Uncle Samuel had to hold him up for a moment or he'd have fallen.

"Bit too fast for you, was it? Well, you shouldn't be so fat. You eat too much. Now we're not going to sit with your father and mother—there isn't room for you there. So don't you go calling out to them or anything. We're sitting in the back and you'd better be quiet or they'll turn you out."

"I'll be quiet," gasped Jeremy.

Uncle Samuel paused at a lighted hole in the wall and spoke to a large lady in black silk who was drinking a cup of tea. Jeremy caught the jingle of money. Then they moved forward, stumbling in the dark up a number of stone steps, pushing at a heavy black curtain, then suddenly bathed in a bewildering glow of light and scent and colour.

Jeremy's first impression, as he fell into this new world, was of an ugly, harsh, but funny voice crying out very loudly indeed: "Oh, my great aunt! Oh, my great aunt! Oh, my great aunt!" A roar of laughter rose about him, almost lifting him off his feet, and close to his car a Glebeshire voice sobbed: "Eh, my dear. Poor worm! Poor worm!"

He was aware then of a strong smell of oranges, of Uncle Samuel pushing him forward, of stumbling over boots, knees, and large hands that were clapping in his very nose, of falling into a seat and then clinging to it as though it was his only hope in this strange puzzling world. The high funny voice rose again: "Oh, my great aunt! Oh, my great aunt!" And again it was followed by the rough roar of delighted laughter.

He was aware then that about him on every side gas was sizzling, and then, as he recovered slowly his breath, his gaze was drawn to the great blaze of light in the distance, against which figures were dimly moving, and from the heart of which the strange voice came. He heard a woman's voice, then several voices together; then suddenly the whole scene shifted into focus, his eyes were tied to the light; the oranges and the gas and the smell of clothes and heated bodies slipped back into distance—he was caught into the world where he had longed to be.

He saw that it was a shop—and he loved shops. His heart beat thickly as his eyes travelled up and up and up over the rows and rows of shelves; here were bales of cloth, red and green and blue; carpets from the East, table-covers, sheets and blankets. Behind the long yellow counters young men in strange clothes were standing. In the middle of the scene was a funny old woman, her hat tumbling off her head, her shabby skirt dragging, large boots, and a red nose. It was from this strange creature that the deep ugly voice proceeded. She had, this old woman, a number of bales of cloth under her arms, and she tried to carry them all, but one slipped, and then another, and then another; she bent to pick them up and her hat fell off; she turned for her hat and all the bales tumbled together. Jeremy began to laugh—everyone laughed; the strange voice came again and again, lamenting, bewailing, she had secured one bale, a smile of cautious triumph began to spread over her ugly face, then the bales all fell again, and once more she was on her knees. It was then that her voice or some movement brought to Jeremy's eyes so vividly the figure of their old gardener, Jordan, that he turned round to Uncle Samuel, and suddenly grasping that gentleman's fat thigh, exclaimed convulsively: "Why, she's a man!"

What a strange topsy-turvy world this was in which women were men, and shops turned (as with a sudden creaking and darkness and clattering did this one) into gardens by the sea. Jeremy drew his breath deeply and held on. His mouth was open and his hair on end.. .

It is impossible to define exactly Jeremy's ultimate impression as the entertainment proceeded. Perhaps he had no ultimate impression. It cannot in reality have been a very wonderful Pantomime. Even at Drury Lane thirty years back there were many things that they did not know, and it is not likely that a touring company fitted into so inadequate an old building as our Assembly Rooms would have provided anything very fine. But Jeremy will never again discover so complete a realisation for his illusions. Whatever failures in the presentation there were, he himself made good.

As a finale to the first half of the entertainment there was given Dick's dream at the Cross-Roads. He lay on the hard ground, his head upon his bundle, the cat as large as he watching sympathetically beside him. In the distance were the lights of London, and then, out of the half dusk, fairies glittering with stars and silver danced up and down the dusky road whilst all the London bells rang out "Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London."

Had Jeremy been of the age and wisdom of Uncle Samuel he would have discovered that Dick was a stout lady and probably the mother of a growing family; that the fairies knew as much about dancing as the Glebeshire wives sitting on the bench behind; that the London bells were two hand instruments worked by a youth in shirt sleeves behind the scenes so energetically that the High Road and the painted London blew backwards and forwards in sympathy with his movements. Jeremy, happily, was not so worldly wise as his uncle. This scene created for him then a tradition of imperishable beauty that would never fade again. The world after that night would be a more magical place than it had ever been before. "Turn again, Whittington" continued the education that the Toy Village and Hamlet had already advanced.

When the gas rose once again, sizzling like crackling bacon, he was white with excitement. The only remark that he made was: "It's much better than the pictures outside Martin's, isn't it, Uncle Samuel?" to which Uncle Samuel, who had been railing for weeks at the deflowering of Polchester by those abominable posters, could truthfully reply, "Much better." Little by little he withdrew himself from the other world and realised his own. He could see that he and his uncle were certainly not amongst the Quality. Large ladies, their dresses tucked up over their knees, sucked oranges. Country farmers with huge knobbly looking sticks were there, and even some sailors, on their way probably to Drymouth. He recognised the lady who kept charge of the small Orange Street post-office, and waved to her with delighted excitement. The atmosphere was thick with gas and oranges, and I'm afraid that Uncle Samuel must have suffered a great deal. I can only put it on record that he, the most selfish of human beings, never breathed a word of complaint.

They were all packed very closely together up there in the gallery, where seventy years before an orchestra straight from Jane Austen's novels had played to the dancing of the contemporaries of Elizabeth Bennett, Emma Woodhouse, and the dear lady of "Persuasion." Another thirty-two years and that same gallery would be listening to recruiting appeals and echoing the drums and fifes of a martial band. The best times are always the old times. The huge lady in the seat next to Jeremy almost swallowed him up, so that he peered out from under her thick arm, and heard every crunch and crackle of the peppermints that she was enjoying. He grew hotter and hotter, so that at last he seemed, as once he had read in some warning tract about a greedy boy that Aunt Amy had given him, "to swim in his own fat." But he did not mind. Discomfort only emphasised his happiness. Then, peering forward beneath that stout black arm, he suddenly perceived, far below in the swimming distance, the back of his mother, the tops of the heads of Mary and Helen, the stiff white collar of his father, and the well-known coral necklace of Aunt Amy. For a moment dismay seized him, the morning's lie which he had entirely forgotten suddenly jumping up and facing him. But they had forgiven him.

"Shall I wave to them?" he asked excitedly of Uncle Samuel.

"No, no," said his uncle very hurriedly. "Nonsense. They wouldn't see you if you did. Leave them alone."

He felt immensely superior to them up where he was, and he wouldn't have changed places with them for anything. He gave a little sigh of satisfaction. "I could drop an orange on to Aunt Amy's head," he said. "Wouldn't she jump!"

"You must keep quiet," said Uncle Samuel. "You're good enough as you are."

"I'd rather be here," said Jeremy. "It's beautifully hot here and there's a lovely smell."

"There is," said Uncle Samuel.

Then the gas went down, and the curtain went up, and Dick, now in a suit of red silk with golden buttons, continued his adventures. I have not space here to describe in detail the further events of his life—how, receiving a telegram from the King of the Zanzibars about the plague of rats, he took ship with his cat and Alderman Fitzwarren and his wife, how they were all swallowed by a whale, cast up by a most lucky chance on the Zanzibars, nearly cooked by the natives, and rescued by the King of the Zanzibars' beautiful daughter, killed all the rats, were given a huge feast, with dance and song, and finally Dick, although tempted by the dusky Princess, refused a large fortune and returned to Alice of Eastcheap, the true lady of his heart. There were, of course, many other things, such as the aspirations and misadventures of Mrs. Fitzwarren, the deep-voiced lady who had already so greatly amused Jeremy. And then there was a Transformation Scene, in which roses turned into tulips and tulips into the Hall of Gold, down whose blazing steps marched stout representatives of all the nations.

It was in the middle of this last thrilling spectacle, when Jeremy's heart was in his mouth and he was so deeply excited that he did not know whether it were he or the lady next to him who was eating peppermints, that his uncle plucked him by the sleeve and said in his ear: "Come on. It's close on the end. We must go."

Jeremy very reluctantly got up, and stumbled out over knees and legs and exclamations like:

"There's Japan!" "No, it ain't; it's Chiney!" "You's a fine, hearty young woman!" and so on. He was dragged through the black curtain, down the stone steps, and into the street.

"But it wasn't the end," he said.

"It will be in one minute," said his uncle. "And I want us to get home first."

"Why?" said Jeremy.

"Never you mind. Come on; we'll race it."

They arrived home breathless, and then, once again in the old familiar hall, Uncle Samuel said:

"Now you nip up to the nursery, and then they'll never know you've been out at all."

"Never know?" said Jeremy. "But you said they'd sent for me."

"Well," said Uncle Samuel, "that wasn't exactly true. As a matter of fact, they don't know you were there."

"Oh!" said Jeremy, the corner of his mouth turning down. "Then I've told a lie again!"

"Nonsense!" said Uncle Samuel impatiently. "It wasn't you; it was I."

"And doesn't it matter your telling lies?" asked Jeremy.

The answer to this difficult question was, happily for Uncle Samuel, interrupted by the arrival of the household, who had careened up Orange Street in a cab.

When Mr. and Mrs. Cole saw Jeremy standing in the hall, his great coat still on and his muffler round his neck, there was a fine scene of wonder and amazement.

Uncle Samuel explained. "It was my fault. I told him you'd forgiven him and sent for him to come, after all. He's in an awful state now that you shouldn't forgive him."

Whatever they thought of Uncle Samuel, this was obviously neither the time nor the place to speak out. Mrs. Cole looked at her son. His body defiant, sleepy, excited. His mouth was obstinate, but his eyes appealed to her on the scene of the common marvellous experience that they had just enjoyed.

She hugged him.

"And you won't tell a lie again, will you, Jeremy, dear?"

"Oh, no!" And then, hurrying on: "And when the old woman tumbled down the steps, Mother, wasn't it lovely? And the fairies in Dick Whittington's sleep, and when the furniture all fell all over the place—"

He went slowly upstairs to the nursery, the happiest boy in the kingdom. But through all his happiness there was this puzzle: Uncle Samuel had told a lie, and no one had thought that it mattered. There were good lies and bad ones then. Or was it that grown-up people could tell lies and children mustn't?...

He tumbled into the warm, lighted nursery half asleep. There was Hamlet watching in front of the Jampot's sewing machine.

He would have things to think about for years and years and years...

There was the Jampot.

"I'm sorry I called you a beastly woman," he said.

She sniffed.

"Well, I hope you'll be a good boy now," she said.

"Oh, I'll be good," he smiled. "But, Nurse, are there some people can tell lies and others mustn't?"

"All them that tell lies goes to Hell," said the Jampot. "And now, Master Jeremy, come along and take your things off. It's past eleven, and what you'll be like to-morrow—"



CHAPTER IV. MISS JONES

I

The coming of the new year meant the going of the Jampot, and the going of the Jampot meant the breaking of a life-time's traditions. The departure was depressing and unsettling; the weather was—as it always is during January in Glebeshire—at its worst, and the Jampot, feeling it all very deeply, maintained a terrible Spartan composure, which was meant to show indifference and a sense of injustice. She had to the very last believed it incredible that she should really go. She had been in the old Orange Street house for eight years, and had intended to be there until she died. She was forced to admit that Master Jeremy was going beyond her; but in September he would go to school, and then she could help with the sewing and other things about the house. The real truth of the matter was that she had never been a very good servant, having too much of the Glebeshire pride and independence and too little of the Glebeshire fidelity.

Mrs. Cole had been glad of the opportunity that Hamlet's arrival in the family had given her. The Jampot, only a week before the date of her departure, came to her mistress and begged, with floods of tears, to be allowed to continue in her service. But Mrs. Cole, with all her placidity, was firm. The Jampot had to go.

I would like to paint a pleasant picture of the sentiment of the Cole children on this touching occasion; something, perhaps, in the vein of tragi-comedy with which Mr. Kenneth Graham embroiders a similar occasion in his famous masterpiece—but in this case there was very little sentiment and no tragedy at all. They did not think of the event beforehand, and then when it suddenly occurred there was all the excitement of being looked after by Rose, the housemaid, of having a longer time with their mother in the evening, and, best of all, a delightful walk with Aunt Amy, whose virginal peace of mind they attacked from every possible quarter.

The Jampot left in a high state of sulks, declaring to the kitchen that no woman had ever been so unfairly treated; that her married sister Sarah Francis, of Rafiel, with whom she was now to live, should be told all about it, and that the citizens of Rafiel should be compelled to sympathise. The children were not unfeeling, but they hated the Jampot's sulks, and while she waited in the nursery, longing for a word or movement of affection, but wearing a face of stony disapproval, they stood awkwardly beholding her, and aching for her to go. She was the more unapproachable in that she wore her Sunday silks and a heavy black bonnet with shiny rattling globes of some dark metal that nodded and becked and bowed like live things. Hamlet, who had, of course, always hated the Jampot, barked at this bonnet furiously, and would have bitten at it had it been within his reach. She had meant to leave them all with little sentences about life and morals; but the noise of the dog, the indifference of the children, and the general air of impatience for her departure strangled her aphorisms. Poor Jampot! She was departing to a married sister who did not want her, and would often tell her so; her prospects in life were not bright, and it is sad to think that no inhabitant of the Orange Street house felt any sorrow at the sight of the last gesticulating wave of her black bonnet as she stepped into the old mouldy Polchester cab.

"The King is dead—long live the King!" The Jampot as a power in the Cole family has ceased to be.

The day following the Jampot's departure offered up the news that, for the first time in the history of the Coles, there was to be a governess. The word "governess" had an awful sound, and the children trembled with a mixture of delight and terror. Jeremy pretended indifference.

"It's only another woman," he said. "She'll be like the Jampot—only, a lady, so she won't be able to punish us as the Jampot could."

I expect that Mr. and Mrs. Cole had great difficulty in finding anyone who would do. Thirty years ago governesses were an incapable race, and belonged too closely either to the Becky Sharp or the Amelia type to be very satisfactory. It was then that the New Woman was bursting upon the scene, but she was not to be found amongst the governesses. No one in Polchester had learnt yet to cycle in rational costume, it was several years before the publication of "The Heavenly Twins," and Mr. Trollope's Lilys and Lucys were still considered the ideal of England's maidenhood. Mrs. Cole, therefore, had to choose between idiotic young women and crabbed old maids, and she finally chose an old maid. I don't think that Miss Jones was the very best choice that she could have made, but time was short. Jeremy, aided by Hamlet, was growing terribly independent, and Mr. Cole had neither the humour nor the courage to deal with him. No, Miss Jones was not ideal, but the Dean had strongly recommended her. It is true that the Dean had never seen her, but her brother, with whom she had lived for many years, had once been the Dean's curate. It was true that he had been a failure as a curate, but that made the Dean the more anxious to be kind now to his memory, he—Mr. Jones—having just died of general bad-temper and selfishness.

Miss Jones, buried during the last twenty years in the green depths of a Glebeshire valley, found herself now, at the age of fifty, without friends, without money, without relations. She thought that she would be a governess.

The Dean recommended her, Mrs. Cole approved of her birth, education and sobriety, Mr. Cole liked the severity of her countenance when she came to call, and she was engaged.

"Jeremy needs a tight hand," said Mr. Cole. "It's no use having a young girl."

"Miss Jones easily escapes that charge," said Uncle Samuel, who had met her in the hall.

The children were prepared to be good. Jeremy felt that it was time to take life seriously. He put away his toy village, scolded Hamlet for eating Mary's pincushion, and dragged out his dirty exercise-book in which he did sums.

"I do hate sums!" he said, with a sigh, regarding the hideous smudges of thumbs and tears that scored the page. "I shall never understand anything about them."

"I'll help you," said Mary, who was greatly excited at the thought of a governess. "We'll do them together."

"No we won't," said Jeremy, who hated to be dependent.

"I'll learn it myself—if only the paper didn't get dirty so quickly."

"Mother says," remarked Helen, "that she's had a very hard life, and no one's ever been kind to her. 'She wants affection,' Mother says."

"I'll give her my napkin-ring that you gave me last Christmas, Mary," said Jeremy. "You don't mind, do you? It's all dirty now. I hope Hamlet won't bark at her."

Hamlet was worrying Mary's pincushion at the moment, holding it between his paws, his body stretched out in quivering excitement, his short, "snappy" tail, as Uncle Samuel called it, standing up straight in air. He stopped for an instant when he heard his name, and shook one ear.

"Mother says," continued Helen, "that she lived with a brother who never gave her enough to eat."

Jeremy opened his eyes. This seemed to him a horrible thing.

"She shall have my porridge, if she likes," he said; "I don't like it very much. And I'll give her that chocolate that Mr. Jellybrand sent us. There's still some, although it's rather damp now, I expect."

"How silly you are!" said Helen scornfully. "Of course, Mother will give her anything she wants."

"It isn't silly," said Jeremy. "Perhaps she'll want more than she really wants. I often do."

"Oh, you!" said Helen.

"And if for ever so long," said Jeremy, "she hasn't had enough to eat, she'll want twice as big meals now as other people—to make up."

"Mother says we've got to remember she's a lady," said Helen.

"What's the difference," asked Jeremy, "between a lady and not a lady?"

"Oh, you are!" said Helen. "Why, Aunt Amy's a lady, and Rose isn't."

"Rose is nicer," said Jeremy.

Miss Jones had, I am sorry to say, lied to Mrs. Cole in one particular. She had told her that "she had had to do with children all her life," the fact being that on several occasions some little cousins had come to stay with herself and her brother. On these occasions the little cousins had been so paralysed with terror that discipline had not been difficult. It was from these experiences that Miss Jones flattered herself that "she understood children."

So audacious a self-confidence is doomed to invite the scornful punishment of the gods.

Miss Jones arrived upon a wet January afternoon, one of those Glebeshire days when the town sinks into a bath of mud and mist and all the pipes run water and the eaves drip and horses splash and only ducks are happy. Out of a blurred lamp-lit dusk stumbled Miss Jones's cab, and out of a blurred unlit cab stumbled Miss Jones.

As she stood in the hall trying to look warm and amiable, Mrs. Cole's heart forsook her. On that earlier day of her visit Miss Jones had looked possible, sitting up in Mrs. Cole's drawing-room, smiling her brightest, because she so desperately needed the situation, and wearing her best dress. Now she was all in pieces; she had had to leave her little village early in the morning to catch the village bus; she had waited at wayside stations, as in Glebeshire only one can wait; the world had dripped upon her head and spattered upon her legs. She had neuralgia and a pain in her back; she had worn her older dress because, upon such a day, it would not do to travel in her best; and then, as a climax to everything, she had left her umbrella in the train. How she could do such a thing upon such a day! Her memory was not her strongest point, poor lady, and it was a good umbrella, and she could not afford to buy another. Perhaps they would find it for her, but it was very unlikely.

She had had it for a number of years.

She was a little woman, all skin and bone, with dried withered cheeks, a large brown nose and protruding ears. Her face had formed severe lines in self-defence against her brother, but her eyes were mild, and when she smiled her mouth was rather pleasantly pathetic.

"Oh, she'll never do," thought Mrs. Cole, as she looked at her dripping in the hall.

"I can't think how I forgot it," said the poor lady, her mind fixed upon her umbrella. "They said that perhaps they would find it for me, but there was a man in my carriage, I remember, who will most certainly have taken it—and it was a nice one with a silver handle."

"Never mind," said Mrs. Cole cheerfully, "I'm sure they'll find it. You must come up to the nursery—or the schoolroom I suppose we must call it now; there's a lovely fire there, and we'll both have tea with the children to-day, so as to feel at home, all of us, as quickly as possible."

What Miss Jones wanted was to lie down on a bed in a dark room and try and conquer her neuralgia. The thought of a lighted nursery filled her with dismay. However, first impressions are so important. She pulled herself together.

The children had heard the arrival; they waited in a bunch by the fire, their eyes partly fixed on the door, partly on the strawberry jam that they were allowed to-day as a treat in the new governess's honour. Hamlet, his eyes and ears also upon the door, expecting perhaps a rat, perhaps Aunt Amy, sat in front of the group, its bodyguard.

"She's in the hall," said Helen, "and now Mother's saying: 'Do take off your things. You must be wet,' and now she's saying: 'You'll like to see the children, I expect,' and now—"

There they were, standing in the doorway, Mrs. Cole and Miss Jones. There followed a dismal pause. The children had not expected anyone so old and so ugly as Miss Jones. Hamlet did not bark—nothing occurred.

At last Mrs. Cole said: "Now, children, come and say, 'How do you do?' to Miss Jones. This is Helen, our eldest—this Mary—and this Jeremy."

Miss Jones did a dreadful thing. In her eagerness to be pleasant and friendly she kissed the girls, and then, before anyone could stop her, kissed Jeremy. He took it like a man, never turning his head nor wiping his mouth with his hand afterwards, but she might have seen in his eyes, had she looked, what he felt about it.

She said: "I hope we shall be happy together, dears."

The children said nothing, and presently they all sat down to tea.



II

It was unfortunate that there was so little precedent on both sides. Miss Jones had never been a governess before and the children had never had one. Of course, many mistakes were made. Miss Jones had had a true admiration for what she used to call "her brother's indomitable spirit," her name for his selfishness and bad temper. She was herself neither selfish nor bad-tempered, but she was ignorant, nervous, over-anxious, and desperately afraid of losing her situation. She had during so many years lived without affection that the wells of it had dried up within her, and now, without being at all a bad old lady, she was simply preoccupied with the business of managing her neuralgia, living on nothing a week, and building to her deceased brother's memory a monument, of heroic character and self-sacrifice. She was short-sighted and had a perpetual cold; she was forgetful and careless. She had, nevertheless, a real knowledge of many things, a warm heart somewhere could she be encouraged to look for it again, and a sense of humour buried deep beneath her cares and preoccupations. There were many worse persons in the world than Miss Jones. But, most unfortunately, her love for her brother's memory led her to resolve on what she called "firmness." Mrs. Cole had told her that Jeremy was "getting too much" for his nurse; she approached Jeremy with exactly the tremors and quaking boldness that she would have summoned to her aid before a bull loose in a field. She really did look frightening with her large spectacles on the end of her large nose, her mouth firmly set, and a ruler in her hand. "I insist on absolute obedience," was her motto. Jeremy looked at her but said no word. It was made clear to them all that the new regime was to be far other than the earlier nursery one. There were to be regular lesson hours—nine to twelve and four to five. A neat piece of white paper was fastened to the wall with "Monday: Geography 9-10, Arithmetic 10-11," and so on. A careful graduation of punishments was instituted, copies to be written so many times, standing on a chair, three strokes on the hand with a ruler, and, worst of all, standing in the corner wearing a paper Dunce's cap. (This last she had read of in books.) At first Jeremy had every intention of behaving well, in spite of that unfortunate embrace. He was proud of his advance in life; he was no longer a baby; the nursery was now a schoolroom; he stayed up an hour later at night; he was to be allowed twopence a week pocket-money; his whole social status had risen. He began to read for pleasure, and discovered that it was easier than he had expected, so that he passed quite quickly through "Lottie's Visit to Grandmama" into "Stumps" and out again in "Jackanapes." He heard some elder say that the road to a large fortune lay through "Sums," and, although this seemed to him an extremely mysterious statement, he determined to give the theory a chance. In fact, he sat down the first day at the schoolroom table, Mary and Helen on each side of him, and Miss Jones facing them, with fine resolves and high ambitions. Before him lay a pure white page, and at the head of this the noble words in a running hand: "Slow and steady wins the race." He grasped his pencil, and Miss Jones, eager to lose no time in asserting her authority, cried: "But that's not the way to hold your pencil, Jeremy, your thumb so, your finger so." He scowled and found that lifting his thumb over the pencil was as difficult as lifting Hamlet over a gate. He made a bold attempt, but the pencil refused to move.

"Can't hold it that way," he said.

"You must never say 'can't,' Jeremy," remarked Miss Jones. "There isn't such a word."

"Oh, yes," said Mary eagerly, "there is; I've seen it in books."

"You musn't contradict, Mary," said Miss Jones. "I only meant that you must behave as though there isn't, because nothing is impossible to one who truly tries."

"My pencil waggles this way," said Jeremy politely. "I think I'll hold it the old way, please."

"There's only one way of doing anything," said Miss Jones, "and that's the right way."

"This is the right way for me," said Jeremy.

"If I say it's not the right way—"

"But it waggles," cried Jeremy.

The discussion was interrupted by a cry from Helen.

"Oh, do look, Miss Jones, Hamlet's got your spectacle-case. He thinks it's a mouse."

There followed general confusion. Miss Jones jumped up, and, with little cries of distress, pursued Hamlet, who hastened into his favourite corner and began to worry the spectacle-case, with one eye on Miss Jones and one on his spoils.

Jeremy hurried up crying: "Put it down, Hamlet, naughty dog, naughty dog," and Mary and Helen laughed with frantic delight.

At last Miss Jones, her face red and her hair in disorder, rescued her property and returned to the table, Hamlet meanwhile wagging his tail, panting and watching for a further game.

"I can't possibly," said Miss Jones, "allow that dog in here during lesson hours. It's impossible."

"Oh, but Miss Jones—" began Jeremy.

"Not one word," said she, "let us have no more of this. Lead him from the room, Jeremy!"

"But, Miss Jones, he must be here. He's learning too. In a day or two he'll be as good as anything, really he will. He's so intelligent. He really thought it was his to play with, and he did give it up, didn't he, as soon as I said—"

"Enough," said Miss Jones, "I will listen to no more. I say he is not to remain—"

"But if I promise—" said Jeremy.

Then Miss Jones made a bad mistake. Wearied of the argument, wishing to continue the lesson, and hoping perhaps to please her tormentors, she said meekly:

"Well, if he really is good, perhaps—"

From that instant her doom was sealed. The children exchanged a glance of realisation. Jeremy smiled. The lesson was continued. What possessed Jeremy now? What possesses any child, naturally perhaps, of a kindly and even sentimental nature at the sight of something helpless and in its power? Is there any cruelty in after life like the cruelty of a small boy, and is there anything more powerful, more unreasoning, and more malicious than the calculating tortures that small children devise for those weaker than themselves? Jeremy was possessed with a new power.

It was something almost abstract in its manifestations; it was something indecent, sinister, secret, foreign to his whole nature felt by him now for the first time, unanalysed, of course, but belonging, had he known it, to that world of which afterwards he was often to catch glimpses, that world of shining white faces in dark streets, of muffled cries from shuttered windows, of muttered exclamations, half caught, half understood. He was never again to be quite free from the neighbourhood of that half-world; he would never be quite sure of his dominance of it until he died.

He had never felt anything like this power before. With the Jampot his relations had been quite simple; he had been rebellious, naughty, disobedient, and had been punished, and there was an end. Now there was a game like tracking Red Indians in the prairie or tigers in the jungle.

He watched Miss Jones and discovered many things about her. He discovered that when she made mistakes in the things that she taught them she was afraid to confess to her mistakes, and so made them worse and worse. He discovered that she was very nervous, and that a sudden noise made her jump and turn white and put her hand to her heart. He discovered that she would punish him and then try to please him by saying he need not finish his punishment. He discovered that she would lose things, like her spectacles, her handkerchief, or her purse, and then be afraid to confess that she had lost them and endeavour to proceed without them. He discovered that she hated to hit him on the hand with a ruler (he scarcely felt the strokes). He discovered that when his mother or father was in the room she was terrified lest he should misbehave.

He discovered that she was despised by the servants, who quite openly insulted her.

All these things fed his sense of power. He did not consider her a human being at all; she was simply something upon which he could exercise his ingenuity and cleverness. Mary followed him in whatever he did; Helen pretended to be superior, but was not. Yes, Miss Jones was in the hands of her tormentors, and there was no escape for her.

Surely it must have been some outside power that drove Jeremy on. The children called it "teasing Miss Jones," and the aboriginal savagery in their behaviour was as unconscious as their daily speech or fashion of eating their food—some instinct inherited, perhaps, from the days when the gentleman with the biggest muscles extracted for his daily amusement the teeth and nails of his less happily muscular friends.

There were many games to be played with Miss Jones. She always began her morning with a fine show of authority, accumulated, perhaps, during hours of Spartan resolution whilst the rest of the household slept. "To-morrow I'll see that they do what I tell them—"

"Now, children," she would say, "I'm determined to stand no nonsense this morning. Get out your copy books." Five minutes later would begin: "Oh, Miss Jones, I can't write with this pencil. May I find a better one?" Granted permission, Mary's head and large spectacles would disappear inside the schoolroom cupboard. Soon Jeremy would say very politely: "Miss Jones, I think I know where it is. May I help her to find it?" Then Jeremy's head would disappear. There would follow giggles, whispers, again giggles; then from the cupboard a book tumbles, then another, then another. Then Miss Jones would say: "Now, Jeremy, come back to the table. You've had quite enough time—" interrupted by a perfect avalanche of books. Mary crying:

"Oh, Jeremy!" Jeremy crying: "I didn't; it was you!" Miss Jones: "Now, children—"

Then Jeremy, very politely:

"Please, Miss Jones, may I help Mary to pick the books up? There are rather a lot." Then, both on their knees, more whispers and giggles. Miss Jones, her voice trembling: "Children, I really insist—" And more books dropped, and more whispers and more protests, and so on ad infinitum. A beautiful game to be played all the morning.

Or there was the game of Not Hearing. Miss Jones would say: "And twice two are four." Mary would repeat loudly: "And twice two is five—"

"Four, Mary."

"Oh, I thought you said five."

And then a second later Jeremy would ask:

"Did you say four or five, Miss Jones?"

"I told Mary I said four—"

"Oh, I've written five—and now it's all wrong. Didn't you write five, Mary?"

"Yes, I've written five. You did say four, didn't you, Miss Jones?"

"Yes—yes. And three makes—"

"What did you say made five?" asked Jeremy.

"I didn't say five. I said four. Twice two."

"Is that as well as 'add three,' Miss Jones? I've got twice two, and then add three, and then twice two—"

"No, no. I was only telling Jeremy—"

"Please, Miss Jones, would you mind beginning again—"

This is a very unpleasant game for a lady with neuralgia.

Or there is the game of Making a Noise. At this game, without any earlier training or practice, Jeremy was a perfect master. The three children would be sitting there very, very quiet, learning the first verse of "Tiger, Tiger, burning bright—" A very gentle creaking sound would break the stillness—a creaking sound that can be made, if you are clever, by rubbing a boot against a boot. It would not come regularly, but once, twice, thrice, a pause, and then once, twice and another pause.

"Who's making a noise?"

Dead silence. A very long pause, and then it would begin again.

"That noise must cease, I say. Jeremy, what are you doing?"

He would lift to her then eyes full of meekness and love.

"Nothing, Miss Jones."

Soon it would begin again. Miss Jones would be silent this time, and then Mary would speak.

"Please, would you ask Jeremy not to rub his boots together? I can't learn my verse—"

"I didn't know I was," says Jeremy.

Then it would begin again. Jeremy would say:

"Please, may I take my boots off?"

"Take your boots off? Why?"

"They will rub together, and I can't stop them, because I don't know when I do it, and it is hard for Mary—"

"Of course not! I never heard of such a thing! Next time you do it you must stand on your chair."

Soon Jeremy is standing on his chair. Soon his poetry book drops with a terrible crash to the ground, and five million pins stab Miss Jones's heart. With white face and trembling hands, she says:

"Go and stand in the corner, Jeremy! I shall have to speak to your mother!"

He goes, grinning at Mary, and stands there knowing that his victim is watching the door in an agony lest Mrs. Cole should suddenly come in and inquire what Jeremy had done, and that so the whole story of his insubordination be revealed and Miss Jones lose her situation for incapacity.

How did he discover this final weakness of Miss Jones? No one told him; but he knew, and, as the days passed, rejoiced in his power and his might and his glory.

Then came the climax. The children were not perfectly sure whether, after all, Miss Jones might not tell their mother. They did not wish this to happen, and so long as this calamity was possible they were not complete masters of the poor lady. Then came a morning when they had been extremely naughty, when every game had been played and every triumph scored. Miss Jones, almost in tears, had threatened four times that the Powers Above should be informed. Suddenly Mrs. Cole entered.

"Well, Miss Jones, how have the children been this morning? If they've been good I have a little treat to propose."

The children waited, their eyes upon their governess. Her eyes stared back upon her tormentors. Her hands worked together. She struggled. Why not call in Mrs. Cole's authority to her aid? No; she knew what it would mean—"I'm very sorry, Miss Jones, but I think a younger governess, perhaps—"

Her throat moved.

"They've been very good this morning, Mrs. Cole."

The eyes of Mary and of Jeremy were alight with triumph.

They had won their final victory.



III

I know what Miss Jones suffered during those weeks. She was not an old lady of very great power of resistance, and it must have positively terrified her that these small children should so vindictively hate her. She could not have seen it as anything but hatred, being entirely ignorant of children and the strange forces to whose power they are subject, and she must have shivered in her bedroom at the dreariness and terror of the prospect before her. Many, many times she must have resolved not to be beaten, and many, many times she must have admitted herself beaten as badly as any one can be.

Her life with the people downstairs was not intimate enough, nor were those people themselves perceptive enough for any realisation of what was occurring to penetrate.

"I hope you're happy with the children, Miss Jones," once or twice said Mrs. Cole.

"Very, thank you," said Miss Jones.

"They're good children, I think, although parents are always prejudiced, of course. Jeremy is a little difficult perhaps. It's so hard to tell what he's really thinking. You find him a quiet, reserved little boy?"

"Very," said Miss Jones.

"In a little while, when you know him better, he will come out. Only you have to let him take his time. He doesn't like to be forced—"

"No," said Miss Jones.

Meanwhile, that morning descent into the schoolroom was real hell for her. She had to summon up her courage, walking about her bedroom, pressing her hands together, evoking the memory of her magnificent iron-souled brother, who would, she knew, despise such tremors. If only she could have discovered some remedy! But sentiment, attempted tyranny, anger, contempt, at all these things they laughed. She could not touch them anywhere. And she saw Jeremy as a real child of Evil in the very baldest sense. She could not imagine how anyone so young could be so cruel, so heartless, so maliciously clever in his elaborate machinations. She regarded him with real horror, and on the occasions when she found him acting kindly towards his sisters or a servant, or when she watched him discoursing solemnly to Hamlet, she was helplessly puzzled, and decided that these better manifestations were simply masks to hide his devilish young heart. She perceived meanwhile the inevitable crisis slowly approaching, when she would be compelled to invite Mrs. Cole's support. That would mean her dismissal and a hopeless future. There was no one to whom she might turn. She had not a relation, not a friend—too late to make friends now.

She could see nothing in front of her at all.

The crisis did come, but not as she expected it.

There arrived a morning when the dark mist outside and badly made porridge inside tempted the children to their very worst. Miss Jones had had a wakeful night struggling with neuralgia and her own hesitating spirit. The children had lost even their customary half-humourous, half-contemptuous reserve. They let themselves appear for what they were—infant savages discontented with food, weather and education.

I will not detail the incidents of that morning. The episodes that were on other mornings games were today tortures. There was the Torture of Losing Things, the Torture of Not Hearing, the Torture of Many Noises, the Torture of Sudden Alarm, the Torture of Outright Defiance, the Torture of Expressed Contempt. When twelve struck and the children were free, Miss Jones was not far from a nervous panic that can be called, without any exaggeration, incipient madness. The neuralgia tore at her brain, her own self-contempt tore at her heart, her baffled impotence bewildered and blinded her. She did not leave the schoolroom with the children, but went to the broad window-sill and sat there looking out into the dreary prospect. Then, suddenly for no reason except general weakness and physical and spiritual collapse she began to cry.

Jeremy was considered to have a cold, and was, therefore, not permitted to accompany his mother and sisters on an exciting shopping expedition, which would certainly lead as far as old Poole's, the bookseller, and might even extend to Martins', the pastrycook, who made lemon biscuits next door to the Cathedral. He was, therefore, in a very bad temper indeed when he returned sulkily to the schoolroom. He stood for a moment there unaware that there was anybody in the room, hesitating as to whether he should continue "A Flat Iron for a Farthing" or hunt up Hamlet. Suddenly he heard the sound of sobbing. He turned and saw Miss Jones.

He would have fled had flight been in any way possible, but she had looked up and seen him, and her sudden arrested sniff held them both there as though by some third invisible power. He saw that she was crying; he saw her red nose, mottled cheeks, untidy hair. It was the most awful moment of his young life. He had never seen a grown-up person cry before; he had no idea that they ever did cry. He had, indeed, never realised that grown-up persons had any active histories at all, any histories in the sense in which he and Mary had them. They were all a background, simply a background that blew backwards and forwards like tapestry according to one's need of them. His torture of Miss Jones had been founded on no sort of realisation of her as a human being; she had been a silly old woman, of course, but just as the battered weather-beaten Aunt Sally in the garden was a silly old woman.

Her crying horrified, terrified, and disgusted him. It was all so dreary, the horrible weather outside, the beginning of a cold in his head, the schoolroom fire almost out, everyone's bad temper, including his own, and this sudden horrible jumping-to-life of a grown-up human being. She, meanwhile, was too deeply involved now in the waters of her affliction to care very deeply who saw her or what anyone said to her. She did feel dimly that she ought not to be crying in front of a small boy of eight years old, and that it would be better to hide herself in her bedroom, but she did not mind—she COULD not mind—her neuralgia was too bad.

"It's the neuralgia in my head," she said in a muffled confused voice. That he could understand. He also had pains in his head. He drew closer to her, flinging a longing backward look at the door. She went on in convulsed tones:

"It's the pain—awake all night, and the lessons. I can't make them attend; they learn nothing. They're not afraid of me—they hate me. I've never really known children before—"

He did not know what to say. Had it been Mary or Helen the formula would have been simple. He moved his legs restlessly one against the other.

Miss Jones went on:

"And now, of course, I must go. It's quite impossible for me to stay when I manage so badly—" She looked up and suddenly realised that it was truly Jeremy. "You're only a little boy, but you know very well that I can't manage you. And then where am I to go to? No one will take me after I've been such a failure."

The colour stole into his cheeks. He was immensely proud. No grown-up person had ever before spoken to him as though he was himself a grown-up person—always laughing at him like Uncle Samuel, or talking down to him like Aunt Amy, or despising him like Mr. Jellybrand. But Miss Jones appealed to him simply as one grown-up to another. Unfortunately he did not in the least know what to say. The only thing he could think of at the moment was: "You can have my handkerchief, if you like. It's pretty clean—"

But she went on: "If my brother had been alive he would have advised me. He was a splendid man. He rowed in his college boat when he was at Cambridge, but that, of course, was forty years ago. He could keep children in order. I thought it would be so easy. Perhaps if my health had been better it wouldn't have been so hard."

"Do your pains come often?" asked Jeremy.

"Yes. They're very bad."

"I have them, too," said Jeremy. "It's generally, I expect, because I eat too much—at least, the Jampot used to say so. They're in my head sometimes, too. And then I'm really sick. Do you feel sick?"

Miss Jones began to pull herself together. She wiped her eyes and patted her hair.

"It's my neuralgia," she said again. "It's from my eyes partly, I expect."

"It's better to be sick," continued Jeremy, "if you can be—"

She flung him then a desperate look, as though she were really an animal at bay.

"You see, I can't go away," she said. "I've nowhere to go to. I've no friends, nor relations, and no one will take me for their children, if Mrs. Cole says I can't keep order."

"Then I suppose you'd go to the workhouse," continued Jeremy, pursuing her case with excited interest. "That's what the Jampot always used to say, that one day she'd end in the workhouse; and that's a horrible place, SHE said, where there was nothing but porridge to eat, and sometimes they took all your clothes off and scrubbed your back with that hard yellow soap they wash Hamlet with."

His eyes grew wide with the horrible picture.

"Oh, Miss Jones, you mustn't go there!"

"Would you mind," she said, "just getting me some water from the jug over there? There's a glass there."

Still proud of the level to which he had been raised, but puzzled beyond any words as to this new realisation of Miss Jones, he fetched her the water, then, standing quite close to her, he said:

"You must stay with us, always."

She looked up at him, and they exchanged a glance.

With that glance Miss Jones learnt more about children than she had ever learnt before—more, indeed, than most people learn in all their mortal lives.

"I can't stay," she said, and she even smiled a little, "if you're always naughty."

"We won't be naughty any more." He sighed. "It was great fun, of course, but we won't do it any more. We never knew you minded."

"Never knew I minded?"

"At least, we never thought about you at all. Helen did sometimes. She said you had a headache when you were very yellow in the morning, but I said it was only because you were old. But we'll be good now. I'll tell them too—"

Then he added: "But you won't go away now even if we're not always good? We won't always be, I suppose; and I'm going to school in September, and it will be better then, I expect. I'm too old, really, to learn with girls now."

She wanted terribly to kiss him, and, had she done so, the whole good work of the last quarter of an hour would have been undone. He was aware of her temptation; he felt it in the air. She saw the warning in his eyes. The moment passed.

"You won't go away, will you?" he said again.

"Not if you're good," she said.



IV

Half an hour later, when Mary and Helen returned from their walk, they were addressed by Jeremy.

"She was crying because we'd been so naughty, and she had pains in her head, and her brother was dead. Her brother was very strong, and he used to row in a boat forty years ago. She told me all about it, just as though I'd been Aunt Amy or Mother. And she says that if we go on being naughty she'll go away, and no one else will have her, because they'll hear about our having been naughty. And I told her about the workhouse and the porridge and the yellow soap that the Jampot told us of, and it would be awful if she went there because of us, wouldn't it?"

"Awful," said Mary.

But Helen said: "She wouldn't go there. She'd take a little house, like Miss Dobell, and have tea-parties on Thursdays—somewhere near the Cathedral."

"No, she wouldn't!" said Jeremy excitedly. "How could she take a little house if she hadn't any money? She told me she hadn't, and no friends, nor nobody, and she cried like anything—" He paused for breath, then concluded: "So we've got to be good now, and learn sums, and not make her jump. Really and truly, we must."

"I always thought you were very silly to make so much noise," said Helen in a superior fashion. "You and Mary—babies!"

"We're not babies," shouted Jeremy.

"Yes, you are."

"No, we're not."

Miss Jones was no longer the subject of the conversation.

That same day it happened that rumours were brought to Mrs. Cole through Rose, the housemaid, or some other medium for the first time, of Miss Jones's incapacity.

That evening Jeremy was spending his last half-hour before bedtime in his mother's room happily in a corner with his toy village. He suddenly heard his mother say to Aunt Amy:

"I'm afraid Miss Jones won't do. I thought she was managing the children, but now I hear that she can't keep order at all. I'm sorry—it's so difficult to get anyone."

Jeremy sprang up from the floor, startling the ladies, who had forgotten that he was there.

"She's all right," he cried. "Really she is, Mother. We're going to be as good as anything, really we are. You won't send her away, will you?"

"My dear Jeremy," his mother said, "I'd forgotten you were there. Rose says you don't do anything Miss Jones tells you."

"Rose is silly," he answered. "She doesn't know anything about it. But you will keep her, won't you, Mother?"

"I don't know—if she can't manage you—"

"But she can manage us. We'll be good as anything, I promise. You will keep her, won't you, Mother?"

"Really, Jeremy," said Aunt Amy, "to bother your mother so! And it's nearly time you went to bed."

He brushed her aside. "You will keep her, Mother, won't you?"

"It depends, dear," said Mrs. Cole, laughing. "You see—"

"No—we'll be bad with everyone else," he cried. "We will, really—everyone else. And we'll be good with Miss Jones."

"Well, so long as you're good, dear," she said. "I'd no idea you liked her so much."

"Oh, she's all right," he said. "But it isn't that—" Then he stopped; he couldn't explain—especially with that idiot Aunt Amy there, who'd only laugh at him, or kiss him, or something else horrible.

Afterwards, as he went slowly up to bed, he stopped for a moment in the dark passage thinking. The whole house was silent about him, only the clocks whispering.

What a tiresome bother Aunt Amy was! How he wished that she were dead! And what a bore it would be being good now with Miss Jones. At the same time, the renewed consciousness of her personal drama most strangely moved him—her brother who rowed, her neuralgia, her lack of relations. Perhaps Aunt Amy also had an exciting history! Perhaps she also cried!

The world seemed to be suddenly filled with pressing, thronging figures, all with businesses of their own.

It was very odd.

He pushed back the schoolroom door and blinked at the sudden light.



CHAPTER V. THE SEA-CAPTAIN

I

Very few matter-of-fact citizens of the present-day world will understand the part that the sea used to play in our young lives thirty years ago in Polchester.

It is very easy to look at the map and say that the sea is a considerable distance from Polchester, and that even if you stood on the highest ridge of the highest cornfield above the town you would not be able to catch the faintest glimpse of it. That may be true, although I myself can never be completely assured, possessing so vividly as I do a memory of a day when I stood with my nurse at the edge of Merazion Woods and, gazing out to the horizon, saw a fleet of ships full-sail upon the bluest of seas, and would not be persuaded that it was merely wrack of clouds. That may be or no; the fact remains that Polchester sniffed the sea from afar, was caught with sea breezes and bathed in reflected sea-lights; again and again of an evening the Cathedral sailed on dust and shadow towards the horizon, a great white ghost of a galleon, and the young citizens of the town with wondering eyes, watched it go. But there were more positive influences than mere cloud and light. We had, in the lower part of our town, sailors, quite a number of them. There were the old white-bearded ones who would sit upon tubs and tell smuggling tales; these haunted the River Pol, fished in it, ferried people across it, and let out boats for hire. There were younger sailors who, tired of the still life of their little villages and dreading the real hard work of a life at sea, lurched and slouched by the Pol's river bed, fishing a little, sleeping, eating and drinking a great deal.

And there were the true sailors, passing through perhaps on their way to Drymouth to join their ships, staying in the town for a day or two to visit their relations, or simply stopping for an hour or so to gaze open-mouthed at the Cathedral and the market-place and the Canons and the old women. These men had sometimes gold rings in their ears, and their faces were often coloured a dark rich brown, and they carried bundles across their backs all in the traditional style.

Then there were influences more subtle than either clouds or men. There were the influences of the places that we had ourselves seen in our summer holidays—Rafiel and St. Lowe, Marion Bay or Borhaze—and, on the other coast, Newbock with its vast stretch of yellow sand, St. Borse with its wild seas and giant Borse Head, or St. Nails-in-Cove with its coloured rocks and sparkling shells. Every child had his own place; my place was, like Jeremy's, Rafiel, and a better, more beautiful place, in the whole world you will not find. And each place has its own legend: at Rafiel the Gold lured Pirates, and the Turnip-Field; at Polwint the Giant Excise Man; at Borhaze the Smugglers of Trezent Rock; at St. Borse the wreck of "The Golden Galleon" in the year 1563, with its wonderful treasure; and at St. Maitsin Cove the famous Witch of St. Maitsin Church Town who turned men's bones into water and filled St. Maitsin Church with snakes. Back from one summer holiday, treasuring these stories together with our collections of shells and seaweed and dried flowers, we came, and so the tales settled in Polchester streets and crept into the heart of the Polchester cobbles and haunted the Polchester corners by the fire, and even invaded with their romantic, peering, mischievous faces the solemn aisles of the Cathedral itself.

The sea was at the heart of all of them, and whenever a sea-breeze blew down the street carrying with it wisps of straw from the field, or dandelion seeds, or smell of sea-pinks, we children lifted our noses and sniffed and sniffed and saw the waves curl in across the shore, or breakers burst upon the rock, and whispered to one another of the Smugglers of Trezent or the Gold-laced Pirates of Rafiel.

But I think that none of us adored the sea as Jeremy did. From that first moment when, as a small baby, he had been held up in Rafiel Cove to see the tops of the waves catch the morning light as they rolled over to shore, he had adored it. He had never felt any fear of it; he had been able to swim since he could remember, and he simply lived for those days at the end of July when they would all, in a frantic hurry and confusion, take the train for Rafiel and arrive at Cow Farm in the evening, with the roar of the sea coming across the quiet fields to mingle with the lowing of the cows and the bleating of the sheep. He had in his bedroom a wonderful collection of dusty and sticky sea-shells, and these he would turn over and over, letting them run through his fingers as a miner counts his gold.

Let him catch the faintest glimpse of a shadow of a sailor in the street and he was after it, and he had once, when he was only four or five, been caught by the terrified Jampot, only just in time, walking away confidently down the market-place, his hand in the huge grasp of a villainous looking mariner. He was exceedingly happy in his home, but he did often wonder whether he would not run away to sea; of course, he was going to be a sailor, but it seemed so long to wait until he was thirteen or fourteen, and there was the sea all the time rolling in and out and inviting him to come.

Mrs. Cole warned Miss Jones of this taste of Jeremy's: "Never let him speak to a sailor, Miss Jones. There are some horrible men in the town, and Jeremy simply is not to be trusted when sailors are concerned."

Miss Jones, however, could not be always on her guard, and Fate is stronger than any governess...

Early in February there came one of those hints of spring that in Glebeshire more than in any other place in the world thrill and stir the heart. Generally they give very little in actual reward and are followed by weeks of hail and sleet and wind, but for that reason alone their burning promise is beyond all other promises beguiling. Jeremy got up one morning to feel that somewhere behind the thick wet mists of the early hours there was a blazing sun. After breakfast, opening the window and leaning out, he could see the leaves of the garden still shining with their early glitter and the earth channelled into fissures and breaks, dark and hard under the silver-threaded frost; beneath the rind of the soil he could feel the pushing, heaving life struggling to answer the call of the sun above it. Far down the road towards the Orchards a dim veil of gold was spreading behind the walls of mist; the sparrows on the almond tree near his window chattered like the girls of the High School, and blue shadows stole into the dim grey sky, just as light breaks upon an early morning sea; the air was warm behind the outer wall of the frosty morning, and the faint gold of the first crocus beneath the garden wall near the pantry door, where always the first crocuses came, caught his eye. Even as he watched the sun burst the mist, the trees changed from dim grey to sharp black, the blue flooded the sky, and the Cathedral beyond the trees shone like a house of crystal.

All this meant spring, and spring meant hunting for snowdrops in the Meads. Jeremy informed Miss Jones, and Miss Jones was, of course, agreeable. They would walk that way after luncheon.

The Meads fall in a broad green slope from the old Cathedral battlement down to the River Pol. Their long stretches of meadow are scattered with trees, some of the oldest oaks in Glebeshire, and they are finally bounded by the winding path of the Rope Walk that skirts the river bank. Along the Rope Walk in March and April the daffodils first, and the primroses afterwards, are so thick that, from the Cathedral walls, the Rope Walk looks as though it wandered between pools and lakes of gold. In the Orchards on the hill also they run like rivers.

Upon this afternoon there were only the trees, faintly pink, along the river and the wide unbroken carpet of green. Miss Jones walked up and down the Rope Walk, whilst Mary told her an endless and exceedingly confused story that had begun more than a week ago and had reached by now such a state of "To be continued in our next" that Miss Jones had only the vaguest idea of what it was all about. Her mind therefore wandered, as indeed, did always the minds of Mary's audiences, and Mary never noticed but stared with the rapt gaze of the creator through her enormous glasses, out into an enchanted world of golden princesses, white elephants and ropes and ropes of rubies. Miss Jones meanwhile thought of her young days, her illnesses and a certain hat that she had seen in Thornley's windows in the High Street. Jeremy, attended by Hamlet, hunted amongst the trees for snowdrops.

Hamlet had been worried ever since he could remember by a theory about rabbits. He had been told, of course, about rabbits by his parents, and it had even been suggested to him that he would be a mighty hunter of the same when he grew to a certain age. He had now reached that age, but never a rabbit as yet had he encountered. He might even have concluded that the whole Rabbit story was a myth and a legend were it not that certain scents and odours were for ever tantalising his nose that could, his instinct told him, mean Rabbit and only Rabbit. These scents met him at the most tantalising times, pulling him this way and that, exciting the wildest hopes in him, afterwards condemned to sterility; as ghosts haunt the convinced and trusting spiritualist, so did rabbits haunt Hamlet. He dreamt of Rabbits at night, he tasted Rabbits in his food, he saw them scale the air and swim the stream—now, he was close on their trail, now he had them round that tree, up that hill, down that hole... sitting tranquilly in front of the schoolroom fire he would scent them; always they eluded him, laughed at him, mocked him with their stumpy tails. They were rapidly becoming the obsession of his nights and days.

Upon this afternoon the air was full of Rabbit. The Meads seemed to breathe Rabbit. He left his master, rushed hither and thither, barked and whined, scratched the soil, ran round the trees, lay cautiously motionless waiting for his foes, and now and then sat and laughed at himself for a ludicrous rabbit-bemused idiot. He had a delightful afternoon...

Jeremy then was left entirely to himself and wandered about, looking for snowdrops under the trees, talking to himself, lost in a chain of ideas that included food and the sea and catapults and a sore finger and what school would be like and whether he could knock down the Dean's youngest, Ernest, whom he hated without knowing why.

He was lost in these thoughts, and had indeed wandered almost into the little wood that lies at the foot of the Orchards, when he heard a deep rich voice say:

"I suppose you 'aven't such a thing as a match upon you anywhere, young gentleman?"

He liked to be asked for a match, a manly thing to be supposed to possess, but, of course, he hadn't one, owing to the stupidity of elderly relations, so he looked up and said politely: "No, I'm afraid I haven't." Then how his heart whacked beneath his waistcoat! There, standing in front of him, was the very figure of his dreams! Looking down upon Jeremy was a gentleman of middle-age whom experienced men of the world would have most certainly described as "seedy."

Jeremy did not see his "seediness." He saw first his face, which was of a deep brown copper colour, turning here and there to a handsome purple; ill-shaved, perhaps, but with a fine round nose and a large smiling mouth. He saw black curling hair and a yachting cap, faded this last and the white of it a dirty grey but set on jauntily at a magnificent angle. He saw a suit of dark navy blue, this again faded, spotted too with many stains, ragged at the trouser-ends and even torn in one place above the elbow, fitting also so closely to the figure that it must have been at bursting point. He saw round the neck a dark navy handkerchief, and down the front of the coat brass buttons that shook and trembled as their owner's chest heaved.

And what a chest! Jeremy had never conceived that any human being could be so thick and so broad. The back, spreading to the farthest limits of the shiny seams of the coat, was like a wall. The thighs were pillows, the arms bolsters and yet not fat, mind you, simply muscle, all of it. One could see in a minute that it was all muscle, the chest thrust forward, the legs spread wide, the bull-neck bursting the handkerchief, everything that Jeremy himself most wished to be. A sailor, a monument of strength, with the scent of his "shag" strong enough to smell a mile away, and—yes, most marvellous of all, gold rings in his ears! His chest would be tatooed probably, and perhaps his legs also!

There, on the back of his hand, was a blue anchor.... Jeremy looked up and trembled lest the vision should fade, then flung a hurried look around him to see whether Miss Jones were near. No one was about. He was alone with the desire of his life.

"I'm so so sorry I haven't a match," he said. "I'm not allowed to have them, you know."

"No, I suppose not," said the vision. "Just my blamed luck. There I am with 'undreds of pounds lying around my room at 'ome careless as you please, and then held up for a bloomin' match. What's gold to a man like me? But a match... there you are... that's life."

He looked at Jeremy with great interest; he took in, as Jeremy realised, every detail of his personal appearance.

"I like boys," he said. "'Ad two myself—'ealthy little nippers they was. Both dead-'ere to-day and gone to-morrer, as you might say. Got your nurse 'anging around anywhere?"

"Nurse?" said Jeremy indignantly. "I don't have a nurse. I'm much too old! There is a governess, but she's over there talking to Mary. She's my sister—but they won't bother yet—not till the Cathedral bell begins."

"No intention of 'urting your feelings, young fellow my lad. Didn't think you'd want a nurse of course—big chap like you. Thought you might 'ave a baby brother or such. No offence—I suppose you 'aven't begun to smoke yet. Can't offer you some tobacco."

Jeremy coloured. The man was laughing at him.

"I'm eight if you want to know," he said, "and I'm going to school in September."

"School!" said the mariner, sniffing contemptuously. "I don't think much of school if you ask me. Now I never went to school, and I can't see that I'm much the worse for not 'aving been there. Contrariwise—I've seen many a fine promising lad spoiled by too much schoolin'. Be a man of the world, I say; that's the direction you want to sail in."

"Did you really never go to school?" asked Jeremy.

"Not I!" relied the sailor. "Flung out at the age of six, I was, turned into a boat sailing to the West Indies and left to shift for myself—and 'ere I am to-day a Captain of as fine a craft as you're ever likely to see, with gold in 'er lockers and peacocks in the 'old—all in a manner of speaking, you know."

Jeremy's eyes glittered; his face was flushed a brilliant red. Hamlet had returned from his rabbit hunting and sat with his tongue out and a wild adventurous eye glittering up at his master from behind his hair, yet he was not noticed.

"You were very lucky," he said devoutly, then he went on hurriedly: "Would you mind—you see, Miss Jones may come at any moment—would you mind—" he choked.

"Would I mind what?" asked the Captain.

"Would you mind telling me? Are you tatooed on your body, snakes and ships and things, like a gardener once we had? He had a sea-serpent all down his back. He showed me one day."

The Captain smiled proudly.

"Tatooed! Talk of tatooing! I'll show yer—and it isn't everybody I'd do it for neither. But I've taken a fancy to you, like my own young nipper what died."

With an air of vast ceremony, as though he were throwing open the door to all the universe, he slowly unwound from about his neck the dark blue handkerchief, unbuttoned his coat, then a grimy shirt and displayed a wall of deep brown chest. This fine expanse had no hair upon it, but was illuminated with a superb picture of a ship in full sail against a setting sun, all worked in the most handsome of blue tatoo. Jeremy gasped. He had never dreamed that such things could be. He ventured to touch the ship with his finger, and he could feel the Captain's manly heart thumping like a muffled hammer beneath the skin.

"There's Queen Victoria on my right thigh and Nelson on my left, and the battle of Trafalgar on the middle of my back. P'raps I'll show 'em you one day. It wouldn't be decent exactly 'ere—too public. But one day you come to my little place and I'll show 'em you."

"Will you really?" said Jeremy. "Didn't it hurt terribly?"

"Hurt!" said the Captain. "I should just think it did. I 'ad to put cotton wool behind my teeth to prevent myself from screaming. But that's nothing. What do you say to being tortured by the Caribbees natives every day after breakfast for three 'ole months. A tooth out a day—"

"But your teeth are all there," said Jeremy.

"False," said the Captain. "Every one of 'em. And the things they'll do to your toenails—it 'ud make your 'air creep on your 'ead to listen to the things I could tell you—"

"Oh, it's awful!" said Jeremy. "And where is your ship now?"

"Ah, my ship!" the Captain replied, winking in the most mysterious fashion; "it would be telling to say where that is. I can trust you, I know; I'm a great judge o' character, I am, but not even with my own mother, gone to glory now twenty years and as holy a soul as ever breathed, I wouldn't trust even 'er with the secret."

"Why is it a secret?" asked Jeremy breathlessly.

"Treasure," said the Captain, dropping his voice.

"Treasure, nothing less nor more. Between you and me there's enough gold on that there ship to satisfy the Prime Minister 'imself, to say nothing of the jewels—rubies, pearls, diamonds. My word, if you could see them diamonds. I'm looking about me now for an extra man or two, and then I'm off again—silent come, silent go's my motto—"