Here, with miles of wood for exploration, brothers and sister were in their element.

They would climb into the highest chestnut trees in the woods, taking up hampers and hay for the construction of nests, and at that exalted altitude play all manner of wild and romantic games.

And yet they would also take up books into those cool branches and do lessons! Of Ste at this period his governess remarks, "It gave him great pleasure to enter a new rule in arithmetic"-- an illuminative sentence, in which one sees the governess as well as the child.
It was here in Tunbridge Wells that Ste, with little Baden, now Guardsman and inventor of war-kites, spent laborious days in constructing a really serviceable dam in the river, digging there a deep hole in order to make themselves a luxurious bathing-place.

From early infancy they had been taught to do for themselves.

Master B.-P.
could dress and undress himself before he was three years old, and at three he could speak tolerably well in German as well as English.