The Girls and I: A Veracious History. Molesworth Mrs.
s.
The Girls and I: A Veracious History
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 nobody 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