"Um-m!" said Sir Toady, the licensed in speech; "we know all that. Oh, yes; and you didn't like fruit, and you liked medicine in a big spoon, and eating porridge and—"
"Oh, we know—we know!" cried all the others in chorus. Whereupon I informed them what would have happened to us thirty years ago if we had ventured to address our parents in such fashion. But Sweetheart, with the gravity of her age upon her, endeavoured to raise the discussion to its proper level.
"Scott writes such a lot before you get at the story," she objected, knitting her brows; "why couldn't he just have begun right away?"
"With Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey drawing at their pipes in the oak-pannelled dining room, and Black Dog outside the door, and Pew coming tapping along the road with his stick!" cried Hugh John, turning off a sketchy synopsis of his favourite situations in fiction.
"Now that's what I call a proper book!" said Sir Toady, hastily rolling himself out of the way of being kicked. (For with these unusual children, the smooth ordinary upper surfaces of life covered a constant succession of private wars and rumours of wars, which went on under the table at meals, in the schoolroom, and even, it is whispered, in church.)
As for blithe Maid Margaret, she said nothing, for she was engaged in testing the capacities of a green slope of turf for turning somersaults upon.
"In Sir Walter Scott's time," I resumed gravely, "novels were not written for little girls—"
"Then why did you give us Miss Edgeworth to read?" said Sweetheart, quickly. But I went on without noticing the interruption, "Now, if you like, I will tell you some of Sir Walter's stories over again, and then I will mark in your own little edition the chapters you can read for yourselves."
The last clause quieted the joyous shout which the promise of a story—any sort of a story—had called forth. An uncertain look crept over their faces, as if they scented afar off that abomination of desolation—"lessons in holiday time."
"Must we read the chapters?" said Hugh John, unhopefully.