*Hello, reader! I've broken down Chapter 1 into 2 parts because it is really long. I've also edited some parts.

“No, Marcil; that is not the proper way to eat the dish.”

Marcil glanced upwards, peering through strands of spindly black hair. His aged tutor haunted a chair across the polished dining table, his fork posed complacently against the mashed potatoes. Somewhere above, a rafter groaned achingly. In the kitchen nearby, the gas stove roared to life, a knife clashed against a cutting board. Even the patterned wallpaper loomed down upon them, a murky blue as the sky would seem through gloomy morning fog. The boy twiddled with his own fork and prodded at his potatoes with a peculiar delicacy.

“I’m not eating a dish. I am eating potatoes that have been smashed and mashed and smashed again,” said the boy. “That is why they are called, ‘mashed potatoes.’ A dish is what the potatoes, which have been very finely mashed, are placed upon. Why ever would I eat a circular piece of polished ceramic?”

Marcil paused. “Well, I suppose I am eating a dish. Not the, ‘circular piece of ceramic in which food is placed on top of,’ but the one that is, ‘an item of food,’ is that right?”

The old, gray-haired tutor looked a bit puzzled. “Indeed,” he said. “Well, anyhow, that is not the proper way to eat the dish.”

“Oh, I wasn’t eating it just then,” said Marcil. “I was drawing you, Mr. Kudwick, with your fancy cream gloves and your gray coat. It’s a fine representation of you. Would you like to see?”

            “No, but thank you for offering. Also, please do not draw in your food. It is not proper,” he said wearily and dabbed his lips with a satin napkin. Mr. Kudwick swept his dull blue eyes across the remains of his lunch. He then rang a petite silver bell on the table.

            Almost instantaneously, a young maid no older than Marcil entered the spacious dining room through a door that was the same color and pattern as the white wallpaper, designed to hide the entryway from view.

            “I would like another serving of buttered corn, and clear the plate, too,” said the tutor.

            “Yes, sir.”

            Marcil moaned softly in his chair at first as he watched the maid lift the heavy ceramic plate from the table. Then he groaned a bit louder, feeling a horrible feeling bubble in his head.

            “You—you can’t do that, Mr. Kudwick! You can’t, you can’t, you can’t, can’t, can’t!” he gasped, clutching his stomach. “You’ve still got some mashed potato on your plate; it’s screaming, ‘I’m a good potato, and you’re wasting me! You’re wasting me! I lived and grew in the nice dirt until you picked me and peeled me and smashed me to bits and cooked me and put me on the ceramic type of, ‘dish,’ not the, ‘item of food,’ one, and now you won’t eat me! Eat me, I’m a good potato!’” The boy covered his face with his hands in despair.

            Mr. Kudwick looked embarrassed. He harrumphed and gave Marcil a stony glare.

            The maid bowed her head slightly and gave Marcil a sympathetic glance. Then she left hurriedly.

            The tutor gave Marcil a stern look. A very, very stern look.

            “What have I taught you, Marcil? You do not throw tantrums when you get angry. What are you supposed to do?”

            “‘Don’t scream, don’t shout, don’t run all about. Don’t bang the table with your fist--which I’ve never done; I don’t like loud noises, you know—and don’t start ranting. Or complaining. Or flipping your sleeve cuffs inward and outward or biting on the end of your fork because only mice do so to the walls,’” he recited from memory.

            “Hot corn with butter for you, sir,” said a different maid as she entered the dining room and laid the sizzling corn on the table.

            “Hot as in, ‘spicy,’ or hot as in, ‘very warm?’” asked Marcil.

            “Hot as in, ‘it’s ready to eat,’ sir,” said the maid and left.

            “Oh dear,” said Marcil. “I never saw that definition in the dictionary for, ‘hot.’”

            The old tutor chuckled. “She was just using an expression. Now please finish your lunch. Afterward, I shall give you a lesson on writing, so do eat with haste so that we may begin the lesson.”

~

Marcil thought most of the books in the manor’s spacious library were quite dull.

            Some books were about manners, which, try as he might to stay conscious, would quickly lull him to sleep. Some were about how to add up numbers and divide them and add them up again and break them apart, which he also found quite pointless and boring.

            Perhaps the books he found most interesting were the series of encyclopedias. It was as if someone had stuffed the whole world and the entire universe into a bookshelf, consisting of exactly two hundred eighty five volumes (he had counted). And the entire universe is about as interesting as this world could ever get. He would read an encyclopedia when he got bored from time to time, and he found the facts about cumulus clouds and red squirrels more interesting than how to properly eat bread or calculate numbers.

            But most of all, he found all of his lessons on grammar, spelling, figurative language, figurative speech, literary devices, and literature exceedingly tiresome.

            “Have you finished reading your novel?” asked Mr. Kudwick, sitting at one of the many dark, wooden desks in the library.

            “Yes, and I think that it is excruciatingly dull,” replied the boy as he opened The Life of the Wealthy Lady. “It doesn’t have much plot and it’s all about what this wealthy lady eats for breakfast, eats for lunch, drinks for tea, feasts for dinner, and how she scolds the laundry maid when she washes the dark colored clothing with the light colored ones. It’s all so ordinary and so bland. I know all of this already; it’s just like life on the manor.”

            “It is not the plot that matters; we are currently analyzing the figurative language used in this piece of literature. Anyway, it is a classic, so you must read it.”

            “Why?”

            “Well, it… um…it educates you.”

            “On what? Scolding the people who wash my clothes? That doesn’t sound very nice to me. It’s rather rude, actually.”

            Mr. Kudwick heaved a heavy sigh. His shoulders rose, his chest puffed like a cold cardinal in winter, his nostrils flared like two immense abysses. Then as he exhaled, Marcil felt a horrendously warm gale blowing from across the table, almost like the wind before a summer rain during the monsoon season.

            “Let us not go further into this discussion at the moment and get started on your written report.”

            “Yes, sir.” Marcil picked up his pen and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper from the wooden paper basket on the desk.

            Just then, John, the manservant of the manor, arrived at the tall library doors. He was a tall, portly man who carried about him an air of hurried nervousness; his gray, watery eyes twitched spasmodically, making him seem a bit delirious and awaiting the arrival of an unknown assailant. His large hands were clasped in front of his chest, by his heart, as if to keep a bullet from ever reaching it.

            “Sir, um, Lord Theodore wishes you to come down to the main entrance to greet his honored sister-in-law and family, sir,” John managed to stammer, wringing his silk-gloved hands nervously.

            “Thank you for the announcement, John,” said Marcil, glad to be rid of another torturous essay. “I shall greet my good Aunt Henrietta and Uncle Walden.”