Novel Notes

ed at first to my going down to this houseboat at all. He thought

hen lying in a hammock among whispering leaves, with the deep blue sky above him, and a tumbler of iced claret cup within easy reach of his hand. Failing a hammock, he found a dec

where else, and accordingly it was settled that I should go down and establish myself upon the thi

delightfully tiny scale. You lived in a tiny little room; you slept on a tiny little bed, in a tiny, tiny little bedroom; and you cooked your little dinner by a tiny little fire, in

n over the front door, which has always appeared to me to be unladylike: but then, of course, I am no authority on doll etiquette-had not yet, I think, quite departed from her. Nay, am I not sure that it had not? Do I not remember, years later, peeping into a certain room, the walls of which are covered with works of art of a character calculated to send any ?sthetic person

-room carpet, I recollect. Ethelbertha fancied a dark blue velvet, but I felt sure, taking the wall-paper into consideration, that some shade of terra-cotta would harmonise best. She agreed with me in the end, and we manufactured one out of an old chest protector. It had a

tect. The house also suffered from the inconvenience common to residences of its class, of possessing no stairs, so that to move from one room to another it was necessar

as a washing-stand, and on the washing-stand there stood a jug and basin, and in the jug there was real water. But all this was as nothing. I have known mere ordinary, middle-class dolls' houses in which you might find washing-stands and jugs and basins and re

seemed to get tired); also a picture and a piano, and a book upon the table, and a vase of flowers that would ups

three occupied about half the room, and what space was left was filled up by the stove-a real stove! Think of it, oh ye owners of dolls' houses, a stove in which you could burn real bits of coal, and o

on its back, just outside the front door, proud but calm, waiting to be put into possession. It was not an exte

or gentleman, down to items that I could not mention. And all these garments, you must know, could be unfastened and taken off. I have known dolls-stylish enough dolls, to look at, some of them-who have been content to go about w

s natural state-none of them. There was a want of fulness about them all. Besides, without their clothes, it might have been di

oss the table. (They had to sit on the floor because the chairs were not big enough.) The girl we placed in the kitchen, where she leant against the dresser in an attitude suggestive of drink, embracing the broom we had given her with maudlin affection. Then we

e we had just seen. It should have art-muslin curtains and a flag, and the flowers about it should be wild roses and forget-me-nots. I could work all the morning on the roof, with an awning over me to keep off the sun, while Ethelber

the west, and that roses will thrive anywhere. But, as you grow older, you grow tired of waiting for the gray sky to break. So you close t

a long while were wet days, and she feared she would never have a chance of wearing her pretty white dress. But at last there came a fête day morning that was bright and sunny, and then the little girl clapped her hands and ran upstairs, and to

out-grown it, and that it was too small for her every

had made enough money for them to live comfortably upon, and then they would marry and be happy. It took him a long while to make, because making money is very slow work,

alone so long that she had grown old-maidish, and she was feeling vexed with him for having dirtied the carpet with his muddy boots. And he had w

" both wondering why they had shed such scalding tears on that day they h

that I learnt at school out of a copy-book. If

grasshopper sported and played, gambolling with his fellows in and out among the sun-beams, dining sumptuously

around, saw that his friends, the flowers, lay dead, and kne

have made the best use of it. I have drunk in the sunshine, I have lain on the soft, warm air, I have played merry games in the waving grass, I have tasted the juic

in the way that all brave grasshoppers should; and a little

s and prudent, and not like this poor grasshopper. While he was flitting about from flower to flower, enjoying himself, I was hard at work, putting

spade, and levelled the hill where she dwelt to th

n of which was, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." It was a very pretty song, and a very wise song, and a man who lived in those days, and to whom the birds, lovi

stop to pick flowers now, my dear," she cries, in her sharp, cross tones, as she seizes our arm and jerks us ba

children, that the chances are that we shall never come th

us that if we were good and saved up our money, we should have one next year; and Ethelbertha and I, being sim

ur plan. The moment the girl opened the door, Ethe

ity as to why such a question had been addressed to her,

won't be able to walk out with your young man, you'll have to swim out. We're not going

rrow that she had never succeeded in doing so. She had hoped great things from this announcement, bu

een the same if we had told her w

er. But she had a knack of making Ethelbertha and myself feel that we were a coupl

icable-but her attitude towards us never changed. Even when we came to be really important married people, the proprietors of a "famil

me to take either of us quite seriously. She would play with us, or join with us in light conversation

n the perambulator one morning, but the

ned Ethelbertha soothingly. "Baby's

f not in words. "Baby don't take a hand in experiments

w heart-broken she was. It was the

ter to another is, in a teller of tales, a grievous sin, and a growing custom much to be condemned. Therefore I will close my eyes to all ot

ve age. The man from whom we hired it described it as "compact." The man to whom, at the end of the first month, we tried

fact that if you got out of bed carelessly you were certain to knock your head against the ceiling, and that i

g-glass and go upon the roof to do he

was one advantage about it, and that was, that she could not tumble out of bed, seeing there was nowhere to tumble; and, on being shown the kitchen, she observed that she should li

Ethelbertha apologetically, "

, "I should say that would

but the weather rendered it impossible, six days out of the seven, for us to do mo

hirty-first of October. Indeed, the country is always associate in my mind with recollections of long, weary days passed in the pitiless rain, and sad evenings spent in other people's clo

o work, but the beating of the hail upon the roof just over my head would drive every idea out of my brain, and, after a wasted hour or two, I would fling down my pen and hunt

saloon was usually illuminated by forked lightning. The evenings we spent in baling out the boat, after which we took it in turns to go into the kitchen and warm ourselves. At eight we supped, and from then until i

ple who did not, as a rule, hanker after jaunts, even under the most favourable conditions; but who had bee

ip themselves and put on things of Ethelbertha's or of mine. But Ethel and I, in those days,

intended to do with them had the day been fine. But their answers were short, and occasionally snappy, and

y would insist upon leaving us, which seemed to me discourteous after all that we had done for the

relative, informing us that both patients were doing as well as could be ex

was to watch from our windows the pleasure-seekers passing by in small open boats, and

them pairs, some of them odd ones); stylish-looking girls with cousins; energetic-looking men with dogs; high-class silent parties; low-class noi

, drenched and gloomy, saying di

eal with pleasant faces. He was rowing hard and singing, with a handkerchief tied round his head to keep his h

haritable and improbable. The other was creditable to the human race, and, adopting it, I took off my cap to this damp but cheer

happy. Maybe, fortune has been kind to them, or maybe she has not, but in

ts own purpose by prematurely exhausting itself. On these rare occasions

ous with the drowned light, the dark banks where the night lu

o listen to the leaping of the fishes, the soft swirl raised by some water-rat, swimmin

o sleep, was shameful. Amenda, who was town-bred, mistook him at first for one of those cheap alarm clocks, and w

bird was preparing to settle down for the night. A family of thrushes had their

t he do it in the daytime if he must do it at all?" (She spoke, of cour

d wake up and begin chirping, and then

. "How do you think the children can get to sleep, poor things, with that

put his head over the nest, and call

eing quiet a bit. My wife says she can't get the childr

keep your wife herself quiet; that's enough for you

from a little further off

, I'd give it him." (This remark would be made in a tone of withering c

ith rising inflection, so that every lady in the plantation might hear) "he wouldn't move him

e"; then, in a voice more of sorrow than of anger:-"but there, it ain't their fault, I

moved at all by these taunts, but the only sound I could ever detect

expressing views concerning that corncrake

rrow would chirp out, in the midst of the hubbub, "

th mock sympathy. "Somebody's put a penny

ould exert himself to be more objectionable than ever, and, as a means to this end, would

not to be trifled with,

down to you I'll peck you

a quarter of an hour, after which