of his curriculum, on our knuckles or our heads?

Uncle Thomas was at the bottom of it. This was not the first
mine he had exploded under our bows. In his favourite pursuit of
fads he had passed in turn from Psychical Research to the White
Rose and thence to a Children's Hospital, and we were being daily
inundated with leaflets headed by a woodcut depicting Little
Annie (of Poplar) sitting up in her little white cot, surrounded
by the toys of the nice, kind, rich children. The idea caught on
with the Olympians, always open to sentiment of a treacly,
woodcut order; and accordingly Charlotte, on entering one day
dishevelled and panting, having been pursued by yelling Redskins
up to the very threshold of our peaceful home, was curtly
informed that her French lessons would begin on Monday, that she
was henceforth to cease all pretence of being a trapper or a
Redskin on utterly inadequate grounds, and moreover that the
whole of her toys were at that moment being finally packed up in
a box, for despatch to London, to gladden the lives and bring
light into the eyes of London waifs and Poplar Annies.

Naturally enough, perhaps, we others received no official
intimation of this grave cession of territory. We were not
supposed to be interested. Harold had long ago been promoted to
a knife--a recognized, birthday knife. As for me, it was known
that I was already given over, heart and soul, to lawless
abandoned catapults--catapults which were confiscated weekly for
reasons of international complications, but with which Edward
kept me steadily supplied, his school having a fine old tradition
for excellence in their manufacture. Therefore no one was
supposed to be really affected but Charlotte, and even she