Mums isn't a bit selfish. The brightest rooms in the house have always been ours. They're two floors over the drawing-rooms, which are really very big rooms. We have a nursery, and on one side of it a dressing-room—that's mine—and two other rooms, with two beds each for the girls. We do our lessons in the study—a little room in front of the dining-room, very jolly, for it looks to the front, and the street is wide, and we can see all the barrel-organs and monkeys, and Punch and Judys, and bands, when we're doing our lessons. I don't mean when we're having our lessons; that's different. My goodness! I'd like to see even Serry try to look out of the window when Miss Stirling is there! Miss Stirling's our governess. She comes, you know; she's not a living-in-the-house one, and she's pretty strict, so we like her best the way she is. But doing our lessons is when we're learning them. Most days, in winter anyway, we go a walk till four, or a quarter to, and then we learn for an hour, and then we have tea; and if we're not finished, we come down again till half-past six or so, and then we dress to go into the drawing-room to mums.
She nearly always dresses for dinner early, so we have an hour with her. The little ones, Serena and Maud, never have much to learn. It's Anne and Hebe and me. We all do Latin— I mean we three do. And twice a week Miss Stirling takes Anne and Hebe to French and German classes for 'advanced pupils.' I'm not an advanced pupil, so those mornings I work alone for two hours, and then I've not much to do in the evening those days. And Miss Stirling gives me French and German the days that the girls are at their music with Mrs. Meux, their music-teacher.
That's how we've done for a long time—ages. But next year I'm going to school.
I'm to go when I'm twelve. My birthday comes in November. It's just been; that's how I said 'I'm eleven,' not eleven and a quarter, or eleven and a half—just eleven. And I'm to go at the end of the Christmas holidays after that. I don't much mind; at least I don't think I do. I'll have more lessons and more games in a regular way, and I'll have less worries, anyway at first. For I shall be counted a small boy, of course, and I shan't have to look after others and be blamed for them, the way I have to look after the girls at home. It'll really be a sort of rest. I've had such a lot of looking after other people. I really have.
Mums says so herself sometimes. She even says I have to look after her. And it's true. She's awfully good—she's almost an angel—but she's a tiny bit like Anne. She's rather untidy. Not to look at, ever. She's as neat as a pin, and then she's very pretty; but she's careless—she says so herself. She so often loses things, because she's got a trick of putting them down anywhere she happens to be. Often and often I go to her room when she's dressing, and tap at the door and say—
'Have you lost something, mums?'
And ten to one she'll call back—
'Yes, my dear town-crier, I have.' ('My gloves,' or 'my card-case,' or 'my keys,' or, oh! almost anything.) 'But I wasn't worrying about it; I knew you'd find it, Jack.'
And Maud does finder for Anne, just the same way, only her finding sometimes gets me into trouble. Just fancy that. If Anne loses something, and Maud is hunting away and doesn't find it all at once, they'll turn upon me—they truly will—and say—
'You might help her, Jack, you really might, poor little thing! It's no trouble to you to run up and down stairs, and she's so little.'