The marvellous land of Snergs
confused with the large grizzly bears which, rumour has it, live beyond
the deep river on the other side of the Snerg country, as also tigers,
unicorns, a dragon or two, and other creatures full of original sin.
With the exception of the very little ones each child has to attend
to its own bed, and on Saturdays to refill the mattresses with little
buds like hops, which have a pleasant aromatic smell and induce sleep.
The old hops are thrown out on the beach at high tide. Saturday is the
clean-up time. Lockers are tidied, pinafores are ironed, and puppies
and other animals that need it are washed with soap; altogether there
is a good deal of what the Gentlemen of the Life Guards call spit and
polish, so as to be ready for Sunday. The smallest children have beds
with rockers, Miss Watkyns having little patience with new-fangled
ideas about not rocking children.
A good deal of worry and argument has been caused by the amount of
animal life in and round about the houses. There is a craze for pets,
and Miss Watkyns’ attempt to limit at the rate of one pet animal to
each three children resulted in quarrels and sulking in corners, and
finally it came to the rule of one child one animal. Puppies, kittens
and small rabbits are the most popular; badgers are discouraged. At one
time the elder children got excited over a recitation from the poets
concerning a girl who owned a lamb which followed her about everywhere,
even to school, where it made the other scholars laugh, and after that
it was nothing but lambs. At length Miss Watkyns decided that only
those who showed perfect behaviour for a month could have one, and that
limited the number right enough. At the end of the month only two smug
little girls had qualified for lambs, and by that time the rage for
mongeese had come up.
Another source of trouble over animals is the food question. The
ladies as a rule are rather sentimental in their ideas and it needed
all the firmness and common sense of Miss Watkyns to prevent a wave
of sloppiness passing over the Society and damaging the children’s
character and insides. Some even went to the length of proposing that
the food should consist entirely of bread, butter, milk, and green
stuff; and the experiment was actually tried for a time, with the
result that the children broke out in pimples. Then fish diet was
added, it being supposed that fish feel no pain when they are caught,
only a little regret, but this was also a failure; the little ones’
systems still cried out for meat and gravy in moderation. Finally, Miss
Watkyns put her foot down firmly and arranged that a supply of sheep
and hares, etc., be delivered at regular intervals by the Snergs, who
are not at all sentimental about killing animals; in fact they rather
like it, being great hunters.
THE SNERGS
The Snergs are a race of people only slightly taller than the average
table but broad in the shoulders and of great strength. Probably
they are some offshoot of the pixies who once inhabited the hills
and forests of England, and who finally disappeared about the reign
of Henry VIII. Their language is not very difficult and the children
especially learn to speak it in a few weeks, which helps to strengthen
my theory of their origin. The ladies, however, never learn to speak
the language with fluency, and the little slang expressions are quite
beyond them; but owing to the untiring energy of Miss Watkyns, that
brainy woman, they now have a little Snerg grammar, with a vocabulary
and some easy exercises.
The Snergs took a great interest in the Society’s development and
offered their services at an early date. It soon came to pass that they
did all the heavy work, such as building (at which they are expert),
gardening, painting and decorating, and the more troublesome part of
the housework, such as swabbing floors. They come in batches and spend
some weeks at work; then they say they are homesick, which means they
have got tired of it, and they go home as soon as another batch can
take their place. In return for these services they receive instruction
in up-to-date methods from Miss Watkyns’ Encyclopædia, little presents
from London or some other large town when one of the ladies has gone
there on business, and those little general advantages, difficult to
specify in words, which come from intercourse with refined females.
If the children go to the woods to collect berries or mushrooms or
whatever else happens to be in season, or to play at outlaws or a
little scalping party, a Snerg or two goes with them to shoo away
obtrusive bears. When they are bathing a Snerg or two sits on a rock
ready to dive in and pick out any child that has got into trouble. It
is interesting to see how they reach such a one with a few vigorous
strokes, take it to land, up-end it by the heels to let the water run
out, and lay it on the grass to dry.
The Snergs dress in tight-fitting woollen hose, with a jerkin of the
same material and a leather belt, and little round leather caps rather
like the deeper kinds of saucers. When at home most of them live
in the town; some few have their mills and farms a little distance
away, but they come in pretty often for they are gregarious people,
loving company. The town has one main street which goes rambling
round corners, with one or two little alleys branching off from it
through archways and so forth, and the houses are three or four or
more stories in height, built in an irregular way of timber and clay
and plaster, top-heavy in appearance though sound in reality even if
a bit elastic. If a house leans over more than it should they prop it
up by timbers reaching across to the house opposite, this generally
giving them an excuse for making a little covered-in passage way on
the timbers so that they can visit one another without all the fuss of
going downstairs and up again, they being great on visits. You never
know when a Snerg will finish with his house because he is always
making additions to it, such as throwing out bay windows, or carrying a
balcony on stilts to one of the big trees near by and then building a
spare bedroom in the tree itself, and the like fool tricks.
They are long-lived people; roughly speaking they live as long as
oaks. For instance those Snergs who remember the excitement caused
by the landing of William the Conqueror (1066) are old, old gaffers,
opinionated, sitting in arm-chairs. The men who remember the Wars of
the Roses are middle-aged and of ripe judgment (in so far as a Snerg
ever has judgment), while those born about the time of the Gunpowder
Plot have still something of the gay insouciance of youth. The babies
date from Trafalgar and upwards.
They are great on feasts, which they have in the open air at long
tables joined end on and following the turns of the street. This
is necessary because nearly everybody is invited--that is to say,
commanded to come, because the King gives the feasts, though each
person has to bring his share of food and drink and put it in the
general stock. Of late years the procedure has changed owing to the
enormous number of invitations that had to be sent; the commands are
now understood and only invitations to stay away are sent to the people
who are not wanted on the particular occasion. They are sometimes hard
up for a reason for a feast, and then the Master of the Household,
whose job it is, has to hunt for a reason, such as its being somebody’s
birthday. Once they had a feast because it was nobody’s birthday that
day.
The King presides at the head of the table, with the best people on
either hand, and there they sit in the mellow evening light and tell
tales of the brave days of old and listen to the sound of harps. But at
the other end of the table, round the corner and out of sight, there
is often a good deal of reckless behaviour and talk, since there is no
one to check the number of cups of mead they drink; and the truth is
they get slightly tiddleums, and laugh far too much and grab off each
other’s caps and throw them in other fellow’s faces, and so on. Queer
people.
The tale is going to start very soon but it will be necessary to give
some account of the two children, Sylvia and Joe, who got mixed up with
the strange doings I have mentioned, and also of Vanderdecken and his
men, because if it had not been for them I really don’t know how things
would have come out as well as they did. Let us begin with Sylvia.
SYLVIA
Sylvia’s mother was a widow who lived in a commodious house in
London and who was much admired, and whom we will call Mrs Walker
because it was not her name. Though she was rather proud of Sylvia
in a way, because she was a pretty little girl with hair that curled
naturally, she never bothered about her very much owing to her Society
engagements. She never, for example, made her laugh with the business
of the little pigs, or pretended to eat her, beginning with the feet,
and she never bored people by exhibiting her little frocks to show
how she was growing out of them; in fact, she never saw her at all
except sometimes when she spared a moment to run upstairs before going
to dinners and dances and the like. But she provided a capable nurse
called Norah who was skilled in all things necessary for young ones,
including interesting tales, and this worked finely until Norah had to
go away and marry a young man in the sausage business. The new nurse
who came had her own society engagements to attend to (though not such
classy ones) and could not spare very much time for Sylvia.
One day Sylvia got wet through in the park and the nurse (Gwendoline)
forgot to change her things, so that she got ill. She got more and
more ill and the doctor was sent for, but he was absolutely rude to
Mrs Walker because he had not been sent for before and this upset her
as she was not accustomed to rudeness. But what made her more upset
was the sight of a dowdy, middle-aged woman who had got in somehow and
was sitting by Sylvia’s bed, and when she asked her what she was doing
there she got no answer but a snort, so she went away. And half an hour
later there was a real trouble, for the dowdy person and Sylvia were
missing.
There was a good deal of excitement because there had been one or two
cases of this kind lately, and there were head-lines in the papers
about it; but nothing more happened and the little bed was empty for
keeps. In time--that is to say, in three weeks--the matter had blown
over, and Mrs Walker went into mourning and looked so absolutely sweet
and lovely that Sir Samuel Gollop (Biscuits) asked for her hand and got
it and serve him right, and she is now my Lady Gollop, with a house in
one of the best parts and two cars and a Pekinese which has taken a
prize. But no Sylvia, never again.
And Sylvia was learning to play a new kind of water-polo in which seals
take part and was fast forgetting all about her former life except the
tales Norah used to tell her.
JOE
Joe is a sturdy boy of about the same age as Sylvia who has caused the
Society more anxiety and exasperation than any ten other boys of his
weight and size. When he first arrived he was by no means sturdy; his
legs and arms were thin, and on all corners of him there was either a
bruise or a place breaking out. This was owing to his father, a circus
rider, who used to train Joe to do dexterous tricks with ropes and
poles so that he would in time be able to earn money and help support
the family--which, by the way, now consisted only of Father; his mother
had been worn out long ago.
Every time Joe missed doing the tricks dexterously it meant trouble for
him, for his father used to drink as much as his wages allowed and this
impaired his judgment and led him many times to nearly overdo what he