A. A. Milne

“ So from that day Diana looked after herself. She woke herself in the morning, dressed herself, took herself out for a walk, told herself to get-on-with-her-dinner-there-was-a-darling, sang herself to sleep in the afternoon, gave herself tea, brushed her hair and took herself downstairs to her{21} Father and Mother, took herself back again if they were out, gave herself a bath, read to herself while she had her supper, and at the end of the day said good-night to herself and left herself in bed. ”

“ But Daffodil thought what fun it would be if she could run about the paths like other boys and girls.
One day, when she was about five years old, a Court Doctor came to see her. And when he had looked at her tongue, he said to the Queen:
“Her Royal Highness needs more exercise. She must run about more. She must climb hills and roll down them. She must hop and skip and jump. In short, your Majesty, although she is a Princess she must do what other little girls do.” ”

“ But what, you say to yourself, is a little rain? Jane Ann must be patient. She must stay at home and play with her delightful toys this afternoon, and then perhaps to-morrow morning the sun will come out, and she will be able to run about in the fields again. After all, it isn’t every little girl who has a rabbit, and a horse and cart, and an india-rubber ball to play with. Come, come, Jane Ann!
How little you understand!
To-day was the day. To-morrow will be too late. ”

“ So Jessica brushed and brushed and brushed his hair every day; and every day Phil tried to get hold of him so as to strengthen him. But Mrs. Banks kept him on the chest of drawers, so that Jessica could brush his hair and Phil couldn’t quite reach him, and she thought to herself, “I believe he will win the prize after all.” And every day when Mr. Banks came home from golf, she looked at him to see if he had won a silver cup ”

“ Mary went off with her Mother to talk about what sort of clothes they would all want. Mary was ten; and when you are ten and the eldest, almost everything depends upon you. John was three and the youngest, and sometimes Mary was not quite sure whether she was John’s mother or not. If you could have two mothers, then she was one of them.
“The great question,” said Mr. Merryweather next day, “is, where shall we go?” ”

“ Now the truth was that Miss Waterlow{38} could speak if she wanted to, but she had decided to wait until she was quarter-past-one. The reason was that she had such lovely things to remember, if only she could remember them. You can’t talk and think. For a year and a quarter she would just lie on her back and remember ... and then when she had it all quite clear in her mind, she would tell them all about it. But nobody can speak without practice. So every night, as soon as she was alone, she practised. ”

“ SPARROW TREE SQUARE
{19}
WE will take the lady in green first. Her name is Diana Fitzpatrick Mauleverer James. She is the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick Mauleverer James, who live at Number 27. Mrs. F. M. James wanted a boy, so that he could support them in their old age; but Mr. F. M. James said loftily: “No F. M. James, my dear, was ever any good at supporting. Where the F. M. Jameses shine is at being supported. Let it be a girl, and let her marry some very rich man when she grows up. It shall be his proud privilege to tend the last of the F. M. James’s in their middle-age.” ”

“ So the baby was called Phil for short. And then, later on, there was a third child, and as Mr. Banks couldn’t very well call him Theophilus, too, he decided to keep as much of the name in the family as was possible. So the Baby was called Theodore, or Toddy for short.
Mr. Banks played golf. He was a very active man, and he played more golf in an afternoon than anybody else at his club. Sometimes the friends he was playing with would stop for tea after hitting the ball only seventy-five times, but Mr. Banks would never stop until he had hit it a hundred and twenty times. ”

“ One day, while she was beneath the apple-tree, she cried out suddenly, “O Silvio, let me not forget you!”—and the tree shook, and an apple fell into her lap. The Princess took a little silver knife, and peeled the apple, so that the peel was unbroken, and she threw the peel over her shoulder, saying, “See whom I love!” And she looked behind her, and there was the letter “S” upon the ground. So it was upon the next day and the next. And upon the fourth day she took an apple from another tree, and the peel broke beneath her knife ”

“ Banks. He used to feel very unhappy about it. Whenever he and Mrs. Banks went out to dinner with their friends, they would always see a silver cup on the table, and Mr. Binks (if that was the name of the friend) would explain to Mr. Banks how he had won the cup last Saturday, and Mrs. Binks would explain to Mrs. Banks how her husband had won it. And Mr. and Mrs. Banks would go home feeling very disheartened about it.
One day Mrs. Banks read in the paper that there was going to be a Baby Show in the town. She told Jessica, and Jessica said at once, “Oh, let’s put Toddy in! What fun!” ”

“ Belinda wore.
I think it looks nicer spread out like that. I will tell you a secret now. When people pay you to write poetry for them (as they often do) , they pay you so much for every line you write, so sometimes you feel that a verse looks nice spread out, and{104} sometimes the man who is paying you feels that it doesn’t. It’s just a matter of taste. ”

“ I am telling you all this because I want you to understand how proud she felt on that first morning when she took herself to Sparrow Tree Square to feed the birds. There were other children there, but they had nurses with them. Sometimes the children ran away and pretended they didn’t belong to the nurses and sometimes the{22} nurses lagged behind and pretended they didn’t belong to the children, but Diana Fitzpatrick Mauleverer James knew! She was the only entirely-all-by-herself person there. ”

“ And all the time Mr. Dewpond went about the house saying “T’chk, t’chk, t’chk” to himself, and looking very miserable; and Anne Mary wrote to her Mother every day to say that they were all getting on all right and did want her back so badly; and Terry ended up her prayers every night with, “And may she suddenly come back to-morrow morning about half past seven, so that I can wake up and there she is”; and George kissed the door of her Mother’s empty bedroom every time she passed it, as{95} a sort of friendly habit ”

“ Good was told about this, he lit a cigar, and said, “Have people no intelligence at all? Next year, when they have grown out of these vests, I will mark the new ones{29} myself.” So next year he marked them all, in very neat printing, W. Good.
Luckily by this time Wilhelmina’s hair had begun to curl. Every night Nurse spent ten minutes with a wet comb, combing it round her finger. William’s hair curled naturally, too, but not so naturally as this, and in a little while you could tell at once which was Wilhelmina and which wasn’t. ”

“ They were both eating, and both had their elbows on the table. It would be a terrible thing if the photograph came out in the paper like that. Couldn’t the man take another one?
Helen said, No, it was the last one he had. He had been taking photographs all{68} the day of “Scenes in the Village on the Occasion of Miss Barbara’s Sixth Birthday” and he only had two left when he came to the house. One was “A Corner of the Stables Taken from the North Side of the Lake,” and the other was “Miss Barbara Entertains a Few Friends to Tea, reading from left to right.”
Barbara said, “Oh!” ”