Charles and Mary lived their childish days over again in these stories. They forgot that as children they had not seen things in the same light. They forgot (those days had been short for them) that children, however precocious, are not concerned with their own thought-process, but with life and movement and adventure. And so their stories are really essays about children: essays that let the grown-up reader into some of the little people’s secrets. If it were possible for children to see themselves with the eyes of men and women, then _Mrs. Leicester’s School_ might be to them what the _Essays of Elia_ are to their parents. As it is, no child could appreciate the irony of innocence which runs through the book like a refrain.