Good Behaviour Read Online Free PDF Page A

were down for Eton, and you can’t take Eton away. Mrs Brock’s task was to prepare them for
     their preparatory school. This was not difficult, as Entwhistle’s was only too ready to accept the right sort of boy; and
     if his father and uncles were Old Boys he could be the right sort of moron and welcome. Of Mrs Brock’s pupils, Sholto was
     the most likely to succeed. A child of few words, greedy in a jolly way, and brutally determined with his pony, he would go
     further with less effort than his elder brother, Richard.
    Richard was Mrs Brock’s favourite, and years afterwards she was to be my first intimate link with him. His curiosity about
     her held a privacy as exciting to Hubert and me as the shared tree houses or the secret rude rhymes of childhood. We would
     piece her together; it was a game in which our memories inter-locked or contradicted recollections. He could say oddly unkind
     things about her, and I could deny her too. But I never told about the mice. What nice girl would?
    Richard was a beautiful child and, despite a proper interest in and aptitude for all the importances of outdoor life, there
     were times when he would lean in silence against Mrs Brock as she played the piano, or even join her in singing ‘Speed Bonnie
     Boat,’ ‘Yip-i-addy,’ or ‘Now the Day Is Over.’ He preferred Mrs Tiggywinkle to the mildest comic, and liked to dwell on the
     idea of her transference from the washerwoman to the wild. He liked dressing up, too, but Mrs Brock felt that such games were
     not quite the thing for little boys. Sometimes she allowed herself to read him her favourite pieces from
The Children’s Golden Treasury of Verse
, when they would charge with the Light Brigade, or even lean from the gold bar of heaven with the Blessed Damozel.
    Raymond was the youngest of the boys and the least likeable. He was a delicate child, and Nannie’s darling. He hated his pony.
     He kicked the dogs when he could do so without being observed or bitten. There was nothing nice or open about him. He in no
     way resembled his elder brothers. Although he only touched the fringes of schoolroom life – simple Bible stories and an hour
     of picture bricks – he usually carried some whining tale back to the nursery, where Nannie sat, brooding and mending the linen
     – spinning in her tower. Nannie was old enough to have been Lady GrizelMassingham’s nannie and she had never been sympathetically inclined towards governesses.
    Mrs Brock conceived a senseless star-struck passion for Lady Grizel. Her eyes and her ears absorbed the sight and sound of
     this cool, contented lady, whose language differed from Mrs Brock’s in being as natural as a peasant’s. She looked downwards
     and spoke rather like a child. Quite simple, grownup words, such as ‘gardening’ got lost. Lady Grizel (and now Mrs Brock,
     of course) would say instead, ‘She’s diggin’ up the garden.’ I can’t think why Mrs Brock had never ascertained from her the
     definitive name for W.C.
    When Lady Grizel gave Mrs Brock not one, but two grey flannel suits, Nannie made no secret of her disapproval. But Mrs Brock’s
     acceptance of the gifts was simple and delighted. They had been made, she told us, by Busvine – that holy tailoring name in
     the holy hunting world – made three and five years previously, of course, but classical tailor-mades never go out of fashion.
     Other kind gifts included a pair of indestructible and eternally right shoes from Peter Yapp. For some unknown reason these
     shoes, although made on Lady Grizel’s own last and all that, were never entirely comfortable, and old Yapp could never improve
     their fit. They were never entirely comfortable on Mrs Brock’s feet either, but she wore them with persistence and courage
     until at last they became docile friends.
    A strange thing about those shoes was the way in which, when she was wearing them, Mrs Brock, who was a heavy treader by nature,
     planted her feet and walked