ulped "Edward Ernest Arnott."

"What is it then?" asked the long-bodied boy.

"Arnott is my surname. Edward and Ernest," he gulped again, "are my
Christian names."

"Mine's Vernon Brown. I say, what's your father?"

"A solicitor," said Edward. "What's yours?"

"A cricket--I mean a critic," said Vernon.

"What's that?"

This seemed to upset the long-bodied boy, who replied:

"Coo! Don't you know what a cricket is? I mean critic. You must be a
kid."

Michael thought this was the most extraordinary conversation he had ever
heard. Not even Mrs. Frith and Annie could be so incomprehensible.

"I don't believe you know yourself," said the pink-faced boy, deepening
to crimson.

"Don't I? I bet I do."

"I bet you don't."

"I know better than you anyway."

"So do I than you."

Michael would have found a conversation between two fox-terriers more
intelligible. It ended abruptly, however, with the entrance of Miss
Marrow, who waved them all to follow her to the severity of her own
room. Edward Arnott and Vernon Brown were despatched upstairs to take
their places in the class above the Kindergarten for which Michael was
destined and whither he followed Miss Marrow, wondering at the size and
ugliness of her. Miss Marrow's base was a black bell, on which was set a
black cushion, above which was Miss Marrow's round beetroot-coloured
face. Miss Caroline was like a green curtain through the folds of which
seemed to have burst a red face like her sister's but thinner. Miss
Caroline was pleasanter than Miss Marrow and never shouted, perhaps
because she was never without a cold in the head.

Michael was handed over to the care of Miss Hewitt, the Kindergarten
mistress, who was very kind and very jolly. Michael enjoyed the
Kindergarten. There he learned to write pothooks and hangers and very
soon to write proper letters. He learned to sew alternate red and blue
lines of wool upon a piece of cardboard. He learned to weave bookmarkers
with shining slips of chocolate and yellow paper, and to pleat chequered
mats of the same material: these, when term was over, appeared at the
prize-giving, beautifully enhanced with paper frills cut by the clever
Miss Hewitt. He learned to paint texts and to keep his pencil-box tidy
and to play the treble of a very unmelodious duet with Miss Hunt, in
whose bony fingers his own fingers would from time to time get
entangled. He tried the treble without the bass accompaniment at home
on Stella