Illustration: THE CHILD GLANCED AT HER WONDERINGLY"the child glanced at herwonderingly"(p. 264).
"Dear me! no, child," Mrs. McDougall replied. "You'd be lost too."
"Should I?" Robbie said, very crestfallen. "Can't I do nothing, mother?"
"Yes; you shall feed the hens. You know how to do that, don't you, Robbie? I'll just get the food ready for them."
Robbie was delighted. He longed to be useful.
Mrs. McDougall bustled about, and got the breakfast—porridge without milk—set everything in order, then went up to see to her mother, just as if nothing had happened. She was not the woman to sit idly nursing her troubles.
As soon as she had partaken of a little food, she prepared to depart once more on her anxious errand, with many an injunction to Robbie not to go outside the gate, and to keep a watch, in case Elsie and Duncan might return, but be afraid to enter.
At the police-station there was no news. Bills were being printed, she was informed, and would be widely distributed before the day was out. Any information they received should be sent to her.
She waited for more than an hour in order to see the bill. It was some sort of consolation to her to see the great black letters, and read the description of the children in black and white.
"This cannot fail to find them," the officer told her. "Every police office in the country will be furnished with this description. The children can't have got very far away. Some of our men must come across them."
"Far enough away to have got beyond our reach," Mrs. McDougall said, dubiously. "And who knows but they may have fallen into bad hands, or got stuck in some bog in the blackness of the night?" she added, with a shudder.
"They'd keep fast enough to the road," the man said, re-assuringly.
"I'd rather ten times over that they should be lying dead in the woods or on a mountain side than that they should fall into the hands of wicked men and women!" Mrs. McDougall said fervently. "The mercies of God are a deal more tender than those of men. I could thank God with all my heart to know that He had them safe."
"There are bad enough folk about," the policeman assented, "but your children are over young to get led astray."
"I pray the Almighty that He'll grant them a merciful death rather than they should fall into bad hands," Mrs. McDougall said, wearily, as she rose to go. "Better for them to die of cold than to be murdered by violence, or made to lie and steal."
"You're taking an over gloomy view of the matter, good wife," the man said, cheerfully; "and perhaps you'll be getting them back safe and sound before nightfall."
But that was not to be. The description of the children was, truly enough, sent to every town or village that could boast a police-station, and was eagerly discussed that very nightfall in many a remote cottage. Had the children wandered farther, to even the first village on their road, they must have been found, but they were safely hidden from the outer world in the least suspected place of any—the miserable hovel of one of those wretched tillers of the land, too poor to deserve the name of farmer, with which some parts of Scotland abound. The man was listless, and apathetic with hunger and poverty, a miserable, degraded creature, who would have sacrificed anything or anybody for the sake of the few pounds that would pay his rent or sow his tiny bit of unproductive land.
He was the very last sort of person to hear rumours of the lostchildren. On that day when he and his wretched beast had toiled the distance of twenty miles to fetch a load of fish refuse from the nearest fishing village in order to enrich his bit of barren land, the bills about the children were not yet distributed. Even had they been, he was little likely to have heard about them, for he was too dull and dejected to talk with his neighbours. When he met them on the road, the idea of giving them a lift would not have penetrated his mind had not Elsie herself requested it. Yet the man was no worse than his fellows, and had an element of unselfish kindness in him, which was shown by his giving them the old sack to sit upon. Under happier auspices he would probably have been a very decent sort of person, but the hopeless hardship of his existence had gradually wiped out every ambition and hope, till at last he had sunk into something scarcely better than an animal.
And, children, let me tell you that there are plenty of us, now bright and gentle and happy, who in Sandy Ferguson's place would have been no better than he; and I wonder whether we always remember that God judges every one, even His little ones, according to the opportunities they have had?
Sandy had no thought of injuring the children any more than of assisting them; but his wife, who was cleverer, and had therefore become cunning and shrewish under the sordid cares of her life, saw directly that she might gain something by keeping them.
She had taken away their clothes, partly because it angered her to see these ungrateful runaway children warmly clothed while her own were shivering in their rags, but far more with the idea of preventing their escape. Their friends would come after them, and it would be her own fault if she didn't see some of their money, she told herself. Five of her children had died from illness, caused by want and cold and misery; it was little wonder that she had grown grasping and cruel.
Yet she, too, meant them no harm. She was anxious enough to get rid of them, for the miserable food that she gave them had to be stolen from their own portions. She looked out eagerly for passers-by, in the hope that the children's friends would overtake them, yet jealously kept her secret, for fear that others might outwit her and reap the reward.
On that day when she had been occupied in listening to a long account of a neighbour's affairs, and had, as she supposed, got the children doubly safe, by virtue of the watch she had set over them as well as the safe custody of their clothes, she had been startled by hearing from this very neighbour an account of how two children had been lost off the moor, and a reward offered for them. She kept her countenance admirably, and pretended to be most astonished and interested, but she sat on thorns, fearing Sandy would betray her.The neighbours stayed long, having much to talk of, and when at last they departed, Mrs. Ferguson went on cleaning, satisfied that the children were safe, since they were all together, and Sandy with them.
Illustration: THE SONG OF A LITTLE BIRDthe song of a little bird(p. 267).
By-and-by Sandy came in, and stood staring hopelessly. Then he began to scratch his head, and looked altogether so stupid that Mrs. Ferguson administered him a good shaking, and demanded of him what he meant by it.
"Where be the bairns?" Sandy asked, in his rough Gaelic.
Then Mrs. Ferguson flew out, and when she could see none of them her wrath knew no bounds. Young Sandy and Jamie, her two boys, were discovered under the cart, and when dragged out and cuffed, declared that Elsie and Duncan had beaten them, and then run as fast as they could down the road; that they had called as loudly as they could, but were unable to make any one hear; and plenty more tales, that their mother knew were made up to shield themselves.
Having called them every bad name she could think of, and dealt them some stinging blows, she flew along the road to seek them. The road wound about pretty much, and as they were nowhere in sight, she concluded they must have gone by it. She came back furiously angry and disappointed, and continued her search till nightfall in the immediate neighbourhood of the croft, but without success. Sandy and Jamie were not to be envied that night.
Thus it happened that the police were quite baffled in their endeavours to find the children, and after they had fallen into Mrs. Donaldson's hands the description given was not accurate.
(To be continued.)
T
houghI'm but a small bird,I may often be heardThese evenings in dreary November,And my sisters and cousinsCome listening by dozens,To songs they can learn and remember.No nightingale I,Yet when light's in the skyIt seems to go through me and through meTill I'm overflowingWith music, scarce knowingWhat wonder is happening to me.Oh, Spring-time is sweet,When loving birds meet,But Autumn's the season for singing,When all the dear swallowsCome out from the hollows,And over the ocean are winging.We stay where we are,While they voyage afar,But the parting leavesustender-hearted,And we sing the more clearlyOf those we love dearlyWhen scores of our friends have departed.
A. M.
Ofall the wonderful countries in the world, and there are many, I do not think there is any one half so wonderful as Holland. We have a saying here that "God made the country, but man made the town," but in Holland it is said "God made the world, but man made Holland," and "God made the sea, but man made the shore."
Ages ago Holland was a wild desolate place in the midst of seas and lakes, with here and there a forest of trees. The first people to settle here were some German tribes, and a hard time they had of it. First of all they had to build strong dykes or embankments round the place in which they were going to encamp, so as to keep out the sea and the waters of the rivers, which wandered where they would, without proper channels; and after that they built rude huts and hovels for themselves. Sometimes they would be able to hold their own for a long time, but it often happened that there would be storms and high tides, and then their settlements would be swept away. Then they moved off somewhere else, living in the meantime as best they could on fish and game and sea-birds' eggs.
At length many of these tribes joined together to see if they could not find some place where they would be more protected, and where they might unite in building great dykes which should be able to resist the seas and the wandering rivers. So they first entrenched themselves; then they spreadout farther afield and enclosed larger tracts of land; then they built dykes big enough to protect whole provinces, and at last they made a great sea-wall or embankment round the whole land.
But why was all this labour necessary? you will ask. Well, it was because the country lies so low that the waters could sweep over it; and even to-day, although there are beautiful towns and cities in Holland, with hundreds and thousands of people, and thousands upon thousands of cattle, the land is lower than the sea; the cities are built upon piles driven into the sand; the river-beds are higher than the tops of the houses, and at any moment, if the dykes were to burst, or the rivers to overflow, the whole country with all its inhabitants might be swept away. It has been well said that "Holland is a conquest made by man over the sea. It is an artificial country. The Hollanders made it. It exists because the Hollanders preserve it. It will vanish whenever the Hollanders shall abandon it."
The dykes or embankments have been made in this way: first of all secure and massive foundations had to be laid, the ground being compressed to make it very solid. Then walls, or dykes, were reared of earth, sand, and mud, so tightly compressed as to be quite impervious to water. The whole was bound with twigs of willows interwoven with wonderful care, and the spaces filled with clay so as to make them almost as hard as stone.
Illustration: A LANDSCAPE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE HAGUE, HOLLAND.a landscape in the neighbourhood of the hague, holland.
Then the dykes were planted with trees, which throw out a network of roots, and help to hold the whole structure firmly together. On the dykes there are over 9,000 windmills always at work, pumping up water to keep the land dry; and there are in the whole country nearly 1,150 miles of canals, for diverting the waters, a good many of their bottoms being higher than the land they drain.
Every dyke in the land is under constant inspection, and every three years the network of willow-twigs is renewed. It is one of the strangest sensations in the world to stand at the foot of one of these outer dykes at high tide and hear the angry breakers of the sea dashing against the other side of the wall, at a height of 16 ft. or 18 ft. above your head.
From the beginning of their history until the present time the Hollanders have had to fight the waters, and they will have to do so as long as their country exists. There are two great sources of danger—the sea and the rivers; and either left neglected would very soon lead to hopeless ruin. There is therefore a great institution, or society, in the country, called the Waterstaat, for watching and controlling the water. Everybody in the land is obliged to obey its commands. If any one see the water threatening to pour in, he must at once give the alarm, and all the people of the district, and of all the districts round about, must be summoned by the ringing of the alarm-bells, and by the booming of cannon, and then old and young, rich and poor, soldiers and public servants, must all set to work together and fight the common foe.
Notwithstanding all the constant vigilance there are terrible stories told in Holland of inundations. It is recorded that during thirteen centuries therehas been one great inundation, besides smaller ones, every seven years. When that great flood came, in the end of the thirteenth century, which formed the Zuyder Zee, 80,000 persons were drowned; in 1421, in one night 72 villages and 100,000 persons were swept away, and even so recently as the year 1855, there was a great inundation which invaded the provinces of Gueldres and Utrecht, and covered a great part of North Brabant.
Illustration: COAST SCENE IN HOLLAND, WITH DYKED MARSHES.coast scene in holland, with dyked marshes.
Most of these catastrophes occurred from the sudden rising of the waters and the bursting of the dams; but it is not from these causes only that the safety of the country is threatened. If you go into the Museum at Leyden you will see some pieces of wood full of little tiny holes. These once formed part of piles and sluice-gates, and they are very memorable to the Dutch people, for they call to mind a terrible danger which befell them once, and might do so again at any time. A ship returning from the tropics brought with it, it is supposed, some tiny little shell-fish, theTeredo navalis. These increased and multiplied with marvellous rapidity, and swarmed the waters. One day every inhabitant of the land was seized with terror, for it was found that these little creatures had nearly eaten away the sluice-gates of the dykes, and had it not been that night and day an immense body of men worked with the energy of those who were trying to save the lives of themselves and their wives and their little ones, the sea, their great enemy, would have been let loose upon them. "A worm," says the historian, "had made Holland tremble."
Once the dykes were cut and the country flooded purposely. It was when Leyden was holding out against the Spaniards, led by Valdez. For four months the people had been besieged, and at last provisions had failed. But when Valdez summoned them to surrender, Vanderdoes, the burgomaster, replied "that when provisions utterly failed, then they would devour their left hands, reserving theirright hands to defend their liberty." One day, when the people were reduced almost to their last extremity, a carrier pigeon was seen flying into the beleaguered city, and it brought the joyful news that the Prince of Orange was coming to their deliverance, having cut the dykes and flooded the country in order that his flotilla of 200 boats laden with provision might reach them. But the water did not rise high enough, the flotilla got stranded, and the poor starving people could see the supplies in the distance, but could not get at them, and it seemed so hard to die of starvation with plenty of food in sight. At last relief came in an unexpected way: the wind arose and a violent storm drove in the flood through the broken dykes, and onward it poured with increasing volume and power, sweeping away the cruel Spaniards, and bearing the flotilla to the very gates of the city. It is no wonder that in commemoration of this almost miraculous deliverance on the 3rd October, 1574, the citizens hold an annual festival.
There is a story told all over Holland—and it has been retold in almost all languages—of a boy, the son of a dykeman, who once saved the country, but whose name, strange to say, has not been preserved. He was only a little fellow eight years old, but like every child in that country, he knew of the danger in which he lived, and how at any time if he should see any sign of water coming in through an embankment, or a sluice-gate, where it ought not, it was his bounden duty immediately to give the alarm. One day he asked his father's permission to go to a village not far off to carry a little present to a blind man who lived there, and who had often talked very kindly to him. He did not stay long at the village, for his father had bidden him to hurry home, but being only a very little boy he walked on and on, thinking of the words the blind man had spoken to him, and of a hundred other things, and paying very little heed to the way in which he was going. After a long time he found that he had taken a wrong road, and was in a desolate part of the country close up by the dykes. It was in the month of October, and night was just coming on, so he climbed up the embankment to try and see the nearest way he could take to reach his home. As he was descending he passed by one of the great flood-gates of the dyke. Pausing for just a moment before making a scamper off towards home, he heard a sound which filled him with dismay—it was the sound of water falling and trickling over stones. He knew it was his duty to find out where it was, and very soon he saw a hole in the wood-work through which the water was coming pretty freely. Examining it more carefully he saw that the pressure was threatening to open up a wide crack in the gate; and, child as he was, he knew that if it were not stopped that little stream would soon become a cascade, a great sheet of water, a torrent, and then a terrible inundation which would end in desolation and death. So the little fellow did not hesitate. He determined to try and prevent the mischief. Reaching up to the hole he placed his finger in it, but soon he found that the wood was rotten, and that the small hole would soon become larger. So he took off his jacket and, tearing off a sleeve, he inserted part of this in the hole, and for a time it resisted the water. But not for long. He found that the pressure was not strong and even enough, and that there was nothing for it but to tear away the edges of the decaying wood and then to put his arm, encased in the other sleeve of the jacket, into the hole. To his delight he found that it exactly fitted and effectually stayed the water. Meanwhile the night was growing darker and he was far from home. But the brave little man would not leave his post. He called at the top of his voice, but there was no one to answer, and his only hope was that some of the dykemen going their rounds might hear his voice and come to his relief. But no one came. Hours passed away and still he was alone, and still the water was resisted. He was in terrible pain, however, for in that chill October night the water was very cold, and his hand and arm and shoulder were so benumbed that he knew not how he could endure it. Then he thought that if he did not persevere the waters would come in and drown perhaps his father and his mother and the neighbours, and he knew not how many others besides, and so he determined, however great the pain might be, to bear it, God helping him. Very long and very terrible were those dark hours of the night, and the poor child cried bitterly with the pain and the terror, but he did not remove his arm!
At last, in the early morning, he heard what seemed to be the sound of footsteps, and raising his voice to its highest pitch he soon had the joy of seeing that some one was approaching. It was a clergyman who had been spending the night by the bedside of a dying man, and was returning home with the first gleams of the morning. He was horrified to see a little child, pale, jacketless, shivering, with eyes swollen with tears, and a face contorted with pain.
"Why are you here, my boy? What are you doing?" he asked anxiously.
"I amholding back the sea!" said the little hero.
And it was literally true—that child's arm had held back the enemy that would have come in with a flood, carrying death and terrible destruction.
The"it" was his supper. Dinner had been a movable feast that day, tea indefinitely postponed, and Patch was beginning to fear that supper also was fading away beyond his grasp.
"And I may go on whistling till that flute bursts itself before I get a halfpenny," he remarked to himself in a tone of intense injury, eyeing the "flute" (which was really a penny whistle) anxiously as he rubbed it on his wet sleeve with a view to improving the notes. "All this day and not a——"
"I say, Patch," broke in a mournful voice from behind, "couldn't you lend me twopence just till to-morrow? It's to get some supper; I haven't sold a single box since morning."
"Supper!" echoed Patch, turning sharply on his supplicant. "Do you think I'd be blowing away here if I didn't want a supper myself? You'd better go on to the bank and ask them."
"I've asked everybody, and it's no use," was the wearyanswer.
"Well it's no use here either, Mike; if I get any I'll want it myself."
Mike listlessly wandered on a few steps farther up the dingy road, and then collapsed, a mere bundle of rags, under the shadow of a doorway.
"You'll not get much of a supper sitting there," commented Patch, setting off himself in quest of a more appreciative audience.
At the corner of the next street was a big hospital, and Patch betook himself thither. He had received stray coppers occasionally from the visitors who came and went through the ponderous iron gates, and what had been once might be again. Fortune was going to favour him at last, he thought, for coming down the steps was a gentle-faced old lady in a curiously-shaped bonnet and grey gown. Patch realised that it was a case of "whistling for it" now, and no mistake; so he put on his most dejected expression and piped out "The Last Rose of Summer" with truly startling emphasis.
Unhappily there chanced to be a shaggy-haired dog waiting outside the gate whose taste for music had evidently not been cultivated. At the very first notes he raised his head with a long howl of disgust that spoilt the effect entirely. Itwastrying, for Patch saw his prospects vanishing into thin air unless his rival could be promptly silenced; so slipping cautiously behind, he dealt the animal as vigorous a kick as the dilapidated state of his shoe would permit.
"Oh, thee should not have done that! the poor creature meant no harm," cried the lady reproachfully, hastening down the steps to console the sufferer; and Patch discovered, with confusion, that the dog belonged to her. Truly it had been an unfortunate day.
"He looked like a poor dog; I didn't know it was yours," he stammered out. "It's the first chance I've had to-day, and he was spoiling the music."
The old lady looked gravely down at his pinched face and ragged figure.
"Thee looks ill."
"It's enough to make a fellow ill—hungry like this all day long."
He looked as if he were speaking sorrowful truth. The old lady opened her bag—"There is sixpence for thee to get some food with," she said kindly, "and try and remember another time, friend, that if thee art poor thyself there is the greater reason why thee should'st feel for others who are poor likewise."
Patch looked from the coin to her face, almost too much astonished to be grateful. Donations to him usually consisted of pence or halfpence flung into the gutter, or carelessly dropped on the roadway. That a lady—and a very beautiful old lady she seemed to him, in spite of the old-fashioned dress and speech—should stand to talk to him in a civil, pleasant voice was something new indeed, especially after that unfortunate blunder about her dog.
"We are none of us so poor that we cannot help each other in some little way," she went on gently, perhaps mistaking the cause of his silence.
"There ain't anybody poorer than me," Patch answered; and his appearance certainly justified the statement. "Much I could help other folk!"
"Try and find out; it only needs a word sometimes. Good-night, friend, do not stay here longer than thee can help in thy wet clothes."
Patch received all the injunctions respectfully for the sake of the sixpence, and proceeded to carry out the first of them straightway. As quickly as his battered shoes would allow he was out of sight on his way to a certain well-known cook-shop. There, in all the assurance of conscious wealth, he planted his elbows on the window-ledge and critically surveyed the contents. Great joints of meat, slabs of suet pudding, dotted here and there with currants, one—but that was a very superior compound—with raisins, cakes and pies in abundance.
A mingled odour of coffee and tea floated through the open door; and Patch, sniffing up the delightful fragrance, went through a rapid mental calculation of the glorious possibilities within his reach.
Illustration: WHISTLING FOR ITwhistling for it.(See p. 271).
"Coffee twopence, a fine big cup too, bread and sausage twopence, and a lump of the currant pudding to wind up; something like a supper that."
Poor hungry Patch! as he lifted his arms from the ledge a sudden recollection of Mike under the dark archway came back to his mind. He wished it had not obtruded itself just then; he had quite enough trouble to get food for himself without looking after other people, and yet something made him hesitate on the threshold and presently go back to his old position, elbows on the window-ledge, while he solemnly debated the matter in his own mind.
It was a subject he had never considered before in all his solitary selfish life; kindly words or deeds had not been his portion, and the gentle-faced woman who had given him a sixpence instead of a scolding was a new feature in his experience.
The debate ended in his walking soberly away from the bright visions in the window to the humbler shop he usually favoured with his custom, and there laying out the precious sixpence in bread and cold meat. He took his purchase, the bread under his arm, the meat in a piece of newspaper, and carried the feast to the doorway where Mike still sat crouching in the chilly darkness.
"Wake up, Mike; see here what I've got. There's some for you as well; sit up and begin."
Mike lifted his head from his arm in utter amazement. "You ain't joking about it?" and then—he was but a little fellow, and hunger is hard to bear—at the sight of the provisions Patch was laying out on the newspaper wrapper, he began to cry for very gladness.
"Stop that!" ordered his host, peremptorily. "It's damp enough without you beginning. Eat away, there's plenty of it."
"Did they trust you at the shop?" queried Mike when the banquet was well in progress. "You said you'd no money."
"Did they ever trust you at the shop when you'd no money?" demanded Patch, scornfully. "I paid for it, that's all you need bother yourself about."
"It isn't that," explained his guest, hastily; "you never had anything to spare before, and I was wondering how you afforded to give me such a lot now."
Patch wondered too; then he crumpled up the paper table-cloth, and flung it into the gutter. "I never wanted to give anything away before," he remarked; "but perhaps—if you couldn't get it anywhere else—I might give you a bit another time."
And presently in the dark a dirty hand stretched out and timidly stroked his sleeve.
Patch went home down the wet streets with his flute. He looked poor and ragged as ever, but he had at least taken the first step upward that night in finding out the possibility even for him of helping another.
Sarah Pitt.
"Dowe work at night! yes, I b'lieve yer; and afore daylight too, leastways, as soon as ever there's light enough to see by. Not always we don't, but when the old man comes back, an' says we must do a spell of peggin' there ain't no time hardly to get our vittles, except perhaps a tater, or a bit o' bread and bacon; but that's ever so much better than it used to be when poor mother was alive, and she and me and Aunt Ann and Ben used to work the dolls and windmills, an' the fly-ketchers, an' the flyin' birds."
She was a tall thin girl, with a flat dirty face, that would have been pale, if it had not been burnt to a yellowish brown with the sun, till it was only a shade lighter than the old battered straw hat that had let a wisp or two of yellow hair through a great slit in the back just above the brim. She wore a tattered cotton frock that had nearly all the pattern washed out, which must have been a long time before, because it was so stained and worn, so thin that it would bear no more washing.
The girl was trudging along in a pair of broken boots, two sizes too large for her, and trying to keep pace with a dark-haired sharp-eyed little woman, wrapped in a frayed shawl, and with a bonnet that looked as though it had been picked up from a dust-bin, as perhaps it had, and while the woman carried half a dozen long sticks, such as are used to prop up the lines upon which clothes are hung to dry, the girl held in one hand a bundle of the wooden pegs with which laundresses fastened the clothes to the lines, and in the other hand a coil of the line itself.
All these things together could not have been worth much, but it would be a hard day's work to cut the pegs, and a still harder day's workto the girl and the woman to sell them all. A good many miles of streets would have to be walked over, a good many area doors knocked at, a number of cross people, or people who were afraid of having something stolen, would shut those doors in their faces, and perhaps when they had trudged back again to Stratford, a long, long way on the other side of Whitechapel, they would only have earned a shilling or two, and would have eaten nothing but a bit of bread, unless somebody were kind enough to give them some food on purpose to get rid of them, when they stood whining and saying, "Buy a clothes-line, buy clothes-pegs, please to buy a clothes-prop," over and over again.
"They takes us for thieves, I s'pose," said the woman, "and I don't know that it's to be wondered at, for they reckon us all one with gipsies, and though our people ain't really gipsies, you know, they're not unlike 'em, and often we live much the same, and it can't be denied that there's them amongst us as would lay their hands on anything they see about; but none of my people would take what don't belong to 'em either from a passage or behind a door or a street stall—no, not if we was ever so badly off we wouldn't, would we, 'Liza?"
"I should think not, aunt," said the ragged girl. "Neither you nor poor mother nor father ever taught us that. It was hard enough, sometimes, as hard as it was yesterday, and is likely to be to-day, and there wasn't nothing to look forward to, except when I went out once or twice with father, or when he came home after a pretty good day, and we had something for supper, and then we often had to sit up at night to look over all the old clothes and the rags and bottles that he'd got in change for the dolls or the win'mills, and now we get more of the country in summer-time, and I ain't left off goin' to the Sunday-school, have I aunt?"
"No," said the woman, looking down and speaking in a low voice; "I shouldn't leave that off if I was you, and I often wish you could get to be in some place of service with a family, or do something better than live in this rough sort of a way. I a'most wish I'd never took you away after your mother died; but your father went away and little Ben was gone to sea, and I couldn't leave a little one like you to work night after night and day after day at the match-box-making along with other children, but with nobody to look after you." Here the poor woman held down her face, and I thought I saw a tear drop on to the back of the brown grimy hand that leaned upon the bundle of clothes-props. "But it's no good now," she said, rising from the bench where we were sitting. "What must be done to-day is to sell these props and pegs, and to-morrow, if Uncle Dick comes back, and has been pretty fortunate with the cart, we shall get our eggs and bacon, and our beef stew again, 'Liza, and most likely shall have a week or two in Epping Forest, with enough to eat, at all events."
"Stop a minute," said I; "perhaps I might find you a customer for your props and pegs, and I want to hear about the doll-making and the windmills."
The woman and the girl sat down again. It was on a bench upon an open space of ground known as Hackney Downs (a few miles out of London), a great bare-looking waste, where nearly all the grass has been worn off, and there's not much to look at; but where a fine air blows, and where there are a few benches for people to sit upon.
"Well, you see, sir, 'Liza had better tell you about the doll-making," said the woman, "becos she begun to speak of it: not that they was whatyou'dcall dolls, but only a sort of rough flat shape, of a head an' body cut out of match-wood, with eyes and mouth painted for a face, and bits of cotton print, or more often wall-paper, pasted on for a dress, and another bit for a cap; they was for poor people's children, don't you see, as could only afford a ha'penny or a farthing."
"And what about the windmills and the birds?"
"Well, don't you see, sir," says 'Liza—"the windmills was made of just the same bits of flat match-wood, that father brought home and cut into thin strips like. The windmills was like the spokes of a wheel joined together, with folded bits o' wall-paper, and fastened with a round French nail to the end of a stick, so as when the wind took 'em, they used to go round and round. The flying birds was this way—the wheel was a little sort of a hoop, with two wooden spokes to fasten it to the stick, and all the other spokes was made of strings with bits of feathers tied on to 'em, so that when the wind took it they looked like birds flying; as to the fly-ketchers, they was round and square bits o' coloured wall-papers and tissue—put together in strings till they looked like a sort of big Chinese lantern, to entice the flies to settleon 'em. You must have seen such things, sir; but then ours was common ones, of course, to sell for a penny, or a bottle or two, or some old rags."
"Oh, that was it, eh?"
"Yes. You see father'd bring home the wood, and Aunt Ann would cut it out to the shape—wouldn't you, aunt?—and poor mother'd cut out the paper or the cotton print for the dolls clothes, or the windmills, and I'd stick 'em on, or nail 'em on, and any of us 'ud paint the eyes an' mouth, even little Ben could do that. We used to live over beyond Bethnal Green, in a place called Twig Folly, and there was plenty of us children thatused to work at lucifer match-box making about that part. When father took to the dolls and mills he bought his own wood and bits of wall-paper and that; but we worked night and day very often, so as to get a lot ready for him, when he used to go out with a barrow and all the dolls stuck up, and the mills going round, and the birds fluttering, and take 'em through the streets, for miles, selling them for ha'pennies, or givin' one for an old wine-bottle or a bundle o' rags, or old metal and such like. When he had money to spare, he'd buy old clothes, and then when he came home, we used to look through 'em to see which was to go with the rags, and which we could sell to the second-hand dealer. I don't work no harder now than I did then."
"What do you do now, then?"
"Well, you see, when poor mother died, and Ben was put aboard a ship to be taught the sea, father—he—he—went away and aunt went back where she'd been once before, to her brother-in-law's—which belongs to the gipsies,—not the real gipsies, that lives in tents, and goes about all over the country, but the London gipsies like, that lives down Stratford and Plaistow way. It's at Stratford that we lives, and there we cut these pegs out of the wood that Uncle Dick brings home; and he brings the props too, and buys the line. There's four of us gals, and when we ain't cuttin' the wood for the pegs we're basket-makin' or straw-plaitin'; but there's times when we go out a good bit, one or the other of us, I mean me and aunt and Uncle Dick's children, because he's got a share in a cart—one o' them big sort of carawans that's all hung round with baskets and mats, and cane-work and brooms and brushes and cradles—and it's a rare change too, to go along with it, though the walkin' makes your feet sore. But it's more change still when we go nearer to Epping Forest in summer-time, and live out there in the country in a covered wan and a tent or two, and learn to plait baskets out of osiers, and to cane chairs, and to make straw plait and all manner o' things, and only cut clothes-pegs at odd times. We don't work much at night then, but we're often up pretty early in the morning, I can tell you; but at Stratford—it's a close bad-smellin' sort of a little place is our lane, and we're pretty often hard at it by candle-light, or else lamplight, making up baskets and clothes-pegs and things ready for the trade in the summer. One thing is that when Uncle Dick makes a good week he don't stint us in food, and, as poor mother used to say, beggars mustn't be choosers, and I haven't got nobody to be good to me but Aunt Ann."
"There, don't take on that way," says the woman, rather roughly, though I can see another tear in her eye. "We've all got somebody to look after, and you was left to me, so up you get, 'Liza, and let's thank you kindly, sir, for—I don't like to take money for nothink, sir, and—perhaps, if you was livin' near here and had the washin' done at home, you'd like me to take home a prop or two, and half-a-dozen pegs, sir."
Thomas Archer.
Thosewho learn drawing will find the game of "Positions" a particularly pleasant pastime for the long evenings. Any number can play the game—the more the merrier. All the players seat themselves round the table, and each one must be supplied with small pieces of white paper, about two inches square, and a pencil—or, better still, a pen and ink. All the players, except one, then silently resolve on some position in life which it is possible for them to fill, and each makes some sign of their "Position" by sketching a little picture of some article connected with their proposed trade or business on one of the blank pieces of paper. The name of each sketcher should be written on his paper. Five minutes are allowed for the sketching, the time being kept by the player who has not selected a "Position." All the illustrated papers are then passed in order round the table, so that each may view the others' pictures; but no one is supposed to criticise them aloud. Lastly they are handed to the "Guesser" (who, up to this point, has taken no active part in the game, except to time the five minutes), and he ranges them in order before him according to the order in which the players are seated at the table. He looks at them attentively and then proceeds to guess from the pictures what are the intended "Positions" of each person. Supposing that there were three players, and each one drew a sketch, say of a house, a pear, and a crown respectively. The Guesser looking at them would have no difficulty in pronouncing (1) landlord, (2) greengrocer, (3) king. If she fail to guess any of the "Positions," the first person at whom he or she stopped is chosen Guesser for the next time; if there has been no failure, the player on the right hand of the Guesser takes the privilege. The principal object of this game is for each player to try who can make the best sketch in five minutes, and the next object is to puzzle the Guesser.
"Ihaveonly one ambition in this world," said King Albus, addressing the feathered members of his household, "onlyoneambition."
"And what is that?" said the oldest and the fattest hen, sidling up to him.
"My ambition is," replied the king, strutting about the yard, and looking as haughty and as full of fight as only a Spanish cock can, "to see my detested rival over the fence yonder humbled in the dust."
"You've often said that," remarked the old hen.
"Yes," continued the king, "I mean to do it, too; and his lifeless body shall float down the mill-stream as helpless as a ball of worsted. I have said, and I will do."
"Well, dear," the hen said; "don't forget that King Crèvecœur is a powerful big bird."
"King Crèvecœur! CrèvecurI call him. Deprive him of his diphthong, when speaking of him to me, madam, please."
"Well, diphthong, or not diphthong," sang the old hen, picking up a small pebble, and swallowing it, "he is big, and he wears a pair of frightfully long spurs."
"And what a charming plume he has on his head!" cried a young hen; "he looks quite soldierly. Belongs to the dragoons, I suppose."
"Hold your tongue," exclaimed the king; "and go about your business. Plume, indeed! spurs forsooth! The plume, madam, is an airy nothing; the spurs have neither strength nor substance. Now, look at me," this proud king went on, as he flew up on top of an old hurdle, "behold me well. Am I not as white as the driven snow? Is not my comb as red and rosy as crimson daisies, or the sunset's glow at dewy eve?" "Cock-a-doodle—doodle—do—o! Did ever you hear such a crow as that before?"
"Never," said the old hen.
"Except——" said the young one.
The king looked at her, and she was silent. But just at that moment came a voice from the other side of the old fence, that fairly startled every hen in King Albus's household. Shrill, defiant, terrible!
"Cock-a-doodle—roaro—ro—o!" went the voice.
"That is he!" cried the king. "That is more of his audacity! It is unbearable. I will stand it no longer. I will instantly give him battle. Farewell, and if for ever—still for ever, fare-ye-well."
"Stay with us, stay with us, stay—stay—stay," cried all the hens in cackling chorus.
"Never," cried the king; "while Crèvecurlives! Cock-a-doodle—do! Death or victory!"
He sprang over the fence as he spoke.