Читать книгу My School Days - E Nesbit - Страница 3

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When I was small and teachable my mother was compelled to much travel and change of scene by the illness of my elder sister; and as she liked to have me more or less within reach, I changed schools as a place-hunter changes his politics.

The first school I went to was a Mrs. Arthur's—at Brighton. I remember very little about the lessons, because I was only seven years old, but I remember—to my inmost fibre I remember the play. There was a yard behind the house—no garden and there I used to play with another small child whose name I have forgotten. But 1 know that she wore a Stuart plaid frock, and that I detested her.

On the first day of my arrival we were sent into the "playground" with our toys. Stuart plaid, as I must call her, having no other name, had a battered doll and three scallop-shells I had a very complete little set of pewter tea-things in a cardboard box.

"Let's change for a bit," said Stuart plaid.

Mingled politeness and shyness compelled my acquiescence. She took my new tea-things, and I disconsolately nursed the battered torso of her doll. But this grew very wearisome, and I, feeling satisfied that the claims of courtesy had been fully met, protested mildly.

"Now then," said Stuart plaid, looking up from the tea-things, "don't be so selfish; besides, they're horrid little stupid tin things. I wouldn't give twopence for them."

"But I don't want you to give twopence for them; I want them back."

"Oh, no you don't!"

"Yes I do," said I, roused by her depreciation of my property-, "and I'll have them too, so there!"

I advanced towards her—I am afraid with some half-formed determination of pulling her hair.

"A11 right," she said, "you stand there and I'll put them in the box and give them to you."

"Promise!"

"Yes, if you don't move."

She turned her back on me. It took her a very long time to put them in the box. I stood tingling with indignation, and a growing desire to slap her face. Presently she turned.

"You would have them back," she said, grinning unpleasantly, "and here they are."

She put them into my hands. She had bitten every single cup, saucer, and plate into a formless lump!

While I stood speechless with anger and misery, she came close to me and said tauntingly

"There, now! aren't you sorry you didn't let me have them?"

"I'll go home," I said, struggling between pride and tears.

"Oh, no you won't," said Stuart plaid, thrusting her mocking face close to mine; "and if you say a word about it I'll say you did it and pinched me as well. And Mrs. Arthur'll believe me, because I'm not a new girl, and you are!"

I turned away without a word, and I never did tell—till now. But I never said another word to Stuart plaid out of school. She tortured me unremittingly. When I had been at school a week or two my paint-box suffered at her hands, but I bore it meekly and in silence, only seeking to replace my Vandyke brown by mud from the garden. Chinese white I sought to manufacture by a mixture of chalk picked up on the sea-shore, and milk from my mug at tea-time. It was never a successful industry. I remember the hot white streets, and the flies, and Brill's baths, and the Western Road, and the bitter pang of passing, at the end of a long procession, our own house, where always some one might be at the window, and never any one was. I used to go home on Saturdays, and then all bitterness was so swallowed up in the bliss of the homereturning, that I actually forgot the miseries of my school-life; but I was very unhappy there. Mrs. Arthur and the big girls were kind enough to me, but Stuart plaid was enough to blight any lot. She blighted mine, and I suppose no prisoner ever hailed the falling of his fetters with the joy I felt when at last, after three or four days of headache and tears, I was wrapped in a blanket and taken home with the measles.

When I got better we went for the midsummer holidays to a lovely cottage among the beech-woods of Buckinghamshire. I shall never forget the sense of rest and delight that filled my small heart when I slipped out under the rustic porch at five o'clock the first morning, and felt the cool velvet turf under my feet. Brighton pavement had been so hard and hot. Then, instead of the long rows of dazzling houses with their bow windows and green-painted balconies, there were lovely trees acacias and elms, and a big copper beech. In the school walks we never had found any flowers but little pink bind-weed, by the dusty roadside. Here there were royal red roses, and jasmine, and tall white lilies, and in the hedge by the gate, sweet-brier and deep-cupped white convolvulus. I think I saw then for the first time how lovely God's good world is, and ever since then, thank God, I have been seeing it more and more. That was a happy morning.

The boys—whom I had not seen for ever so long, because of the measles—were up already. Alfred had a rabbit for me—a white rabbit with pink eyes—in a hutch he had made himself. And Harry led me to a nook among the roots of the copper beech, where he showed me two dormice in an old tea-caddy.

"You shall go shares in them if you like," he said.

There was honey in the comb for breakfast, and new-laid eggs, and my mother was there in a cool cotton gown pouring out tea, and purring with pleasure at having all her kittens together again. There were cool raspberries on the table too, trimmed with fresh green leaves, and through the window we saw the fruit garden and its promise. That was summer indeed.

After breakfast my mother called me to her -she had some patterns in her hand.

"You must be measured for some new frocks, Daisy," she said.

"Oh, how nice. What colour?"

"Well, some nice white ones, and this pretty plaid." She held up a pattern as she spoke. It was a Stuart plaid.

"Oh, not that!" I cried.

"Not this pretty plaid, darling? Why not?"

If you'll believe me, I could not say why not. And the frock was made, and I wore it, loathing it, till the day when I fell out of the apple-tree, and it broke my fall by catching on a branch. But it saved my life at the expense of its own; and I gave a feast to all the dolls to celebrate its interment in the rag-bag.

I have often wondered what it is that keeps children from telling their mothers these things-and even now I don't know. I only know I might have been saved many of these little-big troubles if I had only been able to explain. But I wasn't; and to this day my mother does not know how and why I hated that Stuart plaid frock.