I
remember a rainy day in a country house during the Christmas
holidays. We had among us a Member of Parliament: a man of sunny
disposition, extremely fond of children. He said it was awfully hard
lines on the little beggars cooped up in a nursery; and borrowing his
host's motor-coat, pretended he was a bear. He plodded round on his
hands and knees and growled a good deal, and the children sat on the
sofa and watched him. But they didn't seem to be enjoying it, not
much; and after a quarter of an hour or so he noticed this himself.
He thought it was, maybe, that they were tired of bears, and fancied
that a whale might rouse them. He turned the table upside down and
placed the children in it on three chairs, explaining to them that
they were ship-wrecked sailors on a raft, and that they must be
careful the whale did not get underneath it and upset them. He
draped a sheet over the towel-horse to represent an iceberg, and
rolled himself up in a mackintosh and flopped about the floor on his
stomach, butting his head occasionally against the table in order to
suggest to them their danger. The attitude of the children still
remained that of polite spectators. True, the youngest boy did make
the suggestion of borrowing the kitchen toasting-fork, and employing
it as a harpoon; but even this appeared to be the outcome rather of a
desire to please than of any warmer interest; and, the whale
objecting, the idea fell through.
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