sation
and reading on half-holidays with Blanche's teachers, and they sometimes
gave us poetry to learn by heart or to translate. We were not exactly
_obliged_ to do it, but of course we didn't want Blanche, who was only a
girl, to get ahead of us, as she would very likely have done, for she
did grind at her lessons awfully. I think most girls do.

It sounds as if we were rather hard-worked, but I really don't think we
were, though I must allow that we worked better in those days, and
learnt more in comparison, than we do now at--I won't give the name of
the big school we are at. Clement says it is better not--people who
write books never do give the real names, he says, and I fancy he's
right. It is an awfully jolly school, and we are as happy as sand-boys,
whatever that means, but I can't say that we work as Blanche does,
though she does it all at home with governesses.

That part of the evening--when we went back to the drawing-room to
mamma, I mean--was one of the times I shall always like to remember
about. It is very jolly now, of course, to be at home for the holidays,
but there was then the sort of 'treat' feeling of having got our lessons
done, and the little ones comfortably off to bed, and the
grown-up-ness.

Mamma looked so pretty, as she was always nicely dressed, though I liked
some of her dresses much better than others--I don't like her in black
ones at all; and the drawing-room was pretty, and then there was mamma's
music. Her playing was nice, but her singing was still better, and she
used to let us choose our favourite songs, each in turn. Blanche plays
the violin now, very well, they say, and mamma declares she is really
far cleverer at music than she herself ever was; but for all that, I
shall never care for her fiddle anything like mamma's singing; if I live
to be a hundred, I shall never forget it.

It is a great thing to have really jolly times like those evenings to
think of when you begin to get older, and are a lot away from home, and
likely to be still less and less there.

But I must not forget that this story is supposed to be principally
about Peterkin and his adventures, so I'll go on again about the night
after he'd been lost.

He and I had a room together, and he was nearly always fast asleep, like
a fat dormouse, when I went up to bed. He had a way of curling himself
round, like a ball, that really did remind you of a dormouse. I believe
it kept him from growing; I really do, th