“LUMAWOO, LOOK. WHAT BIRD?”
“That, I believe, is a nuthatch—Beowulf, do be careful!” Beowulf Incorrigible was leaning so far out the nursery window that his governess, Miss Penelope Lumley, was afraid he might tumble out.
“Nuthatch? Not warbler? Awk!” Beowulf’s reply rose into a birdlike squawk as Penelope seized her student firmly by the ankles and returned him to a more secure position behind the windowsill. The bird in question—and on second glance, it did seem to Penelope as if it might be more along the lines of a warbler—cocked its head to one side, as if to say, “I know what I am, but what are you?” Then it pertly flitted off.
“Whether it is a nuthatch or a warbler is perhaps a matter for debate,” Penelope said briskly as she shut the wide-open nursery windows and fastened the latch for good measure. “But you, Beowulf Incorrigible, are not any kind of bird. Under no circumstances are you to fly out the window.”
“Sorry, Lumawoo.” The boy cast a longing glance in the direction of the bird’s departure, but he did not argue. Instead he retreated to the farthest corner of the nursery, where he began building tall, wobbly towers out of square wooden blocks that he then proceeded to tip over with barely a hint of satisfaction.
Penelope returned to her seat and tried to resume reading. But the nursery felt stuffy all at once, without the wonderful summer breeze that had been making the curtains billow and dance all morning. Beowulf’s elder brother, Alexander, had spent the last hour pretending that the wind-filled curtains were sails on a ship. Their sister, Cassiopeia, had volunteered to act as a lookout against pirates while Alexander stood manfully upon the bridge of his imaginary vessel, happily navigating away with the shiny brass sextant that was now his favorite possession.
With the closing of the windows, that game, too, had come to an end.
“No wind,” Alexander announced, wetting his finger and holding it in the air as a test. “We are becalmed. Drop anchor, mate.”
“Aye aye, Captain. Seasick anyway.” Cassiopeia obeyed but sounded glum. She was the youngest of the three Incorrigible children, and, it could be argued, the wildest. Truth be told, she had been rather hoping for a run-in with pirates, for she held a bit of a grudge against them ever since the Incorrigibles’ recent trip to London, and was hoping to get “last licks,” as they say nowadays.
(The theatergoers among you may be able to hum a few bars from Pirates on Holiday, the seaworthy operetta whose disastrous premiere the Incorrigibles and their governess had had the great misfortune of attending during their stay in London. If so, you will have some idea of why Cassiopeia felt the way she did. If not, it is enough to know that an intense dislike of pirates—especially singing pirates, which, luckily, are rare—had taken root in the child, and for good reason, too.)
Alas, there would be no swashbuckling today. The sails had gone slack, and the disappointed girl slumped in one of the cozy nursery chairs and clicked idly at the beads of her abacus: back and forth, back and forth.
Penelope noted the changed mood of her three students with dismay. Already she regretted closing the windows. She had done so to make a point about safety, of course, but upon reflection, perhaps a word of caution to Beowulf might have served just as well. For when the windows were open, the children had been happily engaged in educational pursuits: Beowulf was bird-watching, Alexander was navigating, and Cassiopeia had been making colorful threats against unseen pirates, which was good exercise for the imagination, not to mention the girl’s rapidly growing vocabulary (“I’ll fillet you like a mackerel, woof!” had been one of the choicer examples).
But now the three Incorrigible children were cross and at loose ends, a dangerous combination that could easily tempt any young person to misbehave, never mind three siblings who had been raised in a forest by wolves and were thus especially prone to mischief.
There was a tap-tap-tapping at the window. It was Nutsawoo, the bold and beady-eyed squirrel whom the children had improbably made into a pet. The furry scamp lived outside in the trees, as any sensible squirrel should, but he had become so tame that he often scurried along a low-hanging branch and made the heroic leap to the windowsill, whereupon Cassiopeia would spoil him with treats and try to teach him to do simple arithmetic with the acorns she had saved expressly for that purpose. Now the bewildered rodent could do nothing but press his nose against the glass and knock with his tiny, monkeylike paws as his bushy tail flicked to and fro with anxiety.
No one dared get up to open the window, of course. But the reproachful sound could not be ignored. There it was: the tap-tap-tapping of a single, sad-eyed, snack-seeking squirrel.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.
If you have ever sniffed at the spout of a carton of milk to judge whether the contents were drinkable, and then found yourself wondering if milk actually goes from fresh to sour all at once in a great curdling swoop, or whether it turns bit by bit, in little souring steps, and if so, at what point along the way the sourness would become evident to the human nose and whether it might not be wiser to have a glass of lemonade instead, then you will have some idea of Penelope’s current predicament. By now she understood that the mood in the nursery had begun to curdle, so to speak, and that the cause had something to do with her shutting of the windows. However, she was not exactly sure how things had gone so wrong, so quickly. Nor did she know if the morning was already ruined, or if there was yet hope of turning things ’round.
She frowned and drummed her fingers on the cover of her book. It was not quite a year since she had become governess to the Incorrigibles. All three of the children had made remarkable strides regarding their own educations, yet there were many times that their governess felt she was still figuring things out “on the fly,” so to speak. This was one of those times.
“Would anyone like to be quizzed on Latin verbs?” she asked halfheartedly.
The children shook their heads and sighed. Beowulf had given up building towers and was now gnawing on the blocks. Alexander idly poked his sister with the sextant, and Cassiopeia clutched her abacus in a way that suggested it might soon be hurled across the room.
“What shall I do?” Penelope thought, for she recognized a looming disaster when she saw one. “Should I reopen the windows and risk appearing foolish, as I have only just closed them? Or should I leave them shut and try to jolly up the children some other way? Perhaps they would like me to read to them….”
But then she felt a sharp pang of guilt, for Penelope knew that the reason she had taken her eyes off Beowulf to begin with was that she had reached a particularly exciting part of the very book she now held in her hands and, as a result, had temporarily forgotten—just for a moment, of course—that she was a governess in a nursery at all.
The volume in question was one of the Giddy-Yap, Rainbow! series that Penelope was so fond of. In it, the tale’s heroine, Edith-Anne Pevington, enters her trusty pony, Rainbow, in a pony-and-rider show. Once there, a comical mix-up involving lookalike saddles causes Edith-Anne to meet a boy named Albert, who also plans to take part in the show. His chestnut pony, Starburst, is as spirited and high-strung as Rainbow is gentle and sweet.
The confusion about the saddles is quickly settled, but the encounter with Albert leaves Edith-Anne flummoxed and unable to do anything but braid and rebraid Rainbow’s already perfectly groomed mane and tail, if only to keep her mind off this distracting new acquaintance. Rainbow in Ribbons was the title of the book, and the pony show was the centerpiece of the plot, but this sideline business with Albert had captured Penelope’s imagination in a way that made the book strangely difficult to put down, even when her own real-life pupils were climbing out of windows and so forth. For Albert reminded her of a recent acquaintance of her own—a perfectly nice young man named Simon Harley-Dickinson, whom she had met in London. She often wondered when she might see him again….
“It was a warbler,” Cassiopeia muttered to Beowulf as she fended off Alexander with her abacus. “Stop drooling and draw it.”
Somewhat cheered, Beowulf turned away from chewing his blocks and took out his sketchbook. “For the guidebook,” he announced, and got to work.
The word “guidebook” made Penelope feel yet another, different sort of pang—not only because she herself had recently lost a rather unusual guidebook that had been given to her as a gift (more about that later), but because Penelope had instructed the children to make a guidebook of their own, and this, too, was proving problematic.
The book was to be called Birds of Ashton Place, as Seen from the Nursery Window, but after three days of diligent bird-watching, even Penelope had to admit that only the most common and frankly uninteresting birds were so unimaginative as to spend their days lingering close to the house. Nuthatches, warblers, sparrows, and the occasional wood dove—perfectly acceptable birds all, to be sure, but where were the sage and mysterious owls? The soaring red kites, with their broad and tireless wings? Or the peregrine falcons, with their bladelike talons and darting eyes that could spot a tasty field mouse on the ground from hundreds of feet in the air?
Clearly, none of these noble specimens was likely to make an appearance at the nursery window. Yet bringing these three half-tamed, wolf-raised children outside, into the woods—surely that would be unwise? For who was to say how they would behave, if they wandered too far from the house?
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.
And then, silence. For even Nutsawoo, whose brain was no bigger than a medium-sized walnut, had found something more interesting to do.
AT THIS POINT IT SHOULD be noted that, although Miss Penelope Lumley was still two months shy of her sixteenth birthday, she possessed a great deal of wisdom for a person so young. For that she could thank her years at the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, which equipped her not only with a sound education, but also with the timeless good sense of the school’s founder, Agatha Swanburne, who was known for her countless pithy nuggets of wisdom (nearly all of which are just as useful nowadays as they were back in Miss Lumley’s day—a point to bear in mind).
Penelope drummed her fingers on the cover of Rainbow in Ribbons and tried to imagine what Agatha Swanburne would have to say about her situation. And in fact, the answer came to her. “Now I know just what to do,” she thought. “For, as Agatha Swanburne once said, ‘It is easier to change one’s boots than to change one’s mind, but it is far easier to change one’s mind about whether or not to wear boots than it is to change the weather.’”
It was one of the grand lady’s more enigmatic statements, but still, it had done the trick. Penelope rose from her seat and strode purposefully toward the windows. “Children, I have given the matter some thought, and I see that I was mistaken.” She pushed aside the curtains. “First of all, I believe your guidebook needs a better title than the one I already suggested.”
“Birds of Ashton Place, as Seen from the Nursery Window—no good?” Alexander asked, frowning.
“I believe it can be improved upon.” Penelope undid the latch and flung open the windows more widely than before. At once the curtains filled with air and ballooned giddily into the room.
“Birds of Ashton Place, as Seen with No Jumping Out Window?” Beowulf offered as he batted away the dancing fabric that whipped playfully about him.
“That would certainly be a step in the right direction.” Penelope inhaled deeply; the air smelled like lilacs, and there was a lovely low hum of bees and some very promising distant sounds of birdsong. “However, I think it is the bit about the window that needs changing.”
Now she had all three children’s attention. She folded her hands in front of her and faced her pupils with a solemn expression that was rather hard to keep up, for she could see (as the children could not, since now they had their backs to the window) that Nutsawoo had returned and was doing a skittering, celebratory dance along the tree branches. “I have reconsidered my position. Clearly, a guidebook written by looking through a window simply will not work. Instead, I propose we go outdoors and observe the birds in their natural habitat, so to speak.”
“Birds of Ashton Place That Live Outdoors,” Alexander declared, rummaging about for his shoes.
“Birds in the Fields and Treetops.” Beowulf sounded very pleased.
“Birds, Birds, Birds.” Cassiopeia jumped up and down and flapped her arms like wings. “Birds!”
Penelope nodded thoughtfully. “These are all fine suggestions for titles. But I propose we call our guidebook Birds of Ashton Place That Live Outdoors, as Seen Close Up by Three Clever and Obedient Children Who Will Under No Circumstances Run Off into the Woods. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said Alexander, dodging back and forth behind the billowing curtain.
“Agreed, ahwooooo!” Beowulf howled, forgetting his words for a moment.
“Yes, woof!” Even more than her brothers, Cassiopeia could not help barking when excited.
Penelope suppressed a smile. Sour milk cannot be made unsour, but the three Incorrigible children were clearly made of different and more resilient stuff, and for some reason this made her feel deeply proud of them. “Very well. Let us take no more than three minutes to collect our bird-watching equipment. If we are in luck, we will find some interesting specimens before teatime.”
“Hooray, hooray!” they shouted as one. The children set about gathering their supplies. For Alexander, this meant his sextant, notebook, and sharp pencils for recording the precise geographic location of each sighting. Cassiopeia swept up crumbs and leftover crusts of bread from the breakfast tray and tied them snugly in a linen square; with these she would tempt the birds close enough to be recognized. Beowulf packed up his sketch pad and pastel crayons; he was a talented artist and highly skilled at depicting each bird in all its beaked and feathered glory.
As for their governess, Miss Penelope Lumley: Her preparations involved making a trip to the kitchen for a flask of cold, fresh milk and a large supply of biscuits. Milk, because bird-watching outdoors was bound to be hot and strenuous work, and the children would soon be thirsty.
The biscuits were for her own use, in case the Incorrigibles themselves got carried away and needed to be lured back to more civilized surroundings. The children had always found the antics of small, edible creatures positively riveting and could scarcely take their eyes off them—clearly an advantage when bird-watching—but whether they could refrain from pouncing remained to be seen. Penelope had a great deal of faith in the children, but as a person who had recently made an error herself, and had gone to the trouble of correcting it, she knew better than to expect other people to be perfect at all times.
That is also why, despite a moment’s temptation as she thought how pleasant it would be to read in the shade of an oak tree while the children scampered and sketched, she left her copy of Rainbow in Ribbons behind in the nursery. The plan was to go bird-watching; the children would require close supervision, and Penelope did not want to risk being distracted even for a minute. She was their governess, after all, and she too had learned a valuable lesson that day.
“Although I am frantic to know what happens next to Edith-Anne Pevington, that intriguing boy named Albert, high-spirited Starburst, and dear, sweet Rainbow, I will put aside my book until later and give my full attention to the task at hand,” she thought, carefully tucking her bookmark ribbon in place so she could find her page again later on. “For to do two things at once is to do each one only half as well as one is truly able,” she concluded.
That Miss Penelope Lumley had a knack for inventing catchy sayings was hardly surprising, given where she had gone to school. That she also had the ability to learn from her mistakes and replace a poorly thought-out plan with a better one—well, that, too, should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the plucky young governess, or with her alma mater, either.
For, indoors or out, Penelope was a Swanburne girl, through and through.