Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/25

Rh In the holidays we (Wallace and I) had breakfast and dinner with the Reverend and Mrs. W., but had our tea alone. I liked that: but Wallace talked too much. And we might go out as we liked on to the Heath or into Greenwich Park, but not down into the town. Three or four times I chanced it, and went to the Painted Chamber, which Campbell had told me of, saying that there were fine pictures of sea-fights there and some of Nelson. I liked to be there: I liked most of all to look at the picture of Nelson being taken up into heaven, for I thought I too should be taken up into heaven some day, when I had done great things and was dead. Then there was the picture of him all bloody and wounded, as he ran up on deck in the middle of the fight: and the relics. I liked the holidays.

Next term wasn't much different from last; except that some of the fellows were allowed, in June and July, to go down to the Greenwich baths early on two mornings in the week to bathe. I tried to get the Reverend to let me go, but he wouldn't.

In the next holidays he, and Mrs. W., and the brats, and Jane (the new cook), went to the sea-side, leaving Alice (the maid) to look after us two. (Thomas, the page-boy, didn't stay in the house then. I don't know why.) I liked that better still. I was out almost all day long, on the Heath, in the Park, down by the river. Once I went up the river as far as Westminster in a boat. That was rare sport. Some men played on a harp and a clarionet, and the music almost made me cry. Wallace hadn't the pluck to come, though Alice offered to lend him the money.

The next term was very bad. I had chilblains: only on the feet though. Wallace had them on his hands and ears. And it was so cold and dull in the Christmas holidays, that I was almost glad when the term began again.

A week after it had begun, I had a letter from Colonel James, and Mrs. W. said I must answer it. So I had to write an answer in prep, one night and show it to Mrs. W. after prayers in the drawing-room. She said it was 'so peculiar,' and scratched out most of it, and