Where the Blue Begins | Page 9

out the form that Mr. Poodle had given him, had put
down the names of an entirely imaginary brother and sister-in-law of
his, "deceased," whom he asserted as the parents. He had been so busy
with preparations that he did not find time, before the ceremony, to
study the text of the service; and when he and Mrs. Spaniel stood
beneath the font with an armful of ribboned infancy, he was frankly
startled by the magnitude of the promises exacted from him. He found
that, on behalf of the children, he must "renounce the devil and all his
work, the vain pomp and glory of the world;" that he must pledge
himself to see that these infants would "crucify the old man and utterly
abolish the whole body of sin." It was rather doubtful whether they
would do so, he reflected, as he felt them squirming in his arms while
Mrs. Spaniel was busy trying to keep their socks on. When the curate
exhorted him "to follow the innocency" of these little ones, it was
disconcerting to have one of them burst into a piercing yammer, and
wriggle so forcibly that it slipped quite out of its little embroidered shift
and flannel band. But the actual access to the holy basin was more
seemly, perhaps due to the children imagining they were going to find
tadpoles there. When Mr. Poodle held them up they smiled with a
vague almost bashful simplicity; and Mrs. Spaniel could not help
murmuring "The darlings!" The curate, less experienced with children,
had insisted on holding all three at once, and Gissing feared lest one of
them might swarm over the surpliced shoulder and fall splash into the
font. But though they panted a little with excitement, they did nothing
to mar the solemn instant. While Mrs. Spaniel was picking up the small
socks with which the floor was strewn, Gissing was deeply moved by
the poetry of the ceremony. He felt that something had really been
accomplished toward "burying the Old Adam." And if Mrs. Spaniel
ever grew disheartened at the wash-tubs, he was careful to remind her
of the beautiful phrase about the mystical washing away of sin.
They had been christened Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers, three traditional
names in his family.
Indeed, he was reflecting as he walked in the dusk, Mrs. Spaniel was
now his sheet anchor. Fortunately she showed signs of becoming
extraordinarily attached to the puppies. On the two days a week when

she came up from the village, it was even possible for him to get a little
relaxation--to run down to the station for tobacco, or to lie in the
hammock briefly with a book. Looking off from his airy porch, he
could see the same blue distances that had always tempted him, but he
felt too passive to wonder about them. He had given up the idea of
trying to get any other servants. If it had been possible, he would have
engaged Mrs. Spaniel to sleep in the house and be there permanently;
but she had children of her own down in the shantytown quarter of the
village, and had to go back to them at night. But certainly he made
every effort to keep her contented. It was a long steep climb up from
the hollow, so he allowed her to come in a taxi and charge it to his
account. Then, on condition that she would come on Saturdays also, to
help him clean up for Sunday, he allowed her, on that day, to bring her
own children too, and all the puppies played riotously together around
the place. But this he presently discontinued, for the clamour became
so deafening that the neighbours complained. Besides, the young
Spaniels, who were a little older, got Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers into
noisy and careless habits of speech.
He was anxious that they should grow up refined, and was distressed
by little Shaggy Spaniel having brought up the Comic Section of a
Sunday paper. With childhood's instinctive taste for primitive effects,
the puppies fell in love with the coloured cartoons, and badgered him
continually for "funny papers."
There is a great deal more to think about in raising children (he said to
himself) than is intimated in Dr. Holt's book on Care and Feeding. Even
in matters that he had always taken for granted, such as fairy tales, he
found perplexity. After supper--(he now joined the children in their
evening bread and milk, for after cooking them a hearty lunch of meat
and gravy and potatoes and peas and the endless spinach and carrots
that the doctors advise, to say nothing of the prunes, he had no energy
to prepare a special dinner for himself)--after supper it was his habit to
read to them, hoping to give their