I think you had better play for a little and leave your lessons till
later."

Harvey retreated to the library and spent some thirty or forty minutes in
wondering whether it would be possible to compile a history, for use in
elementary schools, in which there should be no prominent mention of
battles, massacres, murderous intrigues, and violent deaths. The York
and Lancaster period and the Napoleonic era would, he admitted to
himself, present considerable difficulties, and the Thirty Years' War
would entail something of a gap if you left it out altogether. Still, it
would be something gained if, at a highly impressionable age, children
could be got to fix their attention on the invention of calico printing
instead of the Spanish Armada or the Battle of Waterloo.

It was time, he thought, to go back to the boys' room, and see how they
were getting on with their peace toys. As he stood outside the door he
could hear Eric's voice raised in command; Bertie chimed in now and again
with a helpful suggestion.

"That is Louis the Fourteenth," Eric was saying, "that one in
knee-breeches, that Uncle said invented Sunday schools. It isn't a bit
like him, but it'll have to do."

"We'll give him a purple coat from my paintbox by and by," said Bertie.

"Yes, an' red heels. That is Madame de Maintenon, that one he called
Mrs. Hemans. She begs Louis not to go on this expedition, but he turns a
deaf ear. He takes Marshal Saxe with him, and we must pretend that they
have thousands of men with them. The watchword is _Qui vive_? and the
answer is _L'etat c'est moi_--that was one of his favourite remarks, you