Labrador (N.L.) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Love stories, English
There were clever little desks for the elder children to work at,
adjustable desks scientifically lit so that they benefited hands and
shoulders and eyes; there were artistically coloured and artistically
arranged pictures, and a little library held all the best of Lang and
Lucas, rare good things like "Uncle Lubin," Maurice Baring's story of
"Forget-me-not," "Johnny Crow's Garden," "The Bad Child's Book of
Beasts," animal books and bird books, costume books and story books,
colour books and rhyme books, abundant, yet every one intelligently
chosen, no costly meretricious printed rubbish such as silly Gentile
mothers buy. Then in the great nursery, with its cork carpet on which
any toy would stand or run, was an abundance of admirable possessions
and shelving for everything, and great fat cloth elephants to ride, and
go-carts, and hooks for a swing. Marjorie's quick eye saw, and she
admired effusively and envied secretly, and Mrs. Lee appreciated her
appreciation. A skirmishing romp of the middle children and Lee went on
about the two of them, and Trafford was led off by his admirer into a
cubby-house in one corner (with real glass windows made to open) and the
muslin curtains were drawn while he was shown a secret under vows. Lady
Solomonson discovered some soldiers, and was presently on her knees in a
corner with the five-year old boy.
"These are like my Teddy's," she was saying. "My Billy has some of
these."
Trafford emerged from the cubby-house, which was perhaps a little
cramped for him, and surveyed the room, with his admirer lugging at his
arm unheeded, and whispering: "Come back with me."
Of course this was the clue to Lee and Solomonson. How extremely happy
Lee appeared to be! Enormous vistas of dark philoprogenitive parents and
healthy little Jews and Jewesses seemed to open out to Trafford,
hygienically reared, exquisitely trained and educated. And he and
Marjorie had just one little daughter--with a much poorer educational
outlook. She had no cloth elephant to ride, no elaborate cubby-house to
get into, only a half-dozen picture books or so, and later she wouldn't
when she needed it get that linguistic Swiss.
He wasn't above the normal human vanity of esteeming his own race and
type the best, and certain vulgar aspects of what nowadays one calls
Eugenics crossed his mind.
§ 13
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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