CHAPTER IV

BIM ROCHESTER


I

This is the story of Bim Rochester's first Odyssey. It is a story that
has Bim himself for the only proof of its veracity, but he has never, by
a shadow of a word, faltered in his account of it, and has remained so
unamazed at some of the strange aspects in it that it seems almost an
impertinence that we ourselves should show any wonder. Benjamin (Bim)
Rochester was probably the happiest little boy in March Square, and he
was happy in spite of quite a number of disadvantages.

A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the
largest house in March Square--the large grey one at the corner by Lent
Street--and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs.
Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most
untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an
English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her
hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her
boots unbuttoned. She rushed through life with an amazing shattering
vigour, bearing children, flinging them into an already overcrowded
nursery, rushing out to parties, filling the house with crowds of
friends, acquaintances, strangers, laughing, chattering, singing, never
out of temper, never serious, never, for a moment, to be depended on.
Her husband, a grave, ball-faced man, spent most of his days in the City