The Innocents by Margery Sharp Read Free Book Online Page A

let down the foot and made an extension from a nicely padded piano-seat.) In the big trunk, instead of being wadded with cushions, she soon fitted as snugly as an apple in its dumpling, lapped by no more than a blanket; and pushed herself about so vigorously in her coracle its lid, Mrs. Brewer more than once remarked we might as well be having the sweep in. I never attempted to make sense of Mrs. Brewer’s observations. They were so to speak gnomic, in their reference to long but uncoordinated experience.
    I cannot say Antoinette grew any prettier or more animated. Her smooth round face had normally only two expressions: of bland, catlike content when happy, and when put out, a lion-cubbish scowl. All she essentially needed, in the way of speech, was purr and snarl. So I took it for great encouragement when she said tureen to me.
    It was a slow process, educating a little animal into humanity, but fortunately patience is my strong suit; and what was heartening was that every now and then, after weeks and months without any seeming progress at all, there would come sudden breakthroughs as when a plant almost given up for good suddenly puts forth a leaf. To anyone except myself I suppose they would have seemed minuscule indeed: one was when at the end of the Lord’s Prayer Antoinette spontaneously said “Vermin” of her own accord, before prompted by my “Amen”; another when, left in the kitchen with a basket of peas, she of her own accord began shelling them. But on one point I had to admit complete failure. Of all things, I would wish to teach a child the love of reading, not to be exchanged, as Lord Macaulay so rightly observes, for all the wealth of India, and which must begin with ABC; but against any sort of literacy Antoinette’s mind appeared completely closed.
    The set of alphabet blocks I bought her, when she was five, she employed chiefly to set up shelters for hedgehogs—or so I judged the sort of laagers neatly arranged both under the artichokes and on the terrace above. I never actually observed Antoinette making these dispositions—like a little animal she could be very secret—but that was where I found her alphabet blocks, before weather decayed them into illiteracy.
    In some ways she was also cunning as a little animal. She discovered all sorts of ways, for example, of getting back into the house, after I’d closed the sitting-room windows behind her; by back or front door, of course, but also through the shaft to my long-disused coal cellar, whence she suddenly emerged in the kitchen like a cheerful mole to give me a surprise. It was a variant of hide-and-seek I was only too glad to promote, since another thing I wanted Antoinette to learn (second only to reading) was to play games. Especially with other children. Playing with its co-evals is a child’s natural introduction to social life; it learns in the first place to keep rules. Our village infantry would have accepted Antoinette willingly, if slightly de haut en bas , she being an innocent; the stumbling-block was her extreme antipathy to any sort of violence. Violence is implicit in children’s games, from “Who shall we send to fetch him away?” to “Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.” Even Ring-o’-roses, with its “All fall down,” frightened Antoinette. Yet I felt it important that she should at least consort with other children, and felt riding lessons quite an inspiration.
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    Even before these started, however, there was another and quite important breakthrough. One morning when I returned from a solitary shopping round, what was my surprise to see Antoinette, whom any unfamiliar face had hitherto so alarmed, squatting peaceably in the garden with a total stranger.
    Mrs. Brewer caught me at the gate to explain it was a Miss Guthrie, which was why. (I am used to Mrs. Brewer’s shorthand way of speech: why the young woman had been allowed in to wait for