My School-Days | Page 3

shiny, like Katie Martin's, nor would it curl prettily like the red
locks of Cissy Thomas. It was always a rough, impossible brown mop.
I got into a terrible scrape for trying to soften it by an invention of my
own. As we all know, Burleigh House is by Stamford Town, and in
Burleigh Park we children took our daily constitutional. We played
under the big oaks there, and were bored to extinction, not because we
disliked the park, but because we went there every day at the same
hour.
Now Harry Martin (he wore striped stockings and was always losing
his handkerchief) suffered from his hair almost as much as I did; so
when I unfolded my plan to him one day in the park, he joyfully agreed
to help me.
We each gathered a pocketful of acorns, and when we went to wash our
hands before dinner, we cut up some of the acorns into little bits, and
put them into the doll's bath with some cold water and a little scent that
Cissy Thomas gave us, out of a bottle she had bought for twopence at
the fair at home.
"This," I said, "will be acorn oil--scented acorn oil."
" Will it?" said Harry doubtfully.
"Yes," I replied, adding confidently, "and there is nothing better for the
hair."
But we never had a chance of even seeing whether acorns and water

would turn to oil--a miracle which I entirely believed in. The
dinner-bell rang, and I only had time hastily to conceal the doll's bath at
the back of the cupboard where Miss ----- kept her dresses. That was
Saturday.
Next day we found that Miss ----'s best dress (the blue silk with the
Bismarck brown gimp) had slipped from its peg and fallen on to the
doll's bath. The dress was ruined, and when Harry Martin and I owned
up, as in honour bound--Miss Fairfield was away in London--we were
deprived of dinner, and had a long Psalm to learn. I don't know whether
punishment affects the hair, but I thought, next morning at prayers, that
Harry's tow-crop looked more like bay than ever.
My hands were more compromising to me than anyone would have
believed who had ever seen their size, for, in the winter especially, they
were never clean. I can see now the little willow-patterned basin of
hard cold water, and smell the unpleasant little square of mottled soap
with which I was expected to wash them. I don't know how the others
managed, but for me the result was always the same--failure; and when
I presented myself at breakfast, trying to hide my red and grubby little
paws in my pinafore, Miss--used to say:
"Show your hands, Daisy--yes as I thought. Not fit to sit down with
young ladies and gentlemen. Breakfast in the schoolroom for Miss
Daisy."
Then little Miss Daisy would shiveringly betake herself to the cold bare
schoolroom, where the fire had but just been kindled.
I used to sit cowering over the damp sticks with my white mug--mauve
spotted it was I remember, and had a brown crack near the handle--on a
chair beside me. Sometimes I used to pull a twig from the fire, harpoon
my bread-and-butter with it, and hold it to the fire: the warm, pale,
greasy result I called toast.
All this happened when Miss Fairfield was laid up with bronchitis. It
was at that time, too, that my battle with compound long division began.
Now I was not, I think, a very dull child, and always had an indignant

sense that I could do sums well enough if any one would tell me what
they meant. But no one did, and day after day the long division sums,
hopelessly wrong, disfigured my slate, and were washed off with my
tears. Day after day I was sent to bed, my dinner was knocked off, or
my breakfast, or my tea. I should literally have starved, I do believe,
but for dear Mrs. Fairfield. She kept my little Body going with illicit
cakes and plums and the like, and fed my starving little heart with
surreptitious kisses and kind words. She would lie in wait for me as I
passed down the hall, and in a whisper call me into the store closet. It
had a mingled and delicious smell of pickles and tea and oranges and
jam, and the one taper Mrs. Fairfield carried only lighted dimly the
delightful mystery of its well-filled shelves. Mrs. Fairfield used to give
me a great lump of cake or a broad slice of bread and jam, and lock me
into the dark cupboard till it was eaten. I never taste black-currant jam
now without a strong memory of the dark hole of happiness, where I
used to wait--my sticky