It sounds as if we were rather hard-worked, but I really don't think we were, though I must allow that we worked better in those days, and learnt more in comparison, than we do now at--I won't give the name of the big school we are at. Clement says it is better not--people who write books never do give the real names, he says, and I fancy he's right. It is an awfully jolly school, and we are as happy as sand-boys, whatever that means, but I can't say that we work as Blanche does, though she does it all at home with governesses.
That part of the evening--when we went back to the drawing-room to mamma, I mean--was one of the times I shall always like to remember about. It is very jolly now, of course, to be at home for the holidays, but there was then the sort of 'treat' feeling of having got our lessons done, and the little ones comfortably off to bed, and the grown-up-ness.
Mamma looked so pretty, as she was always nicely dressed, though I liked some of her dresses much better than others--I don't like her in black ones at all; and the drawing-room was pretty, and then there was mamma's music. Her playing was nice, but her singing was still better, and she used to let us choose our favourite songs, each in turn. Blanche plays the violin now, very well, they say, and mamma declares she is really far cleverer at music than she herself ever was; but for all that, I shall never care for her fiddle anything like mamma's singing; if I live to be a hundred, I shall never forget it.
It is a great thing to have really jolly times like those evenings to think of when you begin to get older, and are a lot away from home, and likely to be still less and less there.
But I must not forget that this story is supposed to be principally about Peterkin and his adventures, so I'll go on again about the night after he'd been lost.
He and I had a room together, and he was nearly always fast asleep, like a fat dormouse, when I went up to bed. He had a way of curling himself round, like a ball, that really did remind you of a dormouse. I believe it kept him from growing; I really do, though I did my best to pull him out straight. He didn't like that, ungrateful chap, and used to growl at me for it, and I believe he often pretended to be asleep when he wasn't, just to stop me doing it; for one night, nurse had come in to know what the row was about, and though she agreed with me that it was much better for him to lie properly stretched at his full length, she said I wasn't to wake him up because of it.