[Gutenberg 43122] • Silverthorns

The school-room at Number 19, Norfolk Terrace, was not, it must be confessed, a particularly attractive room. To begin with, it looked out upon the little garden at the back of the house, and this same little garden was not much to look out upon. The modest, old-fashioned name of "green" would have suited it better. Some of the gardens of the neighbouring houses were really pretty and well cared for, but Mrs Waldron had long ago decided that to attempt making of "our garden" anything but a playground while the boys were still "such mere boys," so irrepressibly full of high spirits and mischief, would be but to add another and unnecessary care to the long list of household matters which she found already quite as much as she could manage. So the garden remained the green, and the school-room the plain, rather untidy-looking room it had always been. It was not really untidy-a radical foundation of order and arrangement was insisted upon. But any room which is the ordinary resort of four boys and a girl, not to speak of occasional inroads from two "nursery children," cannot be expected to look as if no one lived in it.