'No sound by night but the winds which blow,No sound by day but the water's flow,And the wild bird's screaming note.'
'No sound by night but the winds which blow,No sound by day but the water's flow,And the wild bird's screaming note.'
'No sound by night but the winds which blow,No sound by day but the water's flow,And the wild bird's screaming note.'
Inspite of the best resolutions for early rising, nobody woke with the sun after all, and that luminary had plenty of time to creep round and peep in through the little window before Father sprang up from his bed of heather, and exclaiming that they were late, set the children to blow the peats into life again while he took his morning bath in the lake.
Later on Peggy and Bobby followed his example. After sleeping all night in their clothes the cool plunge in the clear water was delightfully refreshing, and they sat about like mermaids on the rocks, basking in the sunshine, and watching a ring-ousel teaching her three big babies to fly, till Father called out that if they did not hurry up and come in at once he should eat all the breakfast before they arrived.
It was real fun frying rashers of bacon over the fire, especially when Peggy nearly upset the pan in her excitement, and Bobby absentmindedly sat upon the teapot, which he had put to keep warm among the peats. I am afraid poor Father had rather a distracting meal, but he cheerfully ate the smoky toast which thechildren provided, and did not even grumble when Peggy, by mistake, put six lumps of sugar into his tea.
'Rover and I must be off to work again this morning,' he said, taking a shepherd's crook that lay in a corner of the room, and calling the old dog from the fireside. 'You youngsters had better play about near the cottage. Don't go wandering all round the lake, or you'll get so tired you won't be able to walk home this afternoon.'
Left alone, the children began to busy themselves with what the Americans call 'chores.' First of all the breakfast things had to be cleared away, and carried down to the stream, but, to Peggy's dismay, the greasy bacon plates utterly refused to wash clean, however long they were left to soak in the pool, and came up in the same smeary condition in which she had put them in.
'Whatever shall we do with them? We can't leave them dirty like this,' she exclaimed, feeling as anxious for the credit of the establishment as any full-grown housekeeper.
'Tilt them up in a row against the cottage wall, and pour a kettleful of boiling water over them,' said practical Bobby, who generally had some suggestion to offer.
I do not know what Nancy would have thought of such a method of washing up, but it answered splendidly all the same, for the greasy water drained away into the grass, and the fresh breeze dried the plates without any need of a towel, and Peggy even managed to clean out the frying-pan with the help of some fern-leaves and a wisp of grass, an achievement of which she felt quite proud.
'We can't make our beds,' she said, 'because there's nothing to make; but we'll pile the heather up withthe rest of the peat in the chimney corner, and it will do to light the fire with next time. I mean to ask Father to bring us, now, whenever he comes up.'
They managed to construct a broom from some of the longest pieces of heather, and swept the crumbs neatly out at the front-door; they hung up the frying-pan, the kettle, and the bellows in their accustomed places, and stacked the cups and plates in the old box which served as a cupboard.
'Doesn't it look nice?' said Peggy, gazing round with much satisfaction on their handiwork. 'If only we could stay up here a good long time we'd bring lots of things from home, and paint pictures for the walls, and put them in cork frames, and I really believe, if I tried, I could make up one of those hearthrugs out of little scraps of cloth all pinched up and sewn on, like Nancy made last winter for her sister's wedding present.'
'Oh, bother the cottage!' said Bobby, who, boy-like, soon tired of domestic duties. 'Let's go out and look for whinberries; there ought to be heaps of them round there by the lake.'
Peggy was more than willing, and relinquishing her schemes of household improvement to hunt up the milk-can as a handy receptacle, followed him out into the sunshine, to search among the heather for the little low-growing, red-leaved shrubs with their crop of small purple berries.
But the blackbirds and the ring-ousels had been before them, so it took a long time to fill the can, especially as a good deal of the fruit found its way into the children's mouths, leaving them with such purple lips and stained fingers that they resembled the babes in the wood.
'I say, Peggy,' cried Bobby suddenly, stoopingdown to examine more closely the grassy bank where he was sitting, 'there's a whole swarm of bees keeps coming in and out of this hole.'
Peggy came hurrying up in great excitement, tripping as usual over her dangling bootlace.
'It's a wild bees' nest; I expect the bank is full of honey. Oh, wouldn't it be fun to dig it out! I'm sure we could do it first-rate!'
'But won't they all go for us when we start laying into their hive?'
'We must smoke them out first, like the people do in the village when they only have those straw hives. We'll bring some dry heather and light a fire, so that the smoke will send them to sleep, and then we can get the honey as easy as anything. I remember just how Mrs. Davis does.'
Peggy spoke as if she knew all about it, though really she had never seen any honey taken in her life, but she was a young lady who had much confidence in her own powers, and Bobby was so accustomed to follow her lead that he offered no further objections. They went back to the cottage for the matches and a supply of dry heather, which they arranged in a circle round the nest.
'You stand ready with the matches,' commanded Peggy, 'and when I say "Now!" strike a light. Then, as the smoke goes up, I shall poke a stick into the hole, and you'll see they'll all fly out and tumble down asleep.'
Obedient Bobby stood at attention, match in hand.
'Now!' cried Peggy breathlessly.
Up went the smoke, the heather catching fire at once, in went the stick, and out came the bees in an angry swarm; but something had gone wrong in the calculations, for instead of falling stupefied on to thegrass, they flew unharmed through the smoke, and fell upon their tormentors with a buzz of indignation.
Away fled the children, racing over the moor as if the furies were at their heels. They were both capital runners, having had plenty of practice at cricket and rounders, but I do not think they ever ran so fast in their lives as when they were chased by the bees.
They had just reached the side of a little incline when Peggy's bootlace, which she had neglected to fasten all the morning, tripped her up, and over she went, rolling into a prickly gorse-bush, while Bobby, who was so close behind that he could not stop himself, fell over her, and collapsed into a boggy hollow, where he lay panting for breath until Peggy picked herself up and hauled him out.
'Oh, youarein a mess!' she cried, trying to wipe the mud off his coat with her pocket-handkerchief, and getting almost as grimy as he was in the process.
'I'm half stinged up!' moaned poor Bobby. 'I've a great place on my cheek, and just look at my hands!' stretching out the wounded members for sympathy.
'They've stung me all round the back of my neck,' said Peggy. 'I expect it'll hurt ever so when it begins to swell. We'd best go and bathe the places in the lake.'
The water relieved the smart considerably, and Peggy, happily remembering she had a parcel of biscuits in her pockets, pulled them out and suggested some lunch, for Bobby was looking doleful and injured, and inclined to cast aspersions upon her knowledge of bee-keeping.
There were three apiece, all thick arrow-root ones, and I grieve to say this ill-behaved pair had a competition as to which could finish them the quickest. Dry biscuits are choky things, and it is not very easy to eat three off on end, in record time, without drinking.
'I've won!' declared Bobby in triumph, hurriedly swallowing the last morsel, and scooping up a delicious draught of water to wash it down.
'Yes; but you simply bolted your last. You want Miss Wilkins here to teach you manners. What a dear little fat dot she was! I wish we could come across her again.'
'She's gone home. I saw her the day before yesterday in a carriage, with a lady and gentleman and a lot of boxes, and Mrs. Price at the post-office said she had heard Sir Somebody Wilkins was a very great artist in London, and had pictures in the Royal Something-or-other,' explained Bobby lucidly.
'Was it the Royal Academy?'
'I believe it was; but I thought an academy meant a school.'
'So it does sometimes, but I know the Academy is a place where people go to see pictures, because Maud Middleton told me she had her portrait there last year. Talking of Maud, we have never seen anything of Mr. Neville since that party. I wish he would come over to Gorswen.'
'So do I; he was a stunning chap! He could bowl better than the captain of our eleven. Why don't Father and Aunt Helen write and ask him?'
'I don't know. I asked Aunt Helen, but she was so funny and queer over it, and wouldn't talk about him at all. I can't imagine why. Oh, Bobby, look what I've found! A clump of real white heather! Isn't that lucky? The first I've ever seen. I shall take it home for Aunt Helen; she'll be so pleased.'
'Joe says it means a wedding if you give it to anybody, and if you find it in three places you'll be married three times. No, I don't want to hunt for any, thank you! It's girls' stuff! I aren't going to bother withmarrying when I grow up; I mean to be a pirate, and live in a ship with a black flag, and a lot of jolly fellows with pistols and cutlasses, and we'll overhaul every merchantman we see, and string the sailors up from the yard-arm!' and the future buccaneer swung his legs over the rock, and put on a cut-throat expression, strangely at variance with his cherubic cast of countenance.
'Pooh! You're a silly little boy!' said Peggy scornfully, forgetting that only last week she had regarded the adventures in 'Treasure Island' as the beau-ideal of earthly bliss. 'There are no such things as pirates now, so you couldn't be one, and I believe you'd be scared of the pistols, too, if they were loaded!'
Much offended at these remarks, Bobby stalked away in such aggrieved majesty that, as the best means to restore peace, Peggy suggested that they should walk on to a larger stream, which emptied itself into the lake about half a mile lower down. Luckily Bobby's ill-humours were of a short-lived nature, and after a few minutes of cutting silence, he volunteered the rather ambiguous remark that there were 'lots of things a fellow could do when he grew up, anyhow,' and was his smiling self again.
The new stream proved highly attractive. It was one of those noisy, rushing mountain torrents, brown with flowing over the peat, and full of great moss-grown boulders, with smooth round stones between. There were foaming cataracts here and there among the rocks, just like Niagara on a small scale, and there were dear little quiet pools at the edges, where the still water was overhung by ferns and rushes, that sheltered caddice-worms, and boat-flies, and whirligig water-beetles, and all sorts of other delights for the collection.
The children promptly pulled off their shoes and stockings and paddled in the brown water like a couple of ducks. Peggy tied her boots together by the laces, and putting her stockings inside, slung them over her back in true fisher-boy fashion, while she sat dabbling her feet in a waterfall, and watching Bobby's frantic efforts to catch a dragon-fly.
'Oh, Peg, come quick! I believe I have him under my hat!' shouted the enthusiastic collector, lying flat among the reeds on a grassy bank.
Peggy jumped up in a hurry, and splashed her way to the rescue, but the smooth round stones were slippery, and seemed to slide away from under her feet. She gave a desperate clutch at a willow-stump on the bank to save herself from falling, and somehow or other, in the struggle, her bootlace broke, and away went the boots, sailing gaily down the stream, over the waterfall and into the depths of the lake, before their astonished owner had even realized their loss. Naturally, to secure the dragon-fly and pin him on Bobby's hat was the first consideration, and by the time the missing boots were thought of, they had utterly disappeared, and though the children searched for fully half an hour down the stream and on the bank of the lake, they were not to be found.
'I'm afraid it's no use,' said Peggy at last. 'They must have gone down into a hole, or been washed right into the middle of the lake. Someone will fish them out a few hundred years hence, and put them into a museum as great treasures. Well, it can't be helped. I suppose I shall have to walk home without them,' pretending to look as if she did not care, though really the prospect of a scolding from Father, and further explanations with Aunt Helen on her return, made her somewhat uneasy.
With spirits slightly damped she wended her way back to the cottage, trying to think it did not hurt to walk on the scrubby heather-stems, and privately wondering whether Scotch children's toes were made of different material to her own.
Mr. Vaughan came home at one o'clock, having counted the sheep to his satisfaction, and found none missing.
'I'm as hungry as a hunter,' he announced. 'We must eat up everything that's left; it won't do to carry anything back in our baskets. Is the kettle boiling? Come, Peggy, child, put on your shoes and stockings; you look like the picture of an Irish peasant-girl.'
Peggy had certainly expected a lecture when she made the painful confession that her foot-gear was at the bottom of the lake, but, to her great relief, Father took it all as a joke, and laughed so heartily that he quite forgot to scold her.
'But you can't walk eight miles home over a rough road with bare feet!' he exclaimed, the practical side of the question suddenly striking him, 'and I certainly don't feel equal to carrying you. We must manage to make you a pair of sandals of some kind. I suppose I shall have to sacrifice my shooting-gaiters;' and he divested himself of his leather leggings with rueful reluctance. 'Now, put your foot down upon that, and I will draw a line round it; then, if I cut it out with my penknife it will make quite a good sole—enough to save you from the stones, at any rate.'
Peggy sat on the box while Father tied on the improvised sandals with her pocket-handkerchief and Bobby's. They were certainly ingenious, though hardly elegant, and it did not comfort her much to be told that she would be taken for a wounded soldierlimping back from the wars; indeed, Father made such fun of her that she grew quite indignant, and began to think she would really rather have been scolded a little than so very much laughed at.
Peggy never forgot that walk home. The sandals were anything but comfortable, and her feet hurt dreadfully on the stones, while every gorse-bush she passed seemed to be stretching out spiky fingers to scratch her bare legs; she was tired after her morning's adventures on the moors, and the eight miles seemed to lengthen out to an interminable vista, in spite of the way being downhill; sundry bumps and bruises, which she had never noticed at the time, began to ache now, and the bee-stings on her neck smarted, until she hardly knew how to bear the pain.
Poor Bobby was in scarcely better plight, and, to add to their misery, a rain-cloud, blowing over from the west, broke on the mountain-top, and drenched them almost to the skin. Mr. Vaughan was in such haste to get home before post-time that he hurried them on, quite forgetting how much shorter their legs were than his own, and he refused to listen to any excuses for sitting down and resting, which, considering their wet condition, was perhaps just as well.
A more draggled and disreputable-looking pair of children it would have been impossible to find. Bobby's sailor-suit was all stained with mud, where he had fallen into the bog, and smears of the same material seemed to have distributed themselves over his chubby face. There were several rents in his stockings, while the brim and crown of his straw hat had parted company, showing his crop of brown curls through the gap between. As for Peggy, a young gipsy tramp would have looked more respectable, for the brown holland dress, which had started out stiff and cleanyesterday morning, was smeared with whinberry juice, black smudges from the kettle, and green stains from the mossy stones in the stream, and clung around her bare legs in damp, clammy folds, while the drenching rain had reduced the poppies in her hat to a scarlet pulp, which dripped down in crimson tears upon her cheek. The sun, shining out brilliantly as they reached civilization once more, seemed to make the forlorn plight of the wayfarers look worse than ever. If there had been any possible way home, except through the village, I think Peggy would have begged Father to take it, and she wished that, like Lady Godiva, she could have shut the people up in their cottages until she had passed by.
'I know they'll all stand and stare at my bare legs and queer sandals,' she groaned. 'Those horrid, rude Watkin boys are sure to see me, and call names next time, when Father's not there, and Mrs. Price will come fussing out of the post-office to ask if there has been an accident; she always wants to poke her nose into everything!'
The Watkin boys, however, were away, engaged in a raid for early apples in the orchards of long-suffering neighbours, while Mrs. Price was taking tea in her back-parlour, and indulging in such spicy gossip with her particular friend Miss Jones that the children passed by unnoticed, and Peggy began to congratulate herself that they were almost out of danger.
But alas! things rarely happen as we expect in this world. They had crossed the bridge, and were turning away up the lane to the Abbey, when the sound of wheels was heard behind them, and, in the smart carriage which rolled by, whom should Peggy recognise but the supercilious faces and elegant costumes ofPhyllis and Marjorie Norton. Her cup of humiliation was filled to the brim.
'And they knew me at once, I'm sure,' she lamented to Lilian afterwards, 'for they both looked at each other, and Phyllis laughed in that horrid, sneering way she has. I know she'll tell the Middletons, and they'll think it so queer. I don't much mind Marjorie, but of all people in this world I simplydetestPhyllis Norton!'
'Good-morrow to the day so fair,Good-morrow, sir, to you.'
'Good-morrow to the day so fair,Good-morrow, sir, to you.'
'Good-morrow to the day so fair,Good-morrow, sir, to you.'
Onehot afternoon, when the holidays were about three weeks old, found Peggy wandering disconsolately round the farmyard alone. Lilian was away, spending a few days in Shrewsbury with a distant cousin; Father had gone to Warford, and had taken Bobby with him; even Rollo had disappeared on some mysterious errand not entirely disconnected with bones, so the young lady was left for once to her own devices.
Aunt Helen had broadly hinted that an hour's practice of much-neglected pieces upon the piano in the Rose Parlour would be a profitable means of employing the time, and the fear lest this threat should become an actual command caused Peggy to shun the neighbourhood of the house with elaborate care, and betake herself, with a selection of pets, to the barn.
But the rabbits were stupid and sleepy this afternoon. Even Jack, the magpie, seemed to feel the heat, and refused to amuse his young mistress, while Prickles snored on in his box of hay, oblivious to all coaxings and blandishments.
'Bother the creatures!' said Peggy at last, giving it up in despair. 'If they want to go to sleep, I suppose they must! I wonder if it would be worth while going down to the harvest field? I'm afraid David wouldn't let me drive the reaper. No, I know what I'll do.'
And she jumped up, full of a new idea which had suddenly flashed into her mind.
Down the pasture she pelted, her red hat looking like a new species of poppy among the grass, and, taking a flying leap over the fence, made her way along the dusty road to a place where a large willow overhung the path.
The tree was old, so old and decayed that the upper side of the trunk had worn away altogether, leaving nothing but a hollow, crumbling shell, as rotten and dry as matchwood. Into this cavity Miss Peggy proceeded to creep, where, concealed by the new branches which had grown from the old stump, she found she could lie at full length, quite hidden from sight, while through a hole in the bark she could obtain an excellent view of every one who passed in the road below. The first to come by was Mr. Griffiths, the stout old miller, mounted on his equally fat horse, the two jogging comfortably along, almost asleep in the sunshine. Peggy allowed him to get well beneath her, then, taking a pebble from her pocket, she let it fall plump in the middle of his white hat. The miller sat up with a jump, and reined in the old horse, staring into the tree with such blank amazement on his rubicund countenance that Peggy had to stuff her fingers into her mouth to stifle her mirth.
'Shoo! Hi!' cried Mr. Griffiths, clapping his hands.
But, like Brer Rabbit, Peggy 'lay low and said nuffin',' and the old man rode slowly on, turninground in his saddle for a last lingering look as he went.
Encouraged by this success, Peggy's next venture was on a pedlar, who came down the road with a pack on his back and a thick stick in his hand. I am afraid this time her stone was bigger, for it bounced with such effect on his shoulder, that he turned round with a flow of language far from elegant, shaking his fist at the tree with so much fury that Peggy was in terror lest he should climb up to find the author of the assault; but he evidently thought the day too hot for such exercises, and with a final abusive epithet walked away muttering curses on all the children in creation.
'It's not safe to use stones,' thought Peggy. 'They know someone must be up here to drop them. I'll try little pieces of wood instead, and then they'll think it's a bird or a squirrel.'
After that, she had excellent sport, for the women were beginning to return from Warford Market with their empty baskets, and she was able to cause wonder and mystification in many a rustic breast, without the slightest chance of discovery.
She was growing almost tired of the fun, when she heard a cheery whistle, and a boy of about fourteen came sauntering slowly down the road. He was rather a nice-looking boy, with merry brown eyes, a freckled nose, and frizzy chestnut hair, which stood up like a mop all over his head, and he had a particularly jolly, breezy air about him.
Peggy had acquired such practice at her interesting occupation by this time that she was able to drop her piece of wood neatly down the back of his neck exactly at the moment he passed below.
'Hello!' cried the boy, turning round, and flinginga stone into the tree. 'A squirrel, I'll be bound! I guess it's no use you hiding 'way up there, old fellow! I'll unearth you before you're much older!' And he commenced such an onslaught of stones that, to avoid the descending shower, Peggy tried to creep deeper into the hollow cavity where she was lying.
But the poor, rotten old tree could stand the strain no longer, and, with an awful crash, down came the overhanging bough, bringing Peggy to the ground with a good deal more speed than elegance.
'I say! What the dickens! Great Scott! Are you hurt?' exclaimed the boy, regarding with much astonishment the crumpled heap of sailor frock, brown curls, and splinters of willow-wood that had suddenly descended at his feet.
Peggy got up, feeling tenderly at her shins, which had suffered most in the fall.
'I don't think I'm quite killed,' she replied slowly. 'But I've no doubt there'll be heaps of bruises to-morrow.'
'So you were the squirrel! It was rather a cute dodge, and well done. I guess you're something of a tomboy, young lady, aren't you?' said the boy, grinning appreciatively.
'No, I'm not,' said Peggy, indignant at the old reproach; 'I'm only fond of a little fun. I know whoyouare. You're the boy who's staying with Miss Forster at the Willows. I saw you in church on Sunday;' and she nodded convincingly.
'Why, I believe I saw you, too! You dropped your collection money, and made a rabbit out of your pocket-handkerchief,' chuckling at the remembrance.
'Aren't you Miss Forster's nephew? What's your name? Why have you never been to Gorswen before?Where is your home?' asked Peggy, wondering at his slight American accent.
The boy whistled.
'Whew! what a catechism! My name's Archie, if you want to know, and my godfathers and godmother gave it to me at my baptism. Yes, Miss Forster is my aunt, and I haven't been to Gorswen before, because I was raised in Colorado, and that's a little too far for chance visits; but I'm going to locate here now most of the time, I guess. Is there anything else you would like to ask?'
And the brown eyes looked at her quizzically.
'Yes, I should,' admitted Peggy frankly. 'I want to know what you're doing in the corner of Miss Forster's garden. I can hear you sawing and hammering there every morning.'
'I wonder you don't come to see!'
'Well, I would if anyoneinvitedme!'
The boy laughed.
'All right!' he said good-naturedly. 'Come along now, and I'll show you, if you like. If we cut over the hedge here we can drop straight down into the garden without going round by the road. I guess a girl who can climb a tree to play squirrel won't shy at a fence. Eh, Miss Tomboy?'
Peggy replied by lightly vaulting over the obstacle, and following her new friend with much promptitude, giving him a condensed history of herself and family as she ran to keep up with his long strides.
'Here we are!' cried the boy, jumping over the little stream that bounded the Willows garden, and watching Peggy's heroic leap after with an eye of secret approval. 'There, now, if you want to see what I have been doing, you can!'
He put his hands in his pockets, and whistled carelessly, but it was evident, all the same, that he was pleased to show off his handiwork, even to a little girl. Peggy gave a gasp of astonishment and delight, for by the side of the stream was fixed the prettiest little miniature water-wheel, which was turning round as merrily as the miller's own.
'Oh, how lovely!' she cried. 'You don't mean to say you made that yourself?'
For the efforts of Joe and Bobby at carpentry were generally of a very rough description.
'Of course I did. Do you reckon I'd get the village joiner to fix it? Precious much good he'd be at a job like this, the clumsy old idiot! But the wheel's nothing. Come over here, and you'll see what it turns!'
'A grindstone! How splendid! Why, it's going round ever so fast when you put on that catch!'
'I can grind your pen-knife for you, if you like,' suggested Archie magnanimously. 'I'd admire to do it.'
'Haven't got one,' said Peggy sadly. 'I lost mine out of my pocket the other day, when I fell into the stream.'
'Ah! girls have such stupid pockets, they never can keep anything in them. Never mind, perhaps this will be more in your line;' and lifting up a lid, he showed a tiny churn, calculated to fill the feminine soul with rapture.
'You could put some cream in that, and make enough butter for your tea,' he said, when Peggy had exhausted her list of admiring adjectives. 'I'll let you do it some time, if you want. But if you like the churn, what do you think of this, now?' And, stooping forward, he moved a switch, and the strains of a little musical-box were heard playing 'The Last Rose of Summer' with wonderfully correct time and tune.
'You'll never persuade me you made that, too!' cried Peggy, turning upon him with wide-open eyes.
'Indeed I did!' laughed Archie. 'Oh, it's not so difficult, after all. See, I'll show it to you. It's only made with pins set round in a circle on a piece of board, with a nail on a pivot in the centre to revolve round and strike them. The hard part of it was to set the pins just right. You see, the shortness or longness of them makes the difference in the notes, and the distance between gives the time. It took me a jolly long while to puzzle it all out, I can tell you!'
'I think you're a genius!' declared Peggy, who was absolutely steeped in admiration.
'Why, no!' said the boy. 'But I reckon to go in for engineering some time, so it's all practice, you see. When I can get some more tools and things I want to set up a hydraulic pump to water the garden. I believe I could put electric light all over the house, if aunt would only let me try.'
'I'm afraid you might blow us all up, my dear boy!' exclaimed the pleasant voice of Miss Forster, who had joined them unobserved. 'So you have been making Peggy's acquaintance? She had better stay to tea, now she is here. I will send a message up to the Abbey to say we are keeping her.'
Peggy beamed with delight, for she wanted to see more of Archie's wonderful work, and also the cakes and jam at the Willows had a reputation for excellence quite unsurpassed in the neighbourhood.
Miss Forster was a little elderly lady, with a neat, bird-like appearance, and a brisk, cheerful manner, who seemed to match the prim, square house with its green door and brass knocker, and white sun-blinds over the windows. Everything about the place was kept in the most exquisite order—never a weed on thepaths nor a daisy on the lawns—while indoors the old-fashioned rooms were the very perfection of neatness, and the polish on the Chippendale furniture was a thing to wonder at.
When Miss Forster had adopted her brother's youngest boy from Colorado, her neighbours held up their hands in amazement, and suggested that one of her London nieces would have proved a far more satisfactory companion. But Miss Forster herself thought otherwise.
'My nieces are dear girls,' she said, 'but they take all I say for gospel, and have not an original idea among them. I want some fresh young life in the place, to keep me from quite stagnating. Archie brings a breath of the new world with him, and outside interests which I hope may prevent me from falling into the narrow rut that is so often the fate of elderly spinsters in retired villages. It is quite possible that he may upset the house in some slight degree, but on the whole it is good for me to have my little ways interfered with. One is apt to get into the habit of thinking that the set of a curtain, or a speck of dust on the mirror, are of more importance than the affairs of the universe.'
Since his arrival, Archie had certainly done his best to preserve his aunt from any danger of stagnation, for his fertile brain kept her in a perpetual tremor as to what the 'dear boy' would do next.
'We work everything by machinery out in America, you know, aunt,' he explained. 'And it feels just terribly behind the times to come home and find you jogging on in the same hum-drum way this old country has done since the conquest. I guess if you could come out to Colorado, you'd get an eye-opener!'
Miss Forster opened her eyes wide enough, as it was,to see a neat telephone, made of two empty cocoa-tins and a piece of waxed string, fixed up between the house and the stables, while a small windmill on the scullery roof turned the coffee-grinder in the kitchen, to the huge amazement and delight of the cook. She had gasped a little at the incubator, made of an old biscuit-tin, and placed on the greenhouse pipes.
'Would not a good sitting hen be really better, my dear boy?' she suggested mildly. 'I don't see what you are going to do with the young chicks when you hatch them out.'
'Oh, I'll have fixed up a foster-mother before the three weeks are up,' said Archie. 'I'm lining a shallow box with plaster of Paris, and sticking it full of feathers while it's wet. Then, if I keep it on the hot pipes, it will feel for all the world like an old hen, and I don't believe there'll be a chick that'll find out the difference!'
There seemed to be no end to Master Archie's wonderful inventions. The boy had a great talent for mechanics, and was very painstaking in carrying out all the minute details of his work. Most of his schemes were really of use in the household, though occasionally some of them were not attended with quite the success they deserved. He had hung the great dinner-bell in the cherry-tree, and fastened a string from it to his bed-post, so that he might scare the birds from the fruit in the early morning; but unfortunately he had flung out his arms in his sleep and set the bell ringing soon after midnight, bringing the neighbours hurrying up to the Willows, thinking it was an alarm of fire. He had manufactured a marvellous hat-grip, warranted to defy the windiest of weather, and presented it to the housemaid; but when the poor girl tried to take off her Sunday hat, she found it so tightly fixedto her hair that it took the combined efforts of the other servants, aided by the liberal use of a pair of scissors, to remove the construction from her head. He had fixed a fire-escape to the landing window, and nearly killed the trusting parlour-maid by letting her down in a blanket 'just for practice,' while the cook was soaked through in a sudden application of the hose-pipe to quench imaginary flames in the region of the back-kitchen.
But I think the crowning achievement was an automatic currying-brush, which was to be wound up and fixed on to the horse's back, and was to do the work 'in just half the time old Fleming takes pottering over it.'
'Don't ee, now, Master Archie—don't ee, now!' remonstrated the poor old coachman, with dismay in his soul. 'Horses is kittle cattle, and it aren't right to play no tricks with 'em!'
'Don't you be alarmed, Fleming. I guess Captain will like it just first-rate. He'll find it sort of soothing, and it'll put such a gloss on him you'll be able to see your face in his coat. If it works all right, I'll rig up an arrangement to milk the cows next.'
And the confident inventor wound up his little machine, and started it on Captain's fat back. But the old horse would have nothing to say to such a newfangled contrivance, and, with a snort of alarm, had nearly kicked through the side of his stall, sending the currying-brush flying in one direction and Master Archie head over heels in another.
'I reckon he's rather too old to catch on to it,' said the boy, determined not to own himself beaten, as he picked up the ruins of his clock-work. 'It would be best to start on a colt, and put it in as part of the training. Never mind, I can use the wheels to makean alarum, and fix it up in the harness-room, to go off at any time you like, Fleming!'
But Fleming showed such a rooted distrust for anything that was intended to 'go off,' and, indeed, such absolute abhorrence of any further mechanical contrivance in the vicinity of the stables, that Archie had transferred his attentions to the garden, where he was full of a scheme for utilizing the water power of the little stream to irrigate the soil, after the fashion of the Nile in Egypt, in a series of canals between the beds, and had already made the hose-pipe work with capital effect by means of a siphon and an old barrel.
This was a form of amusement which appealed far more to Miss Forster's mind, for her flowers suffered much from drought in summer time, and she was a keen competitor at the local horticultural shows, exhibiting some of the largest carnations and the roundest dahlias in the neighbourhood. So she watched with delight the growth of the hydraulic pump, groaning a little over the dirty boots and muddied clothes that ensued, but assuring her friends that the 'dear boy' was a perfect genius, and would make his mark in the world, and relating the story of his achievements with most unbounded pride and satisfaction.
'A good man's life is like a fairest flower:It casts a fragrant breath on all around.'
'A good man's life is like a fairest flower:It casts a fragrant breath on all around.'
'A good man's life is like a fairest flower:It casts a fragrant breath on all around.'
ThoughMiss Forster's pet flower-beds were a subject for modest congratulation to their owner, they were not to be compared to those at the Rectory, which were indeed a feast of scent and colour. The Rector was worthily proud of his garden. It represented a considerable amount of skill and artistic taste on the part of himself and his handy-man, for the rare plants and exquisite groupings of contrasting blossoms would have done credit to a more imposing establishment, and he had as choice a collection of shrubs as could be grown anywhere in the county.
It was almost sunset when Peggy, having seen the last of Archie's contrivances, and bidden good-bye to kind Miss Forster, passed by the Rectory hedge, and hearing the brisk sound of the mowing-machine, pushed open the little gate and went in, knowing she was always sure of a welcome.
Peggy loved to get Mr. Howell sometimes quite to herself. Perhaps it was because he was one of those rare characters in whose presence we can feel certain of perfect sympathy, or perhaps it grew from a more subtle and silent bond, felt keenly by the child, thoughnever spoken of, for Peggy could remember a time when the Rector's hair was raven black, and there had been a little Raymond Howell playing about on the smooth lawns of the old garden. Folks had said that the Rector, like many a man who marries late in life, had made an idol of his motherless boy, and they had said, again, that the father's heart was broken and the print of death was on his face as he stood by his child's open grave. But they judged wrong, for he had wrestled with his sorrow, like Jacob with the angel of old, and came forth from the struggle with hair indeed as white as snow, but a face so full of the glory of his conquest that those who looked felt as if he, too, had died, and they saw his immortality.
'Ah, he's a changed man!' said Ellen, the nurse, to Susan, the cook, as they talked in whispers over the night-nursery fire when the children were in bed. 'If he was a saint before, it's an angel he is now, and nothing less. They say he takes no thought for himself at all. His heart's been left in the grave with the poor boy, it's true, but, mark my words, if there's a soul in trouble in all the parish it's no kinder friend they'll find than Mr. Howell.'
Little five-year-old Peggy, lying wide awake, straining her ears to overhear the whispered conversation, sat up in bed with burning cheeks.
'Oh, nurse!' she cried. 'PoorMr. Howell! Have they lost his heart in the churchyard, and can't anybody find it for him?'
'Go to sleep at once, you naughty girl, or I'll call your aunt,' said Ellen, putting out the candle to avoid further complications, for she knew she ought not to have been talking within hearing of her charges, and hoped Peggy would forget the matter by morning.
But the child lay awake for a long time, puzzling hersmall brain. She was not quite sure what a heart was, but she thought the Rector would miss it, and that he was in some sort of trouble she realized well enough.
'Can people live without hearts?' she asked Lilian next day.
'Of course not,' replied Lilian, with the superior wisdom of nine years old, and dismissed the idea with scorn.
But Peggy did not consider the question ended by any means. Like most children, with the instinctive dread of being laughed at, she never thought of confiding her difficulty to an older person, but solving the problem according to her own quaint ideas, she dodged the vigilance of Ellen, and trotted off alone to the churchyard. The lych-gate was locked, but she toiled over the steep steps that spanned the wall, and wading through the long grass under the yew-trees, found the spot, all covered with flowers, which Lilian had pointed out on Sunday, where 'Mary, the wife of the Reverend Philip Howell,' slept, 'in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life,' and where the stonemason had been already busy with the newly-added line: 'Also Raymond, only son of the above.'
Who can tell all that goes on in the mind of a little child, or what it understands of death? In a vague way Peggy knew that her playfellow had 'gone to heaven, where mother is,' but she did not think of that as any cause for sorrow, nor did she connect him for an instant with the place where she stood, but, with her nurse's words still troubling her, she knelt down and searched among the white flowers that hid the bare earth beneath.
A step on the gravel walk startled her to her feet, but it was only the Rector, coming slowly down the path from the church-door.
'Don't go away, little Margaret,' he said quietly. 'God's acre is free to all. We have both precious seed sown here that we hope to find blooming some day in Paradise.'
'Oh, Mr. Howell,' burst out Peggy, her gray eyes brimming over with tears, 'is it really true that your heart is lost here? Don't you think, if we were both to look, we might find it again?'
The Rector stroked the brown curls with a tender hand.
'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No, child, it's not here, but up in the light beyond;' and he pointed where the sun, breaking through the clouds, burst out in a flood of golden glory. 'We make our plans for this world,' he said softly, speaking as much to himself as to Peggy, 'and say we will do this or that, but sometimes God takes it out of our hands and arranges it for us; but His ways are better than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts, and, after all, death is but the gate to life immortal.'
Since then a great friendship had existed between these two, made all the stronger, perhaps, by the fifty years that divided them, for old folk have often more tolerance and sympathy for childhood than have those whose eyes are still blinded by the bustle of life, and, whatever Peggy might be to others, with Mr. Howell she was always at her highest and best.
'As welcome as the flowers in May, dear child,' said the Rector this evening. 'I was just longing for an excuse to leave the lawn-mower, and now I feel bound to give up work and entertain you. Come and look at my carnations.' And taking a basket as a receptacle for any weeds that might offend his eye, he led the way, Peggy trotting after him with her little tonguewagging freely in a lively account of her latest adventures, and the marvels which her new friend Archie was constructing in Miss Forster's garden.
'Yes, he's a clever lad,' said Mr. Howell, 'and likely to do well and be a comfort to her, I hope. It's a grand thing when a boy can fill his life with a hobby; it leaves him no time to get into mischief.'
'I think flowers are your hobby, next to the parish,' said Peggy, as she watched the Rector tying up his carnations, touching each blossom as carefully as if it were a child, with a tender pride in its loveliness.
'Flowers are such dear friends, you see, Peggy; they rarely disappoint or deceive you. Treat them well, and they repay you a thousandfold; and the best of it is they give so much pleasure to others as well as to ourselves. By-the-by, how are Miss Forster's carnations getting on?'
'Beautifully! She has a lovely apricot-coloured one she hopes may take a prize, but I don't like it as well as your yellow. She says the show will be bigger than ever this year; so many of the village people have sent in entries.'
'I'm glad of that. Gardening is the best hobby a working man can take up. He won't want to think of the public-house when he's digging in his patch of ground and watching the plants he's raised himself. I always agree with good old Francis Bacon that "God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures." I have given away a great many roots in the village this spring, in the hope that the flowers would find their way to the show in due course. People are generally so pleased with them.'
'I took a nice carnation plant down to old Mrs. Johnson at the smithy,' said Peggy, 'but she didn'tseem at all pleased. She said I might have known she wanted a Bizarre, and not a Picotee, and I was bringing "coals to Newcastle."'
'But you left it for her, all the same?'
'Oh yes; I believe she liked it really, for it was quite a new kind; but she loves to grumble; she's a terribly cross old woman.'
'Poor old soul! She's let her heart wither up instead of ripening! We must all do one or the other, Peggy, child, as we grow older. It is only the sunshine of God's presence that can mellow us thoroughly, and if people wilfully turn away from that they are bound to become shrivelled and sour. Worldly prosperity is like a strong electric light—it may bring out flowers, but it will never ripen character; so don't forget that, or ever exchange it for the true sunlight. Now come and help me to choose out which flowers to specially train for the show, and we shall just have time to stake them before dark.'
The Rector never made the mistake of continually talking down to a child's level. He spoke with Peggy exactly as he would have done with a grown-up friend, and if she could not always follow his train of thought, I think the mere effort to do so was good for her, and the older she grew, the more truly she understood and appreciated him.
It is not only when we try to amuse them that the children love us best (who has not sometimes seen the look of almost contempt in the eyes of a little one for the good-natured elder who plays the fool for his benefit?), and often the companion most cared for and sought after by a child is he who unconsciously raises the standard of the eager, growing soul.
For reasons of his own the Rector kept Peggy late that evening, and they made a little tour of the garden,selecting what they called their prize plants, putting indiarubber bands round carnation-buds to keep them from bursting, and tying up the most promising stocks and asters with a scrupulous care, working until the light had almost failed and the sky stood out yellow against the outline of the cypress-trees. It grew so dim and still in the twilight that Peggy cried out in alarm as a tall figure seemed to rise from the shadows under the dark yew-hedge, and came towards them; but peering through the gathering dusk, she recognised the face of her old friend Mr. Neville.
'John!' exclaimed the Rector, 'I thought you had been at the Abbey all this time!'
'I haven't found the courage yet,' returned the other huskily, picking a prize dahlia to pieces with a recklessness that seemed wanton in Peggy's eyes.
'Oh, Mr. Neville, is it really you? However did you get here?' she cried.
'Mayn't I know the Rector, too, Peggy? He happens to be a very old friend of mine, and I have come to see him.'
'You said you knew Father and Aunt Helen, too, but you have never been to see us,' said Peggy reproachfully. 'I'm afraid there's only Aunt Helen in to-night, but I know she'd love you to come.'
'I'm not so sure about that,' said Mr. Neville rather bitterly. 'I don't know whether I should be welcome, Peggy dear. Aunt Helen and I quarrelled once, long ago, and I doubt if she could forgive me.'
'Oh, she would—I know she would!' exclaimed Peggy. 'She always forgives us, however naughty we are; and she told me once—the night she was crying over the old letters in her writing-desk—that if you quarrelled with anyone it was better to makeit up at once, and not let it go on for ever. Do, please, try!'
'Go, my boy,' said the Rector. 'Tell her the simple truth, and don't spoil two lives for the sake of an old tale that is best forgotten.'
Peggy waited wide awake in bed for hours that night to catch Father's step in the passage and call him in for a good-night kiss.
'Oh, Daddy!' she cried, as she clasped him round the neck, 'is Aunt Helen really and truly going to marry Mr. Neville?'
'Really and truly, at last, dear; and I could not wish to see her in better hands.'
'But whatevershallwe do without her?'
'We must manage as best we can, Peggy, and try and not spoil her happiness by any selfish regrets. I have had terrible trouble to persuade her to leave us all, for she was ready to sacrifice herself bravely a second time, but that I would not allow. Aunt Helen has thought for us, and worked for us, all these years, and now we must learn to look after ourselves. You are getting big girls, and Lilian must be my little housekeeper, and a mother to the rest of you. Aunt Helen has taught you how to behave, so don't you think, little woman, it is time to begin to settle down, and do your best to grow up what she and I would like you to be?'
'I'll try,' said Peggy, kissing him. 'We don't want to lose Aunt Helen, but oh!'—as she nestled down among the bed-clothes—'what a delightful uncle Mr. Neville will make!'