THEday after the fishing boats put out there was a sudden change in the weather. Little white horses rode in the bay. On land the wind blew in sharp, fitful gusts. The watermen said that there must be a fall of snow inland.
Towards evening Mrs. Tregennis grew restless and uneasy. After fastening up the house for the night she slipped back the bolt, and, throwing on a shawl, went down to the front and looked out anxiously over the angry sea.
When she carried in the breakfast the following morning there were deep shadows under her tired eyes.
“You didn’t sleep properly last night, now, did you?” asked Miss Dorothea; and Mrs. Tregennis admitted that she had been awake for many hours.
“I didn’t only partly undress,” she explained. “I felt somehow so restless and onsettled inside o’ me. But ’tis all right now, Miss,” and Mrs. Tregennis smiled brightly, “for the boats they be sighted I do hear tell, and they’ll be here about eleven o’clock.”
Soon after eleven one by one the boats sailed up the harbour. Most of the fishing families of Draeth were represented on the quay, for there was much anxiety to find out at once if the first catch since Christmas had been good.
TOWARDS EVENING MRS. TREGENNIS GREW RESTLESS AND UNEASY, AND WENT DOWN TO THE FRONT AND LOOKED OUT ANXIOUSLY OVER THE ANGRY SEA.
TOWARDS EVENING MRS. TREGENNIS GREW RESTLESS AND UNEASY, AND WENT DOWN TO THE FRONT AND LOOKED OUT ANXIOUSLY OVER THE ANGRY SEA.
Mrs. Tregennis did not go down. She was too busy to leave home, but she sang light-heartedly as she went about her work.
“Where’s my Daddy to?” asked Tommy, when he came home from school.
“Not come home yet, ma handsome.”
“Boats is in,” objected Tommy.
“Yes, my man, but I s’pose your Daddy’s busy cleanin’ up. Run an’ find ’en, ma lovely, an’ tell ’en to come in quick an’ have dinner afore he goes to bed.”
Tommy ran off to the quay and walked alongside, trying to pick out his Daddy’s boat.
“Hallo, Tommy,” said Uncle Sam, who was hauling up water in a bucket over the side of the ‘Henrietta.’
“Hallo,” replied Tommy, “I be lookin’ for my Daddy; where be the ‘Light of Home,’ Uncle Sam?”
“Dear life, I don’t know! Up there ’appen,” and Uncle Sam jerked his thumb in the direction of the bridge.
Tommy sped on. There was Uncle Harry in his boat and Uncle Jim in his. But no Daddy and no “Light of Home” could Tommy find.
“Uncle Jim, do tell I, where be the ‘Light of Home’?”
“Sure I don’t know, Thomas, my son. Can’t ee find she?”
Tommy shook his head.
“Try down below,” and Uncle Jim waved vaguely towards the mouth of the harbour.
“Been there,” Tommy demurred, “an’ Uncle Sam ’e said come up ’ere, ’e did.”
Uncle Jim was removing old bait from the boulter; he stopped and scratched his head.
Tommy’s eyes grew large and puzzled.
In a few minutes the word passed round that the “Light of Home” was missing, and with her were Tom and Jack Tregennis, James Prynne and Billy Dark.
Tommy walked into the kitchen with a white, strained face. “Mammy,” he said, and again, “Mammy.” Then he swallowed hard. “I can’t find my Daddy and the’ Light of Home’ bain’t in.”
Mrs. Tregennis was kneeling in front of the fire, making toast. She rose and turned fiercely on her son. “I’ll about half kill ee, Tommy Tregennis,” she said, “if you come here scarin’ with such tales as they. I don’t want none of that sort of yarn here. I’ll knock ee flying!”
For a moment they looked into each other’s eyes. Then Tommy flung himself on the floor in a passion of weeping, while Mrs. Tregennis stood staring in front of her, still holding the toasting-fork in her hand.
Awkwardly, and as if ashamed, Uncle Sam edged into the kitchen.
“Don’t ee take on now, Ellen,” he admonished. “’Twill sure to be all right; it be just——”
“Of course ’twill be all right, an’ righter than right,” she interrupted, angrily. “’Tis but that fulish child. Get up, Tommy, and come an’ have your dinner, or you’m be late to school.”
Tommy still lay on the floor, his face buried in his arms.
“Getup, I tell ee, or I’ll shift ee, my son.”
Then, as there was still no movement: “If you don’t get up to wanst, Tommy Tregennis, I’ll tell your fäather the minute——”
The familiar threat ended abruptly, and Mrs. Tregennis turned away, put down the toasting-fork and filled the kettle at the sink.
All through that weary Wednesday Draeth waited for the “Light of Home” and still she did not come. There was a heavy fall of snow inland, the papers said, and the wind at sea grew more and more boisterous. On Thursday morning there was snow in Draeth itself, the roofs were white, and it settled on the fields above the cliffs.
Still there was no sign of the “Light of Home.” Glasses swept the horizon in vain. No sail was in sight!
Dozens of people were on the front looking out seaward the whole day long. Women wept and little children were terrified.
All this time Mrs. Tregennis never left the house, but went about her work with tight, colourless lips, and with unseeing eyes. At school Tommy sat still and frightened, but his Mammy said ’twas better as he should go.
Mrs. Radford attempted tactless consolation, but Tommy’s Ladies behaved as far as possible in a normal way. Outside they shunned the shifting throng on the front, because they dreaded hearingthe muttered conjectures. So they sat some little distance apart on the rocks, straining—like all the rest of Draeth—straining out to sea.
“If I were the parson here,” said Miss Margaret, “I should open the church and ask all those people on the front to come in. I’d just have one strong, simple prayer and sing ‘For those in peril on the sea.’ I shouldn’t say anything to them because I should only cry if I did.” Miss Margaret groped for her handkerchief and wiped away the tears that were trickling down her cheek.
In the whole wide world there seemed to be one thing only that really mattered, and this was that the “Light of Home” should sail over the horizon and ride with the tide up the harbour to Draeth.
The remaining hours of the Thursday dragged with incredible slowness. It was a relief when night came and there could be no more weary gazing seaward for a few hours at least.
When Mrs. Tregennis brought the tea in the morning there was a new look in her eyes.
“Well?” asked the ladies, fearfully.
“They’ve sighted the boat,” she said. Then her unnatural composure gave way; she leaned up against the wall and sobbed.
Miss Margaret jumped out of bed, rescued the tray and put her arms around her.
“You darling,” she said. “You’ve been just so brave, it’s been wonderful.” And she and the Brown Lady cried too, cried until they laughed, then laughed until they cried again.
Crowds waited on the Frying Pan and on the quay to see the “Light of Home” come in. Her bows were knocked out with the lashing of the wind and the sea. But they had got the fish! The men were heavy with sleep, stunned with exposure, shaking with cold. But they had got the fish!
Bit by bit their story was told. When they had anchored on the Tuesday afternoon they had, of course, thrown out the boulter with the anchor. About nine o’clock that night when they wanted to sail along a bit they found the boulter had parted from the anchor. There was nothing for it but to make their way to the dan, cast anchor there and wait patiently until daylight. By this time all the other boats were sailing home. They secured the boulter all right, but they didn’t seem to have much fish. So they thought to wait a time longer, sailed farther southwards and anchored again.
Then the wind had come up somethin’ awful. As their lugger was not built for a heavy open sea, they reckoned to make for home. But they found that the strong spring tide had swept the boulter round so that it was firmly caught as ever was on some rock or somethin’ at the bottom o’ the sea. In workin’ another man’s gear you’d rather risk your life than leave the boulter behind! So again there was nothin’ for it but to wait; wait this time until the heavy tide turned and swept their boulter back again from the obstruction on which it had caught.
Hours they had had to wait for this, and even then they couldn’t get off. Ill-luck seemed to dog them,for once more the boulter parted; this time in the middle. How long they were ’eavin’ an’ pullin’ an’ gropin’ they couldn’t rightly say. For more than twenty-four hours they had had neither food nor fire. But they had got the fish and the owner of the boat had his boulter right enough, and that alone was a matter of twenty poun’ an’ more.
The catch of the “Light of Home” made a record sale. There, on the quay, the fish was all arranged in heaps—congers, ray, skate, cod, ling, hake, even a few turbot and halibut lying royally alone.
“There was certainly ’eaps of fish,” the auctioneer remarked, “and good fish at that.”
“’Uman creatures’ lives,” Jack Chorley was heard to quote.
The auctioneer frowned him down, blew his nose and started.
“Beautiful fish, gentlemen,” thus suavely he addressed the buyers. “Now what offers, gentlemen, for the beautiful ’eaps of skate?”
Eight—nine—ten—; up went the bidding, until the pile of skate brought fifteen shillings a dozen, and the ray fetched the same high figure, too. Congers stuck at twelve shillings a hundredweight, but the hake reached as much as one-and-ten apiece; the turbot rose to twelve shillings the fish, and one halibut alone brought forty-two shillings.
On droned the voice of the auctioneer. “’Ow much for this lot, gentlemen? a shame to let it go for ten shillin’, sirs. ’Tis too good a ’eap to be give for nothin’. Come, gentlemen, come! What offers I say?”
“’Twarn’t on no rock as that boulter parted,” said Jim Hex, and shifted his wad of baccy from the right cheek to the left.
“No more it warn’t, Jim,” agreed Joe Cox. “Too good a catch for a rock.”
“A wreck for sartin’,” and Jim spat over the side of the quay.
“A bit o’ what ’peared to be a woman’s gound were catched up along wi’ the boulter,” corroborated Tregennis, somewhat huskily, from the shattered bow of the boat.
“Poor soul!” said a woman on the outskirts, who had overheard. There was a half-sob in her voice.
Jack Chorley looked at her angrily. “Damn!” he said, and vindictively hit at a fly that was trying to settle on his nose.
As the clock chimed a quarter past four the sale was ending. Slowly Tommy trailed along the street to his Mammy and his home. Seeing the crowd on the quay he turned aside to find out its cause.
“Daddy,” he shouted, “oh, Daddy!”
Heedless of mooring-ropes and slippery bits of fish he ran and stumbled, stumbled and ran, towards the “Light of Home.”
“Daddy, oh, Daddy!” he sobbed, and reached the edge of the quay.
Tregennis stretched out his arms, lifted him into the lugger and held him tight. Again there was a woman’s sob and the air was tense.
“Have a bib for your tea, my son,” said Uncle Jack, and laughed rather uncertainly as he held up to hima little fish, something between a pollock and a whiting.
“An’ here be two plate-ray to take home to your Mammy,” added Billy Dark, who was young and unmarried, “an’ happen you’d best take your Daddy along too.”
Once more the crowd parted and Tommy and his Daddy passed through.
Mrs. Tregennis could not trust herself to go down to the quay, so she had not seen Tregennis yet, for the fish must come first.
“I expect you’m cold and hungry, Tom,” was her greeting when at last he came holding Tommy by the hand. Her lower lip trembled as she spoke. “Here be a good meal for ee, an’ there be hot bottles in the bed. So hurry up do ee now, for you do be fair done.”
“I tried Miss Margaret’s plan o’ chewin’,” said Tregennis, smiling a little wearily as he sat down to a bit of somethin’ to eat. “An’ upon my sam I believe there be somethin’ in it. But in a while there warn’t nothin’ left to chew. Not in my mouth I don’t mean this time, but not in the hamper neither. Brave an’ empty ’e was I can tell ee; never a single crumb left, no, not even for a sparrer to pick.”
Later in the evening Mrs. Tregennis held in her hand eight pounds nine shillings and sixpence, Tregennis’s share of the record sale.
“What be I to do with this vasty sum?” she asked the ladies, as they sat by the fire and laughed at nothing at all. “I shall think I be some size now,”she asserted, drawing herself very upright and tilting her chin. “What’ll I do with all this gold?”
“Why not go up to London?” suggested the Blue Lady, “and stay at the Hotel Cecil. I believe you can live there quite comfortably for five pounds a day.”
“Can ee now, Miss, indeed? I hadn’t known of that. Well, th’ objects no money to me, so Tommy, shall you an’ me an’ Daddy go up to London for to see the King?”
“Yes,” nodded Tommy, his mouth full of bread and butter.
“Then come along o’ me,” said Mammy, and she put on her hat and coat, walked up Main Street to the Post Office, and there with pride she pushed the eight pounds nine shillings and sixpence across the counter to be added to her small account.
ALTHOUGHMay had come Tommy’s Ladies had not yet gone. Much to Mrs. Radford’s annoyance their money was still holding out.
Here and there in the woods of Draeth late primroses lingered; while purple-tinged anemones still caught the sun that was cut off more and more each day by the slowly unfolding leafy screen of the oaks.
Miss Lavinia had read lately that in other schools children were learning about flowers and birds and even about the things that crawled. In connexion with this she had read much of Educational Values that she did not understand in the very least. But it seemed to her a delightful change that sometimes in the afternoon the little girls should put aside their hemming and that the little boys should sponge out their sums, and that they should then talk about the flowers the children gathered in the woods and in the lanes.
Miss Lavinia bought a book which helped her to look intelligently at the flowers and to understand the wonders that were there. Again and again she was surprised to find that the children, as a result of their own observations, saw many things that she herself did not know of until she had read about them in her little book.
Mr. Toms, the draper, sent his children to Miss Lavinia’s school. This Mr. Toms was the son of the Mr. Toms from whom Tommy’s Mammy bought the cloth for her green coat so many years ago. He was a very practical, go-ahead man, was the present Mr. Toms; a man whose motto was “Progress,” and by progress he meant “Push,” and “Getting on in the World.”
Mr. Toms felt that afternoons spent in the study of common wild flowers represented so much waste of time. So keenly did he feel this that one early closing day he called on Miss Lavinia to talk to her about the matter. Miss Lavinia received him in the best parlour and was very nervous, for a visit from the parents of her pupils was a most unusual event.
Mr. Toms sat down on the extreme edge of one of Miss Lavinia’s Chippendale chairs, and after clearing his throat loudly explained to her that what he paid for was a good sound education with no high-falutin’ nonsense. Sums and such had made him the man he was; sums and such would surely train his boys to follow worthily in their father’s footsteps.
The flow of words quite paralysed Miss Lavinia; she had no answer to give.
Mr. Toms again cleared his throat. “It’s in this way, Miss Lavinia,” he continued, “time is given us to be used. An all-merciful Providence has put us here to do the best we can, and we must make the most of our talents. They mustn’t be wrapped up in a napkin and hid.”
By this time Mr. Toms’s thumbs were in his arm-holes and he was in his best platform vein.
“There’s them as doesn’t heed, butIsay ‘waste not, want not,’ whether it be bread, or money, or time. Let not the talents be abused! And when my boys come home and talk about primroses and such, well then I feel annoyed and rightly so.”
Again he cleared his throat, but was arrested in the further expression of his views by the tears that filled Miss Lavinia’s faded blue eyes.
In spite of pompous manners and in spite of push, Mr. Toms was a kindly man at heart, and a little old maid’s tears made him feel ashamed. “Oh, I say, Miss Lavinia ...,” he stammered, “oh, I say ...!”
“I am very foolish,” she answered him. “I think I am a little tired. But about the flowers! I read that it was being done in quite big schools. I myself know very little about them but I thought that I, too, would like to try.” Then her delicate cheeks flushed as she went on speaking. “I thought, too, that as God himself has made all these wonders, it could not possibly be waste of time for us to stop now and again and look at the beauty that he gives. But ... I do not know. Perhaps I am wrong....”
Again Mr. Toms cleared his throat. “Upon my word, Miss Lavinia,” he interrupted; “upon my word, I believe that it’s me. Anyhow, go on, go on; I’ll say no more! It can’t do no harm anyhow, and who knows but it may be good.”
When the following week Miss Lavinia took her school to walk, two by two, through the woods of the West River, Mr. Toms was glad that the afternoon wasfine. In the evening, when his boys showed him little twigs of oak already bearing the future acorns, he was so much interested that he took old Mr. Toms’s magnifying glass, until now used in reading the Bible only, and through it saw the flowers on a larger scale.
“Well, it caps me, Mother,” he remarked to his wife as he replaced the lens in the drawer of the bureau. “Forty-five years have I lived in this town and never till to-day did I know as oak trees flowered!”
It was after this walk in the woods that Tommy discovered that the Tregennises had a garden. Naturally he was greatly excited by the discovery and ran into the kitchen volubly explaining the need for watering at once without a moment’s delay.
“My dear soul, Tommy Tregennis, what’s all this?” asked his mother.
“Oh, Mammy, Mammy, gimme some water in a cup to water my garden; give it to me to wanst please Mammy, or my garden’ll mebbe die.”
Mrs. Tregennis did as she was commanded. Taking from the cupboard an enamelled mug she filled it with water at the tap above the sink, handed it to her son and followed him to the door.
There, sure enough, underneath the window, in three separate places little blades of grass had pushed their way upwards between the cobble-stones.
Tommy pointed to these with pride, then, stooping, he put the mug upon the ground. But the stones were uneven there and the mug of water wobbled. In all moments of stress Tommy’s tongue curledround the corner of his mouth. It curled now. Then with care and deliberation he chose another and a safer place where the cup stood firm.
After this Tommy himself knelt upon the uneven stones and tenderly stroked the fresh green blades. “Now, Mammy, look!” he said; and while Mammy looked he lifted up the enamelled cup, bent slightly forward, over-balanced, and fell upon his garden-plot.
There was a moment of deep suspense, but when Tommy found that not one of his plants was injured he smiled happily.
“S’more water, please Mammy,” and he passed the cup towards the doorway.
“But all they plants be just flooded with water, my sweetheart,” objected Mrs. Tregennis. “They’ll be drownded quite if you water ’em any more.”
“That,” Tommy explained patiently, “was accident; that wasn’t waterin’, that wasn’t.”
This was an unanswerable argument and without further ado Mammy refilled the cup.
After this, in sun or rain, Tommy watered his garden twice a day. It was to him an unfailing source of joy.
He told the Blue Lady all about it as they walked up from the sands together. “’N before I go to bed I must water my garden. There’s seven grasses in the one closest up to the drain; ’spect it gets splashed ’n likes it. There be on’y five in the one in front, but there be somethin’ thick an’ tight in the miggle of he.’N there’s ... I don’t ’xactly remember how many grasses there do be under the wall. ’N what be the thick an’ tight thing in the miggle, Miss?”
“I can guess, Tommy, but I won’t tell you. You watch and watch, and just see for yourself what happens.”
“I’m allus watchin’an’watchin’,” replied Tommy, gloomily. “It be they cats! Goin’ round the corner they run right over my garden, they do. I be allus watchin’ an’ shooin’, ’n Mammy she be allus a-shooin’ of they too.”
By this time they were half-way up the alley and very near the house. To his horror Tommy saw his Daddy, his own Daddy, walk ruthlessly over the three small patches of green.
“Oh, oh, oh ...,” he screamed, darting forward in a very passion of anger. “You be a-killing of my garden, ’n I hates ee, I do, I just hates ee!”
His eyes were tightly closed in his rage and with clenched fists he hit out wildly at his Daddy, only to find his outstretched arms firmly imprisoned in his mother’s grasp.
Mrs. Tregennis addressed Miss Margaret. “You’ll often have been wondering, Miss, how my Tommy came by such a funny lookin’ sort o’ face. ’Tis with cryin’ so much that ’e got ’e. ’Tis a brave pity that he be so plain.”
Tommy choked down a sob. “I do know some boys as is uglier ’n me,” he affirmed.
“Oh?” Mammy sounded sceptical.
“Jimmy Prynne’s worse ugly ’n me,” said Tommy, still shaken with sobs.
“I’d think shame if I was ee, Tommy Tregennis, callin’ a likely boy like Jimmy Prynne ugly, that would I.”
Tommy wept more loudly.
“I shouldn’t make a face like that, no, not even if my head was off.” Mammy was scornful.
Tommy felt that there was a flaw in the argument but sobbed more noisily still.
Then Mammy grew stern. “Stop that noise, Tommy,” she said, forcefully, accompanying her words with a shake.
Tommy screamed all the louder.
“My blessed fäather,” Mammy remarked to the empty air. The Blue Lady and Daddy had discreetly vanished. “Whose boy may this be makin’ such a disgraceful scene. Whoever he behisMammy an’ Daddy won’t be wantin’’eany more. There’s no pleasure in lookin’ at a boy like ’e.”
Tommy’s screams ended quite suddenly and he consigned the whole incident to oblivion. “Some water for my garden, please Mammy,” he said.
“No, my son, not to-night. We’ll have no waterin’ to-night. You’m a naughty, hasty boy, ’n you’ll go right up to bed this minute.”
With a sob in his throat Tommy went.
THEYwere all standing outside the kitchen window in the dinner-hour, the Blue Lady and the Brown Lady, Daddy, Mammy and Tommy. In the doorway, not of the group, but looking longingly towards it, stood Annabel.
“’Tis the tight thick thing in the miggle,” Tommy was explaining volubly. “It’s been an’ broke this mornin’, an’ now ’tis all feathery an’ different.”
“That’s what you’ve been watching for, Tommy; that is the flower of the grass.”
Tommy looked at the Blue Lady in amazement. “Flowers do be blue an’ red,” he objected, “an’ my miggle thing’s green.”
“Tommy,” Annabel still in the doorway spoke in a supplicating voice. “Tommy, let me see the green grass-flower.”
The owner of the garden took not the least notice of her request.
Mammy, Daddy and the ladies had returned to the dinner they had left to see the wonder out-of-doors, so the children were alone.
Annabel drew nearer. “Which is it?” she asked, bending down, her hands on her knees.
“Go away,” said Tommy, kicking a loose stone in her direction. “I shan’t show ee my garden.”
“Tisn’t a garden,” retaliated Annabel. “My mother says it isn’t no garden, it’s just bits of grass.”
Deep down in Tommy’s heart there had sometimes been a suspicion that his garden was not quite as other people’s, but he had resolutely put the thought from him. Now Annabel’s scornful words strengthened his fears. He hit her quite hard, ran into the house and made his way upstairs so quickly that his toes hit the front of each step in his hurry. Into the ladies’ room he burst without the preliminary knock insisted upon by Mammy.
“Is my garden a garden,” he demanded; “or is it just bits o’ grass?”
“Do you love your plants very much, Tommy?”
Tommy’s fingers closed tightly and his lips were compressed as he vigorously nodded his head.
“In that case,” decided Miss Margaret, as she added more cream to the strawberries on her plate, “In that case it is most distinctly a garden.”
“I should like to give ee a bunch....” Tommy paused for a moment. A bunch of what?
He decided that just “a bunch” would do, so he began again.
“I’d like to give ee a bunch out of my garden.”
“Oh, but Tommy, it does seem such a pity to pick ....” Miss Margaret in her turn groped for a word. “The blades,” she concluded satisfactorily.
“But just on’ythreeblades,” pleaded Tommy.
“Two,” decided Miss Margaret, and together they went downstairs to make the selection.
When the two blades had been most carefully chosenand most tenderly picked, something still troubled the gardener.
“What is it now, Tommy Tregennis?”
“I wish I could take Miss Lavinia a bunch from my garden, I do.”
Miss Margaret hesitated. She did not know Miss Lavinia, and wondered if she was a woman of understanding, or if she would only scorn the gift that meant so much to the little giver.
“Pick just a tiny bunch,” she advised, “I think Miss Lavinia would like that.”
Tommy selected two blades from each of the three plants, but still he paused.
“Will my other grasses have flowers ever?” he asked, confident that the Blue Lady could always tell him everything he wished to know.
She stooped now to examine the others. “Yes,” she told him; “they will be in flower quite soon.”
Happily Tommy knelt once more and plucked his “miggle feather” to add to Miss Lavinia’s bunch, then he ran off to school in such excitement that he quite forgot to call for Ruthie on the way.
Miss Margaret returned to her room, and taking from the shelf theOxford Book of English Verse, she opened it at Thomas Edward Brown’s poem “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot.” With a smile she laid the two blades of grass between the pages.
When children took flowers to Miss Lavinia they laid them on her desk unobserved by the rest of the school, if possible. Then when Miss Lavinia cameinto the room the giver’s heart would beat quickly until she picked up the offering, smelled it, said “How very beautiful,” and looked all around. Then of course the giver smiled a little conscious smile and Miss Lavinia would see this, and say, “Oh, is it from you Ruby, or Jimmy, or David?” as the case might be.
Tommy had never had this delightful experience, but this afternoon he glowed with joy for at last it was to be his. He slipped into the schoolroom when it was empty, placed his “bunch” on the desk, then ran out of the house again, and unconcernedly kicked dust in the gutter.
Here Ruthie joined him and kicked too. “Why didn’t ee fetch me, Tommy?” she asked.
“I’ve put some of my grasses on the desk.”
This seemed to Ruthie quite a sufficient reason. “Oh, Tommy,” she said, “but hasn’t it spoiled your garden?”
“No; leastways, not much; ’n besides, more’ll grow.” Tommy spoke as one who knows. The clock struck two and the children ran in to take their places at the long, narrow table.
Tommy’s conscious smile began as soon as Miss Lavinia appeared in the doorway, and gradually it broadened as she walked to her desk. Then quite suddenly the smile faded and Tommy’s mouth drooped ominously at the corners.
Miss Lavinia had brushed aside the grass and opened her desk without comment!
Large tear-drops began to fall on that part of thetable that was Tommy’s place, and Miss Lavinia’s attention was arrested by a strangled sob.
“Why, what’s the matter, Tommy?” she asked, it was so unusual for Tommy to cry.
“You haven’t said his flowers was beautiful,” volunteered Ruthie.
“His flowers?” echoed Miss Lavinia; she was deeply puzzled.
Ruthie ran to the desk and gathered together the six blades and the “miggle feather.”
“They be from Tommy’s very own garden,” Ruthie further explained. “He waters they every night an’ mornin’, Tommy does, outside the kitchen window, and shoos off they cats, so’s they can really grow.”
Some of the older children laughed, but a glance from Miss Lavinia caused their laughter to be instantly suppressed.
Miss Lavinia left the desk and holding in her left hand the six blades and the flower of the grass she went to Tommy’s corner of the table. With her disengaged right arm she drew him to her, and memories of her own far-away childhood gave her understanding, just as Miss Margaret had hoped.
“Tommy,” she said, very gently; “Tommy, thank you very much for your present. It was kind of you to pick these for me from your very own garden, and they are very beautiful.”
“Beautiful!” that was the word Tommy wanted.
“To-day I should like to see them in water on my desk, and to-morrow I shall press them between blotting-paper and mount them on a card; you shallwrite your name on the card and hang it on the wall.”
While Miss Lavinia spoke Tommy’s tears dried, and when she ended the broad smile was there once more.
When afternoon school was over Tommy ran home very quickly, for hanging over the river was a large, black cloud, and he feared that rain might fall before he could water his plants. He was eager, too, to see whether the other miggle things had grown into flowers in his absence.
His hands were tucked away in his trouser-pockets, but every now and then as he ran one or the other was withdrawn; the arm thus freed from control made wild circles in the air, while in his excitement he blew through tightly closed lips in a vain attempt to whistle.
At the last turning he underwent a sudden metamorphosis, and becoming a ramping lion he plunged madly round the corner in case Mammy should be standing in the doorway. Then the shrill roar broke off abruptly and the waving arms fell limply to his side.
Perfectly still he stood there, while for the second time that day large tear-drops slowly gathered in his eyes and rolled unheeded down his cheeks. Deep sobs followed and Tommy groped his way slowly into the house.
“Oh, Mammy, Mammy,” he moaned; “my garden’s all picked and withered; my garden’s all picked and withered.”
Mrs. Tregennis was not in the kitchen; probably she was in a house near by, but Tommy could not takehis sorrow to a crowd. Slowly he made his way to the upstairs sitting room, and there he found Miss Margaret writing letters.
“My Lady,” he sobbed, “my Lady, my garden’s all picked and withered.”
“Oh, Tommy,” she answered softly. Drawing him tenderly to her she dried away the tears as they came.
After a little pause, “Shall I come down with you to see it?” she asked.
Tommy sorrowfully shook his head. “I don’t like to see ’e lyin’ there all dead,” he explained. So Miss Margaret went down alone.
There, scattered among the cobble-stones were the treasured blades of grass. They had been ruthlessly torn from their roots, and lay all curled up and shrivelled in the sun. Of all Tommy’s garden not one green blade remained. Carefully Miss Margaret picked up the limp and faded leaves; none must be left for Tommy to see again lying there all dead. Just as she had taken up the last dead blade, big drops splashed upon the door-step, and the shower that Tommy had outrun came heavily down.
As Miss Margaret was closing the door Mrs. Tregennis ran hurriedly across the alley; over her shoulders as protection from the rain she had thrown a thick woollen antimacassar snatched from the back of Auntie Jessie’s rocking-chair.
On the door-step she rested, panting, flushed and smiling. “Oh, Miss,” she gasped, “what a shower, and Miss Dorothea somewheres along the beach! Imust find Tom and send him with a cloak to the caves, may be she’ll be shelterin’ there.”
“Yes,” responded Miss Margaret in a way that plainly showed she scarcely heard what Mrs. Tregennis was saying.
Opening her hand she disclosed the dead grass blades lying there. “It’s Tommy’s garden,” she explained.
Mrs. Tregennis opened the door again, stepped out into the drenching rain, looked down between the stones and understood.
“My poor lamb; where is he, Miss?”
“Upstairs in our room crying.”
“Bless his little heart! I’m afraid Annabel did it, Miss Margaret, and in a way our Tommy did justly deserve it, for he’s been very naughty to she, time an’ again he has.”
“Yes, I know, Mrs. Tregennis, but ...” Miss Margaret hesitated a moment. “You know it’s largely my fault, too, for I haven’t been a bit nice to that child ever once.”
“Oh, Miss!” expostulated Mrs. Tregennis.
“No, you know I haven’t,” and turning Miss Margaret knocked at the door of Mrs. Radford’s sitting-room.
An affected voice bade her “Come in.” Mrs. Radford was reading, while Annabel learned to sew with a hot needle and sticky cotton on a long calico strip.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Radford, languidly, in her best society manner, not rising to receive her visitor. “It is you!”
“Yes, may Annabel come upstairs with me for a little while?”
Annabel looked frightened, and closed her lips in a firm straight line.
Although Mrs. Radford constantly reminded herself that the upstairs visitors were quite common people, yet she felt gratified now, and motioned to Annabel to put her sewing away.
Miss Margaret took hold of Annabel’s hand, and together they went from the room.
DOWNSTAIRSin the kitchen Tommy was being comforted by his mother. In the upstairs sitting room Annabel and Miss Margaret sat together and Miss Margaret was wondering how she should begin what she had to say.
Annabel’s expression was one of sullen obstinacy, her lips were still set in a hard, straight line, and her eyes followed the intricacies of the pattern of the Brussels carpet. Miss Margaret hesitated to ask the child if it was she who had torn up the blades of grass, for she feared to prepare the way for a lie.
“I am so sorry you spoiled Tommy’s garden this afternoon, Annabel,” she ventured.
Annabel’s eyes were still on the carpet, and with her toe she outlined a full-blown rose. “It wasn’t a garden; it was just bits of grass,” she asserted.
“It was only bits of grass to you,” Miss Margaret agreed, “but Tommy had watched it and watered it for weeks, and to him it was a real garden. Now you have spoiled it all, and made Tommy very unhappy.”
“I hate him,” said Annabel, defiantly, between closed teeth.
“Yes, I know, of course you do,” and for the first time Annabel looked up.
Then Miss Margaret drew her to her. “I say, Annabel, don’t you think you and Tommy and I might bereal good friends now, and all just be very nice to each other?”
Then Annabel’s lips trembled; but no tears fell.
“Does Tommy know?” she asked, and when she was told that he did not she went out of the room and stood at the top of the stairs. Bending forward, her hands resting on her knees, she peered down the steep staircase.
“Tommy,” she called, “Tommy Tregennis,” but there was no response.
“Tommy Tregennis, come here!” The call was louder this time.
“Tommy, Miss Margaret and me wants you.”
At this Tommy’s head was poked round the kitchen door.
All Annabel’s usual diffidence in Tommy’s company had vanished.
“Come here, Tommy!” she insisted, and Tommy, impelled by some new quality in her, walked slowly up the stairs.
“Tommy,” said Annabel, rather hesitatingly, but looking straight into his eyes; “Tommy, I rooted up your garden.”
For the second time that day Tommy hit her quite hard.
“Tommy!” called Miss Margaret, in a stern voice, and Tommy, followed by Annabel, obeyed the summons.
Then Miss Margaret explained to Tommy that he had often been very rude and unkind to Annabel, and that in the future they must all be friends.Whereupon Annabel held out her hand to Tommy, and Tommy promptly pushed it away.
Miss Margaret was wisely blind to this by-play, and began to unfold a plan she had formed.
“I’m thinking about the garden,” she said, meditatively, and the children forgot each other and gave their attention to her.
“I think it will grow again; but it will be very slow. Wouldn’t it be rather nice to plant some other flowers, and take care of them until the grasses come again?”
“How?” demanded Tommy.
“I thought we might have boxes made to stand on the ground under the window, and——”
“Not on my garden,” interrupted Tommy.
“No, most certainly not. Not right on your garden, but quite close up to the windows. One will be an unusual shape, because under the kitchen window there’s the drain to think of, too.” Miss Margaret looked out. “It isn’t raining now; shall we go and measure the lengths of our boxes?”
Downstairs they ran, borrowed Mrs. Tregennis’s inch-tape, and outside under the windows they all three measured.
Here Miss Dorothea, returning from the shelter of the caves, found them and went with them up Main Street to the carpenter’s, where they gave the order for the boxes to be made, painted green, and delivered on Monday without fail.
At the green-grocer’s they ordered good soil for the new garden and sturdy little wall-flower plants fullof tightly closed buds. Here, too, Miss Margaret bought Californian oranges, and paid for rosy-cheeked apples to be sent with the soil and plants on Monday.
“Now then, home and tea,” she ordered; but at the cobbler’s window she stopped.
“He lodges with my Aunt Martha,” volunteered Tommy.
But the Blue Lady was not thinking of the cobbler, whose form could be dimly descried through the screen of hanging laces, patches of leather and cards of boot-protectors with which the window was dressed.
“It’s Friday to-day,” she said, impressively.
“Why shouldn’t we have it to-morrow?”
“Have what?” asked Miss Dorothea. “What are you talking about?”
“Why, the pony and trap, of course,” and Miss Margaret pointed to a little card in a corner pane, on which was unevenly printed:
PONY AND GINGLE ON HIRE
“For us,” said Annabel. “I never!” and the children seized each other’s hands in their excitement; but whose hand was put out first this time it was impossible to say.
There was scarcely room for them all in the shop of the cobbler who lodged with Aunt Martha. Miss Margaret bought from him numbers of pairs of cheapboot-laces, for which she had no possible use, because she was a little ashamed of their invasion of the tiny shop, when she learned that the pony and trap did not belong to him, but was advertised by him for a friend who lived at West Draeth, just to do ’e a turn. In the name of his friend, the cobbler promised that if the sun shone the following morning “the gingle ’e should be at the door of Tommy’s house at ten o’clock without fail!”
In spite of his repeated assurance that there should be no mistake, Tommy was seized with a sudden misgiving on the way home and ran back to remind him not to forget.
“I’ve spoken to ’e,” he panted, when he was in line again, “an’ ’e says it’ll be there.” Then “I’m goin’ to tell my Mammy,” he shouted, and was off once more.
When the others reached the house Tommy was in the middle of a voluble and wholly unintelligible explanation, from which Mrs. Tregennis tried vainly to extract some meaning.
“Will you have an orange, Annabel?” asked Miss Margaret at the door.
All Annabel’s affectation had dropped from her this evening: she was just a normal child. As such she nodded, smiling broadly.
“Catch then,” and Annabel made a careful cup of her hands, and caught.
As the ladies went upstairs they were followed by Mrs. Tregennis with the tea.
“Mrs. Tregennis, will you have an orange?”