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The Girls and I: A Veracious History
The Girls and I: A Veracious History
CHAPTER I
OURSELVES
I'm Jack. I've always been Jack, ever since I can remember at least, though I suppose I must have been called 'Baby' for a bit before Serena came. But she's only a year and a half younger than me, and Maud's only a year and a quarter behind her, so I can scarcely remember even Serena being 'Baby'; and Maud's always been so very grown up for her age that you couldn't fancy her anything but 'Maud.'
My real name isn't John though, as you might fancy. It's a much queerer name, but there's always been one of it in our family ever since some grandfather or other married a German girl, who called her eldest son after her own father. So we're accustomed to it, and it doesn't seem so queer to us as to other people. It's 'Joachim.' 'Jock' seems a better short for it than 'Jack,' doesn't it? and I believe mother once meant to call me 'Jock.' But when Serry and Maud came I had to be Jack, for with Anne and Hebe in front of me, and the two others behind, of course I was 'Jack-in-the-middle.' There's never been any more of us, and even if there had I'd have stayed Jack, once I'd got settled into it, you see.
I'm eleven. I'm writing this in the holidays; and if I don't get it finished before they're done I'll keep adding on to it till I've told all there is to tell.
It's a sort of comfort to me to write about everything, for one way and another I've had a good deal to put up with, all because of —girls. And I have to be good-tempered and nice just because they are girls. And besides that, I'm really very fond of them; and they're not bad. But no one who hasn't tried it knows in the least what it is to be one boy among a lot of girls, 'specially when some of them are rather boy-ey girls, and when you yourself are just a little perhaps – just a very little – the other way.
I don't think I'm a baby. Honestly I don't, and I'm not going to write down anything I don't quite think. But I do like to be quiet, and I like to have things tidy and regular. I like rules, and keeping to them; and I hate racket and mess. Anne, now, drives me nearly wild with her rushy, helter-skelter ways. You wouldn't think it, would you, considering that she's fourteen, and the eldest, and that she's been the eldest all her life? – eldests should be steady and good examples. And her name sounds steady and neat, doesn't it? and yet of all the untidy, unpunctual – no, I mustn't let myself go like that. Besides, it's quite true, as Hebe says, Anne has got a very good heart, and she's very particular in some mind ways; she never says a word that isn't quite true – she doesn't even exaggerate. I have noticed that rather tiresome, careless people often have very good hearts. I wish they could see how much nicer it would be for other people if they'd put some of their good hearts into their tiresome ways.
On the whole, it's Hebe that suits the best with me. She particular —much more particular than Anne, though not quite as particular as I'd like her to be, and then she is really awfully sweet. That makes her a little worrying sometimes, for she will take sides. If I am in a great state at finding our postage stamps all muddled, for instance – Anne and Hebe and I have a collection together, I am sorry to say – and I know who's been at them and say something – who could help saying something if they found a lot of carefully-sorted ones ready to gum in, all pitched into the unsorted box with Uncle Brian's last envelopeful that I haven't looked over? – up flies Hebe in Anne's defence.
'Poor Anne, she was in such a hurry, she never meant it'; or 'she only wanted to help you, Jack; she didn't know you had sorted these.'
Now, isn't that rather trying? For it makes me feel as if I was horrid; and if Hebe would just say, 'Yes, it is awfully tiresome,' I'd feel I had a sort of right to be vexed, and when you feel that, the vexedness often goes away.
Still, there's no doubt Hebe is sweet, and I daresay she flies up for me just as she does for the others when I am the one not there.
We're all very fond of Hebe. She and Serena are rather like each other; they have fair fluffy hair and rosy cheeks, but they're not a bit like each other in themselves. Serena is a terrible tomboy – worse than Anne, for she really never thinks at all. Anne does mean to think, but she does it the wrong way; she gets her head so full of some one thing that she forgets everything else, and then she's awfully sorry. But Serry just doesn't think at all, though she's very good-natured, and, of course, when it comes to really vexing or hurting any one, she's sorry too – for about a minute and a half!