Sinister Street

However, under the influence of tea Nanny softened, and the message was read just as the rain stopped and the sun glittered through the day-nursery window right across the room in a wide golden bar.

_Como._

_Darling Michael_,

_You are to go to kindergarten which you will enjoy. You will only go for the mornings and you will have to learn all sorts of jolly things--music and painting and writing. Then you'll be able to write to Mother. I'm sure you'll be good and work hard, so that when Mother comes home at Christmas, you'll be able to show her what a clever boy she has. You would like to be in this beautiful place. As I write I can see such lovely hills and fields and lakes and mountains. I hope darling Stella is learning to say all sorts of interesting things. I can't find any nice present to send you from here, so I've told Nanny that you and she can go and buy two canaries, one for you and one for Stella--a boy canary and a girl canary. Won't that be fun? Love and kisses from_

_Mother_.

Michael sat in a dream when the letter was finished. It had raised so many subjects for discussion and was so wonderful that he could scarcely speak.

"Will mother really come home at Christmas?" he asked.

"You heard what I said."

"Christmas!" he sighed happily.

"Aren't you glad to go to school?" Nurse wanted to know.

"Yes, but I'd like Christmas to come," he said.

"Was there ever in this world anyone so hard to please?" Nurse apostrophized.

"When will we go to get these canaries, Nanny?"

"Plenty of time. Plenty of time."

"Soon, will we?"

"One more question and there'll be no canaries at all," said Nurse.

However, the sun shone so brightly, and the prospect of a visit to Hammersmith Broadway on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon appealed so strongly to Nurse that she put on her bonnet and trotted off with Michael up Carlington Road, and stopped a red omnibus, and fussed her way into it, and held the tickets in her mouth while she put away her purse, and told Michael not to fidget with his legs and not to look round behind him at what was pa.s.sing on that side of the road, until at last they arrived.

The canary-shop was found, and two canaries and a bird-cage were bought, together with packets of seed and a bird's bath and a pennyworth of groundsel and plantains. Nurse told Michael to wait in the shop while the birds were being prepared for travelling, and while she herself went to the chemist to buy a remedy for the neuralgia which she prophesied was imminent. Michael talked to the canary-man and asked a lot

It was very exciting to stand on tiptoe in the kitchen while Mrs. Frith cut the string and displayed the canaries in all the splendour of their cage.

"Beautiful things," said Mrs. Frith. "I'm that fond of birds."

"Don't they hop!" said Annie. "Not a bit frightened they don't seem, do they?"

"What are their names?" Mrs. Frith enquired.

Michael thought for a long time.

"What _are_ their names, Mrs. Frith?" he asked at last.

"That's your business," said Cook.

"Why is it?" Michael wanted to know.

"Because they're your birds, stupid."

"One's Stella's."

"Well, Stella isn't old enough to choose for herself. Come along, what are you going to call them?"

"You call them," said Michael persuasively.

"Well, if they was mine I should call them----" Cook paused.

"What would you?" said Michael, more persuasively than ever.

"I'm blessed if I know. There, Annie, what does anyone call a canary?"

"Don't ask me, I'm sure. No," simpered Annie.

"I shouldn't call them nothing, I shouldn't," Mrs. Frith finally decided. "It isn't like dogs."

"What's the matter?" said Nurse, bustling into the kitchen. "Has one got out? Has one got out?"

"I was telling Master Michael here," said Cook, "as how I shouldn't call neither of them nothing. Not if I was he."

"Call what? Call what?" Nurse asked quickly.

"His new d.i.c.ky-birds."

"Must have names. Yes. Yes. Must have names. d.i.c.k and Tom. d.i.c.k and Tom."

"But one's a girl," Michael objected.

"Can't be changed now. Must be d.i.c.k and Tom," Nurse settled, blowing rapidly as usual.

The decision worried Michael considerably, but as they both turned out to be hens and laid twenty-three eggs between them next spring, it ceased to bother him any more.

The Miss Marrows' School and Kindergarten, kept by Miss Marrow and Miss Caroline Marrow a.s.sisted by Miss Hewitt and Miss Hunt, struck Michael as a very solemn establishment indeed. Although its outward appearance was merely that of an ordinary house somewhat larger than others on account of its situation at the corner of Fairfax Terrace, it contained inside a variety of scholastic furniture that was bound to impress the novice.

At twenty minutes past nine on the first day of the autumn term, Nurse and Michael stood before a bra.s.s plate inscribed

+-------------------------+ THE MISSES MARROW SCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN +-------------------------+

while a bell still jangled with the news of their arrival. They were immediately shown into a very small and very stuffy room on the right of the front door--a gloomy little room, because blinds of coloured beads shut out the unscholastic world. This room was uncomfortably crowded with little girls taking off goloshes and unlacing long brown boots, with little boys squabbling over their indoor shoes, with little girls chatting and giggling and pus.h.i.+ng and b.u.mping, with little boys shouting and quarrelling and kicking and pulling. A huddled and heated knot of nurses and nursemaids tried to help their charges, while every minute more little boys and more little girls and more bigger girls pushed their way in and made the confusion worse. In the middle of the uproar Miss Marrow herself entered and the noise was instantly lulled.

"The new boys will wait in here and the new girls will _quietly_ follow Helen Hungerford down the pa.s.sage to Miss Caroline's room. Nurses need not wait any longer."

Then a bell vibrated shrilly. There was a general scamper as the nurses and the nursemaids and the old boys and the old girls hurried from the room, leaving Michael and two other boys, both about two years older than himself, to survey each other with suspicion. The other boys finding Michael beneath the dignity of their notice spoke to each other, or rather the larger of the two, a long-bodied boy with a big head and vacant mouth, said to the other, a fidgety boy with a pink face, a frog-like smile and very tight knickerbockers:

"I say, what's your name?"