The Young Clementina Read Online Free Page A

skirt never sagged.
    A string of governesses and tutors came and went at the Manor during Garth’s childhood. We children took it as a matter of course that they should come and go—father taught us , of course, but Garth was different. Looking back I wonder why none of them managed to stay, they can’t all have been fools—fools or knaves was Mr. Wisdon’s verdict upon them. They came and went—tall and short, fat and thin, hearty and lugubrious—we got quite a lot of fun out of them one way and another. The housekeepers changed too, and the servants, only Nanny stayed on through the changing years. The last time I was at Hinkleton Manor (I went down for a night about six years ago for old Mr. Wisdon’s funeral) she was just the same. The same comfortable kindly creature, her plump bosom covered by the square white bib of her spotless apron, her black hair, innocent of a thread of gray, scraped back into a little knob at the back of her head. I flung myself into her arms and hugged her, for she brought back the past so vividly. It seemed to me that all had changed, only Nanny remained the same; she hugged me back, and said, with that astonishing lack of tact which had always characterized her, “Oh, Miss Char, my poor lamb, how old you look!”
    ***
    Father was worried about Garth’s education. He used to say that it took a man six months to learn his pupil and that then, and only then, could he get the best work from him. (It is an old-fashioned idea, but, like all father’s ideas, there is something in it.) Father would shake his head sadly when he heard of another change of tutor at the Manor, shake his head and frown and purse his lips. He was very fond of Garth, and he thought that Garth’s future was being jeopardized by the lack of continuity in discipline and study. I see now, looking back, that father tried to keep his hand on Garth’s pulse. He would ask him into his study and talk to him, drawing him out and imparting useful advice as he knew so well how to do.
    One summer holidays he provided Garth and me with shiny black copy-books and advised us to keep a record of our days. “It is a valuable exercise,” he said with his kind smile, “and you will find it useful as you grow older.” Garth looked at his book with some surprise. “But you can buy diaries, sir,” he said. “All ready with dates and a space for every day.” “I know you can,” replied father, “but a bought diary is anathema to the true diariest—take Pepys as your model, his diary was not divided into equal parts—a bought diary starts with the erroneous assumption that all days are alike, or at least equal in length. We all know the assumption to be false. For Monday I may require three pages, for Wednesday three lines. If my diary is divided into equal parts I have the same space for both days. On Monday I am tempted to be telegraphic, or even to miss out some essential portion of my theme, on Wednesday I am tempted to be verbose.”
    Garth and I began our diaries together—everybody knows the lure of a virgin copy-book—Garth lapsed a little when he was at Eton, but in the holidays his diary ran to pages daily. I often wondered, when I lacked material for mine, what he found to say (in speech I was the more facile) but I never knew, for our diaries were strictly private. It was the Unwritten Law that we should not “crib” each other’s diaries, and we never broke it. We left our diaries lying about in the schoolroom or the summer-house secure in the conviction that they were sacred from alien eyes. It was only later, when Kitty was promoted to the ranks of the literate that we learned to secrete our diaries—Kitty did not observe the sanctity of the Unwritten Law. The habit, begun in childhood, continued with me throughout the years. If I had nothing else to write about I still had books, and I often found that