Sweethearts at Home

Well, you can fancy – Polly's mother and father were very angry. So much so that they determined to start off at once to call on the heads of the college and complain.

But Polly herself, as soon as she had heard from Ellen, the housemaid, what had happened, and how Miss Gray had been twenty minutes in the drawing-room, and gone away leaving her tea hardly "sipped," knew at once what was the matter.

So she dissuaded her father and mother from going to Olympia College.

She was not appreciated, she said. She had always known it. Even Miss Gray was jealous of her. And her mother said to her father, "I do not wonder at it, dear. It is all the effect of our too careful bringing up of Polly. Truly we may say with the Psalmist —

"'Than all her teachers now she has

More understanding far!'"

And in a way, do you know, she had. And it was the training that did it.

But later on, Dear Diary, I shall write more about Polly Pretend, when she got a governess. For then she pretended and the governess pretended, and instead of getting out of the habit, as Hugh John says, seven Pretending Devils worse than the first entered into her.

But of that another time.

V

PRINCIPIA

June continued, but nearer the end, and hotter.

Polly Pretend's governess, after she could not be received at Olympia, was Miss Principia Crow. She had more than three miles of testimonials, if all had been written out in a line in text hand and measured.

The only curious thing was that the dates of all these were old, and Miss Principia was still fairly young. Also, she admitted having changed her name "for family reasons."

But she seemed just the sort of person for Polly Pretend. She did not know much arithmetic – just enough to cheat at tennis. She had certificates that reached as far as "trig" – the wonderful science which makes the boys stamp and throw their books about the room when they have to study it.

Now Pa and Ma Pretend had taken a great deal of trouble in providing a suitable companion for Polly, and in a way they had managed all right. Miss Crow pretended to teach, and Polly pretended to learn, and one knew as much about the matter as the other.

Miss Crow passed the time in telling Polly how many people had been in love with her, and the hopes she had of as many more. Polly begged the loan of a pier-glass from her mother, and thought, as she pretended before it, smiling at herself and sweeping imaginary trains, how soon her turn would come to have scores of lovers all willing and anxious to drown themselves for her sake, like Miss Principia Crow.

Fragments of conversation were sometimes caught by Mamma Pretend, and she thought to herself, "What strange authors they do set young people to study now-a-days! When I was a girl we had Magnall's Questions and Little Arthur's History of England!"

It was Miss Crow's voice, however. No mistake about that.

"Yes, and he said to me, 'I adore you with all the fervor of a free and untrammeled genius, with the noble indignation of a spirit on fire against wrong and oppression. It is true that in the meantime, though of an exalted race, I am poor, receiving only twelve shillings a week in one of the institutions of trust vulgarly called a pawn-broker's. But next year and every succeeding year I shall have my salary raised by the sum of two shillings – per fortnight. Oh, Principia, my Principia – '"

At this moment, overcome by her own pardonable curiosity, Mrs. Pretend entered hurriedly to see what they were doing.

She found them busily employed, with head bent over an exercise in dictation… "From Milton's Essay on Macaulay!" Miss Polly Pretend explained in answer to her mother's question.

"Dear me," said Mrs. Pretend, as she went out, "and I always thought that Milton wrote poetry. It's true I never could make out how they could say that blank verse was really poetry – not, I mean, like 'How doth the little busy' and 'Twinkle, twinkle'! But he wrote a long time ago, and perhaps then they had not learned to make the words at the end rhyme!"

But now I must tell how Polly Pretend corrupted the whole house. At first we had only called Polly's father and mother "the Pretends" because they belonged to Polly, and so that we might know who was meant.

But to begin with, Mrs. Pretend had to make up a lot of things to explain why, after all these prizes, Polly had not gone back to Olympia School. She had to think up something that people would believe. You see, Polly's inventions were really too daring – as that after a year abroad she and Miss Crow were going to set up a college of their own, a far better one than Olympia. And then she would show Miss Gray!

Now you will hardly believe me, but old Pretend, who was on the County Council and fussed about roads and drainage – "an innocent enough old duck," Sir Toady calls him – took to magnifying Miss Polly Pretend and her governess. I think he actually began to count up his dollars to see if he had really enough money to start Polly Pretend in a school of her own. But one fine day he met old Lovell, of Castle Lovell, at some joint business meeting about a Combination Poorhouse, or something like that.

Now old Lovell is a fearful big-wig, and looked up to by everybody because he is too stupid ever to pretend the least little bit. He would get found out in a moment if he did. But solid as the Bank of England, and as conceited as Mir-row with a rosette tied to her tail last King's birthday!

And old Lovell said, "I hear you have a Miss Crow to be governess to your little child! I think I ought to know her!"

"Ye-es!" said Father Pretend slowly. He did not like to hear a young lady who was going to set up a school next year to rival Olympia itself called "your little child."

But he could not afford to fall out with old Lovell, who always seemed as wise as a bench of judges and as rich-looking as a jeweler's shop which can afford to keep its blinds down. So he only said, "My daughter is not quite a child!"

"Oh," said old Lovell, "then it can't be Lizzie you have for governess!"

"Certainly not!" said Mr. Pretend, much relieved; "her name is Principia!"

"I thought that was a Latin Grammar or something like that!" said old Lovell, scratching his head like a bald old parrot.

"Well, perhaps," said Papa Pretend, "it is very likely. Miss Crow has been educated in all the languages that are – from her youth up!"

Now all would have gone well if only it had not happened that at that moment Polly and her governess came out of Parkins the pastry-cook's, where they had been stuffing fruit-cakes.

"Why, Lizzie!" cried old Lovell, shaking Miss Principia heartily by the hand, "now I am pleased to see you have got on so well. This is my butler's daughter," he explained, turning to Mr. Pretend, whose mouth was the shape of a capital O; "it does Lizzie much credit. Because, you see, she never got any regular schooling, being kept at home to help her mother in the still-room and with the jams. Good-by, Lizzie! I shall not forget to inform your father and mother that I have seen you – also John the gardener, with whom, I understand, you are keeping company, as they call it. Ah, ha! young people will be young people! Good-by, Pretend! Good-by! Congratulate you on having the daughter of a respectable man in your house. She will teach your little girl to make jams, and her gooseberry-fool will be a marvel, if she is a bit like her mother. Sensible man, Pretend! Far better to teach your daughter to brew and bake than all the modern 'ologies' and fiddle-faddle in the world! Keeps their husbands in better temper. Ah, clever fellow, Pretend! But you couldn't take an old fellow in, eh, Pretend? I knew all that about learning Latin grammar was stuff and nonsense. Good-by, good-by! So long, Lizzie! Don't forget about that gooseberry-fool!"

So off he went, like the rough timber-sided old bargee he was, and left Mr. Pretend muttering angrily, "Gooseberry-fool! Gooseberry-fool!" As if he knew very well who the "Gooseberry Fool" was – knew, that is, but had promised not to tell.

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.