The children could not understand why this aunt and uncle were allowed to interfere with everything as they did: and they quite made up their minds that when they were grown up they would never allow an aunt or an uncle to cross their doorsteps. They never thought—poor, dear little things—that some day they would grow up to be aunts and uncles in their turn, or, at least, one of each.
It was very hot in London that year: the pavement was like hot pie, and the asphalt was like hot pudding, and there was a curious wind that collected dust and straw and dirty paper, and then got tired of its collection, and threw it away in respectable people’s areas and front gardens. The blind in the nursery had never been fixed up since the day when the children took it down to make a drop-scene for a play they were going to write and never did. So the hot afternoon sun came burning in through the window, and the children got hotter and hotter, and crosser and crosser, till at last Selim slapped Thomasina’s arms till she cried, and Thomasina kicked Selim’s legs till he screamed.
Then they sat down in different corners of the nursery and cried, and called each other names, and said they wished they were dead. This is very naughty indeed, as, of course, you know; but you must remember how hot it was.
When they had called each other all the names they could think of, Thomasina said, suddenly, “All right, Silly,” (that was Selim’s pet name)—“cheer up.”
“It’s too hot to cheer up,” said Selim, gloomily.
“We’ve been very naughty,” said Thomasina, rubbing her eyes with the paint rag, “but it’s all the heat. I heard Aunt Selina telling mother the weather wore her nerves to fiddle-strings. That just meant she was cross.”
“Then it’s not _our_ fault,” said Selim. “People say be good and you’ll be happy. Uncle Reggy says, ‘Be happy, and perhaps you’ll be good.’ _I_ could be good if I was happy.”
“What _would_ make you happy?” said a thick, wheezy voice from the toy cupboard, and out rolled the big green and red india-rubber ball that Aunt Emma had sent them last week. They had not played with it much, because the garden was so hot and sunny—and when they wanted to play with it in the street, on the shady side, Aunt Selina had said it was not like respectable children, so they weren’t allowed.