Sweethearts at Home

But poor Principia went as white as a sheet and shook like a fly caught in a spider's web. I'm afraid in her heart she called old Lovell names.

How did it turn out? Oh, the best way in the world. You would hardly believe. At first, of course, old Pretend was all for packing off Principia for teaching his child deceit! But he calmed down when he thought of the lot of money he owed to old Lovell of Castle Lovell, and of the use that his influence would be to him. Besides, he had boasted so much about her. So had his wife.

So he not only let Principia stay on, but actually set her to teach Polly Pretend all she really knew. And she did know about cookery. That was the real college she had been at, and her mother was a better professor than all the ladies who gave lessons there. And Polly was obliged to learn, too, because her father ate all the things she cooked, and if he had indigestion, why, Polly heard about it, that's all. So she stopped pretending and really did learn.

And after a while they set up their college with old Pretend's money – old Lovell's too, and it was called

THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL

COOKERY

Classes Afternoon and Evening

Household Cookery, Preserving, and the

Management of Families a Speciality

And that sentence was the last little bit of "Pretend." For neither Polly nor Miss Crow has any family. Nor, between ourselves, are they likely to have.

VI

TORRES VEDRAS

July the first in the year when I was eleven on August tenth.

Father has seen the real place, and, of course, knows all about it. He says that it is just a lot of rough mountains, with bits of wall built into the open places to connect them and make them strong.

But we know that there are not one, but two Torres Vedrases – all on one bend of a river. The first one is quite near the Low Park, between the Weir and Jackson's Pool. It is a pebbly bar with a kind of green tufty island. From one side of it there is a rippling ford crossing slantwise, by which you can lose yourself barefooted in the woods on the other side.

The water only takes you to about the knee, even if you are pretty little. It is always one of the nicest places in the world. The water makes a soft tinkling over the ford. The grasses and bluebells wave, and the wind goes sough through the big solid walls of pine on either side.

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.

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