Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a Story

No. 1. May, 1919

THE BEGUILER
OR
THE INVALID’S FRIEND

A Miscellany

COMPILED BY
EVANGELINE BARRANCE

ASSISTED BY A BUNCH OF FLOWERS

PEOPLE WHO REALLY DESERVE THE O.B.E.

I. COOK

If ever there was a heroine in real life it is Cook. She has to be all the time in the kitchen even when the sun shines and the birds are singing. The kitchen must be hot or the things wouldn’t be properly done for dinner.

She is always cooking things for other people and she doesn’t get anything to eat till they have finished, although of course she can taste as she goes along. This is a delicious thing to do, and when she is in a good humour she lets us dip our fingers in, but usually she says “Don’t stop here hindering me.”

She never goes out except to see if there is another egg or to pick mint or parsley or to talk to the butcher’s boy, who is terrified of her. Sometimes she has to catch a chicken and kill it and afterwards she has to pluck it.

Our cook is very fat and when she goes upstairs she holds her side and pants. On Sundays she doesn’t go to Church but to Chapel and she wears very bright colours. She had a lover once but he died. His portrait is in her bedroom with his funeral card under it. She says that her troth is in the tomb with him and never can she marry another. She also says that the talk about cooks and policemen having a natural attraction for each other is nonsense.

Her masterpieces are apple charlotte, bread-and-butter pudding, and Lancashire hot pot. She also makes delicious stews, which are better than other cooks’, mother says, because she fries the vegetables first.

Her name is Gladys Mary but we call her Cook. She says that after a certain age, cooks have the right to be called Mrs., but that she is a very long way from that age herself.

We are all horribly afraid that she will give notice, because a new one would be so hard to get. There is nothing we wouldn’t do for her. She could cook as badly as she liked and no one would dare to say anything. But she cooks beautifully.

She truly deserves the O.B.E.

“Rose”

HISTORICAL RHYMES

I. QUEEN ELIZABETH AND SIR WALTER RALEIGH

RULES AS TO BIRTHDAYS
FOR THE BENEFIT OF PARENTS

The person whose birthday it happens to be should be allowed to get up when they choose. There should be sausages for breakfast.

It seems hardly necessary to point out that there should be no lessons, and no walk.

Lunch should be chosen by the birthday person.

In choosing birthday presents people should remember that the whole point of a present is that it is an extra. Clothes should never be given for birthday presents, because one has to have clothes and it is not at all exciting to be given a pair of stockings. Handkerchiefs do not count as clothes because they are pretty.

Some really good entertainment should be arranged for the afternoon. If in London a matinée is suggested, followed by tea at Rumpelmayer’s. Bedtime should come at least two hours later than usual. If only these few simple rules could be committed to memory by those in authority what completely satisfactory occasions birthdays would be.

“Chrysanthemum”

A FABLE

There was once a pine wood on the slope of a hill, and in the middle of the wood was a lovely silver birch which could not grow as it should because the pine trees were so closely packed about it.

Instead of being sorry for it, the pine trees were insulting.

“What are you doing here anyway?” they said. “You weren’t invited. This is a pine wood. Why aren’t you out there on the common, among the brake fern, with all the others of your finicking useless tribe? Who wants silver birches? They do no good in the world.” And so on.

The silver birch, who was a perfect lady, made no reply.

And then a war came and it was necessary to get timber for all kinds of purposes, and all over the country the woods were cut down, among them this pine wood, for pine is very useful for planks for building huts.

The men came with their axes and felled tree after tree, but when they reached the silver birch they said, “We’ll leave this—it’s no good for timber, and when all these others are gone it will have a chance.”

And so it was left, and soon it stood all alone and very beautiful, surrounded by the dead bodies of the unkind pine trees, absolute queen of the hill.

Being a perfect lady it still said nothing to them, nor had it even smiled as they tottered and fell.

The moral is that every one’s good time may come.

“Carnation”

STRAY THOUGHTS ON PARENTS

Parents are always saying that they once were children too, but they give no signs of it.

It is a peculiarity of parents that they always want you to change your boots.

Parents have several set forms of speech, of which “You seem to think I’m made of money” is one, and “I never did that when I was your age” is another. They also wonder “What the world is coming to.”

Parents live in houses, usually in the best rooms. They can’t bear doors either to be left open or shut with a bang.

A funny thing about parents is that they can find interesting reading in newspapers.

“Tulipe Noire”

CORRESPONDENCE

Dear Editor,—You did me the honour to ask me to contribute to your magazine, but as I am no writer I can send you nothing of my own. But I have arranged for a very nice piece of nonsense to be copied out for you. It was written by a mathematician and philosopher named W. K. Clifford and was published years ago but seems now to be forgotten. It was Mrs. W. K. Clifford who wrote a delightful book for children called The Getting-well of Dorothy and a delightful book for grown-ups called Aunt Anne. Wishing every success for The Beguiler in its most admirable campaign,—I am, yours faithfully,

Richard Haven

His mark X

THE GIANT’S SHOES
BY W. K. CLIFFORD

Once upon a time there was a large giant who lived in a small castle: at least, he didn’t all of him live there, but he managed things in this wise. From his earliest youth up his legs had been of a surreptitiously small size, unsuited to the rest of his body: so he sat upon the south-west wall of the castle with his legs inside, and his right foot came out of the east gate, and his left foot out of the north gate, while his gloomy but spacious coat-tails covered up the south and west gates; and in this way the castle was defended against all comers, and was deemed impregnable by the military authorities. This, however, as we shall soon see, was not the case, for the giant’s boots were inside as well as his legs: but as he had neglected to put them on in the giddy days of his youth, he was never afterwards able to do so, because there was not enough room. And in this bootless but compact manner he passed his time.

The giant slept for three weeks at a time and two days after he woke his breakfast was brought to him, consisting of bright brown horses sprinkled on his bread and butter. Besides his boots the giant had a pair of shoes, and in one of them his wife lived when she was at home: on other occasions she lived in the other shoe. She was a sensible practical kind of woman, with two wooden legs and a clothes-horse, but in other respects not rich. The wooden legs were kept pointed at the ends, in order that if the giant were dissatisfied with his breakfast he might pick up any stray people that were within reach, using his wife as a fork. This annoyed the inhabitants of the district, so they built their church in a south-westerly direction from the castle, behind the giant’s back, that he might not be able to pick them up as they went in. But those who stayed outside to play pitch-and-toss were exposed to great danger and sufferings.

Now, in the village there were two brothers of altogether different tastes and dispositions, and talents and peculiarities and accomplishments, and in this way they were discovered not to be the same person. The elder of them was most marvellously good at singing and could sing the Old Hundredth an old hundred times without stopping. Whenever he did this he stood on one leg and tied the other round his neck to avoid catching cold and spoiling his voice; but the neighbours fled. And he was also a rare hand at making guava dumplings out of three cats and a shoehorn, which is an accomplishment seldom met with. But his brother was a more meagre magnanimous person, and his chief accomplishment was to eat a wagon-load of hay overnight, and wake up thatched in the morning.

The whole interest of this story depends upon the fact that the giant’s wife’s clothes-horse broke in consequence of a sudden thaw, being made of organ pipes. So she took off her wooden legs and stuck them in the ground, tying a string from the top of one to the top of the other, and hung out her clothes to dry on that. Now this was astutely remarked by the two brothers, who therefore went up in front of the giant after he had his breakfast. The giant called out “Fork! fork!” but his wife, trembling, hid herself in the more recondite toe of the second shoe. Then the singing brother began to sing: but he had not taken into account the pious disposition of the giant, who instantly joined in the psalm, and this caused the singing brother to burst his head off, but, as it was tied by the leg, he did not lose it altogether.

But the other brother, being well thatched on account of the quantity of hay he had eaten overnight, lay down between the great toe of the giant, and the next, and wriggled. So the giant, being unable to bear tickling in the feet, kicked out in an orthopodal manner: whereupon the castle broke and he fell backwards, and was impaled upon the sharp steeple of the church. So they put a label on him on which was written “Nupides Giganteus.”

That’s all.

End of Number 1 of
The Beguiler; or The Invalid’s Friend.