The Girls and I Part 1

The Girls and I.

by Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth.

CHAPTER I

OURSELVES

I'm Jack. I've always been Jack, ever since I can remember at least, though I suppose I must have been called 'Baby' for a bit before Serena came. But she's only a year and a half younger than me, and Maud's only a year and a quarter behind her, so I can scarcely remember even Serena being 'Baby'; and Maud's always been so very grown up for her age that you couldn't fancy her anything but 'Maud.'

My real name isn't John though, as you might fancy. It's a much queerer name, but there's always been one of it in our family ever since some grandfather or other married a German girl, who called her eldest son after her own father. So we're accustomed to it, and it doesn't seem so queer to us as to other people. It's 'Joachim.' 'Jock' seems a better short for it than 'Jack,' doesn't it? and I believe mother once meant to call me 'Jock.' But when Serry and Maud came I _had_ to be Jack, for with Anne and Hebe in front of me, and the two others behind, of course I was 'Jack-in-the-middle.' There's never been any more of us, and even if there had I'd have stayed Jack, once I'd got settled into it, you see.

I'm eleven. I'm writing this in the holidays; and if I don't get it finished before they're done I'll keep adding on to it till I've told all there is to tell.

It's a sort of comfort to me to write about everything, for one way and another I've had a good deal to put up with, all because of--_girls_.

And I have to be good-tempered and nice just because they _are_ girls.

And besides that, I'm really very fond of them; and they're not bad. But no one who hasn't tried it knows in the least what it is to be one boy among a lot of girls, 'specially when some of them are rather boy-ey girls, and when you yourself are just a little perhaps--just a very little--the other way.

I don't think I'm a baby. Honestly I don't, and I'm not going to write down anything I don't _quite_ think. But I do like to be quiet, and I like to have things tidy and regular. I like rules, and keeping to them; and I hate racket and mess. Anne, now, drives me nearly wild with her rushy, helter-skelter ways. You wouldn't think it, would you, considering that she's fourteen, and the eldest, and that she's been the eldest all her life?--eldests _should_ be steady and good examples. And her name sounds steady and neat, doesn't it? and yet of all the untidy, unpunctual--no, I mustn't let myself go like that. Besides, it's quite true, as Hebe says, Anne has got a very good heart, and she's very particular in some _mind_ ways; she never says a word that isn't quite true--she doesn't even exaggerate. I have noticed that rather tiresome, careless people often have very good hearts. I wish they could see how much nicer it would be for other people if they'd put some of their good hearts into their tiresome ways.

On the whole, it's Hebe that suits the best with me. She particular--_much_ more particular than Anne, though not quite as particular as _I'd_ like her to be, and then she is really awfully sweet. That makes her a little worrying sometimes, for she will take sides. If I am in a great state at finding our postage stamps all muddled, for instance--Anne and Hebe and I have a collection together, I am sorry to say--and _I_ know who's been at them and say something--who could help saying something if they found a lot of carefully-sorted ones ready to gum in, all pitched into the unsorted box with Uncle Brian's last envelopeful that I haven't looked over?--up flies Hebe in Anne's defence.

'Poor Anne, she was in such a hurry, she never meant it'; or 'she only wanted to help you, Jack; she didn't know you had sorted these.'

Now, isn't that rather trying? For it makes me feel as if I was horrid; and if Hebe would just say, 'Yes, it _is_ awfully tiresome,' I'd feel I had a sort of right to be vexed, and when you feel that, the vexedness often goes away.

Still, there's no doubt Hebe _is_ sweet, and I daresay she flies up for me just as she does for the others when I am the one not there.

We're all very fond of Hebe. She and Serena are rather like each other; they have fair fluffy hair and rosy cheeks, but they're not a bit like each other in themselves. Serena is a terrible tomboy--worse than Anne, for she really never thinks at all. Anne does mean to think, but she does it the wrong way; she gets her head so full of some one thing that she forgets everything else, and then she's awfully sorry. But Serry just doesn't think at all, though she's very good-natured, and, of course, when it comes to really vexing or hurting any one, she's sorry too--for about a minute and a half!

And then there's Maud. It is very funny about Maud, the oddest thing about us, though we are rather a topsy-turvy family. Maud is only eight and a half, but she's the oldest of us all.

'She's that terrible old-fashioned,' mother's old nurse said when she came to pay us a visit once, 'she's scarce canny.'

They call _me_ old-fashioned sometimes, but I'm nothing to Maud. Why, bless you (I learnt that from old nurse, and I like it, and n.o.body can say it's naughty to bless anybody), compared to Maud I'm careless, and untidy, and unpunctual, and heedless, and everything of these kinds that I shouldn't be. And yet she and I don't get on as well as Hebe and I do, and in some ways even not as well as Anne and I do. But Maud and Anne get on very well-- I never saw anything like it. She tidies for Anne; she reminds her of things she's going to forget; she seems to think she was sent into the world to take care of her big sister. Anne is big--at least she's tall--tall and thin, and with rather smooth dark hair. My goodness! if she'd had fluffy hair like us three middle ones--for even mine is rather a bother, it grows so fast and is so curly--what _would_ she have looked like? She seems meant to be neat, and till you know her, and go her all over pretty closely, you'd never guess how untidy she is--pins all over, even though Sophy is _always_ mending her frocks and things. And Maud is dark too, though her hair is curly like ours; she's like a gipsy, people say, but she's not a bit gipsy in her _ways_--oh dear, no!

We live in London--mostly, that's to say. We've got a big dark old house that really belongs to grandfather, but he's so little there that he lets us use it, for father has to be in London a lot. We're always there in winter; that's the time grandfather's generally in France or Egypt, or somewhere warm. Now and then, if he's later of going away than usual, or sooner of coming back, he's with us a while in London. We don't like it much.

That sounds unkind. I don't mean to be unkind. I'm just writing everything down because I want to practise myself at it. Father writes books--very clever ones, though they're stories. I've read bits, but I didn't understand them much, only I know they're very clever by the fuss that's made about them. And people wonder how ever he gets time to write them with all the Government things he does too. He _must_ be very clever; that's what put it in my head that _perhaps_ some day I might be clever that way too. For I don't want to be either a soldier or a sailor, or a lawyer like father was before he got into Government things, and I'm sure I'm not good enough to be a parson, though I think I'd rather like it; and so sometimes I really get frightened that I'll be no good at anything at all, and a boy must be something.

I think father and mother would be pleased if I were a great writer.

And then we really have had some adventures: that makes it more interesting to make out a story about ourselves, for I think a book just about getting up and going to bed, and breakfast, and dinner, and tea, would be very stupid--though, all the same, in story-books I do like rather to know what the children have to eat, and something about the place they live in too.

To go back about grandfather. The reason we don't much like his being with us isn't exactly that we don't care for him. He's not bad. But father's his only child, and our grandmother died a good while ago, and I think she must have been a very giving-in sort of person, and that's bad training for any one. When I'm grown up, _if_ ever I marry, I shall settle with my wife before we start that she mustn't give in to me too much, and I'll stick to it once it's settled. For I've got rather a nasty temper, and I feel in me that if I was to get too much of my own way it would get horrid. It's perhaps because of that that it's been a good thing for me to have four sisters, for they're _nearly_ as bad as four wives sometimes. I don't get too much of my own way at present, I can tell you.

I often think I'm rather like grandfather. P'raps if he'd had four sisters or a not-too-giving-in wife he'd have been better. Now, I hope that's not rude? I don't mean it to be; I'm rather excusing him. And I can't put down what isn't true, even though n.o.body should ever see this 'veracious history'--that's what I'm going to put on the t.i.tle-page--except myself. And the truth is that grandfather expects everybody and everything to give in to him. Not _always_ father, for he does see how grand and clever father is, and that he can't be expected to come and go, and do things, and give up things, just like a baby.

But oh, as for poor little mums!--that's mother--her life's not her own when gran's with us. And it isn't that she's silly a bit. She's awfully sensible; something like Hebe and Maud mixed together, though to look at her she's more like Anne. It's real goodness makes _her_ give in.

'He's getting old, dears, you know,' she says, 'and practically he's so very good to us.'

I'm not quite sure that I understand quite what 'practically' means. I think it's to do with the house--or the houses, for we've got two--and money. For father, though he's so clever, wouldn't be _rich_ without grandfather, I don't think. Perhaps it means presents too.

He--grandfather--isn't bad about presents. He never forgets birthdays or Christmases--oh dear, no, he's got an _awfully_ good memory. Sometimes _some_ of us would almost rather be worse off for presents if only he'd forget some other things.

I'm like him about remembering too. I think my mind is rather tidy, as well as my outside ways. I've got things very neat inside; I often feel as if it was a cupboard, and I like to know exactly which shelf to go to for anything I want. Mums says, 'That's all very well so far as it goes, Jack, but don't stop short at that, or you will be in danger of growing narrow-minded and self-satisfied.'

And I think I know what she means. There are some things now about Anne, for all her tiresome ways, that I know are _grander_ than about me, or even perhaps than about Hebe, only Hebe's sweetness makes up for everything. But Anne would give anything in a moment to do any one a good turn. And I--well, I'd think about it. I didn't at all like having to tear up my nice pocket-handkerchief even the day we found the poor little boy with his leg bleeding so dreadfully in the Park, and Anne had hers in strips in a moment. And she'll lend her very best things to any one of us. And she's got feelings I don't understand. Beautiful church music makes her want so _dreadfully_ to be good, she says. I _like_ it very much, but I don't think I feel it that way. I just feel nice and quiet, and almost a little sleepy if it goes on a good while.

I was telling about our house in London. It's big, and rather grand in a dull sort of way, but dark and gloomy. Long ago, when they built big houses, I think they fancied it was the proper thing to make them dark.

It's nice in winter when it's shut up for the night, and the gas lighted in the hall and on the staircases, and with the lamps in the dining-room and drawing-rooms and library--it is very warm and comfortable then, and though the furniture's old-fashioned, and not a pretty kind of old-fashioned, it looks grand in a way. But when the spring comes, and the bright days show up all the dinginess, poor mother, how she does sigh!

'I would so like to have a pretty house,' she says. 'The curtains are all so dark, you can scarcely see they're any colour at all, and those dreadful heavy gilt frames to the mirrors in the drawing-rooms! Oh, Alan'--Alan is father--'don't you think gran would let us refurnish even the third drawing-room? I could make it a sort of boudoir, you know, and I could have my own friends in there in the daytime. The rooms don't look so bad at night.'

But father shakes his head.

'I'm afraid he wouldn't like it,' he says.

So I suppose even father gives in a good deal to gran.

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 cla.s.ses 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.'

When that sort of thing happens, I do feel that I've got a rather nasty temper.

I've begun about losing things, because our adventures had to do with a very big losing. The first adventure came straight from it, and the rest had to do with it.

It's funny how things hang together like that. You think of something that's come, and you remember what made it happen, and then you go back to the beginning of _that_, and you see it came from something else; and you go on feeling it out like, till you're quite astonished to find what a perfectly different thing had started it all from what you would have thought.