Chapter VIII: Reminiscent Narrative (2)

It is all gone now--Frog’s pond, the steeple-chase, and the runners. The old school itself has been converted into a museum, and in the long raftered room where we learnt Greek, a crocodile with gaping jaws, stuffed monkeys, and some bottled snakes teach useful knowledge to all who come. When last I was there, they were teaching a blue-nosed boy to make squeaks on the glass with his wetted finger, and he was getting on very well. But from my old seat (under the crocodile) I could see beyond the Berwick woods the wild and tossing hills, already touched with snow, just as when I used to watch the running light upon them, and envy the lives folded in their valleys. Close in front was the bend of the river where Bryan’s Ford swings past Blue Rails, just as it ran one night, still longer ago, when Admiral Benbow as a little boy launched his coracle for the sea. In a shining horseshoe the river sweeps round the spires on Shrewsbury Hill. The red castle guards the narrows, and east and west the Welsh and English bridges cross the water. Below the English bridge I never cared to discover what might come, for the river ran down towards the land of dulness, opposite to the course of adventure and the sun. But to follow up the stream, to scrape across her shingly fords, to watch for the polished surface of her shoals, and move silently over the black depths where no line had reached a bottom--let me die, as Wordsworth says, if the very thought of it does not always fill me with joy! Incalculable from hour to hour, the river never loses her charm and variety. In a single night the water will rise twenty feet, and pour foaming through the deep channel it has been cutting for so many years. Along its banks of sandstone and loam the dotterels run, and rats and stoats thread the labyrinth of the flood-washed roots. There the bullfinches build, kingfishers dig their “tunnelled house,” moorhens set their shallow bowl of reeds, and sometimes a tern flits by like a large white swallow. On tongues of gravel, where the current eddies under the deep opposite bank, red cattle with white faces used to come down in summer and stand far out in the stream, ruminating and flicking their tails, or following us with wondering eyes as we ran naked over the grass and fell splashing into the water. Severn water is full of light and motion. Never stopping to sulk, it has no dead and solid surface, but is alive right through, reflecting the sunshine, green with long ribbons of weed, orange from the pebbly bed, and indigo where the unbreaking crests of its ripples rise. As it passes beneath deep meadows, and under the solemn elms, it whispers still of the mountains from which it came. Into the midst of hedgerow villages and ordered fields it brings its laughing savagery, telling of another life than theirs, of rocks and sounding falls and moorland watersheds. Other rivers may be called majestic, and we talk of Father Tiber and Father Thames, but no one ever called the Severn Father, or praised her but for her grace; for she is like the body and soul of a princess straight from a western fairyland--so wild and pliant, so full of laughter and of mystery, so uncertain in her gay and sorrowing moods. On my word, though the science of education must be a very splendid thing, untaught, untrained, uninstructed as we Shrewsbury boys would now be considered, I would not change places with the most scientifically educated man in England, who had never known a river such as that.

From _Changes and Chances_ by Henry W. Nevinson.
Copyright by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.

THE BURGLARS

KENNETH GRAHAME

It was much too fine a night to think of going to bed at once, and so, although the witching hour of nine P. M. had struck, Edward and I were still leaning out of the open window in our nightshirts, watching the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planning schemes of fresh deviltry for the sunshiny morrow. From below, strains of the jocund piano declared that the Olympians were enjoying themselves in their listless impotent way; for the new curate had been bidden to dinner that night, and was at the moment unclerically proclaiming to all the world that he feared no foe. His discordant vociferations doubtless started a train of thought in Edward’s mind, for he presently remarked, _à propos_ of nothing whatever that had been said before, “I believe the new curate’s rather gone on Aunt Maria.”

I scouted the notion; “Why, she’s quite old,” I said. (She must have seen some five-and-twenty summers.)

“Of course she is,” replied Edward scornfully. “It’s not her, it’s her money he’s after, you bet!”

“Didn’t know she had any money,” I observed timidly.

“Sure to have,” said my brother with confidence. “Heaps and heaps.”

Silence ensued, both our minds being busy with the new situation thus presented: mine, in wonderment at this flaw that so often declared itself in enviable natures of fullest endowment,--in a grown-up man and a good cricketer, for instance, even as this curate; Edward’s (apparently) in the consideration of how such a state of things, supposing it existed, could be best turned to his own advantage.

“Bobby Ferris told me,” began Edward in due course, “that there was a fellow spooning his sister once----”

“What’s spooning?” I asked meekly.

“O I dunno,” said Edward indifferently. “It’s--it’s--it’s just a thing they do, you know. And he used to carry notes and messages and things between ’em, and he got a shilling almost every time.”

“What, from each of ’em?” I innocently inquired.

Edward looked at me with scornful pity. “Girls never have any money,” he briefly explained. “But she did his exercises, and got him out of rows, and told stories for him when he needed it--and much better ones than he could have made up for himself. Girls are useful in some ways. So he was living in clover, when unfortunately they went and quarrelled about something.”

“Don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” I said.

“Nor don’t I,” rejoined Edward. “But anyhow the notes and things stopped, and so did the shillings. Bobby was fairly cornered, for he had bought two ferrets on tick, and promised to pay a shilling a week, thinking the shillings were going on for ever, the silly young ass. So when the week was up, and he was being dunned for the shilling, he went off to the fellow and said: ‘Your broken-hearted Bella implores you to meet her at sundown. By the hollow oak as of old, be it only for a moment. Do not fail!’ He got all that out of some rotten book, of course. The fellow looked puzzled and said:

“‘What hollow oak? I don’t know any hollow oak.’

“‘Perhaps it was the Royal Oak?’ said Bobby promptly, ’cos he saw he had made a slip, through trusting too much to the rotten book; but this didn’t seem to make the fellow any happier.”

“Should think not,” I said, “the Royal Oak’s an awful low sort of pub.”

“I know,” said Edward. “Well, at last the fellow said, ‘I think I know what she means: the hollow tree in your father’s paddock. It happens to be an elm, but she wouldn’t know the difference. All right: say I’ll be there.’ Bobby hung about a bit, for he hadn’t got his money. ‘She was crying awfully,’ he said. Then he got his shilling.”

“And wasn’t the fellow riled,” I inquired, “when he got to the place and found nothing?”

“He found Bobby,” said Edward indignantly. “Young Ferris was a gentleman, every inch of him. He brought the fellow another message from Bella: ‘I dare not leave the house. My cruel parents immure me closely. If you only knew what I suffer. Your broken-hearted Bella.’ Out of the same rotten book. This made the fellow a little suspicious, ’cos it was the old Ferrises who had been keen about the thing all through. The fellow, you see, had tin.”

“But what’s that got to--” I began again.

“O I dunno,” said Edward impatiently. “I’m telling you just what Bobby told me. He got suspicious, anyhow, but he couldn’t exactly call Bella’s brother a liar, so Bobby escaped for the time. But when he was in a hole next week, over a stiff French exercise, and tried the same sort of game on his sister, she was too sharp for him, and he got caught out. Somehow women seem more mistrustful than men. They’re so beastly suspicious by nature, you know.”

“I know,” said I. “But did the two--the fellow and the sister--make it up afterwards?”

“I don’t remember about that,” replied Edward indifferently: “but Bobby got packed off to school a whole year earlier than his people meant to send him. Which was just what he wanted. So you see it all came right in the end!”

I was trying to puzzle out the moral of this story--it was evidently meant to contain one somewhere--when a flood of golden lamplight mingled with the moon-rays on the lawn, and Aunt Maria and the new curate strolled out on the grass below us, and took the direction of a garden-seat which was backed by a dense laurel shrubbery reaching round in a half-circle to the house. Edward meditated moodily. “If we only knew what they were talking about,” said he, “you’d soon see whether I was right or not. Look here! Let’s send the kid down by the porch to reconnoitre!”

“Harold’s asleep,” I said; “it seems rather a shame----”

“O rot!” said my brother; “he’s the youngest, and he’s got to do as he’s told!”

So the luckless Harold was hauled out of bed and given his sailing-orders. He was naturally rather vexed at being stood up suddenly on the cold floor, and the job had no particular interest for him; but he was both staunch and well disciplined. The means of exit were simple enough. A porch of iron trellis came up to within easy reach of the window, and was habitually used by all three of us, when modestly anxious to avoid public notice. Harold climbed deftly down the porch like a white rat, and his night-gown glimmered a moment on the gravel walk ere he was lost to sight in the darkness of the shrubbery. A brief interval of silence ensued; broken suddenly by a sound of scuffle, and then a shrill long-drawn squeal, as of metallic surfaces in friction. Our scout had fallen into the hands of the enemy!

Indolence alone had made us devolve the task of investigation on our younger brother. Now that danger had declared itself, there was no hesitation. In a second we were down the side of the porch, and crawling Cherokee-wise through the laurels to the back of the garden-seat. Piteous was the sight that greeted us. Aunt Maria was on the seat, in a white evening frock, looking--for an aunt--really quite nice. On the lawn stood an incensed curate, grasping our small brother by a large ear, which--judging from the row he was making--seemed on the point of parting company with the head it completed and adorned. The gruesome noise he was emitting did not really affect us otherwise than æsthetically. To one who has tried both, the wail of genuine physical anguish is easily distinguishable from the pumped-up _ad misericordiam_ blubber. Harold’s could clearly be recognised as belonging to the latter class. “Now you young--” (whelp, I think it was, but Edward stoutly maintains it was devil), said the curate sternly; “tell us what you mean by it!”

“Well leggo of my ear then!” shrilled Harold, “and I’ll tell you the solemn truth!”

“Very well,” agreed the curate, releasing him, “now go ahead, and don’t lie more than you can help.”

We abode the promised disclosure without the least misgiving; but even we had hardly given Harold due credit for his fertility of resource and powers of imagination.

“I had just finished saying my prayers,” began the young gentleman slowly, “when I happened to look out of the window, and on the lawn I saw a sight which froze the marrow in my veins! A burglar was approaching the house with snakelike tread! He had a scowl and a dark lantern, and he was armed to the teeth!”

We listened with interest. The style, though unlike Harold’s native notes, seemed strangely familiar.

“Go on,” said the curate grimly.

“Pausing in his stealthy career,” continued Harold, “he gave a low whistle. Instantly the signal was responded to, and from the adjacent shadows two more figures glided forth. The miscreants were both armed to the teeth.”

“Excellent,” said the curate; “proceed.”

“The robber chief,” pursued Harold, warming to his work, “joined his nefarious comrades, and conversed with them in silent tones. His expression was truly ferocious, and I ought to have said that he was armed to the t----”

“There, never mind his teeth,” interrupted the curate rudely; “there’s too much jaw about you altogether. Hurry up and have done.”

“I was in a frightful funk,” continued the narrator, warily guarding his ear with his hand, “but just then the drawing-room window opened, and you and Aunt Maria came out--I mean emerged. The burglars vanished silently into the laurels, with horrid implications!”

The curate looked slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained, and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might really have seen something. How was the poor man to know--though the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint--that the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by the knife-and-boot boy?

“Why did you not alarm the house?” he asked.

“’Cos I was afraid,” said Harold sweetly, “that p’raps they mightn’t believe me!”

“But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?” put in Aunt Maria.

Harold was hard pressed--by his own flesh and blood, too!

At that moment Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off through the laurels. When some ten yards away he gave a low whistle. I replied with another. The effect was magical. Aunt Maria started up with a shriek. Harold gave one startled glance around, and then fled like a hare, made straight for the back-door, burst in upon the servants at supper, and buried himself in the broad bosom of the cook, his special ally. The curate faced the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung herself on him. “O Mr. Hodgitts!” I heard her cry, “you are brave! for my sake do not be rash!” He was not rash. When I peeped out a second later, the coast was entirely clear.

By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging; and Edward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off. Retreat was an easy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg-up on to the garden wall, which led in its turn to the roof of an out-house, up which, at a dubious angle, we could crawl to the window of the box-room. This overland route had been revealed to us one day by the domestic cat, when hard pressed in the course of an otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhat unwillingly--was filling the title _rôle_; and it had proved distinctly useful on occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus some cuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing something sticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly cook, ere the clamour of the burglar-hunters had died away.

The curate’s undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was generally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight, and much kudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however, when he had dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild curatorial joke about the moral courage required for taking the last piece of bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark dreamily, and as it were to the universe at large: “Mr. Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do not be rash!”

Fortunately for me, the vicar also was a caller on that day; and it was always a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated friend in the open.

Kenneth Grahame, _The Golden Age_. Copyright by
Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. By permission of the
publishers.

THE KITCHEN

JULIET SOSKICE

The kitchen was at the end of a stone passage at the foot of a flight of stone steps. I liked to go there, but I was not really allowed to. I liked it best of all in the evening when the servants had finished supper, and sometimes the cook would let me sit on a chair in the corner near the stove. She was rather an ill-tempered cook, though she often used to laugh. She had been in the family ever since my mother was quite a little girl. She had a dark yellow face and brown eyes and black hair. It was quite straight like tape, and she scraped it back from her forehead and did it in a funny knob behind. It wasn’t black really, but she used an excellent hair dye, and said, what did it matter if it came off on the pillow cases? She said nobody need look their age if only they would take the trouble to look young. But she didn’t look young herself, because she was so bony and her face so dreadfully wrinkled. She looked very nice though when she laughed and showed her false white teeth. They looked whiter than other people’s false teeth, because her face was so yellow and her eyes so dark. Occasionally she flew into an awful temper and swore so dreadfully that it shocked every one who heard her. But at other times she was quite cheerful and told very funny stories.

She had a treacherous friend who was a hunch-backed lady. They both loved the same gentleman, but he couldn’t marry them because he had a wife already. The hunch-backed lady used to come in the evening and sit down in the kitchen and say how ill the wife was, and that she couldn’t last much longer; but she did. The hunch-backed lady said that as soon as she was dead the gentleman they loved would want to marry the cook, and that he really loved her much better than his wife. The cook believed it, and she said if he had only known his mind when they were young together all the bother would have been saved.

The hunch-backed lady wore a woolly black cloak, and a big fur on her shoulders to hide the hunch, a black velvet bonnet with strings and sparkling jet ornaments, and an expensive gold watch-chain. She had a very heavy face with her chin right on her chest, and light blue eyes and a handsome curly fringe. She used to drink quantities of tea out of a saucer, very hot, but the cook said she really liked whisky much better when she could get it.

Once she ceased coming and the cook went to look for her, and she found out that the wife had really been dead all the while, and the hunch-backed lady had got married to the gentleman they loved. He didn’t want to be married, but she made him. She was afraid that if the cook had known his wife was dead she would have made him first.

There was a page-boy in this house too, but not an anarchist. He wore no buttons, and he had to stop down in the kitchen and help the cook because of her “poor leg.”

She got it through going out to buy three pounds of fish at the fishmonger’s and slipping on a piece of orange-peel outside the door. It used to give way just at the most awkward moments, and she said she almost believed it knew and did it on purpose. If she had a saucepan in her hand, or a piece of toast, or a leg of mutton it was all the same--she had to put it down on the floor and clutch herself round the knee to pull her leg straight again. Everybody knew about it, and the first thing they said when they came into the kitchen was, “Good-morning, cook, and how’s your poor leg?” and then she told them about it. When she sat down the boy used to arrange a chair in front of her for her to rest it on.

He had a fat, red face, and he was always smiling. The cook said she wouldn’t have believed that any living mouth could stretch so far. It used to make people angry, because whenever they looked at him he smiled, even when there was nothing at all to smile at. My grandfather said he was like the man in Shakespeare who smiled and was a villain. He liked eating apples and a sweet-stuff called stick-jaw that glued his teeth together. The cook said he was the biggest liar that ever walked the earth. He always pretended he had a serious illness and he must go and see the doctor. But instead he went and played in Regent’s Park. Once he tied his face up in a bandage for two days and said that he was going to the dentist to have a double tooth out. And he borrowed a huge cart-horse from one of the stables in the mews and went for a ride on it, without a saddle, and with an old piece of rope instead of reins; and that was how he got found out. The horse insisted on going past the house when it wanted to return to its stable. He tugged at it as hard as he could to make it go home round the back way, but it refused, and the cook was on the area steps and saw him. She said she wouldn’t have been so certain if he hadn’t had an enormous apple in one hand. When he came next day, he said it was the dentist’s horse, and he had sent him for a ride on it to get rid of the effects of laughing gas. But we knew the very stable where it lived, and so he was dismissed.

The housemaid was Irish, and she couldn’t read or write, but she believed in ghosts. She had been a long time in the family too, and she was very fat, with a big pink face and little beady eyes. She was the kindest person I ever knew. Whenever we liked anything she had she always wanted to give it to us, and it really grieved her if we wouldn’t have it. She gave away all her money to the beggars at the garden gate and if she heard of any of us being ill or punished it made her cry, just as if she herself were in trouble. She used to fall about a great deal. If there was any place she could fall into she always did. She said she had measured her length upon every free space of ground in the house, and bumped her head on every stair, and caught her foot in every rug and carpet. But she didn’t let it worry her. One night, when she was standing on the slippery little knob at the end of the bannisters to light the gas outside the studio door, she fell off and lay quite still with her leg doubled under her until the family had finished dinner, because she didn’t want to disturb them by calling out. Once she fell into the drawing-room with a great big tea-tray when there was a tea-party and alarmed the guests exceedingly. But my grandmother was not angry. She said nothing at all, but helped her to get up and pick the tea-things up again.

She believed in ghosts most firmly. She said that her mother had seen so many in Ireland that she simply took no notice of them. They were in every room in the house and up and down the stairs. They used to ring the bells when nothing was wanted and knock people about when they got in their way, and whenever anybody died or anything was going to happen they made a horrible noise outside the windows in the night. Once, she said, she passed a woman nursing her own head on a stone by the roadside, and they just looked at one another, but neither of them spoke.

A gentleman in a nightshirt had hanged himself from a hook in the middle of the ceiling in the servants’ bedroom, before my grandfather came to the house, and the housemaid said his spirit haunted the top storey. She woke up one night and saw a figure standing in the middle of the room and looking at her. She knew it was the same gentleman, because he still wore his nightshirt and had the rope round his neck, and he was standing just underneath the place where the hook would have been had it not been taken down when the ceiling was whitewashed. He was looking at her fixedly. If he had looked the other way he might have noticed the cook in the other bed as well, and that would have been some relief. But he didn’t. He gazed and gazed as though his heart was going to break. She was so frightened that she shook the bed with trembling; and she shut her eyes and put her hand under the pillow and got out her rosary, and said five “Hail Mary’s.” And when she opened them again he was still there, only not quite so solid. After another five he had got so misty that she could see the furniture through him, and after the third five he had disappeared. But she was so terrified, she said, that she didn’t get a wink of sleep that night, and when she woke in the morning her nightdress and sheets were quite damp with terror.

The cook didn’t believe it. She said it was pure popery. She was sure no ghost could possibly come in in the night like that without her noticing it, because she was such a light sleeper. But as a matter of fact, she snored so dreadfully that my grandfather once asked a builder for an estimate for padding the walls of the servants’ room all round so that she couldn’t be heard on the floor underneath, but she was so offended that it wasn’t padded.

They sometimes used to laugh at the housemaid in the kitchen for being a Catholic. But she didn’t care. She stuck to her religion. She was so certain that the Virgin Mary was taking care of her, or she would have been worse hurt in the dreadful accidents she used to have. She said no living being could have stood it without divine protection. When she was doing something that she thought really might be dangerous, she just said, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, help!” and took more care, and nothing happened.

The cook said why she didn’t like Catholics was because she thought they were wicked for burning the Protestants alive on posts in the streets in the olden days when there were no police. I said that the Protestants burnt the Catholics first, but she was offended. She said that no Protestant would ever have thought of such a thing if it hadn’t been put into their heads by bad example. They argued so angrily about which burnt the other first that the housemaid put her apron over her head and sat down on a chair and began to cry aloud like the Irish do at funerals. But then she left off and went upstairs to do her work, and she tumbled about so badly in the bedroom over the studio that my grandfather got down from his painting chair to go upstairs and see what the matter was, and when he found out why she was crying he was very angry. He stumped right downstairs to the top of the kitchen flight and with his spectacles on top of his head, his palette in one hand and his paint-brush in the other. It was difficult for him to get downstairs because of his gout. But he did, and put his head over the bannisters and forbade the subject ever again to be mentioned in the kitchen. And it was not, and they were quite good friends again after that.

The person who most hated Catholics was Mrs. Hall, the wife of the most pious cabman in the mews at the corner. She was the beautiful woman who sat in the barge and nursed the healthy baby that had been painted as twins. She was so beautiful that it was quite remarkable. Her hair was jet black, and when one day she sat down in a chair in the kitchen and let it down for us to see it trailed upon the floor. Her eyes were dark blue and extremely big and bright, but the doctor said that the brightness was unnatural, and that later she might go blind. She was very tall, and whenever she stood she used to look strong and composed and like the statues that stand round on pedestals in museums. Her husband used to say God punished her for her sins by not giving her a baby.

The husband went to a chapel where any one who liked could get up and preach, and the others were obliged to listen. He preached every time he got a chance, and he said he never felt inclined to stop. He loved his fellow creatures so much that he felt compelled to save their souls. He always carried a bundle of tracts about in his pocket, and when any one paid him his fare he gave them some free of charge in exchange. My grandfather used to say to him, “It’s no good, Hall, I’m past all redemption,” because he didn’t want the tracts, but Mr. Hall stuffed a bundle into the pocket of his overcoat while he was helping him to get out of the cab. Mrs. Hall said that he wrestled with God for his soul in private. They were allowed to do that at his chapel.

He was so religious that he thought both Catholics and Protestants were wicked. He said the mistake that everybody made was to think there was more than one door open into Heaven. He said, “Is there more than one door open into Heaven? No! And why is there not more than one door open into Heaven? Because if there was more than one door open into Heaven there would be a draught in Heaven. And would the Lord tolerate a draught in Heaven? No!” That was part of one of his sermons. It really meant that it was only the door of his chapel that led into Heaven, and that other people hadn’t got a chance.

Some people said he was a handsome man, but I didn’t think so. He was small and his hair was such a bright yellow that it looked as if it had been painted. He had strawberry-coloured cheeks and his nose was deadly white. Whenever he met a very nice young girl he used to take her to prayer-meeting, because he loved her soul. He knew a great many. His wife was angry because he took so much trouble about their souls, and the more he loved them the more she hated them. She used to cry and tell the cook which particular one he was saving then, and the cook used to say “The saucy hussy! I’d save ’er, and ’im too!”

* * * * *

The kitchen was really pleasantest of all in the evening when they were resting after supper. Sometimes there were quite a lot of people there. The charwoman used to unscrew her wooden leg and lean it up against her chair. She said you couldn’t think what a relief it gave her. But, of course, if she’d had to get up suddenly for anything before she’d had time to screw it on again she would certainly have fallen. The cook had her leg up on the chair in front of her and talked about them. But the charwoman talked most. She was a middle-sized woman with greasy greeny-greyish hair, and there always seemed to be perspiration on her face. She talked whatever she was doing. She talked so much that people could never understand how she got through all the work she did. At first it was disturbing, like rain pattering on a roof, but after a time you wouldn’t notice it.

She said that her husband and her husband’s mother and her husband’s father had all got wooden legs. She said that it was fate, and when the doctor in the hospital had told her that her right must go it was hardly any shock to her. She had a little girl called Sarah, and whenever she had anything the matter with her the first thing she always did with her was to test her legs at once. Even if it was only a cold or something wrong at quite another end of her body she always did. The housemaid said that it was tempting Providence to talk like that, but she didn’t care.

She talked most of all with Mrs. Catlin, the woman who did fine needlework and used to make my grandfather’s shirts. She was a caretaker in one of the great big houses in Ormonde Terrace, and she used to look so young and innocent that everybody called her the “little woman,” when she wasn’t there. When she had finished some work she used to bring it round in the evening after her babies were in bed, and then she’d stand near the dresser and talk, but she never sat down round the table with the others. She was rather plump and she always looked pink and clean as though she’d come straight out of a bath. She had nice fluffy hair and blue eyes, and her nose turned up just a little at the end, but gently and not suddenly like Tommy Haughty’s mother’s. She talked a good deal too, but she had a pretty tinkling voice. She said when you’d been shut up in a great big barracks of a place the whole day long you simply must let loose or burst. Sometimes she and the charwoman talked both at once for a long time. They seemed not to hear at all what the others said, but it made no difference. Cook said it was like pandemonium in a hailstorm when those two get together.

From _Chapters from Childhood_ by Juliet Soskice.
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF REMINISCENT NARRATIVE

The editors have found these additional selections very useful in teaching reminiscent narrative:

Adams, Henry. _The Education of Henry Adams_, the early chapters.
Houghton Mifflin Company.

Burroughs, John. _My Boyhood._ Doubleday, Page & Company.

Hudson, W. H. _Far Away and Long Ago._ E. P. Dutton & Company.

Lubbock, Percy. _Earlham_, particularly the early chapters. Charles
Scribner’s Sons.

Muir, John. _The Story of My Boyhood and Youth._ Houghton Mifflin
Company.

Pater, Walter. _The Child in the House._