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Pageant

II

II

For Jenny a governess appeared about this time. A feeble, remote creature who knew as little as any grown woman could, even in those days, and who was supposed to prepare Humphrey for the Hutchens School, just opened for gentlemen's sons in Hobart Town. Humphrey and Jenny, whom Nurse had already brought up to three-syllable words in the New Testament, now embarked with Miss Bean and Peter Parley on strange seas where they encountered The Child's Guide to Knowledge, which told them among other things that a hiccough was a spasmodic twitching of the diaphragm, and "Mrs. Markham" with her obnoxious brood who fattened on dates and aphorisms.

They took their frequent whippings cheerfully, in the knowledge that even grown-ups like Aunt Ellen and Uncle Joe Merrick did not escape when Grandpa Merrick was cross; and in between they pressed wild flowers, played with the baby, and rode out under windy skies when Mab brought in a mob of cattle from the ranges.

The pageantry of the day passed before the children's careless eyes. Ladies in wide gleaming skirts and absurd little parasols, come to pay calls in four-in-hand coaches. Government men with the sun pouring on their half-clad bodies as they sat in the stocks outside Trienna court-house. Julia Sorley and the Beverley girls riding together like a flock of bright parrots. Soldiers on the march down the Main Road, with throbbing drums and crying fifes and the long-tailed red coats swinging above the tight white trousers. A number of grave gentlemen in black frock-coats and tall hats standing against the violet of bare hills to greet the governor who was to stay that night at Bredon. Mab putting Vanity at the stock-yard fence on the day Julia was married, so that Madam ran through the frightened house with hands over her eyes, crying "Does he, then, desire to kill me?"

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Miss Bean took Jenny away after that, and talked about the soul. "Let us pray for the soul of your poor uncle, Jenny" said Miss Bean, and down they both dropped on their knees on the school-room floor.