P.T. (coldly): That will do, Billy, you mustn’t talk now till teacher has done. And it gives us milk. What little boy or girl had milk for their breakfast this morning, I wonder? (Alarums and excursions, many competing claims to have had two moogs full.) Yes, and that came from the cow. What has it got on its head? Horns, yes. And what can it do with its horns, Jenny?
Jenny: Hike yer. (i. e. toss you.)
P.T. (much shocked): Oh, Jenny! I told you never to say “hike.” The cow would give you a great knock. And how many legs has it got?
My attention wanders, as if I were sitting under a dull preacher, and in the absence of mural tablets I study the pictures and general exhibits. With joy I hail a reading sheet for infants:
Bill is not well. He is ill at the mill. Bid Ann fill a can of jam, and get us a bit of ham, and we will go with them to him. Did Bill sip the jam? Oh yes, he sat up in his bed, and did sip jam till his lips were red. He did not have a bit of ham. We sat with Bill till six, and then we set off.
I infer that Bill succumbed to this novel treatment at 5.55, and that they fled in haste, when they were quite sure, you know. But I think if they had given him the ham, too, he would have gone off quicker, if that was all they wanted.
Over the fireplace is the time table for the babies’ class. It is “approved by me as satisfying the Conscience Clause.” (In those days our control over time tables went no further.) The babies have two lessons a week, each of fifteen minutes, on “threading a needle.” I think the Conscience Clause might come in here. On Friday afternoon they have a lesson on riddles! And I never knew that! “Why does a miller wear a white hat?” “When is a door not a door?” For children who have gone through a year of this course of instruction, including the cow, the camel, and the cat, life has no further terrors, and death comes as a happy release.
The cow is nearly exhausted. “And it has a very, very long tongue, and when it wants to get some grass to eat, it wraps its tongue round the grass, and tears it off. Isn’t that clever? Yes, Sally, you shall go home directly, if you are a good girl.”
The closure is applied: the lesson ends, and the cow “winds slowly” to its place on the wall. As I go, I mutter to myself the old tag—
“Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt,”[40]