book I

’d been reading. Well, instead of liking it, Father used to get dreadfully vexed; the trouble was that he generally asked me the question again before I got to ten, and then I had to start counting all over again, so it was quite a long time sometimes before I could answer. I did think it seemed rather silly myself, when he’d only asked me something like, “Have you been out to-day?” because it wasn’t likely that I should have replied anything very dreadful. But in the book it said that one can never tell, and that habit is everything. I did wish that Father hadn’t thought me muttering and sulky.

What I minded most, though, was the way the others went on. They used to stop up their ears whenever they saw me coming and run away. It was dreadful. Some days I’d forget to talk to them about their sins, and then we’d be quite happy, but I always fined myself afterwards. I used to throw a farthing into the pig-sty each time, because I thought if I gave it to any one I’d get pleasure out of it, so that oughtn’t to count; I used to have fines for lots of other wrong things too. Besides this, I’d hit myself with whips and straps to try and make me gooder, but it’s very difficult to hurt oneself much. It was a better mortification when I wore Humphrey’s new jersey under all my clothes, because, though it wasn’t hairy, nor a shirt, it was very rough and tight, but Fräulein discovered it and was most cross.

It was because I hated the others always running away from me that I took to writing about their wickedness instead. I pretended that I was a dumb missionary, and so it wasn’t my fault, and I used to push little notes into their pockets all in printing, so as to be easy to read, but after the first they threw them away without looking at them, so it was no use at all. That’s what made me take to writing things on the walls, where they couldn’t help seeing them, like in our room I put, “Don’t have the cat in bed,” for Violet to read, because Fräulein doesn’t like us to. In the dining-room I put, “It’s horrible to drink with your mouth full,” opposite to where Humphrey sits. Instead of being pleased, though, Fräulein got in a rage again, and said I was spoiling the wall-paper, and made me rub it all out. It did seem difficult to do good.

It was after this that I thought of writing placards. It was all my own idea, and didn’t hurt anything, and was just as good as putting it on the wall. I forgot to say that I hadn’t invented that plan myself. I took it out of _Belshazzar’s Feast_, and I do think they must have made much worse marks than I did, because in the piece of poetry we learnt it says:

“In that same hour and hall, The fingers of a hand Came forth against the wall, And wrote as if on sand.”

So it must have made great holes. I suppose the plaster was wet. At any rate, I thought that with the placards no one could possibly grumble.

I couldn’t have done the placards, of course, if I hadn’t known just the sort of naughty things that the Heathens would do. So I wrote very big on large sheets of paper, “DON’T,” and then a whole heap of different wrong things. I kept them all stuffed up the front of my dress (it was rather loose, because of my growing so fast, and that was the only helping