The Madness of Philip, and Other Tales of ChildhoodBacon, Josephine Daskam
General
The Madness of Philip, and Other Tales of Childhood
Bacon, Josephine Daskam
Children -- Fiction
The Lieutenant was distinctly less impressive. His sash, though not so
long as the Head Captain’s, was forever coming untied and trailing
behind him, and as he often retreated rapidly, he stumbled and fell over
it twice out of three times. This gave it a draggled and spiritless
look. Moreover, he was not allowed to turn his collar up except on
Saturdays, and the one his sister had made him from wrapping paper had
an exotic, not to say amateur theatrical, effect that was far from
convincing. The eye-holes in his mask, too, were much too large—showing,
indeed, the greater part of both cheeks, each of which was provided with
a deep dimple. Seen in the daytime, he was not—to speak
confidentially—very awesome.
As for the Vicar—well, there were obstacles in the way of her presenting
such an appearance as she would have liked. In the first place, there
was not enough Turkey red to go evenly round, and to her disgust she had
been obliged to put up with a scant three-quarters of a yard—not a wide
strip at that. What was by courtesy called the Vicar’s waist was not far
from three-quarters of a yard in circumference, which fact compelled her
to strain her sash tightly in order to be able to make even a small hard
knot, to say nothing of bows and ends. She had no collar of any kind—her
frocks were gathered into bands at the neck—and she was not allowed to
imitate the Lieutenant’s; who, though generally speaking a mush of
concession, held out very strongly for this outward and visible sign of
a presumable inward and spiritual superiority. So the Vicar, in a wild
attempt at masculinity, had privately borrowed a high linen collar of
her uncle. The shirts in her uncle’s drawer had printed inside them,
“_wear a seventeen-and-a-half collar with this shirt_,” so you will not
be surprised to learn that the Vicar occasionally fell into the collar,
so to speak, and found herself most effectually muzzled.
[Illustration: _The Vicar._]
But the worst was her mask. Her hair came down in a heavy bang almost to
her straight brown eyebrows; her round, brown eyes were somewhat
shortsighted; her eye-holes were too small. In consequence of these
facts, whenever it was desirable or necessary to see an inch before her
nose she was obliged to push the mask up over her bang, when it waved
straight out and up, and looked like some high priest’s mitre.
Her title was due to her uncle, who, to do him justice, was as innocent
of his influence in the matter as of the loss of his collar.
“When a person isn’t the head of the Pirates, but is an officer just the
same, and has some say about things, what do you call that?” she asked
him abruptly one day. He was reading at the time, and not unnaturally
understood her to say “the head of the parish.”
“Why, that’s called a vicar, I suppose you mean,” he answered.
“A vicker! Does he have some say?”
“Some _say_?”
“Yes”—impatiently—“some say. He hasn’t got to do the way the others tell
him _all_ the time, has he?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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