TO JOHN BLAND

  My Lamb, you are so very small,
   You have not learned to read at all.
   Yet never a printed book withstands
   The urgence of your dimpled hands.
   So, though this book is for yourself,
   Let mother keep it on the shelf
   Till you can read. O days that Pass,
   That day will come too soon, alas!
 
  CHAPTER 1
  BEAUTIFUL AS THE DAY

    The house
        was three miles
               from the station,
           but before the dusty
              hired fly
            had rattled
                   along for five minutes
                       the children
                began to put their heads
                       out of
                           the carriage window and
                         to say,
         'Aren't we nearly there?'

    And every time
         they passed a house,
           which was not very often,
         they all said,
           'Oh,
               is THIS it?'

    But it never was,
           till they reached
               the very top
                   of the hill,
         just past the chalk-quarry and
             before you
                  come to the gravel-pit.

    And then
        there was a white house
               with a green
             garden and an orchard beyond,
           and mother said,
         'Here we are!'

    'How white the house is,'
          said Robert.

    'And look at the roses,'
          said Anthea.

    'And the plums,' said Jane.

    'It is
           rather decent,' Cyril admitted.

    The Baby said,
         'Wanty go walky';
            and the fly
                   stopped with a last
                       rattle and jolt.

    Everyone got its legs
          kicked or its feet
              trodden on in the
          scramble to get
               out of the carriage
         that very minute,
           but no one
            seemed to mind.

    Mother,
           curiously enough,
         was in no hurry
              to get out;
        and even
             when she
                had come down slowly and
                       by the step,
           and with no jump
               at all,
         she seemed to wish
              to see the boxes
                   carried in,
           and even
              to pay the driver,
         instead of joining in
             that first glorious rush round
                   the garden
                 and the orchard
                   and the thorny,
           thistly,
         briery,
           brambly wilderness beyond the broken
               gate and the dry fountain
                   at the side
                       of the house.

    But the children were wiser,
           for once.

    It was not
          really a pretty house
               at all;
        it was quite ordinary,
           and mother thought it
            was rather inconvenient,
         and was quite
             annoyed at there
            being no shelves,
           to speak of,
         and hardly a cupboard
               in the place.

    Father used to say
         that the ironwork
               on the roof and
             coping was
               like an architect's nightmare.

    But the house
        was deep in the country,
           with no other house
               in sight,
         and the children
            had been
                   in London
                 for two years,
           without so much as once
              going to the seaside
             even for a day
                   by an excursion train,
         and so the White House
            seemed to
                   them a sort
                       of Fairy Palace
                  set down
                       in an Earthly Paradise.

    For London is
         like prison for children,
           especially if their relations
            are not rich.

    Of course
        there are the shops
               and the theatres,
           and Maskelyne and Cook's,
         and things,
           but if your people
            are rather poor you
              don't get
             taken to the theatres,
         and you
            can't buy things
                   out of the shops;
        and London
            has none of
                   those nice things
             that children may play with
               without hurting the things
                  or themselves -
             such as trees
                   and sand
                 and woods and waters.

    And nearly everything in London
        is the wrong
               sort of shape -
                   all straight lines
                 and flat streets,
           instead of
            being all sorts
                   of odd shapes,
         like things
            are in the country.

    Trees are all different,
           as you know,
         and I
            am sure some tiresome person
               must have told you
             that there are
                   no two blades
                       of grass exactly alike.

    But in streets,
           where the blades of grass
              don't grow,
         everything is like everything else.

    This is