Sweethearts at Home

by S. R. Crockett

In June—Some Day, 3 o'clock. Cool under the Trees.

Some while ago a book was written about me, called Sweetheart Travelers. It was father who wrote it, and I think he did his best, saying a lot of nice things. But, of course, how could he really understand little girls?

At first I thought I would write a book contradicting the mistakes. But Mr. Dignus, who is a friend of mine and knows about such things, said that would not be very kind to father, and might do him harm in his business. But that if I would write about everything just as it seemed to me as I grew up, he would see to it that it was printed and published.

So when father sees it, won't he just get a surprise? Perhaps he will go into a shop and buy Sweetheart's Diary, thinking that somebody is poaching on his preserves. I can see him tugging at his big mustache, and walking very solid and determined, same as he does when he says to the boys, "You, sir, come into the study along o' me!" Which makes all the rest of us go sort of cold and trembly all over, like a rabbit smelling fresh lettuce.

But it is for what we are NOT going to get that we are sincerely thankful.

Only, after a dreadful lecture the boys are generally let off—"for this time only, mind you!"—whereas the rabbit always ends up by eating the lettuce. [Moral somewhere about, but I can't just make it out.]

And that reminds me. I will tell you the dreadful history of the Blue Delhi Vase. It is one of the first things I can remember and the one that frightened me the most. It used to sit on our brown, carved-oak table in the little drawing-room. It was pale blue like the color of the beady stones you can't see into—oh, yes—thank you very much—turquoise. And somehow I thought that it had come from a fearfully rich uncle in India, who was Prime Minister to a Begum, and would come home one day with an elephant in a huge cattle truck, like what I had seen on the railway. He would then have a scarlet carpet laid to keep his embroidered slippers clean—there is always mud before our station—and he would ride up to our front door on the Begum's state elephant. And the first question he would ask was always, "Is my Blue Delhi Vase in good repair?"

And if it wasn't, then he would demand the name of the miscreant who had done it, and bid the elephant, whose name was quite distinctly Ram Punch, t-r-r-rample him to pieces.

I suppose when I was very young I must have dreamed this, or heard folk talking, without understanding. At any rate I got things pretty mixed in my mind. You see I was very little then, so little that I don't remember there being any boys. Though I suppose Hugh John was a little trundler in a "pram," looking up at the sky with wide solemn eyes and never saying a word. I suppose so, but I don't remember.

All I know is that I wore little red caps, one for Sunday and one for week-days. The Sunday one was put away during the week, and so mostly I had only one.