THE BARBAROUS BABES THE BARBAROUS BABES BEING THE MEMOIRS OF MOLLY BY EDITH AYRTON (MRS. ISRAEL ZANGWILL) [Illustration] LONDON AND EDINBURGH R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON MCMIV To THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER CONTENTS [Illustration] PAGE I. THE MARTYRDOM OF HUMPHREY 9 II. SAMSON AND DELILAH 24 III. VIOLET’S VISIT 34 IV. THE WHIPPING OF TEDDY 55 V. THE RAGE OF THE HEATHEN 76 VI. A FIRST NIGHT 96 VII. MOTHER 110 I THE MARTYRDOM OF HUMPHREY (Reprinted from _Little Folks_ by kind permission) It all started because Humphrey and me generally play together, and we generally play at torturing games. Sometimes we let the little ones, Violet and Ted, come in too, but they spoil things rather, because Teddy is so tiny and Violet doesn’t properly enjoy even the loveliest tortures. We have promised Mother, though, that we will try not to be selfish, so we pretend we don’t mind their playing with us--much. I generally make up the tortures because I’m the eldest. My name is Molly, and I’m the only one that has to use two figures for their age; I’m ten. Even Humphrey is a good lot younger than me; he’s only nine, and people don’t think he’s as old as that, because he’s very backward. It isn’t so much that he can’t think of clever things, but he had an illness when he was a baby and that makes lessons harder for him than for other people, ’specially long division. He simply can’t do that; if they try and make him, he sits and cries, and he has the most peculiar way of crying of any one I ever saw. He doesn’t make any noise nor wrinkle up his face, but the tears come dripping down slowly with a plop. Sometimes he catches them in his mouth, but if he doesn’t, he always licks them up afterwards, because he says they are good for the digestion. He is going to be a doctor, so that makes him have ideas like that. Once he invented a most beautiful red ink, only it made holes right through his copy-book, and you couldn’t use the same pen twice, so he had to turn it into a medicine instead. Though Humphrey can write, he can’t read yet, and that’s another peculiar thing, because with most people it’s the other way. That’s partly why it’s always me that invents the games. I read a nice tortury book, and then tell him about it, and we pretend it through. We did enjoy _The Tower of London_, but the _Pirates of Algiers_ was almost better. One day we were having a lovely time over this; Humphrey had worked rusty screws into my chest, and had clamped an iron band with spikes round my head, and then he was lashing me with a waxed thong, when all of a sudden he stopped. “It isn’t any fun,” he said, “because by now you must be dead.” I told him I wasn’t, and that in the book they lashed the slaves for hours, and he must go on.