Description
JIMBO
CHAPTER I
“RABBITS”
Jimbo’s governess ought to have known better–but she didn’t. If she
had, Jimbo would never have met with the adventures that subsequently
came to him. Thus, in a roundabout sort of way, the child ought to have
been thankful to the governess; and perhaps, in a roundabout sort of
way, he was. But that comes at the far end of the story, and is doubtful
at best; and in the meanwhile the child had gone through his suffering,
and the governess had in some measure expiated her fault; so that at
this stage it is only necessary to note that the whole business began
because the Empty House happened to be really an Empty House–not the
one Jimbo’s family lived in, but another of which more will be known in
due course.
Jimbo’s father was a retired Colonel, who had married late in life, and
now lived all the year round in the country; and Jimbo was the youngest
child but one. The Colonel, lean in body as he was sincere in mind, an
excellent soldier but a poor diplomatist, loved dogs, horses, guns and
riding-whips. He also really understood them. His neighbours, had they
been asked, would have called him hard-headed, and so far as a
soft-hearted man may deserve the title, he probably was. He rode two
horses a day to hounds with the best of them, and the stiffer the
country the better he liked it. Besides his guns, dogs and horses, he
was also very fond of his children.