The stable-yard of Waring Park seemed to be slightly off its head on a certain fine afternoon in June. Such an afternoon as it was, so sweet and so soft, so full of fragrant sleepy haze, that any sound louder than the sing-song of a cricket must have distracted any ordinary nerve-possessing mortal.

On this particular afternoon however, the sole occupants of the yard were the stable-boys, the groom’s urchin, and the under-gardener’s lad, and as none of these had yet reached the level of nerves, whilst the blood of all of them throbbed with the greed for illegal sport in every shape, their state of lazy content was in no way upset by a medley of blood-curdling shrieks, squeals, and gobbles that issued from the throats of a little boy and a big turkey which the boy was swinging round and round by the tail, from the vantage ground of a large smooth round stone, with an amount of strength that was preternatural, if one had judged by the mere length of him and had not taken into consideration the enormous development of the imp’s legs and arms.

The stable-boys grinned, and smoked like furnaces as the show proceeded, and the other two cheered like Trojans, in the cruelty of the natural boy, and it might have gone badly for the turkey, if there had not swooped down upon him and his tormentor, just in the nick of time, a little lean wiry woman, armed with an authority, which even the imp, after one spasmodic struggle, saw best not to gainsay.

“Master Dacre, whatever do you do it for? Do you think the bird has no feelings? There is no sense in such goings-on.”

“There is sense,” spluttered the boy at full speed, “I like bein’ swung and I like swingin’ the turkey, and I’ll learn him to like it too, and if he don’t learn that anyway he’ll learn something else, which is life’s discerpline, which father says I’m learnin’ when you whip me. If I want it, so does the turkey and wuss. I b’longs to higher orders nor beasts and birds.”

Here the grins of the stable-boys broke into hoarse guffaws, and Mary’s ire culminated in a sharp rebuke all round.

“Go to your work, you idle fellows. I told your father long ago, Jim, what ’ud be the latter end of you. As for you, Robert, I could cry when I think of your blessed mother!

“And what business have you in the yard,” she cried, turning on the two younger sinners. “Be off with you this instant. ’Tis easy to see none of the men are about. You two, Jim and Robert, you’d be surprised yourselves if you could see what soft idiots you look with them stumps of pipes between your jaws.

“Look, Master Dacre, look at the bird’s tail. Haven’t you any heart at all? The creature might have been through the furze covert—”

“There’s not a feather broke,” said the boy, after a critical survey, “not one; I believe that tail were made for swingin’ as much as my arms was.”

For an instant words failed Mary and she employed herself hushing the bird into his pen. When she came back, Dacre had disappeared, and the yard seemed to be quite clear of human life, not to be traced even by the smell of shag tobacco.

Pursuit was useless, as Mary very well knew, so she returned to her nursery a good deal down at heart, muttering and murmuring as she went.

“Oh Lord, whatever is to be the end of it all? Learning is the ruin of the whole place, and yet them children is as ignorant as bears, excepting for their queer words and ways. Set them to read a Royal Reader or to tot up a sum, bless you, they couldn’t for the life of them. And the tempers of the two,” she went on, putting the cross stitches on a darn, “their parents had no hand in them anyway. Where they got ’em from the Lord only knows. Tempers, indeed! And from them two blessed babies as bore ’em.” She lifted her head and glanced out of the window.

“Look at ’em,” she whispered, “hand in hand up and down the drive, talking mathymatics, I’ll be bound,” and Mary’s eyes returned to her basket a trifle moist. She had nursed Mrs. Waring and Mrs. Waring’s children, and she was a good soul with a deal of sentiment about her.

As it happened, Mr. and Mrs. Waring were not discussing mathematics. They were just then deeply and solemnly exercised in their minds as to the exact date of a skeleton recently unearthed from some red sandstone in the neighbourhood. They had dismissed the carriage at the hall gates, and were now hot in argument concerning the bones, each holding diametrically opposed views on the subject, and struggling hard to prove his or her side.

Now and again the husband’s voice rose to a pretty high pitch, and his fine mouth was touched with a sneer, and the wife’s eyes flashed and flamed and shot out indignant wrath. Her hat had fallen off far down the drive, and her rings of yellow fluffy hair fell wildly over her forehead, one small hand was clenched in eager protest, but the other was clasped tight in her husband’s.

They always went like this, these two; they had got into the foolish way very early in their acquaintance and had never been able to get out of it.

Suddenly some common hypothesis struck them both at once, and Mrs. Waring cried out with a gasp,

“If we can prove it, I am right.”

“Yes, if you can prove it, darling, that’s the point, and I hope that you never will. Have you any idea, dear love, what the proving of this will undo, what it must upset?”

“I think I have,” she said slowly, her blue eyes gleaming eagerly, “but it seems to me whenever a great hubbub is made about the upsetting of some theory, that it generally ends in being much ado about nothing, and that the new thing that springs from the ashes of the old dead, is infinitely more beautiful than ever its predecessor was, for it is one step nearer the truth.”

“Dearest, we must end our talk,” groaned Mr. Waring, peering with terrified looks through his eyeglasses. “Here is Gwen, most slightly clad and of a bright blue tint, pursued by Mary. I fear very much that story of Boadicea you told her has instigated her to this action. I think, dearest, I will go to the study and work out this question of date.”

Mr. Waring turned nervously and made a gentle effort to disengage his hand from his wife’s, but she clutched him firmly. “Henry,” she cried, “you would not desert me?”

“Oh, my dear,” he gasped, “what can I do? The child must be cleansed and, I presume, punished. I can be of no use,” and he still showed signs of flight, but the horror-stricken eyes of his wife, fixed pleadingly on him, made him waver and wait.

By a superhuman effort Mary got up first.

“Oh, ma’am,” she shrieked in tones that went through Mrs. Waring’s head, “Oh, ma’am, look at her! I found her with nothing on but this rag and some leaves, painted blue, and varnished—varnished, sir, eating acorns outside of the orchard fence. It’s common indecency, ma’am, and if it’s to continue I can’t”—

By this time Gwen had arrived, desperately blown, but overflowing with words; rather an advantage under the circumstances, for her parents had not one between them.

“Mother, I were a woaded Briton and blue all over. Mag Dow did me behind and I done the front, and it aren’t common naked if queens done it like you said. She did, Mary, say it Thursday when she begun the history course. Dacre was to be a woaded king too, but he were a beast and wouldn’t do nothing but swing turkeys for discerpline.”

“Mary, I think perhaps you should give Miss Gwen a bath, and then we will consider what further course to take.”

Mrs. Waring caught her skirts nervously and drew a step nearer to her husband.

“A bath, ma’am! Don’t you see she’s painted and varnished, no water’ll touch that, ma’am, turpentine it must be and cart grease, not to say paraffin,—and, ma’am, the indecency!”

“Please, Mary,” implored the tortured woman, “oh, please take her away and put the cart grease on—and—the other things, and we can then talk over the rest.”

Here the light of a sudden inspiration leapt into her face, and she turned to her husband. “Henry,” she said solemnly, “do you not think that Gwen should go to bed? She seems to me,” she continued, taking a critical survey of the blue-daubed figure, “she seems to me a little old for such very peculiar adaptations of history.”

“To bed,” remarked the husband infinitely relieved. It seemed quite a happy solution to the whole question, and must fulfil every purpose,—be Gwen’s Nemesis, a salve to Mary’s hurt morality, and a merciful deliverance to all others concerned. “Yes, a very sensible suggestion of yours, dearest. I consider that it would be a most salutary measure to send Gwen to bed.”

“Indeed, sir,” remarked Mary, without a particle of the satisfaction that might have been expected from her, “Miss Gwen will be fit for no other place by the time I’ve done with her, what with the paraffin and the scrubbing and her skin that tender. Oh come, Miss, come away,” she cried grimly, laying hold of Gwen.

“Grace, my darling,” said Mr. Waring, passing his free hand wearily over his brow, “such scenes as these are indeed upsetting. I am quite unable to take up the thread of our discourse.”

“I feel as you do, Henry,” said his wife sadly, “we seem to have so very little time to ourselves.”

“Do you think, Grace, we should procure a tutor for those children? Let me see, how old are they?”

“I have their ages down somewhere in my tablets,” said Mrs. Waring rummaging in her pocket, and producing a little book of ivory tablets. She consulted it anxiously.

“Just fancy!” she exclaimed with astonished eyes, “Dacre will be seven in April—I had no idea he was so old—and I see Gwen is just twelve months younger.”

“I think their physical powers are now fairly developed—indeed, I am of opinion that the boy’s development will continue to be mainly physical; he will, I fear, run much to cricket and other brutal sports. But no doubt he has some small amount of brain power that should be made the most of. We must now get someone who will undertake this business for us, dear love.”

“Ah,” said his wife plaintively, “the feeding and physical care of children seems a terrible responsibility; it weighs upon my life. But the development of their intellectual powers!—I wish the time for it had kept off just a little longer, until we were farther on in our last, our best work. And if,” she said wearily, “you think the brain power of Dacre, at least, is so insignificant, the task becomes Herculean.”

“We must consult the rector, dear.”

“I feel in some way we must have failed in our duty. The grammar that child spoke was appalling, as was also the intonation of her words. I wonder how this has come to pass? I should have thought her mere heredity would have saved us this.”

Mrs. Waring sighed heavily, fate seemed against her, even heredity was playing her false.

“It is shocking, dear, but accountable,” said her husband soothingly, “you are disturbed, and forget how widely modified heredity becomes by conditions. If I recollect aright Gwen mentioned one—Mag—h’m, Dow. Children are imitative creatures. And now, with regard to another matter. I think, dear love, it were wiser if you discontinued that proposed course of history. The imagination of our daughter Gwen must not be fostered until it has a sounder intellectual basis to work up from.”

“Very well, dear,” and Mrs. Waring sighed a sigh of relief. No one but herself knew the horrible embarrassment of having those two children sitting opposite to her and glaring all over her, while she discoursed to them on the customs of the early Britons, and it was only a consuming sense of duty that had seized on her, and forced her to the task.