HER ... WENT QUIETLY OUT OF THE PEW WITHOUT A
NOTION BUT THAT THE CHILD WAS BESIDE HER' 153

'WE RAN OVER THE FIELDS BY A SHORT CUT TO A STILE ON TO THE
ROAD, WHERE WE COULD SEE HER PASS, AND THERE WE SHOUTED OUT
AGAIN ALL OUR MESSAGES' 168

'WE ALL THREE SAT LISTENING AND LISTENING' 175

CHAPTER I

OURSELVES

I'm Jack. I've always been Jack, ever since I can remember at least,
though I suppose I must have been called 'Baby' for a bit before Serena
came. But she's only a year and a half younger than me, and Maud's only
a year and a quarter behind her, so I can scarcely remember even Serena
being 'Baby'; and Maud's always been so very grown up for her age that
you couldn't fancy her anything but 'Maud.'

My real name isn't John though, as you might fancy. It's a much queerer
name, but there's always been one of it in our family ever since some
grandfather or other married a German girl, who called her eldest son
after her own father. So we're accustomed to it, and it doesn't seem so
queer to us as to other people. It's 'Joachim.' 'Jock' seems a better
short for it than 'Jack,' doesn't it? and I believe mother once meant to
call me 'Jock.' But when Serry and Maud came I _had_ to be Jack, for
with Anne and Hebe in front of me, and the two others behind, of course
I was 'Jack-in-the-middle.' There's never been any more of us, and even
if there had I'd have stayed Jack, once I'd got settled into it, you
see.

I'm eleven. I'm writing this in the holidays; and if I don't get it
finished before they're done I'll keep adding on to it till I've told
all there is to tell.

It's a sort of comfort to me to write about everything, for one way and
another I've had a good deal to put up with, all because of--_girls_.
And I have to be good-tempered and nice just because they _are_ girls.
And besides that, I'm really very fond of them; and they're not bad. But
no one who hasn't tried it knows in the least what it is to be one boy
among a lot of girls, 'specially when some of them are rather boy-ey
girls, and when you yourself are just a little perhaps--just a very
little--the other way.

I don't think I'm a baby. Honestly I don't, and I'm not going to write
down anything I don't _quite_ think. But I do like to be quiet, and I
like to have things tidy and regular. I like rules, and keeping to them;
and I hate racket a