[Illustration: B.-P. reflecting on the After-deck of the _Pearl_]

A favourite holiday haunt was Tunbridge Wells, where Ste's grandfather
owned a spacious and a fair demesne. Here, with miles of wood for
exploration, brothers and sister were in their element. They would
climb into the highest chestnut trees in the woods, taking up hampers
and hay for the construction of nests, and at that exalted altitude
play all manner of wild and romantic games. And yet they would also
take up books into those cool branches and do lessons! Of Ste at this
period his governess remarks, "It gave him great pleasure to enter a
new rule in arithmetic"--an illuminative sentence, in which one sees
the governess as well as the child.

It was here in Tunbridge Wells that Ste, with little Baden, now
Guardsman and inventor of war-kites, spent laborious days in
constructing a really serviceable dam in the river, digging there a
deep hole in order to make themselves a luxurious bathing-place. From
early infancy they had been taught to do for themselves. Master B.-P.
could dress and undress himself before he was three years old, and at
three he could speak tolerably well in German as well as English. The
children were encouraged to get knowledge as some other children are
encouraged to get bumptiousness; their parents delighted, and showed
the children their delight, whenever a child did something sensible
and clever; there was no unintelligent admiration of precocity.

The boys dug their own gardens, and from five years of age each child
kept a most careful book of his expenditure by double entry. Their
pennies went chiefly in books and presents, and omnibuses for long
excursions out of London. There was no prohibition as to sweets, but