It was unfortunate that there was so little precedent on both sides. Miss Jones had never been a governess before and the children had never had one. Of course, many mistakes were made. Miss Jones had had a true admiration for what she used to call “her brother's indomitable spirit,” her name for his selfishness and bad temper. She was herself neither selfish nor bad-tempered, but she was ignorant, nervous, over-anxious, and desperately afraid of losing her situation. She had during so many years lived without affection that the wells of it had dried up within her, and now, without being at all a bad old lady, she was simply preoccupied with the business of managing her neuralgia, living on nothing a week, and building to her deceased brother's memory a monument, of heroic character and self-sacrifice. She was short-sighted and had a perpetual cold; she was forgetful and careless. She had, nevertheless, a real knowledge of many things, a warm heart somewhere could she be encouraged to look for it again, and a sense of humour buried deep beneath her cares and preoccupations. There were many worse persons in the world than Miss Jones. But, most unfortunately, her love for her brother's memory led her to resolve on what she called “firmness.” Mrs. Cole had told her that Jeremy was “getting too much” for his nurse; she approached Jeremy with exactly the tremors and quaking boldness that she would have summoned to her aid before a bull loose in a field. She really did look frightening with her large spectacles on the end of her large nose, her mouth firmly set, and a ruler in her hand. “I insist on absolute obedience,” was her motto. Jeremy looked at her but said no word. It was made clear to them all that the new regime was to be far other than the earlier nursery one. There were to be regular lesson hours—nine to twelve and four to five. A neat piece of white paper was fastened to the wall with “Monday: Geography 9-10, Arithmetic 10-11,” and so on. A careful graduation of punishments was instituted, copies to be written so many times, standing on a chair, three strokes on the hand with a ruler, and, worst of all, standing in the corner wearing a paper Dunce's cap. (This last she had read of in books.) At first Jeremy had every intention of behaving well, in spite of that unfortunate embrace. He was proud of his advance in life; he was no longer a baby; the nursery was now a schoolroom; he stayed up an hour later at night; he was to be allowed twopence a week pocket-money; his whole social status had risen. He began to read for pleasure, and discovered that it was easier than he had expected, so that he passed quite quickly through “Lottie's Visit to Grandmama” into “Stumps” and out again in “Jackanapes.” He heard some elder say that the road to a large fortune lay through “Sums,” and, although this seemed to him an extremely mysterious statement, he determined to give the theory a chance. In fact, he sat down the first day at the schoolroom table, Mary and Helen on each side of him, and Miss Jones facing them, with fine resolves and high ambitions. Before him lay a pure white page, and at the head of this the noble words in a running hand: “Slow and steady wins the race.” He grasped his pencil, and Miss Jones, eager to lose no time in asserting her authority, cried: “But that's not the way to hold your pencil, Jeremy, your thumb so, your finger so.” He scowled and found that lifting his thumb over the pencil was as difficult as lifting Hamlet over a gate. He made a bold attempt, but the pencil refused to move.

“Can't hold it that way,” he said.

“You must never say 'can't,' Jeremy,” remarked Miss Jones. “There isn't such a word.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mary eagerly, “there is; I've seen it in books.”

“You musn't contradict, Mary,” said Miss Jones. “I only meant that you must behave as though there isn't, because nothing is impossible to one who truly tries.”

“My pencil waggles this way,” said Jeremy politely. “I think I'll hold it the old way, please.”

“There's only one way of doing anything,” said Miss Jones, “and that's the right way.”

“This is the right way for me,” said Jeremy.

“If I say it's not the right way—”

“But it waggles,” cried Jeremy.

The discussion was interrupted by a cry from Helen.

“Oh, do look, Miss Jones, Hamlet's got your spectacle-case. He thinks it's a mouse.”

There followed general confusion. Miss Jones jumped up, and, with little cries of distress, pursued Hamlet, who hastened into his favourite corner and began to worry the spectacle-case, with one eye on Miss Jones and one on his spoils.

Jeremy hurried up crying: “Put it down, Hamlet, naughty dog, naughty dog,” and Mary and Helen laughed with frantic delight.

At last Miss Jones, her face red and her hair in disorder, rescued her property and returned to the table, Hamlet meanwhile wagging his tail, panting and watching for a further game.

“I can't possibly,” said Miss Jones, “allow that dog in here during lesson hours. It's impossible.”

“Oh, but Miss Jones—” began Jeremy.

“Not one word,” said she, “let us have no more of this. Lead him from the room, Jeremy!”

“But, Miss Jones, he must be here. He's learning too. In a day or two he'll be as good as anything, really he will. He's so intelligent. He really thought it was his to play with, and he did give it up, didn't he, as soon as I said—”

“Enough,” said Miss Jones, “I will listen to no more. I say he is not to remain—”

“But if I promise—” said Jeremy.

Then Miss Jones made a bad mistake. Wearied of the argument, wishing to continue the lesson, and hoping perhaps to please her tormentors, she said meekly:

“Well, if he really is good, perhaps—”

From that instant her doom was sealed. The children exchanged a glance of realisation. Jeremy smiled. The lesson was continued. What possessed Jeremy now? What possesses any child, naturally perhaps, of a kindly and even sentimental nature at the sight of something helpless and in its power? Is there any cruelty in after life like the cruelty of a small boy, and is there anything more powerful, more unreasoning, and more malicious than the calculating tortures that small children devise for those weaker than themselves? Jeremy was possessed with a new power.

It was something almost abstract in its manifestations; it was something indecent, sinister, secret, foreign to his whole nature felt by him now for the first time, unanalysed, of course, but belonging, had he known it, to that world of which afterwards he was often to catch glimpses, that world of shining white faces in dark streets, of muffled cries from shuttered windows, of muttered exclamations, half caught, half understood. He was never again to be quite free from the neighbourhood of that half-world; he would never be quite sure of his dominance of it until he died.

He had never felt anything like this power before. With the Jampot his relations had been quite simple; he had been rebellious, naughty, disobedient, and had been punished, and there was an end. Now there was a game like tracking Red Indians in the prairie or tigers in the jungle.

He watched Miss Jones and discovered many things about her. He discovered that when she made mistakes in the things that she taught them she was afraid to confess to her mistakes, and so made them worse and worse. He discovered that she was very nervous, and that a sudden noise made her jump and turn white and put her hand to her heart. He discovered that she would punish him and then try to please him by saying he need not finish his punishment. He discovered that she would lose things, like her spectacles, her handkerchief, or her purse, and then be afraid to confess that she had lost them and endeavour to proceed without them. He discovered that she hated to hit him on the hand with a ruler (he scarcely felt the strokes). He discovered that when his mother or father was in the room she was terrified lest he should misbehave.

He discovered that she was despised by the servants, who quite openly insulted her.

All these things fed his sense of power. He did not consider her a human being at all; she was simply something upon which he could exercise his ingenuity and cleverness. Mary followed him in whatever he did; Helen pretended to be superior, but was not. Yes, Miss Jones was in the hands of her tormentors, and there was no escape for her.

Surely it must have been some outside power that drove Jeremy on. The children called it “teasing Miss Jones,” and the aboriginal savagery in their behaviour was as unconscious as their daily speech or fashion of eating their food—some instinct inherited, perhaps, from the days when the gentleman with the biggest muscles extracted for his daily amusement the teeth and nails of his less happily muscular friends.

There were many games to be played with Miss Jones. She always began her morning with a fine show of authority, accumulated, perhaps, during hours of Spartan resolution whilst the rest of the household slept. “To-morrow I'll see that they do what I tell them—”

“Now, children,” she would say, “I'm determined to stand no nonsense this morning. Get out your copy books.” Five minutes later would begin: “Oh, Miss Jones, I can't write with this pencil. May I find a better one?” Granted permission, Mary's head and large spectacles would disappear inside the schoolroom cupboard. Soon Jeremy would say very politely: “Miss Jones, I think I know where it is. May I help her to find it?” Then Jeremy's head would disappear. There would follow giggles, whispers, again giggles; then from the cupboard a book tumbles, then another, then another. Then Miss Jones would say: “Now, Jeremy, come back to the table. You've had quite enough time—” interrupted by a perfect avalanche of books. Mary crying:

“Oh, Jeremy!” Jeremy crying: “I didn't; it was you!” Miss Jones: “Now, children—”

Then Jeremy, very politely:

“Please, Miss Jones, may I help Mary to pick the books up? There are rather a lot.” Then, both on their knees, more whispers and giggles. Miss Jones, her voice trembling: “Children, I really insist—” And more books dropped, and more whispers and more protests, and so on ad infinitum. A beautiful game to be played all the morning.

Or there was the game of Not Hearing. Miss Jones would say: “And twice two are four.” Mary would repeat loudly: “And twice two is five—”

“Four, Mary.”

“Oh, I thought you said five.”

And then a second later Jeremy would ask:

“Did you say four or five, Miss Jones?”

“I told Mary I said four—”

“Oh, I've written five—and now it's all wrong. Didn't you write five, Mary?”

“Yes, I've written five. You did say four, didn't you, Miss Jones?”

“Yes—yes. And three makes—”

“What did you say made five?” asked Jeremy.

“I didn't say five. I said four. Twice two.”

“Is that as well as 'add three,' Miss Jones? I've got twice two, and then add three, and then twice two—”

“No, no. I was only telling Jeremy—”

“Please, Miss Jones, would you mind beginning again—”

This is a very unpleasant game for a lady with neuralgia.

Or there is the game of Making a Noise. At this game, without any earlier training or practice, Jeremy was a perfect master. The three children would be sitting there very, very quiet, learning the first verse of “Tiger, Tiger, burning bright—” A very gentle creaking sound would break the stillness—a creaking sound that can be made, if you are clever, by rubbing a boot against a boot. It would not come regularly, but once, twice, thrice, a pause, and then once, twice and another pause.

“Who's making a noise?”

Dead silence. A very long pause, and then it would begin again.

“That noise must cease, I say. Jeremy, what are you doing?”

He would lift to her then eyes full of meekness and love.

“Nothing, Miss Jones.”

Soon it would begin again. Miss Jones would be silent this time, and then Mary would speak.

“Please, would you ask Jeremy not to rub his boots together? I can't learn my verse—”

“I didn't know I was,” says Jeremy.

Then it would begin again. Jeremy would say:

“Please, may I take my boots off?”

“Take your boots off? Why?”

“They will rub together, and I can't stop them, because I don't know when I do it, and it is hard for Mary—”

“Of course not! I never heard of such a thing! Next time you do it you must stand on your chair.”

Soon Jeremy is standing on his chair. Soon his poetry book drops with a terrible crash to the ground, and five million pins stab Miss Jones's heart. With white face and trembling hands, she says:

“Go and stand in the corner, Jeremy! I shall have to speak to your mother!”

He goes, grinning at Mary, and stands there knowing that his victim is watching the door in an agony lest Mrs. Cole should suddenly come in and inquire what Jeremy had done, and that so the whole story of his insubordination be revealed and Miss Jones lose her situation for incapacity.

How did he discover this final weakness of Miss Jones? No one told him; but he knew, and, as the days passed, rejoiced in his power and his might and his glory.

Then came the climax. The children were not perfectly sure whether, after all, Miss Jones might not tell their mother. They did not wish this to happen, and so long as this calamity was possible they were not complete masters of the poor lady. Then came a morning when they had been extremely naughty, when every game had been played and every triumph scored. Miss Jones, almost in tears, had threatened four times that the Powers Above should be informed. Suddenly Mrs. Cole entered.

“Well, Miss Jones, how have the children been this morning? If they've been good I have a little treat to propose.”

The children waited, their eyes upon their governess. Her eyes stared back upon her tormentors. Her hands worked together. She struggled. Why not call in Mrs. Cole's authority to her aid? No; she knew what it would mean—“I'm very sorry, Miss Jones, but I think a younger governess, perhaps—”

Her throat moved.

“They've been very good this morning, Mrs. Cole.”

The eyes of Mary and of Jeremy were alight with triumph.

They had won their final victory.