Sweethearts at Home

by S. R. Crockett

Yes, it is first-rate to play there with your oldest things on, especially on a warm day about this time of the year. The river is pretty dry, and there is a great deal of pebbly bar, also the little green island with rough grass on it has grown to about twice the size.

You can fortify this island, and it is fine to dig channels through the bar for the water, with all sorts of lovely harbors and pleasure-lakes. Once the boys and I made a channel right from one end of the bar to the other, and father helped—and got wet too!

Yes, he did. We always encouraged him to get wet, by saying, "Oh, here is a place we can't reach!" Because if he got wet, we knew very well there would be nothing said to us. Fathers are fearful nice and useful—sometimes. Ours particularly when he helps us to play, and forgets he isn't a boy. Oh, I can see quite well when he says to himself, "I ought to be working—but—oh, bother, how much nicer it is to dig in the sand with the other children!"

And then he took pictures of us—photographs, I mean—working at our engineering, and building and paddling—oh, whole albums full. They began when we were quite little tots. The best are of Maid Margaret and Sir Toady. For I was too old, I suppose, to look nice stuck among trees, and Hugh John hated so being photographed. When told to, he stood up stiff like a stork on one leg. But Sir Toady was usually as nice as pie, being made that way, and as for the Maid, she always looks natural whatever she is doing.

Father has a whole set called the History of a Biscuit. It is only the Maid eating one. But it is funny to see it getting smaller and smaller till it is all gone. They are flashed on quickly by our magic lantern, and we children go wild when it comes to the funny ones. The grand exhibitions are for winter nights. Then we are well wrapped up in gray Harris cloaks and come up, closely marshaled by Somebody to see that we don't snowball too much. They are quite lovely, these nights, with the snow crisping under our feet, and Somebody carrying a swig-swagging lantern before us—everybody's shadow swaying tipsily about, and the sky so near and so thick with stars that it seems as if you had only to put up your hand to catch a whole cluster.

There are usually many pictures of this first Torres, because we were younger, and it is a prettier place. We wore little red coats with big white buttons then, and marched regularly like soldiers. Hugh John beat us on the legs if we did not. He had a switch for the purpose, and he said that was the way the father of Frederick the Great did to make his son turn out a good soldier.

But we didn't care about such very practical history, and it made our legs sore—especially us girls, who wore thinner stockings. So there was a regular mutiny, and the whole army was degraded. You see, we were all generals—except Boss, our fox-terrier, who was named Inspector-General of Communications, because he ran from side to side of the road sniffing, and nothing or nobody could stop him. So, as Boss did not join the mutiny—not knowing how—he was promoted next in rank after the Commander-in-Chief, who was Hugh John. He was permanent Commander, because, you see, he could lick the whole standing army even if it attacked him on all sides at once.

Sir Toady and Bobby Coates were the ring-leaders of the revolt, and they called out, "Hem him in! Hem him in!" But, you see, that was the very thing Hugh John wanted, and the more they "hemmed," the harder he laid into them till Bobby said he would tell his father, which he did. But Mr. Coates was a sensible man, and only said that he was all the better for a "hiding," and that if he came bothering him any more, he would give him another on his own account! So after that Bobby Coates became a good soldier, and lived long as an ornament to the service.

Yes, the nursery army was good fun while it lasted, before we all split up and went to different schools. We tried it once after in the first vacation. But somehow it wasn't the same, and ended in a fight. You see, the boys especially had learned a good deal between them, and though it made no difference to Hugh John, the others kept squabbling all the time, and saying how much better they did things at their school than at any other—which was not at all the way they talked about their school in private.

Then "school was a beastly hole." The masters were "Old Buster," "Plummy," "Sick Cat," and "The Dishlicker"!