Chapter 5 of They and I by Jerome K. Jerome. I started the next morning to call upon St. Leonard. Near to the house I encountered young Hopkins on a horse. He was waving a pitchfork over his head and reciting the charge of the light brigade. The horse looked amused. He told me I should find the governor up by the stables. St. Leonard is not an old man. Dick must have seen him in a bad light. I should describe him as about the prime of life, a little older than myself, but nothing to speak of. Dick was right, however, in saying he was not like a farmer. To begin with, Hubert St. Leonard does not sound like a farmer. One can imagine a man with a name like that writing a book about farming, having theories on this subject. But in the ordinary course of nature things would not grow for him. He does not look like a farmer. One cannot say precisely what it is, but there is that about a farmer that tells you he is a farmer. The farmer has a way of leaning over a gate. There are not many ways of leaning over a gate. I have tried all I could think of, but it was never quite the right way. It has to be in the blood. A farmer has a way of standing on one leg and looking at a thing that isn't there. It sounds simple, but there is a knack in it. The farmer is not surprised it is not there. He never expected it to be there. It is one of those things that ought to be and is not. The farmer's life is full of such. Suffering reduced to a science is what the farmer stands for. All his life he is the good man struggling against adversity. Nothing his way comes right. This does not seem to be his planet. Providence means well, but she does not understand farming. She is doing her best, he supposes, that she is a born muddler is not her fault. If Providence could only step down for a month or two and take a few lessons in practical farming, things might be better. But this being out of the question, there is nothing more to be said. From conversation with farmers, one conjures up a picture of Providence as a well-intentioned amateur put into a position for which she is utterly unsuited. Rain, says Providence, they are wanting rain. What did I do with that rain? She finds the rain and starts it and is pleased with herself until some wandering spirit pauses on his way and asks her sarcastically what she thinks she is doing. Raining, explains Providence, they wanted rain, farmers, you know that sort of people. They won't want anything for long, retorts the spirit, they'll be drowned in their beds before you've done with them. Don't say that, says Providence, well, have a look for yourself if you won't believe me, says the spirit.  It is so difficult, says Providence, to regulate these things just right. So it seems for you, retorts the spirit, anyhow I should not rain any more if I were you, if you must at least give them time to build another ark. And the wandering spirit continues on his way. The place does look a bit wet, now I come to notice it, says Providence, peeping down over the edge of her star. Better turn on the fine weather, I suppose. She starts with what she calls set fair and feeling now that she is something like a Providence composes herself for a dose. She is startled out of her sleep by the return of the wandering spirit. Been down there again, she asks him pleasantly, just come back, explains the wandering spirit. Pretty spot, isn't it, says Providence, things nice and dry down there now, aren't they? You've hit it, he answers, dry is the word. The rivers are dried up, the wells are dried up, the cattle are dying, the grass is all withered, as for the harvest, there won't be any harvest for the next two years. Oh yes, things are dry enough. One imagines Providence bursting into tears. But you suggested yourself a little fine weather. I know I did, answers the spirit. I didn't suggest six months drought with the thermometer at 120 in the shade. Doesn't seem to me that you've got any sense at all. I do wish this job had been given to someone else, says Providence. Yes, and you are not the only one to wish it, retorts the spirit unfeelingly. I do my best, urges Providence, wiping her eyes with her wings. I am not fitted for it. A truer word you never uttered, retorts the spirit. I try, nobody could try harder, wails Providence. Everything I do seems to be wrong. What you want, says the spirit, is less enthusiasm and a little common sense in place of it.  When you do send rain, ten to one, you send it when it isn't wanted. You keep back your sunshine, just as a duffer at whisk keeps back his trumps until it is no good, and then you deal it out all at once. I'll try again, said Providence. I'll try quite hard this time. You've been trying again, retorts the spirit unsympathetically, ever since I have known you. It is not that you do not try. It is that you have not got the hang of things. Why don't you get yourself an almanac? The wandering spirit takes his leave. Providence tells herself she really must get that almanac. She ties a knot in her handkerchief. It is not her fault. She was made like it. She forgets altogether for what reason she tied that knot. Thinks it was to remind her to send frosts in May or scotch mists in August. She is not sure which, so sends both. The farmer has ceased even to be angry with her. Recognizes that affliction and sorrow are good for his immortal soul, and pursues his way in calmness to the bankruptcy court. Hubert St. Leonard of Windrush Bottom Farm. I found to be a worried-looking gentleman. He taps his weather-glass and hopes and fears, not knowing as yet that all things have been ordered for his ill. It will be years before his spirit is attuned to that attitude of tranquil despair essential to the farmer. One feels it. He is tall and thin, with a sensitive, mobile face, and a curious trick of taking his head every now and again between his hands as if to be sure it is still there. When I met him he was on the point of starting for his round, so I walked with him. He told me that he had not always been a farmer. Till a few years ago he had been a stockbroker. But he had always hated his office, and having saved a little, had determined when he came to Forty to enjoy the rare luxury of living his own life. I asked him if he found the farming paid. He said, As in everything else, it depends upon the price you put upon yourself. Now, as a casual observer, what wage per annum would you say I was worth? It was an awkward question. You are afraid that if you spoke candidly you would offend me, he suggested. Very well. For the purpose of explaining my theory, let us take instead your own case. I have read all your books, and I like them. Speaking as an admirer, I should estimate you at five hundred a year. You perhaps make two thousand, and consider yourself worth five. The whimsical smile with which he accompanied the speech disarmed me. What we most of us do, he continued, is to overcapitalize ourselves. John Smith, honestly worth a hundred a year, claims to be worth two. Result? Difficulty of earning dividend, overwork, over worry, constant fear of being wound up. Now, there is that about your work that suggests to me you would be happier earning five hundred a year than you ever will be earning two thousand. To pay your dividend, to earn your two thousand, you have to do work that brings you no pleasure in the doing. Intent with five hundred, you could afford to do only that work that does give you pleasure. This is not a perfect world, we must remember. In the perfect world, the thinker would be worth more than the mere jester. In the perfect world, the farmer would be worth more than the stockbroker. In making the exchange, I had to write myself down. I earn less money, but get more enjoyment out of life. I used to be able to afford champagne, but my liver was always wrong, and I dared not drink it. Now I cannot afford champagne, but I enjoy my beer. That is my theory, that we are all of us entitled to payment according to our market value, neither more nor less. You can take it all in cash, I used to, or you can take less cash and more fun. That is what I am getting now. It is delightful, I said, to meet with a philosopher. One hears about them, of course, but I had got it into my mind that we were all dead. You laugh at philosophy, he said. I never could understand why. It is the science of living a free, peaceful, happy existence. I would give half my remaining years to be a philosopher. I am not laughing at philosophy, I said. I honestly thought you were a philosopher. I judged so from the way you talked. Talked, he retorted. Anybody can talk. As you have just said, I talk like a philosopher. But you not only talk, I insisted.  Sacrificing your income to the joy of living your own life, it is the act of a philosopher. I wanted to keep him in good humor.  No, it wasn't, he answered. A philosopher would have remained a stockbroker and been just as happy. Philosophy does not depend upon environment. You put the philosopher down anywhere. It is all the same to him. He takes his philosophy with him. You can suddenly tell him he is an emperor or give him penal servitude for life. He goes on being a philosopher just as if nothing had happened. We have an old Tomcat. The children lead it an awful life. It does not seem to matter to the cat. They shut it up in the piano. Their idea is that it will make a noise and frighten someone. It doesn't make a noise, it goes to sleep. When an hour later someone opens the piano, the poor thing is lying there stretched out upon the keyboard purring to itself. They dress it up in the baby's clothes and take it out in the purambulator. It lies there perfectly contented looking round at the scenery, takes in the fresh air. They haul it about by its tail. You would think to watch it swinging gently to and fro head downwards that it was grateful to them for giving it a new sensation. Apparently, it looks on everything that comes its way as helpful experience. It lost a leg last winter in a trap. It goes about quite cheerfully on three. It seems to be rather pleased if anything at having lost the fourth saves washing. Now, he is your true philosopher, that cat. Never mind what happens to him and is equally contented if it doesn't. I find myself becoming fretful. I know a man with whom it is impossible to disagree. Men at the club, newcomers, have been lured into taking bets that they could on any topic under the sun find themselves out of sympathy with him. They have denounced Mr. Lloyd George as a traitor to his country. This man has risen and shaken them by the hand, words being too weak to express his admiration of their outspoken fearlessness. You might have thought them nihilists, denouncing the Russian government from the steps of the Kremlin at Moscow. They have, in the next breath, abused Mr. Balfour in terms of transgressing the law of slander. He has almost fallen on their necks. It has transpired that the one dream of his life was to hear Mr. Balfour abused. I have talked to him myself for a quarter of an hour and gathered that at heart he was a piece at any price, man, strongly in favor of conscription, a vehement Republican with a deep-rooted contempt for the working classes. It is not bad sport to collect half a dozen and talk round him. At such times, he suggests to the family dog that six people from different parts of the house are calling to at the same time. He wants to go to the mall at once. I felt I had got to understand this man, or he would worry me. We are going to be neighbors, I said, and I am inclined to think I shall like you. That is, if I can get to know you. You commence by enthusing on philosophy. I hasten to agree with you. It is a noble science. When my youngest daughter has grown up, when the other one has learned a little sense, when Dick is off my hands and the British public has come to appreciate good literature, I am hoping to be a bit of a philosopher myself. But before I can explain to you my views, you have already changed your own and are likening the philosopher to an old Tomcat that seems to be weak in his head. Soberly, now, what are you?  I have the mind of a philosopher coupled to an intensely irritable temperament. My philosophy teaches me to be ashamed of my irritability, and my irritability makes my philosophy appear to be errant nonsense to myself. The philosopher in me tells me it does not matter when the twins fall down the wishing well. It is not a deep well. It is not the first time they have fallen into it. It will not be the last. Such things pass. The philosopher only smiles.  Men have to be called away from their work to haul them out. We all of us get wet. I get wet and excited, and that always starts my liver. The children's clothes are utterly spoiled. John found them. The blood was mounting to his head. They never care to go near the well except they are dressed in their best clothes. On other days they will stop indoors and read Fox's Book of Martyrs. There is something uncanny about twins. What is it? Why should twins be worse than other children? The ordinary child is not an angel, heaven knows. Take these boots of mine. Look at them. I have had them for over two years. I tramp ten miles a day in them. They have been soaked through a hundred times. Do you buy a boy a pair of boots? Why don't you cover over the well? I suggested. There you are again, he replied. The philosopher in me, the sensible man, says, what is the good of the well? It is nothing but mud and rubbish. Something is always falling into it. If it isn't the children, it's the pigs. Why not do away with it? Seems to be sound advice, I commented. It is, he agreed. No man alive has more sound common sense than I have. If only I were capable of listening to myself. Do you know why I don't brick in that well? Because my wife told me I would have to. It was the first thing she said when she saw it. She says it again every time anything does fall into it. If only you would take my advice, you know the sort of thing. Nobody irritates me more than the person who says I told you so. It's a picturesque old ruin, it used to be haunted. That's all been knocked on the head since we came. What self-respecting nymph can haunt a well into which children and pigs are forever flopping. He laughed, but before I could join him he was angry again. Why should I block up an historic well that is an ornament to the garden because a pack of pools can't keep a gate shut? As for the children, what they want is a thorough good whipping in one of these days. A voice crying to us to stop interrupted him. Mon my round, can't come, he shouted. But you must, explained the voice. He turned so quickly that he almost knocked me over. Bothering confound them all, he said. Why don't they keep to the timetable? There is no system in this place. That is what ruins farming want of system. He went on grumbling as he walked. I followed him. Halfway across the field we met the owner of the voice. She was a pleasant-looking lass, not exactly pretty. Not the sort of girl one turns to look at in a crowd, yet having seen her it was agreeable to continue looking at her. St. Leonard introduced me to her as his eldest daughter, Janie, and explained to her that behind the study door, if only she would take the trouble to look, she would find a timetable. According to which, replied Miss Janie with a smile, you ought, at the present moment, to be in the rickyard, which is just where I want you. What time is it? I asked, feeling his waistcoat for a watch that appeared not to be there. Quarter to eleven, I told him. He took his head between his hands. Good God, he cried, you don't say that. The new binder, Miss Janie told us, had just arrived. She was anxious her father should see it was in working order before the men went back. Otherwise, so she argued, old Wilkins will persist it was all right when he delivered it, and we shall have no remedy. We turned towards the house. Speaking of the practical, I said, there were three things I came to talk to you about. First and foremost, that cow. Ah, yes, the cow, said St. Leonard. He turned to his daughter. It was maud, was it not? No, she answered, it was Susie. It is the one, I said, that bellows most all night in three parts of the day. Your boy Hopkins thinks maybe she's fretting. Poor soul, said St. Leonard. We only took her calf away from her. And did we take her calf away from her? He asked of Janie. On Thursday morning returned Janie the day we sent her over. They feel it so at first, said St. Leonard sympathetically. It sounds a brutal sentiment, I said, but I was wondering if by any chance you happened to have by you one that didn't feel it quite so much. I suppose among cows there is no class that corresponds to what we term our smart set, cows that don't really care for their calves, that are glad to get away from them. Miss Janie smiled. When she smiled you felt you would do much to see her smile again. But why not keep it up at your house in the paddock, she suggested, and have the milk brought down? There is an excellent cow shed, and it is only a mile away. It struck me there was sense in this idea. I had not thought of that. I asked St. Leonard what I owed him for the cow. He asked Miss Janie, and she said sixteen pounds. I had been warned that in doing business with farmers it would be necessary always to bargain. But there was that about Miss Janie's tone telling me that when she said sixteen pounds she meant sixteen pounds. I began to see a brighter side to St. Leonard's career as a farmer. Very well, I said, we will regard the cow as settled. I made a note, cows, sixteen pounds, have the cow shed got ready and buy one of those big cans on wheels. You don't happen to want milk, I put it to Miss Janie. Susie seems to be good for about five gallons a day. I'm afraid if we drink it all ourselves we'll get too fat. At two pence half penny a quart delivered at the house, as much as you like, replied Miss Janie. I made a note of that also. Happened to know a useful boy, I asked Miss Janie. What about young Hopkins, suggested her father. The only male thing on this farm, with the exception of yourself, of course, Father Deer, that has got any sense, said Miss Janie. He can't have Hopkins. The only fault I have to find with Hopkins, said St. Leonard, is that he talks too much. Personally, I said, I should prefer a country lad. I have come down here to be in the country. With Hopkins around I don't somehow feel it is the country. I might imagine it a garden city. That is, as near as Hopkins would allow me to get. I should like myself something more suggestive or rural simplicity. I think I know the sort of thing you mean, smiled Miss Janie. Are you fairly good tempered? I can generally, I answered, confine myself to sarcasm. It pleases me, and as far as I have been able to notice, does neither harm nor good to anyone else. I'll send you up a boy, promised Miss Janie. I thanked her. And now we come to the donkey. Nathaniel explained Miss Janie in answer to her father's look of inquiry. We don't really want it. Janie, said Mr. St. Leonard, in a tone of authority, I insist upon being honest. I was going to be honest, retorted Miss Janie, offended. My daughter Veronica has given me to understand, I said, that if I buy her this donkey, it will be for her the commencement of a new and better life. I do not attach undue importance to the bargain, but one never knows. The influences that make for reformation in human character are subtle and unexpected. Anyhow, it doesn't seem right to throw a chance away. To which it has occurred to me that a donkey might be useful in the garden. He has lived at my expense for upwards of two years, replied St. Leonard. I cannot myself see any moral improvement he has brought into my family. What effect he may have upon your children, I cannot say. But when you talk about his being useful in a garden, he draws a cart, interrupted Miss Janie. So long as someone walks beside him, feeding him with carrots, we tried fixing the carrot on the pole six inches beyond his reach. That works all right in the picture. It starts this donkey kicking. You know yourself, he continued, with growing indignation. The very last time your mother took him out, she used up all her carrots getting there, with the result that he and the cart had to be hauled home behind a trolley. We had reached the yard, and Nathaniel was standing with his head stretched out above the closed half of his stable door. I noticed points of resemblance between him and Veronica herself. There was about him a light suggestion of resignation, of suffering virtue misunderstood. His eye had the same wistful yearning expression with which Veronica will stand before the window, gazing out upon the purple sunset, while people are calling to her from distant parts of the house to come and put her things away. Miss Janie, bending over him, asked him to kiss her. He complied, but with a gentle, reproachful look that seemed to say, Why call me back again to earth? It made me mad with him. I was wrong in thinking Miss Janie, not a pretty girl. Hers is that type of beauty that escapes attention by its own perfection. It is the eccentric, the discordant that arrests the roving eye, to harm anyone has to attune oneself. I believe, said Miss Janie, as she drew away, wiping her cheek. One could teach that donkey anything. Apparently she regarded willingness to kiss her as an indication of exceptional amiability. Except to work, commented her father. I'll tell you what I'll do, he said. If you take that donkey off my hands and promise not to send it back again, why you can have it. For nothing demanded Janie woefully. For nothing, insisted her father, and if I have any argument I'll throw in the cart. Miss Janie sighed and shrugged her shoulders. It was arranged that Hopkins should deliver Nathaniel into my keeping sometime the next day. Hopkins, it appeared, was the only person on the farm who could make the donkey go. I don't know what it is, said St. Leonard, but he has a way with him. In now, I said, there remains but Dick. The lad I saw yesterday suggested St. Leonard, good-looking young fellow. He is a nice boy, I said. I don't really think I know a nicer boy than Dick, and clever when you come to understand him. There was only one fault I have to find with Dick. I don't seem able to get him to work. Miss Janie was smiling, I asked her why. I was thinking, she answered, how close the resemblance appears to be between him and Nathaniel. It was true, I had not thought of it. The mistake, said St. Leonard, is with ourselves. We assume every boy to have the soul of a professor and every girl a genius for music. We pack off our sons to cram themselves with Greek and Latin and put our daughters down to strum at the piano. Nine times out of ten it is a sheer waste of time. They sent me to Cambridge and said I was lazy. I was not lazy. I was not intended by nature for a senior wrangler. I did not see the good of being a senior wrangler. Who wants a world of senior wranglers? Then why start every young man trying? I wanted to be a farmer. If intelligent lads were taught farming as a business, farming would pay. In the name of common sense, I am inclined to agree with you, I interrupted him. I would rather see Dick a good farmer than a third-rate barrister anyhow. He thinks he could take an interest in farming. There are ten weeks before he needs to go back to Cambridge. Sufficient time for the experiment. Will you take him as a pupil? St. Leonard grasped his head between his hands and held it firmly. If I consent, he said, I must insist on being honest. I saw the woefulness again in Janey's eyes. I think, I said, it is my turn to be honest. I have got the donkey for nothing. I insist on paying for Dick. They are waiting for you in the rickyard. I will settle the terms with Miss Janey. He regarded us both suspiciously. I will promise to be honest, laughed Miss Janey. If it is more than I am worth, he said, I will send him home again. My theory is he stumbled over a pig which according to the timetable ought not to have been there.  Miss Janey said she would show me the shortcut across the fields. We could talk as we went. We walked in silence for a while. You must not think, she said, I like being the one to do all the haggling. I feel a little sore about it very often. But somebody, of course, must do it, and as for father, poor dear. I looked at her. Hers is the beauty to which a touch of sadness adds a charm. How old are you? I asked her. Twenty, she said, next birthday. I judged you to be older, I said. Most people do, she answered. My daughter, Robina, I said, is just the same age, according to years. And Dick is twenty-one. I hope you will be friends with them. They have got sense, both of them. It comes out every now and again and surprises you. Veronica, I think, is nine. I am not sure how Veronica is going to turn out. Sometimes things happen that make us think she has a beautiful character, and then for quite long periods she seems to lose it all together. The little mother, I don't know why we always call her little mother, will not join us till things are more ship-shaped. She does not like to be thought an invalid, and if we have her about anywhere near work that has to be done, and they're not always watching her, she gets added and tires herself. I am glad we are going to be neighbors, said Miss Janey. There are ten of us altogether. Father, I am sure you will like. Clever men always like father. Mother's day is Friday. As a rule, it is the only day no one ever calls. She laughed. The cloud had vanished. They come on other days and find us all in our old clothes. On Friday afternoon, we sit in state and nobody comes near us, and we have to eat the cakes ourselves. It makes her so cross. You will try and remember Fridays, won't you? I made a note of it then and there. I am the eldest, she continued, as I think father told you. Harry and Jack came next, but Jack is in Canada and Harry died, so there is somewhat of a gap between me and the rest. Bertie is twelve and Ted eleven. They are home just now for the holidays. Sally is eight, and then there come the twins. People don't have to believe the tales that are told about twins, but I am sure there is no need to exaggerate. They are only six, but they have a sense of humor you would hardly credit. One is a boy and the other a girl. They are always changing clothes, and we are never quite sure which is which. Wilfred gets sent to bed because Winnie has not practiced her scales, and Winnie is given syrup of squills because Wilfred has been eating green gooseberries. Last spring, Winnie had the measles. When the doctor came on the fifth day, he was as pleased as punch. He said it was the quickest cure he had ever known, and that really there was no reason why she might not get up. We had our suspicions, and they were right. Winnie was hiding in the cupboard, wrapped up in a blanket. They don't seem to mind what trouble they get into, provided it isn't their own. The only safe plan, unless you happen to catch them red-handed, is to divide the punishment between them and leave them to settle accounts between themselves afterwards. Algie is four. Till last year he was always called the baby. Now of course there is no excuse, but the name still clings to him in spite of his indignant protestations. Father called upstairs to him the other day. Baby, bring me down my gators. He walked straight up to the cradle and woke up the baby. Get up, I heard him say. I was just outside the door. And take your father down his gators.   Father took him to Oxford last Saturday. He is small for his age. The ticket collector quite contented threw him a glance and merely as a matter of form asked if he was under three. No, he shouted before Father could reply. I sist, I am being honest. I is four. It is Father's pet phrase. What view do you take of the exchange, I asked her, from stockbroking with its larger income to farming with its smaller? Perhaps it was selfish, she answered, but I am afraid I rather encouraged Father. It seems to me mean making your living out of work that does no good to anyone. I hate the bargaining, but the farming itself I love. Of course it means having only one evening dress a year and making that myself, but even when I had a lot I always preferred wearing the one that I thought suited me the best. As for the children, they are as healthy as young savages and everything they want to make them happy is just outside the door. The boys won't go to college, but seeing they will have to earn their own living, that perhaps is just as well. It is mother poor dear that worries so, she laughed again. Her favorite walk is to the workhouse. She came back quite excited the other day because she had heard the guardians intend to try the experiment of building separate houses for old married couples. She is convinced that she and Father are going to end their days there. You, as the business partner, I asked her, are hopeful that the farm will pay? Oh yes, she answered it will pay all right. It does pay for the matter of that. We live on it and live comfortably. But of course I can see mother's point of view with seven young children to bring up. And it is not only that, she stopped herself abruptly, oh well, she continued with a laugh, you have got to know us. Father is trying.  Last year it was bare feet. I dare say it is healthier, but children who have been about in bare feet all the morning, well it isn't pleasant when they sit down to lunch. I don't care what you say. You can't be always washing. He is so unpractical. He was quite angry with mother and myself because we wouldn't. And a man in bare feet looks so ridiculous. This summer it is short hair and no hats. And Sally had such pretty hair. Next year it will be sabaats or turbans, something or other suggesting the idea that we've lately escaped from a fair. On Mondays and Thursdays we talk French. We have got a French nurse and those are the only days in the week on which she doesn't understand a word that said to her, we can none of us understand father and that makes him furious. He won't say it in English. He makes a note of it, meaning to tell us on Tuesday or Friday, and then of course he forgets and wonders why we haven't done it. He is the dearest fellow alive. When I think of him as a big boy, then he is charming. And if he really were only a big boy, there are times when I would shake him and feel better for it. She laughed again. I wanted her to go on talking because her laugh was so delightful, but we had reached the road and she said she must go back. There were so many things she had to do. We were not settled about Dick, I reminded her. Mother took rather a liking to him, she murmured. If Dick could make a living, I said, by getting people to like him, I should not be so anxious about his future, lazy young devil. He has promised to work hard if you let him take up farming, said Miss Janey. He has been talking to you, I said. She admitted it. He will begin well, I said. I know him. In a month he will have tired of it and be clamoring to do something else. I shall be very disappointed in him if he does, she said. I will tell him that, I said it may help. People don't like other people to be disappointed in them. I would rather you didn't, she said. You could say that father will be disappointed in him. Father formed rather a good opinion of him, I know. I will tell him, I suggested that we shall all be disappointed in him. She agreed to that and we parted. I remembered when she was gone that after all we had not settled terms. Dick overtook me a little away from home. I have settled your business, I told him. It's awfully good of you, said Dick. Mind I continued, it's on the understanding that you throw yourself into the thing and work hard. If you don't I shall be disappointed in you, I tell you so, frankly. That's all right, Governor, he answered cheerfully. Don't you worry. Mr. St. Leonard will also be disappointed in you, Dick, I informed him. She has formed a very high opinion of you. Don't give him cause to change it. I'll get on all right with him, answered Dick. Jolly old duffer, Haney. Miss Janey will also be disappointed in you, I added. Did she say that? He asked. She mentioned it casually, I explained. Though now I come to think of it she asked me not to say so. What she wanted me to impress upon you was that her father would be disappointed in you. Dick walked beside me in silence for a while. Mary, I've been a worry to you, Dad, he said at last. Glad to hear you say so, I replied. I'm going to turn over a new leaf, Dad, he said. I'm going to work hard. About time, I said. Chapter 6 of They and I by Jerome K. Jerome. We had cold bacon for lunch that day. There was not much of it. I took it to be the bacon we had not eaten for breakfast. But on a clean dish with parsley it looked rather neat. It did not suggest, however, a lunch for four people, two of whom had been out all the morning in the open air. There was some excuse for Dick. I never heard before, said Dick, of cold fried bacon as a hors d'oeuvres. It is not a hors d'oeuvres, explained Rabana. It is all there is for lunch. She spoke in the quiet, passionless voice of one who has done with all human emotion. She added that she should not be requiring any herself, she having lunched already. Veronica, conveying by her tone and bearing the impression of something midway between a perfect lady and a Christian martyr, observed that she also had lunched. Which I had, growled Dick. I gave him a warning kick. I could see he was on the way to getting himself into trouble. As I explained to him afterwards, a woman is most dangerous when at her meekest. A man, when he feels his temper rising, takes every opportunity of letting it escape. Trouble at such times he welcomes. A broken boot lace or a shirt without a button is to him, then, as water in the desert. An only collar stud that will disappear as if by magic, from between his thumb and finger, and vanish, apparently into thin air, is a piece of good fortune sent on these occasions only to those whom the gods love. By the time he has waddled on his hands and knees twice round the room, broken the boot jack, raking with it underneath the wardrobe, been bumped and slapped and kicked by every piece of furniture that the room contains, and ended up by stepping on that stud and treading it flat, he has not a bitter or an angry thought left in him. All that remains of him is sweet and peaceful. He fastens his collar with a safety pin, humming an old song the while. Failing the gifts of Providence, the children, if in health, can generally be depended upon to afford him an opening. Sooner or later, one or another of them will do something that no child, when he was a boy, would have dared, or dreamed of daring, to even so much as think of doing. The child, conveying by expression that the world, it is glad to say, is slowly but steadily growing in sense, and pity it is that old-fashioned folks can't bustle up and keep abreast of it, points out that, firstly, it has not done this thing, that for various reasons, a few only of which need be dwelt upon, it is impossible it could have done this thing, that secondly, it has been expressly requested to do this thing, that wishful always to give satisfaction it has, at sacrifice of all its own ideas, gone out of its way to do this thing, that thirdly, it can't help doing this thing, strive against fate as it will. He says he does not want to hear what the child has got to say on the subject, nor on any other subject, neither then nor at any other time. He says there's going to be a new departure in this house, and that things all round are going to be very different. He suddenly remembers every rule and regulation he has made during the past ten years for the guidance of everybody, and that everybody himself included has forgotten. He tries to talk about them all at once in haste, lest he should forget them again. By the time he has succeeded in getting himself, if nobody else, to understand himself, the children are swarming round his knees, extracting from him promises that in his sober moments he will be sorry that he made. I knew a woman, a wise and good woman she was, who, when she noticed that her husband's temper was causing him annoyance, took pains to help him to get rid of it. To relieve his sufferings, I have known her search the house for a last month's morning paper, and ironing it smooth lay it warm and neatly folded on his breakfast plate. One thing in this world to be thankful for at all events, and that is that we don't live in ditchly in the marsh. He would growl ten minutes later from the other side of it. Sounds a bit damp, the good woman would reply. Damp? He would grunt. Who minds a bit of damp? Good for you. Makes us Englishmen what we are. Being murdered in one's bed about once a week is what I should object to. Do they do much of that sort of thing down there? The good woman would inquire. Seems to be the chief industry of the place. Do you mean to say you don't remember that old maiden lady being murdered by her own gardener and buried in the fall run? You women, you take no interest in public affairs. I do remember something about it now you mention it, dear. The good woman would confess. Always seems such an innocent type of man a gardener. Seems to be a special breed of them at ditchly in the marsh, he answers. Here again last Monday, he continues, reading with growing interest. Almost the same case, even to the pruning knife. He has hanged if he doesn't. Berries are in the fall run. This is most extraordinary. It must be the imitative instinct asserting itself suggests the good woman, as you, dear, have so often pointed out one crime makes another. I have always said so, he agrees, that has always been a theory of mine. He folds the paper over. Dull dogs, these political chaps, he says. Here's the Duke of Devonshire speaking last night at Hackney. Begins by telling a funny story, he says he has just heard about a parrot. Why, it's the same story somebody told a month ago. I remember reading it. Yes, upon my soul word for word I'd swear to it, shows you the sort of men were governed by. You can't expect everyone, dear, to possess your repertoire, the good woman remarks. Needn't say he's just heard it that afternoon anyhow, responds the good man. He turns to another column.  He pounces on the eldest boy. When was the Oxford and Cambridge boat race? He fiercely demands. The Oxford and Cambridge boat race repeats the astonished youth. Why, it's over. You took us all to see it last month. The Saturday before—the conversation for the next ten minutes he conducts himself unaided. At the end he is tired, maybe a trifle horse. But all his bad temper is gone. His sorrow is there was not sufficient of it. He could have done with more. Woman knows nothing of simple mechanics. A woman thinks you can get rid of steam by boxing it up and sitting on the safety valve. Feeling as I do this morning that I'd like to ring everybody's neck for them, the average woman argues to herself, my proper course, I see it clearly, is to creep about the house asking of everyone that has the time to spare to trample on me. She coaxes you to tell her of her faults. When you have finished, she asks for more. Reminds you of one or two you had missed out. She wonders why it is that she is always wrong. There must be a reason for it if only she could discover it. She wonders how it is that people can put up with her. Makes it so good of them. At last, of course, the explosion happens. The awkward thing is that neither she herself nor anyone else knows when it is coming. A husband cornered me one evening in the club. It evidently did him good to talk. He told me that finding his wife that morning in one of her rare listening moods, he had seized the opportunity to mention one or two matters in connection with the house he would like to have altered. That was if she had no objection. She had, quite pleasantly, reminded him the house was his that he was master there. She added that any wish of his, of course, was law to her. He was a young and inexperienced husband. It seemed to him a hopeful opening. He spoke of quite a lot of things, things about which he felt that he was right and she was wrong. She went and fetched a quire of paper and borrowed his pencil and wrote them down. Later on, going through his letters in the study, he found an unexpected check and ran upstairs and asked her if she would not like to come out with him and get herself a new hat. I could have understood it, he moaned. If she had dropped on me while I was, well, I suppose you might say lecturing her. She had listened to it like a lamb, hadn't opened her mouth except to say yes, dear, or no, dear. Then when I only asked her if she'd like a new hat, she goes suddenly raving mad. I never saw a woman go so mad. I doubt if there be anything in nature quite as unexpected as a woman's temper unless it be tumbling into a hole. I told all this to Dick. I have told it to him before. One of these days he will know it. You are right to be angry with me, Robinna replied meekly. There is no excuse for me. The whole thing is the result of my own folly. Her pathetic humility should have appealed to him. He can be sympathetic when he isn't hungry. Just then he happened to be hungry. I left you making a pie, he said. It looked to me a fair-sized pie. There was a duck on the table with a cauliflower and potatoes. Veronica was up to her elbows in peas. It made me hungry merely passing through the kitchen. I wouldn't have anything to eat in the town for fear of spoiling my appetite. Where is it all? You don't mean to say that you and Veronica have eaten the whole blessed lot. There is one thing she admits to herself that exhausts Veronica's patience. It is unjust suspicion. Do I look as if I'd eaten anything for hours and hours? Veronica demanded, you can fill my waistband if you don't believe me.  I know I did, Veronica admitted. One minute you were told that it is wicked to tell lies. The next, Veronica, Robina interrupted threateningly. It's easy for you, retorted Veronica. You are not a growing child. You don't feel it. The least you can do, said Robina, is to keep silence. What's the good, said Veronica, not without reason. You'll tell them when I've gone to bed and can't put in a word for myself. Everything is always my fault. I wish sometimes that I was dead. That I were dead, I corrected her. The verb to wish implying uncertainty should always be followed by the conditional mood. You ought, said Robina, to be thankful to Providence that you're not dead. People are sorry when you're dead, said Veronica. I suppose there's some bread and cheese in the house, suggested Dick. The baker, for some reason or another, has not called this morning, Robina answered sweetly. Neither, unfortunately, has the grocer. Everything there is to eat in the house, you see upon the table. Accidents will happen, I said. The philosopher, as our friend St. Leonard would tell us, only smiles. I could smile, said Dick, if it were his lunch. Cultivate, I said, a sense of humor. From a humorous point of view, this lunch is rather good. Did you have anything to eat at the St. Leonard's? He asked. Just a glass or so of beer and a sandwich or two, I admitted. They brought it out to us while we were talking in the yard, to tell the truth I was feeling rather peckish. Dick made no answer, but continued to chew bacon rind. Nothing I could say seemed to cheer him. I thought I would try religion. A dinner of herbs, the sentiment applies equally to lunch, and contentment therewith is better, I said, than a stalled ox. Don't talk about oxen, he interrupted fretfully. I feel I could just eat one, a plump one. There is a man I know, I confess he irritates me. His argument is that you should always rise from a meal feeling hungry. As I once explained to him, you cannot rise from a meal feeling hungry without sitting down to a meal feeling hungry, which means, of course, that you are always hungry. He agreed with me, he said that was the idea, always ready. Most people, he said, rise from a meal feeling no more interest in their food. That was a mental attitude, injurious to digestion. Keep it always interested. That was the proper way to treat it. By it, you mean, I said, of course he answered, I'm talking about it. Now, on myself, he explained, I rise from breakfast feeling eager for my lunch. I get up from my lunch looking forward to my dinner. I go to bed just ready for my breakfast. Cheerful expectancy, he said, was a wonderful aid to digestion.  You don't seem to me, I said, to be anything else. You talk like a tadpole. Haven't you any other interest in life? What about home and patriotism and Shakespeare, all those sort of things? Why not give it a square meal and silence it for an hour or two, leave yourself free to think of something else? How can you think of anything? He argued when your stomach's out of order. How can you think of anything? I argued when it takes you all your time to keep it in order.  We were growing excited, both of us, for getting our natural refinement. You don't get even your one afternoon a week. You are healthy enough, I admit it, so are the convicts at Portland. They never suffer from indigestion. I knew a doctor once who prescribed for a patient two years penal servitude is the only thing likely to do in permanent good.  Now when you are thirsty, it allows you a glass of a pint in the water at times when you don't want it, assuming there could ever be a time when you did want it. You are deprived of your natural vittles and made to live upon prepared food as though you were some sort of a prized chicken. You are sent to bed at 11 and dressed in hygienic clothing that makes no pretense to fit you. Talk of being hand-picked. Why the mildest husband living would run away or drown himself rather than remain tied for the rest of his existence to your stomach. It is easy to sneer, he said. I am not sneering, I said, I am sympathizing with you. He said he did not want any sympathy. He said if only I would give up over eating and drinking myself it would surprise me how bright and intelligent I should become. I thought this man might be abused to us on the present occasion. Accordingly I spoke of him and of his theory. Dick seemed impressed. Nice sort of man, he asked. An earnest man, I replied. He practices what he preaches and whether because or in spite of it, the fact remains that a chirpier soul I am sure does not exist. Married, demanded Dick. A single man, I answered. In all things an idealist. He has told me he will never marry until he can find his ideal woman. What about Robinah here? Suggested Dick. Seemed to have been made for one another. Robinah smiled.  Even he thought Robinah would want his beans cooked to time and to feel that a reasonable supply of nuts was always in the house. We incompetent women never ought to marry. We had finished the bacon. Dick said he would take a stroll into the town. Robinah suggested he might take Veronica with him. That perhaps a bun and a glass of milk would do the child no harm. Veronica for a wonder seemed to know where all her things were. Before Dick had filled his pipe, she was ready dressed and waiting for him. Robinah said she would give them a list of things they might bring back with them. She also asked Dick to get together a plumber, a carpenter, a bricklayer, a glazier and a civil engineer and to see to it that they started off at once. She thought that among them they might be able to do all that was temporarily necessary, but the great thing was that the work should be commenced without delay. Why, what on earth the matter, old girl? Asked Dick, have you had an accident? Then it was that Robinah exploded. I had been wondering when it would happen. To Dick's astonishment, it happened then. Yes, she answered, there had been an accident. Did he suppose that seven scrappy scraps of bacon was her notion of a lunch between four hungry persons? Did he, judging from himself, imagine that our family yielded only lunatics? Was it kind? Was it crudious to his parents? To the mother he pretended to love? To the father whose gray hairs he was by his general behavior bringing down and sorrow to the grave? To assume without further inquiry that their eldest daughter was an imbecile? My hair, by the by, is not gray. There may be a suggestion of grayness here and there, the natural result of deep thinking. To describe it in the lump as gray is to show lack of observation. And at forty-eight, or a trifle over, one is not going down into the grave, not straight down. Robinah, when excited, uses exaggerated language. I did not, however, interrupt her. She meant well, added to it, interrupting Robinah when, to use her own expression, she is tired of being a worm, is like trying to stop a cyclone with an umbrella. Had his attention been less concentrated on the guzzling of cold bacon, he had only had four mouthfuls, poor fellow. Had he noticed the sweet patient child starving before his very eyes, this referred to Veronica, his poor elder sister worn out with work and worry, pining for nourishment herself, it might have occurred to even his intelligence that there had been an accident. The selfishness, the egotism of men it was that staggered, overwhelmed Robinah when she came to think of it. Robinah paused, not for want of material, I judged, so much as want of breath. Veronica performed a useful service by seizing the moment to express a hope that it was not early closing day. Robinah felt a conviction that it was. It would be just like Dick to stand there dawdling in a corner till it was too late to do anything. I have been trying to get out of this corner for the last five minutes, explained Dick, with that angelic smile of his that I confess is irritating. If you have done talking and will give me an opening, I will go. Robinah told him that she had done talking. She gave him her reasons for having done talking. If talking to him would be of any use, she would often have felt that her duty to talk to him, not only with regard to his stupidity and selfishness and general aggravatingness, but with reference to his character as a whole. Her excuse for not talking to him was the crushing conviction of the hopelessness of ever effecting any improvement in him. Were it otherwise? Seriously speaking, said Dick, now escaped from his corner, something I take it has gone wrong with a stove and you want a sort of general smith. He opened the kitchen door and looked in. Great Scott, he said, what was it, an earthquake? I looked in over his shoulder. But it could not have been an earthquake, I said. We should have felt it. It is not an earthquake, explained Robinah. It is your youngest daughter's notion of making herself useful. Robinah spoke severely. I felt for the moment as if I had done it all myself. I had an uncle who used to talk like that. Your aunt, he would say, regarding me with a reproachful eye. Your aunt can be, when she likes, the most trying woman to live with I have ever known. It would depress me for days. I would wonder whether I ought to speak to her about it or whether I should be doing only harm. But how did she do it, I demanded. It is impossible that a mere child, where is the child? The parlor contained but Robinah. I hurried to the door.  Veronica, I could not see. We are making haste, Dick shouted back, in case it is early closing day. I want Veronica, I shouted. What? shouted Dick. Veronica, I shouted with my hands to my mouth. Yes, shouted Dick. She's on ahead. It was useless screaming anymore. He was now climbing the stile. They always take each other's part, those two, sighed Robinah. Yes, and you were just as bad, I told her. If he doesn't, you do.  And between you all, I am just getting tired of bringing any of you up, which is the truth. How did this thing happen? I had got everything finished, answered Robinah. The duck was in the oven with the pie. The peas and potatoes were boiling nicely. I was feeling hot, and I thought I could trust Veronica to watch the things for a while. She promised not to play King Alfred. What's that, I asked. You know, said Robinah, King Alfred and the cakes. I left her one afternoon last year when we were on the houseboat to watch some buns.  The buns were all burnt to a cinder. As I told her, if I had known what she wanted to be up to, I could have given her some extra bits of dough to make believe with. But oh no, if you please, that would not have suited her at all. It was there being real buns and my being real mad, that was the best part of the game. She's an uncanny child. What was the game this time, I asked. I don't think it was intended for a game. Not at first, answered Robinah. I went into the wood to pick some flowers for the table. I was on my way back, still at some distance from the house when I heard quite a loud report. I took it for a gun and wondered what anyone would be shooting in July. It must be rabbits, I thought. Rabbits never seem to have any time at all to themselves, poor things. And in consequence, I did not hurry myself. It must have been about 20 minutes later when I came inside of the house. Veronica was in the garden, deep in confabulation with an awful looking boy, dressed in nothing but rags. His face and hands were almost black. You never saw such an object. They both seemed very excited.  She said that a few minutes after I had gone, Robbers had come out of the wood, she talked about them as though there had been hundreds, and had with the most awful threats demanded to be admitted into the house. Why they had not lifted the latch and walked in, she did not explain. It appeared this cottage was their secret rendezvous where all their treasure lies hidden. Veronica would not let them in but shouted for help and immediately this awful looking boy to whom she introduced me as Sir Robert, something or other, had appeared upon the scene and then there had followed, well I have not the patience to tell you the whole of the rigmarole they had concocted. The upshot of it was that the Robbers, defeated in their attempt to get into the house, had fired a secret mine which had exploded in the kitchen. If I did not believe them, I could go into the kitchen and see for myself. Say what I would, that is the story they both stuck to. It was not until I had talked to Veronica for a quarter of an hour and had told her that you would most certainly communicate with the police and that she would have to convince a judge and jury of the truth of her story that I got any sense at all out of her. What was the sense you did get out of her, I asked. Well, I am not sure even now that it is the truth, said Robina. The child does not seem to possess a proper conscience. What she will grow up like if something does not happen to change her, it is awful to think. I don't want to appear a hustler, I said, and maybe I am mistaken in the actual time but it feels to me like ours since I asked you how the catastrophe really occurred.  She was in the kitchen yesterday when I mentioned to Harry's mother who had looked in to help me wash up that the kitchen chimney smoked. And then she said, who said, I asked. Why she did, answered Robina, Harry's mother. She said that very often a penny worth of gunpowder. Now at last we have begun, I said. From this point I may be able to help you and we will get on.  The thing by its very nature would appeal to Veronica's sympathies. She went to bed dreaming of gunpowder, left in solitude before the kitchen fire. Other maidens might have seen pictured in the glowing coals, princes, carriages, and balls. Veronica saw visions of gunpowder. Who knows, perhaps even she one day will have gunpowder of her own. She looks up from her reverie, a fairy god-mama in the disguise of a small boy. It was a small boy, was it not? Rather a nice little boy, he gave me the idea of having been originally, answered Robina. The child, I should say, of well-to-do parents. He was dressed in a little Lord Fauntlery suit, or rather he had been. Did Veronica know how he was, anything about him, I asked? Nothing that I could get out of her, replied Robina. You know her way, how she chums on with anybody and everybody. As I told her if she had been attending to her duties instead of staring out of the window, she would not have seen him. He happened to be crossing the field just at the time. A boy born to ill luck, evidently, I observed. To Veronica, of course, he seemed like the answer to a prayer. A boy would surely know where gunpowder could be culled. They must have got a pound of it from somewhere, said Robina, judging from the result. Any notion where they got it from, I asked? No, explained Robina. All Veronica can say is that he told her he knew where he could get some and was gone about 10 minutes. Of course they must have stolen it. Even that did not seem to trouble her. It came to her as a gift from the gods, Robina. I explained, I remember how I myself used to feel about these things at 10. To have inquired further would have seemed to her impious. How was it they were not both killed? Providence, was Robina's suggestion. It seemed to be the only one possible. They lifted off one of the saucepans and just dropped the thing in. Fortunately wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, which gave them both time to get out of the house. At least Veronica got clear off. For a change it was not she who fell over the mat, it was the boy. I looked again into the kitchen. Then I returned and put my hands on Robina's shoulders. It is a most amusing incident as it has turned out, I said. It might have turned out rather seriously, thought Robina. It might, I agreed. She might be lying upstairs. She is a wicked heartless child, said Robina. She ought to be punished. I lent Robina my handkerchief. She never has one of her own. She is going to be punished, I said. I will think of something. And so ought I, said Robina. It was my fault leaving her knowing what she's like. I might have murdered her. She doesn't care. She's stuffing herself with cakes at this very moment. They will probably give her indigestion, I said. I hope they do. Why didn't you have better children? sobbed Robina. We are none of us any good to you. You are not the children I wanted, I confess, I answered. That's a nice kind thing to say, retorted Robina indignantly. I wanted such charming children, I explained. My idea of charming children, the children I had imagined for myself. Even as babies you disappointed me. Robina looked astonished. You, Robina, were the most disappointing, I complained. Dick was a boy. One does not calculate upon boy angels. And by the time Veronica arrived, I had got more used to things. But I was so excited when you came. The little mother and I would steal at night into the nursery. Isn't it wonderful the little mother would whisper to think it all lies hidden there. The little tiresome child, the sweetheart, they will one day take away from us, the wife, the mother. I am glad it is a girl, I would whisper. I should be able to watch her grow into womanhood. Most of the girls one comes across in books, strike one is not perhaps quite true to life. It will give me such an advantage, having a girl of my own. I shall keep a notebook with a lock and key devoted to her. Did you? Asked Robina. I put it away, I answered. There were but few pages written on. It came to me quite early in your life that you were not going to be the model heroine. I was looking for the picture baby, the clean thoughtful baby with its magical mystical smile. I wrote poetry about you Robina, but you would slobber and howl. Your little nose was always having to be wiped, and somehow the poetry did not seem to fit you. You were at your best when you were asleep, but you would not even sleep when it was expected of you. I think, Robina, that the fellows who draw the pictures for the comic journals of the man in his night shirt with the squalling baby in his arms must all be single men. The married man sees only sadness in the design. It is not the mere discomfort. If the little creature were ill or in pain, we should not think of that. It is the reflection that we, who meant so well, have brought into the world just an ordinary, fretful human creature with a nasty temper of its own. That is the tragedy, Robina. And then you grew into a little girl. And I wanted the soulful little girl with a fathomless eyes who would steal to me at twilight and question me concerning life's conundrums. But I used to ask you questions, grumbled Robina, and you would tell me not to be silly. Don't you understand, Robina? I answered, I am not blaming you. I am blaming myself. We are like children who plant seeds in a garden and then are angry with the flowers because they are not what we expected.  I see that now, looking back, but not the little girl I had in my mind. So I missed you thinking of the little girl you were not. We do that all our lives, Robina. We are always looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling underfoot, the blossoms round about us. It was the same with Dick. I wanted a naughty boy. Well, Dick was naughty. No one can say that he was not. But it was not my naughtiness. I was prepared for his robbing orchards. I rather hoped he would rob orchards. All the high-spirited boys in books rob orchards and become great men. But there were not any orchards handy. We happened to be living in Chelsea at the time he ought to have been robbing orchards. That, of course, was my fault. I did not think of that. He stole a bicycle that a lady had left outside the tea room in Battersea Park, he and another boy, the son of a common barber who shaved people for three half-pins. I am a Republican in theory, but it grieved me that a son of mine could be drawn to such companionship. They contrived to keep it for a week till the police found it one night, artfully hidden behind bushes. Logically, I do not see why stealing apples should be noble and stealing bicycles should be mean, but it struck me that way at the time. It was not the particular steal I had been hoping for. I wanted him wild. The hero of the book was ever in his college days a wild young man. Well, he was wild. It cost me 300 pounds to keep that breach of promise case out of court. I had never imagined a breach of promise case. Then he got drunk and bonneted a bishop and a mistake for a bulldog. I didn't mind the bishop. That by itself would have been wholesome fun, but to think that a son of mine should have been drunk. He has never been drunk since, pleaded Rabana. He had only three glasses of champagne and a liqueur. It was the liqueur. He was not used to it. He got into the wrong sec. You cannot in college belong to the wild set without getting drunk occasionally. Perhaps not, I admitted. In the book, the wild young man drinks without ever getting drunk. Maybe there is a difference between life and the book. In the book, you enjoy your fun, but contrive somehow to escape the licking. In life, the licking is the only thing sure. It was the wild young man of fiction I was looking for who, a fortnight before the exam, ties a wet towel around his head, drinks strong tea and passes easily with honors. He tried the wet towel, he tells me. It never would keep in its place. Added to which it gave him neuralgia while the strong tea gave him indigestion. I used to picture myself the proud, indulgent father lecturing him for his wildness, turning away at some point in the middle of my tirade to hide a smile. There was never any smile to hide. I feel that he has behaved disgracefully, wasting his time and my money. He is going to turn over a new leaf, said Rabana. I am sure he will make an excellent farmer. I did not want a farmer, I explained. I wanted a prime minister. Children, Rabana, are very disappointing, Veronica is all wrong. I like a mischievous child. I like reading stories of mischievous children. They amuse me. But not the child who puts a pound of gunpowder into a red hot fire and escapes with her life by a miracle. And yet, I daresay, suggested Rabana, that if one put it into a book, I mean that if you put it into a book, it would read amusingly. Likely enough, I agreed. Other people's troubles can always be amusing. As it is, I shall be in a state of anxiety for the next six months, wondering every moment that she is out of my sight what new devilment she is up to. The little mother will be worried out of her life unless we can keep it from her. Children will be children, remembered Rabana, meaning to be comforting. That is what I am complaining of, Rabana. We are always hoping that ours won't be.  She is lazy. Lazy is not the word for it. She is lazy, Rabana was compelled to admit. There are other faults you might have had and welcome, I pointed out. Faults, I could have taken an interest in and liked her all the better for. Your children are so obstinate. You will choose your own faults. Veronica is not truthful always. I wanted a family of little George Washington's who could not tell a lie. Veronica can. To get herself out of trouble and provided there is any hope of anybody believing her, she does. We all of us used to when we were young, Rabana maintained, dick used to, I used to. It is a common fault with children. I know it is, I mean, answered. I did not want a child with common faults. I wanted something on my own. I wanted you, Rabana, to be my ideal daughter. I had a girl in my mind that I am sure would have been charming. You are not a bit like her. I don't say she was perfect. She had her failings, but they were such delightful failings. Much better than yours, Rabana. She had a temper. A woman without a temper is insipid. But it was that kind of temper that made you love her all the more. Yours doesn't, Rabana. I wish you had not been in such a hurry and had left me to arrange your temper for you. We should all of us have preferred mine. It had all the attractions of temper without the drawbacks of the ordinary temper. Couldn't use it up, I suppose, for yourself, Pa, suggested, Rabana. It was a lady's temper, I explained. Besides, as I asked her, what is wrong with the one I have? Nothing, answered Rabana, yet her tone conveyed doubt. It seems to me sometimes that an older temper would suit you better. That was all. You have hinted as much before, Rabana, I remarked. Not only with reference to my temper, but with reference to things generally. One would think that you were dissatisfied with me because I am too young. Not in years, perhaps, replied Rabana. But, well, you know what I mean. One wants one's father to be always great and dignified. We cannot change our ego, I explained to her. Some daughters would appreciate a father youthful enough in temperament to sympathize with and to indulge them. The solemn old fogey you have in your mind would have brought you up very differently. Let me tell you that, my girl. You would not have liked him if you had had him. Perhaps not, Rabana agreed. You are awfully good in some ways. What we have got to do in this world, Rabana, I said, is to take people as they are and to make the best of them. We cannot expect everybody to be just as we would have them, and maybe we should not like them any better if they were.  Think how nice they are. Rabana said she would try. I have hopes of making Rabana a sensible woman. End of chapter 6. Chapter 7 of They and I by Jerome K. Jerome. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Deborah Lynn. They and I by Jerome K. Jerome. Chapter 7. Dick and Veronica returned laden with parcels. They explained that Daddy Slee, as it appeared he was generally called, a local builder of renown, was following in his pony cart and was kindly bringing the bulkier things with him. I tried to hustle him, said Dick. But coming up after he had washed himself and had his teeth seemed to be his idea of hustling. He has got the reputation of being an honest old Johnny, slow but sure. The others, they tell me, are slower. I thought you might care later on to talk to him about the house. Veronica took off her things and put them away, each one in its proper place. She said if no one wanted her she would read a chapter of the vicar of Wakefield and retired upstairs. Rabana and I had an egg with our tea. Mr. Slee arrived as we had finished and I took him straight into the kitchen. He was a large man with a dreamy expression and a habit of sighing. He sighed when he saw our kitchen. There's four days' work for three men here, he said, and you'll want a new stove. Lord, what troubled children can be. Rabana agreed with him. Meanwhile she demanded how am I to cook. Myself, Missy, sighed Mr. Slee. I don't see how you are going to cook. We'll all have to tramp home again, thought Dick. Until a little mother, the reason, and frightened her out of her life, retorted Rabana indignantly. Rabana had other ideas. Mr. Slee departed, promising that work should be commenced at seven o'clock on Monday morning. Rabana, the door closed, began to talk. Let Pa have a sandwich, said Rabana, and catch the six fifteen. We might all have a sandwich, suggested Dick. I could do with one myself. Pa can explain, said Rabana, that he has been called back to town on business. That will account for everything, and little mother will not be alarmed. She won't believe that business has brought him back at nine o'clock on a Saturday night, argued Dick.  She'll see there's something up and ask a hundred questions. You know what she is. Pa, said Rabana, will have time while in the train to think out something plausible. That's where Pa is clever. With Pa off my hands, I shan't mind. We three can live on cold ham and things like that. By Thursday, we will be all right, and then he can come down again. I pointed out to Rabana, kindly but firmly, the utter absurdity of her idea. How could I leave them three helpless children with no one to look after them? What would the little mother say? What might not Verona could be up to in my absence? There were other things to be considered. The donkey might arrive at any moment. No responsible person there to receive him, to see to it that his simple wants would be provided for. I should have to interview Mr. St. Leonard again to fix up final details as regarded Dick. Who was going to look after the cow about to be separated from us? Young Butte would be down again with plans. Who was going to take him over the house, explain things to him intelligibly? The new boy might turn up. This simple son of the soil Miss Janie had promised to dig out and send along. He would talk Berkshire. Who would there be to understand him, to reply to him and dialect? What was the use of her being impetuous and talking nonsense? She went on cutting sandwiches. She said they were not helpless children. She said if she and Dick at forty-two hadn't grit enough to run a six-room cottage, it was time they learned. Who was forty-two, I demanded. We are, explained Robina, Dick and I, between us. We shall be forty-two next birthday, nearly your own age. Veronica, she continued, for the next few days won't be a child at all. She knows nothing of the happy medium. She is either herself or she goes to the opposite extreme and tries to be an angel. But at the end of the week it will be like living with a vision. As for the donkey, we'll try and make him feel as much at home as if you were here. I don't mean to be rude, Pa, Robina explained, but from the way you put it you evidently regard yourself as the only one among us capable of interesting him. I take it he won't mind for a night or two sharing the shed with the cow. If he looks shocked at the suggestion Dick can knock up a partition. I'd rather for the present, till you come down again, the cow stop where she was. She helps to wake me up in the morning. You may reckon you have settled everything as far as Dick is concerned. If you talk to St. Leonard again for an hour it will be about the future of the Yellow Races or the possibility of life in Jupiter.  Let me talk to Janie we've both of us got sense. As for Mr. Butte I know all your ideas about the house and I shan't listen to any of his silly arguments. What that young man wants is someone to tell him what he's got to do and then let there be an end of it. And the sooner that handy boy turns up the better. I don't mind what he talks. All I want him to do is to clean knives and fetch water and chop wood.  For conversation he can wait till you come down. That is the gist of what she said. It didn't run exactly as I have put it down. There were points at which I interrupted but Robinah never listens. She just talks on and at the end she assumes that as a matter of course you have come around to her point of view and persuading her that you have it means beginning the whole thing over again. She said I hadn't time to talk and that she would write and tell me everything. Dick also said he would write and tell me everything and that if I felt moved to send them down a hamper the sort of thing that left to themselves Fortnum and Mason would put together for a good class picnic safe for six persons I might rely upon it that nothing would be wasted. Veronica by my desire walked with me to the end of the lane. I talked to her very seriously. Her difficulty was that she had not been blown up. Had she been blown up then she would have known herself she had done wrong. In the book it is the disobedient child that is tossed by the bull. The child that has been sent with the little basket to visit the sick aunt may be right in the bull's way. That is a bit of bad luck for the bull. The poor bull has compelled to waste valuable time working round carefully so as not to upset the basket. If the wicked child had sense, which in the book does not happen, it would while the bull was dodging past the good child seize the opportunity to move itself quickly. The wicked child never looks round but pegs along steadily and when the bull arrives it is sure to be in the most convenient position for receiving moral lessons. The good child, whatever its weight, crosses the ice in safety. The bad child may turn the scale at two stone lighter. The ice will have none of him. Once you talk to me about relative pressure to the square inch, says the indignant ice, you were unkind to your little baby brother the week before last. In you go. Veronica's argument, temperately and courteously expressed, I admit came practically to this. I may have acted without sufficient knowledge to guide me. My education has not perhaps on the whole been ordered wisely. Subjects that I feel will never be of the slightest interest or consequence to me have been insisted upon with almost tiresome reiteration. Others that should be useful and helpful to me, gunpowder to take but one example, I have been left in ignorance concerning. About all that, I say nothing. People have done their best according to their lights, no doubt. When, however, we come to purity of motives, singleness of intention, then I maintain I am above reproach. The proof of this is that providence has bestowed upon me the seal of its approval. I was not blown up. Had my conduct been open to censure, as in certain quarters has been suggested, should I be walking besides you now, undamaged, not a hair turned as the saying is? No. Discriminating fate, that is, if any reliance at all is to be placed on literature for the young, would have made it her business that at least I was included in the debris. Instead, what do we notice? A shattered chimney, a ruined stove, broken windows, a wreckage of household utensils, I alone of all things miraculously preserved. I do not wish to press the point offensively, but really it would almost seem that it must be you three, you, my dear parent, upon whom will fall the bill for repairs, Dick, apt to attach too much importance, maybe to his vitals, and who for the next few days will be compelled to exist chiefly upon tinned goods. Robbina, by nature of a worrying disposition, certain till things get straight again to be next door to offer head, who must, by reason of conduct into which I do not inquire, have merited chastisement at the hands of providence. The moral lesson would certainly appear to be between you three. I, it grows clear to me, have been throughout but the innocent instrument. Admit the premise that to be virtuous is to escape whipping, the argument is logical. I felt that left uncombattered it might lead us into yet further trouble. Veronica, I said, the time has come to reveal to you a secret. Literature is not always a safe guide to life. You mean, said Veronica. I mean, I said, that the writer of books is, generally speaking, an exceptionally moral man. That is what leads him astray. He is too good. This world does not come up to his ideas. It is not the world as he would have made it himself. To satisfy his craving for morality, he sets to work to make a world of his own. It is not this world. It is not a bit like this world. In a world as it should be, Veronica, you would undoubtedly have been blown up, if not altogether, at all events partially. What you have to do, Veronica, is with a full heart to praise heaven that this is not a perfect world. If it were, I doubt very much, Veronica, your being here. That you are here happy and thriving proves that all is not as it should be. The bull of this world, feeling he wants to toss somebody, does not sit upon himself, so to speak, till the wicked child comes by. He takes the first child that turns up and thanks God for it. A hundred to one it is the best child for miles around. The bull does not care. He spoils that pattern child. He'd spoil a bishop, feeling as he does that morning. Your little friend in the velvet suit who did get himself blown up at all events as regards the suit.  You or he? Veronica claimed that the inspiration had been hers. I can easily believe it. Was he anxious to steal the gunpowder and put it on the fire, or did he have to be persuaded? Veronica admitted that in the qualities of a first class hero he was wanting. Not till it had been suggested to him that he must at heart be a cowardly, cowardly custard had he been moved to take a hand in the enterprise. A lad clearly, I continued, that left to himself would be a comfort to his friends. And the story of the robbers, your invention, or his. Veronica was generously of opinion that he might have thought of it had he not been chiefly concerned at the moment with the idea of getting home to his mother. As it was, the clothing with romance of incidents otherwise bald and uninteresting had fallen upon her. The good child of the story. The fact stands out at every point. His one failing and amiable weakness. Do you not see it for yourself, Veronica? In the book you, not he, would have tumbled over the mat. In this wicked world it is the wicked who prosper. He, the innocent, the virtuous, has torn into rags. You, the villain of the story, escape.  I don't go so far as to say that, Veronica, and I wish you wouldn't use slang. Dick is a man, and a man won't ever mind about a man.  Justice must not be looked for in this world. Sometimes the wicked get what they deserve, more often they don't. There seems to be no rule. Follow the dictates of your conscience, Veronica, and blow, I mean, be indifferent to the consequences. Sometimes you'll come out all right, and sometimes you won't. But the beautiful sensation will always be with you. I did right. Things have turned out unfortunately, but that's not my fault. Nobody can blame me. But they do, said Veronica. They blame you just as if you'd meant to go and do it. It does not matter, Veronica, I pointed out, the opinion of the world. The good man disregards it. But they send you to bed, persisted Veronica. Let them, I said, what is bed so long as the voice of the inward monitor consoles us with the reflection? But it don't, interrupted Veronica. It makes you feel all the matter. It does, really. It oughtn't to, I told her. Then why does it, argued Veronica? Why don't it do what it ought to? The trouble about arguing with children is that they will argue too. Life's a difficult problem, Veronica, I allowed. Things are not as they ought to be, I admit it. But one must not despair. Something's got to be done. It's jolly hard on some of us, said Veronica. Strive as you may. You can't please everyone. And if you just as much as stand up for yourself, oh, crikey. The duty of the grown-up person, Veronica, I said, is to bring up the child in the way that it should go. It is an easy work, and occasionally irritability may creep in. There's such a lot of them at it, grumbled Veronica.  They mean well, Veronica, I said. When I was a little boy, I used to think just as you do. But now, did you ever get into rouse, interrupted Veronica? Did I ever was never out of them so far as I can recollect? If it wasn't one thing, then it was another. And didn't it make you wild, inquired Veronica? When, first of all, they'd ask what you'd got to say and why you'd done it. And then when you tried to explain things to them, wouldn't listen to you? What used to irritate me most, Veronica, I replied, I can remember it so well, was when they talked steadily for half an hour themselves, and then when I would attempt with one sentence to put them right about the thing, turn round and bully rag me for being argumentative. If they would only listen, agreed Veronica, you might get them to grasp things, but no, they talk and talk till at the end they don't know what they're talking about themselves. And then they pretend it's your fault for having made them tired. I know, I said, they always end up like that. I am tired of talking to you, they say, as if we were not tired of listening to them. And then, when you think, said Veronica, they say you oughtn't to think. And if you don't think and let it out by accident, then they say, why don't you think? It don't seem as though we could do right. It makes one almost despair. And it isn't even as if they were always right themselves, I pointed out to her, when they knock over a glass, it is, who put that glass there? You'd think that somebody had put it there on purpose and made it invisible.  The way they talk, you'd suppose that a glass had no business on a table. If I broke it, then it was always clumsy little devil ought to have his dinner in the nursery. If they mislay their things and can't find them, it's, who's been interfering with my things? Who's been in here rummaging about? Then when they find it, they want to know indignantly who put it there.  And of course you mustn't say anything, commented Veronica. Oh no, if they do something silly and you just pointed out to them, then there was always a reason for it that you wouldn't understand. Oh yes, and if you make just the slightest mistake like what is natural to all of us, that is because you are wicked and unfeeling and don't want to be anything else. I will tell you what we will do, Veronica. I said, we will write a book. You shall help me and in it the children shall be the wise and good people who never make mistakes and they shall boss the show. You know what I mean? Look after the grown up people and bring them up properly and everything the grown up people do or don't do will be wrong. Veronica clapped her hands. No, will you really? She said, oh, do. I will really, I answered. We will call it a moral tale for parents and all the children will buy it and give it to their fathers and mothers in such like fault for their birthdays with writing on the title page from Johnny or Jenny to dear papa or to dear auntie with every good wish for his or her improvement. Do you think they will read it? Doubted Veronica. We will put in it something shocking, I suggested and get some paper to denounce it as a disgrace to English literature. And if that won't do it, we will say it as a translation from the Russian. The children shall stop at home and arrange what they have for dinner and the grown up people shall be sent to school. We will start them off each morning with a little satchel. They shall be made to read Grimm's fairy tales in the original German with notes and learn Old Mother Hubbard by heart and explain the grammar. And go to bed early, suggested Veronica. We will have them all in bed by eight o'clock Veronica and they will go cheerfully as if they liked it or we will know the reason why we will make them say their prayers. Between ourselves, Veronica, I don't believe they always do and no reading in bed and no final glass of whiskey toddy or any nonsense of that sort.  We will be up to all their tricks. And they'll have to take their medicine, Veronica remembered. The slightest suggestion of sulkiness, the first intimation that they are not enjoying themselves will mean cod liver oil and a tablespoon Veronica. And we will ask them why they never use their common sense chipped Veronica. That will be our trouble Veronica that they won't have any sense of any sort not what we shall deem sense but nevertheless we will be just we will always give them a reason why they have got to do everything they don't want to do and nothing that they want to do. They won't understand it and they won't agree that it is a reason but they will keep that to themselves that they are wise. And of course they must not argue Veronica insisted. If they answer back Veronica that will show they are cursed with an argumentative temperament which must be rooted out at any cost I agreed. And if they don't say anything that will prove them possessed of a surly disposition which must be checked at once before it develops into a vice. Whatever we do to them we will tell them it's for their own good Veronica chortled. Of course it will be for their own good I answered that will be our chief pleasure making them good and happy. It won't be their pleasure but that will be owing to their ignorance. They will be grateful to us later on gurgled Veronica. With that assurance we will comfort them from time to time I answered. We will be good to them in all ways we will let them play games not stupid games golf and croquet that do you know good and lead only to language and dispute but bears and wolves and whales educational sort of games that will aid them in acquiring knowledge of natural history. We will show them how to play pirates and red Indians and ogres sensible play that will help them to develop their imaginative faculties. That is why grown up people are so dull they are never made to think but now and then I continued we will let them play their own games say on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons we will invite other grown ups to come to tea with them and let them flirt in the garden or if what make love in the dining room till nurse comes for them but we of course must choose their friends for them nice well behaved ladies and gentlemen the parents of respectable children because left to themselves well you know what they are they were just as likely fallen up with quite undesirable people men and women we could not think of having about the house we will select for them companions we feel sure will be the most suitable for them and if they don't like them if Uncle William says he can't bear the girl we have invited up to love him that he positively hates her we will tell him that it is only his willful temper and that he's got to like her because she's good for him and don't let us have any of his fretfulness and if Grandma pouts and says she won't love old man Jones merely because he's got a red nose or a glass eye or some silly reason of that sort we will say to her all right my lady you will play with Mr. Jones and be nice to him or you will spend the afternoon putting your room tidy make up your mind we will let them marry on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and play at keeping house and if they quarrel we will shake them and take the babies away from them and lock them up in drawers and tell them they shan't have them again till they are good and the more they try to be good the more it will turn out that they ain't been good Veronica reflected their goodness and their badness will depend upon us in more senses than one Veronica I explained when consoles are down when the east wind is touched up our liver they will be surprised how bad they are they mustn't ever forget what they've ever been once told quote Veronica we mustn't have to tell them the same thing over and over again like we was talking to brick walls and if we meant to tell them and forgot to tell them I added we will tell them that they ought not to want us to tell them a simple thing like that as if they were mere babies we must remember all these points and if they grumble we'll tell them that's cause they don't know how happy they are and we'll tell them how good we used to be when I say don't you miss your trainer I shall get into a row great scott I'd forgotten all about that train Veronica I admitted better run suggested Veronica it sounded good advice keep on thinking about that book shouted Veronica make a note of things as they occur to you I shouted back what shall we call it Veronica screamed why the man in the moon looks sad upon I shrieked when I turned again she was sitting on the top rail of the style conducting an imaginary orchestra with one of her own shoes the six fifteen was fortunately twenty minutes late I thought it best to tell Ethel Bertha the truth that things had gone wrong with the kitchen stove let me know the worst she said is Veronica hurt the worst I said is that I shall have to pay for a new range why when anything goes amiss poor Veronica should be assumed as a matter of course to be in it appears to me unjust you're sure she's all right persisted Ethel Bertha honest engine confound those children in their slang I mean positively I answered the little mother looked relieved I told her all the trouble we had had in connection with the cow her sympathies were chiefly with the cow I told her I had hopes of Robin is developing into a sensible woman we talked quite a deal about robin we agreed that between us we had accomplished something rather clever I must get back as soon as I can I said I don't want young but getting wrong ideas into his head who is young but she asked the architect I explained I thought he was an old man said Ethel Bertha old sprite is old enough I said young but is one of his young men but he understands his work and seems intelligent what's he like she asked personally an exceedingly nice young fellow there's a good deal of sense in him I like a boy who listens good-looking she asked not objectionably so I replied a pleasant face particularly when he smiles as he married she asked really it did not occur to me to ask him I admitted how curious you women are no I don't think so I should say not why don't you think so she demanded oh I don't know he doesn't give you the idea of a married man you'll like him seems so fond of his sister shall we be seeing much of him she asked a goodish deal I answered I expect he will be going down on Monday very annoying this stove business what is the use of his being there without you Ethel Bertha wanted to know oh he'll potter round I suggested in tape measurements Dick will be about to explain things to him or if he isn't there's Robina awkward thing is Robina seems to have taken a dislike to him why has she taken a dislike to him asked Ethel Bertha oh because he mistook the back of the house for the front of the front of the house for the back I explained I forget which now says it's his smile that irritates her she owns herself is no real reason when will you be going down again Ethel Bertha asked on Thursday next I told her stove or no stove she said she would come with me she felt the change would do her good and promised not to do anything when she got there and then I told her all that I had done for Dick the ordinary farmer I pointed out to her is so often a haphazard type of man with no ideas if successful it is by reason of a natural instinct which cannot be taught St. Leonard has studied the theory of the thing from him Dick will learn all that can be learned about farming the selection I felt demanded careful judgment but will Dick stick to it Ethel Bertha wondered there again I pointed out to her the choice was one calling for exceptional foresight the old man as a matter of fact he isn't old at all can't be very much older than myself I don't know why they all call him the old man has formed a high opinion of Dick his daughter told me so and I have taken care to let Dick know it the boy will not care to disappoint him her mother whose mother interrupted Ethel Bertha Janey's mother Mrs. St. Leonard I explained she also has formed a good opinion of him the children like him Janey told me so she seems to do a good deal of talking this Miss Janey remarked Ethel Bertha you will like her I said she is a charming girl so sensible and good and unselfish and who told you all this about her interrupted Ethel Bertha you can see it for yourself I answered the mother appears to be a non entity in St. Leonard himself well he is not a businessman it is Janey who manages everything keeps everything going what is she like asked Ethel Bertha I am telling you I said she is so practical and yet at the same time in appearance I mean explained Ethel Bertha how you women I said do worry about mere looks what does it matter if you want to know it is that sort of face that grows upon you at first you do not notice how beautiful it is but when you come to look into it and has she also formed a high opinion of Dick interrupted Ethel Bertha she will be disappointed in him I said if he does not work hard and stick to they will all be disappointed in him what's it got to do with them demanded Ethel Bertha I'm not thinking about them I said what I look at is I don't like her said Ethel Bertha I don't like any of them but she didn't seem to be listening I know that class of men she said and the wife appears if anything to be worse as for the girl when you come to know them I said she said she didn't want to know them she wanted to go down on Monday early I got her to see it took some little time the disadvantages of this we should only be adding to Robin's troubles and change a plan now with unsettled Dick's mind he has promised to write me I said and tell me the result of his first day's experience let us wait and hear what he says she said that whatever could have possessed her to let me take those poor unfortunate children away from her and muddle up everything without her was a mystery to herself she hoped that at least I had done nothing irrevocable in the case of Veronica Veronica I said is really wishful I think to improve I have bought her a donkey a what? exclaimed Ethel Bertha a donkey I repeated the child took a fancy to it and we all agreed it might help to steady her give her a sense of responsibility I somehow felt you hadn't overlooked Veronica said Ethel Bertha I thought it best to change the conversation she seemed in a fretful mood end of chapter seven