The Project Gutenberg eBook ofNoel's Christmas treeThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Noel's Christmas treeAuthor: Amy Le FeuvreRelease date: September 16, 2023 [eBook #71664]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, 1926*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOEL'S CHRISTMAS TREE ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Noel's Christmas treeAuthor: Amy Le FeuvreRelease date: September 16, 2023 [eBook #71664]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, 1926
Title: Noel's Christmas tree
Author: Amy Le Feuvre
Author: Amy Le Feuvre
Release date: September 16, 2023 [eBook #71664]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, 1926
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOEL'S CHRISTMAS TREE ***
Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
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CHAPTER
I. THEIR UNKNOWN BROTHER
II. WISTARIA COTTAGE
III. THE CHRISTMAS TREE
IV. A NURSERY ENTERTAINMENT
V. LESSON DAYS
VI. INEZ APPEARS
VII. INEZ AT HOME
VIII. THE LITTLE RESCUERS
IX. THE COMING OF THE HOLIDAYS
X. THEIR PICNIC
XI. WITHOUT A MOTHER
XII. INEZ'S VOW
XIII. THEIR MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY
XIV. THE GLORY OF THE TREE
XV. TO THE BORDERLAND AND BACK
"Dinah, do hurry up!"
A small boy with close-cropped brown head and dark eager eyes was drumming with his fingers on the windowpane. He turned his head over his shoulder as he spoke, and his tone was impatient.
Dinah, or Diana as she was really called, lay flat on her chest by the schoolroom fire. Big sheets of paper were before her, and with a good deal of sucking of her pencil she was writing rapidly. She was very thin and pale; her nurse said she was wiry, and her fair hair was bobbed in the usual fashion.
"How do you spell alarming, two l's and two m's?" she asked, without raising her head.
"Hurray! Here's the taxi! Such a lot of luggage! You're too late; you can't see it now."
Diana had dashed to the window. They were at the top of a high London house, in one of the quiet roads of South Kensington, but try as they could, they could neither see the cab nor its occupants now, and the windows were too heavy to be raised.
"Aha!" shouted the boy, dancing round the room. "I saw, and you didn't!"
"What did you see?"
"A monkey, and a parrot, and a black, and a huge bunch of coco-nuts!"
"I don't believe you. Did you see—Mother?" She added the last word in an awed whisper.
He looked at her, then impishly shook his head.
"I dare say she hasn't come. P'r'aps she's drowned in the sea."
"You wicked, wicked boy!"
"You're always making those kind of things in your stories."
Diana stole out of the room on tiptoe. Her brother Chris followed her. Hanging breathlessly over the staircase, they vainly tried to see what was going on in the hall. How could Granny have ordered them to stay up in the schoolroom till sent for, when an unknown mother and brother were arriving from India! It was too tantalizing! They could hear a great bustle in the hall, and then a little shrill voice made itself heard:
"I've gotted new boots with buttons."
"That's him," said Diana.
Chris danced up and down in excitement.
"We must see them," he cried.
"Then Granny or Nurse will only send us to bed. Of course Nurse is down there. I hear her voice. Mean old thing! As if we oughtn't to see Mother before she does!"
But the next moment Nurse came panting upstairs.
"You're to go down at once. Your mother wants to see you. She's in the drawing-room. Are you tidy?"
She passed her hands over their hair, pulled Diana's short brown velvet frock straight, then sent them down. And strange to say, they went very slowly.
"My heart is thumping!" whispered Diana.
Chris stuck his chest out with some bravado.
"My heart never thumps me!" he said. "I wouldn't let it!"
But when they reached the drawing-room door he hesitated.
When you have looked forward to a thing very much and talked about it every day, and many times a day, for quite a month, it is rather stupendous when it actually arrives.
And then he turned the door handle, and politely stood back and let his sister go in before him.
"Ladies first," was one of Nurse's favourite maxims. And just now Chris felt rather glad of it!
Granny was in her easy chair with her arm round a tiny fair curly-haired boy who stood leaning against her knees. Standing on the hearthrug with her back to them, warming her delicate-looking hands on which were many sparkling rings, was their mother. She was tall and slender, and wore a close-fitting green cloth gown. She had thrown off her thick fur coat, but wore a little sable toque over her sunny brown hair. And when she turned round and opened her arms exclaiming, "And here are my big boy and girl!"
Diana felt a lump rise in her throat. Inwardly she said to herself: "My beautiful mother—"
In another moment Diana and Chris were being embraced.
Little Noel regarded them with a pucker in his baby brow. He did not quite like seeing his mother kiss them as she kissed him.
"Now speak to your little brother. He has been longing to see you—haven't you, Noel?"
Noel stood out straight with his hands behind him.
"I've see'd them now, Mummy, and they're just like uvver chil'en. Like the chil'en on board."
He did not offer to kiss them, but Diana put her arms round him and kissed him warmly.
"I think you're a dear little boy," she said. "I like your curls!"
Chris shook hands with him, and said nothing.
His mother laughed:
"Take him up to the nursery or schoolroom, or whatever you call it, and you'll soon be friends. I think I'll have a warm bath, Mother, before dinner. Noel and I had tea in the train. Oh, I'm tired!"
The children left the room, and climbed two flights of stairs in perfect silence.
This new unknown brother with his baby face and flaxen curls was amazingly self-possessed. Diana tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away from her with a jerk. He seemed to find going upstairs a great effort, and put his right foot foremost the whole way. When they reached the schoolroom, at last, he heaved a little sigh.
"It's nearly as high as heaven!" he remarked.
Chris stared at him. He was going to show him the toy cupboard, but Noel suddenly found his tongue. He stood by the fire looking into the red coals with thoughtful face; then he turned to Diana.
"I like fires," he said, "and puppy dogs, and sa'ngwiches that taste hot and have no sweet in them. What do you like?"
"She likes paper and pencil best," said Chris. "Dinah writes lovely stories, Noel, about shipwrecks, and fires, and floods, and earthquakes, and everything exciting, and her people are just going to be killed and then they're saved, and the girls always have golden curls and blue eyes, and the boys black flashing eyes and coal-black hair."
Noel seemed impressed.
"What peoples do you know?" he asked. "I have two peoples always going about with me. Do you know them? God is one, and the Devil is another. God takes care of me and loves me. I love Him when I'm good, and I push the Devil away; but when I'm wicked, I make friends with the Devil."
"Oh!" cried Diana in a shocked voice. "You mustn't talk out loud about things like that. They're only spoken in church on Sundays."
"What's church?"
"Have you never been to church?" asked Chris. "It's a house with a pointed roof or tower. Haven't you got any in India? People go to hear the clergyman read and say prayers, and preach a sermon, and everybody sings hymns."
"It's very dull," confessed Diana. "Grown-up people seem to like it, but there's a lot of kneeling and sitting still. Chris and I would like to run away out of it often."
"What do you do it for?"
"It's to worship God, Nurse says."
"Oh," said Noel with a smile, "then it's like what we have in a tent sometimes, when the padre comes to see us. I went once, and they sang hymns, but we hardly ever have it. I'd like to see a proper church. Is it like the temples where the idols are?"
"We don't know anything about them," said Chris. "You wait and see next Sunday."
Then Diana began to question the little stranger.
"Tell us," she said, with a little hesitation in her voice, "what is Mother like?"
Noel stared at her with his big eyes.
"She's like my darling Mummy, that's what she is!"
"I mean—is she cross or kind? Does she laugh, or is she shocked? We don't know her, and grown-up people are so very different, aren't they, Chris?"
"Yes; Granny says some things are wrong which Nurse sees no harm about! And Nurse is cross about something when Granny is not a bit."
"Where is your monkey, and parrot, and coco-nuts?" asked Diana.
Noel stared at her.
"Shut up!" said Chris, giving his sister a nudge. "I was only pulling your leg. I didn't see them really."
Nurse came into the room at this moment. She took possession of Noel at once.
"Come along, your mother says you'd best go to bed as you're tired out, and I'll bring you your supper, when you've had your bath."
"No, fanks, I'll stay here."
Noel put his hands in his pockets and looked at Nurse defiantly. She said nothing, but she was a big woman and Noel a tiny boy. She simply took him up in her arms and carried him off to bed. And Noel was so astounded that he said nothing. His ayah had been left behind in India, and a young girl who wanted her passage home had taken charge of him on the voyage. The consequence was that he had had things pretty much his own way.
"I rather like him," said Diana when the door had closed upon them. "He's a funny boy."
"He's too cocky," said Chris loftily. "I'll soon teach him!"
"But it's Mother I'm interested in," said Diana. "Oh, Chris, I think she's lovely, and she dresses like a queen, and she's so tall and thin, not fat like Granny, and she had buckles on her shoes that were sparkling like her rings. I wish we could see her again to-night. Do you think we will?"
"We're going away with her soon," said Chris. "Granny says she's going to take us with her to Granny's old home in the country. It's that white house with green shutters in the big garden in the picture over Granny's sofa."
"I know," said Diana, smiling in that soft dreamy way of hers that Chris always called "bunkum." "It's called Wistaria Cottage, and it will be heavenly going with a strange mother into a strange country! So many, many things might happen."
Chris laughed, but not derisively. He had had a feeling in his chest when his mother had put her arms round him and kissed him. He thought he had heard her murmur, "My first-born," but he could not be quite sure. He asked Diana now if he could be a "first-born."
"Of course, you stupid, if you were born first!"
"Oh," said Chris blankly. "I didn't know it meant that! I was thinking it was a Bible word. Wasn't it in the plagues in Egypt?"
Diana nodded.
"You're older than me."
"I know that; you generally forget it."
"I go by size."
This was an insult that Chris could not stand. He was a year older than Diana, but she was as tall as he was, and sometimes it seemed as if she were going to out-top him. Chris prayed in agony sometimes:
"O God, make me grow, make me grow in the night."
He was always measuring himself, and had been found by Nurse one day lying flat on his bed, his wrists and his ankles tied to the head and foot rail of the bed. "I'm trying to stretch myself," he said, and Nurse had laughed at him, and told him he would grow in "God's good time." So now he made a rush for Diana, and she fled round the room. Chairs were knocked over, and when Nurse came in to see what was the matter, there was a writhing mass of legs and arms on the floor. Diana was kicking and screaming for all she was worth. If she were inclined to be the taller, Chris was the stronger, and he was on top of her now. Nurse soon restored quiet and order.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves," she said sternly; "the first evening your mother is here. She'd be ashamed to own you if she'd seen you a minute ago!"
"Shall we see her again?" questioned Diana eagerly.
"No, not unless you're sent for, and I know your Granny won't do that."
But they did see her again, for when they were in bed she came to visit them in turn. Diana and Chris had each a small room of their own, and Diana was the first one to be visited.
She sat up in bed with wide starry grey eyes, as she gazed in rapt admiration at her mother. Mrs. Inglefield had changed her cloth gown, and was in a powder-blue velvet tea-gown edged with sable fur. A string of pearls was round her white throat. Diana had sometimes hung over the banisters and watched some of Granny's friends go into the dining-room when they came to dinner, but though she had admired all their lovely clothes, none of them had ever belonged to her. She put her little hand out and stroked her mother's long open velvet sleeve. And then her mother knelt by her bed and looked at her with laughing eyes.
"Do you remember me, my sweet? Five years ago I brought you and Chris to Granny, and I thought my heart would break. Hasn't she been a good kind Granny to take care of you and keep you for me all these years? You were such a tiny girl, not three years old. I suppose you can't remember me? I'm quite a stranger to you."
Diana gave a little gulp. How she wished she could remember! But she wouldn't tell a lie.
"I'm 'fraid I don't remember," she said with downcast head. "But you aren't a stranger, for we've had your letters, and Chris and I have been counting the days till you came. And, please, we do belong to you as much as Noel, don't we? But of course he knows you better than we do."
"Oh, we shall all know each other very soon and will be a happy family party! Good night, darling, I'm very tired or I would stay longer. Where does Chris sleep?"
Diana told her, and Mrs. Inglefield passed on.
Chris received her very gravely and a little shyly.
"My eldest son," his mother murmured, as she laid her hand caressingly on his short-cropped head. "What talks you and I must have together! I'm very unhappy at being away from dear Dad, but you seem a little bit of him. You have his eyes, Chris. Such frank truthful eyes your Dad has. He has never told an untruth in his life, I believe."
Chris gave a little wriggle. He could not say that of himself, but he liked to think he had his father's eyes. He gazed at his mother adoringly.
What a beautiful mother she was! And he was her eldest son. He smiled at the thought of it.
"Are we going away with you to-morrow?" he asked.
"Oh, no, not for another week. I have a lot of shopping I want to do in town, and I must see something of Granny. She's my mummy, you know."
This was quite a new idea to Chris. He pondered over it, then he said suddenly:
"Noel is very cocky!"
"Is he? I dare say he may be, poor mite. He has lived very much alone in India, and ruled it over the native servants. He's a very quaint little soul with decided opinions of his own, though he looks and is such a baby. You must show him how English boys behave, Chris, and teach him to play fair and give honour to others. Now, good night, darling."
Chris had never been kissed in such a tender fashion before. He lay back with rapt eyes after she had left him. "I'm her eldest son," he murmured to himself.
The sound of it warmed and stirred his heart. He felt it was a new calling, a sudden incitement to heroic deeds. He would take care of her, die for her if necessary. He was a bit of Dad: she had said so. He must behave like Dad.
Then Mrs. Inglefield visited her baby. She thought at first that he was fast asleep, but Nurse shook her head.
"He has been very restless and excited," she said in a low tone. "I suppose it is his arrival here. He slept for an hour straight off and then woke, and I can't get him asleep again."
"Of course you can't," said Noel, hearing the whisper and opening his eyes wide. "It's dreffully hard to get me to sleep. God has to send an angel to do it and he works at me for hours! And then, pop! Off I go!"
Then he seized his mother's hand and held it tight.
"Have you been to those uvver chil'en?"
"Yes, darling. What a happy boy you are to have a little sister and brother to play with!"
"I don't want them. They're too large for me. How many kisses did you give them?"
"Oh, Noel, you funny boy! Half a dozen each, I dare say. I never counted."
"Then you mus' give me double half a dozen. You don't know them like you know me."
His mother looked at him a little anxiously.
"Noel, darling, I love my three children exactly the same. I have thought more of Diana and Chris than of you when we were in India, because they were away from me. Now we are together, and I am going to show my love as much to them as to you. You are all equal in my heart. I shall give you half a dozen kisses now. Not one more. Now then, one on each cheek, one on each eye, one on the top of your darling little nose, and one on your mouth. Good night, my blessing, God bless and keep you."
Noel took his mother's kisses very calmly.
He blew a kiss to her when she reached the door.
"I fink God likes me better than them," he murmured. "Anyhow, I'll ask Him to."
The next week seemed full of delightful bustle to Diana and Chris. Their mother was very busy shopping and arranging about their new home; so she did not see much of them in the daytime. Nurse was packing, and fitting Noel out with English clothes. He continued to be a puzzle and interest to his brother and sister. They found him a good playfellow, but difficult to corner. Nothing seemed to shake his good opinion of himself, and he would never acknowledge himself to be in the wrong. Yet he would talk like a little angel of the Unseen World Above, and had a firm, unshaken belief that God was his Best Friend, and Jesus Christ His Saviour. His Indian ayah had been an earnest Christian, and had taught him as she had been taught herself in the Mission School.
His grandmother regarded him with anxious eyes. She asked his mother one day:
"Are you bringing up that child in the crude modern fashion of letting him think himself of more importance than us older folk?"
"No, Mother, but he has an original mind, and I don't want him snubbed and repressed."
Diana heard this, and pondered over it. Another day her Granny said:
"I still doubt the wisdom of your burying yourself in the country. After your time abroad you will feel the loneliness dreadfully. I couldn't stand the country, and came to town, as you know. You will have very few neighbours."
"So much the better. I shall have my children, and I am sick and tired of society life. It is only a year and then Gregory will be home."
Then seeing Diana standing by, her mother turned to her.
"You won't let me be dull, Diana, will you?"
"Not if I can help it," said Diana fervently; and she there and then registered a vow that she would not.
The day of departure came at last.
Three happy children were packed into a taxi with Nurse, and their grandmother drove with their mother in another, behind them, for Mrs. Greyling was coming to see them off at Paddington.
Granny had some conversation with the guard at the station, and the result was that they got a reserved carriage all to themselves.
The English country was strange to Noel; he was delighted to see some lambs at play in the fields, and he took a great interest in the different churches which appeared.
"What a lot of houses God has!" he remarked. "How tired He must get of going round and round and round to them all! Does He never miss any?"
"God is never tired," Diana said rebukingly, "and of course God is everywhere at the same time."
"Isn't it wonnerful!" said Noel with shining eyes.
"I shall go to church next Sunday, shan't I, Mummy?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Inglefield absently as she read her magazine.
"Mummy," said Diana anxiously, "Miss Carr, when we wished her good-bye, said she hoped we wouldn't forget our lessons. But we're going to have holidays for a little, aren't we?"
"Yes, I think so. I have a good deal to arrange, Diana, but I'm going to look to my little daughter to do a lot of things for me."
Diana flushed with importance, but Chris said bluntly:
"Dinah is only good for writing stories; she always forgets everything else."
Mrs. Inglefield was deep in her magazine again.
"Shut up!" said Diana, stretching out one slim leg to give her brother a kick.
Chris retaliated at once. Noel looked at them in delight.
"Have a fight," he suggested cheerfully.
Chris instantly was on his best behaviour.
"Men don't fight women," he said; "they're too sloppy, girls are."
"I've got as much muscle as you," said Diana, baring her arm to the elbow.
Chris grinned at her, and said no more.
It was a long journey; and all the travellers were glad when it was over. A car was waiting for them at their destination. Mrs. Inglefield arranged that the luggage should follow in a cart, and then they drove along a country road till they came to a pretty village with quaint irregular thatched cottages, a corner general shop and post office, and a square green with a big oak tree in the middle of it.
There was an inn with a sign of a bright yellow dog hanging over it, and it was called "The Golden Dog." The children wanted to stop and look at it closer, but on the car went, and never stopped till it came to a white wooden gate a little way out of the village. There was a drive with trees and shrubs on either side, and then a low white house came in view, and over the porch door was a winter jasmine in full flower, and a red japonica was just coming out and was creeping up the house.
"Not a big house, but it is a cosy one," said Mrs. Inglefield, looking at it with content.
The children were delighted with the pretty little entrance hall and the white railed staircase leading up from the middle of it. Nurse took them straight upstairs. She had lived here before with their grandmother, and knew her way about. There was a day nursery, a bedroom out of it where Noel was going to sleep with Nurse; beyond was a little room for Chris, and Diana was going to sleep in her mother's dressing-room. All the bedrooms were on the same landing, and the windows all looked out the same way. Chris and Diana were surprised at the one flight of stairs after their high London house, but Noel found any stairs a difficulty.
"We never has them in India," he said; "and my legs don't like them."
It was nearly dark when they reached the house, so there was no exploring for the children to do out of doors. But they visited every room inside. The pretty little drawing-room with the big round bay window at one end of it, the long low dining-room with the square table in it, and some oil portraits of Granny's family on the wall. The room they liked best was a little boudoir full of beautiful china and pretty things.
"I s'pose," said Diana wistfully, "that we shan't ever be in the downstair rooms."
"My darling," said her mother quickly, "this is going to be your home. You are welcome to every room in it; but the drawing-room I must have kept for special occasions. I shall be generally in the boudoir, I think, until the summer comes, and then we shall all live out of doors." Diana danced up and down softly on the tips of her toes.
"We shall be full, full, full!" she chanted almost under her breath.
"Full of what?" questioned her mother, with laughing eyes.
"Oh," said Diana, waving her small hands in the air, "full of riches, and joys, and—and love."
Her mother gazed at her contemplatively, but Chris was standing by, and he was eminently practical.
"That's all her story-book stuff," he remarked. "Dinah is always full of words, that's what she's full of."
"Oh, you children!" laughed Mrs. Inglefield. "I suppose I shall get to know you soon. I hope I shall. Now we're all tired. We shall have our supper very soon, and then bed. And to-morrow—well, to-morrow we shall see everything. I'm longing to look at the garden."
The little people were very tired, but they managed to peep inside the kitchen, where a stout woman called Mrs. Tubbs was bustling round and produced some delicious little hot scones from the oven. There was also a very fat girl there, her daughter, whose name was Cassy. She was about fifteen, and wore a funny little white cap perched on the top of her head like a big white rosette. Nurse told them that she and her mother and herself were going to run the house together.
"Lizzie Tubbs and I are old friends, went to the village school here together. I never have liked London. It seems coming home to be back here."
After Granny's big house and many servants, this new home seemed very small and cosy; but the children were almost too tired to talk about it. They had a supper of boiled eggs, scones, and a rice pudding, and then went to bed.
The next morning was sunny and bright. They had their eight o'clock breakfast with Nurse in the nursery, and then to their joy she turned them out into the garden. "Your mother has a headache and is having her breakfast in bed. I knew she'd feel it—she's been overtiring herself these last few weeks, so don't you be making a noise in the garden."
"We shan't be making more noise than the birds," said Diana. "I heard them chattering quite early."
They flew off out of the back door, and found themselves in an old square walled garden. There was a big lawn with a group of trees at the bottom. All round it were beds for flowers. Fruit trees were nailed against the walls.
"It's quite large enough for cricket," said Chris, looking at the lawn with satisfaction in his eyes.
Diana walked on to the trees. She stopped beneath an old medlar tree with low branches almost reaching the ground.
"I shall sit up there and write my stories," she said with a rapt smile.
But Noel had trotted on; he had found between some high shrubs a little twisting path which led to two gates. One gate opened into a small kitchen garden. Noel surveyed this, with his chin resting on the top bar of the gate. It did not appeal to him; he turned to the other, opened it and disappeared. Diana and Chris did not miss him, they were so accustomed to only having each other, that they both climbed up into the medlar tree and began to discuss this wonderful new life of theirs.
"Isn't it perfectly lovely!" Diana said. "And when the summer comes, Chris, think of the garden with the flowers and the trees, and Mums in a white dress trailing about, carrying armfuls of roses, and looking like the fairy queen."
Chris nodded.
"Go on, describe it," he said.
"And that fat girl Cassy bringing out a tray for tea on the lawn with strawberries and ices and all kinds of cakes," went on Diana enthusiastically.
"And me on the lawn with a new hat, in white flannels, and a boy friend trying to bowl me out, and Noel fielding for us," put in Chris.
"And I shall be in a hammock swinging backwards and forwards," said Diana, "and writing stories all day long."
"How about lessons?"
"Oh, don't think of them. They belong to London."
"I say, how thick these walls are! I could walk along the top if I could get there," said Chris. "I think I could climb up if I got up that tree leaning against the wall. Shall I try?"
"I'll come, too."
Diana was equal to adventure at any time; but Nurse appeared and called them in.
"Your mother wants you. Where's Master Noel?"
"We don't know."
"Fetch him in then. I can't wait."
But they could not find him, and after calling for some minutes, they thought he must have gone into the house.
Mrs. Inglefield was waiting for them in her boudoir.
"Good morning, darlings. Come and kiss me. I want to have ten minutes' reading out of what Daddy calls our Order Book for the day. And I want all three of you to come to me every morning at ten o'clock, will you? Where's Noel?"
"We don't know. Is the Order Book the Bible?" asked Diana.
"But that's only for Sunday," objected Chris.
"Oh, no, indeed it is not. But I must have my baby. Ah, here he is! I hear his dear stumping feet."
Up the stairs plodded Noel. He came into the room with shining mysterious eyes.
His mother took him on her lap. His curls were full of cobwebs and his knees and hands very dusty.
"Where have you been, sweetheart?"
"You never tolded me that God was going to live next door to us," was Noel's astounding remark.
"I hope," said his mother gravely, "that God lives nearer to us than that."
"I went down the paff," said Noel in his little breathless way. "I sawed a gate and I went frough, and there was a tiny paff and a wall of trees and anuver little gate, and then one of God's houses like we saw in the train, and it's quite, quite close to us. And there are bumps all over its garden and white stones with letters, and then I opened a very big door and went in."
He paused, and his big blue eyes blazed with excitement.
"It was raver dark, but the sun came through a beautiful window all red and blue and yellow, and there were most wunnerful fings in it. Seats, and books, and stools, and little steps into a high box, and a very big book on a stand, and a stone idol lying on his back with a sword, and some flowers on a table. And does it belong to us, Mums? It's a church, isn't it? I never sawed one in India."
"No, darling, we have been far away from a church these last three years. You are right. It is our church, but it doesn't belong to me especially. But Granny was allowed to have a little gate made into the churchyard when she lived here. It saved her a longer walk."
"And I went into a little room where there were white dresses hanging, and then I found anuver door with steps up, and I went up and up and up near the sky, and there was a tangle of ropes like on board ship, and some great 'normous bells, and I climbed and climbed and I came out right frough anuver door to a wall where I sawed the whole world!"
"You got up to the tower through the belfry," said his mother. "No wonder you are dusty, and it was dangerous, Noel: you mustn't go up there by yourself again. You might have fallen."
"May I go there on Sunday?" demanded Noel.
"Yes, to church. We'll all go together. Now I want you to be quiet, and I'm going to begin the Gospel of St. Matthew, about the little Christmas Babe. I think Diana and Chris might read the verses with me."
The children thought their mother's Bible reading very strange, but interesting. When it was over they were sent into the garden again, and their mother told them she would join them there. Noel was rather quiet till they got out of the house, then he said to Chris rather truculently.
"I s'pose you know I'm one of God's specials?"
"What's that?" asked Chris.
"Well, it's His favrit boy. Jesus Christ and me have the same birfday. God borned me on Christmas Day."
"Oh, I see," said Diana; "but that won't make any difference to God."
"I'm a Christmas child," said Noel, staring at her gravely, "that's why I'm called Noel. It means Christmas. It's a very grand and wunnerful thing to have the same birfday as Jesus Christ."
"Oh, come on!" exclaimed Chris impatiently. "You aren't grand or wonderful, Noel. Why, you hardly know how to run! Race me to the medlar. I'll give you ten yards' start. I'll guess at it."
Noel did his best, but he certainly was not a good runner: he waddled and he panted, and several times nearly tumbled headlong. But the run had taken his thoughts off himself, and when Mrs. Inglefield joined them, he was as eager as the others to see everything, and to hear about the time when his mother lived here as a little girl.
"This is where I used to have my garden," she said, taking them to a corner under the high wall. "I remember quite well when I sowed some little shells in it which I had brought from the seaside, and thought that fishes might come up out of the ground! Would you each like a garden?"
There was an eager assent from all three children.
Mrs. Inglefield began to measure out ground in the large herbaceous border.
"What shall we plant in them?" Diana asked.
"Anything and everything you like. I know a dear old gardener outside the village who is a florist and has a nursery for flowers and plants. Shall we all go and see him one day and ask him for seeds and plants? I will give you three shillings each to lay out in seeds."
"Oh, thank you," cried Diana, "but let's go to-day."
"Yes, don't let us wait," said Chris; "not a minute, as they might be growing."
Their mother laughed.
"Perhaps this afternoon I can manage it; but I have letters to write. It is mail day, and poor Daddy would be dreadfully disappointed if I didn't send him a letter."
"You can give him my big love," said Noel, "and tell him I'm going to be a church gardener."
"Are you?" said his mother, smiling at Diana and Chris, who always listened to Noel's statements with open eyes and mouths.
"Yes," nodded Noel, "I've just made it up, but I aren't going to tell nobody how I'll do it. It's a secret."
He would say no more, but pursed up his button of a mouth till it looked like a marble.
Then Mrs. Inglefield showed them the kitchen garden, and a shed in it where they might keep their gardening tools. An old man was in it, and Mrs. Inglefield spoke to him very pleasantly.
"Well, Foster, I see you have kept the garden in beautiful order," she said. "We're quite old friends. You were here before I went to India."
"A've bin fourteen year in this garden this coming midsummer," said the old man importantly.
"And these are my children, Foster. I'm going to try to make them gardeners."
"For mercy's sake, no!" ejaculated Foster, looking at the children with no loving eye. "Dogs an' childer be the garden's curse!"
"Oh, hush!"
Mrs. Inglefield looked really shocked.
"Of course they will have their own bit of ground and keep to it. But you were a boy once, Foster, and I'm sure you were always fond of flowers."
"He's a nassy old man!" said Noel in a loud voice; and his mother, taking him by the hand, left the kitchen garden and returned to the house.
In the afternoon it was a very happy little party that set out down the village. Diana and Chris were losing their shyness, and were able to chatter as freely as Noel to this new mother of theirs. It was of no use to point out to them the pretty thatched cottages, the geese and ducks upon the green, the lambs at play in the fields, the cows going home to be milked, the pale primroses appearing in the hedges, and the budding fresh green on every tree and bush. All these were delightful no doubt when there was nothing else on hand. With three shillings almost burning a hole in their pockets, was it likely that anything could keep them from their goal?
Along a green lane, up a hill, and then a very pretty whitewashed cottage appeared inside a big gate. Glass greenhouses stretched away on a sunny slope behind it. Mrs. Inglefield made her way to one of these, for she recognized Mr. Henry Sharpe, an old man with a white beard, standing at the door speaking to a workman.
And when he saw her, he came hurrying towards her with outstretched hands.
"Why, if it isn't Miss Bessie! Beg pardon, ma'am, but I do forget your married name. You are always Miss Bessie to me."
"I love to be called by the old name," said Mrs. Inglefield with her happy laugh, "and here is my little flock waiting to be made acquainted with you. They are going to start gardens, Henry, but they can make their own choice. Do you remember how I used to tear up to you when my pocket-money was due? What a lot of money I spent on seeds and flowers!"
"You were a born gardener, that you were!"
"Well, I haven't had a nice garden in India; we have moved about so much."
"Mums," said Chris, "may we see the flowers and choose?"
"Aye, come along then, and tell me what you want. Fruit to eat, flowers to smell, or shrubs to grow?"
"Is your daughter still with you?" asked Mrs. Inglefield.
"She is. She married, was left a widow in the war, and came back to me. My grandson is a big boy and goes to school. If I may say so, ma'am, you've a garden round you worth cultivating. Young fruit trees want a lot of training to make them fruit-bearing!"
Mrs. Inglefield looked at her children and then at the old man.
"You are right," she said, "and I'm going to try to do it, and if I get into difficulties I shall come to you. I think I will leave my children with you, and go into the cottage and have a talk with Bessie."
Mr. Sharpe took the children down between the houses to see the rows and rows of spring flowers and seedlings which were all coming on. He was very different to Foster. He loved children, and they all chattered away to him as if they had known him all their life.
By and by, he brought three very happy children back to their mother. Chris and Diana held fat packets in their hands. Noel had his in his pocket, but his blue eyes were shining mysteriously. They had each made their choice, and certainly Noel's choice seemed the strangest of all.
Old Mr. Sharpe insisted upon the children coming into the cottage and having some refreshment. It was too early for tea, but he produced some home-made ginger beer, and some currant cake. His daughter, a sad-faced young woman, had traces of tears on her cheeks. She had been talking about the young husband killed in the war. But she smiled at the children's eagerness and enthusiasm for the garden.
"Oh, Mums, such rows and rows of daffodils and narcissus! Isn't it a pity it's too late to plant them now?"
"And, Mums, you should have seen the flowers in the hot-houses, but none of them will grow out of doors now!"
"And the little trees, all coming out in pink and white flowers!"
It was not until they were on the way home that Mrs. Inglefield was told of the purchases.
Diana had chosen nothing but flowers. She had a tiny rose tree coming up the next day to be placed in the middle of her bed.
"It will be the queen," she said with the dreamy look in her grey eyes that her mother loved to see; "and I shall have her ladies-in-waiting all round her: Lady Pansy, and Lady Blue Cornflower, and Lady Pink Verbena, and Lady Snapdragon, and Lady Yellow Eschscholtzia; and then her little pages will be Tom Thumb Nasturtiums. Don't you think my bed will be lovely, Mums?"
"Lovely, darling. You have done very well, I think. What is Chris's choice?"
"I've got mustard and cress, and radishes," he said sturdily, "and one strawberry plant. And two red geraniums are coming to me when it's time to put them in the ground. And I've a lot of mixed sweet-peas, and one little gooseberry bush."
"You have a lot for your money. First rate," said his mother. "What has Noel got?"
Diana looked at Chris, and they both giggled.
Noel looked at them angrily, and turned to his mother:
"I'm going to have one fing only, but it's quite big, it's what we never had in India, and what I've always been wanting ever since you read me about it in my fairy book."
"I believe I can guess," his mother said: "it's a Christmas tree."
"Yes, that's just what it is. And Mr. Sharpe and me choosed for ever so long before we found a big one, and it's coming to-morrow."
"But, my darling, won't it be rather a dull garden with only that tree in it?"
"It won't be dull to me," said Noel. "I love it. And it will be ready for next Christmas. It's been wondering when its turn was coming to be taken away, it didn't know it was coming into this lovely garden with me to love it. Don't you r'ember the fir tree that was always finking and being disappointed? I mean to tell mine exac'ly what's going to happen to him."
"You're a funny darling," said his mother, but she kissed him and said no more.
"Mr. Sharpe gave him some flower seeds as a present," said Chris, "but he says he isn't going to put them in his garden."
"No, my Christmas tree won't like them. He likes plenty of room all to himself, and I shall put those seeds where I want to."
Mrs. Inglefield looked at him a little perplexedly.
"You're a funny boy," she said again; "but if your Christmas tree will make you happy, I shall say nothing against it. You've made your choice, so it's all right."
Noel seemed quite content. But he refused to tell Diana and Chris his plan about his seeds. All three of them wanted to go into the garden after tea, but Nurse refused to let them do it.
"It is too cold, and rain is beginning to fall. You must just stay in the nursery."
"We can go to Mums," said Diana.
"No, you can't. The mistress is going to rest. She's been at it all day long."
So they tried to make themselves happy in this new nursery of theirs. Chris got out his paint-box and began to colour the picture in a story-book of his. Diana got out her beloved sheets of paper and commenced a fresh story under the inspiration of this fresh home. Noel got a chair and knelt up at the window, looking out upon the English scene with keen, observant eyes.
Suddenly he looked round:
"What are those green lumps all over the church garden?" he asked.
"Those are graves, of course," said Chris, "where people are buried when they die."
"Why do they crowd into the church garden? Haven't they gardens of 'er own?"
"Oh, that wouldn't be proper," said Chris.
"I s'pose," Noel went on thoughtfully, "they try and get as near to God as they can, poor fings! But they aren't really vere at all, it's only their bodies. It isn't a very pretty garden: God ought to have a better one."
Chris made no reply.
Noel was always dressed first, and then Nurse went to Diana. It was a lovely sunny morning. Directly Nurse's back was turned, Noel slipped downstairs very quietly: then he ran out into the garden, opened the little gate that led to the churchyard and began his operations. Going from one green mound to another, he made a hole with his finger in the middle of each, opened his precious packet of seeds and dropped one or two seeds in it. Then he carefully covered it up with earth, and went on to another. Mr. Sharpe had put several varieties of seed into his packet. There was mignonette, aster, lobelia, and a few other summer flowers. Noel knew nothing about the names or the flowers, but he went on steadily planting seed by seed, and by and by a clergyman came out of the church. He looked at the small boy in surprise. He was a young, cheerful-looking man with a very quick, decided manner.
"Now, what on earth are you doing here?" he asked. "And who are you? We've never seen each other before, have we?"
"I'm Noel. Who are you?"
"I'm John Wargrave, the parson. And this place belongs to me."
Noel looked at him stolidly.
"This is God's garden," he said, "and that place you've come out of is God's house. It all belongs to Him."
"So it does, sonny. You've corrected me. But it isn't nice to make a playground of the churchyard. What are you doing?"
"I'm not playing. I'm working very hard."
Noel spoke in an injured tone. Mr. Wargrave looked at the packets of seeds in his hands, and wondered. Then Noel explained himself.
"I've made myself into God's gardener, and I'm going to make flowers come all over His garden. God loves flowers. Mums told me He did. It's an ugly garden now: not half as nice as ours."
"Do you love God?" Mr. Wargrave asked gently.
Noel nodded.
"It's a very nice thought, my boy, but a lot of people own a bit of ground here. The graves belong to them, and they wouldn't like you to meddle with them. Have you many seeds left?"
Noel spread out three small packets.
"Well, look here. There is a rose tree over the church porch. It is in a bed of its own, and you can plant the rest of your seeds there. I'll come and help you do it now."
Noel was quite willing. Mr. Wargrave produced a trowel from a little room at the back of the church, and they made quite a good job of it. He soon found out who Noel was and where he lived, and he said he was coming to call on Mrs. Inglefield very soon. They were good friends when they parted, and Noel trotted upstairs to his nursery breakfast. Nurse scolded him for his dirty hands, but supposed he had been playing in the garden. He did not tell anyone what he had been doing.
But later in the day when his Christmas tree arrived, and Diana and Chris were busy with their gardens, he was asked where his seeds were.
"God has got them," he said solemnly; "I've given them to Him."
He would say nothing more.
Diana remarked to Chris:
"I can't think why Noel is so religious. He isn't a good boy at all, and yet he is always talking about God."
"He's too little to know he oughtn't to do it," said Chris decidedly.
"Why oughtn't we to do it, I wonder?" said Diana musingly. "The people in the Bible talked about God."
"It isn't respectful," said Chris: "rev'rent, I mean. Granny always hushed us about religious things."
"Yes, but Mums talks about them quite easily: she doesn't whisper."
Chris gave it up.
"I only know Noel wouldn't do it if he was amongst a lot of other boys. They'd laugh at him."
"We laugh at him, but he doesn't care."
"He's a most cocky little beggar!"
The Christmas tree almost overshadowed Noel's small garden. It looked strangely out of place there, and would do so even more when surrounded by spring and summer flowers. Chris and Diana, up in the medlar tree the next day, watched Noel standing, hands in pockets, in front of it. A pert saucy robin came and perched on the topmost branch. Noel stood so still that he did not frighten it away, but he commenced to talk to it.
"You're sitting on my tree. I don't know if you know it. I'm a Chris'mas child and the tree is a Chris'mas tree, and we bofe belong to the best day in the whole year, and that's Jesus Christ's birfday and mine. It will take a long time to come this year, for we haven't got to the summer yet, but I'm going to be patient, and as for my tree, he is finking all the time of the wonderful day that's coming to him: the glorious, beautiful day when he'll be dressed from his head to his feet all over with lovely shining fings of glory, and crowds of chil'en and people will be dancing round him and looking up at him as if—as if he was a king. So, Mr. Robin, if you sit on his branches, you must re'mber you're almost sitting on a king!"
"Isn't he a funny boy?" whispered Diana to Chris.
Then Noel went on talking to his tree:
"I'm going to call you Firry; you must have a name. I hope you're happy in this garden; you haven't got any bruvvers to talk to, but I'd rather talk alone than to Chris. He never understands, and so you must be like me and like best to be alone. And if the trees wiv flowers on laugh at you, tell them that when winter comes—the English winter—they'll be dead and gone, and you'll be alive and glorious, it will be Chris'mas, and the very happiest day in the whole year. I don't want you to be unhappy, Firry. I cried for the poor little Chris'mas tree in Germany that was forgotten when Chris'mas Day was over. I shall never forget you. That's why I brought you here. I'll talk to you all the summer and tell you what's coming to you, and after Chris'mas you shall come back here and live and be happy and get ready for the nex' Chris'mas."
"He's talking drivel!" said Diana, and then she sprang down from the tree with a shout, and Noel, after giving a violent start, walked away and didn't go near his Christmas tree again that day.
The first Sunday came.
To Chris and Diana church was no treat; yet they looked forward to the novelty of going to a strange church and seeing strange people. To Noel this was a momentous day. He had never been to church in England yet. In London, for several reasons, he had not been taken there.
It was a bright sunny morning. Noel was dressed in his white sailor suit. It was a new one, and he felt rather self-conscious in it. As Mrs. Inglefield walked down the garden and through the little gate into the churchyard, she felt proud of her children. Diana had slipped her hand into her mother's, but Chris and Noel were having a tussle the other side of her. Each felt he ought to be nearest to his mother. When they reached the church door, Mrs. Inglefield looked down upon two hot, rather angry faces, and she said immediately:
"Now, boys, I can't have this. I am going to have Diana on one side of me in church, and Noel the other. Chris must be content to be the outside one. He shall sit near the aisle, for he is my eldest son, and that is where his father would sit if he were with us."
Chris brightened up immediately. They took their seats in the middle aisle, not very far from the pulpit. There was a good congregation, and the service was a hearty one. Mr. Wargrave, the young vicar, preached so earnestly and simply that even Noel could understand him. His big blue eyes seemed to be taking in everybody and everything. He was very still; he did not fidget as much as Chris did, and when they came out of church, he looked up at his mother with shining eyes:
"When I grow up, I shall have a white dress on, and stand up in church and preach like that man. I shall be a padre when I grow up."
Mrs. Inglefield looked down upon him tenderly.
"You couldn't be anything better, Noel," she said.
And then an old lady came up to them and shook hands with Mrs. Inglefield in a delighted way.
"I heard you were coming back to these parts. How's your mother? Still wedded to her town life? And are these your children? Bring them to tea with me to-morrow. Four o'clock. Good-bye. So glad to welcome you."
And then she bustled off and got into a car and was whirled away from them before Mrs. Inglefield had time to say a word. She turned to her children.
"That is Lady Alice Herbert. She's an old friend of Granny's. She lives at the Hall, and her husband, General Herbert, is a great invalid."
"And we're all going to tea with her. What fun!" said Chris.
In the afternoon the three children went into the garden whilst their mother rested; but by and by Mrs. Inglefield heard a little tap at the door, and Noel walked in. He did not look very happy.
"Am I asturbing you, Mummy?" he asked in his most angelic tone.
"No, darling, I am not sleeping; come and sit down by the couch here. What have you been doing?"
"I don't like those uvver two," said Noel, shaking his head with a heavy frown. "They're always playing and talking outside me."
"You mean without you; but you see they've not been accustomed to have a third in their games. I hope you're nice to them?"
"I don't want to have nuffin' to do with them. They laugh at me about the Chris'mas tree. You and me, Mummy, can be two as we've always been, and they can be just a two away from us."
"Oh, my darling," said Mrs. Inglefield, half laughing, yet with a perplexed face, "you mustn't talk so! This comes of bringing you up away from them. You all belong to me and to each other, and we must be a very happy little family. I can't talk to you any more now, so if you want to stay with me, get a picture-book from my table over there. There's that one you love about the boys in the Bible."
Noel got the book, and drawing a stool up by his mother's side, was quite happy till tea-time.
Chris and Diana appeared in very good spirits, and if Noel was rather silent, they did not seem to be impressed by it.
They were full of anticipation of going to Lady Alice Herbert's to tea the following day, and talked about it till bedtime.
Very great was their disappointment the next morning when their mother told them that she had received a letter from Lady Alice saying that, as the General was not very well, she would not ask the children, but only herself.
Diana pouted, Chris cried "What a shame!" and Noel stumped up and down the room in real anger.
"Never mind, chicks, she will ask you another day, I am sure, and perhaps it is just as well, for it looks like rain."
And rain it did in an hour's time. The children played contentedly in the nursery all the morning. They had their early dinner downstairs with their mother, and afterwards she took them up to her boudoir, and read a story to them till it was time for her to go off to the Hall. The car came for her a little before four o'clock, and the children watched her depart with envious eyes. They waved their hands to her, standing on the doorstep till they could see her no more, and then very reluctantly they went back to their nursery.
"What is there to do?" said Chris discontentedly as he put his hands deep in his jacket pockets and stood gazing out of the window at the driving rain and sodden garden.
"I'm going to finish my story, and then I'll read it to you," said Diana happily, as she drew her chair up to the table and produced some crumpled sheets of paper out of her pocket. Diana always carried her story about with her, in case of sudden inspiration seizing her.
"Read it to us first, and finish it afterwards," said Chris with a grin.
Noel looked at him contemptuously, and Chris caught the look and resented it.
"What are you going to do, Baby?" he asked.
Noel's eyes flashed.
"I aren't going to play with you," he said, and then, he marched out of the room.
A few minutes later a little figure in sailor cap and overcoat was plodding down the path to the gate, in the rain.
It was Noel. He felt that he could not be shut up in the nursery with his brother and sister all the afternoon, and suddenly thought that he would go and see Mr. Wargrave. Then he changed his mind. He would go into the church if the door was unlocked. There were a lot of things he wanted to see and understand there.
Half an hour later the house was being searched by Nurse for the truant. When she missed his cap and coat she was very angry with Chris and Diana.
"I was only ironing in the kitchen; you might have kept him quiet and out of mischief, the two of you," she said. "He's a child, I'll say that, but if he's wandering about in this rain, he'll be laid up with cold, with his Indian constitootion."
"He's most likely in the garden talking to his fir tree, or in the churchyard," said Chris. "Shall I go and look for him and bring him in?"
"Put on your mackintosh then, and be quick about it," said Nurse. "'Tis your fault he's wandered out, I consider. You're none too kind to him, either of you!"