So Ethel and Johnnie are at work, from six in the evening until nine o'clock, scratching through a small-type Bible for flavourless aphorisms. Ethel is set to find six texts, and finds four of them, when she perceives something funny in one of them. She shows it to Johnnie, and they both giggle. Father looks up severely, and warns her. Then Johnnie, not to be outdone, remembers something he has heard about at school, and hunts through the Book of Kings to find it. He finds it. It is funnier still; and he shows it to Ethel. She giggles again. Father looks up reprovingly at her. She tries to maintain composure of face, but just then Johnnie pinches her knee, so that she squeals with long-pent-up laughter.
Father and Mother get up. Her Bible is taken from her. Her pencil and paper are taken from her. She is made to stand on the hearthrug, with her hands behind her, while Mother and Father lecture her on Blasphemy. The bell is then rung, and Nurse is sent for. She is handed over to Nurse, with pitiless instructions. Nurse then takes her to her room, where she is undressed, put to bed, and severely slapped.
It is Sunday.... Over her little bed is a text in letters of flame: "_Thou God seest me!_" After burning with indignation and humiliation for some time, she falls at last to sleep, with an unspoken prayer of thanksgiving to her Heavenly Father that to-morrow is Monday.
_From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green, We flash through misty fields of light. Oh, many lovely things are seen From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green! We reign together, king and queen, Over the lilied London night. From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green, We flash through misty fields of light._
_So, driver, drive your taxi well To Golder's Green from Gloucester Square. This dreaming night may cast a spell; So, driver, drive your taxi well. I have a wondrous tale to tell: Immortal Love is now your fare! So, driver, drive your taxi well To Golder's Green from Gloucester Square!_
I originally planned this chapter to cover A German Night amid the two German colonies of Great Charlotte Street and Highbury; but I have a notion that the public has read all that it wants to read about Germans in London. Anyway, neither spot is lovable. I have never been able to determine whether the Germans went to Highbury and the Fitzroy regions because they found their atmosphere ready-made, or whether the districts have acquired their atmosphere from the German settlers. Certainly they have everything that is most Germanically oppressive: mist, large women, lager and leberwurst, and a moral atmosphere of the week before last that conveys to the mind the physical sensations of undigested cold sausage. So I was leaving Great Charlotte Street, and its Kaiser, its _kolossal_ and its _kultur_, to hop on the first motor-'bus that passed, and let it take me where it would--a favourite trick of mine--when I ran into Georgie.