Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 1.djvu/435

1914.] expostulations with a robin, who insists on coming and getting in the way of the spade and the rake whenever there is the chance of a grub turning up. But if the unexplained charm of the garden is due to the Wizard’s influence, it is the Wizard’s wife who is responsible for the unexplained charm of the house. She really ought to have an article all to herself, but she is as shy and elusive as the little green people of her native Irish hills, so I ’ve small hopes of catching her. In the little house in Chalcot Gardens, the sweet fellowship of daily life is made perfect by the fellowship of work. Under that roof Mrs. Rackham has her own studio; things pass from it now and again to the walls of the Royal Academy, and one of her paintings has lately found a permanent resting-place in the Luxembourg.

Perhaps the most important inhabitant of the house—certainly in his own eyes—is Jimmie, who goes on four feet, and purrs. To formal acquaintances he is Sir James; he was named after J. M. Barrie, and of course he too must have his baronetcy. He does not consider kitchens the place for the toilets of titled cats, and makes a point of being combed, as often as he can, in the studio. Nevertheless, a few of us believe that he is of less account than one other member of the family—the child for whom the garden keeps its memories and expectations.



It 1s pleasant, after you have heen chatting with Arthur Rackham upon every subject from Shakspere to skeeing, to hear him say, “Now come and see Barbara. We shall have her to ourselves. Mademoiselle is out.”

It is pleasanter still to see him, in what is supposed to be Barbara's “Rest Hour,” solving puzzles for her that ; or playing Cinderella while she plays the Prince; or teaching her to dance with a hop and a skip across the floor; and presently (since it is her Rest Hour) whispering, “Slip out quietly so that she does n’t notice.”

Between Barbara and Barbara’s mother and Jimmie, and skeeing in Switzerland, and fishing, tennis, and golf in England (he is the only golfer, good or bad, that I ever heard say, “Yes, I play golf,” and then talk about something else), and the automatic piano-player in the dining-room, it is rather to be wondered at that the studio sees anything of him. And it is in that part of himself, the part which produces the