At that time he was going through a course of Jane Austen, for whose works he had an enthusiastic admiration, and I remember thinking that he was rather like a Jane Austen person himself, and that she would have "done him" uncommonly well. The book he read was Pride and Prejudice, most witty and delightful to read in later life. But children miss the real savour of its caustic wit, and I know that it was as much over Fiammetta's head as over mine, even though she was so infinitely better versed in literature of all kinds than I. At seven Uncle Edward ceased, placing a marker in the page as he closed the book.
"Perhaps," he said, "Fiammetta already knows this book by heart and can tell me what comes next."
Fiammetta arose hastily from her chair with evident relief: "Oh, no," she said frankly, "that's not the sort of book one knows by heart. I don't think it's particularly interesting—do you?"
"I think it is a masterpiece," Uncle Edward replied, almost breathless with astonishment. "I hope that in a year or two Viola and Hermione will know it, and many others by the incomparable Jane, as well as they know their multiplication table."
"Do they know that awfully well?" asked Fiammetta. "I don't; the sevens and the nines are so muddling—my daddie quite agrees with me. May we go away now?"
In all my intercourse with Fiammetta, the thing that never failed of its joy and wonder was the way she nonplussed grown-up people. They seemed to have no suitable snub ready for her. She was not in the least impertinent, but neither was she deferential to their superior intelligence. In fact, she made us question sometimes whether they were so very intelligent. She lived on terms of such absolute equality with her father, such understanding affection existed between them, that it never occurred to Fiammetta to conceal her opinions or to pretend she liked things merely to please people who happened to be several years older than herself. She was quite prepared to show Uncle Edward good reasons for her lack of interest in Pride and Prejudice as frankly as she afterwards gave them to me. But she had no opportunity, for I remember Aunt Alice hustled us out into the garden with almost unseemly haste, and we were set to play golf croquet, in which game Viola and Hermione excelled, I was only moderately good, and Fiammetta couldn't play at all. Naturally she did not enjoy herself much.
By lunch time on Saturday she was, as she herself put it, "thoroughly issasperated" with things in general. Never for one moment were we left alone. Something was arranged for every minute. The Staceys believed in organised games; "innocent pastimes varied by intellectual pursuits" was Uncle Edward's curriculum, and it would have been excellent had there been rather less of the innocent pastimes. Until quite recently the Staceys had lived in towns, and they had yet to learn that in the country children can find their own amusements with the greatest ease: that Dame Nature is an excellent M.C., and that the queer plays children invent for themselves are far more entrancing than any game that is played by rule.
Fiammetta looked quite pale and exhausted after a morning spent in rounders, clumps, golf croquet (she rested and watched us during this, as she firmly refused to play, but Fräulein sat with her lest she should be dull), spelling-game, Puss-in-the-corner, and "Earth, air, fire, and water."
Observe the judicious admixture of active exercise and mental gymnastics.
While I was washing my hands for lunch she came into my room, shut my door—I'm afraid she banged it—locked it, and stood with her back against it.