



Produced by Annie McGuire. This book was produced from
scanned images of public domain material from the Google
Print project.









THE GIRLS AND I




[Illustration: 'We ran over the fields by a short cut to a stile on to
the road, where we could see her pass, and there we shouted out again
all our messages.'--c. xi. p. 168.]




THE GIRLS AND I: A
Veracious History


[Illustration]


BY MRS MOLESWORTH

Illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke

London Macmillan & Co.
MDCCCXCII




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I OURSELVES                                                  1

  CHAPTER II THE DIAMOND ORNAMENT                                     16

  CHAPTER III WORK FOR THE TOWN-CRIER                                 30

  CHAPTER IV AT THE DANCING CLASS                                     46

  CHAPTER V RODNEY SQUARE                                             63

  CHAPTER VI THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW                                 79

  CHAPTER VII FOUR 'IF'S' AND A COINCIDENCE                           95

  CHAPTER VIII MOSSMOOR FARM                                         110

  CHAPTER IX SPYING THE LAND                                         125

  CHAPTER X A LONG AGO ADVENTURE                                     140

  CHAPTER XI MISCHIEF IN THE AIR                                     157

  CHAPTER XII MISS CROSS-AT-FIRST'S FUR CAPE                         173




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  'JACK, DO HELP ME TO FASTEN THIS BRACELET'                          24

  'I'D GIVE ANYTHING, I'D ALMOST GIVE MYSELF, TO FIND IT'             48

  'THE DOOR OPENED A LITTLE WIDER, AND TWO FACES APPEARED'            74

  'I JUST STOOD STILL... AND LOOKED WELL ROUND AT THE VIEW AND
    EVERYTHING'                                                      130

  'HER GRANDMOTHER... WENT QUIETLY OUT OF THE PEW WITHOUT A
    NOTION BUT THAT THE CHILD WAS BESIDE HER'                        153

  'WE RAN OVER THE FIELDS BY A SHORT CUT TO A STILE ON TO THE
    ROAD, WHERE WE COULD SEE HER PASS, AND THERE WE SHOUTED OUT
    AGAIN ALL OUR MESSAGES'                                          168

  'WE ALL THREE SAT LISTENING AND LISTENING'                         175




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