about the park and the village that they told every one, and
Beatrice watched me across the table with a pitiless little curiosity
that made me uncomfortable.

"Nannie," she said, pointing, and Nannie left a question of my mother's
disregarded to attend to her; "is he a servant boy?"

"S-s-sh," said Nannie. "He's Master Ponderevo."

"Is he a servant boy?" repeated Beatrice.

"He's a schoolboy," said my mother.

"Then may I talk to him, Nannie?"

Nannie surveyed me with brutal inhumanity. "You mustn't talk too much,"
she said to her charge, and cut cake into fingers for her.

"No," she added decisively, as Beatrice made to speak.

Beatrice became malignant. Her eyes explored me with unjustifiable
hostility. "He's got dirty hands," she said, stabbing at the forbidden
fruit. "And there's a fray to his collar."

Then she gave herself up to cake with an appearance of entire
forgetfulness of me that filled me with hate and a passionate desire to
compel her to admire me.... And the next day before tea, I did for the
first time in my life, freely, without command or any compulsion, wash
my hands.

So our acquaintance began, and presently was deepened by a whim of hers.
She had a cold and was kept indoors, and confronted Nannie suddenly with
the alternative of being hopelessly naughty, which in her case involved
a generous amount of screaming unsuitable for the ears of an elderly,
shaky, rich aunt, or having me up to the nursery to play with her all
the afternoon. Nannie came downstairs and borrowed me in a careworn
manner; and I was handed over to the little creature as if I was some
large variety of kitten. I had never had anything to do with a little
girl before, I thought she was more beautiful and wonderful and bright
than anything else could possibly be in life, and she found me the
gentlest of slaves--though at the same time, as I made evident, fairly
strong. And Nannie was amazed to find the afternoon slip cheerfully and
rapidly away. She praised my manners to Lady Drew and to my mother,
who said she was glad to hear well of me, and after that I played with
Beatrice several times. The toys she had remain in my memory still as
great splendid things, gigantic to all my previous experience of toys,
and we even went to the great doll's house on the nursery landing to
play discreetly with that, the great doll's house that the Prince Regent
had given Sir Harry Drew's first-born (who died at five), that was a not
i