“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 and such-like folk for their birthdays, with writing on the title-page, ‘From Johnny, or Jenny, to dear Papa, or to dear Aunty, 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 is a translation from the Russian. The children shall stop at home and arrange what to 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 whisky toddy, or any nonsense of that sort. An Abernethy biscuit and perhaps if they are good a jujube, and then ‘Good night,’ and down with their head on the pillow. And no calling out, and no pretending they have got a pain in their tummy and creeping downstairs in their night-shirts and clamouring for brandy. 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 in a tablespoon, Veronica.”
“And we will ask them why they never use their commonsense,” chirped Veronica.