Shipwrecked Mariner. "Ahoy, mates! Wot 's won t' Derby?"
THE RISE AND FALL OF AN AMATEUR EXAMINER.
The Nabobs is, I suppose, one of the best girls' schools in England. Anyhow it is perhaps the most exclusive unless you have money enough. But, as the prospectus says, "it commands an extensive view of the English Channel," and I suppose these things have to be paid for. At all events there is no doubt that the principal, Miss Penn-Cushing, has her heart in her work and is a splendid disciplinarian, and so I sent my niece Mollie there to be finished (her mother being in India).
I have an idea at times that it is Mollie who will finish Miss Penn-Cushing, but I try to preserve a benevolent neutrality combined with a regular supply of food parcels to my niece.
Miss Penn-Cushing is LL.A. of one University and LL.B. of another, and, I think, LL.C. of a third, so that she ought to be more than a match for six Mollies.
I have always had the impression that Miss Penn-Cushing regarded me as a humble entomological specimen until the other day when she paid me a staggering compliment. She herself teaches all the English literature in her academy, and each class in turn goes up to her room to receive its daily dose. Mollie says that when she grows up she is going to give up English literature for ever and read something interesting.
I am glad that the revered Principal is never present to hear Mollie's blasphemies, at which I as an uncle have to shudder. Since the publication of The Cambridge History of English Literature Miss Penn-Cushing has been steadily absorbing it, to help her in her daily task, and has apparently reached the chapter in which is suitably acknowledged the debt of English literature to Punch.
So at least I judge, for she gave the girls a long serious talk on humour in literature, how to detect it and what should be done about it. One rather sensitive child began to cry, but Mollie, who has never kept a secret in her life and in fact loves to drag her uncle's skeletons out of cupboards, blurted out, "Uncle writes for Punch!"
I was somewhat alarmed when I heard of this, for I did not know how Miss Penn-Cushing, who keeps all the girls' uncles in order, might take it. My fears were groundless, perhaps stupid, for the immediate result was an invitation to examine Mollie's form in literature at the forthcoming Christmas examination. I felt uplifted in spirit; I felt that people were beginning to understand me. I even entertained an hallucination that perhaps Mollie might now treat my intellect with respect and stop calling me "Old dear." Three inches taller I sat down to my desk and, thanking Miss Penn-Cushing for the honour paid me, I promised I would do my best, although it would be my first appearance in the rôle.