The oak staircase

It was the opinion of Robin Dalrymple that Mangnall was a humbug. Such, at least, was the fact that he announced, in tones both loud and decided, as he closed a somewhat battered copy of that author's works with a tremendous clap, and tossed it contemptuously on the table. Lessons were over in the schoolroom at Horsemandown; and Miss Gregory, at the writing-table in her own peculiar corner, was doing her best to be deaf for a few moments to her pupils' clamour, while she tried to finish a letter in time for the post. Now the Horsemandown schoolroom was hardly the place one would choose for the purpose of writing a letter at any time--much less at four o'clock in the afternoon, when the operation of 'clearing away' was taking place. Fortunately, however, Miss Gregory was used to it; and her pen continued to scratch away valiantly, in spite of the opening and shutting of drawers, the tumbling of books or slates on the floor, the heavy bang of the piano lid, and the uproar of shrill voices that almost drowned the rest of the clatter around her. 'Yes,' repeated Robin, taking up a perilous position on the table between two inkstands: 'Mangnall is a humbug! Silvia, don't you agree with me?'

But Silvia was busily engaged with a sponge and a gallipot of water, generally known in the family as 'the schoolroom jam-pot;' and as she never could answer when appealed to suddenly, she was obliged to pause in her occupation of washing the slates, and lean both elbows on the table in order to meditate. Whereupon Sydney burst in: 'Humbug, of course! All lessons are humbug, except perhaps geography. That's the only one that has something like sense in it.'

Robin raised his eyebrows incredulously. 'Sense in geography! Why, Syd, if there is a thing that's utterly abominable and senseless, that's it. To have to remember what's the capital of what, and where rivers "take their source," and to find out the latitude and longitude of wretched places where one never goes, and never wants to go!'

'But that is the very thing,' said Sydney. 'I do want to go there; and, what is more, I mean to go some day when I'm a sailor, and sail round the world. I want to go to China and India and South America--Egypt, of course (not Europe. I don't care for stupid, civilised places).'

'Oh Syd!' interrupted Silvia's deliberate little voice. 'Not care to see Edinburgh or Rome! Think of Horatius. Don't you care to see places where things happened long ago, or where celebrated people used to live? I did so like going over the Tower last year, and seeing where the poor little princes were murdered, and where Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned, and putting my hand on the very same stone that perhaps his had been on.'

'But why?' asked Sydney. 'It makes no difference. The stone looks just the same, whether he touched it or not.'

Silvia could not tell why. She could only knit her brows, and repeat in a meditative tone her favourite phrase, 'Somehow--I don't know,' till Sydney grew tired of waiting for an answer, and began again.

'Well, all that I can say is, that I don't care a farthing for the Tower of London, or Horatius, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or any of those people. I never can remember which is which, or what they did. I want to travel, and discover new countries, and fight wild beasts and savages, and see all sorts of extraordinary plants and animals, and forests full of poisonous snakes and fire-flies, and tremendously big ferns, and humming-birds, and get into all sorts of dangers, and go where no one has ever been before. Oh, that would be glorious!'