Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/17

Rh parents, after the manner of their kind, maintained that she had a blind spot in her moral nature and talked vaguely but hopefully of what school would do to her when the time came.

She was, in fact, emerging into her tumultuous teens before she could be persuaded that waxed parquetry was not made for the purpose of sliding on and that a tea-wagon was not the correct thing to cascade down the terrace on. And when the golden key of the printed word might have opened a newer and wider world to her she was allotted a series of exceedingly namby-pamby "uplift" books (kindly suggested by the Bishop one day after he'd had a glance over the Ketley orchids in the greenhouse). These, however, she quietly consigned to the garage water-tank, and having entered into secret negotiations with Muggsie, the head chauffeur's stepson, she bartered a wrist-watch with a broken hair-spring, a silver-studded dog- collar, and two Tournament racquets for a dog-eared copy of The Hidden Hand and a much-thumbed copy of The Toilers of the