Doda was nine when she began; Huggo, when he was home for his
holidays, eleven, rising twelve; Benji only seven. They seemed to
her, all of them, wonderfully old for their years and, no getting
over that, different. She tried to read them the stories she used
to love. They didn't like them. Doda didn't like "The Wide Wide
World" and didn't like "Little Women." Huggo thought "The Swiss
Family Robinson" awful rot, and argued learnedly with her how
grotesque it was to imagine all that variety of animals and all
that variety of plants in one same climate. "But, Huggo, you needn't
worry whether it was possible. It was just written as a means of
telling a family of children natural history things. They didn't
have to believe it. They only enjoyed it. I and your uncle Robert
never worried about whether it was possible; we simply loved the
adventure of it."
"Well, I can't, mother," said Huggo. "It's not possible, and if it
isn't possible, I think it's stupid."
And Doda thought Ellen in the "Wide Wide World" silly, and Beth
and Jo and the others in "Little Women" dull.
She read them Dickens, but it was always, "Oh, leave out that part,
mother. It's dull." And so was Scott Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare"
never had a chance at all. They had heard from Miss Prescott, or
Huggo had heard at school, that Shakespeare was a lesson. "Oh, not
a thing out of lessons, mother." What they liked were what seemed
to Rosalie the crudely written stories, and the grotesque and usually
rather vulgar comic drawings, in the host of cheap periodicals for
children that seemed to have sprung up since her day.
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