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diff --git a/75229-0.txt b/75229-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fafbdce --- /dev/null +++ b/75229-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5970 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75229 *** + + + + + +[Illustration: THE FLYING CARPET] + + + + +[Illustration] + + THE + FLYING CARPET + + + Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY + CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS + + Printed in the United States of America + +[Illustration: [Colophon]] + + + + + LIST OF THOSE WHO HAVE WOVEN THIS + FLYING CARPET + +[Illustration] + + + PAGE + _THOMAS HARDY_ + _A POPULAR PERSONAGE AT HOME_ 9 + + _ADELAIDE PHILLPOTTS_ + _THOMAS HENRY TITT_ 11 + _THEOPHANIA_ 160 + + _JOHN LEA_ + _THE TWO SAILORS_ 108 + _THE SIMPLE WAY_ 198 + + _ALFRED NOYES_ + _INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE_ 16 + + _DESMOND MACCARTHY_ + _I WISH I WERE A DOG_ 18 + + _A. A. MILNE_ + _WHEN WE WERE VERY, VERY YOUNG_ 32 + + _DAVID CECIL_ + _THE SHADOW LAND_ 35 + + _CYNTHIA ASQUITH_ + _THE BARGAIN SHOP_ 38 + _OLAF THE FAIR AND OLAF THE DARK_ 184 + + _HENRY NEWBOLT_ + _THE JOYOUS BALLAD OF THE PARSON AND THE BADGER_ 54 + _VICE-VERSA: ANY FATHER TO ANY DAUGHTER_ 118 + _SERMON TIME_ 183 + _FINIS_ 200 + + _A. PEMBURY_ + _THE SPARK_ 158 + _THE RHYME OF CAPTAIN GALE_ 182 + + _G. K. CHESTERTON_ + _TO ENID_ 57 + + _CHARLES WHIBLEY_ + _SCENES IN THE LIFE OF A PRINCESS_ 60 + + _J. M. BARRIE_ + _NEIL AND TINTINNABULUM_ 65 + + _HERBERT ASQUITH_ + _STORIES_ 15 + _THE DREAM_ 96 + _EGGS_ 107 + + _ELIZABETH LOWNDES_ + _MR. SNOOGLES_ 99 + + _HUGH LOFTING_ + _DR. DOLITTLE MEETS A LONDONER IN PARIS_ 110 + + _MARGARET KENNEDY_ + _KITTEEN_ 120 + + _CLEMENCE DANE_ + _GILBERT_ 122 + + _HILAIRE BELLOC_ + _JACK AND HIS PONY, TOM_ 129 + _TOM AND HIS PONY, JACK_ 131 + + _WALTER DE LA MARE_ + _PIGTAILS, LTD._ 133 + + _SIR WALTER RALEIGH_ + _THE PERFECT HOST_ 157 + + _EDWARD MARSH_ + _THE WEASEL IN THE STOREROOM_ 167 + + _W. H. DAVIES_ + _LOVE THE JEALOUS_ 168 + + _DENIS MACKAIL_ + _THE MAGIC MEDICINE_ 170 + + + + + List of those who have helped to adorn the + Flying Carpet + +[Illustration] + + + _MABEL LUCIE ATTWELL_ + _J. R. C. BODLEY_ + _L. R. BRIGHTWELL_ + _H. M. BROCK_ + _HAROLD EARNSHAW_ + _DAPHNE JERROLD_ + _E. BARNARD LINTOTT_ + _HUGH LOFTING_ + _GEORGE MORROW_ + _SUSAN PEARSE_ + _T. HEATH ROBINSON_ + _ERNEST H. SHEPARD_ + _DUDLEY TENNANT_ + _A. H. WATSON_ + + + + +[Illustration] + + A POPULAR PERSONAGE AT HOME + + BY THOMAS HARDY + + + “I live here: ‘Wessex’ is my name, + I am a dog known rather well: + I guard the house; but how that came + To be my lot I cannot tell. + + “With a leap and a heart elate I go, + At the end of an hour’s expectancy, + To take a walk of a mile or so, + With the folk who share the house with me. + + “Along the path amid the grass + I sniff, and find out rarest smells + For rolling over as I pass + The open fields towards the dells. + + “No doubt I shall always cross this sill, + And turn the corner, and stand steady, + Gazing back for my mistress till + She reaches where I have run already. + + “And that this meadow with its brook, + And bulrush, just as it appears + As I plunge past with hasty look, + Will stay the same a thousand years.” + + Thus “Wessex.” Yet a dubious ray + At times informs his steadfast eye, + Just for a trice, as though to say: + “Will these things, after all, go by?” + +[Illustration] + + + + + Thomas Henry Titt + +[Illustration] + + ADELAIDE PHILLPOTTS + + +In the South West of London stands a cathedral, which, from outside, +looks like a child’s castle of bricks. But when you go inside you see +nothing at first but a large emptiness—a ceiling somewhere up in the +clouds supported by huge marble columns. There is always a smell of +incense in the air, and there is a little painted figure before which, +night and day, burn three rows of candles. Sometimes, on Saints’ Days, +other rows of candles are lighted before other painted figures—St. +Andrew, St. Patrick, St. George—making centres of bright light in the +dimness of the great interior. + +Near this cathedral are blocks of tenement buildings where families +dwell, one on top of the other, like books in a bookcase. These +buildings are full of children: boys and girls and babies. + +On the top floor of one of these blocks lived Thomas Henry Titt, aged +twelve. Thomas Henry’s father kept a shop round the corner where you saw +sausages and onions frying in the window. His mother was dead. He had an +elder sister who mended his clothes and helped their father in the shop. +Thomas was known as Tom-Tit; and he looked rather like a bird, for he +had thin arms and legs, sharp little eyes, a crest of bright hair, and a +pointed nose. + +Like every imaginative child, Tom-Tit had a secret: a passion for the +sea, which he had never seen. His ocean was in his mind’s eye, and he +hoped as no one ever hoped before that one day he might behold the +reality of his dream. In the darkness of night Tom-Tit, alone in his +attic, lying awake on his mattress, gazed out upon a heaving +cornflower-blue coloured ocean—as blue as the flowers which the woman +sold at the end of his street. And this ocean was full of shining +fishes. There was no land in sight—ever. + +Thomas Henry Titt loved the candles that burned before the painted +figure in the cathedral. In the winter, when he was small, he had often +held his little frozen hands to the warmth of them, when nobody was +looking. But as he grew older the candles began to have for him a deeper +significance. During evening service he would creep into a corner by one +of the pillars, listening to the organ and watching the kneeling people +in the distance near the shining altar. Then, when the music stopped and +the people were gone, he would steal out and patter along to the rows of +candles. There his heart would light up, even as they, and he would +thrill with a strange, unaccountable happiness. + +Gradually Tom-Tit began to connect these candles with his desire for the +sea. The two facts became one in his mind. It was as if, by the light of +the former, he could see the blue waves of the other. + +Underneath the rows of burning candles was a rack full of new ones. Tom +often saw people drop a coin into a box, take one, fix it upon a spike +among the rest, and light it. And a longing overcame him to possess for +his own one of these new candles. Perhaps, at the bottom of his mind, +was the idea that if he took it home and lighted it, it would bring him +nearer to his ultimate ambition—to see the sea. He determined to realise +his desire. + +Then came a winter day when Tom-Tit’s head ached, shivers ran up and +down his spine, and he felt very ill. Therefore his sister bade him stay +in bed, and he did so until she had left the house with her father. But +then, despite his fever, the craving to possess that candle overcame +obedience. So, gripping a penny, he rose, staggered downstairs, and out +into the road. The cold air cooled his body and numbed his pains. He +slipped unnoticed into the cathedral and leaned for a moment against the +wall, for his head was swimming and he could not see. Then he recovered, +and his eyes sparkled as he beheld the candles flickering like golden +flowers before the wooden figure at the end of the aisle. The +surrounding air was a golden haze. The smell of incense was sweet. + +He tottered to the box of new candles, dropped in his penny, and took +one. Then he dragged himself home, feeling worse and worse at every +step, but gloriously glad within, because of the candle in his pocket. + +All day he lay on his bed, too ill to sit up, nursing his treasure. “I +shall be well to-night,” he thought, “and when it’s dark I’ll light it.” + +In the evening his father and sister returned, found him in a state of +high fever, and sent for the doctor. He, when he saw Tom-Tit, said that +he would come back in the morning and remove him to the hospital if he +were not better. + +He gave Tom a sleeping draught before he left. + +When his father and sister had gone to bed, Thomas Henry, feeling drowsy +and less hurt with pain, pulled out his candle half melted already by +the heat of his hands, lit it, and set it on a chair by his side. Then +he lay gazing at it, until the whole world was but a golden flame with a +blue root. + +Then a wonderful thing happened. He did not see the candle any more. His +first idea was that the wind must have blown it out, for a great wind +was blowing. Where could he be? He opened his eyes, which must have been +closed, and lo! he was in a little wooden boat on a cornflower-blue sea! +The boat was rocking from side to side like the baby’s cradle on the +floor below—a mechanical rock, rock, rock, rock, from side to side. He +scooped up a handful of the sea, and, just as he had expected, it was +bright blue. He could see blue shining fishes swimming round the boat, +so he caught them in his fingers where they wriggled about and made blue +reflections until he threw them back again into the blue water. + +And all the time, though he could not see it, the candle was burning at +his side—burning lower, and lower, and lower. + +From horizon to horizon the cobalt ocean stretched around him—not a +speck of land anywhere. He was perfectly happy there staring down +through the blue fathoms and feeling the wind blow. He had never been so +happy in his life before. + +Then the candle went out. + +In the morning they found a little pool of grease on the chair—and +Tom-Tit was dead. + +But this is not really a sad story, because Thomas Henry did what many +thousands of people never do, even though they live to be a hundred and +three—he realised his ambition. He saw the sea. And he was not +disillusioned; for the sea that he saw was just as beautiful as the sea +which he imagined: the reality matched the dream. + + + + + Stories + + HERBERT ASQUITH + + + When lights are out and Pat’s in bed, + He tells a story from his head + Of men who fight by sea and land + With cutlasses in either hand. + Who make their mouths into a sheath + And sharpen dirks upon their teeth; + And schooners heeling to the breeze + That blows across the coral seas, + With kegs of rum and bars of gold + And corpses rolling in the hold. + Then far below the dining-room + Pours out its voices: through the gloom + Borne on tobacco-laden air + The roar of talk comes up the stair, + But where are now the coral seas + And where is Pat? Lost on the breeze + With streaming flag the schooner fades + And takes her captain to the shades. + + + + + Invitation to the Voyage + + (_A New Version_) + + ALFRED NOYES + + + A rambling cherry-petalled stream; + A bridge of pale bamboo; + A path that seemed a twisted dream + Where everything came true; + A crimson-lanterned garden-house + With jutting eaves below the boughs; + The slant-eyed elves in blue + With soft slip-slapping heels and toes + Dancing before the Daimyōs: + + “_And is it Old Japan_,” you cry + “That half-remembered place”— + I see beneath an English sky + A child with brooding face. + The curious realm he chose to build + And paint with any hues he willed + Is all I strive to trace, + Where odds and ends of memory smile + Like bits of heaven, through clouds awhile. + + And some for charts and maps would call, + But here, beside the fire, + The kakemono on the wall + Is all that we require. + A chanty piped by bosun Lear + May float around us while we steer + Our hearts to their desire— + The Nonsense Land beyond the sun + Where West and East, at last, are one. + + Then let the rigging hum the tales + That Tusitala[1] told + When first we spread our purple sails + In quest of pirate gold; + For, though he waved us all good-bye + Beneath the deep Samoan sky, + His heart was blithe and bold, + And hailed across a darker main + The shadowy hills of home again. + + So we, who now adventure far + Beyond the singing foam, + May see, in every dipping star, + The harbour lights of home; + And, finding still, as all have found, + That every ship is homeward bound, + (For none could ever roam + A sea too wide for heaven to span) + Sail on—sail on—to Old Japan. + +Footnote 1: + + Robert Louis Stevenson. + + + + + I Wish I Were a Dog + + DESMOND MACCARTHY + + +There were five in the family and Dicky, nearly nine, was the youngest +but one. Dicky’s father was a country doctor, and, like many country +doctors, he led rather a hard life. The sick people he visited lived +miles apart, and many were too poor to pay him properly. + +Dr. Brook was a tall, pale man with grizzled hair turning to grey. He +was clever, and he had a quick, short way of talking. He seemed to make +up his mind about everything in a moment, and if you asked him a +question, he answered as though it ought not to have been necessary to +explain. + +Dicky would have been surprised to hear that his father was a kind man, +but kind he was. He hated attending upon well-to-do people who had +nothing much the matter with them, though he knew he must visit them to +make enough money to bring up his own children properly. + +He would remember this while he was driving miles out of his way to see +some poor cottager, and so, when he arrived at the cottage, he was +usually in a bad temper. On the other hand, when he was calling on old +Mrs. Varden at The Grange, who was sound as a bell and would probably +live to be ninety, he was always thinking of those who really wanted +looking after. Then, instead of smiling sympathetically, while she told +him how queer she had felt in the middle of the night three weeks ago, +or how well her nephews were doing, he would stand in front of the fire +in her cosy sitting-room, look up at the ceiling with a stern +expression, and rattle the keys in his pocket in a manner which said +plainly, “How much longer shall I have to listen to this stuff?” So, +although everybody thought Dr. Brook “a very clever doctor,” few people +were fond of him. + +All day he went bumping and rushing along the country lanes and roads in +his shabby, muddy car, which he never had time to clean properly; and +when he got home his day’s work was not over. In the evening he turned +schoolmaster and taught his children. + +Dicky’s mother had died when his brother Peregrin was born. Ella, the +eldest of the children, a grown-up girl, kept house and taught Dicky and +Peregrin in the morning. She was very like her father in many ways, only +her cleverness had turned to music. She played the violin beautifully, +and she was dying to get away from home and become a famous musician. +Dr. Brook knew this and was very sorry for her; but he could not let her +go till Dicky and Peregrin went to school. She had to be a governess +till then. The other two boys had done very well. They had both got +scholarships, and little Peregrin was as sharp as a needle. + +Altogether the doctor had to admit he was very blessed in his children. +But there was Dicky! Dicky was a dunce, there was no doubt about it—at +least, so Ella reported. And when Dicky showed his smudgy exercise-books +to his father in the evenings, his father thought it only too true. + +Dicky dreaded the evening every day. He did not much mind his sister +Ella’s crossness. He was used to it. But there was something awful about +the weary quiet way his father used to ask, “Do you understand _now_?” +Dicky had then to say “Yes,” and presently his father would find out he +hadn’t understood at all. There would be a still longer pause, and at +last his father would sigh, “Unhappy boy, what will become of you!” + +This was far worse than being slapped by Ella, though her ring sometimes +really did hurt. His father would then repeat what he had said before, +twice, very slowly, as though he were dropping the words drop by drop +into a medicine glass, looking at Dicky all the time, till Dicky’s lips +began to quiver and his eyes to fill, when his father would say hastily, +pulling out his watch, “There, there. It’s time for bed. Run along. Kiss +me.” Then Dicky’s one desire was to get out of the room before bursting +into tears. He did not mind if it happened outside the door or upstairs. +Indeed, it was rather a comfort to cry, especially if he could only get +hold of Jasper, the black spaniel, to hug and talk to while he was +crying. But he was terrified at breaking down before his father. He +somehow felt if he did, he might never stop sobbing, or that something +else dreadful would happen. One evening it did happen. + +The day had been altogether a bad day. Dicky had got up that morning +feeling as if his head was rather smaller and lighter than usual. It +felt about the size of an apple. Ella had had a fat letter that morning +from her bosom friend, at the Royal College of Music in London. Lessons +were always worse on the days she heard from her, and that morning it +was true also, for once in a way, that Dicky had really _not_ been +“trying.” He had begun by making thirty-four mistakes in his French +dictation—and he was rather glad. During arithmetic he had amused +himself by imagining that the numbers had different characters, and that +some of them were very pleased to find themselves side by side in the +sums. The result was that all his sums were wrong, and he had +exasperated Ella by telling her that it was the fault of number 8, who +was a quarrelsome widow and wore spectacles. + +When left alone to do his Latin Prose, while Ella went to her bedroom to +practise furiously on the fiddle, he had spent the time in teasing a +beetle by hemming it in between canals of ink on the schoolroom table. +He liked the beetle, but he enjoyed imagining its disgust and +perplexity, and he enjoyed feeling that he could, but wouldn’t, drown +it. When Ella came back and found that he had only written one Latin +word, “Jam” (already), on the paper, she tore the exercise book from him +and said that he could do what he liked: she would tell his father and +never teach him again—never, never, never. + +[Illustration: “SHE WOULD NEVER TEACH HIM AGAIN—NEVER, NEVER”] + +But the evening was a long way off, and Dicky walked into the garden, in +a gloomy sort of way rather proud of himself. He found, however, he +could not amuse himself, so he devoted himself to amusing Jasper, +chasing him in circles about the lawn and throwing sticks for him to +fetch. When the dog had had enough, and lay down on the grass with his +paws out in front of him like a lion, Dicky did not know what to do +next. He went down himself on all fours and kissed Jasper, who +responded, between quick pants, with a hasty slobber of his pink +quivering tongue, as though he were snapping at a fly. Ah, if only he +were as happy as Jasper! Dicky suddenly remembered that an old gentleman +had once given him a sort of blessing, saying, “May you be as happy as a +good dog.” What an easy time Jasper had! Of course he got into trouble +if he rolled in things, but if Dicky were in his shoes—or perhaps he +ought to say on his paws—_he_ wouldn’t want to. (Jasper certainly had a +very odd taste in scent.) Examinations, scholarships—those awful things +meant nothing to him. Dicky thought he could have easily managed to be a +good dog. And since he wanted to stop thinking about himself, he began +to play a favourite game of imagining what Jasper said to other dogs +about his home and the family. How he would boast to them of the +excellent rabbit-hunting in the copse near by, of the good bones he had +and the warm fires; and how he would tell them about jumping on Dick’s +bed in the morning and how perfectly Dick and he understood each other. +But the worst of it was that unless one were tired and a little sleepy, +one could not go on with that game very long. It soon began to seem +silly. It was not a good morning game. + +Ella was very grim at lunch and only spoke to Peregrin. After luncheon +Dicky felt very inclined to work—anything to stop thinking. He said +something about learning grammar, but Ella took all the books away and +locked them up. She said he could do _whatever he liked_. This had never +happened before and it frightened him. + +He went for a walk by himself. The sky was grey and the hedges were +dripping and his feet felt heavy. He actually tried to remember what +cases the different prepositions governed in Latin, as he walked along, +in the hope of surprising his father in the evening; but the fear that +he might be repeating them to himself all wrong made him hopeless. It +was never safe to learn without the book. Only once, when a red stoat +ambled with arched back across the lane, did he forget himself. A stoat, +too, must have a jolly life, he thought, even if it ended by being +nailed up on a door by a keeper. He stayed out till it was dark and past +tea time. + +His father’s hat and coat were not in the hall when he returned, so +Dicky knew he had not yet come back. Upstairs he could hear the wailing +of Ella’s violin. He went up and knocked at her door. She did not say +“Come in,” or stop bowing away or frowning at the music on the stand in +front of her. “If you’re hungry get milk in the kitchen,” she said, her +chin still on the fiddle, “and—shut the door.” + +Dicky did so, and stood for a minute outside it. Then he went slowly to +the schoolroom and sat down at the table. Peregrin was already in bed, +and there was nothing to do but to wait. + +Time passed very slowly, and if Dicky had not known that he was dreading +something, he would have thought he must be ill. He did, indeed, feel +very queer. At last he heard the front door slam and the tramp of his +father’s stride in the hall. The same instant the sound of the violin +stopped and Ella walked rapidly along the passage; and before Dicky knew +what he was doing he had started to run after her. At the head of the +stairs he stopped himself, and peeping over the bannisters he saw that +his father had hesitated in the middle of pulling off his coat, and was +staring at Ella, who was talking vehemently in front of him. Dicky heard +her raised voice saying, “It is hopeless. Father, I won’t; I really +can’t. He....” His father finished getting out of his coat without a +word; then they both went into the study. The door closed behind them, +and Dicky crept back to the schoolroom. + +Presently, he heard Ella calling him to come down. A few minutes before, +his legs had carried him to the top of the stairs without his wanting +it, now they refused to move. “Father wants you in the study at once,” +she shouted, and she continued to call, “Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick.” There +was a long pause and Ella herself stood in the doorway. + +“Father is coming to whip you,” she said, and walked off to her room. + +But he did not come. Dicky waited with beating heart, but he did not +come. He waited till he almost forgot he was waiting, and yet his father +did not come. And when at last he heard soft shuffling steps coming +along the passage, his heart almost stopped. To his astonishment he saw +in the darkness beyond the door two small round orange lamps shining +about a foot from the ground. It was only Jasper, who padded quietly +into the room and lay down on the hearthrug with a quiet sigh of +satisfaction. Having settled himself in the shape of a large foot-stool, +Jasper did not lift his nose again, but he turned up his eyes at +Dicky—they were brown eyes now, exquisitely humble and kind—and wagged +his stumpy tail. Dicky had flung himself on the floor beside the dog and +embraced him. Were these the terrible sobs which would never leave off? +No, presently they did stop; and gradually Dicky even forgot that he was +waiting for something awful. The occasional dab of the dog’s cold nose +on his hot cheeks was comforting, and so it was to curl all round him. +Dicky felt almost as though he were a dog himself when he was curled up +like that. + +“Do you know, Jasper, if I were a dog, I should be a very clever dog? +Much, much cleverer than you,” he whispered with his face buried in the +black fur. His head felt swollen and confused. “A re-markable dog,” he +repeated, “I should be a very re-markable dog.” + +Downstairs Dr. Brook was sitting close up to the fire and staring +gloomily into it. He had forgotten that he held a short switch in his +hand, and that it still hung down between his knees. He was thinking in +pictures and the pictures were not of Dicky. He had forgotten Dicky; he +had even forgotten himself. They say the whole of life passes before a +drowning man’s eyes. The doctor ever since he sat down had felt like a +man drowning in a sea of troubles. If not the whole of his own life, +still, much of it, had passed before his eyes. Only when at last he was +eating his cold solitary dinner in the dining-room, did he remember +again that Dicky had been naughty that morning, and that Dicky was +probably incurably stupid. But even if he were it did not seem now to +matter much, or to matter in a different way. Ella, too, he thought, +must go to her College of Music; things could somehow be managed. The +doctor sat a very long time over his dinner. + +But upstairs still stranger things were happening to Dick. First he felt +hot and large, then cold and small. He kept on shivering. Was this silky +hair his own or Jasper’s? And where was he? He was apparently in a wet, +grey place. What he touched with his hands and feet felt rough and +gritty. Suddenly he saw a brown stoat with an arched back ambling +rapidly in front of him—it was as big as a fox. Yes, he was on a +road—the very road he had walked along that very afternoon, only now the +wet hedges were ever so much higher. And before Dicky knew what he was +doing he was dashing after the stoat, right into the quickset hedge +after it. What was he doing? He smelt a queer strong smell which excited +him; and he pushed and struggled through the roots and thorns, following +the smell. He seemed, too, to be wearing a very odd cap with long flaps, +which kept catching in the brambles and dragging him back. This did not +hurt, but it was a nuisance, and he had constantly to shake his head. He +traced the smell of stoat to a rabbit hole and thrust his head down it. +Hullo! Dicky had no idea rabbits smelt so deliciously, as nice as +pineapples or peaches! Dicky had wanted to kill the stoat, but he would +have liked to eat the rabbit. He tried to make the hole larger, by +tearing away the earth with his hands, but, although he got on much +faster than he expected, he soon saw that was no use; and dragging +himself violently backwards out of the hedge, he found himself in the +road again with nothing to do. + +Yes, there was nothing, absolutely nothing to do. The sensation was a +strange one, for he couldn’t even think of anything. He just stood there +snuffing the wet wind. Then suddenly he found himself trotting towards +home. He had not gone very far when he was aware of another smell which +he somehow recognised instantly as “The Sacred Smell.” He knew what it +was, though he had never smelt it properly before. It reminded him of a +feeling he had sometimes had in church—how long ago that seemed!—and +partly of a feeling he had had when once an old general in scarlet and +covered with medals had patted him on the head. Only this time The +Sacred Smell was mixed with other smells; with smells of horse, leather, +onions and smoke. This, Dicky knew, was not as it should be, and he was +distinctly alarmed. However, he thought he had better stand still. It +was always better, something whispered to him, not to run away from The +Sacred Smell—unless the danger was terrific. + +Of course, having smelt The Sacred Smell, he was not at all surprised to +see next a huge pair of muddy boots coming towards him, and a pair of +huge knees in dirty trousers moving up and down. When they were a short +distance off, they stopped; and Dicky, looking up, saw what he had +expected; an unshaven, dark-skinned Man in a cap, with a spotted +handkerchief knotted round his neck. The Man made a squeaking noise with +his pursed-up lips, such as rats make, and slapped his thigh once or +twice. Dicky knew what this meant, but even when the Man called in a +croaking voice, “E-e-e-’ere good boy,” Dicky still thought it was best +not to move. He stood and turned his face instead to the hedge, looking, +no doubt, as absent-minded and miserable as he felt. (It was odd, but +_now_ when Dicky felt wretched and miserable that feeling was strongest, +not just under the middle of his ribs, but at the end of his spine where +his legs began; there now was the seat of anguish.) The Man took a step +or two nearer, then another step. Still Dicky did not stir. Suddenly the +Man dashed forward and made a grab at him. Dicky ducked, started aside +and bumped right into the road-bank. He saw the Man’s hand outstretched +above him, and he knew there was now only one thing to do: to roll right +over on to his back, in order to show he wouldn’t resist and hoped for +mercy. The Man stroked Dicky’s head and made soothing noises; and then, +suddenly, put an arm under him, lifting him up and holding him tight to +his side. + +[Illustration: “THE MAN DASHED FORWARD AND MADE A GRAB AT HIM”] + +Dicky felt perfectly miserable, but what could he do? He knew it would +be folly to try to escape, and that it would be wiser to wait for an +opportunity. The Man tucked him with a jerk still more firmly under his +arm, and started to walk slowly on. He walked on for more than an hour, +till they came to a gorse common, where a caravan was standing with +empty shafts and a pair of steps behind. Gripping Dicky tighter than +ever the Man gave a whistle, and a Woman came out of the caravan. + +“Where did you find him, Joe?” said the Woman, looking at Dicky. + +“’Long road,” said the Man, jerking his head backwards. + +“You ain’t been and thrown away his collar, ’ave you, Joe?” + +“’Adn’t any,” said the Man. Dicky was very dazed, but he did think they +were talking about him in an odd way. + +“Better take ’im where he belongs,” said the Woman. “The cops won’t +believe as such as ’e is ours. He looks well cared for. Might get five +bob.” + +Dicky did not try to tell them where he lived; he felt somehow it would +be no use to try. + +Instead of answering the Man just threw him into the caravan and shut +the door. Although it was nearly dark, Dicky found he could see +surprisingly well. Presently a tin bowl full of scraps of meat and bones +was thrust in. Dicky would have been revolted by such a mess a short +time ago, but now, though he was too scared to feel hungry, he could not +resist putting his face close to it and giving a sniff. It really smelt +uncommonly good. He put out the tip of his tongue and touched a +brown-looking, ragged bit of gristle. Yes, it was good. Then all of a +sudden he understood what must have happened. He had changed into a dog! +Into a black spaniel! + +He dashed at the door, shouting at the top of his voice, “Let me out! +Let me out!” Alas, the only word which sounded at all like what he +wanted to say was, “Out.” “Out, out, out, out,” he kept barking, hoping +that the Man and Woman would understand. They took no notice; but he +could not stop. “Out, out, out,” he barked. He shook the door by jumping +at it; he tore at the wood with his nails. There was a latch just within +his reach when he sprang up, but his paws—yes, it was only too true, his +hands were round, black and feathery—could not lift it. “Out, out, out.” +No answer. At last he gave it up, and lay down on the floor, feeling +very tired. It occurred to him presently that he might think better +while gnawing a bone. So he went to the bowl and pulled out the largest. +It was a slight comfort to him. With his head on one side and his teeth +sliding along the bone, he found he could think a little more calmly. +How was he to let them know that he was not a real dog, but a boy called +Dicky Brook? He tried again to talk. After a lot of practice he +succeeded in making a sound rather like “Brrr-ook,” but it was also too +sadly like the noise Jasper made when he was too lazy to bark or had +been told to stop barking. Dicky was afraid they would never understand. +But surely a very clever dog could make people understand somehow? + +At last the door opened and the Man appeared, black against the starry +sky. He stumbled over Dicky, swore and lit a stinking lamp-flame the +size of the blade of a pocket knife. He was followed by the Woman. +Outside Dicky could see the red glow of the fire which had cooked their +dinner. Now was his chance. What should he do to astonish them? That was +the first thing to do, to astonish them till they began to understand. +But all Dicky could think of was a doggy thing after all: he sat up and +begged. The Woman grinned at him, but the Man, who was pulling off his +great boots, flung one at him, which Dicky dodged. He at once sat up on +his hind-legs again, this time joining his paws and holding them up high +in front of him. + +“Bli’my Joe, look at the dawg!” exclaimed the Woman. “It’s saying its +prayers!” + +The Man, too, stared in astonishment. + +“I don’t like it,” said the Woman. + +Dicky felt greatly encouraged. At home he was fond of turning +somersaults. Now, down went his head and over went his hind-legs. It was +not a good somersault (he was too short in the legs for somersaults now) +but it was one. The Man gave a shout of laughter, and his face lit up +with joy and cunning. + +“S’truth, it’s a performing dawg! I ain’t taking ’im back, no fear. +He’ll make our fortunes.” + +At these words Dicky saw he had made a terrible mistake. If he was a +dog, he had better not be a re-markable dog. + +[Illustration: “HE COULD NOT FALL ANY FURTHER”] + +The door was still open, and through it he dashed, taking the steps at a +leap. Now he was falling, falling, falling. What a height! Oh, would he +never reach the bottom? Stars were flying above him like bees. The awful +thing was that he was beginning to fall slowly, while a huge arm with a +hand at the end of it was stretching out, longer and longer, after him. +He was not even falling slowly now; he was floating. He tried to force +himself down through the air, but though there was nothing to keep him +up he could not fall any further. Suddenly the arm gripped him. In an +agony of terror he yelled: “I’m not a dog.” He heard his own voice, and, +to his amazement, he saw his father’s face close to his; it was his +father’s arm lifting him from the hearthrug. He felt a hand cool on his +forehead. “Dick, you’re feverish. My little Dick.” His father’s voice +had never sounded like that before, and he felt himself being +carried—deliciously safe—to bed. + +“After all,” he said to himself, as he snuggled down, “I’m glad I’m not +a dog.” + + + + +[Illustration] + + When We Were Very, Very Young + + A. A. MILNE + + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + + I think I am a Muffin Man. I haven’t got a bell, + I haven’t got the muffin things that muffin-people sell. + Perhaps I am a Postman. No, I think I am a Tram. + I’m feeling rather funny and I don’t know _what_ I am— + + BUT + + _Round_ about + And _round_ about + And _round_ about I go— + All round the table, + The table in the nursery— + _Round_ about + And _round_ about + And _round_ about I go: + + I think I am a Traveller Escaping from a Bear; + I think I am an Elephant + Behind another Elephant + Behind _another_ Elephant who isn’t really there.... + + SO + + _Round_ about + And _round_ about + And _round_ about and _round_ about + And _round_ about + And _round_ about + I go. + + I think I am a Ticket Man, who’s selling tickets-please, + I think I am a Doctor who is visiting a Sneeze; + Perhaps I’m just a Nanny who is walking with a pram. + I’m feeling rather funny and I don’t know _what_ I am— + + BUT + + _Round_ about + And _round_ about + And _round_ about I go— + All round the table + The table in the nursery— + + _Round_ about + And _round_ about + And _round_ about I go: + I think I am a Puppy, so I’m hanging out my tongue: + I think I am a Camel Who + Is looking for a Camel Who + Is looking for a Camel who is Looking for its Young.... + + SO + + _Round_ about + And _round_ about + And _round_ about and _round_ about + And _round_ about + And _round_ about + I go. + +[Illustration] + + + + +[Illustration] + + THE SHADOW LAND + + DAVID CECIL + + + Night falls upon a day of storm, + Of mist and gust and rain, + And still wind howls along the sands, + And sleet with myriad tiny hands, + Slaps at the window pane. + + Awake in bed lay Jack and Jane, + They watched the shadows play; + Their eyes roved round from wall to floor + And then they stopped and roved no more. + A lady standing by the door + Looked at them as they lay. + + Her skin was smooth as ivory, + Her hair was like pale silk + All spells and secrets seemed to lie + Beneath each slanting emerald eye, + And eyelid white as milk. + + Her stiff skirts gleamed in the firelight + And the ceaseless hurrying shadows. + Her voice was high and far away + Like distant voice at close of day, + Calling across the meadows. + + “Come!” she said, “Come!”; the children came, + They had nor voice nor will. + Round her the hurrying shadows skim, + She struck one with her knuckles slim, + It fluttered and stood still. + +[Illustration: WILDER YET THE SHADOWS WHIRL] + + + Wilder yet the shadows whirl. + As nailed to wall and floor, + Stood firm this one; she whispered “Follow.” + Then swiftly swooping like a swallow, + Slipt through as through a door. + + And she led them to far shadowland, + Where the shadows stand upright; + And walk and talk, while on the ground, + The live men trail without a sound, + Solid and pink and white. + + Where the echo is heard before the song, + And in the pools you see + Reflected houses steady stand, + While real ones built upon the land + Tremble continually. + + All night long stayed Jack and Jane, + But when the dawn grew red, + They crept back through the shadow door, + Across the firelight-chequered floor, + And scrambled back to bed. + +[Illustration] + + + + +[Illustration] + + THE BARGAIN SHOP + + BY CYNTHIA ASQUITH. + + + I + +Once upon a time there lived a man called Anselm, who used several times +an hour to stamp his foot and cry out: “I _must_ be rich! I _must_ be +rich!” He was married to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and, +since he had enough to eat and a weatherproof house, and had neither +aches nor pains, he should have been happy for 365 days in each year. +But his unceasing longing for great wealth spoilt everything, and even +on fine days he went about looking as discontented as though he were +hungry. + +As for his wife, Jasmine, she had long red-gold hair and great green +eyes set wide apart in her flower-like face, and she possessed a mirror +in which she could see her shimmering loveliness. So she ought to have +been very happy and very grateful. She was so beautiful that when she +walked abroad, men would lean far out of their windows to watch her pass +and then wonder why their own wives and daughters should look so much +like suet puddings. + +But, though you will scarcely believe it, Jasmine was quite as +discontented as her husband, and pouted and sighed through the days. + +For she, too, was consumed by this perpetual craving for riches. Whether +she had caught this uncomfortable sort of illness from her husband, or +whether she had given it to him, I do not know, but there they were both +wasting their youth, their beauty, and their love for one another, in +foolish, petulant longing. + +Whenever Jasmine saw other women clad in rich raiment and adorned with +jewels, envy would blight her loveliness as frost blights a flower. + +“Of what use is my beauty if I cannot adorn it?” she cried. “I _must_ +have pearls—ropes of pearls, crowns of glittering diamonds, emeralds, +rubies, and sapphires!” + +“Yes,” said Anselm, “and I must have a hundred horses, a thousand +slaves, and fountains that spout forth wines!” + +One day, as Jasmine walked sadly through a deep, dark forest she +suddenly saw a very strange looking house moving slowly towards her. The +roof of the house was most beautifully thatched with brightly-coloured +feathers, and across its face in rainbow letters ran the queer +inscription: + + THE BARGAIN HOUSE + + MONEY FOR SALE. ENQUIRE WITHIN. + +“Money for sale?” read the wondering Jasmine. “What can this mean? Some +foolish jest, no doubt.” + +Three times the house sped round her; then it quivered and stood still. +She stared at the glass door that held a myriad reflections of herself. +As though her gaze had power to push, it slowly opened. She now saw into +a vast hall, and heard a gentle but compelling voice say: “Come in.” +Trembling, Jasmine walked through the door. The light was dim and +flickering as though from a fire, but no fireplace could be seen. Across +the whole length of the hall ran a counter, such as you see in large +shops, and behind this counter there rose up a wall made of rows of +boxes piled high the one upon the other, and on these boxes were rainbow +letters and figures. Between the boxes and the counter there stood a +tall, sweetly-smiling woman, whose face, though unrecognisable, seemed +somehow familiar to Jasmine. + +“I was expecting you, beautiful Jasmine,” spoke the stranger in a voice +that was soft but decided, like the fall of snow. “You would buy money, +would you not?” + +“Can one buy money?” faltered Jasmine. “Save _with_ money, and, alas! I +have none.” + +“Though you were penniless, yet from me you could purchase boundless +wealth,” replied the stranger. “Behold, a purse,” she continued, holding +up a red-tasselled bag, “which, spend as you may, will always contain +one thousand golden guineas. This purse is yours if in exchange you will +give me one part of yourself.” + +“A part of myself?” gasped the astonished Jasmine. “What would you have? +My hair?” + +“No,” smiled the woman. “Lovely as are your tresses, in time they would +grow again, and no one may own unlimited wealth and pay no price +therefor. Your beauty shall remain untouched. It is your Sense of Humour +that I require.” + +“My Sense of Humour?” laughed Jasmine. “Is that all? Just that part of +me which makes me laugh? Humour? What was it my mother used to call +Humour? I remember—she said it was Man’s consolation sent to him by God +in sign of peace. God’s rainbow in our minds. But with boundless wealth +what need of consolation shall I have? Besides, I have often been told I +had but little Sense of Humour. The more gladly will I give it to you. +The purse, I pray,” and Jasmine held out both her trembling hands. + +“Stay a while,” said the solemn, smiling woman. “I must warn you of two +conditions. First, I would have you know, the money this purse yields +can be spent only upon yourself. Would you still have it?” + +“Yes! Yes! Yes!” clamoured Jasmine. + +“I must also tell you that should you ever repent of your bargain and +wish to buy back the precious sense you sell, it will, alas, not be in +my power to help you. I can never buy back from the person to whom I +have sold. The only chance of recovering your Sense of Humour is, that +another customer, unasked by you, should buy it back with a similar +purse, and I warn you that it may be hard to find anyone willing to give +up boundless wealth for the sake of your laughter.” + +“What matter?” exclaimed Jasmine. “Never, never shall I wish to return +my purse.” + +“You are determined?” asked the strange saleswoman. + +“Yes, yes, yes!” + +“Hold out your arms, then.” + +Eagerly Jasmine stretched out her arms. + +The smiling woman touched her on both her funny-bones, drew forth her +Sense of Humour, laid it away in a box, on which she wrote Jasmine’s +name, and the date, and then placed it on a shelf between two other +boxes. + +“Now it is mine, until redeemed by the return of a purse, fellow to this +that I give thee,” said the woman, handing the tasselled red bag to +Jasmine. “And while it is in my careful keeping, this despised sense of +yours will grow and grow. Farewell, Jasmine. Leave me now and go forth +into a bleak world.” + +Clasping the marvellous purse to her heart, Jasmine fled from the house +and hastened through the deep, dark forest till she reached the city. At +once she went to the great jewel-merchants, against whose windows she +had often pressed her face in wistful longing. + +“I want the biggest pearl necklace you have got,” she cried, +breathlessly bursting into the gorgeous showroom. + +“I’m afraid goods of such value can only be supplied in exchange for +ready money,” said the merchant with an uncivil smile. + +“How much?” asked Jasmine. + +[Illustration] + +“Seven thousand guineas.” + +Jasmine opened the purse and holding it upside down, shook it. +Glittering guineas poured out in a golden stream, but the purse remained +just as full as before. + +As the clinking coins bounded and rolled the merchant’s eyes grew +rounder and rounder, and he had to shout for six small black slaves to +come to help him to count the money, now lying scattered all over his +shop. With the lowest bow he had ever bowed he handed the long rope of +glistening pearls to Jasmine. Feverishly she clasped them round her +throat, where they scarcely showed against the whiteness of her skin. +They reached down to her knees. + +“Now some emerald ear-rings, a crown of diamonds, ten ruby bracelets for +each arm, and all the opals you possess!” ordered Jasmine, scattering +guineas as she spoke, and putting on all the jewels as fast as they were +produced. + +At last she went away, hung with jewels as a Christmas tree is hung with +ornaments. Proud as a peacock she strutted through the streets, and +everyone laughed at the absurd sight of so many gaudy ornaments crowded +on to one ordinary-sized woman. She heard titters and wondered what +might be the cause of the laughter. + +She now went to the grandest Fashion House in the city, ordered one +thousand costly garments, and came out wearing the richest raiment she +had found in stock. Next she bought a most magnificent coach, made of +mother o’ pearl, and sixteen piebald horses to draw it; and then she +engaged an enormous coachman with a face gilt to match his golden +livery. + +On her way home she stopped at seven merchants to buy all manner of rare +and costly foods, and before long the great coach was crammed with +dainties. In it were piled every fruit and vegetable that happened to be +then out of season, bottles of wonderful wine, jars of caviare, pots of +roseleaf jam, tiny birds in aspic, and sugar plums of every colour. Last +of all—because it looked so grand and expensive—she bought an immense +wedding-cake, sixteen stories high. The confectioners laughed. They +seemed to think it funny that she should buy the wedding-cake. She +wondered why they were amused. + +When Anselm saw his wife stagger into the room, swaying beneath the +weight of so many gaudy jewels, thinking them to be all sham and worn in +jest, he burst into a great roar of laughter. + +Annoyed at his merriment, Jasmine told him breathlessly of the +marvellous purse. Her husband laughed and laughed, partly at her story, +partly at her absurd appearance. He laughed until he got hiccoughs. + +“Oh, how funny! How funny! What has come over you?” he cried, rolling on +the floor. + +“This is no jest, Anselm, I swear; it is the solemn truth. Just look +inside and you will see all the golden coins.” + +Incredulously Anselm peered into the bulging purse. He rubbed his eyes. +Slowly his unbelief gave way to amazed joy. + +“Praise be to God!” he cried at last. “We’re rich, rich, rich beyond the +dreams of man. Give it to me that I may go and buy gorgeous apparel, +fine horses, and rarest wines.” Feverishly he snatched the purse from +his wife’s hand. + +“What’s this?” he cried. “I knew it was some trickery. Your precious +purse is as empty as an egg that has been eaten.” And in truth, the +tasselled bag now dangled from his hand flat and light as a leaf. + +“Oh!” screamed Jasmine, in dismay, “give it back to me!” No sooner had +she touched the purse than once more it became rounded and heavy with +the weight of a thousand guineas. + +“Praise be to God!” she sighed. “I remember now. The woman from whom I +bought it warned me that the guineas were only for my own use.” + +“Tut, tut, that’s very troublesome,” said Anselm ruefully. “But what +matter? You will be able to buy gifts for me. It will come to the same +thing. But, wife, what mean you when you say you _bought_ the purse? +With what can one buy money?” + +Jasmine told him of the weird house, the mysterious saleswoman and the +strange bargain she had driven. + +“Your Sense of Humour?” cried Anselm. “_Your_ Sense of Humour! Well, she +didn’t get much for her money, did she? Ha! ha! ha!” + +With grave eyes Jasmine stared at her husband, offended at his display +of merriment. + +Then she said: “You little guess what a banquet I have prepared for you. +Come now and I will show you how I have ransacked the city for its +choicest dainties. Let us now feast.” Together they entered the +dining-hall and at sight of the gorgeous banquet spread before them +Anselm smacked his lips and promised himself great delight. + +But bitter disappointment awaited him. For, no sooner did he touch the +iced grape-fruit with which he intended to begin his feast, than, +behold, it shrivelled in his hand, and became an empty rind. With an +oath he stretched out his hand to grasp a goblet of purple wine. It +broke in his hand, and of the rich vintage nothing remained but a stain +on the damask tablecloth. + +“Alas!” cried Jasmine. “It seems that with the magic gold I may buy +nothing for your use!” + +In truth, everything that poor Anselm touched, before it reached his +eager lips, disappeared like a bubble that has burst. In nothing that +had been purchased with the magic gold could he share. For him, all the +rich viands were spread in vain, and finally, he was obliged to fall +back on their accustomed fare of bread and cheese and last Friday’s +mutton. + +“’Tis funny to watch one’s wife quaffing the wines one dreams of and to +be on prison-fare oneself,” laughed Anselm, trying to make the best of +things. + +“Funny?” asked his wife. “Why is it funny? I think it is very sad. These +humming birds and this sparkling juice of the grape are most delicious.” + +To keep up his spirits Anselm, who was famed for his wit, cracked many +jokes, but no smile ever lifted the corners of Jasmine’s perfect mouth; +no twinkle appeared in the depth of her great green eyes. Discouraged at +last, Anselm fell into silent sulks, whilst his wife continued to eat +and drink, until a stitch came in both her sides. + +Days passed. Every evening, Jasmine, clad in new raiment and gorgeous +jewels, regaled herself with rich dainties. + +“Alas, husband!” she cried one night, “I have no pleasure in feasting +that you cannot share.” + +“In truth, this is no life!” angrily exclaimed Anselm. “To sit at a +banquet one may not taste with a wife who cannot see one’s jokes. I can +bear it no longer. Why should not I seek this strange woman and make the +same bargain? If husband and wife may not share their jokes, they must +at least share their dinner. Tell me quickly where I may find this +‘Bargain House.’” + +Jasmine told her husband the way through the deep, dark forest, and +early the next morning he set forth in search of the mysterious +building. An hour’s walking brought him within sight of just such a +house as his wife had described. It moved nearer, sped three times +around him and then stood still. As he stared at it, the door slowly +opened, the gentle, commanding voice bade him enter, and there stood the +tall, smiling woman of his wife’s description. + +“Good morning, Anselm,” she said, in the voice that was soft like the +fall of snow. “Would you have a purse that shall always bear a thousand +guineas?” + +“Indeed I would!” cried Anselm. “Have you one for me?” + +“Yes, if you consent to my terms.” + +“What is it that you want? My Sense of Humour? Of what use is it to me +now? I will gladly part with it.” + +“No,” said the woman. “’Tis not your Sense of Humour I require of you, +it is your Sense of Beauty.” + +“Take what you will from me,” cried Anselm. “I care not so I have one of +those wondrous purses.” + +“Listen first, Anselm,” said the woman, and solemnly, as she had warned +Jasmine, so she warned him that the magic money could be spent on none +save himself, and that the sense he sold could be bought back only by +the owner of such another purse. + +“Remember, you can never reclaim it yourself,” she repeated. + +“I care not! I care not!” exclaimed Anselm. “Quick, the purse!” + +“Come hither,” said the woman, “and close your eyes.” Gently she touched +him on both eyelids, and drew forth his Sense of Beauty. Then she handed +him a red-tasselled bag exactly the same as Jasmine’s and as heavy with +golden guineas. + +“Now farewell, Anselm. Go forth into a bleak world.” + +Wild with joy and excitement, Anselm dashed from the Bargain House and +hastened through the deep, dark forest to that part of the city where +dwelt the grandest merchants. Here he bought gorgeous apparel, costly +wines, and magnificent horses. Astride the finest of the horses, a +gleaming chestnut, said to be the swiftest steed alive, he then rode +home through the forest. As he went, he met an old man clad in wretched +rags, who looked very hungry and tired. Feeling pleased with life Anselm +plunged his hand into the magic purse, and, drawing forth a golden +guinea, flung it at the poor man, who joyfully stooped to pick it up. +But no sooner had his hand touched the coin than it vanished. Anselm +remembered the woman’s warning. + +[Illustration: “ANSELM DREW FORTH A GOLDEN GUINEA”] + +“Sorry, my good fellow,” he said, shamefacedly handing the beggar two +coppers—all that he could find in his old purse. + +“Thanks, noble master. Now I can buy bread for my supper. I never +thought to eat to-night.” + +“For one who sups on dry bread you look strangely cheerful,” said +Anselm. “At what can you rejoice?” + +“’Tis the beauty of the sunset, master. It seems to warm my heart. Never +have I seen one like to it in glory. Who could look and not be +comforted?” + +And, in truth, a radiant smile lit up the old man’s suffering face as he +gazed on the flaming splendours of the western sky. Anselm turned and +looked where the beggar pointed, but he could see nothing that seemed +worth the turning of the head, and with a shrug of the shoulders he rode +home. + +Now Jasmine, rejoicing that Anselm would share her feasting, arrayed +herself that she might look her fairest for their banquet. She brushed +her red-gold hair until it shone, and gazed at herself in the mirror +until her beauty glowed. Then she attired herself in a dress of +dragon-flies’ wings, covered all over with hearts made of tiny little +diamonds like dewdrops. + +“Never, never have I looked so fair. When Anselm sees me he will love me +more than ever. How joyfully we shall feast together, and how glad am I +that he will no longer want me to laugh at the things he says! I shall +love him far more without his Sense of Humour.” + +Her heart beat as she heard footsteps hastening up the stairs. Radiant +with excitement in burst Anselm. “I’m rich!” he cried. “Rich! rich! +Rejoice with me, Jasmine.” + +Grey disappointment crushed into Jasmine’s heart, for not one word did +her husband say of her especial beauty or her wonderful dress. + +“There’s nothing like wealth!” he cried. “How did we ever endure our +poverty? And fancy, I met a beggar-man, who said he was cheerful because +he looked at the sunset! Ha! ha! ha!” + +“Why do you laugh, Anselm? Have you then not sold your Sense of Humour? +How came you then by that purse?” + +“No. I may still laugh. I have but parted with my Sense of Beauty.” + +“Your Sense of Beauty?” echoed Jasmine, icy fear entering her heart. “Is +that why your eyes no longer seek my face?” + +“Why ever do you look so doleful?” laughed Anselm. “Let us hasten down +and feast. My lips thirst for the wines I have bought.” + +Trembling, Jasmine pleaded: “Look on my face, husband, the face you have +so often called your glory. What think you of my face to-night?” + +“Your face? Let me look. It seems all right: two eyes, one nose, one +mouth. Yes, it seems just as other faces are.” + +It was with a sad heart poor Jasmine sat at the feast that night. Loving +her husband, she rejoiced to see him revel, but that he should no longer +gaze at her with the admiration which had been her delight was pain past +bearing. Anselm enjoyed his feasting, but the wine made jokes rise in +his mind, to flutter from his lips, and it vexed him that no smile ever +widened his wife’s mouth, set for ever in still solemnity. + +Days, weeks, months passed. Anselm and Jasmine now lived in a gorgeous +palace. They were clad in the finest raiment and they feasted like +emperors, but in their hearts all was becoming as dust and ashes. + +“Ah me!” sighed Jasmine. “I know now why it was that I longed for +wealth. It was that I might add to my beauty and see even more +admiration in my beloved’s eyes. Of what use to me are my gorgeous +gowns, my jewels, my flower-like face, since Anselm no longer delights +to see me.” + +And for Anselm the pleasures of feasting and luxurious living soon +palled. His wife could not laugh at his jokes, and in the wide world +there was nothing for him to admire. Neither sunsets, nor courage, nor +self-sacrifice. He could see no beauty in any face, thought or action. +Lost to him were the delights of Poetry and all the loveliness of +Nature. + +“What is there in life,” he cried, “but feasting and laughter? If only +Jasmine could join with me in mocking at the absurdities of Man!” + +Desperately he strove to restore laughter to his mirthless wife. He +engaged a thousand jesters and promised a fortune to him who should make +her laugh. Everything human beings consider funny was shown to her. +Orange peel was plentifully scattered outside the palace windows, and +aged men encouraged to walk past, that they might step on the orange +peel and fall. Then, by means of huge bellows purposely placed, their +hats were blown from off their heads, in the hope that Jasmine would +smile to see the poor old fellows vainly chasing their own headgear. But +all in vain. Nothing amused Jasmine, neither physical misfortune nor the +finest wit. Her mouth remained set. Daily Anselm laughed louder and +longer, but into his laughter an ugly bitterness had come. It was now +the laughter of mockery, no longer softened by admiration. + +During that summer a child was born to Jasmine. For years she had longed +for a baby, but now that the funny little creature squirmed in her arms, +yawning, and making faces, she thought it merely ugly and turned from it +in disgust. + +A few months later the coachman’s wife gave birth to a baby, and Jasmine +went to visit her. She found her by the fire, nursing a red, hairless, +wrinkled daughter that seemed to Jasmine the ugliest morsel in all the +world. In speechless horror she stared at it. Opening wide its shapeless +mouth, the baby stretched its tiny arms and gave a great yawn. With a +joyful laugh, the mother clutched it to her heart. “Oh, you darling, +darling!” she cried. “Could anyone not love anything so _funny_?” + +“Is Love then born of Laughter?” cried poor Jasmine, and, full of bitter +envy, she rushed from the room. + +That same year a terrible war was waged and thousands of soldiers went +forth to die. One day, Jasmine gazed out of the window. Brave music was +playing, and with colours flying, a gallant host of youths marched past, +their weeping mothers and sweethearts waving farewell. + +“A disgusting sight, is it not?” said Anselm. “All these boys striding +off to be killed simply because their foolish kings have quarrelled!” + +“Yes,” replied Jasmine, her eyes full of tears. “But beautiful, too.” + +“Beautiful?” jeered her husband with a harsh, discordant laugh. “You +fool! What beauty can there be in senseless sacrifice?” And, as now +often happened, these two fell into loud and bitter wrangling. + +Thus daily life became more and more unbearable to Anselm and Jasmine. +In spite of all their wealth, boredom pressed heavily upon them. Since +she could not laugh, and he could not admire, to both the world seemed +full of senseless suffering. + +“I can no longer bear this life,” said Jasmine, one day. “Of what use is +the beauty to which Anselm is blind? I will seek the Bargain House and +buy back the Sense he sold. He will still have his purse with which to +buy the luxuries he loves.” And forth she went into the deep, dark +forest. + +An hour later, Anselm exclaimed: + +“I can no longer bear this life. I will buy back Jasmine’s humour that +at least we may together mock at this senseless life. She will still +have her purse to buy the fineries she loves.” And forth he went into +the deep, dark forest. + +That evening Jasmine returned without her magic purse, rejoicing that +her husband would once more delight in her beauty. She went to say good +night to her little son, who lay in his cot, struggling to draw his tiny +toes up into his mouth. The window was open. Suddenly he stretched forth +his arms towards the shining moon. It looked so good to suck; he longed +to grasp it. He struggled and bubbled and clutched, his crinkled face +growing crimson with effort. How funny he looked! Suddenly, Jasmine +found herself laughing—laughing—laughing until her whole body shook, and +happy peals broke through her astonished lips. “Oh, you darling, darling +little joke,” she cried, joyfully kissing her child. + +At that moment in rushed Anselm, and stood transfixed at the dazzling +beauty of his wife. + +“Jasmine, Jasmine,” he cried, “what has happened. Why are you so +dazzlingly beautiful?” + +“Because I have no longer a magic purse. I have bought you back your +Sense, husband.” + +“You too?” cried Anselm; “and I have bought back your laughter.” + +“Then we are both poor! Oh, how funny!” cried Jasmine, her laughter +growing louder and louder as they fell into one another’s arms. + +Thus Anselm and Jasmine parted with their magic purses, and had to work +for their daily bread, but they lived happily ever afterwards in a world +that was blessedly beautiful and blessedly funny. + + + + +[Illustration] + + The Joyous Ballad of the Parson and the Badger + + HENRY NEWBOLT + + + Not far from Guildford town there lies + A house called Orange Grove, + And there his trade a Parson plies, + Whom all good people love. + + Sing up, sing down, for Guildford town, + And sing for the Parson too! + I’ll wager a penny you’ll never find any + That’s more of a sportsman true. + + A neighbour came in haste one day + With a piteous tale to tell, + But “A badger, a badger,” was all he could say, + When they answered the front door bell. + + Sing in, sing out, there’s a badger about, + Send word to the County Police. + He’s playing the dickens with all the spring chickens, + And gobbling up the geese. + + Forth to the fray the Parson goes + Beneath the midnight sky, + He threads the wood on the tip of his toes + And he climbs a fir-tree high. + + Sing never a word, it’s quite absurd + To expect a badger to come + And sit to be shot like a bottle or pot + To the sound of an idiot’s hum! + + The clock has struck both twelve and one, + His eyes are heavy as lead, + He heartily wishes the deed were done + And himself at home in bed. + + Sing ho! Sing hey! the badger’s away, + The Parson’s up the tree: + It’s horribly damp and he’s got the cramp + And there’s nothing at all to see. + + The clock struck two, and then half-past, + The day began to break; + The badger came back to his earth at last + And found our friend awake. + + Sing boom and bang! the welkin rang, + The Parson, “Hurrah!” he cried: + The badger lay there with his legs in the air + And an ounce of shot inside. + + Happy at heart, though in pitiful plight, + The victor crawled away; + He slept the sleep of the just all night + And half of the following day. + + Sing loud and strong, sing all day long, + Sing Yoicks! and Hullabaloo! + But I’ve had enough of this doggerel stuff + And so, I should think, have you! + +[Illustration: “HE CLIMBED A FIR-TREE HIGH”] + + + + +[Illustration] + + To Enid + who acted the + Cat + in private Pantomime + + G. K. CHESTERTON + + + Though cats and birds be hardly friends, + We doubt the Maeterlinckian word + That must dishonour the White Cat, + Even to honour the Blue Bird. + + And if once more in later days + His baseless charge the Belgian brings, + Great ghosts shall rise to vindicate + The right of cats to look at kings. + + The Lord of Carabas shall come + In gold and ermine, silk and furs, + To tell of that immortal cat + That wore its boots and won its spurs. + +[Illustration] + + THE LORD OF CARABAS SHALL COME + IN GOLD AND ERMINE, SILK AND FURS, + TO TELL OF THAT IMMORTAL CAT + THAT WORE ITS BOOTS AND WON ITS SPURS + + Great Whittington shall show again + The state that London lends her Lord, + Where the great golden griffins bear + The blazon of the Cross and Sword. + + And hear the ancient bells anew, + And talk and not ignobly brag + What glorious fortunes followed when + He let the cat out of the bag. + + And Gray shall leave the graves of Stoke + To weep over a gold-fish bowl— + Cowper, who, beaming at his cat, + Forgot the shadow on his soul. + + Then shall I rise and name aloud + The nicest cat I ever knew, + And make the fairy fancies pale + With half a hundred tales of you: + + Till Pasht upon his granite throne + Glare with green eyes to hear the news + Jealous; and even Puss in Boots + Will wish that he were in your shoes. + + When I shall pledge in saucers full + Of milk, on which the kitten thrives, + Feline felicities to you + And nine extremely prosperous lives. + + + + + Scenes in the Life of a Princess + + CHARLES WHIBLEY + + + _Ashridge_ + +When Queen Mary was persuaded, falsely, that her throne could be made +safe only by the death of her sister, then but eighteen years old, the +Princess Elizabeth lay sick at Ashridge. One spring morning, as she +tossed abed, ’twixt sleeping and waking, in the weariness of fever, she +heard in the courtyard beneath her window the tramp of men, the clatter +of horses’ hoofs. Her affrighted servants brought her word that a guard +of two hundred and fifty horsemen attended the Lords, who came with +messages from the Queen, a guard larger than enough to keep watch over +so frail a Princess. The house being thus begirt, Lord Thame and his +companions, thrust their way into the presence of the Princess. To her +demand that if not for courtesy, yet for modesty’s sake, they should put +off the delivery of their message till the morrow, they answered that +their commission was to bring her to London, alive or dead. + +“A sore commission,” said the Princess, but a commission not to be +gainsaid. And the Queen’s doctors showed her little pity. She might be +removed, said they, not without danger, yet without death. + +So on the morrow, the sad cavalcade set forth. The Princess, that she +might be the more darkly shielded from the public gaze, was borne in the +Queen’s own litter, which she presently bade to be opened, and thus she +made her progress to Whitehall in the full view of the people. It was a +tedious and a painful journey. From Ashridge, by St. Alban’s, she came +to South Mymms, where again she rested her weary body, and not until +four suns had set did she reach the inhospitable Court of Mary, her +Queen and her sister. + + + _Whitehall_ + +When she came to Whitehall, she was still a prisoner. It was as though +she carried her dungeon with her. Whitehall was less kind even than the +white high road, where at least she had found solace in the pity of the +humble folk, who wept as she passed, and offered prayers for her safety. +Fourteen days she spent in unfriended seclusion, with “no comfort but +her innocence, no companion but her book.” Not for her the freedom of +the open air, the chatter of tongues, the laughter of friends. Her +oft-repeated request to see her sister fell upon the deaf ears of her +jailers. A princess of less courage would have quailed before the +ill-omened silence which enwrapped her. And how could she hope to regain +the Queen’s affection, so long as the cunning servants of the Emperor +and the King of France, Renard and Noailles, were there to distil the +poison of hate and dread in Queen Mary’s ear? + +Knowing well that her foes were the Queen’s friends, her friends the +Queen’s foes, she was still of a stout heart. When Gardiner, the Bishop +of Winchester, resolute to entrap her, urged her to confess and to +submit herself to the Queen’s Majesty, “submission,” said she proudly, +“confessed a crime, and pardon belonged to a delinquent.” For her part +she had no crime to confess, and she asked no pardon. So for her +temerity she was told that two hundred Northern Whitecoats should guard +her lodging that night, and that in the morn she should be secretly +conveyed to the Tower, without her household, there to be kept a close +prisoner. + + + _The Tower_ + +It was a Palm Sunday when she set forth, under a guard, to that place of +ill-omen, the Tower of London. Hers was no triumphal progress; neither +palm nor willow was carried in her honour. And well might she dread the +journey, which she was forced to make. Within the dark walls of the +Tower her mother had laid her fair head down upon the block; and what +cause had she to hope for a happier destiny? As she left Whitehall, to +her a place of durance, she looked up to the window of the Queen’s +bedchamber, hoping there to see some mark of favour, some signal of +affection. The hope was vain, and in cold despair she came to the +Stairs, where the barges awaited her. When she reached the Tower, she +was bidden to enter at the Traitor’s Gate, which at first she refused, +and then stepping short so that her foot fell into the water, she spake +these words to her obdurate jailer: + +“Here landeth as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these +stairs, since Julius Cæsar laid the first foundations of the Tower.” + +The Constable, a wry-faced ruffian, lurched forth savagely to receive +her, and in a harsh voice told her that he would show her her lodging. +Then she, being faint, “sat down,” we are told, “upon a fair stone, at +which time there fell a great shower of rain: the heavens themselves did +seem to weep at such inhuman usage.” + +[Illustration: + + SCENES IN THE LIFE OF A PRINCESS + + “They answered that their commission was to bring her to London, alive + or dead.” +] + + _Drawn for “The Flying Carpet” + by H. M. Brock_ + +Presently she was locked and bolted in the Tower; her own servants were +taken from her; to open her casement, that she might enjoy the fresh air +of heaven, to walk in the garden—these were pleasures denied her. One +sole thing was constantly demanded of her, that she should confess +herself a rebel and submit herself to the Queen. Nobly did she refuse, +and was left to silence and her own proud thoughts. + + + _Hampton Court_ + +She changed her prison, and kept unchanged her high courage. From the +Tower she was carried to Woodstock. But what mattered it where the +dungeon lay? The locks and bolts were no more easily burst asunder at +Woodstock than at the Tower. And then of a sudden her keeper was bidden +to bring her to Hampton Court, not as a free Princess, but as a guarded +malefactor. At Colnbrook, where on the way she sojourned at the sign of +the George, certain gentlemen, devoted to her service, came to do her +homage. Instantly, at the Queen’s command, they were sent about their +business, and the Princess was bidden to enter Hampton Court, without an +escort, and by the back gate, like the humblest menial. Again for many +days she was left solitary and in silence, when she was summoned one +night into the presence of the Queen, her sister, whose heavy hand she +had felt unceasingly, whose face she had not seen for two long years. +The Queen, sitting on her chair of State, took up her promise of loyalty +sharply and shortly. + +“Then you will not confess yourself,” said she, “to be a delinquent, I +see, but stand peremptorily upon your truth and innocence; I pray God +they may so fall out.” + +To which the Princess replied: “If not, I neither require favour nor +pardon at your Majesty’s hands.” + +“Well,” said the Queen, “then you stand so stiffly upon your faith and +loyalty, that you suppose yourself to have been wrongfully punished and +imprisoned.” + +“I cannot,” replied the Princess, “nor must not say so to you.” + +“Why then belike,” retorted the Queen, “you will report it to others.” + +“Not so,” said the Princess. “I have borne and must bear the burden +myself.” + +The two sisters never met again, but the Princess’s courage in facing +her fate was not in vain. Thenceforth she was eased of her imprisonment, +and went to Ashridge in free custody, where she remained at her +pleasure, until Queen Mary’s death. + + + _A Progress through London_ + +In 1558 the Queen died, and the Princess Elizabeth, justified of her +patience and her courage, was proclaimed Queen of England. In the loyal +enthusiasm of her subjects, who had long since acclaimed her in their +hearts, the years of solitude and imprisonment were forgotten. To the +Tower, which she had left a captive, she returned a monarch, and passed +in triumph through her City of London to Westminster. Everywhere she was +welcomed by pageants and loyal discourse, until she came to the famous +Abbey where she was crowned, to the contentment of her loyal lieges and +to the honour and glory of her realm. + + + + + Neil and Tintinnabulum + + AN INTERLUDE FOR PARENTS + + BY J. M. BARRIE + + + 1. _Early Days_ + +In writing a story a safe plan must be to imitate your favourite author. +Until he was nine, when he abandoned the calling, Neil was my favourite +author, and I therefore decide to follow his method of dividing the +story into short chapters so as to make it look longer. + +When he was nine I took him to his preparatory, he prancing in the +glories of the unknown until the hour came for me to go, “the hour +between the dog and the wolf,” and then he was afraid. I said that in +the holidays all would be just as it had been before, but the newly-wise +one shook his head; and on my return home, when I wandered out unmanned +to look at his tool-shed, I found these smashing words in his writing +pinned to the door: + + THIS ESTABLISHMENT IS NOW PERMANENTLY CLOSED. + +I went white as I saw that Neil already understood life better than I +did. + +Soon again he was on the wing. Here is interesting autobiographical +matter I culled years later from the fly-leaf of his _Cæsar_: “Aetat 12, +height 4 ft. 11, biceps 8¼, kicks the beam at 6-2.” + +The reference is to a great occasion when Neil stripped at his +preparatory (clandestinely) for a Belt with the word “Bruiser” on it. I +am reluctant to boast about him (this is untrue), yet must mention that +he won the belt, with which (such are the ups and downs of life) he was +that same evening gently belted by his preceptor. + +It is but fair to Neil to add that he cut a glittering figure in those +circles: captain of the footer, and twenty-six against Juddy’s. + +“And even then,” his telegram to me said, “I was only bowled off my +pads.” + +A rural cricket match in buttercup time with boys at play, seen and +heard through the trees; it is surely the loveliest scene in England and +the most disarming sound. From the ranks of the unseen dead, for ever +passing along our country lanes on their eternal journey, the Englishman +falls out for a moment to look over the gate of the cricket field and +smile. Let Neil’s 26 against Juddy’s, the first and perhaps the only +time he is to meet the stars on equal terms, be our last sight of him as +a child. He is walking back bat in hand to the pavilion, an old railway +carriage. An unearthly glory has swept over the cricket ground. He tries +to look unaware of it; you know the expression and the bursting heart. +Our smiling Englishman who cannot open the gate waits to make sure that +this boy raises his cap in the one right way (without quite touching it, +you remember), and then rejoins his comrades. Neil gathers up the glory +and tacks it over his bed. “The End,” as he used to say in his letters. + +I never know him quite so well again. He seems henceforth to be running +to me on a road that is moving still more rapidly in the opposite +direction. + + + 2. _The First Half_ + +The scene has changed. Stilled is the crow of Neil, for he is now but +one of the lowliest at a great public school, where he reverberates but +little. The scug Neil fearfully running errands for his fag-master is +another melancholy reminder of the brevity of human greatness. + +Lately a Colossus he was now infinitely less than nothing. What shook +him was not the bump as he fell, but the general indifference to his +having fallen. He lay there like a bird in the grass winded by a +blunt-headed arrow, and was cold to his own touch. The Bruiser Belt and +his score against Juddy’s had accompanied him to school on their own +legs, one might say, so confident were they of a welcome from his +mantelshelf, but after an hour he hid them beneath the carpet. Hidden by +him all over that once alluring room, as in disgrace, were many other +sweet trifles that went to the making of the flame that had been Neil; +his laugh was secreted, say in the drawer of his desk; his pranks were +stuffed into his hat-box, his fell ambitions were folded away between +two pairs of trousers, and now and then a tear would mix with the soapy +water as he washed his cheerless face. + +In that dreadful month or more I am dug up by his needs and come again +into prominence, gloating because he calls for me, sometimes unable to +do more than stand afar off on the playing field, so that he may at +least see me nigh though we cannot touch. The thrill of being the one +needed, which I had never thought to know again. I have leant over a +bridge, and enviously watching the gaiety of two attractive boys, now +broken to the ways of school, have wished he was one of them, till I +heard their language and wondered whether this was part of the necessary +cost. + +Leaden-footed Neil in the groves that were to become so joyous to him. +He had to refashion himself on a harsher model, and he set his teeth and +won, blaming me a little for not having broken to him the ugly world we +can make it. One by one his hidden parts peeped out from their holes and +ran to him, once more to make his wings; stronger wings than of yore, +though some drops of dew had to be shaken off. + +By that time my visits were being suffered rather than acclaimed. It was +done with an exquisite politeness certainly, but before I was out of +sight he had dived into some hilarious rumpus. Gladly for his sake I +knew my place. + +His first distinct success was as a gargler. + +[Illustration: “WE GENERALLY GARGLE A SONG”] + +“You remember how I used to hate gargling at home,” says an early +letter, “and you forced me to do it. Jolly good thing you did force me.” +His first “jolly” at that school. At once I began to count them. + +“Everyone has to gargle just now,” he continues, “and we all do it at +the same time, and it must sound awfully rum to people passing along the +street. We generally gargle a song, and there was a competition in +‘Home, sweet Home’ among the scugs at m’ tutor’s, and the judge said I +gargled it longest.” + +Soon afterwards he had the exultation of being recognised as an entity +by one of the masters. + +“I was walking with Dolman mi.,” his letter says, “and we met a new beak +called Tiverley and he pretended to fence with me and said ‘Whose +incomparable little noodle are you?’” This, apparently, was all that +happened, but Neil adds with obvious elation, “It was awfully decent of +him.” (Hail to thee, Tiverley, may “a house” anon be thy portion for +heartening a new boy in the dwindling belief that he exists.) + +Dolman mi. evidently had no run on this occasion, but he is older and +more famous than Neil (which makes the thing the more flattering). It is +a school whither many royal scions are sent, and when camera men go down +to photograph the new one, Dolman mi. usually takes his place. He has +already been presented to newspaper readers as the heir to three +thrones. Of course it is the older boys who select, scrape and colour +him (if necessary) for this purpose, but they must see something in him +that the smaller boys don’t see. + +Neil’s next step was almost a bound forward; he got a tanning from the +head of the house. This also he took in the proper spirit, boasting +indeed of the vigour with which Beverley had laid on. (Thee, also, +Beverley, I salute, as the Immensity who raised Neil from the ranks of +the lowly, the untanned.) + +Quite the amiable, sensible little schoolboy, readers may be saying, but +that Neil was amiable or sensible I indignantly deny. He was merely +waiting; that shapely but enquiring nose of his was only considering how +best to strike once more for leadership. So when the time came he was +ready; and he has been striking ever since, indeed, there is nothing +that I think he so much resembles as a clock that has got out of hand. + +All the other small boys in his house had the same opportunity, but they +missed it. It was provided by some learned man (name already tossed to +oblivion) who delivered unto them a lecture entitled _Help One Another_. +The others behaved in the usual way, cheered the lecturer heartily when +he took a drink of water, said “Silly old owl!” as they went out and at +once forgot his Message. Not so Neil. With the clearness of vision that +always comes to him when anything to his own advantage is toward, he saw +that the time and the place and the loved one (himself) had arrived +together. Portents in the sky revealed to him that his _métier_ at +school was to Help Others. There would be something sublime about it had +he not also seen with the same vividness that he must make a pecuniary +charge of threepence. He decided astutely to begin with W. W. Daly. + +As we write these words an extraordinary change comes over our +narrative. In the dead silence that follows this announcement to our +readers you may hear, if you listen intently, a scurrying of feet, which +is nothing less than Neil being chased out of the story. The situation +is one probably unparalleled in fiction. + + + 3. _Tintinnabulum_ + +Elated by your curiosity we now leave Neil for a moment (say, searching +with his foot for a clean shirt among a pile of clothing on the floor), +mount to the next landing and enter the second room on the left, the +tenant of which immediately dives beneath his table under the impression +that we are a fag-master shouting “Boy.” We drag him out and present him +to you as W. W. Daly. He is five feet one, biceps 7¾, and would probably +kick the beam at about 6½ stone. He is not yet celebrated for anything +except for being able to stick pins into his arm up to the head; +otherwise a creature of small account who, but for Neil’s patronage, +would never have risen to the distinction of being written about, except +perhaps by his mother. + +W. W.’s first contact with school was made dark by a strange infirmity, +an incapacity to remember the Latin equivalent for the word “bell.” Many +Latin words were as familiar to him as his socks (perhaps even more so, +for he often wears the socks of others), and those words he would give +you on demand with the brightness of a boy eager to oblige; but daily +did his tutor insist (like one who will have nothing for breakfast but +eggs and bacon) on having “bell” alone. Daily was W. W. floored. + +It is now that Neil appears with his sunny offer of Help. He took up the +case so warmly that he entirely neglected his own studies, which is one +of his failings. True he charged threepence (which we shall henceforth +write as 3_d._, as it is so sure to come often into these chronicles), +but this detracts little from his grandeur, for the mere apparatus +required cost him what he calls a bob. + +His first procedure was to affix to the bell-pull a card bearing in bold +letters the device “Tintinnabulum.” This seems simple but was +complicated by there being no bell in W. W.’s room. Neil bought a bell +(W. W. being “stony”), and round the walls he constructed a gigantic +contrivance of wire and empty ginger-beer bottles, culminating at one +end in the bell and at the other end in W. W.’s foot as he lay abed. The +calculation, a well-founded one, was that if the sleeper tossed +restlessly the bell would ring and he would awake. He was then, as +instructed by Neil, first, to lie still but as alert as if visited by a +ghost, and to think hard for the word. If, however, it still eluded him +he was to turn upon it the electric torch, kept beneath his pillow for +this purpose and borrowed at 1_d._ per week from Dolman mi., spot the +tricky “Tintinnabulum” in its lair and say the word over to himself a +number of times before returning to his slumbers, something attempted, +something done to earn a night’s repose. + +All this did W. W. conscientiously do, and if there was delay in +bringing Tintinnabulum to heel the fault was not that of Neil, but +of inferior youths who used to substitute cards inscribed +“Honorificabilitudinitatibus,” “Porringer,” “Xylobalsamum,” +“Beelzebobulus,” and other likely words. + +Eventually he achieved; a hard-won ribbon for his benefactor whom we are +about to call Neil for the last time. + +There was a feeling among those who had betted on the result that it +should be celebrated in no uncertain manner, and a dinner with speeches +not being feasible (though undoubtedly he would have liked it), he was +re-christened Tintinnabulum, and the name stuck. + +So Tintinnabulum let it be henceforth in these wandering pages. Neil the +disinherited may be pictured pattering back to me on his naked soles and +knocking me up in the night. + +“Neil,” I cry (in dressing gown and a candle), “what has happened? Have +you run away from school?” + +“Rather not,” says the plaintive ghost, shivering closer to the fire, “I +was kicked out.” + +“By your tutor?” I ask blanching. + +“No, by Tintinnabulum. He is becoming such a swell among the juniors +that he despises me and the old times. And now he has kicked me out.” + +“Drink this hot milk, Neil, and tell me more. What are those articles +you are hugging beneath your pyjamas?” + +“They are the Bruiser Belt and the score against Juddy’s. He threw them +out after me.” + +“Don’t take it so much to heart, Neil. I’ll find an honoured place for +them here, and you and I will have many a cosy talk by the fire about +Tintinnabulum.” + +“I don’t want to talk about him,” he says, his hands so cold that he +spills the milk, “I would rather talk about the days before there was +him.” + +Well, perhaps that was what I meant. + +Cruel Tintinnabulum. + + + 4. _The Best Parlour Game_ + +Soon after the events described in our last chapter I knew from +Tintinnabulum’s letters that he was again Helping. They were +nevertheless communications so guarded as to be wrapped in mystery. + +His letters from school tend at all times to be more full of instruction +for my guidance than of information about where he stands in his form. I +notice that he worries less than did an older generation about how I am +to dress when I visit him, but he is as pressing as ever that the postal +order should be despatched at once, and firmly refuses to write at all +unless I enclose stamped envelopes. On important occasions he even +writes my letters for me, requesting me to copy them carefully and not +to put in any words of my own, as when for some reason they have to be +shown to his tutor. He then writes, “Begin ‘Dear T.’ (not ‘Dearest T.’), +and end ‘Yours affec.’ (not ‘Yours affectionately’).” + +The mysterious letters that preceded the holidays were concerned with W. +W. Daly, whom I was bidden (almost ordered) to invite to our home for +that lengthy period, “as his mother is to be away at that time on +frightfully important business in which I have a hand.” + +I was instructed to write “Dear Mrs. Daly (not “dearest”), I understand +that you are to be away on important business during the holidays, and +so I have the pleasure to ask you to allow your son to spend the +holidays with me and my boy who is a general favourite and very +diligent. Come, come, I will take no refusal, and I am, Yours affec.” + +I did as I was told, but as I now heard of the lady for the first time I +thought it wisest not to sign my letter to her “Yours affec.” Thus did I +fall a victim to Tintinnabulum’s wiles. + +What could this frightfully important business of Mrs. Daly’s be in +which he “had a hand”? + +[Illustration: “ON IMPORTANT OCCASIONS HE EVEN WRITES MY LETTERS FOR +ME.”] + +You may say (when you hear of his dark design) that I should at once +have insisted on an explanation, but explanations are barred in the +sport that he and I play, which is the greatest of all parlour games, +the Game of Trying to Know Each Other without asking questions. It is +strictly a game for two, who, I suppose, should in perfect conditions be +husband and wife; it is played silently and it never lasts less than a +life-time. In panegyrics on love (a word never mentioned between us two +players), the game is usually held to have ended in a draw when they +understand each other so well that before the one speaks or acts the +other knows what he or she is going to say or do. This, however, is a +position never truly reached in the game, and if it were reached, such a +state of coma for the players could only be relieved by a cane in the +hand of the stronger, or by the other bolting, to show him that there +was one thing about her which he had still to learn. + +No, no, these doited lovers when they think the haven is in sight have +set sail only. Tintinnabulum and I have made a hundred moves, but we are +well aware that we don’t know each other yet; at least, I don’t know +Tintinnabulum, I won’t swear that he does not think that he at last +knows me. So when he brought W. W. home with him for the holidays it was +for me to find out without inquiry how he had been helping Mrs. Daly +(and for what sum). He knew that I was cogitating, I could see his +impertinent face regarding me demurely, as if we were at a chess board +and his last move had puzzled me, which indeed was the situation. + +All I knew of her was that she had lately remarried and that W. W. had +been invited to spend his holidays with us while she was away on her +honeymoon. + +Good heavens, could Tintinnabulum have had some Helping part in the +lady’s marriage? This boy is beginning to scare me. + +I studied him and W. W. at their meals and stole upon them at their +play. There could not have been more cherubic faces. + +But then I remembered the two cherubic faces I had watched from a +bridge. + + + 5. _Tintinnabulum Eats an Apple_ + +I went to Tintinnabulum’s bedchamber and told him I could not rest until +I knew what he had been doing to that lady. In the days of Neil it had +been a room of glamour, especially the bed therein, where were performed +nightly between 6.15 and 6.30 precisely, the brighter plays of +Shakespeare, two actors, but not a sign of them anywhere unless you +became suspicious of the hump in the coverlet. Never have the plays gone +with greater merriment since Mr. Shakespeare made up “A Midsummer +Night’s Dream” in his Judith’s hump. + +No glamour of course in the room of a public schoolboy, unless it was +provided by his discarded raiment, which lay like islands on the floor. +However, I found Tintinnabulum in affable humour, sitting tailor-like in +bed, dressed in half of his pyjamas, reading a book and eating an apple. +He had doubtless found the apple or the book just as he was about to +enter the other half of his night attire. + +“What could I have been doing to her?” he asked invitingly. (He likes to +be hunted.) + +The robing of him having been completed, I said with humorous intent, +“You may have been luring her into matrimony against her better +judgment.” + +“She is nuts on him,” Tintinnabulum said, taking my remark seriously. + +“But you can’t have had anything to do with it?” + +He nodded, with his teeth in the apple. + +“Of course this is nonsense,” I said, though with a sinking, “you don’t +know her.” + +“I didn’t need to know her for a thing like that.” + +I tried sarcasm. “I should have thought it was essential.” He shook his +head. + +“I heard W. W. say to-day,” I continued in the same vein, “that she is +spending the honeymoon on the Riviera; you are not implying, are you, +that it was you who sent her there?” + +“At any rate, if it hadn’t been for me,” he replied, taking a good bite, +“she wouldn’t be on the Riviera and there wouldn’t be a honeymoon.” + +I became alarmed. “Take that apple out of your mouth and tell me what +you mean.” + +The mysterious boy of the so open countenance, as he told me the queer +tale in bed that night, was superbly unaware of its queerness, and was +more interested in standing on his head to see how far his feet would +reach up the wall. He far exceeded the record that had been left by +Neil. + +“I wasn’t the one who made her fond of the chappie,” he said by way of +beginning. “She did that bit herself.” + +“Very generous of you to give her that amount of choice,” I conceded. + +“But she stuck there,” said he. “It was W. W. who told me how she had +stuck. W. W. has a sister called Patricia. Their mother’s name is +Mildred. That is all I know about her,” he added with great lightness of +touch, “except that I worked the marriage.” + +This was the first time I had heard of W. W.’s having a sister. + +“He doesn’t speak about her much,” Tintinnabulum explained, “because +they are twins. I say, don’t let on to him that I told you he was a +twin.” + +So far as I can gather, W. W. keeps the existence of his girl twin dark +from boys in general in case it should make them think less of him. + +“He didn’t ask me to help him out till things were in an awful mess at +home, and then he showed me some of Patricia’s letters.” + +“If I were cross-examining you,” I pointed out, “I should say that your +statement is not quite clear. Tell the Jury what you mean, and don’t +blow the apple pits at the portrait of your uncle the bishop.” + +“I bet you I get him in the calves twice in three shots,” he said. + +“An ignoble ambition,” I told him; “answer my question.” + +“Well, you see, Patricia had found out all about her mother’s being fond +of the man. His name begins with K, but I forget the rest of it.” + +I ventured to say that the least he could do for a man whose life he had +so strangely altered was to remember his name. + +“W. W. will know it,” he said with the carelessness of genius. + +“Even now,” I pressed him, “I don’t see where you come in. Did Patricia +object to Mr. K.?” + +“Oh, no, she thinks no end of him. So does W. W.” He added handsomely, +“I wouldn’t have let her get married if they had shied at it.” + +“In that case——” + +“It wasn’t Patricia that was the bother,” he explained, running the +apple up and down his arm like a mouse, “it was Mrs. Daly. You know how +funny ladies are about some things.” + +“I do not,” I said severely. + +“Well, it was about marrying a second time. Mrs. Daly couldn’t make up +her mind whether it would be fair to W. W. and Patricia. She knew they +liked him all right, but not whether they liked him as much as that.” + +“Tell me how Patricia found all this out, and don’t bump about so much.” + +“She was watching,” he replied airily. “She is that kind. I daresay the +thing wasn’t difficult to find out if all the stuff she said in her +letters to W. W. was true. They were awful letters, saying her mother +was in anguishes about what was the best thing to do for her progeny. +One letter would say, ‘Mr. K. made a lovely impression on mother to-day +and I don’t think she can resist much longer.’ Then the next would say, +‘I fear all is up, for they have been crying together in the +drawing-room, and when he left he banged the door.’” + +“Their mother hadn’t a notion,” Tintinnabulum assured me, making an +eye-glass of the apple, “that they knew there was anything in the wind.” + +“Nor would they have had any such notion,” I rapped out, “if they had +been children of an earlier date.” + +“I suppose we are cleverer now,” he admitted. He became introspective. +“I expect the war did it. It’s rummy what a difference the war has made. +Before the war no one could hold two eggs in his mouth and hop across a +pole. Now everyone can do it.” + +I requested him to stick to the point. + +“Why didn’t Patricia the emancipated go to her mother and inform her +that all was well?” + +“That is the very thing W. W. and she bickered about in their letters. +He was always writing to her to do that, but she said it would be +unladylike.” + +“Very un-shingled of her to trouble about that,” I got in. “But had she +any proposal to make to W. W.?” + +“Rather. She was always badgering W. W. to write to their mother saying +they knew all and wanted her to go at it blind. She thought it would +come better from him, being male. That was what made him come to me in +the end. He told me all about it and asked me if I could help.” + +“And what was your reply?” I asked with some interest. “Don’t tell me,” +I added hurriedly (we were back at the game, you see), “I want to guess. +You said immediately, ‘All right’?” + +He approved. + +“Did it ever strike you,” I enquired curiously, “that you might not be +able to help?” + +“I can’t remember,” the unfathomable one answered. “I say, would you +like to see me do a dive over your head?” + +Offer declined. + +“You see,” he continued, “W. W. is rather—rather——” + +“Rather a retiring boy when there is trouble ahead,” I suggested. “Well, +what did you devise?” + +“I said I couldn’t do anything until I knew the colour of Patricia’s +hair and eyes.” + +This took me aback, though it is quite in Tintinnabulum’s manner. + +“How could that help?” I had to enquire instead of risking a move. + +“I couldn’t get a beginning,” he insisted doggedly, “till I found out +that.” (To this day I don’t know what he meant.) + +“No difficulty in finding out from W. W.,” I said. + +Here I was wrong. W. W. had no idea of the colour of his dear little +sister’s eyes but presumed that, as he and she were twins, their eyes +must be of the same hue. There followed a scene, undoubtedly worthy of +some supreme artist, in which, by the light of a match, Tintinnabulum +endeavoured to discover colour of W. W.’s eyes, W. W. being again unable +to supply desired information. The match always going out just as +Tintinnabulum was on the eve of discovery, it was decided by him that W. +W. should write to his twin for particulars (letter dictated by +Tintinnabulum). Patricia’s reply was, “Who is it that wants to know? +Eyes too expressive to be blue, too lovely to be grey,” and it irritated +the two seekers after truth. + +“We didn’t ask her what colour they were not,” Tintinnabulum said to me +witheringly, “but what colour they were.” + +In the end, rather than bother any more with her, they risked putting +her eyes down as browny black. This determined, Tintinnabulum apprized +his client that Patricia was to write the letter that would make their +mother happy. This nearly led to a rupture. + +_W. W._ (_sitting_, as they say in the plays, though he might as well be +standing): She can’t write a letter to mother when they are living in +the same house. + +_Tintinnabulum_ (_rising_, because W. W. sat): It would be a letter to +you. + +_W. W._ (_contemptibly_): That brings me into the thing again. + +_Tintinnabulum_: Shut up and listen. The letter isn’t to be posted. Your +mother will find it lying open on Patricia’s desk and read it on the +sly. + +_W. W._ (_nobly_): My mother never does things on the sly. + +_Tintinnabulum_ (_comprehensively_): Oh. + +_W. W._ (_hedging_): What would the letter say? + +_Tintinnabulum_: It would show her that you and Patricia knew what she +was after and both wanted her to marry the chappie, and then she could +put it back where she found it and never let on that she had seen it and +make all her arrangements with a happy heart. + +_W. W._: That is what we want, but mother wouldn’t read a letter on the +sly. + +_Tintinnabulum_ (_after thinking it out when he should have been doing +his prep._): Look here, if she is so fussy we can tell Patricia to leave +the letter open on the floor as if it had blown there, and then when +your mother picks it up to put it back on the desk she can’t help taking +a look at it. + +_W. W._: Would that not be reading it on the sly? + +_Tintinnabulum_ (_with cheerful cynicism_): Not for a woman. + +_W. W._ (_depressed_): It will be an awfully difficult letter to write. + +_Tintinnabulum_ (_exultant_): Fearfully. + +_W. W._: I don’t think Patricia could do it. + +_Tintinnabulum_: Not she. I’ll do it. Then you copy my letter and she +copies yours. + +_W. W._: 3_d._? + +_Tintinnabulum_: Tons more than that. + +This scheme was carried out, Tintinnabulum, after a thoughtful study of +Patricia’s epistolary style, producing something in this manner, no +doubt with the holy look on his face that is always there when he knows +he is concocting a masterpiece. (I regret that he has forgotten what he +said in the introductory passage, which dealt in an artful feminine +manner with her garments and was probably a beauty.) + + +“Darling Doubly Doubly, + +... oh dear, I am so unhappy because I fear the match between darlingest +mummy and Mr. K. is not to be hit off. Oh dear, she blows hot and cold +and it makes me bleed to see the poor man’s anguishes, and you and me +wanting it so much. If only I could think of a lady-like way to tell +mummy that we know she wants it and that we want her to go ahead, but I +cannot, and it would need a wonder of a man to do it. Oh dear, how +lovely it would be, oh dear, how I wish I knew some frightfully clever +person, oh dear——” + + +“I stopped there,” Tintinnabulum told me. “I meant to put in a lot more +before I finished, but I wouldn’t let myself go on.” + +“Why?” I asked eagerly, aware that he had reached a great moment in his +life. + +“Because,” he said heavily, “I saw all at once that I had come to the +end.” (We are so undemonstrative that I did not embrace him). + +The letter was left as arranged, on Mrs. Daly’s floor, and I may say at +once that everything went as planned by the Master. Can we not see +Mildred (all authors have a right to call their heroine by her Christian +name), opening the door of that room? Her beautiful face is down-cast, +all the luckier for Tintinnabulum and Co., for she at once sees the +life-giving sheet. She picks it up, meaning to replace it on the desk +whence it has so obviously fluttered, when a word catches her eye, and +not intending to read she reads. An exquisite flush tints her face as +she recognises Patricia’s inimitable style. The happy woman is now best +left to herself (Come away, Tintinnabulum, you imp). + +Dear (not dearest) heroine, you little know who is responsible for your +raptures, the indifferent lad now trying to twist one leg round his neck +as he finishes his apple. Grudge us not the few minutes in which for +literary purposes we have snatched you from the shores of the blue +Mediterranean. Thither we now return you to cloudless days and to your +K., roses in your cheeks (Tintinnabulum’s roses). And you, O lucky K., +when you encounter boys of thirteen, might do worse than have a +mysterious prompting to give them a franc or so. I wish you both very +happy, and I am, yours affec. + +“Shall I send them your love?” I almost hear myself saying to +Tintinnabulum. + +“If you like,” he replies, preoccupied with what is left of an apple +when the apple itself has gone. For it must be admitted of him that he +has not boasted of his achievement. His only comment was modesty itself, +“Two bob,” he said. + +It is almost appalling to reflect that no woman who knows Tintinnabulum +(and has two bob) need remain single. And what character apples have, +even when being consumed; if I had given him an orange or a pear this +chapter would be quite different. With such deep thoughts I put out his +light, and took away the other apple which he had hidden beneath his +pillow. + + + 6. _Nemesis_ + +As the holidays waned (and after W. W. was safely stowed away in bed) +Tintinnabulum gratified me by being willing to talk about Neil. If you +had heard us at it you would have sworn that those two had no very close +connection, that Neil was merely some interesting whipper-snapper who +had played about the house until the manlier Tintinnabulum arrived. He +was always spoken of between us as Neil, which obviously suited +Tintinnabulum’s dignity, but I wonder how I took to it so naturally +myself. I hope I am not a queer one. + +By that arrangement Tintinnabulum can make artful enquiries, not +unwistful, into his own past, and I can seem (thus goes the game) not to +know that he is doing so. He can even commend Neil. + +“Pretty decent of him,” he says, discussing the Bruiser Belt and the +score against Juddy’s. + +“I didn’t think he had it in him,” is even stronger about the sea-trout +Neil had landed and been so proud of that he would not lie prone till it +was put in a basin by his bedside. He had then slept with one arm over +the basin. + +Strongest of all is to say that Neil was mad, at present a term not only +of approval but even of endearment at the only school that counts +(Tintinnabulum speaking). Sometimes we talk of the dark period when +Neil, weeping over his first Latin grammar, used to put a merry tune on +the gramophone to accompany his woe. He continued to weep as he studied, +but always rose at the right time to change the tune. This is a +heart-breaker of a memory to me, and Tintinnabulum knows it and puts his +hand deliciously on my shoulder (that kindest gesture of man to man). + +“The gander must have been mad, quite mad,” he says hurriedly. + +How Neil would like to hear Tintinnabulum saying these nice things about +him. + +Perhaps we all have a Neil. Have you ever wakened suddenly in the night, +certain that you heard a bell ring as it once rang or a knocking on your +door as only one could knock or a voice of long ago, quite close? +Sometimes you rise and wander the house; more often, after waiting alert +for a repetition of the sound, you decide that you have been dreaming or +that it was the creaking of a window or a board. But I daresay it was +none of these things. I daresay it was your Neil. + +Perhaps you have become something quite different from what he meant to +be. Perhaps he wants to get into the house, not to gaze proudly at you +but to strike you. + +Some drop their Neil deliberately and can recall clearly the day of the +great decision, but most are unaware that he has gone. For instance, it +may have been Neil who married the lady and you who gradually took his +place, so like him in appearance that she is as deceived as you. Or it +may be that she has found you out and knows who it is that is knocking +on the door trying to get back to her. You might be scared if you knew +that though she is at this moment attending to your wants with a smile +for you on her face, her passionate wish is to be done with you. On the +other hand, you may be the better fellow of the two. Let us decide that +this is how it is. + + * * * * * + +The last week of the holidays was darkened for Tintinnabulum and W. W. +by the shadow of a letter demanded of them by their tutor. It had to be +on one of three subjects: + + (_a_) Your Favourite Walk. + (_b_) Your Favourite Game. + (_c_) What shall I do next Half? + +A nasty tag attached to m’ tutor’s order said “the letter must be of +great length.” Little had they troubled about it till the end loomed, +but then they rumbled wrathfully; well was it for their tutor he heard +not what they said of him. + +Tintinnabulum of course was merely lazy, or on principle resented +writing anything for less than 3_d._ Grievous, however, was the burden +on W. W., whose gifts lie not in a literary direction. He is always +undone by his clear-headed way of putting everything he knows on any +subject into the first sentence. He had a shot at (_a_), (_b_) and +(_c_). + +_Attempt on (a)._ “My favourite walk is when I do not have far to go to +it.” (Here he stuck.) + +_Attempt on (b)._ “The game of cricket is my favourite game, and it +consists of six stumps, two bats and a ball.” After wandering round the +table many times he added, “Nor must we forget the bails.” (Stuck +again.) + +_Attempt on (c)._ “Next half is summer half, so early school will be +half an hour earlier.” (Final stick.) + +He then abandoned hope and would, I suppose, have had to run away to sea +(if boys still do that) had not Help been nigh. + +For a consideration (and you can now guess exactly how much it was) +Tintinnabulum offered to write W. W.’s letter for him. I did not see it +till later (as you shall learn), indeed the episode was purposely kept +dark from me. The subject chosen was “My Favourite Walk,” because +Tintinnabulum had a book entitled Walks and Talks with the Little Ones, +which never before had he thought might come in handy. Of course such a +performer by no means confined himself to purloining from this work, +though he did have something to say about how W. W. wandered along his +walk carrying a little book into which he put “interesting plants.” +Anything less like W. W. thus engaged I cannot conceive, unless it be +Tintinnabulum himself. + +The miscreant also carefully misspelt several words, as being natural to +W. W. Unfortunately (his fatal weakness) he could not keep his own name +out of the letter, and he made W. W. say that the favourite walk was +“near the house of my kind friend Tintinnabulum, and you know him, sir, +for he is in your house, and I mess with him, which is very lucky for +me, all the scugs wanting to mess with him and nobody wanting me.” + +Could brainy critics, peeled for the pounce, read that human document +they would doubtless pause to enquire into its hidden meaning. On the +surface it was written (_a_) to get 3_d._ out of W. W., (_b_) to give +relief to Tintinnabulum’s ego. To the ordinary reader (with whom to-day +we have no concern) this might suffice, but the digger would ask, what +is the philosophy of life advanced by the author, is the whole thing an +allegory and if so, what is Tintinnabulum’s Message; in short, is he, +like the commoner writers, merely saying what he says, or, like the big +chaps, something quite different? + +Had his tutor considered the letter thus, we might have had a most +interesting analysis of it (and no one would have been more interested +than Tintinnabulum). But though a favourite of mine (and also of +Tintinnabulum) his tutor is just slightly Victorian, and he went for the +letter like one of the illiterate. + +It was not seen by me until the two hopefuls returned to school, when I +received it from their tutor with another one which is uncommonly like +it. Investigation has elicited the following data, for which kindly +allow me to use (_a_), (_b_) and (_c_) again, as I have taken a fancy to +them. + +(_a_) Letter is read and approved by W. W. + +(_b_) W. W. on reflection objects to passage about the honour of messing +with Tintinnabulum. + +(_c_) Ultimatum issued by Tintinnabulum that the passage must be +retained. + +(_d_) MS. haughtily returned to the author. + +(_e_) The author alters a few words and sends in letter as his own. + +(_f_) W. W. has made a secret copy of the letter and sends it in as his, +with the objectionable passage deleted. + +(_g_) Their tutor smells a rat. + +(_h_) He takes me into his confidence. + +(_i_) Days pass but I remain inactive. + +(_j_) He puts the affair into the hands of Beverley, the head of the +house. + +(_k_) Triumph of Miss Rachel. + +Miss Rachel who is an old friend of ours is slight and frail, say 5 ft. +3, her biceps cannot be formidable and I question whether she could kick +the beam however favourably it was placed for her. She is such an +admirer of Tintinnabulum that he occasionally writhes, in his fuller +knowledge of the subject. + +Having led a quiet and uneventful life (so far as I know), Miss Rachel +suddenly shoots into the light through her acquaintance with the +Beverleys of Winch Park, which is, as it were, nothing; but the great +Beverley, Beverley the thunderous, who is head of m’ tutor’s house, is a +scion of that family; and now you see what a swell Miss Rachel has +become. When Neil (as he then was) was entered for that great school she +wrote to Beverley—fancy knowing someone who can write to +Beverley—telling him (to Neil’s indignation) what a darling her young +friend was and hoping Beverley would look after him and make him his +dear little fag. Months elapsed before a reply came, but when it did +come it really referred to Tintinnabulum and contained these pregnant +words: “As to the person in whom you are interested, I look after him a +good deal, and the more I see of him the more I lick him.” + +Miss Rachel showed me the letter with exultation. So kind of him, she +said, though she was a little distressed that a strapping fellow like +Beverley should spell so badly. + +More recently I had a letter from Tintinnabulum, which I showed to her +as probably denoting the final transaction in the affair of the letter. + +“W. W. and I,” it announced very cheerily, “saw Beverley yesterday in +his room and he gave each of us six of the best.” + +“How charming of Beverley!” Miss Rachel said. + +“The best what?” she enquired, but I cannot have heard her, for I made +no answer. + +I learn that sometimes she thinks it was probably cakes and at other +times fives balls, which she knows to be in great demand at that school. +I shall not be surprised if Miss Rachel sends a dozen of the best to +Beverley. + + + 7. _How to Write a Collins_ + +I note that the dozen of the best shared by these two odd creatures +seems to have made them pals again. The proof is that though they began +the new half by messing with other youths they are now once more messing +together. + +“That priceless young cub, W. W.,” occurs in one letter of +Tintinnabulum’s. + +“W. W. is the lad for me,” he says in the next. + +Again, I have a note of thanks for hospitality from W. W. in which he +remarks, “Tintinnabulum is as ripping as ever.” This, however, is to be +discounted, as, though the letter is signed W. W. Daly, I recognise in +it another hand, I recognise this other hand so clearly that I can add a +comment in brackets (3_d._). + +Yes, I can do so (because of a game I have long been playing), but any +other person would be deceived, just as m’ tutor was at first deceived +by the epistles on the favourite walk. He told me that these were so +fragrant of W. W. that he had thought Tintinnabulum must be the +copy-cat. Indeed, thus it was held until W. W. nobly made confession. + +What I must face is this, that Tintinnabulum, being (alas) an artist, +has been inside W. W. Not only so, he has since his return to school +been inside at least half a dozen other boys, searching for Collinses +for them. + +A Collins, as no one, perhaps except Miss Austen, needs to be told, is +the fashionable name for a letter of thanks for hospitality to a host or +hostess. Thus W. W.’s letter to me was a Collins. Somehow its fame has +spread through his house, and now Tintinnabulum is as one possessed, +writing threepenny Collinses for the deficient. They are small boys as +yet, but as the quality of his Help is trumpeted to other houses I +conceive Fields, Blues and Choices knocking at his door and begging for +a Collins. It will be a great day for Tintinnabulum when Beverley +applies. + +The Collins letter is a fine art in which those who try the hardest +often fall most heavily, and perhaps even m’ tutor or the Provost +Himself, at his wit’s end how to put it neatly this time, will yet crave +a 3_d._ worth. It may even be that readers grown grey in the country’s +service, who quake at thought of the looming Collins, would like to have +Tintinnabulum’s address. It is refused; but I mention, to fret them, +that his every Collins is guaranteed different from all his other +Collinses, and to be so like the purchaser that it is a photograph. + +If you were his client you could accept Saturday to Monday invitations +with a light heart. But don’t, when he is at your Collins, go near him +and the babe lest he clutch it to his breast and growl. He has the great +gift of growling, which will yet make him popular with another sex. + +His concentration on the insides of others is of course very disturbing +to me, but I should feel still more alarmed if I heard that he had +abandoned the monetary charge and, for sheer love of the thing, was +turning out Collinses gratis. + +To-day there comes a ray of hope from a harassed tutor, who writes that +Tintinnabulum has deserted the Collins for googly bowling, the secrets +of which he is pursuing with the same terrific intensity. I can picture +him getting inside the ball. + + + 8. _He and I and Another_ + +You readers may smile when I tell you why I have indited these memories +and fancies. It was not done for you but for me, being a foolish attempt +to determine, by writing the things down (playing over by myself some of +the past moves in the game), whether Tintinnabulum really does like me +still. That he should do so is very important to me as he recedes +farther from my ken down that road which hurries him from me. I cannot, +however, after all, give myself a very definite answer. He no longer +needs me of course, as Neil did, and he will go on needing me less. When +I think of Neil I know that those were the last days in which I was +alive. + +Tintinnabulum’s opinion of himself, except when he is splashing, is +lowlier than was Neil’s; some times in dark moods it is lowlier than +makes for happiness. He has hardened a little since he was Neil, +coarsened but strengthened. I comfort myself with the curious reflection +that the best men I have known have had a touch of coarseness in them. + +Perhaps I have made too much of the occasional yieldings of this boy +whom I now know so superficially. The new life is building seven walls +around him. Are such of his moves in the game as I can follow merely an +expert’s kindness to an indifferent player? + +On the other hand, I learn from a friendly source that he has spoken of +me with approval, once at least, as “mad, quite mad,” and I know that my +battered countenance, about which I am very “touchy” excites his pity as +well as his private mirth. On the last night of the holidays he was +specially gruff, but he slipped beneath my door a paper containing the +words “I hereby solemnly promise never to give you cause for moral +anxiety,” and signed his name across a postage stamp to give the +document a special significance. Nevertheless, W. W. and he certainly do +at times exchange disturbing glances of which I am the object, and +these, I notice, occur when I think I am talking well. Again, if I set +off to tell a humorous story in company nothing can exceed the agony on +Tintinnabulum’s face. Yet I am uncertain that this is not a compliment, +for if he felt indifferently toward me why should he worry about my +fate? + +During those holidays a master at his old preparatory sent me a letter +he had received from Tintinnabulum (whom he called Neil), saying that as +it was about me he considered I ought to read it. But I had not the +courage to do so. Quite likely it was favourable, but suppose it hadn’t +been. Besides, it was not meant for me to see, and I cling to his +dew-drop about my being mad. On the whole, I think he is still partial +to me. Corroboration, I consider, was provided at our parting, when he +so skilfully turned what began as a tear into a wink and gazed at me +from the disappearing train with what I swear was a loving scowl. + +What will become of Tintinnabulum? There was a horror looking for him in +his childhood. Waking dreams we called them, and they lured Neil out of +bed in the night. It was always the same nameless enemy he was seeking, +and he stole about in various parts of the house in search of it, +probing fiercely for it in cupboards, or standing at the top of the +stairs pouring out invective and shouting challenges to it to come up. I +have known the small white figure defend the stair-head thus for an +hour, blazing rather than afraid, concentrated on some dreadful matter +in which, tragically, none could aid him. I stood or sat by him, like a +man in an adjoining world, waiting till he returned to me, for I had +been advised, warned, that I must not wake him abruptly. Gradually I +soothed him back to bed, and though my presence there in the morning +told him, in the light language we then adopted, that he had been “at it +again” he could remember nothing of who the enemy was. It had something +to do with the number 7; that was all we ever knew. Once I slipped from +the room, thinking it best that he should wake to normal surroundings, +but that was a mistake. He was violently agitated by my absence. In some +vague way he seemed on the stairs to have known that I was with him and +to have got comfort from it; he said he had gone back to bed only +because he knew I should be there when he woke up. I found that he +liked, “after he had been an ass,” to wake up seeing me “sitting there +doing something frightfully ordinary, like reading the newspaper,” and +you may be sure that thereafter that was what I was doing. + +After he had been a year or two at his preparatory, Neil did a nice +thing for me; one of a thousand. I had shaken my head over his standing +so low in Maths, though he was already a promising classic, and had said +that it was “great fun to be good at what one was bad at.” A term or two +later when he came home he thrust the Maths prize into my hand. “But it +wasn’t fun,” he growled. (It was Neil’s growl before it was +Tintinnabulum’s.) He came back to blurt out, “I did it because in those +bad times you were always sitting there with the newspaper when I woke.” + +By becoming Tintinnabulum he is not done with his unknown foe, though I +think they have met but once. On this occasion his dame had remained +with him all night, as he had been slightly unwell, and she was amused, +but nothing more, to see him, without observing her, rise and search the +room in a fury of words for something that was not there. The only word +she caught was “seven.” He asked them not to tell me of this incident, +as he knew it would trouble me. I was told, and, indeed, almost expected +the news, for I had sprung out of bed that night thinking I heard Neil +once again defending the stair. By the time I reached Tintinnabulum it +had ceased to worry him. “But when I woke I missed the newspaper,” he +said with his adorable smile, and again putting his hand on my shoulder. +How I wished “the newspaper” could have been there. There are times when +a boy can be as lonely as God. + +[Illustration: “I DID IT BECAUSE YOU WERE ALWAYS SITTING THERE WITH THE +NEWSPAPER WHEN I WOKE”] + +What is the danger? What is it that he knows in the times during which +he is shut away and that he cannot remember to tell to himself or to me +when he wakes? I am often disturbed when thinking of him (which is the +real business of my life), regretting that, in spite of advice and +warnings, I did not long ago risk waking him abruptly, when, before it +could hide, he might have clapped seeing eyes upon it, and thus been +able to warn me. Then, knowing the danger, I would for ever after be on +the watch myself, so that when the moment came, I could envelop him as +with wings. These are, of course, only foolish fears of the dark, and +with morning they all fly away. Tintinnabulum makes very merry over +them. I have a new thought that, when he is inside me, he may leave them +there deliberately to play upon my weakness for him and so increase his +sock allowance. Is the baffling creature capable of this enormity? With +bowed head I must admit he is. I make a note, to be more severe with him +this half. + + + + +[Illustration] + + The Dream + + HERBERT ASQUITH + + + My dream? Can I remember my dream? + I was floating down the nursery stair, + And my little terrier ran in front + With his feet treading on the air; + And when we came to the dining-room, + The King and the Queen were there: + And father and mother, two and two; + And a baby elephant from the Zoo, + Each on a golden chair; + And three soldiers, and Mary Rose + Riding an ostrich that pecked her toes, + And Uncle Jim + Looking very trim, + Eating a kipper. + And, when they had sung to the King, + They all sat down in a ring, + And played at hunt the slipper. + + Then I saw a curling stream + And yellow flow’rs in a meadow, + And six little green frogs + Dancing a jig in the shadow: + And the tune came from a bough, + “Tweet, tweet, quiver,” + Sung by a little brown bird + That swayed above the river. + + Then we all started to dance, + And Aunt Rebecca too; + Uncle Jim began to prance, + And the baby elephant blew + A curl of smoke from his cigar, + As he sat and watched the evening star. + And the little brown bird sang on, + Swaying above the river: + But a wind came whispering down, + And the leaves began to shiver. + + Then with a crackly sound + Uncle Jim went flat: + He turned into a cricket-bat; + But Aunt Rebecca grew very round + And floated up like a black balloon, + Higher and higher, into the Moon. + The stars fell out of the sky; + The baby elephant whined: + “Time to get up” said nurse: + And “Flap” went the blind. + +[Illustration] + + + + +[Illustration] + + Mr. Snoogles + + By Elizabeth Lowndes + + +Veronica lay very still in bed, then she stretched out as far as she +could. Her feet travelled down to that cold region near where the sheets +and blankets disappear under the mattress. She was certainly still +awake, for one doesn’t stretch in dreams, and if one did one would +certainly wake up. + +Then she cautiously raised herself upon one elbow and looked round, +slowly, at the fire. Ever since Teddy had said that Mr. Snoogles lived +up the chimney she had regarded the fire with much greater interest, not +to say dread. Not that Mr. Snoogles was real. He was just fun. And yet, +though Veronica knew he was only fun, she often wondered how he managed +to fit in the inside of the chimney—if, that is, he was at all like +father, or even Dr. Blackie (who wasn’t at all big for a man). But then +Teddy was the only person who claimed to have ever seen this person who +had taken refuge in their chimneys, and he couldn’t be made to describe +him. + +In the morning and in the afternoon Mr. Snoogles was much more amusing +than any shop-bought game. Veronica would laugh over him, and invent +long conversations in which he said such silly things! But when the +evening crept on, and the fire crackled in the grate, and flickered on +the walls, it made it all so different. Why do things which aren’t true +make you think they are true, at night? + +Veronica remembered uneasily a curious dream. She was no longer a big +girl with short hair and long thin legs; she was a green velvet +pin-cushion, and pins of various sizes and colours were just about to be +stuck into her before she was sent off to a village bazaar. Though that +was only a dream, for a long time she never saw a pin-cushion without +thinking of herself as one.... + +And now, to-night, she at last lay back in bed out of sight of the fire, +and tried to plan adventures for the next day. Why did real adventures +always pass her by? + +Suddenly she heard a curious low rumbling sound. For a moment she hoped +and yet dreaded that it came from the direction of the chimney, but when +the sound got louder, as it did very soon, she burst out laughing, for +it was only Teddy snoring. The door between their rooms was open, so no +wonder she heard him. How funny, and how disappointing! + +In time Veronica’s eyes closed without her noticing it, and lying there, +so comfortable and so warm in bed, just on that borderland of the +ordinary world of lessons and rice pudding (when one expected something +else with jam on it) and that other delicious world of dreams and vague +sensations. + +But all at once Veronica heard a great clatter. She sat up in bed and +opened her eyes wide to see in the firelight a most curious little +person. He had leapt out of the chimney and dropped all the fire-irons +in a heap at his feet. She could see them lying there on the white +woolly mat, all at sixes and sevens. + +He was very small, about as high as the poker. He had large round eyes, +nearly as round as two pennies. And on his head, perched on the very +top, was the lid of the nursery kettle! It was a copper kettle, and was +always kept very bright. + +The stranger was dressed in black and his clothes fitted him quite +tight, like a well-drawn-up stocking or a glove. + +Veronica gazed at him, her eyes growing almost as round as his own. + +Then he stamped his foot, and raising his arms over his head, he made a +low bow. + +“Madam, your wish to see me, though it is only prompted by idle +curiosity, has brought me down from my kingdom among the chimney pots. I +have a request to make to you. Will you take my place for a few hours? I +am called away on urgent private affairs, but I cannot leave my work up +there unless you will give me your help.” + +His voice was high and sharp. It was rather like listening to a sparrow. + +[Illustration: “HE MADE A LOW BOW”] + +He went straight on, without waiting for an answer. “It is a mistake to +suppose that I live in the chimney. It would be most disagreeable to do +so, as I should have thought you, who have imagination, would realize. +But I am talking too much. I wait respectfully, Madam, for your answer. +Will you help me?” + +Veronica wriggled uncomfortably under the warm bedclothes. + +“I will help you if I can.” She was a cautious, as well as a truthful, +child, so she added hastily, “I don’t want to say I will, if I can’t. +And are you—_are_ you Mr. Snoogles?” + +The strange little man standing on the mat threw back his head so +suddenly that the lid of the kettle fell off and bounced away behind the +coal scuttle. + +“Oh, how funny!” he laughed. “I shall add that to my collection. No, I’m +_not_ Mr. Snoogles; but I am the person whom your brother calls Mr. +Snoogles.” + +“So Teddy _has_ seen you after all. Sometimes I thought Mr. Snoogles was +only a game.” + +“Indeed, I’m not a game. What a horrid thing to be! Imagine being a +football?” + +“Or a pin-cushion,” said Veronica hastily. “I know because I believed I +was one once, but only for a short time,” she added, because she was +truthful, but also in case Mr. Snoogles found a stray pin on the floor +and, remembering what she had said, might stick it into her. He looked +such a tidy man. + +“I can assure you, Madam, that I will not request you to do anything at +all difficult. I shall only require your services for a short period—say +about ten years.” + +“_Ten years?_ But in ten years I shall be quite old—that is, quite grown +up. I shall be twenty-one.” + +“Well, what of that? My work is much more amusing than what you do all +day—lessons, walks, quarrels.” + +Veronica felt a little taken aback. + +“But I don’t quarrel—that is to say, not much, not nearly as much as do +our cousins in the country or as the long-haired family we see in the +park. Would you like to hear my names? I am not madam yet. You see, I am +not married. And won’t you sit down?” + +“No, I never sit down. It’s lazy. Proceed with your names. Though I know +what I call you to myself.” + +“I was christened Elizabeth Veronica Sybella—now, what do _you_ call +me?” + +“Never mind. Don’t ask questions. It’s bad manners.” + +Veronica felt annoyed, but she put her pride in her pocket and asked: +“If I do what you want me to do—will you tell me then?” + +“I shall if you deserve it.” + +What a horrid thing to say! How like a holiday governess!—the sort that +Veronica and her brother had had last summer. + +“We must be gone. You have been wasting _our_ time. Not that time is +money to me.” + +“Isn’t it? It is to father, though how he makes it into money I don’t +know. I have so much time I could make such a lot of money if only I +knew how to do it.” + +“Money is silly stuff. Look how easily it burns. Only yesterday I saw +the kitchenmaid at No. 5 throw a five-pound note on to the fire. She +didn’t know what it was, poor silly girl, though she is very clever at +washing cups and saucers. Come on now!” + +Veronica jumped out of bed, and ran over to the fireplace. + +“Do we go up there?” she said, looking at the chimney and then at the +dying fire. “Won’t it burn?” + +“Not when you are with me. Fire is my servant. I am fire’s lord and +master. But if you feel at all nervous I will command it to die.” + +With these dramatic words Mr. Snoogles clapped his hands together and +cried out: “Servant, hide thyself! Let thy light burn dim while we pass +over you.” + +Instantly the coals grew grey and dusty. + +Mr. Snoogles put out his hand, and taking Veronica’s fingers firmly in +his, he pulled her up, and soon she found herself being drawn up higher +and higher. + +“When we get to the top I will explain what you have to do.” + +Veronica said nothing. Adventure had come at last—the real thing, better +than any story-book she had ever read, because it was happening to +her—actually to her. + +They suddenly came out into the night air. To the right, to the left, in +fact, wherever she looked, were chimney pots. Some had strange things on +them like hats. + +Then it was that Veronica noticed she had become about the same size as +Mr. Snoogles. She did not feel cold, either, which was stranger still. +But she sat down as she had been told, and gazed about her. High above, +the stars were twinkling and the young moon was shining. + +Mr. Snoogles coughed. + +“Have you finished thinking your thoughts, and will you now think of +mine?” he said crossly. + +“I am so sorry. Please tell me yours.” + +“My business—and soon it will be _your_ business, don’t forget—is to be +the Watchman of Fire and Smoke. Smoke is used for punishment because it +is unpleasant. But Fire brings warmth and happiness. You will have power +over them both, but you must keep Fire in his proper place. When you see +things not going well in a house then send down Smoke. If they bear it +well, and cease to think of themselves, call it back and ask Fire to +burn brightly to warm them, and to make them feel happy and cheerful. If +a live coal flies out on the mat, you must be there to make it go out. A +house on fire is a terrible thing, and means you have not been doing +your work properly.” He waited a moment, then exclaimed: “I must be +going soon, so do your best!” + +[Illustration: “HAVE YOU FINISHED THINKING YOUR THOUGHTS”] + +“But how shall I——?” Veronica looked round, but Mr. Snoogles had +vanished, and she found herself alone on the roof. + +“I can’t do it, it’s too difficult,” she said to herself, “much more +difficult than learning a long speech out of Shakespeare. One can always +do that if one really tries, but this——?” + + * * * * * + +“Veronica, Veronica, I have been screaming at you for ages. There is a +big fire outside! That empty house is burning down, I can see it from my +window——” + +Teddy was jumping about in his pyjamas. “Come along! Hurry up!” he +shouted. + +Veronica got out of bed as if she was dreaming. Then she cried in great +distress, “It’s my fault—that fire. Mr. Snoogles said I must not allow +it to happen.” + +“Don’t be so silly. Mr. Snoogles isn’t real. Come along!” + +The two children ran to the window, and in the excitement of watching +the fire engines arrive, and the water pouring out of the great hose +pipes Veronica forgot her part in this tragedy. + +Later in the morning, as they were coming in from a walk, Veronica said, +“Teddy, what was Mr. Snoogles really like when you saw him? Do tell me +and I will tell you a great secret.” + +“Mr. Snoogles? I will show him to you.” + +Teddy took off his coat and hat, and running halfway up the stairs, he +threw his coat round a pillar which marked the half landing. Then he put +his cap on the round knot at the top. + +“Veronica! Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Snoogles!” + +“Teddy! D’you mean you never saw him really? I have.” + +“Of course I didn’t. And you haven’t either!” + +Veronica said nothing to that. She knew better. + + + + +[Illustration] + + Eggs + + HERBERT ASQUITH + + + Bob has blown a hundred eggs, + Blue and olive, white and grey; + Warbler, nightingale, and thrush, + Bob has blown their songs away! + + Low in spotless wool they rest, + Purest blue and clouded white, + Streaked with cinnamon and red, + Flecked with purples of the night; + + Mute and gleaming, row on row, + Lie the tombstones of the spring! + What a chorus would there be + If those eggs began to sing! + + + + + The Two Sailors + +[Illustration] + + JOHN LEA + + + _This was one_ + + There once was a sailor who never could bear + To rub any oil on the top of his hair, + And no one who loved him at sea or at home + Would offer the use of a brush and a comb. + He said (and what reason for doubting the tale?) + The very best brush is the breath of a gale, + While as to the comb—seek a better, in vain, + Than jolly good torrents of tropical rain. + So all round the world (and no cruise did he miss) + That singular sailor looked something like _this_. + + + _This was the other one_ + +[Illustration] + + There once was a sailor who lavished with care + Whole buckets of oil on the top of his hair, + And no one who loved him omitted to speak + In rapture of tresses so splendidly sleek. + He said (and who questions what mariners say?) + He brushed them and combed them each hour of the day. + For, up on the mast in the wildest of seas, + He never neglected such duties as these. + And so, as no chance he would lazily miss, + That singular sailor looked something like _this_. + + + + + Doctor Dolittle meets a Londoner in Paris + + HUGH LOFTING + + +One day John Dolittle was walking alone in the Tuileries Gardens. He had +been asked to come to France by some French naturalists who wished to +consult him on certain new features to be added to the zoo in the Jardin +des Plantes. The Doctor knew Paris well and loved it. To his way of +thinking it was the perfect city—or would be, if it were not so +difficult to get a bath there. + +It had been raining all day, but now the sun was shining, and the +gardens, fresh and wet, looked very beautiful. As the Doctor passed one +of the many shrubberies he came upon a sparrow wallowing in a puddle in +the middle of the gravel path. + +“Why, I declare!” he muttered to himself, hurrying forward. “It’s +Cheapside!” + +The small bird, evidently quite accustomed to human traffic, was far too +busy with his bathing to notice anyone’s approach. + +“How do you do, Cheapside?” said the Doctor in sparrow language. “Who on +earth would ever have thought of finding you here?” + +The sparrow stopped his fluttering and wallowing and looked up through +the water that ran down in big drops off his tousled head-feathers. + +“Jiminy Crickets!” he exclaimed. “It’s the Doc himself!” + +[Illustration: “‘HOW DO YOU DO, CHEAPSIDE?’ SAID THE DOCTOR IN SPARROW +LANGUAGE”] + +“How do you come to be in Paris?” asked John Dolittle. + +“Oh, it’s all Becky’s doing,” grumbled Cheapside, hopping out of the +puddle and fluttering his wings to dry them. “I’m satisfied to stay in +London, goodness knows. But every Spring it’s the same way: ‘Let’s take +a hop over to the Continong,’ says she. ‘The horse-chestnuts will just +be budding.’ ‘We got horse-chestnut trees in Regent’s Park,’ I says to +’er. ‘Ah,’ says she, ‘but not like the ones in the Twiddle-didee +Gardens. Oh, I love Paris in the Spring,’ she says.... It’s always the +same way: every year she drags me over ’ere. Sentiment, I reckon it is. +You see, Doc, me and Becky met one another first ’ere—right ’ere in the +Twiddle-didee Gardens. I recognised ’er as a London Sparrow—you can tell +’em the world over—and we got talkin’. You know the way those things +’appen. She wanted to build our first nest up there in the Lufer Palace. +But I says, ‘No,’ hemphatic. ‘Let’s go back to St. Paul’s,’ I says. ‘I +know a place in St. Edmund’s left ear what ’as all the stonework in +Paris beat ’ollow as a nestin’ place. Besides,’ I says, ‘we don’t want +our children growing up talkin’ no foreign language! We’re Londoners,’ I +says: ‘let’s go back to London.’” + +“Yes,” said the Doctor. “Even I guessed you were a London sparrow, +before I recognised you, because——” + +“Because I was washin’,” Cheapside finished. “That’s true: these ’ere +foreign birds don’t run to water much.” + +“That’s a fine puddle you have there,” said the Doctor. “I’ve half a +mind to ask you to lend it to me. You know, I’ve been trying to get a +bath myself ever since I’ve been in Paris—without success so far. After +all, even a puddle is better than nothing. When I asked them at the +_pension_ where I’m staying could I have a bath, they seemed to think I +was asking for the moon.” + +“Oh, I can tell you where you can get a bath, Doctor, a good one,” said +the sparrow. “Just the other side of that shrubbery over there there’s +an elegant marble pond, with a fountain and statues in the middle. You +can hang your bath-towel on the statue and use the fountain for a +shampoo. Just helegant!—But of course you’d have to do it after dark. +Anybody washin’ in Paris is liable to get arrested—not because you ’ad +no clothes on, mind you. Oh no, the French is very sensible about that. +Look at all these statues: they don’t wear no clothes—and in summertime +it’s much cooler for ’em. But washin’? That’s another matter. Over ’ere +they’re very suspicious of anybody washin’. Just the same you could +manage a tub in the marble pond late at night, easy—because there’s +hardly anybody in the gardens then.” + +“My gracious! I’ve a good mind to try it, Cheapside,” said the Doctor. +“I haven’t had a bath in over a week.” + +“Well,” said the Cockney sparrow, “you meet me here at midnight and me +and Becky will guide you to the pond and keep a look-out while you get a +wash.” + + * * * * * + +There was a half moon that night. And when, a few minutes before twelve +o’clock, John Dolittle came into the Tuileries Gardens with a bath-towel +over his arm, the first person he saw was a French policeman. Not +wishing to be taken for a suspicious character, he thrust the bath-towel +beneath his coat and hurried past the shrubbery as though bent on +important business. + +But he had not gone very far before he was overtaken by Cheapside and +his wife, Becky. + +“Don’t get worried, Doc, don’t get worried,” said the sparrow. “That +bobby only goes by about once every ’alf-hour. ’E won’t be back for a +while. Come over ’ere and we’ll show you your dressing-room.” + +John Dolittle was thereupon conducted to a snug retreat in the heart of +a big shrubbery. + +“Nobody can see you ’ere,” said Cheapside. “And as soon as you’re ready +all you’ve got to do is to ’op round that privet-’edge, sprint across +the little lawn and there’s your bath waitin’ for you. Me and Becky will +keep a look-out. And if any danger comes along we’ll whistle.” + +Five minutes later the famous naturalist was wallowing luxuriously in +the marble pond. The night was softly brilliant with moonlight, and the +statues in the centre of the pool stood out palely against the dark mass +of the trees behind. + +John Dolittle had paused a moment with a cake of soap uplifted in his +hand, utterly enchanted by the beauty of the scene, when he heard +Cheapside hoarsely whispering to him from a branch overhead. + +“Look out! Hide quick! Someone coming!” + +Now the Doctor had left his bath-towel on the base of the statue. At +Cheapside’s warning he splashed wildly out to get it before attempting a +retreat to the shrubbery. Breathless, he finally reached the fountain. +But just as he was about to grasp the towel Becky called from the other +side of the pond: + +“Cheapside! There is another party coming in at the other gate! The +Doctor can never make it in time.” + +John Dolittle, waist-deep in the water at the foot of the statue, looked +about him in despair. + +“Gracious! What shall I do then?” he cried drawing the bath-towel over +his shoulders. + +“You’ll have to be a statue,” hissed Cheapside the quick thinker. “Hop +up on to the pedestal. They’ll never know the difference in this light. +When they go by you can come down. Hurry! They’re quite close. I can see +their heads over the top of the hedge.” + +Swiftly winding his bath-towel about him, John Dolittle sprang up on to +the pedestal and crouched in a statuesque pose. The marble group was of +Neptune the sea-god and several attendant figures. John Dolittle, M.D., +became one of the attendant figures. His hand raised to shade his eyes +from an imaginary sun, he gazed seaward with a stony stare. + +“Fine!” whispered Cheapside, flying on to the base of the statue. “No +one could tell you from the real thing. Just keep still and you’ll be +all right. They won’t stay, I don’t expect. Here they come. Don’t get +nervous, now. Bless me, I believe they’re English too!—Tourists. Well, +did you ever?” + +A man and a woman, strolling through the gardens by one of the many +crossing paths, had now paused at the edge of the pond and, to John +Dolittle’s horror, were gazing up at the statue in the centre of it. +They were both elderly; they both carried umbrellas; and they both wore +spectacles. + +“I’ll bet they’re short-sighted, Doc,” whispered Cheapside comfortingly. +“Don’t worry.” + +“Dear me, Sarah,” sighed the man. “What a beautiful night! The moon and +the trees and the fountain. And such an imposing statue!—The sea-god +Neptune with his mermaids and mermen.” + +“Lancelot,” said the woman shortly, “let us hurry home. You’ll get your +bronchitis worse in this damp air. I don’t like the statue at all. I +never saw such fat creatures. Just look at that one on the corner +there—the one with his hand up scanning the horizon. Why, he’s stouter +than the butcher at home!” + +“Humph!” muttered Cheapside beneath his breath. “It don’t seem to me as +though _you_ ’ave any figure to write ’ome about, Mrs. Scarecrow.” + +At this moment a large flying beetle landed on the Doctor’s neck and +nearly spoiled everything. + +“Good gracious, Sarah!” cried the man. “I thought I saw one of the +figures move, the fat one.” + +The tourist adjusted his spectacles and, coming a little closer to the +edge of the pond, stared very hard. But Cheapside, to add a touch of +convincing realism, flew up on to the merman’s shoulder, kicked the +beetle into the pond with a secret flick of his foot and burst into a +flood of carefree song. + +“No, Sarah,” said the man. “I was mistaken. See, there is a bird sitting +on his shoulder. How romantic! Must be a nightingale.” + +“_Will_ you come home, Lancelot?” snapped the woman. “You won’t feel so +romantic when your cough comes back. It must be after midnight.” + +“But you know, Sarah,” said the man, as he was almost forcibly dragged +away, “_I_ don’t think he’s too fat. They had to be stout, those marine +people: they floated better that way. Dear me, Paris is a beautiful +city!” + +As the footsteps died away down the moonlit path, John Dolittle sighed a +great sigh of relief and came to life. + +“Cheapside,” said he, stretching his stiff arms, “you could never guess +who those people were. My sister Sarah and her husband, the Reverend +Lancelot Dingle. It’s funny, Cheapside, but whenever I am in an awkward +or ridiculous situation Sarah seems bound to turn up. Of course she and +her husband would just _have_ to come touring Paris at the exact hour +when I was taking a bath in the Tuileries Gardens. Ah well, thank +goodness the pond kept them off from getting any closer to me!” + +“Well, listen, Doc,” said the London sparrow: “I think you had better be +gettin’ along yourself now. It’s about time for that bobby to be coming +round again.” + +“Yes, you’re right,” said the Doctor. And he slid back into the water, +waded to the edge and stepped out on to dry ground. + +But John Dolittle’s troubles were not over yet. While he was still no +more than half way to his “dressing-room” there came another warning +shout from Cheapside: + +“Look out!—Here he comes!” + +This time flight seemed the only course. The policeman had seen the +culprit disappear into the shrubbery. Breaking into a run, he gave +chase. + +“Don’t stop, Doc!” cried Cheapside. “Grab your clothes and get out the +other side—Becky! Hey, Becky! Keep that policeman busy a minute.” + +The Doctor did as he was told. Seizing his clothes in a pile as he +rushed through the shrubbery, he came out at the other end like an +express train emerging from a tunnel. Here Cheapside met him and led him +across a lawn to another group of bushes. Behind this he hurriedly got +into his clothes. Meanwhile Becky kept the policeman busy by furiously +pecking him in the neck and making it necessary for him to stop and beat +her off. + +However, she could not of course keep this up for long. And if John +Dolittle had not been an exceptionally quick dresser he could never have +got away. In one minute and a quarter, collar and tie in one hand, soap +and towel in the other, he left his second dressing-room on the run and +sped for the gate and home. + +The loyal Cheapside was still with him; but the sparrow was now so +convulsed with laughter that he could scarcely keep up, even flying. + +“I don’t see what you find so funny about it,” panted the Doctor +peevishly as he slowed down at the gate and began putting on his collar. +“I had a very narrow escape from getting arrested.” + +“Yes, and you’d have gone to jail, too,” gasped Cheapside. “It’s no +light offence, washing in this country. But that wasn’t what I was +laughing at.” + +“Well, what was it, then?” asked the Doctor, feeling for a stud in his +pocket. + +“The Reverend Dingle took me for a nightingale!” tittered the Cockney +sparrow. “I must go back and tell Becky that. So long, Doc! You’ll be +all right now. That bobby’s lost you altogether.... After all, you got +your bath. See you in Puddleby next month.” + + + + + Vice-versa + ANY FATHER TO ANY DAUGHTER + + HENRY NEWBOLT + + + If buttercups were white and pink, + And roses green and blue, + Then you instead of me could think, + And I instead of you. + + Then I could daily give your doll + Her early evening tub, + While you in easy-chairs could loll + At some or other Club. + + Then I could spell p-i-g pidge, + And learn to sew like Nurse; + While you could take a hand at bridge, + And murmur “Zooks!” or worse. + + Oh, it would be as fresh a sight + As ever yet was seen, + If buttercups were pink and white + And roses blue and green. + +[Illustration] + + + + +[Illustration] + + KITTEEN + + BY + + MARGARET KENNEDY + + + I sat beside the ingle-nook, + The fire was glowing; + The pot was bubbling on the hook, + The wind was blowing. + In the shadows of the room + Ghosts were hiding; + From the furthest, deepest gloom + They came gliding. + At the back of me I knew + Crowds were creeping. + Through the house the storm-wind blew, + Flames went leaping, + Awful shadows on the wall + Set me screaming. + Close at hand came Someone’s call: + “Sure she’s dreaming! + What have you seen? + Kitteen! + Tell us, what have you seen?” + + In the brown bog by the lake + There are stacks of drying peat; + When by chance that way I take, + Past I run with flying feet; + For once when, wandering carelessly, + I came into that lonely place, + I watched a peat stack close to me + And saw it had a wrinkled face! + All old women sitting round, + Each one in a long brown cloak; + They gazed and gazed upon the ground + With eyes like stones, and never spoke. + Then I turned my back and fled + Up our hill, with stumbling feet; + In a doorway Someone said: + “She’s as white as any sheet! + What did you see? + Kitteen machree! + Tell us, what did you see?” + + + + + Gilbert + + CLEMENCE DANE + + +I am the aunt of Annabel. Annabel is coming next Friday to the birthday +party she ought to have had a month ago; but she had measles instead. I +am anxious for Annabel to enjoy herself. Whom shall I ask to meet her? + +Annabel is five—a gracious-mannered five, with a smooth bobbed head of +red hair, eyes like lilacs, and a generously curved mouth. She is a +darling. She is also a devil. She never allows me or anyone else a quiet +moment with her mother when she is in the room: indeed, she owns her +parents and regards all visitors as her perquisites. She owns also, and +can use with disastrous effect on my borders, a scooter and a tricycle. +She can adjust the wireless set and listen in at her pleasure to +Bournemouth, Cardiff or London. She swears at the dog in broad Devon, +and has her ideas about her frocks. But she cannot read or tie her own +shoes or tell the time. + +Annabel is coming to tea on Friday. How am I to keep her amused? Shall I +invite Philip Collins, that hard-working child, proprietor of +stickle-backs, my particular friend? Will there be anything left of +Philip if I do—or of Annabel? Philip is seven. With only a year or so +between them they ought to get on. And yet, how did I feel towards seven +when I was five? Across the white magic-lantern circle of my memory a +shadow flits, a leggy, olive-green shadow, with fur at its neck and +wrists, and I recognise Gilbert, and pause. + +Annabel is so much more sophisticated and so much more of a baby than we +were ever allowed to be, that the Gilbert adventure could hardly happen +to her. She would say she didn’t like him and be done with it. And +yet—suppose she didn’t! Suppose she suffered him in silence like her +aunt before her! I do want Annabel to enjoy herself. + +[Illustration: “SHE OWNS ALSO, AND CAN USE WITH DISASTROUS EFFECT ON MY +BORDERS, A SCOOTER AND A TRICYCLE.”] + +You must not think that there was any harm in Gilbert. He was, I see +now, a nice, polite little boy. My Aunt Angela said so. He was as nice a +boy, I daresay, as Philip, who is—perhaps—to make Annabel’s acquaintance +next Friday. But he was long and, as it was a fancy-dress ball, his +mother had dressed him in greenery-yallery tights, and a doublet with +moleskin at the neck and wrists. Now, when you are no older than Annabel +and own a live mole which you keep in the ring-dove’s cage, you do not +feel friendly to people who wear moleskin. (No, I don’t know what +happened to the ring-dove, though I remember that she lived for some +time in the kitchen in a straw-coloured wicker-work cage, and was +incessantly laying eggs that wouldn’t hatch and croo-rooing over them in +a lamentable voice which made the nursery feel that the whole bitter +business was the nursery’s fault.) + +It is not too much to say that from the moment I set eyes upon Gilbert I +felt for him that unreasoning sick dislike of which only a child is +capable, and which it never attempts to explain. I never said a word to +my Aunt Angela about Gilbert, though I noted him with a prophetic +shudder as I followed her across the shining, slippery floor. Indeed, +nobody could help noticing Gilbert. It was not only that he was so much +longer than anybody else, so prominent among the Joan of Arcs and +Pierrots and Geishas, but that he was such a pervasive dancer: he seemed +to be behaving beautifully with everybody at once. There was a horrible +fascination in his smiling efficiency: he wasn’t shy like everyone else: +he didn’t mind what he did: and he did it well. He was a handsome boy +too, for my Aunt Angela said so. Indeed, I can best fix him for you by +recalling the fact that when I saw Lewis Waller come upon the stage as +Robin Hood I instantly, and for the first time in fifteen years, +remembered Gilbert. + +Before I could pull on my white silk mittens, my aunt (I knew she would) +had caught Gilbert and introduced him to me, and he wrote his name on my +programme and his own, and his moleskin wrist—his mole must have been an +older and oilier mole than mine—rubbed against my bare hand. In the +frantic subsequent attempts to scrub off the feel, I spilled water down +my new frock, my fancy-dress of yellow satin petals over a green satin +skirt, with three green satin leaves dangling from the neck; for I, in +that hour, was a primrose. + +But washing my hands and drying my frock only took up a dance and a +half: Gilbert and his Berlin Polka were still to be faced. + +I had an idea. I would anticipate Gilbert: I would have a partner of my +own. I marked one down, a rosy, bewildered little girl in sparkles: a +Snow-white—a Fairy queen—what did I care? I gave her her orders; for she +was only four. She was to look out for me when number seven began. She +was to refuse to dance with anyone else. She was dancing the Berlin +polka with me—did she understand?—with me: and if a green boy with +moleskin on his wrists asked her where I was, well—there I wasn’t! Did +she quite understand? + +I was still passionately explaining the situation when the music of +number six struck up, and her partner, a Father Christmas smaller than +herself, jogged her away. I can still see so clearly the bunchy little +figure—we were not so particular about the cut of our clothes as is +Annabel’s generation—and the alarmed dark eyes and hot cheeks as she +looked back at me over her winged shoulder. As for me, I had to put in +the perilous time somehow. I hid. + +I found a beautiful place to hide in, a room with cane chairs and palms, +and one or two screened recesses with two chairs and a table in each. I +sat me down in the only empty recess and listened to the music, and +wondered whether Gilbert had begun to look for me yet. Soon a young lady +with bare shoulders and a young gentleman with an eye-glass arrived, +looked in, departed, and shortly returned again. It was quite evident +that they wanted my refuge. I wasn’t going to let them have it. I was +terrified of them both, but I was still more terrified of Gilbert. + +Said the young gentleman: + +“What are you doing here?” and he called me “little girl!” + +Said I, firmly, but I was on the edge of tears: + +“I am waiting for my partner,” and felt that I lied, for I was not +exactly waiting for Gilbert. + +[Illustration: “HE STARED AT ME REPROACHFULLY”] + +“Oh, indeed!” said the young gentleman, and stared again, and whispered +to the young lady with the white shoulders, and the young lady whispered +back. You cannot think how miserable I felt. They went away at last; but +they, and my lie—a lie was a lie in those days—had ruined my haven. I +slipped out as the music stopped, and instantly the young gentleman and +the young lady got up from two chairs under a palm and sat down behind +my screen, while—oh horror!—Gilbert’s green and questing length crossed +and re-crossed the lighted swirling space on the other side of the +draped doorway. I knew—who better?—whom he sought. I backed into the +dark corner formed by the wall and the other side of the screen, too +much occupied with Gilbert’s next move to attend to the murmurs on the +other side of it. But the sitters-out were sensitive; or I, effacing +myself as much as possible, must have pushed against the screen. Slowly, +over the top, rose the head of the young gentleman. He stared down at me +reproachfully and I, in a paralysis of embarrassment, stared up at him. +You cannot think how tall the screen seemed, and how terrible the face +of the young gentleman to the eyes of five. Nothing was said. How long +he was prepared to stare at me I do not know, for his eye-glass was more +than I could bear: at that moment even Gilbert was easier to face. I +sidled back into the ballroom, worming my way as self-effacingly as +possible in and out between mothers and empty chairs, till a familiar +glitter caught my eye. It was my partner, my illegal partner, so soft, +so rosy, so cosy, so blessedly harmless, so very much smaller than I. +She was not pleased to see me (I realise now that I must have been as +awful to her as Gilbert to me) but what did that matter? I grasped her +hurriedly by a hand and a wing: + +“One, two, three,” I prompted: and we put our feet into the second +position. But fate was looking after the little girl in sparkles, not +after me. + +“My dance, I think.” Gilbert, cool, easy, adequate, even remembered to +bow. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” he said and he put out +mole-skinny hands. + +“I’m dancing with _her_,” I muttered. It was my last throw. But at that +a new voice interposed: + +“Oh, Mary, you mustn’t take the little girl away from her partner!” And +the fairy queen, inexpressible relief in her eyes, pulled her hand out +of mine and retired upon her mother. + +I danced with Gilbert. + +The last straw was hearing my Aunt Angela telling my mother, in the cab +coming home, that it was pretty to see how the child had enjoyed +herself. + +Now I wonder how Annabel would have dealt with Gilbert? Her childhood is +not my childhood. I read _Pickwick_ at five, while Annabel is satisfied +with _Teddy Tail_: that fancy-dress ball was my first party, while +Annabel goes to dances twice a week. Annabel’s emotions could never have +been in the least like mine. And yet, five years old in the +eighteen-nineties is nearer five years old in the nineteen-twenties than +five years old will ever be to a contemporary aunt. If I ask my nice +Philip Collins to tea—such a handsome boy!—such good manners!—how am I +to be certain that I am not inflicting a Gilbert upon Annabel? On the +other hand, Annabel might have liked Gilbert. He was a popular person +that evening: and Annabel has never kept moles. + +Annabel does not think me young. She asked me yesterday if I had ever +spoken to Queen Elizabeth; but she likes to hear what I did in that +Palæolithic age when I was little. I will tell her about Gilbert when I +tuck her up to-night, and see what she says. + + + + + Jack and His Pony, Tom + + H. BELLOC + + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + + Jack had a little pony, Tom. + He frequently would take it from + The stable where it used to stand + And give it sugar with his hand. + He also gave it oats and hay + And carrots twenty times a day + And grass in basketfuls and greens + And swedes and mangels: also beans; + And patent foods from various sources + And bread—which isn’t good for horses— + And chocolate and apple-rings, + And lots and lots of other things + The most of which do not agree + With Polo Ponies such as he, + And all in such a quantity + As ruined his digestion wholly + And turned him from a Pono Poly + —I mean a Polo Pony—into + A case that clearly must be seen to, + Because he swelled and swelled and swelled. + Which, when the kindly boy beheld, + He gave it medicine by the pail + In malted milk, and nutmeg ale, + And yet it only swelled the more + Until its stomach touched the floor; + And then it heaved and groaned as well + And staggered, till at last it fell + And found it could not rise again. + Jack wept and prayed—but all in vain. + The pony died, and, as it died, + Kicked him severely in the side. + + + MORAL + + Kindness to animals should be + Attuned to their brutality. + + + + + Tom and His Pony, Jack + + H. BELLOC + + +[Illustration] + + Tom had a little pony, Jack: + He vaulted lightly on its back + And galloped off for miles and miles, + A-leaping hedges, gates and stiles, + And shouting “Yoicks!” and “Tally-Ho!” + And “Heads I win!” and “Tails below!” + And many another sporting phrase. + He rode like this for several days, + Until the pony, feeling tired, + Collapsed, looked heavenward and expired. + His father made a fearful row. + He said, “By Gum! You’ve done it now! + Here lies, a Carcase on the ground, + No less than five and twenty pound! + Indeed, the value of the beast + Would probably have much increased. + His teeth were false; and all were told + That he was only four years old. + Oh! Curse it all! I tell you plain + I’ll never let you ride again.” + +[Illustration] + + + MORAL + + His father died when he was twenty, + And left three horses—which is plenty. + + + + +[Illustration] + + “Pigtails + Ltd.” + + WALTER DE LA MARE + + +How such an odd and curious notion had ever come into Miss Rawlings’s +mind, not even Miss Rawlings herself could have said. When had it come? +She could not answer even that question either. It had simply stolen in +little by little like a beam of sunshine into a large room. + +Not of course into an empty room, for Miss Rawlings had many things to +think about. She was by far the most important person in the Parish, and +everyone—from Archdeacon Tomlington and his two curates, Mr. Moffat and +Mr. Timbs, down to little old Mrs. Ort the hump-backed charwoman who +lived in the top attic of a cottage down by Clopbourne—or, as they +called it, Clobburne—Bridge, everyone knew how _practical_ she was. + +But once that sunny beam had begun to steal into Miss Rawlings’s mind +and into her life, it had lightened up with its precious gold everything +that was there. It was nevertheless a fantastic notion, simply because +it could not possibly be true. How could Miss Rawlings ever have lost a +little girl if there had never been any little girl to lose? Yet that +exactly was Miss Rawlings’s idea. It had flitted into her imagination +like a nimble, bright-feathered bird. And once it was really there, she +never hesitated to talk about it; not at all. + +“My little girl, you know,” she would say with a little emphatic nod and +a pleasant smile on her broad face. Or rather, “My little gal”—for she +always pronounced the word as if it rhymed with Sal—the short for Sarah. +This, too, was an odd thing; for Miss Rawlings had been brought up by +her parents with the very best education, and seldom mispronounced even +such words as Chloe or Psyche or epitome or misled. And so far as I +know—which is not very far—and apart from shall and pal and Hal, there +is not a single word of one syllable in our enormous English language +that is pronounced like Sal; for Pall Mall, of course, is pronounced +Pell Mell. Still, Miss Rawlings did talk about her little girl, and she +called her, her little gal. + +It never occurred to anybody in the Parish—not even to Mr. Timbs—to +compare the Little Gal to a gay little bird or to a beam of sunshine. +Mrs. Tomlington said indeed that it was merely a bee in Miss Rawlings’s +bonnet. But whether or not, partly because she delighted in bright +colours, and partly because, in fashion or out, she had entirely her own +taste in dress, there could not be a larger or brighter or flowerier +bonnet for any bee to be _in_. Apart from puce silk and maroon velvet +and heliotrope feathers and ribbons and pom-poms and suchlike, Miss +Rawlings’s bonnets invariably consisted of handsome spreading +flowers—blue-red roses, purple pansies, mauve cineraria—a complete +little garden for any bee’s amusement. And this bee sang rather than +buzzed in it the whole day long. + +You might almost say it had made a new woman of her. Miss Rawlings had +always been active and positive and good-humoured and kind. But now her +spirits were so much more animated. She went bobbing and floating +through the Parish like a balloon. Her _interest_ in everything seemed +to have first been multiplied by nine, and then by nine again. And +eighty-one times anything is a pretty large quantity. Beggars, gipsies, +hawkers, crossing-sweepers, blind men positively smacked their lips when +they saw Miss Rawlings come sailing down the street. Her heart was like +the Atlantic, and they like row-boats on the deep—especially the blind +men. As for her donations to the Parochial Funds, they were first +doubled, then trebled, then quadrupled. + +There was, first, for example, the Fund for giving all the little +parish girls and boys not only a bun and an orange and a tree at +Christmas and a picnic with Veal and Ham Pie and Ice Pudding in +June, but a Jack-in-the-Green on May-day and a huge Guy on +November the 5th, with Squibs and Roman Candles and Chinese +Crackers and so on. There was not only the Fund for the Delight of +Infants of Every Conceivable Description; there was also the +Wooden-Legged Orphans’ Fund. There was the Home for Manx and Tabby +Cats; and the Garden by the River with the willows for Widowed +Gentlewomen. There was the Threepenny-Bit-with-a-Hole-in-It +Society; and the Organ Grinders’ Sick Monkey and Blanket Fund, and +there was the oak-beamed Supper Room in “The Three Wild Geese” for +the use of Ancient Mariners—haggis and toad-in-the-hole, and plum +duff and jam roley-poley. And there were many others. If Miss +Rawlings had been born in another parish, it would have been a sad +thing indeed for the cats and widows and orphans and organ monkeys +in her own. + +With such a power and quantity of money, of course, writing cheques was +very much like just writing in birthday-books. Still you can give too +much to any Fund; though very few people make the attempt. But Miss +Rawlings was a practical woman. Besides, Miss Rawlings knew perfectly +well that charity must at any rate _begin_ at home, so all this time she +was keeping what the Ancient Mariners at the “Three Wild Geese” called a +“weather eye” wide open for her lost Little Gal. But how, it may be +asked, could she keep any kind of an eye open for a lost Little Gal, +when she didn’t know what the lost Little Gal was like? And the answer +to that is that Miss Rawlings knew perfectly well. + +She may not have known where the absurd notion came from, or when, or +why; but she knew that. She knew what the Little Gal looked like as well +as a mother thrush knows what an egg looks like; or Sir Christopher Wren +knew what a cathedral looks like. But as with the Thrush and Sir +Christopher, a good many little things had happened to Miss Rawlings +first. And this quite apart from the old wooden doll she used to lug +about when she was seven, called Quatta. + +One morning, for example, Miss Rawlings had been out in her carriage and +was thinking of nothing in particular, just daydreaming, when not very +far from the little stone bridge at Clobburne she happened to glance up +at a window in the upper parts of a small old house. And at that window +there seemed to show a face with dark bright eyes watching her. Just a +glimpse. I say _seemed_, for when in the carriage Miss Rawlings rapidly +twisted her head to get a better view, she discovered either that there +had been nobody there at all, or that the somebody had swiftly drawn +back, or that the bright dark eyes were just too close-together flaws in +the diamond-shaped bits of glass. In the last case what Miss Rawlings +had seen was mainly “out of her mind.” But if so, it went back again and +stayed there. It was excessively odd, indeed, how clear a remembrance +that glimpse left behind it. + +Then again, Miss Rawlings, like her great-aunt Felicia, had always +enjoyed a weakness for taking naps in the train, the flowers and plumes +and bows in her bonnet nodding the while above her head. The sound of +the wheels on the iron lines was like a lullaby; the fields trailing +softly away beyond the window drowsed her eyes. Whether asleep or not, +she would generally close her eyes and at least appear to be napping. +And not once, or twice, but three separate times, owing to a screech of +the whistle or a jolt of the train, she had suddenly opened them again +to find herself staring out (rather like a large animal in a field) at a +little girl sitting on the opposite seat, who, in turn, had already +fixed _her_ eyes on Miss Rawlings’s countenance. In every case there had +been a look of intense, patient interest on the little girl’s face. + +Perhaps Miss Rawlings’s was a countenance that all little girls are apt +to look at with extreme interest—especially when the owner of it is +asleep in the train. It was a broad countenance with a small but +powerful nose with a round tip. There was a good deal of fresh colour in +the flat cheeks beneath the treacle-coloured eyes; and the hair stood +out like a wig beneath the huge bonnet. Miss Rawlings, too, had a habit +of folding her kid-gloved hands upon her lap as if she was an image. +None the less, you could hardly call it only “a coincidence” that these +little girls were so much alike, and so much like the face at the +window. And so very much like the real lost Little Gal that had always, +it seemed, been at the back of Miss Rawlings’s mind. + +Not that there had ever been any kind of a ghost in Miss Rawlings’s +family. Her family was far too practical for that; and her mansion was +most richly furnished. All I mean is that each one of these little girls +happened to have a rather narrow face, a brown pigtail, rather small +dark brown bright eyes and narrow hands, and except for the one at the +window, they wore round beaver hats and buttoned coats. No; there was no +ghost _there_. What Miss Rawlings was after was an absolutely real +Little Gal. And her name was Barbara Allan. + +This sounds utterly absurd. But so it had come about. For a long +time—having talked about her Little Gal again and again to the +Archdeacon and Mrs. Tomlington and Mr. Moffat and other ladies and +gentlemen in the Parish, Miss Rawlings had had no name at all for her +small friend. But one still summer evening, there being a faint red in +the sky, while she was wandering gently about her immense drawing-room, +she had happened to open a book lying on an “occasional” table. It was a +book of poetry—crimson and gilt-edged, with a brass clasp—and on the +very page under her nose she had read this line: + + “Fell in love with Barbara Allan.” + +The words ran through her mind like wildfire. Barbara Allan—it was _the_ +name! Or how very like it! An echo? Certainly some words and names _are_ +echoes of one another—sisters or brothers once removed, so to speak. +Tomlington and Pocklingham, for example; or quince and shrimp; or +angelica and cyclamen. All I mean is that the very instant Miss Rawlings +saw that printed “Barbara Allan,” it ran through her heart like an old +tune in a nursery. It _was_ her Little Gal, or ever so near it—as near, +that is, as any name can be to a thing, viz., crocus, or comfit, or +shuttlecock, or mistletoe, or pantry. + +Now, if Miss Rawlings had been of royal blood and had lived in a +fairy-tale; if, that is, she had been a Queen in Grimm—it would have +been a quite ordinary thing that she should be seeking a little lost +Princess, or badly in need of one. But except that her paternal +grandfather was a Sir Samuel Rawlings, she was but very remotely +connected with royalty. Still, if you think about it, seeing that once +upon a time there were only marvellous Adam and beautiful Eve in the +Garden, that is in the whole wide world, and seeing that all of Us as +well as all of the earth’s Kings and Queens must have descended from +them, _therefore_ all of Us must have descended from Kings and Queens. +So too with Miss Rawlings. But—unlike Mrs. Tomlington—she had not come +down by the grand staircase. + +Since then Miss Rawlings did not live in a fairy-tale nor in Grimm, but +was a very real person in a very real Parish, her friends and +acquaintances were all inclined in private to agree with Mrs. Tomlington +that her Little Gal was nothing but a bee in her bonnet. And that the +longer it stayed there the louder it buzzed. Indeed, Miss Rawlings +almost began to think of nothing else. She became absent-minded, quite +forgetting her soup and fish and chicken and French roll when she sat at +dinner. She left on the gas. She signed cheques for the Funds without +looking back at the counterfoils to see what she had last subscribed. +She gave brand-new mantles and dolmens away to the Rummagers; ordered +coals from her fishmonger’s; rode third class with a first class ticket; +addressed a postcard to Mrs. Tomfoolington—almost every kind of +absent-minded thing you can imagine. + +And now she was always searching: even in the house sometimes; even in +the kitchen quarters. And her plump country maids would gladly help too. +“No, m’m, she ain’t here.” “No, m’m, we ain’t a-seed her yet.” “Lor’, +yes’m, the rooms be ready.” + +Whenever Miss Rawlings rose from her chair, she would at once peer +sharply out of the window to see if any small creature were passing in +the street beyond the drive. When she went a-walking, she was frequently +all but run over by cabs and vans and phaetons and gigs, because she was +looking the other way after a vanishing pigtail. Not a picture-shop, not +a photographer’s could she pass without examining every single face +exhibited in the window. And she never met a friend, or the friend of a +friend, or conversed with a stranger without, sure enough, beginning to +talk about Young Things. Puppies or kittens or lambs, perhaps, first, +and then gradually on to little boys. And then, with a sudden whisk of +her bonnet, to Little Girls. + +Long, long ago now she had learnt by heart the whole of “Barbara Allan”: + + “... She had not gane a mile but twa, + When she heard the dead-bell ringing, + And every jow that the dead-bell gied, + It cryed, _Woe to Barbara Allan!_ + + ‘O mother, mother, make my bed! + O make it saft and narrow! + Since my love died for me to-day, + I’ll die for him to-morrow.’” + +Oh dear, how sad it was; and you never knew! Could it be, could it be, +she cried one day to herself, that the dead, lovely Barbara Allan of the +poem had got by some means muddled up in Time, and was in actual fact +_her_ Little Gal? Could it be that the maiden-name of the wife of Miss +Allan’s father had been Rawlings? + +Miss Rawlings was far too sensible merely to wonder about things. She at +once enquired of Mr. Moffat (who had been once engaged to her dearest +friend, Miss Simon, now no more) whether he knew anything about Barbara +Allan’s family. “The family, Felicia?” Mr. Moffat had replied, his +bristling eyebrows high in his head. And when, after a visit to the +British Museum, Mr. Moffat returned with only two or three pages of +foolscap closely written over with full particulars of the ballad and +with “biographical details” of Bishop Percy and of Allan Ramsay and of +Oliver Goldsmith and of the gentleman who had found the oldest +manuscript copy of it in Glamis Castle, or some such ancient edifice, +and of how enchantingly Samuel Pepys’s friend, Mrs. Knipp, used to sing +him the air—but nothing else: Miss Rawlings very reluctantly gave up all +certainty of this. “It still might be my Little Gal’s family,” she said, +“and on the other hand it might not.” And she continued to say over to +herself with infinite sorrow in her deep rich voice, that tragic stanza: + + She had not gane a mile but twa, + When she heard the dead-bell ringing, + And every jow that the dead-bell gied, + It cryed, _Woe to Barbara Allan!_ + +And “Oh no! not Woe,” she would say in her heart. + +Soon after this, Miss Rawlings fell ill. A day or two before she took to +her bed, she had been walking along Laburnum Avenue, and had happened to +see the pupils of the Miss Miffinses’ Young Ladies’ Seminary taking the +air. Now, the last two and smallest of these pupils—of the Crocodile, as +rude little boys call it—were walking arm in arm with the nice English +mistress, chattering away like birds in a bush. Both of them were rather +narrow little creatures, both wore beaver hats beneath which dangled +brown pigtails. It was yet one more astonishing moment, and Miss +Rawlings had almost broken into a run—as much of a run, that is, as +being of so stout and ample a presence she was capable of—in order to +get a glimpse of their faces. + +But, alas! and alack! the wrought-iron gates of the school were just +round the corner of Laburnum Avenue, and the whole Crocodile had +completely disappeared into the great stone porch beyond by the time she +had come in sight of the two Monkey-Puzzles on the lawn, and the brass +curtain bands to the windows. + +Miss Rawlings stood and gazed at these—for the moment completely +forgetting polite manners. The hurry and excitement had made her hot and +breathless: and the wind was in the east. It dispirited her, and instead +of ringing the bell and asking for the Miss Miffinses, she had returned +home and had at once written an invitation to the whole school to come +to tea the following Sunday afternoon. In a moment of absent-mindedness, +however, she left the note on her little rose-wood secretaire beside the +silver inkstand that had belonged to Sir Samuel. And two days +afterwards—on the Friday, that is, the month being February—she had been +seized with Bronchitis. + +It was a rather more severe attack than was usual for Miss Rawlings, +even in foggy November, and it made Miss Rawlings’s family physician a +little anxious. There was no immediate danger, he explained to Nurse +Murphy; still care is care. And Miss Rawlings, being so rich and so +important to the Parish, he at once decided to invite an eminent +Consultant to visit his patient—a Sir James Jolliboy Geoghehan who lived +in Harley Street and knew more about Bronchitis (Harley Street being +also in a foggy parish) than any other medical man in Europe or in the +United States of America (which are not usually foggy places). + +Fortunately, Sir James took quite as bright and sanguine a view of his +patient as did Miss Rawlings’s family physician. There Miss Rawlings +lay, propped up against her beautiful down pillows with the frills all +round, and a fine large pale blue-ribboned bed cap stood up on her large +head. She was breathing pretty fast, and her temperature, according to +both the gentlemen’s thermometers, was 102.6. + +A large copper kettle was ejecting clouds of steam from the vast +cheerful fire in the vast brass and steel grate, with the Cupids in the +chimneypiece. There were medicine bottles on the little table and not +only Nurse Murphy stood grave but brave on the other side of the bed, +but, even still more Irish Nurse O’Brien also. Now, the more solemn +_she_ looked the more her face appeared to be creased up in a gentle +grin. + +Miss Rawlings panted as she looked at them all. Her eye was a little +absent, but she too was smiling. For if there was one thing Miss +Rawlings was certain to do, it was to be cheerful when most other people +would be inclined to be depressed. As she knew she was ill she felt +bound to be smiling. She even continued to smile when Sir James +murmured, “_And_ the tongue?” And she assured Sir James that though it +was exceedingly kind of him to call it wasn’t in the least necessary. “I +frequently have bronchitis,” she explained, “but I never die.” Which +sounded a little like “rambling.” + +When Sir James and the family physician had gone downstairs and were +closeted together in the gilded Library, Sir James at once asked this +question: “What, my dear sir, was our excellent patient remarking about +a Miss Barbara Allan? Has she a relative of the name?” + +At this Miss Rawlings’s family physician looked a little confused. “No, +no; oh dear no,” he exclaimed. “It’s merely a little fancy, a caprice. +Miss Rawlings has a notion there is a little girl belonging to her +somewhere—probably of that name, you know. Quite harmless. An +aberration. In fact, I indulge it; I indulge it. Miss Rawlings is a most +able, sagacious, energetic, philanthropic, practical, generous, +and—and—humorous lady. The fancy, you see, has somehow attached itself +to the _name_ Barbara Allan—a heroine, I believe, in one of Sir Walter +Scott’s admirable fictions. Only that. Nothing more.” + +Sir James, a tall man, peered down at Miss Rawlings’s family physician +over his gold pince-nez. “I once had a patient, my dear Dr. Sheppard,” +he replied solemnly in a voice a good deal deeper but not so rich as +Miss Rawlings’s, “who had the amiable notion that she was the Queen of +Sheba and that I was King Solomon. A _most_ practical woman. She left me +three hundred guineas in her will, for a mourning ring.” He thereupon +explained (in words that his patient could not possibly have understood, +but that Dr. Sheppard understood perfectly), that Miss Rawlings was in +no immediate danger and that she was indeed quite a comfortable little +distance from Death’s Door. Still, bronchitis _is_ bronchitis; so let +the dear lady be humoured as much as possible. “Let her have the very +best nurses, excellent creatures; and all the comforts.” He smiled as he +said these words, as if Dr. Sheppard was a long-lost brother. And he +entirely approved not only of the nice sago puddings, the grapes, the +delicious beef-juice (with toast _or_ a rusk), the barley water and the +physic, but of as many Barbara Allans as Miss Rawlings could possibly +desire. And all that he said sounded so much like the chorus of “Yeo, +ho, ho,” or “Away to Rio,” or “The Anchor’s Weighed,” that one almost +expected Dr. Sheppard to join in. + +Both gentlemen then took their leave, and Dr. Sheppard having escorted +Sir James to his brougham (for this was before the days of machine +carriages), the two nurses retired from the window and Miss Rawlings +sank into a profound nap. + +In a few days Miss Rawlings was much, much, much better. Her temperature +was 97.4. Her breathing no more than twenty-four or five to the +minute—at most. The flush had left her cheeks, and she had finished +three whole bottles of medicine. She devoured a slice from the breast of +a chicken and said she enjoyed her sago pudding. The nurses _were_ +pleased. + +Now, naturally, of course, Miss Rawlings’s illness increased her anxiety +to find Barbara Allan as quickly as ever she could. After all, you see, +we all of us have only a certain number of years to live, and a year +lasts only twelve calendar months, and the shortest month is only +twenty-eight days (excluding Leap Year). So if you want to do anything +badly it is better to begin at once, and go straight on. + +The very first day she was out in Mr. Dubbins’s invalid chair she met +her dear friend Mr. Moffat in Combermere Grove, and he stood conversing +with her for a while under the boughs of almost as wide a spreading +chestnut-tree as the village blacksmith’s in the poem. Mr. Moffat always +looked as if he ought to have the comfort of a sleek, bushy beard. If he +had, it is quite certain it would have wagged a good deal as he listened +to Miss Rawlings. “What I am about to do, my dear Mr. Moffat, is +advertise,” she cried, and in such a powerful voice that the lowest +fronds of the leafing chestnut-tree over her head slightly trembled as +they hung a little listlessly on their stalks in the spring sunshine. + +“Advertise, my dear Felicia?” cried Mr. Moffat. “And what for?” + +“Why, my dear old friend,” replied Miss Rawlings, “for Barbara Allan to +be sure.” + +Mr. Moffat blinked very rapidly, and the invisible beard wagged more +than ever. And he looked hard at Miss Rawlings’s immense bonnet as if he +actually expected to see that busy bee; as if he even feared it might be +a Queen Bee and would produce a complete hive. + +But after bidding him good-bye with yet another wag of the bonnet and a +“Yes, thank you, Dubbins,” Miss Rawlings was as good as her word. She +always was. Three days afterwards there appeared in the _Times_, and in +the _Morning Post_, and in the _Daily Telegraph_, and five days later, +in the _Spectator_, the following: + + WANTED as soon as possible, by a lady who has lost her as long + as she can remember, a little girl of the name (probably) of + Barbara Allan, or of a name that _sounds_ like Barbara Allan. + The little girl is about ten years old. She has a rather + three-cornered shaped face, with narrow cheek-bones, and bright + brown eyes. She is slim, with long fingers, and wears a pigtail + and probably a round beaver hat. She shall have an _exceedingly_ + happy home and Every Comfort, and her friends (or relatives) + will be amply rewarded for all the care and kindness they have + bestowed upon her, for the first nine years or more of her life. + +You should have seen Miss Rawlings reading that advertisement over and +over. Her _Times_ that morning had a perfume as of the spices of +Ambrosia. But even Miss Rawlings could not have hoped that her +advertisement would be so rapidly and spontaneously and abundantly +answered. The whole day of every day of the following week her beautiful +wrought-iron gates were opening and shutting and admitting all kinds and +sorts and shapes and sizes of little girls with brown eyes, long +fingers, pigtails and beaver hats, _about_ ten years of age. And usually +an Aunt or a Step-mother or the Matron of an Orphanage or a Female +Friend accompanied each candidate. + +There were three genuine Barbara Allans. But one had reddish hair and +freckles; the second, curly flaxen hair that refused to keep to the +pigtail-ribbon into which it had been tied; and the third, though her +hair was brown, had grey speckled eyes, and looked to be at least +eleven. Apart from these three, there were numbers and numbers of little +girls whose Christian name was Barbara, but whose surname was Allison or +Angus or Anson or Mallings or Bulling or Dalling or Spalding or +Bellingham or Allingham, and so on and so forth. Then there were +Marjories and Marcias and Margarets, Norahs and Doras, and Rhodas and +Marthas, all of the name of Allen, or Allan or Alleyne or Alyn, and so +on. And there was one little saffron-haired creature who came with a +very large Matron, and whose name was Dulcibella Dobbs. + +Miss Rawlings, with her broad bright face and bright little eyes, smiled +at them all from her chair, questioned their Aunts and their +Stepmothers, and their Female Friends, and coveted every single one of +them, including Dulcibella Dobbs. But you _must_ draw the line +somewhere, as Euclid said to his little Greek pupils when he sat by the +sparkling waves of the Ægean Sea and drew triangles in the sand. And +Miss Rawlings felt in her heart that it was kinder and wiser and more +prudent and proper to keep strictly to those little girls with the +three-cornered faces, high cheek-bones, “really” bright brown eyes and +with truly appropriate pigtails. With these she fell in love again and +again and again. + +There was no doubt in the world that she had an exceedingly motherly +heart, but very few mothers could so nicely afford to _give it rein_. +Indeed, Miss Rawlings would have drawn the line nowhere, I am afraid, if +it had not been for the fact that she had only ten thousand pounds or so +a year. + +There were tears in her eyes when she bade the others good-bye. And to +everyone she gave not one bun, not one orange, but a _bag_ of oranges +and a _bag_ of buns. And not merely a bag of ordinary denia oranges and +ordinary currant buns, but a bag of Jaffas and a bag of Bath. And she +thanked their Guardianesses for having come such a long way, and would +they be offended if she paid the fare? Only one was offended, but then +her fare had cost only 3_d._—2_d._ for herself, and 1_d._ (half price) +for the little Peggoty Spalding she brought with her. And Miss Rawlings +paid _her_ sixpence. + +She kept thirty little ten-year-olds altogether, and you never saw so +many young fortunate smiling pigtailed creatures so much alike. And Miss +Rawlings, having been so successful, withdrew her advertisements from +the _Times_ and the _Morning Post_ and the _Daily Telegraph_ and the +_Spectator_, and she bought a most beautiful Tudor house called Trafford +House, with one or two wings to it that had been added in the days of +Good Queen Anne, and William and Mary, which stood in entirely its own +grounds not ten miles from the Parish boundary. The forest trees in its +park were so fine—cedars, sweet chestnuts, and ash and beech and +oak—that you could only get a glimpse of its chimneys from the entrance +to the drive. + +Things _are_ often curious in this world, and coincidences are almost as +common as centipedes. So Miss Rawlings was more happy than surprised +when, on looking over this mansion, she counted (and to make sure +counted again) exactly thirty little bedrooms, with some larger ones +over for a matron, a nurse, some parlour-maids, some housemaids, some +tweeny-maids and a boy to clean the button-boots and shoes. When her +legal adviser explained to her that this establishment, what with the +little chests-of-drawers, basins and ewers, brass candlesticks, oval +looking-glasses, mahogany beds, three-legged stools, dimity curtains, +woolly rugs, not to speak of chiffoniers, what-nots, hot-water bottles, +soup ladles, and so on and so forth; not to mention a uniform with brass +buttons for the man with whiskers at the park gate, would cost her at +least six thousand a year, that bee in Miss Rawlings’s bonnet buzzed as +if indeed it _was_ a whole hive gone a-swarming. + +“Well, now, my dear Mr. Wilkinson,” she said, “I made a little estimate +myself, being a _business_ woman, and it came to £6,004 10_s._ 0_d._ How +reasonable! I shall be over four pounds in pocket.” + +So, in a few weeks everything was ready; new paint, new gravel on the +paths, geraniums in the flower-beds, quilts as neat as daisies on a lawn +on the mahogany beds, and the thirty Barbara Allans sitting fifteen a +side at the immensely long oak table (where once in Henry VIII’s time +monks had eaten their fish on Fridays), the matron with the corkscrew +curls at the top and the chief nurse in her starched cap at the bottom. +And Miss Rawlings, seated in the South bow-window in an old oak chair +with her ebony and ivory stick and her purple bonnet, smiling at her +Barbara Allans as if she had mistaken Trafford House for the Garden of +Eden. + +And I must say every single pigtail of the complete thirty bobbed as +merrily as roses in June over that first Grand Tea—blackberry jelly, +strawberry jam, home-made bread, plum cake, the best beef-dripping for +those who had not a sweet or a milk tooth, Sally Lunns, heather honey, +maids-of-honour, and an enormous confection of marchpane, with cupids +and comfits and silver bells and thirty little candles standing up in +the midst of the table like St. Paul’s Cathedral on the top of Ludgate +Hill in the great city of London. It was a lucky thing for the Thirty’s +insides that Grand Teas are not every-day teas. + +[Illustration: “THAT FIRST GRAND TEA”] + +And so, when all the thirty Pigtails had sung a Latin grace put out of +English by Mr. Moffat and set to a tune composed by a beloved uncle of +Miss Rawlings, who also was now no more, the Grand Tea came to an end. +Whereupon the Thirty (looking themselves like yet another Crocodile with +very fat joints) came and said good night to Miss Rawlings, though some +of them could scarcely speak. And as Miss Rawlings knew that not _all_ +little girls like being kissed by comparative strangers, she just shook +hands with each, and smiled at them as if her motherly heart would +almost break. And Dr. Sheppard was Medical Adviser to the thirty little +Pigtailers, and Mr. Moffat came every other Sunday to hear their +catechisms. + +And this was the order of the day with the Pigtails in their home. At +half-past seven in Summer, and at nine in Winter, the boy in buttons +rang an immense bell, its clapper tied round with a swab of cotton-wool, +to prevent it from clanging too sonorously. This great quiet bell was +not only to waken from their last sweet dreams the slumbering Pigtails +in their little beds, but to tell them they had yet another half-hour +between the blankets before they had to get up. Then, hair-brushes, +tooth-brushes, nailbrushes, as usual. Then, “When morning gilds the +sky,” and breakfast in the wide white room with the primrose curtains +looking out into the garden. And if any Pigtail happened to have been +not quite so good as usual on the previous day, she was allowed—if she +asked for it—to have a large plateful of porridge, with or without salt, +for a punishment. No less than ninety-nine such platefuls were served +out in the first year—the Pigtails were so high-spirited. Still, it can +be imagined what a thirty-fold sigh of relief went up when breakfast on +December 31st was over and there hadn’t been a hundredth. + +From nine _a.m._ to twelve _p.m._ the Pigtails were one and all +exceedingly busy. Having made their beds they ran out into the garden +and woods: some to bathe in the stream, some to listen to the birds, +some to talk and some to sing; some to paint and some to play, and some +to read and some to dance, and some just to sit; and some, high up in a +beech-tree, to learn poems, to make up poems and even to read each +other’s. It all depended on the weather. The sun shone, the rooks cawed, +the green silken leaves whispered; and Miss Rawlings would stand looking +up at them in their venturous perch as fondly as a cat at its kittens. +There was not at last a flower or a tree or an insect or a star in those +parts—or a bird or a little beast or a fish or a toadstool or a moss or +a pebble that the little Pigtails did not know by heart. And the more +they knew them the more closely they looked at them, and the more +closely they looked at them the more they loved them and the more they +knew them—round and round and round and round. + +[Illustration: “HIGH UP IN A BEECH-TREE TO LEARN POEMS”] + +From twelve to one there were “Lessons”; then dinner, and tongues like +jackdaws raiding a pantry for silver spoons. In the afternoon those who +went for a walk towards the stranger parts, went for a walk. Some stayed +at home in a little parlour and sang in chorus together like a charm of +wild birds. Some did their mending and darning, their hemming and +feather-stitching, and some did sums. Some played on the fiddle, and +some looked after their bullfinches and bunnies and bees and guinea-pigs +and ducks. Then there were the hens and the doves and the calves and the +pigs to feed, and the tiny motherless lambs, too (when lambs there were) +with bottles of milk. And sometimes of an afternoon Miss Rawlings would +come in and sit at a window just watching her Pigtails, or would read +them a story. And Dr. Sheppard asseverated not once, but three times +over, that if she went on bringing them sweetmeats and candies and +lollipops and suckets to such an _extent_, not a single sound white +ivory tooth of their nine hundred or so would be left in the Pigtails’ +heads. So Miss Rawlings kept to Sundays. + +At five was tea-time: jam on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; jelly on +Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; and both on Sundays. From six to +seven there were “Lessons,” and when the little Pigtails were really +tired, which was always before nine, they just slipped off to bed. Some +of them had munched their supper biscuits and were snug in bed indeed +even before the rest had sung the evening hymn. And the evening hymn was +always “Eternal Father”—for being all of them so extremely happy they +could not but be “in peril on the deep.” For happiness in this world may +fly away like birds in corn, or butterflies before rain. And on Sundays +they sang “Lead, kindly light” too, because Miss Rawlings’s mother had +once been blessed by the great and blessed Cardinal Newman. And one +Pigtail played the accompaniment on her fiddle, and one on the +sweet-tongued viola, and one on the harpsichord; for since Miss Rawlings +had read “Barbara Allan” she had given up pianofortes. And then, sleepy +and merry and chattering, they all trooped up to bed. + +So this was their Day. And all night, unseen, the stars shone in their +splendour above the roof of Trafford House, or the white-faced moon +looked down upon the sleeping garden and the doves and the pigs and the +lambs and the flowers. And at times there was a wind in the sky among +the clouds; and at times frost in the dark hours settled like meal +wheresoever its cold brightness might find a lodging. And when the +little Pigtails awoke, there would be marvellous cold fronds and +flowerets on their windowpanes, and even sometimes a thin crankling slat +of ice in their water-jugs. On which keen winter mornings you could hear +their teeth chattering like monkeys cracking nuts. And so time went on. + +On the very next June 1, there was a prodigious Garden Party at +Trafford House, with punts on the lake and refreshments and lemonade +in a tent in the park, and all the Guardianesses and Aunts and +Stepmothers and Matrons and Female Friends were invited to come and +see Miss Rawlings’s little Pigtails. And some brought their sisters, +and some their nieces and nephews. There were Merry-go-Rounds, Aunt +Sallies, Frisk-and-Come-Easies, a Punch and Judy Show, a Fat Man, a +Fortune-Teller, and three marvellous acrobats from Hong Kong. And +there were quantities of things to eat and lots to see, and +Kiss-in-the-Ring, and all broke up after fireworks and “God Save the +Queen” at half-past nine. + +The house, as I keep on saying, was called Trafford House, but the +_Home_ was called “The Home of all the little Barbara Allans and such +like, with Brown Eyes, Narrow Cheekbones, Beaver Hats, and Pigtails, +Ltd.” And it was “limited” because there could be only thirty of them, +and time is not Eternity. + +And now there were only three things that prevented Miss Rawlings from +being too intensely happy to go on being alive; and these three were as +follows: (_a_) She wanted to live always at the House—but how could the +Parish get on without her? (_b_) What was she going to do when the +Pigtailers became 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, etc., and grown-up? And (_c_) +How could she ever possibly part with any of them or get any more? + +For, you see, Miss Rawlings’s first-of-all Barbara Allan was aged 10, +and had somehow managed to stay there. But because, I suppose, things +often go right in this world when we are not particularly noticing them, +and don’t know how, all these difficulties simply melted away at last +like butter in the sun. + +In the first place, Miss Rawlings did at last (in 1888, to be exact, one +year after Queen Victoria’s first Jubilee), did, I say, at last go to +live at the Home of all the little Barbara Allans and such like with +Brown Eyes, Beaver Hats, and Pigtails, Ltd. She was called The Matron’s +Friend, so as not to undermine the discipline. When her Parish wanted +her, which was pretty often, the Parish (thirty or forty strong) came to +see her in her little parlour overlooking the pond with the punts and +the water-lilies. + +Next, though how, who can say, the little Pigtails somehow did not grow +up, even though they must have grown older. Something queer happened to +their Time. It cannot have been what just the clocks said. If there +wasn’t more of it, there was infinitely more _in_ it. It was like air +and dew and sunbeams and the South Wind to them all. You simply could +not tell what next. And, apart from all that wonderful learning, apart +even from the jam and jelly and the Roast Beef of Old England, they went +on being just the right height and the right heart for ten. Their brown +eyes never lost their light and sparkle. No wrinkles ever came in their +three-cornered faces with the high cheek-bones; and not a single grey or +silver hair into their neat little pigtails that could at any rate be +seen. + +Next, therefore, Miss Rawlings never had to part with any of them or to +search or advertise for any more. + +Yet another peculiar thing was that Miss Rawlings grew more and more +like a Pigtail herself. She grew younger. She laughed like a +school-girl. Her face became a little narrower, even the cheek-bones +seemed not to be so wide. As for her bonnets, as time “went on,” they +grew up instead of broadwise. And when she sat in Church with the +Thirty, in the third pew down from Mrs. Tomlington’s, you might almost +have supposed she herself was a widish pigtail, just a little bit +dressed up. + +It is true that in the very secretest corner of her heart of hearts she +was still looking for the one and only absolute little Barbara Allan of +her life-long day-dream; but that is how things go. And the thought of +it brought only a scarcely perceptible grave glance of hope and enquiry +into her round brown eyes. But underneath—oh dear me, yes—she was almost +too happy and ordinary and good-natured and homely a Miss Rawlings to be +telling this story about at all. + +We all die at last—just journey on—and so did Miss Rawlings. And so did +the whole of the Thirty, and the matron, and the chief nurse, and Mr. +Moffat, and Dr. Sheppard, and the Man with whiskers at the park gates, +_and_ the Boy who cleaned the button-boots; parlour-maids, tweeny-maids, +Mrs. Tomlington and all. + +And if you would like to see the Old House and the little graves, you +take the first turning on the right as you leave the Parish Church on +your left, and walk on until you come to a gate-post beyond the +mile-stone. A path crossing the fields—sometimes of wheat, sometimes of +turnips, sometimes of barley or oats or swedes—brings you to a farm in +the hollow with a duck-pond, guinea-fowl roosting in the pines at +evening, and a lovely old thatched barn where the fantailed doves croon +in the sunshine. You then cross the yard and come to a lane beside a +wood of thorn and hazel. This bears a little East, and presently after +ascending the hill beyond the haystack you will see—if it is still +there—The Home of all the little Barbara Allans and such like with Brown +Eyes, Beaver Hats and Pigtails, Ltd. + +And not very far away is a little smooth-mown patch of turf with a +beautiful thatched wall round it, which Mr. Moffat consecrated himself. +And there, side by side, sleep the Little Thirty, with their pigtails +beside their narrow bones. And there lie the tweeny-maids, the +parlour-maids, the Man with whiskers at the park gate, and the Boy who +cleaned the button-boots. And there Miss Rawlings, too. And when the +last trump sounds, up they will get as happy as wood-larks, and as sweet +and fresh as morning mushrooms. But if you want to hear any more about +_that_, please turn to the Poems of Mr. William Blake. + + + + +[Illustration] + + THE + PERFECT HOST + + (_From Lady Trenchard’s Visitor’s Book_) + + SIR WALTER RALEIGH + + + What is it makes the Perfect Host? + Not wine and coffee, eggs and toast, + For these you can get just as well + In any dreary good hotel; + Not resolute attempts to please, + For money will procure you these. + The Perfect Host thinks vastly less + Of comfort than of happiness. + He’s happy; and the overflow + Belongs to those who come and go. + Within his house you’ll hear no quarrels + And very little talk of morals, + He does not lead a perfect life, + He sometimes has a perfect wife. + But this of all his points is best— + He does not want a perfect guest; + And even when you go too far + He’s friendly with you as you are. + + + + + The Spark + + A. PEMBURY + + + The daylight was fading, and shadowy gloom + Was creeping and crawling all over the room, + When out of the fire, like a star in the dark, + There leapt to the fender a bright little spark. + + “Ha, ha, little children!” it chuckled with glee, + “I’ve something to tell you, so listen to me! + This morning, Tom Dull, whom I never admire, + Was sitting in front of this very same fire; + And, as it burned dimly, was heard to remark: + ‘Oh, Mary! There’s nothing in here but a spark!’ + + “The spark was myself, and I thought, Well-a-day! + It’s hard to be judged in that impudent way. + But stuck to my labours, and shortly, you know, + Had warmed up the coals to a beautiful glow. + + “I called from their slumbers, the fairies of flame, + And out on the carpet they merrily came, + And up all the curtains, a marvel to view, + They climbed as no others are able to do. + + “They peeped in the corners where shadows lay hid, + And chuckled: ‘We’ve found you! Come out!’ and they did. + Thus, darting about in the liveliest play, + They caught all the shadows and drove them away. + + “I’m certain they laughed, though you think it absurd; + For never a sound of that laughter was heard. + Yet where is the wonder, for who will dispute + That hearts often laugh when the lips are quite mute? + + “That’s all. But in parting, oh, take it from me + That sparks of endeavour, though tiny to see, + May quickly grow stronger and end, as you guess, + In lighting the beautiful fire of success. + My task is accomplished. Good-bye!” said the spark— + And, giving one flash, he went out in the dark. + +[Illustration] + + + + + Theophania + + ADELAIDE PHILLPOTTS + + +Peter-Wise was a clever young peasant who lived in a little village that +looked like a dimple in the hillside. He owned fifty mooing cows, one +hundred baaing sheep, forty grunting pigs, two hundred clacking +fowls—and a bellowing bull. And he prophesied that in ten years’ time he +would have doubled these numbers. But with all this wealth, Peter-Wise +lacked the most important creature of all—a wife. Without a wife, what +is the use of fifty cows, one hundred sheep, forty pigs, two hundred +fowls—and a bull? + +Now Peter-Wise declared that he would not marry a maiden who was less +than seventeen or more than twenty-two years old, and in the village +there were only six girls between these ages who were not already +betrothed or wed. Of these six, therefore—all of whom, being brought up +on cream and honey and wheaten bread and saffron cake and wild +strawberries, were bonny and plump and fair to see—Peter-Wise decided to +choose the cleverest, who, nevertheless, must be just the least bit less +clever than he was. So, to discover which was the cleverest, for, busy +man that he was with his cows and his sheep and his pigs and his +fowls—and his bull, he had not the time to woo each separately, he +resolved to set them three tasks: one to try their fingers; one to try +their brains; one to try their imaginations; and to marry her who +succeeded best in the three. + +[Illustration: “I WILL MARRY WHICHEVER OF YOU CAN PERFORM THREE TASKS”] + +So Peter-Wise summoned Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy, and +Theophania, called Tiffany for short—these were the names of the +girls—and said to them: + +“Children, I will marry whichever of you can perform to the best +advantage these three tasks: first, to darn a hole in the heel of a +sock; secondly, to open, without touching the keyhole, the big barn door +which is always locked; thirdly, to catch the moon and put it into a +wash-tub.” + +Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy said: + +“Oh, the sock is easy enough, but the door and the moon——” + +Theophania, called Tiffany for short, said: “The door and the moon +should be easy enough, but the sock——” + +The three trials were to take place in the morning, afternoon and +evening respectively. So in the morning the six maidens assembled in +Peter-Wise’s parlour—Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy in +their best flowered-prints—Tiffany in a green smock; Tiffany had brown +eyes, but the eyes of the others were five different shades of blue: +speedwell, cornflower, lupin, forget-me-not, and chicory. + +Peter-Wise gave them each a sock, out of which he had cut the heel, and +left them for an hour to darn the hole. When he came back the six socks +were lying on the table in a heap, finished. He examined them carefully. +Then he said: + +“Five of these socks are so perfectly darned that not one exceeds +another in excellence. The sixth, however, is very badly done—a mere +cobble. Come forward in turn, and let her who darned _this_ sock claim +it.” + +Mary tripped forward, looked at the sock, turned up her nose a little +and shook her pretty head. “Not mine,” said she. Then came Sally and +Polly and Minnie and Lucy, also turning up their noses a little and +shaking their pretty heads and saying: “Not mine,” “Not mine,” “Not +mine,” “Not mine.” Lastly, with a twinkle in her eye, came Theophania, +called Tiffany for short. + +“Mine,” she said. “I never, never shall be able to darn.” + +“The first task is over,” announced Peter-Wise. “This afternoon meet me +outside the big barn door which is always locked, at three o’clock.” + +And away trotted Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy and +Tiffany. + +At three o’clock they met outside the big barn door, wearing pink and +yellow and blue and white and green sunbonnets, and fluttering together +like butterflies, except Tiffany, who did not wear a bonnet at all, and +she stood by herself, thinking. + +Peter-Wise said: + +“This door, as you know, is always kept locked. Here is the key. Now, +let me see which of you can open it without touching the keyhole, for I +assure you it can quite easily be done.” + +“How can we open a locked door without a key?” said Mary and Sally and +Polly and Minnie and Lucy in dismay, and each thought—“It is useless +trying the handle—besides, I should look so foolish, and the others +would jeer.” + +But Tiffany—who always thought her own thoughts, not other +people’s—thought something quite different. + +“We give it up,” sorrowfully said Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie +and Lucy. + +“And you?” asked Peter-Wise of Tiffany. + +Tiffany thought: “Because the door has always been locked before, that +doesn’t prove it is locked to-day. Anyhow, here goes!” And she marched +up to the big barn door, turned the handle, and—opened it wide! + +“Oh!” cried Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy. “But it is +always locked!” + +“It wasn’t to-day,” said Theophania, called Tiffany for short; and she +could not help laughing, kindly, at the five expressions of surprise on +the five fair faces. + +“The second task is over,” said Peter-Wise. “Now go and borrow your +mothers’ wash-tubs, wait till the moon rises, catch it, and put it in +the tub. Then come and fetch me.” + +“But,” said Tiffany, “there is only one moon.” + +“Exactly,” he replied, “therefore only one of you can succeed.” + +Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy whispered together. + +“He is making sport of us,” they agreed. “Not even Tiffany can catch the +moon. We must give it up.” And each of them said in her heart: “After +all, so-and-so would make a much better husband.” + +So they gave it up. + +[Illustration: “THERE, SURE ENOUGH, WAS THE ROUND, SILVER MOON”] + +But in the evening Tiffany came to Peter-Wise and said: + +“I have caught the moon and put it into mother’s wash-tub. Come and +see.” + +“Caught the moon!” exclaimed Peter. “But there it is up in the sky!” + +“Not at all,” replied she. “That is not the moon.” + +The night was still and warm. Peter-Wise followed Tiffany to a +water-meadow, in the middle of which was her mother’s wash-tub. + +“There!” she cried, pointing. “Go and see if the moon isn’t in that +tub.” + +So he went up to it, looked over the edge, and there, sure enough, was +the round, silver moon shining up at him. + +“Well, but there are not two moons,” he said, looking at the other moon +in the sky. + +“How foolish you are!” said Tiffany. “That moon in the sky is just the +reflection of the real moon in this tub.” + +Peter-Wise was determined to make sure, so he took a penny out of his +pocket and dropped it into the tub. It fell through the moon with a +splash. + +“Oh ho!” he exclaimed. “Whoever heard of a penny falling through the +moon? This moon is made of water.” + +“Nobody ever tried to throw a penny through before,” said Tiffany. + +Then Peter-Wise kicked the tub, and the moon began to wobble. A piece of +it splashed over the edge on to his boots. + +“Whoever heard of the moon being spilt?” he asked. + +“Nobody ever tried to spill it before,” said Tiffany. + +Peter-Wise stroked his chin. + +“I have it!” he cried, and grasping the tub, heaved it sideways and +upset the mock moon on to the grass, where with little watery sighs it +slowly disappeared. + +“So much for your moon,” said he. “And behold its reflection is still in +the sky!” But Tiffany only laughed and laughed and laughed. + +“Yes,” said Peter to himself, “she is certainly the cleverest girl in +the village, but just the least bit less clever than I am. I will marry +her.” And aloud he said: + +“Theophania, you shall, in spite of the sock and the moon that was not a +moon, be my wife.” + +“Peter-Wise,” she answered, “you shall not win me so easily. There is a +task that _you_ shall perform for _me_ before I will marry you.” + +“Well, that is only fair after all,” said he, rather taken aback. + +“It is quite out of the question for me to marry you before I can darn a +sock,” she continued, “but in six years I shall have perfected myself in +that difficult art. Will you wait for me six years?” + +This she said to try his love. + +“I will wait,” said he, who really loved her, and knew something about +women. + +Now, at the end of three months Peter-Wise was still waiting for +Theophania, and she realised that he would keep his word for the rest of +the six years. But meanwhile she had learnt to darn as beautifully as +Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy, who by this time were +betrothed respectively to John and James and William and Tom and Adam. +So she came to him one day with an example of her darning, and said: + +“Peter, it has not taken me so long to learn to darn as I thought it +would. How would it be if we were married _before_ the six years are +up?” + +“We will get married whenever you please, dear heart,” he said, not +surprised. + +“Well then,” she replied, “—to-morrow.” + +And they were married at eleven o’clock the next morning. + + + + + The Weasel in the Storeroom + + (_La Fontaine, Fables, III._, 17) + + EDWARD MARSH + + + Into a storeroom once Miss Weasel came, + Through a small hole squeezing her lank lean frame: + From illness she had grown so slender. + Once in, she made complete surrender + To her capacious appetite, + Nibbling and guzzling day and night. + The life she led, Lord only knew, + Or the amount of bacon she got through— + Small wonder she grew chubby, plump, and sleek! + After this diet for a week, + She heard some noise which made her wish to egress. + Where was the hole? She scuttled to and fro. + Surely ’twas this one? No—then this? Still less. + “Well, bless my soul!” she said, “’twas here, I know, + I wriggled through, hardly a week ago.” + A rat perceived how she was troubled. + “Since you’ve been here,” said he, “your paunch has doubled. + Thin you came in, and thin you must go out.” + + This has been said to others, I’ve no doubt; + But Reader, be it far from you or me + To press the delicate analogy.[2] + +Footnote 2: + + The allusion is to the tribunal set up by Colbert to enquire into the + peculations of the Financiers. + + + + +[Illustration] + + Love the Jealous + + + W. H. DAVIES + + I praised the daisies on my lawn, + And then my lady mowed them down. + My garden stones, improved by moss, + She moved—and that was Beauty’s loss. + When I adored the sunlight, she + Kept a bright fire indoors for me. + She saw I loved the birds, and that + Made her one day bring home a cat. + She plucks my flowers to deck each room, + And make me follow where they bloom. + Because my friends were kind and many, + She said—“What need has Love of any?” + What is my gain, and what my loss? + Fire without sun, stones bare of moss, + Daisies beheaded, one by one; + The birds cat-hunted, friends all gone— + These are my losses: yet, I swear, + A love less jealous in its care + Would not be worth the changing skin + That she and I are living in. + +[Illustration] + + + + +[Illustration] + + The + Magic Medicine + + BY + DENIS MACKAIL + + +Once upon a time there was a very naughty little girl called Freda. She +was what is known as an only child, and so you might have thought that +her father and mother and her grandparents and her uncles and aunts and +her nurse would have had all the more time for teaching her to be good. +But though this was perfectly true, and they all worked very hard at +saying “Don’t do that, Freda,” or “Put that down at once!” she continued +to be extremely naughty. + +She never tried to be polite to anybody, she used to tear her clothes on +purpose, she used to break her toys, and walk in puddles, and snatch +things from other children, and say things that weren’t true, and eat +gravel and blow bubbles in her milk. If there are any other naughty +things that I have forgotten to mention, then she did them too. And when +she was scolded, instead of saying she was sorry, she used to lie down +on the ground and bellow at the top of her voice. + +For this reason the people who knew her best grew to be rather careful +about scolding her—especially in the Park, where her behaviour had often +attracted quite a crowd; but, of course, the only result of this was +that she became far naughtier than ever. + +Is that perfectly clear? Well, now we come to the story. + +One afternoon she was taken to a children’s party, where there was not +only a bran-pie but also a conjuror. Freda was fairly good while she was +being dressed, and still fairly good while she was driving there in the +taxi with her nurse, but as soon as she got to the party itself she just +let herself go. She made a face at a little boy who was smaller than she +was until he cried and had to be taken to sit upstairs. She snatched a +balloon from another child and burst it, so that the child also cried +and had to be taken to sit upstairs. And when the bran-pie came in, she +felt about in it for nearly two minutes until she had found the largest +parcel—which, of course, is cheating—and afterwards, because she didn’t +like what was inside, she forced another little girl to change presents +with her, and the other little girl cried and had to be taken to sit +upstairs. + +And when the conjuror was in the middle of his most difficult trick and +had just got to the part where he was going to cut open an orange and +take out of it a watch which he had borrowed from the father of the +little girl who was giving the party, I am sorry to say that Freda +shouted out: “It isn’t the same orange!” + +This was exceedingly naughty of her, and distressed the conjuror more +than I can say, as well as spoiling all the pleasure of the good +children who thought it _was_ the same orange. And several of them were +so much upset that they cried, and had to be taken to sit upstairs. + +Freda’s nurse had seen her doing all these naughty things, but she had +said to herself: “It’s no use my saying anything to Miss Freda now, +because if I do she will only lie down on the floor and bellow at the +top of her voice. It will be better to speak to her about it when we get +home.” So she contented herself by making a stern face when she thought +that Freda and no one else could see her. Only, as a matter of fact, she +did this just at the wrong moment and missed Freda altogether, and only +succeeded in frightening a little boy in a kilt. And he cried, and had +to be taken to sit upstairs. + +So Freda went on being naughtier and naughtier, and the room upstairs +became fuller and fuller of other children, but the lady whose little +girl was giving the party didn’t like to say anything because she +thought, “Freda is an only child, and, anyhow, I needn’t ask her another +time.” And Freda’s nurse didn’t like to say anything because (as I have +already told you) she was afraid that Freda might disgrace her by lying +down on the floor and bellowing at the top of her voice. + +Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now we get on to what happened next. + +All the children went into the dining-room, where there were so many +buns and chocolates and crackers and pink cakes and sandwiches and other +things of this nature that their eyes nearly popped out of their heads. +And in the middle of the biggest table there was an enormous cake, and +on the top of the enormous cake there was a rather smaller cake, and on +the top of the rather smaller cake there was a golden star. + +And as soon as Freda saw this golden star, she pointed at it (which, of +course, she shouldn’t have done) and said in a very loud, clear voice: +“I WANT THAT STAR.” + +If only her nurse had heard these words, she would most certainly have +said something which would have made Freda lie down on the floor and +bellow at the top of her voice. For there is no need to explain how +naughty it is to point at things in other people’s houses and say that +you want them. No grown-up person would ever dream of doing a thing like +that. + +But, as a matter of fact, the nurse had just met another nurse who was a +great friend of hers, and although they had had a long talk in the Park +only that very morning, they still found they had so much to tell each +other that neither of them heard what Freda was saying. + +Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now Freda really _is_ going to be +naughty. + +For I am grieved to say that, having pushed a number of other children +out of the way (several of whom cried and had to be taken to sit +upstairs) she went on pushing until she had got right up to the middle +table. And then, when no one was looking, she stood up very quickly on a +chair and snatched at the golden star. + +I really don’t know what, exactly, she meant to do with it, because she +had no pocket in her party frock; and very likely if she had been left +to herself she would have got tired of the golden star and dropped it +under the table. + +But just at this moment a little boy in a white silk blouse looked up +and saw what she had done. + +“Oh!” he said, in a very loud, clear voice. “Freda has taken the golden +star.” + +And all the other children began to shout and tell each other that Freda +had taken the golden star. And Freda’s nurse heard the noise, and came +quickly to see what had happened. + +“What’s the matter, Miss Freda?” she said. “What did you do?” + +“Nothing,” said Freda. + +“She did,” said a little girl who had just lost all her front teeth. +“She took the golden star off the top of the cake.” + +“Put it back at once,” said Freda’s nurse. + +“Shan’t!” said Freda. + +And then the nurse saw it in her hand and tried to take it from her. And +Freda never stopped to think what the star might be made of, but put it +very quickly into her mouth, and crunched it into three bits, and +swallowed them all with one swallow. + +“I’ve swallowed it,” she said. + +Her nurse turned first pink, then white, and then green in the face. + +“Put it out at once,” she said. + +“I can’t,” said Freda. “It’s gone.” + +“Oh dear,” said the nurse. “Does anyone know what that star was made +of?” + +But nobody knew what the star was made of. Even the mother of the little +girl whose party it was didn’t know. + +“What did it taste like?” they asked Freda. + +But she had swallowed it so quickly that she didn’t know. + +“You’re a very naughty little girl,” said the nurse. And of course you +can all guess what happened then. Freda got off her chair and lay down +on the floor, and began to bellow at the top of her voice. + +But it was far too serious a case to be treated merely by sending her to +sit upstairs. For all that anyone knew the star might have been made of +the most deadly kind of poison. So Freda’s nurse ran off and found her +shawl, and she picked her up off the floor (where she was still +bellowing at the top of her voice) and wrapped the shawl round her and +carried her away and put her into a taxi, and they drove back to Freda’s +home, and she missed the dancing altogether—which served her perfectly +right. + +And when they got home, the nurse went to the cupboard in the corner of +the room and took out a very large bottle and a very small glass, and +filled the very small glass from the very large bottle, and then she +said to Freda: + +“Now you must drink this.” + +At these words Freda lay down on the floor and bellowed at the top of +her voice. + +“If you don’t drink it,” said the nurse, “you will have a terrible +pain.” + +“Whoo-hoo-hoo,” said Freda (for this was the way that she bellowed), and +she crawled right under the table—in her best frock—and stayed there. + +“Now, Miss Freda,” said the nurse presently, when everything else had +failed, “I shall put this glass on the table here, and I shall go +upstairs and turn on your bath, and if you haven’t drunk it by the time +I come back again, I shall be very angry indeed.” + +Then she left the room, and after a second Freda came out from under the +table and picked up the glass and sloshed all the slimy stuff in it into +the fireplace, and it spluttered and fizzed and disappeared from sight. + +And when she had done this, she was terribly frightened. + +She was so frightened that when the nurse came back and said, “Ah, +that’s a good little girl. I see you’ve drunk it all up nicely,” she +never said anything at all. She didn’t even bellow at the top of her +voice. + +All the time she was having her bath she was trying to say what she had +done, but she never could quite bring herself to do it. And after she +was in bed she called out suddenly to her nurse, meaning to say what she +had done with the slimy stuff in the little glass; but when the nurse +came in, she just couldn’t get it out. She pretended that she had wanted +a drink of water, and the nurse gave it her and went away again, and +Freda was left alone—still feeling terribly frightened. + +“Supposing,” she thought, “that star really _was_ made of poison. +Supposing that stuff I threw in the fire might have saved me. Oh dear, +if the poison kills me now, it will be all my own fault.” + +It was a long time before she could go to sleep, and in the morning she +hadn’t been awake for more than five minutes when it all came back to +her. But she had left it so long now, that it was quite impossible to +tell anyone. + +Is that all perfectly clear? Well, now I’ll tell you something that +Freda doesn’t know to this day. + +The mother of the little girl who had given the party had been so +anxious about Freda that the very first thing in the morning she had +telephoned to the shop where the cake had come from, and had asked the +lady there what the star was made of. And the lady had said: “Sugar.” +And the mother of the little girl who had given the party had telephoned +to Freda’s house and had asked to speak to Freda’s nurse and had told +her that the star was made of sugar. And when Freda’s nurse heard this +she was very much relieved, but at the same time she wasn’t going to +tell Freda that she had made her drink that slimy stuff (as she thought) +for nothing at all. “If I do that,” she said to herself, “I shall never +get Miss Freda to drink any medicine again.” + +So she said nothing; and Freda—who of course hadn’t drunk even a drop of +the slimy stuff—went about wondering when the poison was going to begin +working, and whether it would hurt horribly when it did. + +She was so frightened now that if only she could have got at the large +bottle, she would have drunk it all up without saying anything—and that +really _would_ have made her ill. But she couldn’t get at the large +bottle, because the cupboard was out of her reach. + +And so what do you think she did? + +She went to the china pig in which she kept all her money, and she shook +it and rattled it and waved it and waggled it until at last a very +bright sixpence (which her grandfather had once given her) rolled out on +to the floor. And she picked up this sixpence, and waited carefully +until her nurse went up to the bathroom to wash out the party frock +which had got all dirty from being under the table last night, and then +she ran downstairs very quickly and let herself out by the front door +and ran off to the chemist’s shop, which was just round the corner. + +The chemist was a very old man with spectacles, and in the ordinary way +Freda was rather frightened of him, but she was still more frightened of +being poisoned, so she pushed open his door—which, always made a little +bell ring—and went straight up to his counter and knocked on it with her +sixpence. + +Presently the old chemist came out and looked at her through his +spectacles. + +“And what can I do for you, miss?” he said. + +“I want to buy some medicine,” said Freda, “that would save someone from +being poisoned by a golden star on the top of a cake at a party. And it +mustn’t cost more than sixpence, because that’s all I’ve got.” + +“Dear, dear,” said the chemist. “And are you the little girl who ate the +golden star?” + +Freda would have liked to say “No,” but she didn’t dare. + +“Yes,” she said, in a very small voice. + +“Dear, dear,” said the chemist again. “That wasn’t very good of you, was +it?” + +“No,” said Freda, in a still smaller voice. + +“And when did you eat it?” asked the old chemist. + +“Yesterday,” said Freda. + +“And do you still feel quite well?” asked the old chemist. + +“Yes,” said Freda. “But I only pretended to drink the slimy stuff they +gave me last night, and I’m afraid the poison may still be waiting +inside me.” + +“It seems to me,” said the chemist, “that what you really need is some +medicine to make you good. Eh?” + +He looked at her very hard through his spectacles as he said this, and +Freda agreed at once. + +“Very well,” said the chemist. “You’ve come to me just in time. When I +close this shop to-night I’m never coming back, and next week they’re +going to start pulling it down. But I’ve got just one dose of medicine +for naughty children left, and you shall have it now.” + +Then he took Freda round behind the counter, and she watched him while +he poured a little from one bottle, and a few drops from another, and a +teaspoonful from a third, and just a dash from a fourth. And he mixed +them all together until the stuff fizzed and turned pink, and then he +poured most of it away and gave the rest to Freda. + +“If you drink this,” he said, “it will make you good for twenty-four +hours.” + +She drank it down, and it tasted delicious. + +“Thank you very much,” she said. “And here’s the sixpence.” + +“Thank _you_, miss,” said the old chemist. “And here’s your change.” + +And he gave Freda half-a-crown from his pocket, and she ran back home as +fast as she could and found the front door still open. So she ran right +up to the nursery, and she dropped the half-crown into the china pig, +and just at that moment the nurse came down from the bathroom. + +“Why, Miss Freda,” she said; “how quiet you’ve been.” + +“I cannot see,” said Freda, “why any child should ever be anything but +quiet. Can you, my dear nurse?” + +She was good now, you see, because the pink medicine was beginning to +work. And this is the way that good children talk. But the nurse +couldn’t make it out. + +“Well,” she said, with a laugh, “I’m sure it’s strange to hear you say +that, Miss Freda.” + +“I fear,” said Freda, “that I have often been extremely thoughtless in +the past, and that I have often allowed my temper to get the better of +me, with the result that I have lain down on the floor and bellowed at +the top of my voice. I can only express my regret that this should have +been so, and my hope that you will overlook the trouble which I must +have given you.” + +The nurse opened her mouth very wide and stared. + +“Good gracious, Miss Freda!” she said. “What _has_ come over you?” + +“Nothing, that I am aware of,” said Freda. “And now, if you will be good +enough to dress me, I think it is time for us to go up to the Park.” + +The nurse was more puzzled than ever, for Freda used almost always to +make a fuss about going out. But she was still more puzzled by the time +they came in again. For Freda hadn’t walked in a single puddle, she had +insisted on keeping her gloves on, she hadn’t run, she hadn’t shouted, +and she had refused to play with her usual friends because she said +their games were so noisy and rough. + +At lunch time she asked for a second helping of plain rice-pudding, and +ate every scrap of it. + +“This can’t last,” said the nurse to herself. But it did. And after tea, +when Freda went down to the drawing-room, she quite terrified her mother +by asking to be taught a hymn—although her father had just offered to +play at tigers with her. + +At half-past six she kissed her father and mother and went up to bed +without being fetched. While she was having her bath, instead of +splashing—and screaming when it was time to come out—she told her nurse +how she had decided to give all her toys to the poor children who hadn’t +got any. As soon as she was put to bed, she lay quietly down and went +fast to sleep. + +The nurse and Freda’s mother had a long talk together that evening. + +“I don’t see how she can be ill, mum,” said the nurse, “because she’s +eaten everything, and made no fuss about it at all. I just can’t make it +out.” + +“I don’t like it,” said Freda’s mother. “There’s nothing we can do now, +and she’s certainly sleeping very peacefully—though I’ve never seen that +look on her face before. But if she’s no different in the morning, I +shall send for the doctor.” + +In the morning Freda was just the same, and her mother sent for the +doctor. + +“It is very kind of you, dear mother,” said Freda, when she was told, +“but I am feeling perfectly well. Would it not be better if the doctor +were to visit some of the poor children in the hospital?” + +And this alarmed Freda’s mother so much that she went quickly to the +telephone, and asked Dr. Tomlinson to put off all his other patients and +come at once. When he arrived, he found Freda sitting bolt upright in +her little chair and reading a lesson-book. + +“Well, my little dear,” he said, “and how do you feel this morning?” + +“It is very good of you to ask,” said Freda. “I am happy to say that I +am in the best of health. However, if you have a few minutes to spare, +perhaps you would be kind enough to hold my book, and see whether I have +yet learnt this beautiful poem about the poor little chimney-sweep.” + +The doctor did nothing of the sort. + +“I’m very glad you sent for me,” he told Freda’s mother, and he picked +Freda up and felt her pulse and looked at her tongue and put his head +first against her chest and then against her back. + +“Well,” he said at length; “this beats me. The child seems to be +perfectly well, and yet....” And he scowled and puffed out his cheeks +and walked up and down, while all the time Freda’s mother and the nurse +waited in the utmost anxiety. + +And then all of a sudden the clock struck, and as it was twenty-four +hours since Freda had swallowed the magic dose, the effect vanished in a +single instant. + +The grown-up people who were watching her saw her jump out of the chair, +and fling the lesson-book on the ground. + +“Now, now,” said Dr. Tomlinson, “oughtn’t you to be more careful with +that pretty book?” + +Freda gave one look at him, and then she lay down on the floor and +bellowed at the top of her voice. + +“Thank heaven!” said her mother. + +“Our dear little Miss Freda has come back to us,” said the nurse. + +“Hum-ha,” said Dr. Tomlinson. “Yes, I think we have cured her.” + +He had to say this, you see, because he was a doctor. But Freda’s mother +was so glad that her little girl was herself once more, that she thanked +him over and over again. And all the time Freda lay on the floor and +bellowed at the top of her voice, and from that moment she was just as +naughty as ever she had been before. + +I hope that’s all perfectly clear. Some people say that this story will +encourage little girls to be naughty, by making them think that their +parents and nurses prefer them like that. I should be very sorry if this +were so, but of course it’s no use pretending that anything happened +otherwise than I have said. + +Freda never had another dose of the magic medicine, because the old +chemist never came back to his shop, and—as he had said—the next week +the men came and began to pull it down. But of course she didn’t go on +being naughty for ever, because after a bit she grew up, and now she +actually has a little girl of her own. And if there’s one thing that’s +absolutely certain, it is that all grown-up people are always good. + + + + + The Rhyme of Captain Gale + + A. PEMBURY + + + Oh, Captain Gale who sails the sea, + When waves are high and winds are free, + Will kiss his hand, to make it plain + How much he scorns the hurricane; + A most imprudent thing to do + While sailing on the ocean blue. + + He walks his deck, I’ve heard it said, + When wiser sailors lie in bed, + And far upon the lonely foam, + He takes his food as if at home + (Including plates of greasy stew); + A thing that I could never do. + + His ship may toss, his ship may pitch, + He doesn’t mind a morsel which; + And never seems to care a bit + How deep the sea is under it— + Though this, to me, beyond a doubt, + Is something he should care about. + But sailors always were, to me, + A singular community. + + + + +[Illustration] + + Sermon Time + + HENRY NEWBOLT + + + The roof is high above my head, + With arches cool and white; + The man is short, and hot, and red; + It is a curious sight. + + + + +[Illustration] + + OLAF THE FAIR AND OLAF THE DARK + + CYNTHIA ASQUITH + + +Once upon a time there lived two boys who were each called Olaf. One had +golden curls clustered all over his head—curls so glittering that every +woman’s hand must touch their brightness: and to look into his eyes was +to see the gleam of blue sky through two rounded windows. In short, he +was the most beautiful child that his mother had ever seen. + +The other Olaf was crowned with dark curls—blue-black as the plumage of +a crow. And to look into his eyes was to see twin stars shine up through +the brown depths of a mountain stream. In short, he was the most +beautiful child that his mother had ever seen. + +Now, these two Olafs had both been born on exactly the same day, but +Olaf the Fair was the son of a mighty King, and lived in a dreadfully +big palace, and Olaf the Dark was the son of a poor shepherd, and lived +in a dreadfully small cottage. + +When Olaf the Fair learned to walk, he staggered across a vast floor, +and if he tumbled, it was only to sink into the soft depths of thick +carpets. In his nursery there was nothing dangerous—not even the corners +were allowed to be sharp—so he never knew the fun of watching bruises +turn from plain brown to yellow and purple and green. + +But Olaf the Dark learned to walk in quite a different way; he staggered +across an uneven floor of cold stone, in a small room, crowded with +things from whose sharp corners Pain constantly darted out at him. The +hard floor seemed to rise up and smite him, first in one place and then +in another. His mother was always kissing these places to make them +well. He liked these kisses and was proud of his scarred body, +especially of the red knees across which his seven skins were never seen +all at once. His knees generally looked as though raspberry jam had been +spread over them. + +Just as you do, both Olafs hated to go to bed, but, just as you do, to +bed they both had to go. Olaf the Fair plunged his bright head into a +large pillow—so soft that it almost met across his nose, whilst the +small pillow on which Olaf the Dark laid his dark head was so bumpy and +so hard that in the morning his bruised ear would often ache, he knew +not why. + +[Illustration] + +Both boys loved to eat and drink. Olaf the Fair was fed on every sort of +delicious food. You should have seen his nursery table piled high with +glowing fruits, coloured cakes and trembling jellies. Chicken came every +day, and there was always jam for tea. Olaf the Dark seldom swallowed +anything more dainty than lumpy porridge, black bread and just a very +little bacon. Yet he often knew a treat, that was far greater than any +of the dainties in the palace, and this was the taste of his plain food +when he was very hungry—so hungry that his empty place was just +beginning to hurt. + +His father lay all crumpled up with rheumatism, so that, almost as soon +as Olaf the Dark could walk, he had to shoulder the shepherd’s heavy +staff, whistle to the sheep-dog, and stride forth to guard his father’s +flocks. + +Watching the baaing sheep as they nibbled the short grass, their bells +tinkling as they moved, the lonely little shepherd-boy shivered in the +cold, wet winds of winter and gasped in the scorching heats of summer. +He would have liked to stay at home, learning to read by the leaping +fire whilst his mother stirred the porridge, but day after day, he had +to put on his little sheepskin suit, and go out to be hurt by +hailstones, terrified by thunder or soaked in the snow. + +The year Olaf the Fair was born his father died, so he became king, the +smallest king that ever was seen. His crown was heavy and made his head +ache. His sad, smiling mother said he must learn how to be a wise king. +This meant doing hundreds and hundreds of lessons. Whilst ten tutors +tried to stuff figures and facts into his head, he would stare out +through the windows wistfully watching all the different sorts of +weather. Oh, how he longed to be out in the hail, the thunder, or the +snow! + +One day as Olaf the Dark sat by his sheep on the high hillside and +played on his flute to keep himself company, a huge brown mastiff came +into sight. Olaf’s faithful sheep-dog pricked his ears and low thunder +rumbled in his shaggy throat. The fierce mastiff sped along the ground, +and in the blinking of an eye the two dogs had flown at one another’s +throats. Terrified, Olaf the Dark strove with his staff to beat them +apart, but all in vain. Fortunately four horsemen, who were the little +king’s escort, now galloped up and, leaping from their saddles, +contrived to separate the foam-flecked, blood-spattered dogs. + +“Well for thee, lad, we were at hand,” said the tallest of the men. +“’Twould have gone ill with thy mongrel had he harmed the king’s pet.” + +“It was your dog’s fault! He attacked mine!” indignantly answered Olaf +the Dark. + +“Hush!” said the man roughly. “Here is the king. Bow down to him, you +saucy lad!” + +For Olaf the Fair had just ridden up. The man held the reins of the +snow-white palfrey and the little king dismounted to assure himself of +his mastiff’s safety. + +Now, Olaf the Dark had never even seen a picture-book, and at the +dazzling sight of Olaf the Fair he gasped in amazement. The little king +was clad in velvet of shimmering blue, edged with shining silver and on +his head was a crown of gold. + +He approached the shepherd-boy, and the two Olafs, who were of exactly +the same size, stared long at one another. + +“I’m glad your dog is not harmed. How long have you had him?” said the +king. “Wolf was only given to me yesterday.” + +“Sentry is my father’s,” answered the shepherd. “He had him before I was +born.” + +“How old are you?” asked the king. + +“I was seven years yesterday,” answered the shepherd. + +“Were you? That’s funny!” exclaimed the king. “Why I had my seventh +birthday yesterday, too. But, who is with you? Surely you aren’t allowed +to stay out by yourself, are you?” + +“I _have_ to stay out,” replied the shepherd. “I should like to go +home.” + +“You’d like to go home? Funny! Why, I’d give anything to be allowed to +sit on that silvery frost! Have you been playing with those nice woolly +sheep for long? What pretty bells they’ve got! And wherever did you get +that splendid crook’d staff? I’d like to have one just like that,” +chattered the little king. + +“Sire,” broke in the tall man with a low bow. “We must return home. His +Excellency your Tutor-in-Chief said that only one hour could be spared +from your Majesty’s studies to-day.” + +Olaf the Fair stamped his foot. + +“Oh, bother!” he cried. “I can’t bear to go in to yawny lessons! I want +to stay out in the shininess. I say, Boy, when have you got to go home +and do lessons?” + +“Don’t do any lessons,” grunted Olaf the Dark. + +“You don’t do any lessons?” exclaimed Olaf the Fair. “Oh, you _are_ a +lucky one! How long will you stay out?” + +“Till it gets dark. The sheep must graze till then.” + +“Till it gets dark? Oo-oo-oo-ee! Lovely! I’ve never been out in the +night. I would like to see how the stars get there. Have you ever seen +one just pricking through the blackness? But, where’s your coat? ’Twill +surely be cold before ’tis dark.” + +“Don’t have a coat.” + +“Don’t you wear anything but just that one dead sheep? It must be +beautifully comfortable. My clothes are so hot and heavy,” said the +king, tugging at his rich robes. + +“Sire?” pleaded the attendant. + +“All right, I’m coming,” said Olaf the Fair, and reluctantly mounting +his palfrey, he turned its arched neck towards the distant palace. +“Good-bye, Boy. Wish I could stay and play with you and your sheep.” + +Wistfully Olaf the Dark gazed after the gay figure of the king +disappearing into the rising mists, and as he rode away, Olaf the Fair +turned his head, weary with the weight of his crown, and stared long at +the solitary figure of the sturdy little shepherd. Disconsolately, he +listened to the tinkling bells till they died away in the distance. + +Deep in thought, his forgotten flute on the grass, the shepherd-boy sat +on. Hours passed. The sun sank in flaming glories of orange and gold. +Dusk thickened into darkness and heavy drops of rain fell coldly on his +bare head. Still pondering, Olaf the Dark at last rose and wearily drove +his drowsy sheep towards home. + +He sat down to his supper. Silently he spooned his burnt porridge and +gnawed at his crust of black bread. + +“What’s come to thee, son?” asked his mother. “I miss the gabble of thy +tongue.” + +“I’ve seen the king, mother,” said Olaf, and he told her the story of +the dog fight. + +“Seen his small majesty, have you? To think of it! Born the very same +day as you, he was. Be you two boys much of a size?” + +“Yes, he’s no taller nor I and I guess I’m the stronger. But oh, mother, +the lovely horse he was riding, and the clothes he had on him, and the +glittering crown on his head! ’Twas as though he had caught rays from +the sun itself! Oh, mother, I’d like to be a king the same as him, and +ride around in coloured clothes, nor need to mind no silly sheep.” + +“Is it wanting to be a king you are, Olaf?” laughed his mother. “Sure, +there’s no contentment under the sun. But I’m thinking a good shepherd’s +better nor a bad king, and they’re saying to be a good king’s no easy +calling—subjects being more unaccountable troublesome than sheep +themselves. Anyways, you two lads have the same God to serve, and sure +you can serve Him from a cottage just as easy as from a palace. To be a +good shepherd’s a proud thing, I’m thinking, and as for the rheumatics, +they enters the joints be you high or be you low.” + +But Olaf the Dark was not to be consoled. For the first time he noticed +the shabbiness of his sheepskin suit, and the smallness of the cottage. +Discontentedly he looked around. + +“What would the king’s palace be like?” he asked. + +“Oh!” said his mother. “They do say it be all marble and gold with +thousands of lights a-twinkling from the ceiling, and I’ve heard as the +wee king sleeps in a bed that’s bigger nor this room and the roof of +it’s of gold and there be curtains to it.” + +Olaf the Dark blinked. + +“Oo-oo-oo-ee!” he sighed, as though sucking the sweetest of sweets. + + * * * * * + +Now, that same evening, when bedtime came, Olaf the Fair pressed his +face against the cold bars of the window and stared wistfully at the +spangled blue-blackness outside. He thought with envy of the +shepherd-boy out there all alone on the hidden hill. For the little king +yearned to go out while darkness was spread over the earth. How +mysterious the world looked! What, he wondered, happened to all the +ordinary daylight things during the night? If he were outside would he +be able to see his shadow and what would the flowers and the trees be +doing? + +After he had climbed into his high, soft, golden bed, the queen came in +to say good night. + +“Oh, mother!” he said, snuggling into her white arms, “I’ve done such a +dreadful, dreadful lot of lessons to-day.” + +“Poor little Olaf,” said the Queen, kissing her son. + +“Oh, mother,” the little king continued, “I saw such a nice boy to-day +out on the hill. And isn’t he lucky? He doesn’t do any lessons at all, +and he’s allowed to stay out by himself with nothing but a lot of sheep. +Mayn’t I have some nice woolly sheep to play with, mother?” + +“Sheep aren’t toys, Olaf. They’re duties, like lessons. The boy must +have been a shepherd.” + +“Duties, are they, mother? Then I’d much rather do sheep than do +lessons. But was he a real shepherd, that boy? Why, he’s only my age! +Oh, mother, can’t I be a shepherd?” + +“You are a sort of shepherd, Olaf. But you’ve got human beings to look +after instead of animals. I want you to be so good a king that I shall +be proud that you were my baby. That’s why you have to work so hard.” + +“I do try, mother. But I wish I was a proper out-of-doors shepherd. And +please, mother, must I always wear my crown? It is so heavy, and it +bites my forehead.” + +“Yes, darling. I am afraid you must. Your crown is to remind you that +you are a king and not your own master. Now go to sleep and dream that +you are a shepherd and have to shiver out of doors in all the cold and +wet. You’d soon be glad to wake up in your own bed.” + +But Olaf the Fair was not to be persuaded. + +“I’d love to be out in the rain!” he exclaimed. “I hate indoors, and I’d +like to be dressed in a dead sheep.” + +Days, weeks, months passed away, and Olaf the Fair and Olaf the Dark +still continued to think of one another. More and more did the little +king weary of the long lessons which kept him indoors and of all the +solemn attendants who surrounded him. More and more did he pine to be +free and wander at will over the hillside. Above all he yearned to go +out into the night and feel the darkness. When he looked up at the sad, +solemn moon, he would thrill with a strange, unaccountable excitement. +The moon! She flooded the earth with a queer, transforming light that +drew him out of all sleepiness and made his soul shiver till his body +became too excited to lie still. Passionately he envied the shepherd-boy +out there in the darkness, playing his flute beneath the pine trees. One +night the longing grew too strong, and, as he tossed on his golden bed, +it flashed into his memory that the bars of the window in the great hall +were wide enough apart to allow his body to squeeze through them. (This +was long before even kings had glass in their windows.) + +He sat upright. The leaves of the trees just outside rustled +mysteriously and tiny twigs tapped against the bars, beckoning him out +of bed. Yes, his mind was made up. He was going to escape and run out +into the strange silvery light that the moon was making. With hammering +heart he slid from his high bed and tiptoed towards the door. There was +a low growl, and the mastiff raised his huge head. Oh, heavens, if he +were to bark, or follow, he would surely arouse the man who slept just +outside across the door! But, fortunately, Olaf remembered the bone he +was to give his dog next morning, and in a moment busy sounds of +scrunching and gulping filled the room. + +One danger passed. But now Olaf must step across the body of the man +who, with a dagger in his mouth, guarded his royal master’s door. +Supposing the man were awake. Then the adventure would become impossible +and Olaf would have to return to the dreariness of trying to go to +sleep. Trembling, he turned the handle and pulled the door towards him. +Regular breathing reassured him. The man was fast asleep. Softly as snow +falls on snow, the boy stepped across the huge form and hastened on +swift feet down the long, empty corridor. Shafts of moonlight gleamed +through the round windows and shone on the armour stacked against the +wall. How strange the palace seemed in this light! + +A little scared, Olaf slipped down the wide, shallow steps of the huge +staircase. Now he was in the great hall. The night wind blew in and the +tapestries trembled on the walls. Olaf shivered with something that was +more than cold. High up in the sky a pale moon raced through white +trailing clouds. She looked as if she were being pursued. + +[Illustration: “THE TWO BOYS STARED AT ONE ANOTHER”] + +“I must get out! I must get out!” said Olaf aloud. “I must get out and +run after her.” + +He reached the window and seized the bars. Oh, heavens, what was this? +Consternation crushed into his heart, for crisscross along the iron bars +there now ran new horizontal ones. Alas! alas! he had adventured too +late. Impossible now to squeeze through to liberty. His palace was a +prison. In vain he tugged at the cruel bars. They could not even be +shaken. He stamped his foot. Strong sobs shook his small body; tears +scalded his eyes. + +But what was this he saw through the dancing blur of his tears? Exactly +opposite, a face stared through at him! The moon had raced behind a +cloud and her light was dim. Was he looking into a mirror instead of out +of doors? No, this pale face was surrounded with dark hair, and now his +fingers felt the touch of other warm fingers. Yes, other hands were +clasping the forbidding bars, and sobs that were not his own fell on his +ear. The moon again sailed forth into the open sky and clearly Olaf the +Fair recognised the face of the shepherd-boy, the constant thought of +whom had so much quickened his discontent. Yes, it was Olaf the Dark, +who, shivering from the cold, stood outside and wistfully gazed at the +warmth and wealth within. + +The one craning in, the other craning out, the two boys stared at one +another. + +“Why are you crying, Boy?” asked Olaf the Fair. + +“Because I can’t get in,” sobbed the little shepherd. “Why are you +crying?” + +“Because I can’t get out,” sobbed the little king. + + “Do you want to get _in_?” } + } shrilled two surprised voices. + “Do you want to get _out_?” } + +“Funny!” they both said, and their next sobs rode up on the top of two +little laughs and their tears fell into the cracks made by their smiles. + +Yes, they both laughed and the laughter stretched their hearts, so that +Understanding could enter in and open the door to Contentment. Some +people can only laugh at jokes. If you can laugh at your life even while +it makes you cry, you have learnt more than a thousand schoolroom +lessons can teach you, and your face will be safe from ever growing ugly +through sullenness. + +“Why ever do you want to get in here?” asked the king. + +“Because it looks so lovely—all gorgeous and glowing. I want to know +what it feels like inside. I’m so cold—I’m quite blue and I mustn’t go +home till morning breaks. I thought I’d squeeze through the bars and +‘catch warm’ and then go back to my sheep. There they are. Do you hear +their bells? But why ever do you want to get out?” + +“Because I hate the palace. Ugh! It’s a great big prison. Besides, I +want to feel the moonlight, dance in it, alone and free, and I want to +be cold. I’ve never been cold.” + +“Wish I were you!” said both boys at once, smiling as they sighed. + +“Where’s your lovely golden crown?” asked Olaf the Dark. “Don’t you +always wear it?” + +“Oh, no. I don’t sleep in it. I hang it on its peg. I hate it!” + +“Oh, I did want to try it on.” + +“You wouldn’t like it. It makes my head ache. It’s so heavy. I’d much +rather have a staff like that crooked one of yours.” + +“It’s awfully heavy,” sighed the shepherd. + +“Heavy?” exclaimed Olaf the Fair. “I don’t see how a heavy thing in your +hand could matter. Push it through. I want to hold it.” + +“Fetch me your crown, then, and we’ll exchange.” + +Olaf the Fair knew that it was dangerous to return to his room to fetch +the crown. Supposing the mastiff should bark and awaken the man. But he +longed to handle the shepherd’s staff. + +“All right, I’ll fetch it,” he said and tiptoed up the stairs. +Stealthily he stepped across the sleeping man, and the dog, recognising +his master’s scent, made no sound. Olaf seized the crown and hastened +back to the moon-flooded window. + +“Here it is,” he said, pushing the crown through the bars that were just +wide enough to let it through. “Try it on, and give me your staff.” + +Exultantly, the shepherd placed the gleaming crown on his dark head +while the king grabbed at the tall crook. + +“It isn’t a bit heavy! I can’t feel it!” they both exclaimed. + +Then for a few minutes they chattered, comparing one another’s days: the +little king complaining of confinement and of being always in a crowd, +the little shepherd complaining of having to stay out of doors and be +all alone. + +“Mother says I am the servant of my subjects,” said the king. “And oh, +I’ve got such an awful lot of them! I’d far rather be the master of +sheep, as you are.” + +“I’m not their master,” replied the shepherd. “I’m no better than their +slave. Father says so. Besides, they’re really yours. They’ve all got +little crowns stamped on their backs.” + +“Have they? That’s funny! Why, my sceptre’s the shape of a shepherd’s +crook.” + +As they talked, Olaf the Dark felt the crown beginning to eat into his +forehead. Heavier and heavier it grew until his brows ached and his head +drooped. Meanwhile, in Olaf the Fair’s hand the staff which had seemed +so light grew heavier and heavier. Surely it must be made of lead, he +thought, and at last with a sigh he changed it into his other arm. At +the same moment, with a groan, the shepherd tore the crown from his +head. + +“Phew! it _is_ a weight! How can you wear it all day?” he said, pushing +it back through the bars. + +“Phew! it _is_ a weight,” said the king, poking the staff through the +bars. “I can’t think how you can carry it all day.” + +“Funny,” they both said, and they laughed quite loud; the king, feeling +proud of his head that could carry so heavy a weight, and the shepherd +feeling proud of his right arm, grown strong from carrying so heavy a +staff. + +“The dawn breaks,” he said. “I must return to my sheep.” + +“Come again,” cried the king. “Come again and talk to me.” + +So once in every year the little shepherd returned to the palace walls +and through the bars the boys talked long and eagerly. The king always +told the shepherd how stuffy it was within, and the shepherd always told +the king how cold it was outside, and during the rest of the year, +whenever the king’s discontentment grew, he remembered the weeping boy +who had tried so hard to get _in_. And whenever the shepherd wearied of +his lot, he remembered the boy who wept because he could not get _out_. + +The king knew that the shepherd never forgot the heaviness of a king’s +crown, and the shepherd knew that the king never forgot the heaviness of +a shepherd’s staff, and thus each was braced to bear his own burden; for +it is a fact that our burdens are only unendurable when no one +understands how heavy is their weight. + +These two boys grew into men. Sorrows they had—as all men have, yet to +each was given much happiness, for the one was a good king and the other +a good shepherd. Far and wide Olaf the Fair was famed as the “Shepherd +of all his People,” and Olaf the Dark, who guarded the royal sheep, was +called the “King of all Shepherds.” + + + + + The Simple Way + + JOHN LEA + + + Said Mr. Wise: “I’m one of those + Who think a short and pleasant doze + Will aid in solving, yea or nay, + Such problems as perplex the day.” + + So, sitting in a comfy chair, + He stretched his slippers, then and there, + Toward the fire that glowed and leapt, + And very soon he soundly slept. + + He soundly slept, or so he thinks, + For little more than forty winks, + Then rose with more than common might + And went and set the world aright. + + To each expectant boy he showed + The shortest and the straightest road + That leads to fortune and to fame + For those who like to play the game. + + To all the girls he made it clear + How smiles and patience grace the year, + And how a placid mind will foil + The wear and tear of daily toil. + + He settled in the smartest way + The hottest questions of the day, + And, by a magic mode of thought, + So deftly on opinion wrought, + That politicians failed to see + Why they should longer disagree, + And forthwith formed, by joint consent, + _One_ party in our parliament. + + In short, his triumphs were so bright + While setting all the world aright, + That when he waked, ’twas sorrow deep + To find the labours of his sleep + Had failed the slightest mark to make + Upon the world he’d left awake. + +[Illustration] + + + + + Finis + + HENRY NEWBOLT + + + Night is come, + Owls are out; + Beetles hum + Round about. + + Children snore + Safe in bed, + Nothing more + Need be said. + +[Illustration] + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES + + + Page Changed from Changed to + 16 A crimson-lanterned garden-hous A crimson-lanterned garden-house + + ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. + ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75229 *** |