My Lamb, you are so very small,
You have not learned to read at all.
Yet never a printed book withstands
The urgence of your dimpled hands.
So, though this book is for yourself,
Let mother keep it on the shelf
Till you can read. O days that Pass,
That day will come too soon, alas!
1. Beautiful As the Day2. Golden Guineas3. Being Wanted4. Wings5. No Wings6. A Castle and No Dinner7. A Siege and Bed8. Bigger Than the Baker's Boy9. Grown Up10. Scalps11. The Last Wish
The house was three miles from the station, but before the dustyhired fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began toput their heads out of the carriage window and to say, 'Aren't wenearly there?' And every time they passed a house, which was notvery often, they all said, 'Oh, is THIS it?' But it never was,till they reached the very top of the hill, just past thechalk-quarry and before you come to the gravel-pit. And then therewas a white house with a green garden and an orchard beyond, andmother said, 'Here we are!'
'How white the house is,' said Robert.
'And look at the roses,' said Anthea.
'And the plums,' said Jane.
'It is rather decent,' Cyril admitted.
The Baby said, 'Wanty go walky'; and the fly stopped with a lastrattle and jolt.
Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scrambleto get out of the carriage that very minute, but no one seemed tomind. Mother, curiously enough, was in no hurry to get out; andeven when she had come down slowly and by the step, and with nojump at all, she seemed to wish to see the boxes carried in, andeven to pay the driver, instead of joining in that first gloriousrush round the garden and the orchard and the thorny, thistly,briery, brambly wilderness beyond the broken gate and the dryfountain at the side of the house. But the children were wiser,for once. It was not really a pretty house at all; it was quiteordinary, and mother thought it was rather inconvenient, and wasquite annoyed at there being no shelves, to speak of, and hardly acupboard in the place. Father used to say that the ironwork on theroof and coping was like an architect's nightmare. But the housewas deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and thechildren had been in London for two years, without so much as oncegoing to the seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and sothe White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down inan Earthly Paradise. For London is like prison for children,especially if their relations are not rich.
Of course there are the shops and the theatres, and Maskelyne andCook's, and things, but if your people are rather poor you don'tget taken to the theatres, and you can't buy things out of theshops; and London has none of those nice things that children mayplay with without hurting the things or themselves - such as treesand sand and woods and waters. And nearly everything in London isthe wrong sort of shape - all straight lines and flat streets,instead of being all sorts of odd shapes, like things are in thecountry. Trees are all different, as you know, and I am sure sometiresome person must have told you that there are no two blades ofgrass exactly alike. But in streets, where the blades of grassdon't grow, everything is like everything else. Thi