Free Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim Page A

this ship was pleasant. You lay in a deck-chair all day
long, staring at the blue sky and blue sea that enclosed you as if
you were living in the middle of a jewel, and tried not to
remember--oh, there were heaps of things it was best not to
remember; and when the rail of the ship moved up across the horizon
too far into the sky, or moved down across it and showed too much
water, you just shut your eyes and then it didn't matter; and
the sun shone warm and steady on your face, and the wind tickled
the tassel on the top of your German-knitted cap, and Mr. Twist
came and read aloud to you, which sent you to sleep quicker than
anything you had ever known.
    The book he read out of and carried about with him his pocket
was called "Masterpieces You Must Master," and was an
American collection of English poetry, professing in its preface to
be a Short Cut to Culture; and he would read with what at that
time, it being new to them, seemed to the twins a strange exotic
pronunciation, Wordsworth's "Ode to Dooty," and the
effect was as if someone should dig a majestic Gregorian psalm in
its ribs, and make it leap and giggle.
    Anna-Rose, who had no reason to shut her eyes, for she
didn't mind what the ship's rail did with the horizon,
opened them very round when first Mr. Twist started on his
Masterpieces. She was used to hearing them read by her mother in
the adorable husky voice that sent such thrills through one, but
she listened with the courtesy and final gratitude due to the
efforts to entertain her of so amiable a friend, and only the
roundness of her eyes showed her astonishment at this waltzing
round, as it appeared to her, of Mr. Twist with the Stern Daughter
of the Voice of God. He also read "Lycidas" to her, that
same "Lycidas" Uncle Arthur took for a Derby winner, and
only Anna-Rose's politeness enabled her to refrain from
stopping up her ears. As it was, she fidgeted to the point of
having to explain, on Mr. Twist's pausing to gaze at her
questioningly through the smoke-coloured spectacles he wore on
deck, which made him look so like a gigantic dragon-fly, that it
was because her deck-chair was so very much harder than she
was.
    Anna-Felicitas, who considered that, if these things were
short-cuts to anywhere, seeing she knew them all by heart she must
have long ago got there, snoozed complacently. Sometimes for a few
moments she would drop off really to sleep, and then her mouth
would fall open, which worried Anna-Rose, who couldn't bear her
to look even for a moment less beautiful than she knew she was, so
that she fidgeted more than ever, unable, pinned down by politeness
and the culture being administered, to make her shut her mouth and
look beautiful again by taking and shaking her. Also Anna-Felicitas
had a trick of waking up suddenly and forgetting to be polite, as
one does when first one wakes up and hasn't had time to
remember one is a lady. "To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures
noo," Mr. Twist would finish, for instance, with a sort of
gulp of satisfaction at having swallowed yet another solid slab of
culture; and Anna-Felicitas, returning suddenly to consciousness,
would murmur, with her eyes still shut and her head lolling limply,
things like, "After all, it
does
rhyme with blue. I wonder why, then, one still
doesn't like it."
    Then Mr. Twist would turn his spectacles towards her in mild
inquiry, and Anna-Rose, as always, would rush in and elaborately
explain what Anna-Felicitas meant, which was so remote from
anything resembling what she had said that Mr. Twist looked more
mildly inquiring than ever.
    Usually Anna-Felicitas didn't contradict Anna-Rose, being
too sleepy or too lazy, but sometimes she did, and then Anna-Rose
got angry, and would get what the Germans call a red head and look
at Anna-Felicitas very severely and say things, and Mr. Twist would
close his book and watch with that alert, cocked-up-ear look of a
sympathetic and highly interested terrier; but sooner or later the
ship would always give a