We didn’t play any more at Jack and Jill with real water.
Chapter Two.
While Walking on the Sea-Beach.
Everybody loved auntie, for with all her strictness, and—to our young eyes her strange old-world ways, she was so good and so genuine. Goodness was no penance with auntie; it was not put on and off like a dress-coat, a silk hat, or a sealskin jacket; it was part and parcel of her very nature. I believe that if auntie ever cloaked her real soul’s self at all, it was when she was apparently exceedingly wroth with us, after some of our little escapades; which we could no more help than a bird can help flying. But sitting there in that weird black chair, lecturing Jill and me with uplifted forefinger, and steadfast glances over, not through, the two pairs of glasses, she certainly did look thrillingly stern. And she had a way, too, of making us feel thoroughly ashamed of ourselves, without saying much or without scolding.
So our love was mingled with a good deal of reverence. Really I laugh now when I think of it, but whether you can understand the feeling or not, we—that is Jill and I—almost revered the chair in which auntie sat, even when she wasn’t sitting in it. You see we were allowed to play and dance and jump in the schoolroom on wet days, or when the wind blew high from the south and west, and dashed the sea’s spray over beach and gardens. And do what we might, we never could disabuse our minds of the notion that the chair was a living thing, and took notes of all we said and did, and would whisper things to auntie when she sat down again.
At ordinary times, when we might be merely squatting together on a goatskin rug, reading “Robinson Crusoe,” or turning over the leaves of a huge “Arabian Nights” to look at the pictures, it did not matter much. But always when I proposed a game at anything very ridiculous—and it was always I who did make the proposition—before we began, I would say—
“Wait half a minute, Jill, let’s play at the chair being naughty first.”
This was only an excuse, of course, to have the chair turned round with its back to us.