The Third Class at Miss Kaye's: A School Story — Story, Setting & Ideas

She was rather a pretty child; her features were good though the small face was pale and thin; her hair was fair and fluffy, and she had large hazel-grey eyes which looked so very dreamy sometimes that you could imagine their owner was apt to forget the commonplace surroundings of everyday life and live in a make-believe world that was all her own. Equally oblivious of the driving rain outside and the cosy scene within, Sylvia read on, so lost in her story that she did not even notice when the door opened and her mother entered the room.

"Why, here you are, darling! I thought I should find you in Father's study. I'm so sorry it's such a dreadful day for your party."

Sylvia put down her book with a slam, and dragging her mother into the big armchair, installed herself on her knee and administered a somewhat choking hug.

"Oh, Mother dear, I'm so glad!" she declared. "I didn't want a party, and I've been watching the rain all the time and hoping it would go on pouring."

"Sylvia! I thought you would be terribly disappointed. Don't you want to see your little friends?"

"But why, sweetheart?"

Sylvia squeezed her mother's hand in her own and sighed, as if she found it rather difficult to explain herself.

"Lots of reasons," she said briefly.

"Tell me what they are."

"Why, for one thing, I've just got to the middle of _Ivanhoe_, where Rowena is shut up in Front de Boeuf's castle, and I want to see how she escapes. I'd much rather stay and read than go racing round the garden playing at 'I spy!'"

"But I thought you liked Effie and May and the Fergusson boys."

"I hate boys!" declared Sylvia dramatically. "At least, not Cousin Cuthbert and Ronald Hampson, but boys like the Fergusson boys. They do nothing but tear about and play tricks on one. They're perfectly hateful! I didn't enjoy my last party there one scrap. They tease me most dreadfully every time I meet them."

"They call me 'The Tragic Muse', because they got hold of one of my pieces of poetry. They made the most dreadful fun of it. And it wasn't tragic at all. It was about the Waltons' baby, and its blue eyes and curls and dimples. I did put dimples, though they read it out pimples! I don't believe they know what tragic means, or a muse either, and I do, because I learnt them in Greek history last month. Mrs. Walton liked the poetry though. She said I must copy it into her album and sign my name to it, and she thought I might be a poetess when I grew up, and she expected it was that which kept me so thin, and had you tried giving me cod-liver oil, because she was sure it would do me good. You're not going to, are you? I took some once at Aunt Louisa's, and it was the most disgusting stuff."

"I don't think you need any more medicine just at present, so we will spare you the cod-liver oil," said Mrs. Lindsay, smiling. "Perhaps Roy and Donald would have forgotten about the poem by this afternoon."

"No, they wouldn't. They never forgot anything if it's possible to tease. I'd far rather they didn't come. I don't want the Waltons either, or the Carsons. It's so nice and quiet in here, and Miss Holt's out, and it's such a wet day that there won't be any callers, and I can have tea with you in the drawing-room, and Father said perhaps he would be back from the office by half-past five, and he promised the next time he was home early that he'd go through my museum and help me to label all the shells, and that would be far nicer than a party."

"I thought you enjoyed playing with other children, dear," said Mrs. Lindsay rather gravely.

"I don't think I do," replied Sylvia. "It's so hard to make them play properly. They never can imagine things. When I tell the Waltons there's a witch in the cupboard, they look inside and say there isn't anybody there. They can't understand that you can pretend things until they seem quite real, and yet it's only pretending. When I told Beatrice and Nora Jackson that I knew a dragon lived in their coal house, they went and told their governess, and she said she was afraid I was not a truthful child!"