Boys and Girls
Boys against girls was fair at Gateshead. John was so large that he outnumbered the three of us, and so it seemed just that we should be able to form our own team, while he worked alone. He certainly did not mind. He boasted about it, although he seldom won at races.
However, one overcast afternoon on the moors, girls against boys turned into something else entirely. As always, Eliza and Georgiana hardly paid me any attention, and so these games nearly always became a sibling matter instead of including miserable Jane. Usually John would forget me, too.
Not on this day, because for the first time, boys against girls became Eliza and Georgy versus Jane and John, and I hardly know how that arrangement happened. John and I hate each other more than a hen and a fox and he is twice as hungry, but I just as cunning as he. As the game of hiding developed, John did not announce my presence behind the old oak. And I did not retort in response to his steady movement for me, toward me.
John was interested in me. He liked anything nasty and vile, and to Aunt Reed, I was just that.
I was not interested in John. He was a loathsome, sinful thing, and yet was extremely boring, always yawning and complaining that he was tired or hurt or offended by some bloody thing I'd uttered at him. Great hulk of a boy with piercing eyes and grinning teeth and a tongue between his lips like a wolfhound.
Except not this day, because it was John and Jane versus Eliza and Georgiana, who (thank God) forgot us behind the old oak and busied themselves with buttercups and giggles.
Only Hell knows how they would have reacted to our very tasteless interpretation of being a team.
fin
