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Title: Anne's terrible good nature : And other stories for children
Author: Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Anne's terrible good nature : And other stories for children" ***

ANNE’S TERRIBLE GOOD NATURE

OTHER BOOKS FOR CHILDREN BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN

ANOTHER BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN

THE FLAMP

THE AMELIORATOR

THE SCHOOLBOY’S APPRENTICE

OLD-FASHIONED TALES

FORGOTTEN TALES OF LONG AGO

THREE HUNDRED GAMES AND PASTIMES

RUNAWAYS AND CASTAWAYS

THE “ORIGINAL POEMS” OF ANN AND JANE TAYLOR

THE SLOW-COACH: A Story. Illustrated in Colour by M. V. WHEELHOUSE

A CAT BOOK. Illustrated by PAT SULLIVAN

[Illustration: TO THE OLD WOMAN’S INTENSE ASTONISHMENT, SHE GAVE HER
ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR OF HER THREEPENNY BITS. [p. 42]

ANNE’S TERRIBLE GOOD
NATURE

AND OTHER STORIES FOR CHILDREN

BY
E. V. LUCAS

WITH 12 ILLUSTRATIONS
BY A. H. BUCKLAND

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

_First published, August 1908; Reprinted December 1908,
July 1911, March 1915, December 1919,
June 1923, December 1924,
and January 1928._

PREFACE

Of the eleven stories in this book, seven now appear for the first
time. For permission to reprint “Sir Franklin and the Little Mothers,”
I have to thank Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew & Co.; and Messrs. George
Allen & Sons allow me to include “The Miss Bannisters’ Brother.” “The
Monkey’s Revenge” was printed first in Messrs. Dent’s _Christmas
Treasury_, and “The Anti-burglars” in _The Woman at Home_ for December
1902. The motive of the title story was given to me by Mrs. Charles
Bryant, and that of “The Ring of Fortitude” by Mrs. W. M. Meredith.
The suggestion as to organs and street cries in “The Notice-Board”
was made to me by Oxford’s Professor of Poetry. The autobiographies of
coins, I might add, are a commonplace in old books for children; but
one is at liberty, I think, to adapt the idea to one’s own time without
being guilty of very serious want of originality.

E. V. L.

CONTENTS

PAGE

ANNE’S TERRIBLE GOOD NATURE 1

THE THOUSAND THREEPENNY BITS 27

RODERICK’S PROS 55

THE MONKEY’S REVENGE 73

THE NOTICE-BOARD 87

THE MISS BANNISTERS’ BROTHER 109

THE ANTI-BURGLARS 143

SIR FRANKLIN AND THE LITTLE MOTHERS 169

THE GARDENS AND THE NILE 203

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SHILLING 217

THE RING OF FORTITUDE 237

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE
PAGE

TO THE OLD WOMAN’S INTENSE ASTONISHMENT, SHE GAVE
HER ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR OF HER THREEPENNY
BITS _frontispiece_

“PLEASE DON’T TROUBLE TO GO BACK. I’LL LEND YOU THE
CUPS AND SAUCERS” 19

THESE TOMMY CATHCART AND SHE SLIPPED INTO THE HANDS
OF THE SANDWICH-MEN 44

THE PRESENCE OF SO SMALL A CRICKETER MADE A GREAT
SENSATION AMONG THE PORTERS 64

“DO LOOK AT THAT QUEER LITTLE MAN!” 80

“WE HAD IT MADE ON PURPOSE” 103

THERE WAS CHRISTINA 114

WHILE MARY HELD THE LANTERN, HE WORKED
AWAY AT THE FASTENINGS 162

A LITTLE PROCESSION PASSED THE DOORWAY 181

“YES, NURSE, BUT DO TELL ME WHAT SPEKE DID?” 206

“A BLUE RIBBON WAS THREADED THROUGH ME,
AND I WAS HUNG ROUND A LITTLE GIRL’S NECK” 229

“WILL YOU TELL ME WHAT MR. DEAR IS LIKE?” 255

ANNE’S TERRIBLE GOOD NATURE

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Anne Wilbraham Bayes,
Wilbraham being after her grandfather on the mother’s side, a very
clever gentleman living at Great Malvern, and writing books on Roman
history, who has, however, nothing whatever to do with this story. This
story is about Anne and her perfectly appalling good nature.

Where Anne’s good nature came from no one ever could guess, for her
father had little enough, always insisting on silence at breakfast
while he read the paper and ate the biggest egg; and her mother had
little enough, too, never seeing her children without being reminded
of something which she wanted from the top left-hand drawer in
her bedroom; while Anne’s brothers and sisters had so little that
they always forced Anne to be the one who should go on these boring
errands. And so far as I have been able to discover, none of Anne’s
grandparents were particularly good-natured either, for old Mr. Bayes
had a barbed-wire fence all round his estate in west Surrey, near
Farnborough, and old Mrs. Bayes would not allow any fruit to be picked
except by the gardeners; while old Mr. Wilbraham, in consequence of
writing his Roman history all day long, insisted on perfect quietness,
so that whenever the children were at Great Malvern they had to play
only at those games with no noise in them, which are hardly worth
calling games at all; and as for old Mrs. Wilbraham, she was dead. It
looks, therefore, very much as if Anne either inherited her wonderful
and embarrassing good nature from a distant ancestor too far back to
be inquired into, or that it was a totally new kind, beginning with
herself. For she would do the most dreadful things--things to make the
hair of ordinarily good-natured people stand on end.

For instance, this is what she did once. She heard her mother complain
to a visitor one January afternoon that there were no flowers in the
garden at that time of year, and it made the view from the sitting-room
window very depressing. After lying awake most of the night thinking
how she might improve this view and make it more cheerful for her
mother’s eyes, Anne got up very early, while it was still dark, and
went to the conservatory, and chose from it by candlelight a number of
gay flowers, and these she carefully planted in the bed just in front
of her mother’s window. It was raining a little, and bitterly cold,
and Anne’s fingers became numb, and her feet like stones, and her nose
pink, but she went right through with it without faltering until the
bed was as gay as summer.

That was good nature, if you like, but no one seemed to think so. Mrs.
Bayes, when she looked out of the window, instead of being cheered,
screamed out “Oh!” and sent for her smelling salts, and then became
quite tearful over the ruin of her pet geraniums, freesias, carnations,
cyclamens, and genistas. Mr. Bayes was perfectly furious, and said so
several times in different ways, each more cutting than the last; while
Anne’s brothers and sisters thought it the greatest joke against Anne
possible.

“You didn’t really think they’d live, did you?” they asked her. “How
absolutely dotty!”

Directly after breakfast the gardener dug them all up again and put
them back in their hot-house pots. Anne was not punished for her folly
in any other way than by want of appreciation; but if anyone had seen
her crying by herself in her bedroom they might have thought that she
had been.

However, when Valentine’s Day came round, which was about three weeks
later, and all the little Bayeses found a parcel on their plates at
breakfast--their Aunt Margaret being one of those few eccentric persons
left who remember St. Valentine’s Day--Anne’s package was found to
be twice as good as any of the others, containing as it did not only
the ordinary present, but a gold bangle as well, with a little piece
of blue turquoise hanging from it (from Liberty’s probably), and this
inscription on a tiny label: “From St. Valentine to the little girl who
tried to make her mother’s garden bright in winter and was only laughed
at and chidden for her pains.”

So Anne really scored, you see; but, of course, it was a ridiculous
thing to do, wasn’t it? Just think of supposing that hot-house flowers
would grow out of doors in January! It shows how perfectly absurd
Anne’s good nature could be.

That is one case. Now I will tell you of another.

One day the whole Bayes family were going to London--they lived near
Leatherhead--for the day. They were going to Cousin Alice’s wedding in
the morning, and afterwards to the Hippodrome matinée. Marceline, it
is true, was not there any longer, but it was a wonderful programme,
Mr. Bayes said, and they were all immensely excited. Besides, they had
bunches of flowers to throw at the bride, rice having now gone out on
account of its being dangerous for the eyes and very smartful generally.

The train was full, but Mr. Bayes, by mentioning the fact overnight,
had had a third-class compartment guarded for him by a porter, and into
this they all climbed: Mr. Bayes, Mrs. Bayes, Arthur Lloyd Bayes,
Gerald Gilmer Bayes, Marion Lease Bayes, Meta Cleghorn Bayes, and Anne
Wilbraham Bayes. There were also two friends from Leatherhead who knew
Cousin Alice, making nine in all.

Anne sat next the window, on the platform side.

All went well until the train drew up at the next station, but there an
unfortunate thing happened. Scores of people were waiting to get in,
and they began to push round the third-class carriage doors. Several
came to the Bayeses’ compartment, but, seeing that it was all one
family in their best clothes, they had consideration and passed on.

Gradually every one found a seat, either in the thirds or the seconds,
and even the first--all except a poor shabby old woman in a shawl, with
a big basket, who tottered piteously up and down trying in vain to find
a place. Anne saw her pass and peer into their carriage with an anxious
and even tearful look, but Mr. Bayes frowned so forbiddingly that she
hurried on.

At this moment Anne’s terrible good nature overpowered her, and she
leaned out of the window and cried invitingly: “Come in here--quick!
There’s room for one.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Bayes; “it’s full.”

“Oh no,” said Anne--“look! It says, ‘To seat five persons on each
side,’ and we’re only nine altogether. Come in here,” she cried again
to the old woman.

“But she’s dirty,” said Mrs. Bayes; “she’ll spoil your frocks.”

“Very likely got something catching,” said Mr. Bayes.

“What a rotter you are, Anne!” said the others.

But meanwhile a porter had opened the door and pushed the old woman in.
Anne stood up to give her her place; the others moved to the other end;
and Mr. Bayes, who, after all, was a very good father and exceedingly
keen about health, let down the window with a bang and hid behind his
paper.

“I’m sure,” said the old woman to Anne, “I’m very much obliged to you,
missy.”

She got out at the next station, and as she did so she handed Anne a
little paper article from her basket, for she was a pedlar, and said
it was a present for her for being so good-natured; and so saying she
hobbled off, and Mr. Bayes blew hard through his lips, as if he had
come up from a long dive, and Mrs. Bayes made the children smell at her
salts.

When Anne looked at her present she found it was a halfpenny row of
pins, and this made every one laugh and quite happy again. Anne put
them in her pocket and laughed too, although how she could find it in
her heart to laugh, after ruining the railway journey like that by her
unfortunate trick of good nature, I can’t think.

The wedding was a great success until Cousin Alice, the bride--and a
very pretty bride too--was coming down the aisle on Captain Vernon’s
arm (and the Captain looked every inch a soldier, and had across his
forehead the nicest brown line, which he had brought back with him from
Egypt, where he had been on duty before he hurried home to marry Cousin
Alice); all went well until a silly boy, in his desire to cross the
church and get to the door first and begin to throw confetti, stepped
on Cousin Alice’s beautiful white satin train and tore a yard or two
nearly off.

She was as sweet about it as only Cousin Alice could be, but she
stopped and picked it up, and looked round imploringly for help. And
then happened that which I need hardly tell you, for you have guessed
it already. The only person that had any pins was Anne, who stepped out
of her pew and handed her little halfpenny row to Captain Vernon; and
there and then, several people helping, the beautiful white satin train
was made all right again, at least for the time being, and the bride
and bridegroom walked on, smiling to right and left, and ducked their
heads outside as the flowers and confetti rained on them, and got into
the brougham, and the coach-man cracked his whip with the white rosette
on it, and they were driven to Uncle Maurice’s house, where Cousin
Alice used to live, but where she would now live no more.

After a while the Bayes family, with many other guests, arrived there
too, to stay for a few minutes to see the presents and say good-bye to
the bride. It was a morning wedding, because they were going on a very
long journey.

When Anne came at last face to face with Cousin Alice and Captain
Vernon, Captain Vernon, who had suddenly become Cousin Phil, took out
of his pocket a piece of money, and, holding it tight in his hand, said
to Anne: “I owe you this.”

“Oh no,” said Anne, “you don’t. How could you?”

“How could I?” said Cousin Phil. “Why, I bought a row of pins from you
this morning.”

“Oh no!” said Anne again. “I was very glad to have them for Cousin
Alice to use.”

“You may say what you like, Anne,” said Cousin Phil, “but I consider
that you sold them to me, and I intend to pay for them; and here you
are, and you shall give me a receipt for it.” And so saying, he stooped
down, and Anne kissed him, and he kissed Anne; and then Cousin Alice
kissed Anne and Anne kissed Cousin Alice; and then other people pressed
forward and Anne walked away. And when she looked at the piece of money
in her hand it was a sovereign.

All’s well that ends well, says Shakespeare, but of course it was very
unwise and very unnecessary of Anne to have leaned out of the window
of that nice clean family compartment and invited into it a dirty old
pedlar woman, even if she was very infirm and unhappy and there was no
room anywhere else. We must, as Mr. Bayes remarked on the way home--his
words not very clear by reason of his eating all the time one of the
chocolate creams which Anne had bought with part of her sovereign for
the family at the Hippodrome. “We must,” said Mr. Bayes--and the others
all agreed with him--“we must, dear Anne, be a little careful how we
exercise even so amiable a quality as kindness of heart. I am very glad
to see you always so ready to be nice and helpful to others, but your
brain has been given you to a large extent to control your impulses.
Never forget that.”

Here Mr. Bayes took another chocolate, and very soon afterwards their
station was reached.

But did Anne profit by her father’s excellent advice? We shall soon
see, for now I come to the worst adventure into which her terrible good
nature has ever led her.

You must know that the Bayeses were not rich, although they had rich
relations and really never wanted for anything. But they lived on as
little as possible, and on two or three mornings every week Mr. Bayes,
after reading his letters, would remark that all his investments were
going wrong and they would soon be in the workhouse. That was, of
course, only his way; but they could not have many treats, or many
visitors, and it caused them to look with very longing eyes on the
young Calderons, the children of the gentleman that had taken the Hall,
the great house near by, for August and September, who used to gallop
by on their ponies, and play golf and cricket in their park, and who
never seemed to want for anything.

To know the Calderon family was the Bayeses’ great desire, but their
mother explained that it would not be right to call on strangers
staying for so short a time, and nothing therefore could be done: which
was particularly trying because, owing to the absence of something
called dividends, the visit to Sea View, said Mr. Bayes, was this year
an impossibility.

Such was the state of affairs on the morning of August 21, when Anne
was working in her garden just under the wall which separated Mr.
Bayes’s property from the high road. She was steadily pulling up weeds
after the rain, and thinking how nice the sun made the earth smell,
when she heard the beating of hoofs, and the scrunching of wheels on
the road, and a murmur of happy voices young and old. And then she
heard a man’s voice call out “Stop!” and the horses were pulled up.

“What is it, father?” she heard a girl’s voice say.

And then the man’s voice replied, “We shall have to go back. I’ve just
remembered that no cups and saucers were put in.”

“Oh no, don’t let’s go back,” said one child’s voice after another.
“It’s so hot, and it doesn’t really matter. We can drink out of the
glasses.”

“No,” said the father’s voice again, “we must go back. You forget that
the Richardsons are going to meet us there, and they will want tea and
want it properly served. We must have at least six cups and saucers.
Turn round, John!”

[Illustration: “PLEASE DON’T TROUBLE TO GO BACK. I’LL LEND YOU THE CUPS
AND SAUCERS.”]

By this time, Anne, who had been struggling to set a ladder against the
wall, had got it to stand still and climbed to the top, and just as
John began to turn the horses of the carriage she called out:

“Please don’t trouble to go back. I’ll lend you the cups and saucers. I
won’t be gone a minute”; and before anyone could reply she was down the
ladder and running to the house.

Perhaps if she had not been in such a hurry, and had not been so
genuinely troubled to think of the picnic party spoiling their pleasure
by going back to the Hall (a horrid thing to do, as Anne remembered,
after leaving it so gaily), she would have asked herself several
questions--such as, “What right have I to offer to lend strangers
cups and saucers belonging to my parents?” and “Is my head properly
controlling my impulse?” and so forth. But Anne had no time for
inquiries like that: all she could think of was getting the cups and
saucers as soon as possible, and returning with them so as to save
those nice picnic people from having to go back again.

Just before she reached the house, however, she remembered that old
Martha, the cook, was in a very bad temper that morning, and would
certainly refuse to give them up; but Anne also remembered at the same
instant that there was in the drawing-room a cabinet full of cups and
saucers, which no one ever used, but which now and then a visitor took
out and examined underneath, and she decided to take six of these
instead--so hastily seizing a basket from a hook in the hall she took
what she wanted from the cabinet and ran back panting to the gate
leading to the road.

To her immense delight the carriage was still standing there, and she
hastened to hand the basket to the gentleman who was waiting in the
road to receive it.

“Well, you are a little brick,” he said, “and how hot it has made you.”

Anne gasped out something in reply, but not at all comfortably, because
for one thing she was out of breath, and for another the children in
the carriage were all looking at her very hard. But at this moment the
gentleman, who had been examining the basket, gave a low whistle and
then called to one of the ladies to come and speak to him. She got out
of the carriage and walked a little way apart with the gentleman, who
showed her something in the basket and talked very earnestly. Then all
of a sudden he called to the children to get out and play for a little
while until he and their mother came back, and taking Anne’s hand he
asked her if she would lead him and his wife to her mother, as he had
something to say to her, and they all three went off through the gate
to the house.

The gentleman talked gaily as they went, and the lady held Anne’s other
hand very softly, and so they came to Mr. Bayes’s study, where he
was writing, Mrs. Bayes and the other children being in Leatherhead
shopping. The gentleman and Mr. Bayes then talked together, while Anne
led the lady about the garden until she was suddenly sent for to change
her clothes--why, you shall hear.

What happened at the interview between Mr. Bayes and the gentleman can
best be told by repeating the conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bayes
and the children at lunch.

“But where’s Anne?” said Mrs. Bayes, as the servant removed the cover
from the joint.

“Anne,” said Mr. Bayes, “Anne? Oh, yes, Anne has gone for a picnic.”

“For a picnic!” cried the whole family.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bayes, “for a picnic with the people staying at the
Hall.”

Mrs. Bayes sat back with a gasp, and the children’s mouths opened so
wide you could have posted letters in them.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bayes. “She was working in her garden when she heard
Mr. Calderon order the driver to go back because cups and saucers had
been forgotten. He is a very nice fellow, by the way. I find we were
at Oxford together, although I did not know him there, but he has
been intimate with Charley for years. It is the same Calderon, the
architect, that built your uncle’s house at Chichester.”

“Do go on, father,” said the children.

“Well,” said Mr. Bayes, “what does that little duffing Anne do but sing
out that they were not to go back, but wait a minute, and she would
lend them the cups and saucers.”

“Yes, yes, go on!”

“Well, and fearing that Martha--very properly--wouldn’t let her have
any for the party, what does she do but take six of the very best of my
Crown Derby from the cabinet in the drawing-room and scamper back with
them!”

“My love,” said Mrs. Bayes, “the Crown Derby that Uncle Mortimer left
us?”

“Yes, the Crown Derby, valued only a month ago at two guineas apiece.
Off she runs with it in a basket and hands it over to Mr. or Mrs.
Calderon. Mrs. Calderon, by the way, I like. She wants you to call. I
said you’d go to-morrow.”

“Do go on, father!”

“Well, where was I? Oh yes. The Calderons no sooner saw the china
than they realized what had happened, and brought it back to me. By a
miracle there wasn’t a chip on it. Of course, I said I was very much
obliged to them, and I offered some ordinary crockery, but Calderon
said they would take it only on condition that Anne accompanied it in
the capacity of caretaker and brought it back. So she went.”

“I hope she changed her frock,” said Mrs. Bayes.

“I believe she did,” said Mr. Bayes. “They’ve gone to Chidley Woods,
where the Richardsons will meet them, and they won’t be back till six.
Now perhaps I may get on with my lunch.”

* * * * *

By the following Saturday evening, I may add, the Bayes children and
the Calderon children were very friendly, and Arthur Lloyd Bayes had
fallen off Harold Armiger Calderon’s pony twice.

THE THOUSAND THREEPENNY BITS

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Alison Muirhead, and
she had a doll named Rosamund and a dog named Thomson. The dog was an
Aberdeen terrier, and he came from Aberdeen by train in the care of
the guard, and he rarely did what he was told, which is the way of
Aberdeens, as you have perhaps discovered.

Alison used to take her doll and Thomson every day into Kensington
Gardens, and when they were well inside the Gardens, opposite the
tulips and the new statue of William III., she used to unclasp the
catch of Thomson’s lead and let him run, doing her best to keep an eye
on him. This was not easy, for Thomson was a sociable dog, and he
rushed after every other dog he saw, and either told them the latest
dog joke or heard it, and Alison was often in despair to get him back.

If, however, Thomson had been an angel of a dog this story would never
have been written, because it was wholly owing to his naughtiness that
Alison and the Old Gentleman met.

The Old Gentleman used also to go into the Gardens on every fine day
and sit on one of the seats by the may-trees between the long bulb walk
and the Round Pond, with his back to the Albert Memorial. Not that he
was one of those persons who always click their tongues when the Albert
Memorial is mentioned, for, as a matter of fact, he did not mind the
gold on it at all, and he really liked the groups of Asia and Europe
and India at the corners, with the nice friendly elephant and camel in
them; but he turned his back on the Memorial because the seat was set
that way, and he liked also, when he raised his eyes from his book,
to see so much green grass, and in the distance the yachtsmen running
round the Round Pond to prevent their vessels wrecking themselves on
the cement.

Alison had noticed the Old Gentleman for a long time before they had
become acquainted, and he had noticed her, and was much attracted by
her quiet little ways with Rosamund, and her calm, if despairing,
pursuit of Thomson; and he liked her, too, for never playing diabolo.

But it was not until one day that Thomson broke loose at the very gate
of the Gardens with his lead still on him, and in course of time ran
right under the Old Gentleman’s legs and caught the chain in one of the
eyelet flaps of his laced boots, that Alison and he came to speak.

“Ha, ha!” said the Old Gentleman to Thomson, “I’ve got you now. And I
shall hold you tight till your mistress comes.”

Alison was still a long way off. Thomson said nothing, but tugged at
the chain.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time, Mr. Thomson,” said the Old
Gentleman, “and I have come to the conclusion that you are a bad dog.
You don’t care for anyone. You do what you want to do and nothing
else.” Thomson lay down and put out a yard and a half of pink tongue.
Alison came nearer.

“If you were my dog,” the Old Gentleman continued, “do you know what I
should do? I should thrash you.” Thomson began to snore.

Alison at this point came up, and Thomson sprang to his feet and
affected to be pleased to see her.

“Thank you ever so much,” Alison said to the Old Gentleman. “But
however did you catch him?”

“I didn’t catch him,” said the Old Gentleman, “he caught me. Come and
sit down and rest yourself.”

So Alison sat down, and Thomson laid his wicked cheek against her boot,
and that was the beginning of the acquaintance.

The next day when she went into the Gardens Alison looked for the Old
Gentleman, and sure enough there he was, and seeing there was no one
beside him, she sat down there again. And for a little while on every
fine day she sat with him and they talked of various things. He was
very interesting: he knew a great deal about birds and flowers and
foreign countries. He had not only lived in China, but had explored
the Amazon. On his watch chain was a blue stone which an Indian
snake-charmer had given him. But he lived now in the big hotel at the
corner of the Gardens and all his wanderings were over.

The funniest thing about him was his name. Alison did not learn what it
was for a long time, but one day as she was calling “Thomson! Thomson!”
very loudly as they sat there, the Old Gentleman said, “When you do
that it makes me nervous.”

“Why?” Alison asked.

“Because,” the Old Gentleman said, “my name’s Thomson too.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Alison said, “I must call Thomson--I mean my
dog--something else. I can’t ever call him Thomson again.”

“Why not?” said the Old Gentleman. “It doesn’t matter at all. I can’t
expect to be the only Thomson in the world.”

“Oh yes,” said Alison, “I shall.”

The next day the first thing she did when she saw the Old Gentleman
was to tell him she had changed Thom--the dog’s name. “In future,” she
said, “he is to be called Jimmie.”

The Old Gentleman laughed. “That’s my name too,” he said.

One day the Old Gentleman was not in his accustomed place; and it was
a very fine day too. Alison was disappointed, and even Thomson, I mean
Jimmie, I mean the Aberdeen terrier, seemed to miss something.

And the next day he was not there.

And the next.

And then came Sunday, when Alison went to church, and afterwards for a
rather dull walk with her father, strictly on the paths, past “Physical
Energy” to the Serpentine, to look at the peacocks, and then back again
by the Albert Memorial, and so home. Monday and Tuesday were both wet,
and on Wednesday it was a whole week since Alison had seen the Old
Gentleman; but to her grief he was again absent.

And so, having her mother’s permission, the next day she called at the
hotel. She had the greatest difficulty in getting in because it was the
first time that either she or her dog had ever been through a revolving
door; but at last they came safely into the hall into the presence of a
tall porter in a uniform of splendour.

“Can you tell me if Mr. James Thomson is still staying here?” Alison
asked.

“I am sorry to say, Missie,” replied the porter, “that Mr. Thomson died
last week.”

Poor Alison....

III

One morning, some few weeks afterwards, Alison found on her plate a
letter addressed to herself in a strange handwriting. After wondering
about it for some moments, she opened it. The letter ran thus:

“_Re Mr. James Thomson, deceased._

“TO MISS ALISON MUIRHEAD.
“DEAR MADAM,

“We beg to inform you that, in accordance with the last will and
testament of our client, the late Mr. James Thomson, there lies at
our office a packet containing a thousand threepenny bits, being
a legacy which he devised to yourself, free of duty, in a codicil
added a few days before his death. We should state that, by the terms
of the bequest, it was our client’s wish that five hundred of the
threepenny bits should be spent by you for others within a year of
its receipt, and not put away against a maturer age; the remaining
five hundred he wished to be spent by yourself, for yourself, and for
yourself alone, also within the year. The parcel is at your service
whenever it is convenient to you to call for it.

“We are, dear madam,
“Yours faithfully,
“LEE, LEE AND LEE.”

Alison was too bewildered to take it all in on the first reading, and
her father therefore read it again and explained some of the words,
which perhaps your father will do for you.

But if Alison was bewildered, it was nothing to her mother’s state,
which was one of amazement and pride too.

“To think of it!” she cried.

“Well, I never heard of such a thing in my life!” she said.

“It’s like something in a book or a play!” she exclaimed.

“A thousand threepenny bits! Why, that’s--let me see--yes, it’s--why,
it’s twelve pounds ten,” she remarked.

As for Mr. Muirhead, he was pleased too; but him it seemed to amuse
more than surprise.

“After your lessons this morning,” he said, “instead of going for a
walk you can come into the city to me, and we’ll go to the lawyers’
together, and then have lunch at Birch’s.”

When they reached the lawyers’ office Alison and her father were
shown into a large room with three grave gentlemen in it, whom Alison
supposed were Lee, Lee and Lee; and all the time that her father was
talking to them she wondered which was _the_ Lee, and which was the
second Lee, and which was “and Lee.” Then she had to sign a paper,
and then one of the Lees gave her a canvas bag containing a thousand
threepenny bits.

“Of course you would like to count them,” he said; and Alison replied,
“Yes,” at which every one laughed, because Mr. Lee had meant it for a
joke and Alison had taken it seriously. But how could she expect that
Mr. Thomson’s lawyer, or, indeed, any lawyer of a dead friend, would
make a joke?

“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Lee, when they had done laughing “that you would
be very tired of the job before you were half-way through it. Count
them when you get home, and if there is any mistake we will put it
right; but one of our most careful clerks has already gone through them
very thoroughly.”

Then they all shook hands, and each of the three Lees said something
playful.

The one that Alison guessed was Lee said, “Don’t be extravagant and buy
the moon.”

The one that Alison guessed was the second Lee said, “If at any time
you get tired of so much money, we shall be pleased to have it again.”

While “and Lee” looked very solemn and said, “Now you can go to church
a thousand times.”

Then they all laughed again, and Alison and her father were shown out
into the street by a little sharp boy, whose eyes were fixed so keenly
on the canvas bag that Alison was quite certain that he was the most
careful clerk who had done the counting.

After they had been to lunch at Birch’s, where they had mock turtle
soup and oyster patties, they went home, and Alison poured all the
threepenny bits into a depression in a cushion from the sofa, and
counted them into a hundred piles of ten each. Then she got a wooden
writing-desk, which had been given her by her grandmother, and emptied
out all the treasures it contained, and put fifty of the little heaps
into the large part of the writing-case, and the remaining fifty little
heaps into the compartment for pens and sealing-wax, and locked it up
again.

For the next few days Alison collected advice about the spending of her
money from every one she knew. All her friends were asked to give their
opinions, and thus gradually she decided upon the best way to spend the
five hundred threepenny bits which were for others.

Her first thought was naturally for her mother, who was an invalid.
Mrs. Muirhead was very fond of flowers, and so Alison went at once
to see the old flower-woman who sits outside Kensington High Street
Station, and who was so cross with the Suffragettes in self-denial week
for interfering with her “pitch,” as she called it; and Alison arranged
with her for a threepenny bunch of whatever was in season to be taken
to her mother twice every week, on Saturdays and Wednesdays, for a
year, and, to the old woman’s intense astonishment, she gave her one
hundred and four of her threepenny bits.

Her uncle Mordaunt advised her to take in a weekly illustrated
paper--say the _Sphere_--and, after she had looked at it herself, to
send it to one of the lighthouses, where the men are very lonely and
unentertained. Alison thought this was a very good idea. The _Sphere_
cost two threepences a week, and postage a halfpenny, or one hundred
and twelve threepences--altogether one pound eight shillings.

Alison had now spent two hundred and sixteen threepenny bits, and,
having arranged these two things, she decided to wait till Christmas
came nearer (it was now July) before she spent any more large sums,
always, however, keeping a few threepenny bits handy in her purse in
case of meeting any particularly hard case, such as a very blind man,
or a begging mother with a dreadfully cold little baby, or a Punch
and Judy man with a really nice face, or a little boy who had fallen
down and hurt himself badly, or an old woman who ought to be riding in
a ’bus. In this way she got rid of fifty of her little coins before
Christmas came near enough for her once more to think of little else
but threepenny plans.

It was then that she found Tommy Cathcart so useful. Tommy Cathcart was
one of her father’s articled pupils, and it was he who reminded Alison
of the claims of sandwichmen. Sandwichmen have an awfully bad time,
Tommy explained to her. It is almost the last thing men do. No one
carries sandwich-boards until he has failed in every other way.

[Illustration: THESE TOMMY CATHCART AND SHE SLIPPED INTO THE HANDS OF
THE SANDWICH-MEN.]

After talking it over very seriously, they went together to a
tobacconist near the Strand, who undertook to make up thirty little
packets for threepence each, containing a clay pipe and tobacco, and
these Tommy Cathcart and she slipped into the hands of the sandwichmen
as they drifted by in Regent Street, in the Strand, and in Oxford
Street, while the rest were given to a little group of the men who were
resting, with their sandwich-boards leaned against the wall, in a court
near Shaftesbury Avenue.

“Don’t you think,” Alison said, “that those who carry a notice over the
head as well ought to have more?”

But Tommy Cathcart thought not.

That exhausted seven-and-sixpence.

Another thing that Alison and Tommy Cathcart did was to knock at the
door of the cabmen’s shelter opposite De Vere Gardens, and ask if she
might present a few puddings for Christmas Day. The man said she might,
and that used up seven-and-sixpence--three puddings at half a crown,
thirty threepences.

The other people to whom Alison sent Christmas presents with Mr.
Thomson’s money were the children of the boatmen who had taken out her
and her father and her cousins, Harry and Francis Frend, in the Isle
of Wight last year. These boatmen were two brothers named Fagg--Jack
and Willy Fagg--and their boat was the _Seamew_. Jack had four children
and Willy six, and Alison used to go and see them now and then. After
much consideration she sent four threepenny bits to each of these
children, a shilling pipe, with real silver on it, to Jack and Willy,
and a pound of two-shilling tea to Mrs. Jack and Mrs. Willy. That made
sixteen shillings, or sixty-four threepenny bits.

Just then Alison had an unexpected piece of luck, for as she was
passing a shop in Westbourne Grove she saw a window full of mittens
at threepence a pair, sale price. Now, mittens are just the thing for
cabmen in winter--cabmen and crossing-sweepers and errand-boys. So
Alison bought thirty pairs, or seven-and-sixpence worth, and she gave a
pair to each of the boys that called regularly--the butcher’s boy, and
the baker’s boy, and the grocer’s boy, and a pair to the milkman, and
a pair to the crossing-sweeper, and the rest were put in the hall for
cabmen who brought her father home or took him out.

And then, just as they were getting rather in despair, one afternoon
Tommy Cathcart came home with a brilliant idea.

“Smith,” he said, “is the commonest name in England. In every workhouse
in England,” he said, “there must be one Smith at least. Why not,” he
said, “get, say, sixty picture postcards and send them addressed to
Mrs. Smith or Mr. Smith, or plain Smith, to sixty workhouses? We can
get,” he said, “the names from ‘Bradshaw.’ A person in a workhouse will
be awfully excited to get a Christmas card, and if,” he said, “there
happens to be no Smith, some one else will have it.”

Alison liked the idea very much, and so they went off to a shop in the
Strand absolutely full of picture postcards and bought sixty at a
penny each. They had some little difficulty in choosing, because Tommy
Cathcart wanted a certain number to be photographs of Pauline Chase
and other pretty people, but Alison said that views of London would
be better, since most persons knew London, and the card would remind
them of old times. As it was, so to speak, her money, Alison got her
own way. Then they bought sixty halfpenny stamps, and returned home
to find the towns in “Bradshaw” and send them off. That all came to
seven-and-six, or thirty threepenny bits.

Then Alison had a very brilliant inspiration--to give Jimmie a
beautiful silver collar all for himself, with the words “In memory
of James Thomson” on it, as a Christmas present. Dogs have so few
presents, and Jimmie really was very good, except when he lost his head
in the Gardens, which indeed, to be truthful, he always did. So he had
his collar on Christmas morning, and it cost exactly twelve-and-six
altogether, or fifty threepenny bits.

So much for the first five hundred.

Alison had then to lay out the second five hundred, or £6 5s., on
herself and herself alone. This was easier. She and her father spent
three afternoons among the old furniture shops of Kensington and the
Brompton Road, and at last came upon the very thing they were looking
for in the back room of a shop close to the Oratory, kept by an elderly
Jewish lady with a perfectly gigantic nose and rings on every finger.

This was an old bureau writing-desk, with drawers, and a flap to pull
down to write on, and lots of pigeon-holes, and a very strong lock.
Also a secret drawer. After some bargaining Mr. Muirhead got it for
six pounds, which left five shillings for writing paper and sealing-wax
and blotting-paper and nibs.

And that was an end of the thousand threepenny bits, as the
balance-sheet on the opposite page shows.

At least, not quite the end, as I will tell you. The face of the old
Jewess, when the time came to pay for the bureau and Alison took
forty-eight little packets of ten threepenny bits each out of her bag
and laid them on the table, was a picture of perplexity and amusement.

“Well, ma tear, what’s that?” she asked.

“Four hundred and eighty threepenny bits--six pounds,” said Alison.

“But, ma tear, what will I do with all the little money?”

“It’s all I’ve got,” said Alison.

“You see,” said Mr. Muirhead--and then he told the old lady with the
big nose the story.

STATEMENT OF ACCOUNTS

FIRST ACCOUNT--FOR OTHER PEOPLE.

Threepences. £ s. d.
A year’s flowers for mother, twice a week,
at 3d. a bunch 104 1 6 0
The _Sphere_ for a year 104 1 6 0
Postage of same to a lighthouse 8 0 2 0
Odd threepenny bits given to unhappy
people in the streets, etc. 50 0 12 6
Tobacco and pipes to thirty sandwichmen,
at 3d. each 30 0 7 6
Three Christmas puddings for the cabmen’s
shelter near De Vere Gardens, at 2s. 6d. 30 0 7 6
Ten Fagg children, at 1s. each 40 0 10 0
Two pipes for Jack and Willy Fagg, at 1s. 8 0 2 0
Two pounds tea for Mrs. Jack and Mrs.
Willy, at 2s. 16 0 4 0
Mittens for cabmen, etc. 30 0 7 6
Sixty picture postcards for the Smith family
at 1d., and postage at ½d. 30 0 7 6
Silver collar for Jimmie, with engraving 50 0 12 6
---- ----------
500 £6 5 0

SECOND ACCOUNT--FOR ALISON MUIRHEAD HERSELF.

Threepences. £ s. d.
Old Bureau 480 6 0 0
Writing paper, etc. 20 0 5 0
---- ----------
500 6 5 0
First account total 500 6 5 0
---- ----------
Grand total 1000 £12 10 0
==== ============
Audited and found correct,
(_Signed_) THOMAS W. CATHCART.

And what do you think she did? “Well, ma tear,” she said, “I can’t let
you go away without something left, in case you met a poor beggar in
the street. You must take back one of those little packets to go on
with, as a present from me;” and she picked up one and placed it in
Alison’s hand, and Alison took it gladly.

And that was the beginning of a new Threepenny Trust, for Mr. Cathcart
also contributed a little heap, and Mr. Muirhead henceforward made a
point of saving every threepenny bit that he received in change (and
I believe that sometimes he asked specially for them when he went to
his bank) and bringing them home for Alison’s fund; and Uncle Mordaunt
must have done the same, for the last time he came to dinner he said to
Alison, “I wish you’d get rid of this rubbish for me,” and handed her
seventeen of the little coins.

So you see that there is every chance of Mr. James Thomson’s kind
scheme going on for a long time yet; but, in so far as his own thousand
threepenny bits are concerned, the story is done.

RODERICK’S PROS.

Once upon a time there was a little boy of ten, who bowled out C. B.
Fry. This little boy’s name was Roderick Bulstrode (or Bulstrode is
the name that we will give him here), and he lived in St. John’s Wood,
in one of the houses whose gardens join Lord’s. His father played for
the M.C.C. a good deal, and practised in the nets almost every day, to
the bowling of various professionals, or pros., as they are called for
short, but chiefly to that of Tom Stick; and in the summer Roderick was
more often at Lord’s than not.

How it came about that Roderick bowled C. B. Fry was this way.
Middlesex were playing Sussex, and Mr. Fry went to the nets early
to practise, and Roderick’s father bowled to him and let Roderick
have the ball now and then. And whether it was that Mr. Fry was not
thinking, or was looking another way, or was simply very good-natured,
I don’t know, but one of Roderick’s sneaks got under his bat and hit
the stumps. (They were not sneaks, you must understand, because he
wanted to bowl sneaks, but because he was not big enough to bowl any
other way for 22 yards. He was only ten.) Roderick thus did that day
what no one else could do, for Mr. Fry went in and made 143 not out, in
spite of all the efforts of Albert Trott and Tarrant and J. T. Hearne.

Roderick’s bedroom walls had been covered with portraits of cricketers
for years, but after he bowled out C. B. Fry he took away a lot of them
and made an open space with the last picture postcard of Mr. Fry right
in the middle of it, and underneath, on the mantelpiece, he put the
ball he had bowled him with, which his father gave him, under a glass
shade. And other little St. John’s Wood boys, friends of Roderick’s
from the Abbey Road, and Hamilton Terrace, and Loudoun Road, and that
very attractive red-brick village with a green of its own just off the
Avenue Road, used to come and see it, and stand in front of it and hold
their breath, rather like little girls looking at a new baby.

Roderick also had a “Cricketers’ Birthday Book,” so that when he came
down to breakfast he used to say, “Tyldesley’s thirty-five to-day,”
“Hutchings is twenty-four,” and so on. And he knew the initials of
every first-class amateur and the Christian name of every pro.

That was not Roderick’s only cricketing triumph. It is true that he
had never succeeded in bowling out any other really swell batsman,
but he had shaken hands with Sammy Woods and J. R. Mason, and one day
Lord Hawke took him by both shoulders and lifted him to one side,
saying: “Now then, Tommy, out of the way.” But these were only chance
acquaintances. His real cricketing friend was Tom Stick, the ground
bowler.

Tom Stick came from Devonshire, which is a county without a first-class
eleven that plays the M.C.C. in August, and he lived in a little
street off Lisson Grove, where he kept a bird-fancier’s shop. For
most professional cricketers, you know, are something else as well,
or they would not be able to live in the winter. Many of them make
cricket-bats, many keep inns, many are gardeners. I know one who is a
picture-framer, and another an organist, while George Hirst, who is the
greatest of them all, makes toffee. Well, Tom Stick was a bird-fancier,
with a partner named Dick Crawley, who used to mind the shop when Tom
had to be at Lord’s bowling to gentlemen, Roderick’s father among them,
or playing against Haileybury or Rugby or wherever he was sent to do
all the hard work and go in last.

Roderick’s father was very fond of Tom and was quite happy to know
that Roderick was with him, so that Roderick not only used to join
Tom at Lord’s, but also at the shop off Lisson Grove, where he often
helped in cleaning out the cages and feeding the birds and teaching the
bullfinches to whistle, and was very good friends also with certain
puppies and rabbits. His own dog, a fox-terrier named “Sinhji,” had
come from Tom.

Tom used to bowl to Roderick in the mornings before the gentlemen
arrived for their practice, and he taught him to hold his bat straight
and not slope it, and to keep his feet still and not draw them away
when the ball was coming (which are the two most important things
in batting), and it was he who stopped Roderick from carrying an
autograph-book about and worrying the cricketers for their signatures.
In fact, Tom was a kind of nurse to Roderick, and they were so much
together that, whereas Tom was known to Roderick’s small friends as
“Roddy’s Pro,” Roderick was known to Tom’s friends as “Sticky’s Shadow.”

Now it happened that last summer Roderick’s father had been making a
great many runs for the M.C.C. in one of their tours. (Roderick did not
see him, for he had to stay at home and do his lessons; but his father
sent him a telegram after each innings.) Mr. Bulstrode (as we are
calling him) batted so well, indeed, that when he returned to London
he was asked to play for Middlesex against Yorkshire on the following
Monday, to take the place of one of the regular eleven who was ill; and
you may be sure he said yes, for, although he was now thirty-two, this
was the first time he had ever been asked to play for his county.

Roderick, you may be equally sure, was also pleased; and when his
father suddenly said to him, “Would you like to come with me?” his
excitement was almost too great to bear.

“And Tom too?” he asked, after a minute or so.

“Yes, Tom’s going,” said his father. “He’s going to field if anyone is
hurt or has to leave early. But if he’s not wanted he will look after
you.”

“Hurray!” said Roderick. “I know what I shall do. I shall score every
run and keep the bowling analysis too.”

The train left St. Pancras on the Sunday afternoon, and that in itself
was an excitement, for Roderick had never travelled on Sunday before;
but before that had come the rapture of packing his bag, which on
this occasion was not an ordinary one, but an old cricket-bag of his
father’s, which he begged for, in which were not only his sponge and
collars and other necessary things, but his flannels and his bat and
pads.

This bag he insisted upon carrying himself all along the platform, and,
as several of the Middlesex team were also on their way to the train at
the same moment, the presence of so small a cricketer in their midst
made a great sensation among the porters.

“My word!” said one, “Yorkshire will have to look out this time.”

“Who’s the giant,” asked another, “walking just behind Albert Trott? I
shouldn’t like to be in when he bowled his fastest.”

But Roderick was unconscious of any laughter. He was the proudest
boy in London, although his arm, it is true, was beginning to ache
horribly. But when, as he was climbing into the carriage, the guard
lifted him up and called him “Prince Run-get-simply,” he joined in the
fun.

[Illustration: THE PRESENCE OF SO SMALL A CRICKETER MADE A GREAT
SENSATION AMONG THE PORTERS.]

It was a deliriously happy journey, for all the cricketers were very
nice to him, and Mr. Warner talked about Australia, and Mr. Bosanquet
showed him how he held the ball to make it break from the leg when the
batsman thought it was going to break from the off, and at Nottingham
Mr. Douglas bought him a bun and a banana. They got to Sheffield just
before eight, and Roderick went to bed very soon after, in a little bed
in his father’s room in the hotel.

The first thing Roderick did the next morning was to buy a scoring-book
and a pencil, and then he and his father explored Sheffield a little
before it was time to go to the ground at Bramall Lane and get some
practice.

The people clustered all round and in front of the nets and watched the
batsmen, and now and then they were nearly killed, as always happens
before a match. They pointed out the cricketers to each other.

“There’s Warner,” they said. “That’s Bosanquet--the tall one.” “Where’s
Trott? Why, there, bowling at Warner. Good old Alberto!” and so on.

“Who’s the man in the end net?” Roderick heard some one ask.

“I don’t know. One of Middlesex’s many new men, I suppose,” said the
other.

“But he can hit a bit, can’t he?” the first man said, as Roderick’s
father stepped out to a ball and banged it half-way across the ground.

Roderick was very proud, and he felt that the time had come to make his
father known. “That’s Bulstrode,” he said.

“Oh, that’s Bulstrode, is it?” said the second man. “I’ve heard of him.
He makes lots of runs on the M.C.C. tours. But I guess Georgy’ll get
him.”

“Who is Georgy?” asked Roderick.

“Georgy--why, where do you come from? Fancy being in Sheffield and
asking who Georgy is. Georgy is Georgy Hirst, of course.”

Roderick walked back to the pavilion with his father very proudly.
“You’ll have to be very careful how you play Hirst,” he said.

“I shall,” said his father; “but why?”

“Because the men were saying he’s going to get you.” Mr. Bulstrode
laughed; but he thought it very likely too.

I’m not going to tell you all about the match, for it lasted three
days, and was very much like other matches. Roderick had a corner seat
in the pavilion, where he could see everything, and for the first day
he scored every run and kept the analysis right through. This included
his father’s innings, which lasted, alas! far too short a time, for,
after making four good hits to the boundary, he was caught close in at
what was called silly mid-on off--what bowler do you think?--George
Hirst.

But the next day Roderick gave up work, because he wanted to see more
of Tom, and Tom made room for him in the professionals’ box while
Yorkshire were in, and he saw all the wonderful men--quite close
too--Tunnicliffe and Denton and Hirst--and even talked with them. Hirst
sat right in front of the box, with his brown sunburned arms on the
ledge, and his square, jolly, sunburned face on his arms, and said
funny things about the play in broad Yorkshire; and now and then he
would say something to Roderick. And then suddenly down went a wicket,
and Hirst got up to go in.

“Give me a wish for luck,” he said to Roddy.

“I wish my father may catch you out,” said Roddy; “but not until,” he
added, “you have made a lot of runs.”

“If he does,” said Hirst, “I’ll give thee some practice to-morrow
morning.”

Poor Roddy, this was almost too much. It is bad enough to watch your
favourites batting at any time, for every ball may be the last; but
it is terrible when you equally want two people to bring something
off--for Roddy wanted Hirst (whom he now adored) to make a good
innings, and, at the same time, he wanted his father to catch Hirst out.

Hirst was not out when it was time for lunch, and so Roderick was able
to tell his father all about it.

“What’s this, Hirst?” said Mr. Bulstrode, when the teams were being
photographed. “Give me a chance, and let me see if I can hold it.”

Hirst laughed, and when he laughs it is like a sunset in fine weather.
“I have a spy round to see where thee’re standing every over,” he said,
“and that’s where I’ll never knock it.”

“But what about my boy’s practice?” Mr. Bulstrode replied.

“Ah, we’ll see about that,” said the Yorkshireman.

But, as a matter of fact, Roderick got his practice according to the
bargain, for, as it happened, it was Mr. Bulstrode who caught Hirst, at
third man.

I need hardly tell you that Roderick dreamed that night. His sleep was
full of Hirsts, all jolly and all hitting catches which his father
buttered. But in the morning, when he knew how true his luck was, he
was almost too happy. Hirst was as good as his word, and they practised
in the nets together for nearly half an hour, and Roderick nearly
bowled him twice.

In Middlesex’s next innings Roderick’s father made thirty-five, all
of which Roderick scored with the greatest care; but the match could
not be finished owing to a very heavy shower, and so this innings did
not matter very much one way or the other, except that it made Mr.
Bulstrode’s place safe for another match.

Of that match I am not going to tell; but I have perhaps said enough
to show you how exceedingly delightful it must be to have a father who
plays for his county.

THE MONKEY’S REVENGE

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Clara Amabel Platts.
She lived in Kensington, near the Gardens, and every day when it was
fine she walked with Miss Hobbs round the Round Pond. Miss Hobbs was
her governess. When it was wet she read a book, or as much of a book
as she could, being still rather weak in the matter of long words.
When she did not read she made wool-work articles for her aunts, and
now and then something for her mother’s birthday present or Christmas
present, which was supposed to be a secret, but which her mother,
however hard she tried not to look, always knew all about. But this
did not prevent her mother, who was a very nice lady, from being
extraordinarily surprised when the present was given to her. (That word
“extraordinarily,” by the way, is one of the words which Clara would
have had to pass over if she were reading this story to herself; but
you, of course, are cleverer.)

It was generally admitted by Mrs. Platts, and also by Miss Hobbs and
Kate Woodley the nurse, that Clara was a very good girl; but she had
one fault which troubled them all, and that was too much readiness
in saying what came into her mind. Mrs. Platts tried to check her
by making her count five before she made any comment on what was
happening, so that she could be sure that she really ought to say it;
and Kate Woodley used often to click her tongue when Clara was rattling
on; but Miss Hobbs had another and more serious remedy. She used to
tell Clara to ask herself three questions before she made any of her
quick little remarks. These were the questions: (1) “Is it kind?” (2)
“Is it true?” (3) “Is it necessary?” If the answer to all three was
“Yes,” then Clara might say what she wanted to; otherwise not. The
result was that when Clara and Miss Hobbs walked round the Round Pond
Clara had very little to say; because, you know, if it comes to that,
hardly anything is necessary.

Well, on December 20, 1907, the postman brought Mrs. Platts a letter
from Clara’s aunt, Miss Amabel Patterson of Chislehurst, after whom she
had been named, and it was that letter which makes this story. It began
by saying that Miss Patterson would very much like Clara to have a nice
Christmas present, and it went on to say that if she had been very good
lately, and continued good up to the time of buying the present, it was
to cost seven-and-six, but if she had not been very good it was only
to cost a shilling. This shows you the kind of aunt Miss Patterson
was. For myself, I don’t think that at Christmas-time a matter of
good or bad behaviour ought to be remembered at all. And I think that
everything then ought to cost seven-and-six. But Miss Patterson had
her own way of doing things; and it did not really matter about the
shilling at all, because, as it was agreed that Clara had been very
good for a long time, Mrs. Platts (who did not admire Miss Patterson’s
methods any more than we do) naturally decided that unless anything
still were to happen (which is very unlikely with six-and-sixpence at
stake) the present should cost seven-and-six, just as if nothing about
a shilling had ever been said.

_Unless anything were to happen._ Ah! Everything in this story depends
on that.

Clara was as good as gold all the morning, and she and Miss Hobbs
marched round the Round Pond like soldiers, Miss Hobbs talking all
the time and Clara as dumb as a fish. At dinner also she behaved
beautifully, although the pudding was not at all what she liked; and
then it was time for her mother to take her out to buy the present. So,
still good, Clara ran upstairs to be dressed.

As I dare say you know, there are in Kensington High Street a great
many large shops, and the largest of these, which is called Biter’s,
has a very nice way every December of filling one of its windows (which
for the rest of the year is full of dull things, such as tables, and
rolls of carpets, and coal scuttles) with such seasonable and desirable
articles as boats for the Round Pond, and dolls of all sorts and sizes,
and steam engines with quite a lot of rails and signals, and clockwork
animals, and guns. And when you go inside you can’t help hearing the
gramaphone.

It was into this shop that Mrs. Platts and Clara went, wondering
whether they would buy just one thing that cost seven-and-six all at
once, or a lot of smaller things that came to seven-and-six altogether;
which is one of the pleasantest problems to ponder over that this life
holds. Well, everything was going splendidly, and Clara, after many
changings of her mind, had just decided on a beautiful wax doll with
cheeks like tulips and real black hair, when she chanced to look up
and saw a funny little old gentleman come in at the door; and all in a
flash she forgot her good resolutions and everything that was depending
on them, and seizing her mother’s arm, and giving no thought at all to
Miss Hobbs’s three questions, or to Kate Woodley’s clicking tongue, or
to counting five, she cried in a loud quick whisper, “Oh, mother, do
look at that queer little man! Isn’t he just like a monkey?”

[Illustration: “DO LOOK AT THAT QUEER LITTLE MAN!”]

Now there were two dreadful things about this speech. One was that it
was made before Aunt Amabel’s present had been bought, and therefore
Mrs. Platts was only entitled to spend a shilling, and the other was
that the little old gentleman quite clearly heard it, for his face
flushed and he looked exceedingly uncomfortable. Indeed, it was an
uncomfortable time for every one, for Mrs. Platts was very unhappy to
think that her little girl not only should have lost the nice doll,
but also have been so rude; the little old gentleman was confused and
nervous; the girl who was waiting on them was distressed when she knew
what Clara’s unlucky speech had cost her; and Clara herself was in a
passion of tears. After some time, in which Mrs. Platts and the girl
did their best to soothe her, Clara consented to receive a shilling box
of chalks as her present, and was led back still sobbing. Never was
there such a sad ending to an exciting expedition.

Miss Hobbs luckily had gone home; but Kate Woodley made things worse
by being very sorry and clicking away like a Bee clock, and Clara
hardly knew how to get through the rest of the day.

Clara’s bedtime came always at a quarter to eight, and between her
supper, which was at half-past six, and that hour she used to come
downstairs and play with her father and mother. On this evening she
was very quiet and miserable, although Mrs. Platts and Mr. Platts did
all they could to cheer her; and she even committed one of the most
extraordinary actions of her life, for she said, when it was still only
half-past seven, that she should like to go to bed.

And she would have gone had not at that very moment a tremendous
knock sounded at the front door--so tremendous that, in spite of her
unhappiness, Clara had, of course, to wait and see what it was.

And what do you think it was? It was a box addressed to Mrs. Platts,
and it came from Biter’s, the very shop where the tragedy had occurred.

“But I haven’t ordered anything,” said Mrs. Platts.

“Never mind,” said Mr. Platts, who had a practical mind. “Open it.”

So the box was opened, and inside was a note, and this is what it said:

“DEAR MADAM,

“I am so distressed to think that I am the cause of your little girl
losing her present, that I feel there is nothing I can do but give
her one myself. For if I had not been so foolish--at my age too!--as
to go to Biter’s this afternoon, without any real purpose but to
look round, she would never have got into trouble. Biter’s is for
children, not for old men with queer faces. And so I beg leave to
send her this doll, which I hope is the right one, and with it a few
clothes and necessaries, and I am sure that she will not forget how
it was that she very nearly lost it altogether.

“Believe me, yours penitently,
“THE LITTLE-OLD-GENTLEMAN-WHO-REALLY-
IS-(AS-HIS-LOOKING-GLASS-HAS-TOO-
OFTEN-TOLD-HIM)-LIKE-A-MONKEY.”

To Clara this letter, when Mrs. Platts read it to her, seemed like
something in a dream, but when the box was unpacked it was found to
contain, truly enough, not only the identical doll which she had
wanted, with cheeks like tulips and real black hair, but also frocks
for it, and night-dresses and petticoats, and a card of tortoiseshell
toilet requisites, and three hats, and a diabolo set, and a tiny doll’s
parasol for Kensington Gardens on sunny days.

Poor Clara didn’t know what to do, and so she simply sat down with the
doll in her arms and cried again; but this was a totally different
kind of crying from that which had gone before. And when Kate Woodley
came to take her to bed she cried too.

And the funny thing is that, though the little old gentleman’s present
looks much more like a reward for being naughty than a punishment,
Clara has hardly ever since said a quick unkind thing that she could be
sorry for, and Miss Hobbs’s three questions are never wanted at all,
and Kate Woodley has entirely given up clicking.

THE NOTICE-BOARD

Once upon a time there was a family called Morgan--Mr. Morgan the
father, Mrs. Morgan the mother, Christopher Morgan, aged twelve, Claire
Morgan, aged nine, Betty Morgan, aged seven, a fox-terrier, a cat, a
bullfinch, a nurse, a cook, a parlourmaid, a housemaid, and a boy named
William. William hardly counts, because he came only for a few hours
every day, and then lived almost wholly in the basement, and when he
did appear above-stairs it was always in the company of a coal-scuttle.
That was the family; and at the time this story begins it had just
removed from Bloomsbury to Bayswater.

While the actual moving was going on Christopher Morgan, Claire
Morgan, and Betty Morgan, with the dog and the bullfinch, had gone
to Sandgate to stay with their grandmother, who, with extraordinary
good sense, lived in a house with a garden that ran actually to the
beach, so that, although in stormy weather the lawn was covered with
pebbles, in fine summer weather you could run from your bedroom into
the sea in nothing but a bath-towel or a dressing-gown, or one of those
bath-towels which are dressing-gowns. Christopher used to do this, and
Claire would have joined him but that the doctor forbade it on account
of what he called her defective circulation--two long words which mean
cold feet.

When, however, the moving was all done and the new house quite ready,
the three children and the dog and the bullfinch returned to London,
and getting by great good luck a taxicab at Charing Cross, were
whirled to No. 23, Westerham Gardens almost in a minute, at a cost
of two-and-eightpence, with fourpence supplement for the luggage.
Christopher sat on the front seat, watching the meter all the time,
and calling out whenever it had swallowed another twopence. The first
eightpence, as you have probably also noticed, goes slowly, but after
that the twopences disappear just like sweets.

It is, as you know, a very exciting thing to move to a new house.
Everything seems so much better than in the last, especially the
cupboards and the wall-papers. In place of the old bell-pulls you find
electric bells, and there is a speaking-tube between the dining-room
and the kitchen, and the coal-cellar is much larger, and the bath-room
has a better arrangement of taps, and you can get hot water on the
stairs. But, of course, the electric light is the most exciting thing
of all, and it was so at Westerham Gardens, because in Bloomsbury there
had been gas. But Mr. Morgan was exceedingly serious about it, and
delivered a lecture on the importance--the vital importance--of always
turning off the switch as you leave the room, unless, of course, there
is some one in it.

Christopher and Claire and Betty were riotously happy in their new home
for some few days, especially as they were so near Kensington Gardens,
only a very little way, in fact, from the gate where the Dogs’ Cemetery
is.

And then suddenly they began to miss something. What it was they had no
idea; but they knew that in some mysterious way, nice as the new house
was, in one respect it was not so nice as the old one. Something was
lacking.

It was quite by chance that they discovered what it was; for, being
sent one morning to Whiteley’s, on their return they entered Westerham
Gardens by a new way, and there on a board fixed to the railings of
the corner house they read the terrible words:

+-------------------------+
| ORGANS AND STREET CRIES |
| |
| PROHIBITED. |
+-------------------------+

Then they all knew in an instant what it was that had vaguely been
troubling them in their new house. It was a house without music--a
house that stood in a neighbourhood where there were no bands, no
organs, and no costermongers.

“What a horrid shame!” said Claire. And then they began to talk about
the organs and bands that used to come to their old home in Bloomsbury.

“Do you remember the Italian woman in the yellow handkerchief on
Thursday mornings during French?” said Christopher.

“Yes,” said Betty, “and the monkey boy with the accordion on Mondays.”

“And the Punch and Judy on Wednesday afternoons,” said Claire.

“And ‘Fresh wallflowers,’ ‘Nice wallflowers!’ at eleven o’clock every
day in spring,” said Christopher.

“And the band that always played ‘Poppies’ on Tuesday evenings at
bedtime,” said Claire.

“And the organ with the panorama on Friday mornings,” said Betty.

“And the best organ of all, that had one new tune every week, on
Saturdays,” said Christopher.

“It must be a great day for the organists when they have a new tune,”
said Claire.

“Yes,” said Betty; “but you have forgotten the funniest of all--the old
man with a wooden leg on Tuesday and Friday.”

“But he had only one tune,” said Christopher

“It was a very nice tune,” said Betty. “But why I liked him was
because he always nodded and smiled at me.”

“That was only his trick,” said Christopher. “They all do that if they
think you have a penny.”

“I don’t care,” said Betty stoutly; “he did it as if he meant it.”

That night, just after Claire had undressed, Christopher came in
and sat on her bed. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s have a new
notice-board painted with

+-------------------------+
| ORGANS AND STREET CRIES |
| |
| INVITED |
+-------------------------+

on it, and have it fixed on our railings. Then we shall get some music
again. I reckon that Mr. Randall’s son would make it just like the
other for about four shillings, and that’s what we’ve got.”

Mr. Randall’s son was the family carpenter, and he was called that
because his father had been the family carpenter before him for many
years. When his father, Mr. Randall, was alive, the son had no name,
but was always referred to as Mr. Randall’s son, and now that the old
man was dead he was still spoken of in that way, although he was a man
of fifty and had sons of his own. (But what they would be called it
makes my head ache to think.)

Mr. Randall’s son smiled when he was asked if he could and would
make a notice-board. “I will, Master Christopher,” he said; “but I’m
thinking you had better spend your money on something else. A nice
boat, now, for the Round Pond. Or a pair of stilts--I could make you a
pair of stilts in about an hour.” Poor Christopher looked wistful, and
then bravely said that he would rather have the notice-board. After
giving careful instructions as to the style of painting the words, he
impressed upon Mr. Randall’s son the importance of wrapping the board
very carefully in paper when he brought it back, because it was a
surprise.

“A surprise!” said Mr. Randall’s son with a great hearty laugh; “I
should think it will be a surprise to some of ’em. I’d like to be there
to see the copper’s face when he reads it.”

Mr. Randall’s son was not there to see the copper’s face; but the
copper--by which Mr. Randall’s son meant the policeman--did read it
in the company of about forty other persons, chiefly errand-boys and
cabmen, in front of the Morgans’ house on the morning after Christopher
had skilfully fixed it to the area railings; and having read it he
walked off quickly to the nearest police-station to take advice.

The result was that just as Mr. Morgan was leaving for the city the
policeman knocked at the door and asked to see him.

Mr. Morgan soon afterwards came from the study and showed the
policeman out, and then he sent for Christopher. After Christopher
had confessed, “My dear boy,” he said, “this won’t do at all. That
notice-board at the end of this street means either that the owners
of Westerham Gardens or a large number of the tenants wish the
neighbourhood to be free from street music. If we, who are new-comers,
set up notice-boards to a contrary effect, we are doing a very rude
and improper thing. I quite understand that you miss the organs that
we used to have, but the only way to get them back would be to obtain
the permission of every one in the Gardens; and that, of course, is
absurd.” With these words, which he afterwards wished he had never
used, Mr. Morgan hurried off to the nearest Tube to make money in the
city, which was how he spent his days.

Christopher carried the news to Claire, who at once said, “Then we must
go to every house to get leave.”

“Of course,” said Christopher. “How ripping!”

And they started immediately.

It would take too long to tell you how they got on at each house. From
some they were sent away; at others they met with sympathy.

Their words to the servant who opened the door were: “Please give your
mistress the compliments of No. 23, and ask if she really wants street
music to be prohibited.”

“Of course we don’t, my dears,” said an old lady at No. 14. “We should
love to have a nice pianoforte organ every now and then, or even a
band; but it would never do to say so. Every one is so select about
here. Why, in that house opposite lives the widow of a Lord Mayor.”

Claire made a note of the number to tell Betty, who loved rank and
grandeur, and then they ascended the next steps, where they found
the most useful person of all, a gentleman who came down to see
them, smoking a pipe and wearing carpet slippers. “In reply to your
question,” he said, “I should welcome street music; but the matter has
nothing to do either with me or with you. It is all settled by the old
lady at the corner, the house to which the notice-board is fixed. It is
she who owns the property, and it is she who stops the organs. If you
want to do any good you must see her. Her name is Miss Seaton, and as
you will want a little cake and lemonade to give you strength for the
interview, you had better come in here for a moment.” So saying he led
them into the dining-room, which was hung with coloured pictures of
hunting and racing, and made them very comfortable, and then sent them
on with best wishes for good luck.

Telling Claire to wait a moment, Christopher ran off to their own house
for the board, and returned quickly with it wrapped up under his arm.
He rang the bell of the corner house boldly, and then, seeing a notice
which ran, “Do not knock unless an answer is required,” knocked boldly,
too. It was opened by an elderly butler. “Please tell Miss Seaton
that Mr. and Miss Morgan from No. 23 would like to see her,” said
Christopher.

“On what business?” asked the butler.

“On important business to Westerham Gardens,” said Christopher.

“Wait here a moment,” said the butler, and creaked slowly upstairs.
“Here” was the hall, and they sat on a polished mahogany form, with a
little wooden roller at each end, exactly opposite a stuffed dancing
bear with his arms hungry for umbrellas. Upstairs they heard a door
open and a muttered conversation, and then the door shut and the butler
creaked slowly down again.

“Will you come this way?” he said, and creaked slowly up once more,
followed by the children, who had great difficulty in finding the
steps at that pace, and showed them into a room in which was sitting
an old lady in a high-backed arm-chair near the fire. On the hearthrug
were five cats, and there was one in her lap and one on the table.
“Oh!” thought Claire, “if only Betty was here!” For Betty not only
loved rank and grandeur but adored cats.

“Well,” said the old lady, “what is it?”

“If you please,” said Christopher, “we have come about the notice-board
outside, which says, ‘Organs and street cries prohibited.’”

“Yes,” Claire broke in; “you see, we have just moved to No. 23, and at
our old home--in Bloomsbury, you know--there was such a lot of music,
and a Punch and Judy, and there’s none here, and we wondered if it
really meant it.”

[Illustration: “WE HAD IT MADE ON PURPOSE.”]

“Because,” Christopher went on, “it seemed to us that this
notice-board”--and here he unwrapped the new one--“could just as
easily be put up as the one you have. We had it made on purpose.” And
he held it up before Miss Seaton’s astonished eyes.

“‘Organs and street cries _invited_!’” she exclaimed. “Why, I never
heard such a thing in my life. They drive me frantic.”

“Couldn’t you put cotton-wool in your ears?” Claire asked.

“Or ask them to move a little further on--nearer No. 23?” said
Christopher.

“But, my dear children,” said the old lady, “you really are very
wilful. I hope your father and mother don’t know what you are doing.”

“No,” said Christopher.

“Well, sit down, both of you,” said Miss Seaton, “and let us talk it
over.” So they sat down, and Claire took up one of the cats and stroked
it behind the ears, and Miss Seaton asked them a number of questions.

After a while she rang the bell for the butler, who creaked in and out
and then in again with cake and a rather good syrup to mix with water;
and they gradually became quite friendly, not only with Miss Seaton,
but with each of the cats in turn.

“Are there any more?” Claire asked.

“No, only seven,” said Miss Seaton. “I never have more and I never have
fewer.”

“Do you give them all names?” said Claire.

“Of course,” said Miss Seaton. “That is partly why there are only
seven. I name them after the days of the week.”

“Oh!” thought Claire again, “if only Betty were here!”

“The black one there, with the white front, is Sunday,” Miss Seaton
continued. “That all black one is Monday--black Monday, you know. The
tortoiseshell is Friday. The sandy one is Saturday.”

“It was on Saturday,” said Christopher, “that the best organ of all
used to come, the one with a new tune every week.”

“The blue Persian is Wednesday,” said Miss Seaton, not taking any
notice of his remark. “The white Persian is Tuesday, and the grey
Iceland cat is Thursday. And now,” she added, “you must go home, and I
will think over your request and let you have the answer.”

That evening, just after the children had finished their supper, a
ring came at the door, followed, after it was opened, by scuffling
feet and a mysterious thud. Then the front door banged, and Annie the
maid came in to say that there was a heavy box in the hall, addressed
to Master and Miss Morgan. The children tore out, and found a large
case with, just as Annie had said, Christopher and Claire’s name upon
it. Christopher rushed off for a hammer and screw-driver, and in a
few minutes the case was opened. Inside was a note and a very weighty
square thing in brown paper. Christopher began to undo the paper, while
Claire read the note aloud:

“1, WESTERHAM GARDENS, W.

“DEAR MISS AND MASTER MORGAN,

“I have been thinking about your request all the afternoon, as I
promised I would, and have been compelled to decide against it in the
interests not only of the property but of several of my old tenants,
whose nerves cannot bear noise. But as I feel that your father, when
he made inquiries about your new house, was not sufficiently informed
as to the want of entertainment in the neighbourhood, I wish to
make it up in so far as I can to you all for your disappointment,
and therefore beg your acceptance of a musical box which was a
great pleasure to me when I was much younger, and may, I trust, do
something to amuse you, although the tunes are, I fear, not of the
newest.
“Believe me yours sincerely,
“VICTORIA SEATON.”

“There, father,” said Christopher, “you see she wasn’t really cross at
all.”

“No,” said Mr. Morgan; “but, all the same, this must be the last of
such escapades.”

Then he opened the musical box, and they found from the piece of paper
inside the lid, written in violet ink in a thin, upright, rather curly
foreign hand, that it had twelve tunes. Mr. Morgan wound it up, and
they all stood round watching the great brass barrel, with the little
spikes on it, slowly revolve, while the teeth of the comb were caught
up one by one by the spikes to make the notes. There was also a little
drum and a peal of silver bells. Although old, it was in excellent
order, and very gentle and ripply in tone; and I wish I had been there
too, for it is a long time since I heard a musical box, every one now
having gramaphones with sore throats.

The first tune was “The Last Rose of Summer” and the second the
beautiful prison song from “Il Trovatore.” When it came to the seventh
the children looked at each other and smiled.

“Why,” said Betty, “that’s the tune the nice man with the wooden leg on
Tuesdays and Fridays always played.”

And what do you think it was? It was “Home, sweet Home.”

THE MISS BANNISTERS’ BROTHER

Christina’s father was as good as his word--the doll came, by post, in
a long wooden box, only three days after he had left for Paris. All the
best dolls come from Paris, but you have to call them “poupées” there
when you ask the young ladies in the shops for them.

Christina had been in the garden ever since she got up, waiting for
the postman--there was a little gap in the trees where you could see
him coming up the road--and she and Roy had run to meet him across the
hay-field directly they spied him in the distance. Running across the
hay-field was forbidden until after hay-making; but when a doll is
expected from Paris...!

Christina’s father was better than his word, for it was the most
beautiful doll ever made, with a whole wardrobe of clothes, too.

Also a tiny tortoiseshell comb and a powder puff. Also an extra pair
of bronzed boots. Her eyes opened and shut, and even her eyebrows were
real hair. This, as you know, is unusual in dolls, their hair, as a
rule, being made of other materials and far too yellow, and their
eyebrows being just paint. “She shall be called Diana,” said Christina,
who had always loved the name from afar.

Christina took Diana to her mother at once, Roy running behind her
with the box and the brown paper and the string and the wardrobe,
and Chrissie calling back every minute, “Don’t drop the powder puff
whatever you do!” “Hold tight to the hand-glass!” and things like that.

“It’s splendid!” Mrs. Tiverton said. “There isn’t a better doll in the
world; only, Chrissie dear, be very careful with it. I don’t know but
that father would have done better to have got something stronger--this
is so very fragile. I think perhaps you had better have it only
indoors. Yes, that’s the best way; after to-day you must play with
Diana only indoors.”

It was thus that Diana came to Mapleton.

How Christina loved her that first day! She carried her everywhere
and showed her everything--all over the house, right into the attics;
all over the garden, right into the little black stove-place under
the greenhouse, where Pedder, the gardener, read last Sunday’s paper
over his lunch; into the village, to the general shop, to introduce
her to the postmistress, who lived behind a brass railing in the odour
of bacon and calico; into the stables, to kiss Lord Roberts, the old
white horse. Jim, who groomed the General, was the only person who did
not admire the doll properly; but how could you expect a nice feeling
from a boy who sets dogs on rats?

It was two or three days after this that Roy went down to the river to
fish. He had to go alone, because Christina wanted to play with Diana
in the nursery; but not more than half an hour had passed when he heard
feet swishing through the long grass behind him, and, looking up,
there was Christina. Now, as Christina had refused so bluntly to have
anything to do with his fishing, Roy was surprised to see her, but more
surprised still to see that Diana had come too.

“Why, surely mother never said you might bring Diana?” he exclaimed.

[Illustration: THERE WAS CHRISTINA.]

“No,” said Christina, rather sulkily, “but I didn’t think she’d
mind. Besides, she’s gone to the village, and I couldn’t ask her.”

Roy looked troubled; his mother did not often make rules to interfere
with their play, and when she did she liked to be obeyed. She had
certainly forbidden Christina to take Diana out of the house. He did
not say anything. Christina sat down and began to play. She was not
really at all happy, because she knew it was wrong of her to have
disobeyed, and she was really a very good girl. Roy went on fishing.

“Oh, do do something else,” Christina cried pettishly, after a few
minutes. “It’s so cold sitting here waiting for you to catch stupid
fish that never come. Let’s go to the cave.” The cave was an old
disused lime-kiln, where robbers might easily have lived.

“All right,” Roy said.

“I’ll get there first,” Christina called out, beginning to run.

“Bah!” said Roy, and ran after. They had raced for a hundred yards,
when, with a cry, Christina fell. Roy, who was still some distance
behind, having had to pack up his rod, hastened to Christina’s side. He
found her looking anxiously into Diana’s face.

“Oh, Roy,” she wailed, “her eyes have gone!”

It was too true. Diana, lately so radiantly observant, now turned to
the world the blankest of empty sockets. Roy took her poor head in
his hand and shook it. A melancholy rattle told that a pair of once
serviceable blue eyes were now at large. Christina sank on the grass in
an agony of grief--due partly, also, to the knowledge that if she had
not been naughty this would never have happened. Roy stood by, feeling
hardly less unhappy. After a while he took her arm. “Come along,” he
said; “let’s see if Jim can mend her.”

“Jim!” Christina cried in a fury, shaking off his hand.

“But come along, anyway,” Roy said.

Christina continued sobbing. After a while she moved to rise, but
suddenly fell back again. Her sobbing as suddenly ceased. “Roy!” she
exclaimed fearfully, “I can’t walk.”

Christina had sprained her ankle.

Roy ran to the house as fast as he could to find help, and very soon
old Pedder, the gardener, and Jim were carrying Christina between
them, with mother, who had just come back, and nurse, walking by her
side. Christina was put to bed and her foot wrapped in bandages, but
she cried almost incessantly, no matter how often she was assured that
she was forgiven. “Her sobs,” the cook said, coming downstairs after
her twentieth visit to the nursery--“her sobs are that heartrending I
couldn’t stand it; and all the while she asks for that blessed doll,
which its eyes is rattling in its head like marbles, through falling
on the ground, and Master Roy and Jim’s trying to catch them with a
skewer.”

Cook was quite right. Roy and Jim, with Diana between them, were
seated in the harness-room, probing tenderly the depths of that poor
Parisienne’s skull. A housemaid was looking on without enthusiasm. “You
won’t do it,” she said every now and then; “you can’t catch dolls’ eyes
with skewers. No one can. It’s impossible. The King himself couldn’t.
The Primest Minister couldn’t. No,” she went on, “no one could do
it. No one but the Miss Bannisters’ Brother near where I live at
Dormstaple. He could. You ought to take it to him. He’d mend it in a
jiffy--there’s nothing he can’t do in that way.”

Roy said nothing, but went on prodding and probing. At last he gave up
in despair. “All right, I’ll take it to the Miss Bannisters’ Brother,”
he said. “Dormstaple’s only six miles.” But a sudden swoop from a
figure in the doorway interrupted his bold plan.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” cried nurse, seizing the doll, “with
that angel upstairs crying for it every minute, and the doctor saying
she’s in a high fever with lying on the wet grass”; and with a swirl of
white skirts and apron, nurse and Diana were gone.

Roy put his hands in his pockets and wandered moodily into the garden.
The world seemed to have no sun in it any more.

III

The next day Christina was really ill. It was not only the ankle, but
she had caught a chill, the doctor said, and they must be very careful
with her. Roy went about with a sad and sadder face, for Christina was
his only playmate, and he loved her more than anything else; besides,
there was now no one to bowl to him, and also it seemed so silly not to
be able to mend a doll’s eyes. He moped in the house all the morning,
and was continually being sent away from Christina’s door, because she
was too ill to bear anyone in the room except nurse. She was wandering
in her mind, nurse said, and kept on saying that she had blinded her
doll, and crying to have its eyes made right again; but she would
not let a hand be laid upon her, so that to have Diana mended seemed
impossible. Nurse cried too, as she said it, and Roy joined with her.
He could not remember ever having been so miserable.

The doctor looked very grave when he was going away. “That doll ought
to be put right,” he said to Mrs. Tiverton. “She’s a sensitive little
thing, evidently, and this feeling of disobeying you and treating her
father’s present lightly is doing her a lot of harm, apart altogether
from the chill and the sprain. If we could get those eyes in again
she’d be better in no time, I believe.”

Roy and his mother heard this with a sinking heart, for they knew that
Christina’s arms locked Diana to her side almost as if they were bars
of iron.

“Anyway,” the doctor said, “I’ve left some medicine that ought to give
her some sleep, and I shall come again this afternoon.” So saying, he
touched up his horse, and Mrs. Tiverton walked into the house again.

Roy stood still pondering.

Suddenly his mind was made up, and he set off for the high road at a
good swinging pace. At the gate he passed Jim. “If they want to know
where I am,” he called, “say I’ve gone to Dormstaple, to the Miss
Bannisters’ Brother.”

Miss Sarah Bannister and Miss Selina Bannister had lived in Dormstaple
as long almost as anyone could remember, although they were by no means
old. They had the red house with white windows, the kind of house which
one can see only in old English market-towns. There was a gravel drive
before it, in the shape of a banana, the carriages going in at one end
and out at the other, stopping at the front doorsteps in the middle.
A china cockatoo hung in the window. The door knocker was of the
brightest brass; it was a pleasure to knock it.

Behind the house was a very large garden, with a cedar in the midst,
and a very soft lawn, on which the same birds settled every morning
in winter for the breakfast that the Miss Bannisters provided. The
cedar and the other trees had cigar-boxes nailed to them, for tits or
wrens to build in, and half cocoa-nuts and lumps of fat were always
hung just outside the windows. In September button mushrooms grew on
the lawn--enough for breakfast every morning. At one side of the house
was the stable and coach-house, on the other side a billiard-room, now
used as a workshop. And this workshop brings us to the Miss Bannisters’
Brother.

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother was an invalid, and he was also what is
called eccentric. “Eccentric, that’s what he is,” Mr. Stallabrass,
who kept the King’s Arms, had said, and there could be no doubt of it
after that. This meant that he wore rather shabby clothes, and took
no interest in the town, and was rarely seen outside the house or the
garden.

Rumour said, however, that he was very clever with his hands, and could
make anything. What was the matter with the Miss Bannisters’ Brother
no one seemed to know, but it gradually kept him more and more indoors.

No one ever spoke of him as Mr. Bannister; they always said the Miss
Bannisters’ Brother. If you could see the Miss Bannisters, especially
Miss Selina, you would understand this; but although they had deep,
gruff voices, they were really very kind.

As time went on, and the Miss Bannisters’ Brother did not seem to grow
any better, or to be likely to take up his gardening and his pigeons
again, the Miss Bannisters had racked their brains to think of some
employment for him other than reading, which is not good for anyone all
day long. One evening, some years before this story, while the three
were at tea, Miss Selina cried suddenly, “I have it!”--so suddenly,
indeed, that Miss Sarah spilt her cup, and her brother took three lumps
of sugar instead of two.

“Have what?” they both exclaimed.

“Why,” she said, “I was talking to-day with Mrs. Boniface, and she
was saying how nice it would be if there was some one in the town who
could mend toys--poor Miss Piper at the Bazaar being so useless, and
all the carpenters understanding nothing but making book-shelves and
cucumber-frames, and London being so far away--and I said, ‘Yes,’ never
thinking of Theodore here. And, of course, it’s the very thing for him.”

“Of course,” said Miss Sarah. “He could take the old billiard-room.”

“And have a gas-stove put in it,” said Miss Selina.

“An oil-stove,” said Miss Sarah; “it’s more economical.”

“A gas-stove,” said Miss Selina; “it’s more trustworthy.”

“And put up a bench,” said Miss Sarah.

“And some cocoa-nut-matting on the floor,” said Miss Selina.

“Linoleum,” said Miss Sarah; “it’s cheaper.”

“Cocoa-nut-matting,” said Miss Selina; “it’s better and warmer for his
feet.”

“And we could call it the Dolls’ Hospital,” said Miss Sarah.

“Infirmary,” said Miss Selina.

“I prefer Hospital,” said Miss Sarah.

“Infirmary,” said Miss Selina. “Dr. Bannister, house-surgeon, attends
daily from ten till one.”

“It would be the prettiest and kindliest occupation,” said Miss Sarah,
“as well as a useful one.”

“That’s the whole point of it,” said Miss Selina.

And that is how--five or six years ago--the Miss Bannisters’ Brother
came to open the Dolls’ Infirmary. But he did not stop short at mending
dolls. He mended all kinds of other things too; he advised on the
length of tails for kites; he built ships; he had even made fireworks.

Roy walked into Dormstaple at about one o’clock, very tired and hot and
dusty and hungry. With the exception of a lift for a mile and a half
in the baker’s cart, he had had to walk or run all the way. A little
later, after asking his way more than once, he stood on the doorstep of
the Miss Bannisters’ house. The door was opened by old Eliza, and as
the flavour of roast fowl rushed out, Roy knew how hungry he was. “I
want to see the Miss Bannisters’ Brother,” he said, “please.”

“You’re too late,” was the answer, “and it’s the wrong door. Come
to-morrow morning, and go to the Hinfirmary. Mr. Theodore never sees
children in the afternoon.”

“Oh, but I must,” Roy almost sobbed.

“Chut, chut!” said old Eliza, “little boys shouldn’t say must.”

“But when they must, what else is there for them to say?” Roy asked.

“Chut, chut!” said old Eliza again. “That’s himperent! Now run away,
and come to-morrow morning.”

This was too much for Roy. He covered his face with his hands, and
really and truly cried--a thing he would scorn to do on his own account.

While he stood there in this distress a hand was placed on his arm
and he was drawn gently into the house. He heard the door shut behind
him. The hand then guided him along passages into a great room, and
there he was liberated. Roy looked round; it was the most fascinating
room he had ever seen. There was a long bench at the window, with a
comfortable chair before it, and on the bench were hammers and chisels
and all kinds of tools. A ship nearly finished lay in one place, a
clockwork steamer in another, a pair of rails wound about the floor on
the cocoa-nut matting--in and out like a snake--on which a toy train
probably ran, and here and there were signals. On the shelves were
coloured papers, bottles, boxes, and wire. In one corner was a huge
kite, as high as a man, with a great face painted on it. Several dolls,
more or less broken, lay on the table.

All this he saw in a moment. Then he looked at the owner of the
hand, who had been standing beside him all the while with an amused
expression on his delicate, kind face. Roy knew in an instant it was
the Miss Bannisters’ Brother.

“Well,” said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother; “so when one must, one must?”

“Yes,” Roy said half timidly.

“Quite right too,” said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother. “‘Must’ is a very
good word, if one has the character to back it up. And now tell me,
quickly, what is the trouble? Something very small, I should think, or
you wouldn’t be able to carry it in your pocket.”

“It’s not in my pocket,” Roy said; “it’s not here at all. I want--I
want a lesson.”

“A lesson?” the Miss Bannisters’ Brother asked in surprise.

“Yes, in eye-mending. When eyes fall inside and rattle, you know.”

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother sat down, and took Roy between his knees.
There was something about this little dusty, nervous boy that his
clients (often tearful enough) had never displayed before, and he
wished to understand it. “Now tell me all about it,” he said.

Roy told him everything, right from the first.

“And what is your father’s name?” was the only question that had to be
asked. When he heard this, the Miss Bannisters’ Brother rose. “You
must stay here a minute,” he said.

“But--but the lesson?” Roy exclaimed. “You know I ought to be getting
back again. Christina----”

“All right, just a minute,” the Miss Bannisters’ Brother replied.

When the Miss Bannisters’ Brother came back, Miss Selina came with him.
“Come and get tidy. You are just in time for dinner,” she said, “and
afterwards we are going to drive home with you.”

“Oh, but I can’t stop for dinner!” Roy cried. “It’s much too important
to stop for dinner; I’m not really hungry, either.”

“Dinner will only take a little while,” said Miss Selina, “and the
horses can be getting ready at the same time; and if you were to
walk you wouldn’t be home nearly so soon as you will if you drive,
dinner-time included.”

“Besides,” said the Miss Bannisters’ Brother, “I’m much too hungry to
give lessons. I need heaps of food--chicken and things--before I can
give a lesson.”

“But Christina----” Roy gasped again.

“And, as a matter of fact, we’ve thought of a better way than the
lesson,” Miss Selina said. “Mr. Bannister is going with you; but he
must eat first, mustn’t he?”

It took a moment for Roy to appreciate this, but when he did he was the
happiest boy in Dormstaple.

He never tasted a nicer chicken, he said afterwards.

Certainly not more than three-quarters of an hour had passed before
the carriage was on its way to Mapleton--with the Miss Bannisters’
Brother propped up with cushions (for he could not bear the jolting of
carriages) on the back seat, and Miss Selina and Miss Sarah, who had
come to look after him, on the other. Roy was on the box. You never saw
such puzzled faces as the Dormstaple people had when the party went by,
for the Miss Bannisters’ Brother had not driven out these twenty years;
but their surprise was nothing to that of old Eliza, who wandered about
the rooms all the rest of the day muttering “Little himperent boy!”

At the Mapleton gates Roy jumped down and rushed up to the house. His
mother came to the door as he reached it. “Oh, mother, mother,” he
cried, “he’s come himself!”

“Who has come?” she asked, forgetting to say anything about Roy’s long
absence. “I hoped it was the doctor. Christina is worse, I’m afraid;
she won’t sleep.”

“It’s all right,” Roy assured her. “I’ve brought the Miss Bannisters’
Brother, who mends dolls and everything, and he’ll put the eyes right
in no time, and then Chrissie’ll be well again. Here they are!”

At this moment the carriage reached the door; but Mrs. Tiverton’s
perplexities were not removed by it. On the contrary, they were
increased, for she saw before her three total strangers. Miss Selina,
however, hastily stepped out and took Mrs. Tiverton’s hand, and
explained the whole story, adding, “We are not coming in; my sister and
I have a call to pay a little further on. We shall come back in less
than an hour for our brother, carry him off, and be no trouble at all.
I know how little you must want just now even people that you know.”
In spite of Mrs. Tiverton’s protest, Miss Selina had her way, and the
sisters drove off.

While this conversation had been in progress, Roy had been speaking
to the Miss Bannisters’ Brother. He had been preparing the speech
ever since they had started, for it was very important. “Please,” he
said--“please how much will this visit be, because I want to pay for it
myself?”

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother smiled. “But suppose you haven’t enough?”
he said.

“Oh, but I think I have!” Roy told him. “I’ve got seven-and-six, and
when the vet. came to see Lord Roberts it was only five shillings.”

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother smiled again. “Our infirmary is rather
peculiar,” he said. “We don’t take money at all; we take promises;
different kinds of promises from different people, according to their
means. We ask rich patients’ friends to promise to give away old
toys, or story-books, or scrap-books, or something of that kind, to
real hospitals--children’s hospitals. We find that much better than
money. Money’s such a nuisance. One is always losing the key of the
money-box.”

Roy was a little disappointed. “Oh yes!” he said, however, “I’ll do
that. Won’t I just? But, you know,” he added, “you can always break
open a money-box if it comes to the worst. Pokers aren’t bad. And
there’s a way of getting the money out with a table-knife.”

It was just then that the Miss Bannisters drove off, and Mrs. Tiverton
asked their brother to come to Christina’s room with her. Roy would
have given anything to have been allowed upstairs; but as it was
forbidden, he went to see Jim and tell him the news. He found, however,
that the housemaid had already told not only Jim but every one else.

“Now it will be all right,” she was saying. “The Miss Bannisters’
Brother will do it! Why, he made a wooden leg for a tame jackdaw once!”

VII

Christina was moaning in the bed with Diana locked in her arms when the
Miss Bannisters’ Brother sat down beside her. “Come,” he said gently,
“let me feel your pulse.”

Christina pushed her wrist towards him wearily.

“Oh no, not yours!” he said, with a little laugh. “Yours doesn’t
matter. I meant this little lady’s. I’m not your doctor. I’m a doll’s
doctor.”

Christina turned her poor flushed face towards him for the first time.
A doll’s doctor--it was a new idea. And he really seemed to be all
right--not anyone dressed up to make her feel foolish or coax her into
taking horrid medicine. “Was it your carriage I heard?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I have come on purpose. But so many dolls are ill
just now that I must be getting away soon. It’s quite a bad time for
dolls, especially French ones. They are very delicate.”

“Mine is French,” Christina said, growing really interested.

“How very curious!” he answered. “I had a French patient the other
day--a Parisian--whose sight had become so weak that she had to wear
glasses. And now for the pulse,” he went on, and he drew out a large
gold watch.

Mrs. Tiverton was looking on with tears in her eyes. Christina had not
taken this quiet interest in anything or kept so still in bed for many
hours. Not even the sleeping draught had had any effect.

The Miss Bannisters’ Brother held Diana’s tiny wrist and looked very
grave. “Dear, dear!” he said, “I ought to have been sent for before,
and then I could have cured her here in your arms. As it is, I must
take her to the light. Won’t you have that nice jelly while I am
treating Miss----? Let me see, what is my patient’s name?”

“Diana,” Christina said.

“Ah, yes--Miss Diana. By the time you have finished the jelly I ought
to have finished my visit.” So saying he rose and carried Diana to the
window-seat behind the curtains, while Mrs. Tiverton gave Christina the
jelly. Christina took it, nurse said afterwards, like a lamb--though I
never saw a lamb take jelly.

Meanwhile, the Miss Bannisters’ Brother had taken some tools and a tube
of seccotine from his pocket, and he had lifted up Diana’s hair, cut
a hole in her head, and was busily readjusting the machinery of her
eyes. It was all done in five minutes, just as Christina was eating the
last mouthful. “There,” he said, returning to the bedside, “that’s all
right. It was a very simple operation, and didn’t hurt at all. I think
our patient can see now as well as ever.”

Christina peered into Diana’s face with a cry of joy, and sank back on
the pillow in an ecstasy of content.

Neither Mrs. Tiverton nor the Miss Bannisters’ Brother dared to move
for some minutes. While they sat there the doctor tip-toed in. He
crossed to the bed and looked at Christina. “She’s asleep,” he said.
“Splendid! She’s all right now. It was sleep she wanted more than
anything. Don’t let her hear a sound, nurse, for hours.”

They found Roy waiting for the news. When he heard it he jumped for
joy. His mother caught him up and hugged him. “You thoughtful little
imp!” she cried--and, turning to the doctor, told him the story. He
went off, laughing. “I shall take my door-plate down when I get home,”
he called out as he drove off, “and send it round to you, Bannister.
You’re the real doctor.”

When the Miss Bannisters drove back they found tea all ready, and Mrs.
Tiverton would not hear of their leaving without it. And when they did
leave, an hour later, they were all fast friends.

VIII

Roy and Christina never think of going to Dormstaple now without
calling at the red house.

THE ANTI-BURGLARS

The letter was addressed to Miss Mary Stavely. It ran:

“MY DEAR MARY,

“I have just received five pounds that I had given up for lost,
and, remembering what you told me at Easter of the importance of
distributing a little money in the village, I think you had better
have it and become my almoner. An almoner is one who gives away money
for another. I shall be interested in hearing how you get on.

“Your affectionate
“UNCLE HERBERT.”

Inside the letter was a five-pound note.

Mary read the letter for the twentieth time, and for the twentieth time
unfolded the crackling five-pound note--more money than she had ever
seen before. She was thirteen.

“But what shall I do with it?” she asked. “So many people want things.”

“Oh, you mustn’t ask me,” said her mother. “Uncle Herbert wants you to
decide entirely for yourself. You must make a list of every one in the
village who wants help, and then look into each case very carefully.”

“Yes,” said Harry, Mary’s brother, as he finished breakfast, “and
don’t forget me. My bicycle ought to be put right, for one thing, and,
for another, I haven’t any more films for my camera. If that isn’t a
deserving case I’d like to know what is.”

In a few days’ time the list was ready. It ran like this:

£ s. d.
Mrs. Meadows’ false teeth want mending.
It can be done for 0 12 6
Tommy Pringle ought to go to a Nursing
Home by the sea for three weeks. This
costs 7s. a week and 5s. 4d. return fare 1 6 4
Old Mrs. Wigram really must have a new
bonnet 0 4 6
Mrs. Ryan has been saving up for months
to buy a sewing machine. She had it all
ready, but Sarah’s illness has taken away
10s. I should like to make that up 0 10 0
The little Barretts ought to have a real ball.
It isn’t any fun playing with a bit of
wood 0 1 0
Mr. Eyles has broken his spectacles again 0 2 6
Old Mr. and Mrs. Snelling have never been
in London, and they’re both nearly eighty.
I’m sure they ought to go. There is an
excursion on the first of the month at 3s.
return each, and their grandson’s wife
would look after them there. Fraser’s
cart to the station and back would be 4s. 0 10 0
Mrs. Callow will lose all her peas and currants
again if she doesn’t have a net 0 3 0

The schoolmaster says that the one thing
that would get the boys to the village
room is a gramaphone like the one at the
public-house. This is 15s., and twelve
tunes for 9s. 1 4 0
Mrs. Carter’s mangle will cost 8s. to be
mended, but it must be done 0 8 0
Thomas Barnes’ truck is no good any more,
and his illness took away all the money
he had; but he will never take it if he
knows it comes from us 1 10 0

Mary read through her list and once more added up the figures. They
came to £6 11s. 10d.

“Dear me!” she said, “I hadn’t any idea it was so difficult to be an
almoner.”

She went through the list again, and brought it down to £5 0s. 10d. by
knocking off one week of Tommy Pringle’s sea-side holiday and depriving
the village room of its gramaphone.

“I suppose I must make up the tenpence myself,” she said.

III

That afternoon Mary went to call on Mr. Verney. Mr. Verney was an
artist who lived at the forge cottage. He and Mary were great friends.
She used to sit by him while he painted, and he played cricket with her
and Harry and was very useful with a pocket-knife.

“No one,” she said to herself, “can help me so well as Mr. Verney, and
if I decide myself on how the money is to be spent, it will be all
right to get some help in spending it.”

Mr. Verney liked the scheme immensely. “But I don’t see that you want
any help,” he said. “You have done it so far as well as possible.”

“Well,” said Mary, “there’s one great difficulty: Thomas Barnes would
never take anything from our house. You see, we once had his son for a
gardener, and father had to send him away because of something he did;
but though it was altogether his son’s fault, Thomas Barnes has never
spoken to father since, or even looked at him. But he’s very old and
poorly, and very lonely, and it’s most important he should have a new
hand-truck, because all his living depends on it; but it’s frightfully
important that he shouldn’t know who gave it to him.”

“Wouldn’t he guess?” Mr. Verney said.

“Not if nobody knew.”

“Oh, I see: no one is to know. That makes it much more fun.”

“But how are we to do it?” Mary asked. “That’s why I want you to help.
Of course, we can post most of the money, but we can’t post a truck. If
Thomas Barnes knew, he’d send it back directly.”

“Well,” said Mr. Verney, after thinking for some time, “there’s only
one way: we shall have to be anti-burglars.”

“Anti-burglars!” cried Mary. “What’s that?”

“Well, a burglar is some one who breaks into a house and takes things
away; an anti-burglar is some one who breaks into a house and leaves
things there. Just the opposite, you see.”

“But suppose we are caught?”

“That would be funny. I don’t know what the punishment for
anti-burgling is. I think perhaps the owner of the house ought to be
punished for being so foolish as to interrupt. But tell me more about
Thomas Barnes.”

“Thomas Barnes,” said Mary, “lives in a cottage by the cross-roads all
alone.”

“What does he do?”

“He fetches things from the station for people; he carries the washing
home from Mrs. Carter’s; he runs errands--at least, he doesn’t run
them: people wish he would; he sometimes does a day’s work in a garden.
But he really must have a new barrow, and his illness took all his
money away, because he wouldn’t belong to a club. He’s quite the most
obstinate man in this part of the country. But he’s so lonely, you
know.”

“Then,” said Mr. Verney, “we must wait till he goes away on an errand.”

“But he locks his shed.”

“Then we must break in.”

“But if people saw us taking the barrow there?”

“Then we must go in the night. I’ll send him to Westerfield suddenly
for something quite late--some medicine, and then he’ll think I’m
ill--on a Thursday, when there’s the midnight train, and we’ll pop down
to his place at about eleven with a screw-driver and things.”

After arranging to go to Westerfield as soon as possible to spend their
money, Mary ran home.

Being an almoner was becoming much more interesting.

Mr. Verney and Mary went to Westerfield the next day, leaving a very
sulky Harry behind.

“I can’t think why Uncle Herbert didn’t send that money to me,” he
grumbled. “Why should a girl like Mary have all this almoning fun? I
could almon as well as she can.”

As a matter of fact, Uncle Herbert had made a very wise choice. Harry
had none of Mary’s interest in the village, nor had he any of her
patience. But in his own way he was a very clever boy. He bowled
straight, and knew a linnet’s egg from a greenfinch’s.

Mr. Verney and Mary’s first visit was to the bank, where Mary handed
her five-pound note through the bars, and the clerk scooped up four
sovereigns and two half-sovereigns in his little copper shovel and
poured them into her hand.

Then they bought a penny account-book and went on to Mr. Flower,
the ironmonger, to see about Thomas Barnes’ truck. Mr. Flower had a
secondhand one for twenty-five shillings, and he promised to touch
it up for two shillings more; and he promised, also, that neither he
nor his man should ever say anything about it. It was arranged that
the barrow should be wrapped up in sacking and taken to Mr. Verney’s,
inside the waggon, and be delivered after dark.

“Why do _you_ want it?” Mary asked him.

“That’s a secret,” he said; “you’ll know later.”

Mr. Flower also undertook to send three shillings’ worth of netting to
Mrs. Callow, asking her to do him the favour of trying it to see if it
were a good strong kind.

Mary and Mr. Verney then walked on to Mr. Costall, the dentist, who
was in Westerfield only on Thursdays between ten and four. It was the
first time that Mary had ever stood on his doorstep without feeling
her heart sink. Mr. Costall, although a dentist, was a smiling, happy
man, and he entered into the scheme directly. He said he would write to
Mrs. Meadows and ask her to call, saying that some one whom he would
not mention had arranged the matter with him. And when Mary asked him
how much she should pay him, he said that ten shillings would do. This
meant a saving of half a crown.

“How nice it would be always to visit Mr. Costall,” Mary said, with a
sigh, “if he did not pull out teeth.”

Mary and Mr. Verney then chose Mrs. Wigram’s new bonnet, which they
posted to her at once. Mr. Verney liked one with red roses, but Mary
told him that nothing would ever induce Mrs. Wigram to wear anything
but black. The girl in the shop recommended another kind, trimmed with
a very blue bird; but Mary had her own way.

Afterwards they bought a ball for the Barretts; and then they bought a
postal order for eight shillings for Mrs. Carter, and half a crown for
Mr. Eyles, and ten shillings for Mrs. Ryan, and fourteen shillings for
Mrs. Pringle. It was most melancholy to see the beautiful sovereigns
dropping into other people’s tills. Mary put all these amounts down in
her penny account-book. She also put down the cost of her return ticket.

When they got back to the village they saw Mr. Ward, the
station-master. After telling him how important it was to keep the
secret, Mary bought a return ticket to the sea for Tommy Pringle,
without any date on it, and two excursion tickets for old Mr. and Mrs.
Snelling for the 1st of next month. Mr. Ward did not have many secrets
in his life, and he was delighted to keep these.

While they were talking to him a curious and exciting thing happened. A
message began to tick off on the telegraph machine. Mr. Verney was just
turning to go away when Mr. Ward called out, “Stop a minute, please!
This message is for Miss Stavely.”

Mary ran over to the machine and stood by Mr. Ward while he wrote down
the message which the little needle ticked out. She had never had a
telegram before, and to have one like this--“warm from the cow,” as Mr.
Ward said--was splendid. Mr. Ward handed it to her at last.

“MARY STAVELY, MERCOMBE.

“How is the almoning? I want to pay all extra expenses.--UNCLE
HERBERT.”

The reply was paid; but Mary had to write it out several times before
it satisfied her and came within the sixpence. This was what she said:

“STAVELY, REFORM CLUB, LONDON.

“All right. Will send accounts. Expenses small.--MARY.”

On the way home they spoke to Fraser, who let out carriages and carts.
Fraser liked the plan as much as every one else did. He promised to
call in on the Snellings in a casual way, on the morning on which they
would receive the tickets, and suggest to them that they should let him
drive them to the station and bring them home again. When Mary offered
to pay him, Mr. Fraser said no, certainly not; he would like to help
her. He hadn’t done anything for anybody for so long that he should be
interested in seeing what it felt like. This meant a saving of four
shillings.

Mary went to tea at Mr. Verney’s. After tea he printed addresses on a
number of envelopes, and put the postal orders inside, with a little
card in each, on which he printed the words, “From a friend, for Tommy
to go to the sea-side home for a fortnight”; “From a friend, for Mr.
and Mrs. Snelling to go to London”; “From a friend, for Mr. Eyles’
spectacles,” and so forth, and then he stamped them and stuck them
down, and put them all into a big envelope, which he posted to his
sister in Ireland, so that when they came back they all had the Dublin
postmark, and no one ever saw such puzzled and happy people as the
recipients were.

“Has your mother any friends in Dublin, Miss Mary?” Mrs. Snelling asked
a day or so later, in the midst of a conversation about sweet peas.

“No,” said Mary. It was not until afterwards that she saw what Mrs.
Snelling meant.

Next Thursday came at last, the day on which Thomas Barnes’ shed was to
be anti-burgled. At ten o’clock, having had leave to stay up late on
this great occasion, Mary put on her things, and Mr. Verney, who had
come to dinner, took her to his rooms. There, in the outhouse which he
used for a studio, he showed her the truck.

“And here,” he said, “is my secret,” pointing out the words--

THOMAS BARNES,
PORTER, MERCOMBE.

which he had painted in white letters on the side.

“He’s bound to keep it now, whatever happens,” Mr. Verney said. “In
order to make as little noise as possible to-night,” he added, “I have
wrapped felt round the tyres.”

He then took a bag from the shelf, placed it on the barrow, and they
stole out. Mr. Verney’s landlady had gone to bed, and there was no
sound of anyone in the village. The truck made no noise.

After half a mile they came to the cross-roads where Thomas Barnes’
cottage stood, and Mr. Verney walked to the house and knocked loudly.

There was no answer. Indeed, he had not expected one, but he wished to
make sure that Thomas had not returned from Westerfield sooner than he
should.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Now for the anti-burgling.”

He wheeled the truck to the side of the gate leading to the shed, and,
taking the bag, they passed through. Mr. Verney opened the bag and took
out a lantern, a hammer, and a screw-driver.

“We must get this padlock off,” he said, and while Mary held the
lantern he worked away at the fastenings. It was more difficult than he
expected, especially as he did not want to break anything, but to put
it back exactly as it had been. Several minutes passed.

“There,” he cried; “that’s it.”

At the same moment a sound of heavy footsteps was heard, and Mary gave
a little scream and dropped the lantern.

A strong hand gripped her arm.

“Hullo! Hullo!” said a gruff voice. “What’s this? Housebreaking,
indeed!”

Mr. Verney had stooped for the lantern, and as he rose the
policeman--for he it was--seized him also.

“You’d better come along with me,” the policeman said, “and make no
trouble about it. The less trouble you make, the easier it’ll be for
you before the magistrates.”

[Illustration: WHILE MARY HELD THE LANTERN, HE WORKED AWAY AT THE
FASTENINGS.]

“But look here,” Mr. Verney said, “you’re making a mistake. We’re not
housebreaking.”

The policeman laughed. “Now, that’s a good’un,” he said. “Dark lantern,
screw-driver, hammer, eleven o’clock at night, Thomas Barnes’ shed--and
you’re not housebreaking! Perhaps you’ll tell me what you are doing,
you and your audacious female accomplice here. Playing hide-and-seek, I
suppose?”

“Well,” said Mr. Verney, suddenly striking a match with his free hand,
and holding it up so that the light fell full on his own and on Mary’s
face, “we’ll tell you the whole story.”

“Miss Stavely!” cried the policeman, “and Mr. Verney. Well, this is a
start. But what does it all mean?”

Then Mr. Verney told the story, first making Dobbs promise not to tell
it again.

The policeman grew more and more interested as it went on. Finally
he exclaimed: “You get the door open, sir, and I’ll fetch the truck
through. Time’s getting along.”

He hurried out of the yard and returned carrying the truck on his
shoulders. Then he stripped off the felt with his knife and ran it into
the shed, beside the old broken-down barrow that had done service for
so many years.

Mr. Verney soon had the padlock back in its place as if nothing had
happened, and after carefully gathering up the felt they hurried off,
in order to get home before Thomas Barnes should call with the medicine
that he had been sent to buy.

“Let me carry the bag, sir,” the policeman said.

“What, full of burgling tools!” said Mr. Verney.

“Mum’s the word,” the policeman replied, “mum’s the word.”

At the forge cottage he wished them good-night.

“Then you don’t want us in court to-morrow?” Mr. Verney asked.

“Mum’s the word,” was all that Dobbs replied, with a chuckle.

Thomas Barnes’ train being late, Mary did not get to bed until after
twelve that night. She laid her head on the pillow with particular
satisfaction, for the last and most difficult part of the distribution
of Uncle Herbert’s money was over.

The next day Mary sent Uncle Herbert a long description of her duties
as his almoner, and enclosed the account. What with postages and her
railway fare, she had spent altogether £4. 18s. 11d.

Two days later this letter came back from Uncle Herbert:

“DEAR MARY,

“You are as good an almoner as I could wish, and I hope that another
chance of setting you to work will come. Put the thirteen pence
that are over in a box labelled ‘The Almoner’s Fund.’ Then take the
enclosed postal order for a pound and get it cashed, and the next
time you are in Westerfield buy Mr. Verney a box of cigarettes, but
be sure to find out first what kind he likes. Also give Harry six
shillings. I dare say he has broken his bicycle or wants some more
films: at any rate, he will not say no. The rest is for yourself to
buy something purely for yourself with. Please tell your mother that
I am coming on Saturday by the train reaching you at 5.8. I shall
walk from the station, but I want Thomas Barnes to fetch my bag.

“Your affectionate
“UNCLE HERBERT.”

Whether or no Thomas Barnes knew where the truck came from we never
found out; but at Christmas-time he was discovered among the waits who
sang carols on the Stavelys’ lawn.

SIR FRANKLIN AND THE LITTLE MOTHERS

Once upon a time there was a very rich gentleman named Sir Franklin
Ingleside, who lived all alone in a beautiful house in Berkeley Square.
He was so rich that he could not possibly spend more than a little
of his money, although he gave great sums away, and had horses and
carriages, and bought old pictures and new books.

He lived very quietly, rode a little, drove a little, called on old
friends (chiefly old ladies), usually dined alone, and afterwards read
by the fire.

Although the house was large and full of servants, all Sir Franklin’s
wants were supplied by his own particular man, Pembroke. Pembroke was
clean-shaven, very neat, spoke quietly, and never grew any older or
seemed ever to have been any younger. It was impossible to think of
Pembroke as a baby, or a boy, or a person with a Christian name. One
could think of him only as a grave man named Pembroke. No one ever saw
him smile in Berkeley Square, but a page boy once came home with the
news that he had passed Mr. Pembroke talking to a man in the street at
Islington, and heard him laugh out loud. But page boys like inventing
impossible stories, and making your flesh creep.

Pembroke lived in a little room communicating by bells with all the
rooms which Sir Franklin used; so that whenever the bell rang Pembroke
knew exactly where his master was. Pembroke did not seem to have any
life but his master’s; and the one thing about which he was always
thinking was how to know beforehand exactly what his master wanted.
Pembroke became so clever at this that he would often, after being rung
for, enter the room carrying the very thing that Sir Franklin was going
to request him to get.

Sir Franklin once asked him how he did it, and Pembroke said that he
did not know; but part of the secret was explained that very year quite
by chance. It was like this. In the autumn Sir Franklin and Pembroke
always went to Scotland, and that year when they were in Scotland the
Berkeley Square house was done up and all the old pull-bells were taken
away and new electric ones were put in instead. When Sir Franklin
came back again he noticed that Pembroke was not nearly so clever in
anticipating needs as he had been before; and when he asked him about
it, Pembroke said: “My opinion, sir, is that it’s all along of the
bells. The new bells, which you press, ring the same, however you
press them, and startle a body too, whereas the old bells, which you
used to pull, sir, told me what you wanted by the way you pulled them,
and never startled one at all.”

So Sir Franklin and Pembroke went to Paris for a week while the new
press bells were taken away and the old pull-bells put back again, and
then Pembroke became again just as clever as before. (But that was, of
course, only part of the secret.)

It was at a quarter to nine on the evening of December 18, 1907,
that Sir Franklin, who was sitting by the fire reading and thinking,
suddenly got up and rang the bell.

Pembroke came in at once and said, “I’m sorry you’re troubled in your
mind, sir. Perhaps I can be of some assistance.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Sir Franklin. “But do you know what day this is?”

“We are nearing the end of December 18,” said Pembroke.

“Yes,” said Sir Franklin, “and what is a week to-day?”

“A week to-day, sir,” said Pembroke, “is Christmas Day.”

“And what about children who won’t get any presents this Christmas?”
Sir Franklin asked.

“Ah, indeed, sir,” said Pembroke.

“And what about people in trouble, Pembroke?” Sir Franklin asked.

“Ah, indeed, sir,” said Pembroke.

“And that reminds me,” Pembroke added after a pause, “that I was going
to speak to you about the cook’s brother-in-law, sir: a worthy man,
sir, but in difficulties.”

Sir Franklin asked for particulars.

“He keeps a toy-shop, sir, in London, and he can’t make it pay.
He’s tried and tried, but there’s no money in toys in his
neighbourhood--except penny toys, on which the margin of profit is, I
am told, sir, very small.”

Sir Franklin poked the fire and looked into it for a little while.
Then, “It seems to me, Pembroke,” he said, “that the cook’s
brother-in-law’s difficulties and the little matter of the children can
be solved in the same action. Why shouldn’t we take over the toy-shop
and let the children into it on Christmas Eve to choose what they will?”

Pembroke stroked his chin for a moment and then said, “The very thing,
sir.”

“Where does the cook’s brother-in-law live?” Sir Franklin asked.

Pembroke gave the address.

“Then if you’ll call a hansom, Pembroke, we’ll drive there at once.”

III

It does not matter at all about the visit which Sir Franklin Ingleside
and Pembroke paid to the cook’s brother-in-law. All that need be
said is that the cook’s brother-in-law was quite willing to sell Sir
Franklin his stock-in-trade and to make the shop over to him, and Sir
Franklin Ingleside rode back to Berkeley Square not only a gentleman
who had horses and carriages and who bought old pictures and new books,
but perhaps the first gentleman in Berkeley Square to have a toy-shop
too.

On the way back he talked to Pembroke about his plans.

“There’s a kind of child, Pembroke,” said Sir Franklin, “that I
particularly want to encourage and reward. It is clear that we can’t
give presents to all; and I don’t want the greedy ones and the
strongest ones to be as fortunate as the modest ones and the weak ones.
So my plan is, first of all to make sure that the kind of child that I
have in mind is properly looked after, and then to give the others what
remains. And the particular children I mean are the little girls who
take care of their younger brothers and sisters while their parents are
busy, and who go to the shops and stalls and do the marketing. Whenever
I see one I always say to myself, ‘There goes a Little Mother!’ and it
is the Little Mothers whom this Christmas we must particularly help.

“Now what you must do, Pembroke, during the next few days, is to make
a list of the streets in every direction within a quarter of a mile of
the toy-shop, and then find out, from the schoolmistresses, and the
butchers, and the publicans’ wives, and the grocers, and the oil-shops,
and the greengrocers, and the more talkative women on the doorsteps,
which are the best Little Mothers in the district and what is the size
of their families, and get their names and addresses. And then we shall
know what to do.”

By this time the cab had reached Berkeley Square again, and Sir
Franklin returned to his books.

The next few days were the busiest and most perplexing that Pembroke
ever spent. He was in Clerkenwell, where the toy-shop was situated,
from morning till night. He bought all kinds of things that he did
not want--cheese and celery, mutton-chops and beer, butter and
paraffin--just to get on terms with the people who know about the
Little Mothers.

Although naturally rather silent and reserved, he talked to butchers
and bakers and women on doorsteps, and schoolmistresses, and even
hot-potato men, as if they were the best company in the world, and
bit by bit he made a list of twenty-two Little Mothers of first-class
merit, and fifty-one of second-class merit, and all their children.

Having got these down in his book, Pembroke was going home on the
evening of the 21st very well pleased with himself on the whole, but
still feeling that Sir Franklin would be disappointed not to have the
name of the best Little Mother of all, when an odd thing happened. He
had stopped in a doorway not very far from the toy-shop, to light his
pipe, when he heard a shrill voice saying very decidedly, “Very well,
then, William Kitchener Beacon, if that’s your determination you shall
stay here all night, and by and by the rats will come out and bite you.”

Pembroke stood still and listened.

[Illustration: A LITTLE PROCESSION PASSED THE DOORWAY.]

“I don’t want to go home,” a childish voice whimpered. “I want to
look in the shops.”

“Come home you must and shall,” said the other. “Here’s Lucy tired out,
and Amy crying, and John cold to his very marrer, and Tommy with a
sawreel, and father’ll want his dinner, and mother’ll think we’re all
run over by a motor-car; and come home you must and shall.”

Sounds of a scuffle followed, and then a little procession passed the
doorway. First came a sturdy little girl of about ten, carrying a huge
string-basket filled with heavy things, and pulling behind her by the
other hand a small and sulky boy, whom Pembroke took to be William
Kitchener Beacon. Then came the others, and lastly Tommy, limping with
the sore heel.

Pembroke stopped the girl with the bag, and asked her if she lived far
away, and finding that it was close to the toy-shop, he said he should
like to carry the bag, and help the family home. He was not allowed to
carry the bag, but no objection was raised to his lifting Tommy on his
back, and they all went home together.

On the way he discovered that the Little Mother was named Matilda
Beacon, and that she lived at 28, Pulvercake Buildings, Clerkenwell.

She was nine years old, an age when most of you are still running
to your nurses to have this and that done for you. But Matilda, in
addition to doing everything for herself very quietly and well, had
also to do most things for her mother, who went out charing every
day, except Sunday, and for her brothers and sisters, of whom she had
five--three brothers aged seven, six, and three, and two sisters, who
were twins and both five. Matilda got them up and put them to bed;
picked them up when they fell, and dried their tears; separated them
when they quarrelled, which was very often; bought their food and
cooked it, and gave it to them, and saw that they did not eat too fast;
and was, in short, the absolute mistress of the very tiny flat where
the Beacons lived.

Mr. Beacon worked on the line at St. Pancras, and if he was late home,
as he very often was, Mrs. Beacon was always sure that he had been
run over by a passing train and cut into several pieces; so that in
addition to all her other work Matilda had also to comfort her mother.

The next day, when he came again to the toy-shop district, Pembroke was
delighted to find that by general consent Matilda Beacon was considered
to be the best Little Mother in Clerkenwell; but who do you think came
next in public opinion? Not Carrie Tompsett, although she had several
strong backers; and not Lou Miller, although she had her supporters
too, and was really a very good little thing, with an enormous family
on her hands. No, it was neither of these. Indeed, it was not a Little
Mother at all, so I don’t see how you could have guessed. It was a
“Little Father.” It was generally agreed by the butchers and bakers and
oilmen and hot-potato men and publicans and the women on the doorsteps,
that the best Little Mother next to Matilda Beacon was Artie Gillam,
who, since his mother had died last year and his father had not yet
married again, had the charge of four sisters and two brothers.

All these things Pembroke reported to his master; and Sir Franklin
was so much interested in hearing about Matilda Beacon that he told
Pembroke to arrange so that Mrs. Beacon might stay at home one day and
let Matilda come to see him. So Matilda put on her best hat and came
down from Clerkenwell to Berkeley Square on the blue bus that runs
between Highbury and Walham Green.

When the splendid great door was opened by a tall and handsome footman
Matilda clung to Pembroke as if he were her only friend in the world,
as, indeed, he really seemed to be at that moment in that house. She
had never seen anything so grand before; and after all, it is rather
striking for a little girl of nine who has all her life been managing a
large family in two small rooms in Clerkenwell, to be brought suddenly
into a mansion in Berkeley Square to speak to a gentleman with a title.
Not that a gentleman with a title is necessarily any more dreadful
than a policeman; but Matilda knew several policemen quite intimately,
and was, therefore, no longer afraid of them, although she still
found their terribleness useful when her little brothers and sisters
were naughty. “I’ll fetch a policeman to you!” she used to say, and
sometimes actually would go downstairs a little way to do so and come
back stamping her feet; and this always had the effect of making them
good again.

Sir Franklin was sitting in the library with a tea-table by his side
set for two, and directly Matilda had dared to shake his hand he told
Pembroke to bring the tea.

Matilda could not take her eyes from the shelves of books which ran
all round the room. She did not quite know whether it might not be a
book-shop and Sir Franklin a grand kind of bookseller; and then she
looked at the walls and wondered if it was a picture-shop; and she made
a note in her mind to ask Mr. Pembroke.

Her thoughts were brought back by Pembroke bringing in a silver tea-pot
and silver kettle, which he placed over a spirit lamp; and then Sir
Franklin asked her if she took sugar.

(If she took sugar? What a question!)

She said, “Yes, please, sir,” very nicely, and Sir Franklin handed her
the basin.

Would she have bread and butter or cake? he asked next.

(Or cake? What a question again!)

She said she would like cake, and she watched very carefully to see how
Sir Franklin ate his, and at first did the same; but when after two
very small bites he laid it down and did not pick it up again, Matilda
very sensibly ceased to copy him.

When they had finished tea and had talked about various things that did
not matter, Sir Franklin asked her suddenly, “How would you like to
keep shop, Matilda?”

Matilda gasped. “What sort of a shop?” she asked at last.

“A toy-shop,” said Sir Franklin.

“Oh, but I couldn’t,” she said.

“Only for one day,” Sir Franklin added.

“One day!” Her eager eyes glistened. “But what about Tommy and Willy
and the twins?”

“Your mother would stay at home that day and look after them. That
could easily be arranged.

“You see,” Sir Franklin went on, “I want to give all the children in
your street and in several other streets near it a Christmas present,
and it is thought that the best way is to open a toy-shop for the
purpose. But it is necessary that the toy-shop keeper should know most
of the children and should be a capable woman of business, and that is
why I ask you. The salary will be a sovereign; the hours will be from
two to eight, with an interval for tea; and you shall have Mr. Pembroke
to help you.”

Matilda did not know how to keep still, and yet there was the least
shade of disappointment, or at least perplexity, on her face.

“Is it all right?” Sir Franklin asked.

“Ye-e-s,” said Matilda.

“Nothing you want to say?”

“No-o-o,” said Matilda; “I don’t think so.”

And yet it was very clear that something troubled her a little.

Sir Franklin was so puzzled by it that he went out to consult Pembroke.
Pembroke explained the matter in a moment.

“I ought to have said,” Sir Franklin remarked at once on returning,
“that the shopkeeper, although a capable business woman, may play at
being a little girl, too, if she likes, and will find a doll and a
work-basket for herself, and even sweets too, just like the others.”

Matilda’s face at once became nothing but smiles.

“You will want a foreman,” Sir Franklin then said.

“Yes,” said Matilda, who would have said yes to anything by this time.

“Well, who will you have?”

“I don’t think Tommy would do,” said Matilda. “He’s that thoughtless.
And Willy’s too small.”

“How about Frederick?” said Sir Franklin, ringing the bell twice.

Matilda sat still and waited, wondering who Frederick was.

After a moment or two the door opened, and a very smart boy, all over
buttons, came in. “You can take away the tea-things,” said Sir Franklin.

“That was Frederick,” said Sir Franklin, when the boy had gone.

“Oh!” said Matilda.

“Would he do for foreman?” Sir Franklin asked.

Matilda hesitated. She would have preferred some one she knew, but she
did not like to say so.

“Too buttony?” suggested Sir Franklin.

Matilda agreed.

“Then,” said Sir Franklin, “is there anyone you know?”

“I think Artie Gillam----” said Matilda.

“Very well, then,” said Sir Franklin, “it shall be Artie Gillam. His
wages will be ten shillings.”

And thus everything was settled, and Matilda was sent home with
Frederick the page boy, the happiest and most responsible Little Mother
in London, with an armful of good things for the family.

Meanwhile Pembroke had been to Houndsditch buying quantities of new
toys: for every Little Mother a large doll and a work-basket, and
smaller dolls and other toys for the others, together with sweets and
oranges and all kinds of other things, and everything was ready by the
day before Christmas Eve, and all the tickets were distributed.

The tickets were Pembroke’s idea, because one difficulty about opening
a free toy-shop in a poor district of London for one day only is that
even the invited children, not having had your opportunities of being
brought up nicely and learning good manners, are apt to push and
struggle to get in out of their turn, and perhaps even to try to get
in twice, while there would be trouble, too, from the children who did
not belong to the district. Pembroke knew this, and thought a good
deal about the way to manage it so that there should be no crowding or
difficulty. In the end Sir Franklin engaged a large hall, to which all
the children were to come with their tickets, and from this hall they
were to visit the shop in little companies of ten, make their choice of
toys, and then go straight home. Of course, a certain number of other
children would gather round the shop, but that could not be helped, and
perhaps at the close of the afternoon, when all the others had been
looked after, they might be let in to choose what was left. And in this
state were the things the night before Christmas Eve.

VII

Pembroke managed everything so well that the great day went off without
a hitch. At half-past two the Little Mothers with their families began
to arrive, and they were sent off to the shop in companies of ten
or thereabouts, two or three families at once. A couple of friendly
policemen kept the crowd away from the shop, so that the children had
plenty of time and quiet to choose what they wanted.

All the Little Mothers, as I have said, had each a doll and a
work-basket; but the younger children might make their choice of two
things each, and take two things for any little brother or sister who
could not come--Clerkenwell being full of little boys and girls who
are not very well.

When they were chosen, Artie Gillam wrapped them up, and off the
children went to make room for others.

Matilda was a splendid shopkeeper. She helped the smaller children to
choose things in a way that might be a real lesson to real keepers of
toy-shops, who always seem tired.

“Now then, Lizzie Hatchett,” she said, “you don’t want that
jack-in-the-box. What’s the good of a jack-in-the-box to you if your
brother’s got one? One in a family’s plenty. Better have this parasol:
it lasts longer and is much more useful.

“Here’s a nice woolly lamb for Jenny Rogers’s baby brother,” she cried,
taking away a monkey on a stick. “He’ll only suck the paint off that
and be deathly ill.

“Now, Tommy Williams, don’t bother about those ninepins. Here’s a
clockwork mouse I’ve been keeping for you.” And so on. Matilda’s
bright, quick eyes were everywhere.

Only one or two uninvited children squeezed in with the others. One of
these was a very determined little rascal, who actually got in twice.
The first time he went away not only with toys of his own, but with
something for a quite imaginary brother with whooping-cough. This made
him so bold that he hurried away and fought another little boy in the
next street and took away his coat and cap. The coat was red and the
cap had flaps for the ears, so that they made him look quite different.
Wearing these, he managed to mix with the next little party coming
from the hall. But he had forgotten one thing, and that was that the
little boy whom he had fought was Artie Gillam’s cousin. Artie at once
recognized both the cap and the coat, and told Mr. Pembroke, and Mr.
Pembroke told one of the policemen, who marched into the shop, looking
exceedingly fierce, and seizing the interloper by the arm, asked him
whose coat he had on. At this the boy began to cry, and said he would
never do it again. But it was too late. The policeman took hold of
his wrist and marched him out of the shop and through all the other
children in the street, who followed them in a procession, to the home
of Artie’s cousin, and there he had to give back the coat. Then he was
allowed to go, because Artie’s cousin’s father was out, and Artie’s
cousin’s mother (who was Artie’s aunt) was not at all the kind of woman
to thrash little boys.

So the time went on until all the children in Pembroke’s list had got
their toys and the hall was empty, and then the many others who had
been waiting outside were let in, one by one, until all the toys were
gone, and the policemen sent the rest away.

“Now,” said Pembroke, “we must shut the shop.” So Artie Gillam went
outside and put up the shutters, and Matilda put on her jacket and hat.

Then Pembroke took some money out of his pocket to pay the manager and
her foreman their salaries.

“How will you have it?” he said to Matilda.

“Please I don’t know what you mean,” Matilda replied.

“Gold or silver?” Pembroke explained.

Matilda had never seen gold yet, except in jewellers’ windows. Her
mother’s wedding-ring was silver. “Oh, gold, please,” she gasped.

“One sovereign or two halves?” Pembroke asked.

“Two halves,” Matilda said.

Pembroke gave them to her.

Artie Gillam, on the other hand, wanted his ten shillings in as many
coins as he could have, and his pocket was quite heavy with it.

“And now,” said Pembroke, “I suppose you’re going home. Be careful of
your money on the way.”

“Oh no,” said Matilda, “I’m not going home yet. I’ve got some shopping
to do.”

“To-morrow’s dinner?” Pembroke suggested.

“No,” said Matilda mysteriously. “That’s all bought. Father won a goose
in the Goose Club.”

“Then what are you going to buy?” Pembroke asked, for he wished to take
as long and full a story home to Sir Franklin as might be.

“I’m going shopping for myself,” said Matilda. “I’m going to buy some
Christmas presents.”

“May I come with you?” Pembroke asked.

“Oh yes, please, I want you to. I’m only going to spend one of these
half-sovereigns. The other I shall put away. But I must buy something
for mother, and something for father, and I want to buy something
else, too, for somebody else.”

So Pembroke and Matilda and Artie, having turned out the gas and locked
up the shop, which, however, now contained nothing whatever but paper
and string and straw, walked off to the shops.

They first went into a draper’s, where Matilda looked at some shawls
and bought a nice thick woollen one for her mother, and also a pair of
grey wool mittens for her father. These came to five-and-six.

Then they went to an ironmonger’s and bought a cover for a plate to
keep things warm, which Matilda said was for her father’s dinner,
because he was often late while her mother thought he was being cut in
pieces. This cost ninepence.

Then they went to a tobacconist’s and bought a pipe with a silver band
on it, and two ounces of tobacco. These came to one-and-fourpence and
were also for her father.

Then they went to a china-shop and bought a hot-water bottle for a
shilling. “That,” said Matilda, “is for the old woman next door to us,
who nursed mother when she was ill. She can’t sleep at night because
her feet are so cold.”

“And now,” said Pembroke, “it’s my turn,” and he took the children
into a greengrocer’s shop and bought a shilling’s worth of holly and
mistletoe for each of them. “If you like,” he said, “I will carry this
home for you.”

Matilda thanked him very heartily, but said that she still had one more
present she must buy, and led the way to a little fancy shop, kept by
an old maid.

“Please,” said Matilda, “I want a kettle-holder.”

The old lady took out a drawer and laid it on the counter. It was
full of kettle-holders, some made in wool-work, others in patch-work.
Matilda looked at them very carefully one by one, and at last chose
one in scarlet and bright yellow wool-work. When it was done up in a
neat little packet and she had paid for it--sixpence--she handed it to
Pembroke.

“That,” she said, “is a present for the gentleman. When I had tea
with him I noticed that he hadn’t got one, and of course every family
ought to have a kettle-holder. I should have liked to make one for him
myself, but there hasn’t been time.”

VIII

Sir Franklin Ingleside did not use the kettle-holder. He hung it on a
nail by the fire-place, and whenever he is asked about it, or people
smile at its very striking colours, he says, “I value that very highly;
that is the profit that I made out of a toy-shop which I once kept.”

THE GARDENS AND THE NILE

THE STORY OF SPEKE

In Kensington Gardens, close to Lancaster Gate, there rises from the
grass beside the path leading direct to “Physical Energy” a column of
red granite, bearing the words “In Memory of Speke. Victoria Nyanza
and the Nile. 1864.” Anyone curious enough to stand for a while near
this column and listen to the nurses and children who pass would hear
some strange suggestions as to why the column is there, and who or what
Speke was; but for the most part the answer to the question is: “I
don’t know,” or, “How should I know?” or, “Inquire of your pa”; or, by
the more daring, “Speke was a great man.”

“Yes, but what kind of a great man? What did he do?”

“Do? Oh! [airily] he did great things. That’s why he has a
monument--monuments are put up only to great men.”

“Yes, nurse, but do tell me what Speke did?”

“That I shan’t now. I might have done if you hadn’t worried me so. But
I’ll tell you what he didn’t do: he didn’t ask questions all day long.
No great man ever did.”

That evening, perhaps, just before bedtime, the same question will be
repeated at home.

“Father, who is Speke?”

“Speke?”

“Yes, there’s a monument in the Gardens in memory of Speke.”

[Illustration: “YES, NURSE, BUT DO TELL ME WHAT SPEKE DID?”]

“A very unsuitable inscription, I think. Bad advice. Little boys--yes,
and little girls too--should be seen and not heard. I would rather it
said ‘In honour of not speaking.’” (This father, you see, was one of
the funny fathers who think that children want only to laugh.)

“No, father, not S-P-E-A-K; S-P-E-K-E.”

“Oh, Speke!--yes, of course, well, Speke--Speke was a great man.”

“Nurse said that, father. But what did he do?”

“Do? Oh, he was a great, great Englishman! A very noble life. That’s
why he has a monument. Monuments, you know, are raised only to the
great. You have seen the Albert Memorial, and the statue of the Duke of
Wellington at Hyde Park Corner?”

“Yes, father, but do tell me what Speke did?”

“Speke--my dear child, do you know what the time is? It’s twenty to
eight. You ought to have been upstairs for ten minutes. Good-night.
Sleep well.”

The result is that for several years the children of Bayswater and
Kensington have had to invent stories of Speke for themselves. They
know in a vague way that he was a traveller, because of the other
words on the monument; but that is all. They don’t know whether he was
young or old; whether he travelled in 1864, or died in 1864. Some of
them, the smaller ones, connecting Victoria Nyanza in some way with
Queen Victoria, think of Speke as something to do with Kensington
Gardens--perhaps he was the head gardener, they think, or the man who
planted the trees. To others the word Nile on the column suggests
thoughts of Moses in the bulrushes, and Pharaoh and the Israelites.

Meanwhile, who was Speke?

I will tell you.

John Hanning Speke was born on May 4, 1827, at Jordans, near Ilchester,
in Somersetshire. That was the year when it was first observed that
Englishmen walked with their hands in their pockets. Speke’s father was
a captain in the 14th Dragoons, and the son was brought up to be a
soldier too; and in 1844, when he was seventeen, he entered the army,
and went to the Punjab in India, where he fought in several battles and
became a lieutenant. Any time he could get from active service he spent
in exploring the Himalayas and in hunting wild beasts and looking for
rare plants and fossils.

In 1854, when his ten years in India were over, he went to Africa in
order to carry out his pet scheme of exploring the centre of that
Continent, which was then almost unknown. Before, however, he could get
to work properly the Crimean War broke out, and he at once volunteered
for service there and fought very gallantly; and then, in 1856, he
really began again upon Africa in earnest, in company with another
intrepid traveller, Sir Richard Burton, the wonderful man who made the
pilgrimage to Mecca disguised so cleverly as a Mohamedan that he was
not discovered. Had he been he would have been killed at once.

The particular ambition of Burton and Speke was to trace the river Nile
back to its source in the mysterious heart of the Mountains of the Moon.

Has it ever occurred to you that every river has a source--that every
river begins somewhere, in a tiny spring? Few forms of exploration are
more interesting than to trace a stream back to its first drop. The
Thames, for example, begins in the Cotswold Hills--the merest little
trickle. All running water, you know, sooner or later reaches the sea.
That little trickle in the Cotswolds will in time glide past Henley
and Hampton Court and Westminster Bridge, and past the Tower, and help
to bear up the thousands of vessels in the Port of London, and at last
will run out into the sea at Gravesend. Some day perhaps you will walk
up the banks of the Upper Thames until you come to the Cotswold spring.

But of course a river, although we speak of its having one source, has
others too. Many streams run into the Thames, and each of these has
also its source. There is one, indeed, close to Speke’s monument--the
Westbourne, which gives its name to Westbourne Grove, where Whiteley’s
is. The West Bourne, like all the little London rivers, now runs
underground, but it used to be open a hundred and more years ago.
The West Bourne rises near the Finchley Road Station, and has many
adventures before it reaches the Thames and the sea. It runs, I have
been told, under the Bayswater Road into the Serpentine. At the bottom
of the Serpentine it comes out again in a waterfall, where the rabbits
are, and again runs underground to the King’s garden at the back of
Buckingham Palace, where it reappears as a beautiful lake. Then it
dives under the Palace and comes up again as the water in St. James’s
Park, where all the interesting water-fowl live and have nests on an
island--the ducks and gulls and cormorants and penguins. Then, once
more, it disappears, this time under the Horse Guards and Whitehall,
and comes out into the Thames. Not a bad career for a little bit of a
stream rising at Hampstead, is it?

To explore that stream would be fairly easy, and it is not difficult
to explore the Thames. But in order to realize quite what Speke did
you must think for a moment of what it means to travel in unexplored
countries. There are no maps: you have no notion what is before you;
the natives may be suspicious of you and make war at once, or they may
at first pretend to be friendly and then suddenly attempt a massacre;
fever is always on your track; wild beasts may be in such numbers as
to be a continual danger. It is a great thing to dare all these known
and unknown perils just to do--what? To make a fortune? No. To add a
country to England’s possessions? No. But just to gain a little more
knowledge of geography; just to add one more fact to the world’s sum.

Illness came to both explorers, and they endured very severe
privations, and at last Burton had to give up and allow Speke to go
on alone. They parted at Kazé on July 9, 1858, just fifty years ago,
Speke setting out with thirty-five native followers and supplies for
six weeks. On August 3 he discovered a gigantic lake, to which he gave
the name Victoria Nyanza--Victoria after his Queen, and Nyanza meaning
a piece of water.

You should now get your atlas and look for the Nile and Kazé and the
vast lake, where, as Speke then thought, and as is now known, the river
Nile begins its course of three thousand four hundred miles, which does
not end until, after passing through Khartoum, and Dongola, and Wady
Halfa, and Assouan, and Thebes, and Ghizeh, and Cairo, it glides into
the sea by the many mouths of its delta at Rosetta and Damietta and
Alexandria.

Speke then returned to England, to tell his countrymen all about his
discovery, and in 1860 he set out for Africa again, and began a series
of very tedious and harassing marches from Zanzibar through Uganda to
reach Victoria Nyanza once more, and explore it thoroughly. Illness
again interrupted him, and the native kings were not wholly friendly,
but at last, on July 28, 1862, he came to the head of the lake where
the water that becomes the Nile tumbles over the edge of a cataract.
This cataract he named Ripon Falls.

Speke telegraphed his news to England directly he reached a civilized
town, so that when he himself landed at Southampton, in 1863, he was
received as a hero, and honours were showered upon him, and he was the
most famous traveller of his own or almost any other day.

Not every one, however (including Burton), was satisfied that the Nile
really began at Ripon Falls, and books were written by Burton and
others in support of rival theories. Speke, who naturally believed
himself to be right, arranged to meet some of these other geographers
in a public discussion at Bath, in September, 1864; but on the very
morning of that day, as he was out partridge-shooting, he accidentally
shot himself and died at the early age of thirty-seven.

Isn’t that a wretched way for a man to die after braving all the perils
of unknown Africa?

And now, whenever you see the Speke monument again you will think
of that great inland sea in Africa called Victoria Nyanza, and the
Nile tumbling out of it and beginning its wonderful journey to the
Mediterranean.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SHILLING

Has it ever occurred to you through how many hands a piece of money
passes in the course of a day, a week, a month, and what it does for
its owners during that time? I am fortunately in the position to be
able to tell you of the adventures of a shilling of my acquaintance
during a single day; and the story will show you how busy a piece of
silver can be.

“Let me see, you want an ordinary day,” the shilling said. “Of course,
sometimes I am not busy at all--I just lie all the time in a till or
a drawer at the Bank (we hate being at the Bank on Sundays), or I
may belong for the time being to a miser, or I may be locked up in a
money-box. (Children have no notion how irksome it is to an active
intelligent coin to be put away in a dark money-box for weeks and
weeks, with no recreation but an occasional rattle.) But I will tell
you my adventures on a rather special day on which I not only went to
church, but to a race-meeting, and was lost into the bargain. I was not
busier then than I have been at other times, but I had rather more ups
and downs than a day usually sees.

“When I woke it was quite light, and as I lay on the dressing-table
with all the other coins the sunshine came through the chinks of the
blind and made me pleasantly warm. Not so warm as I am in a pocket, but
still very comfortable, especially as I had been cold in the night.

“It was a new room to me, and I was very glad to see it, or, indeed, to
see anything again, since for nearly a year I had been locked up in a
little girl’s money-box, with no one to talk to but a few low pennies
and a very rude little threepenny bit, who squeaked his impertinences
into my ear all day long. Every now and then another penny would come
tumbling in among us with a crash, sometimes bruising us horribly, but
never any real gentlefolk, not even a sixpence. Luckily, however, this
little girl’s mother had the sense to have a birthday, and so at last I
was taken out, to be exchanged at a flower-shop for a pot of musk.

“I lay in the flower-shop till for an hour or so, and then a
nice-looking gentleman with grey hair came in for some pink carnations
for a lady on Campden Hill, and I was given to him as change. He put
me in his pocket, and there I remained till he came home, when I was
placed on the dressing-table with all the other coins.

“I was the only shilling, the others being a very old half-crown, quite
deaf and short-tempered, a tired florin, some more vulgar pennies
(pennies can be very coarse), and a sovereign, who was too proud even
to look at us and at once went to sleep.

“I don’t know what I should have done for company had it not been
for a very affable silver-backed hair-brush on the table close to
me, who told me one or two interesting stories of his youth and the
grand people he used to see when he was lying in a Bond-Street window.
He was in the midst of the romance of a very giddy tortoiseshell
comb whom he had once loved, when the gentleman got up and began to
brush his hair, and when he set the brush down again it was too far
off for conversation. These are the little things that human beings
do not think of, but which mean so much to us. We always like to be
put close together according to our metal, gold near gold, silver
near silver, and so on, and we like, also, to keep near our own
values too--half-crowns near half-crowns, and pennies near pennies
(although now and then I will admit I have heard some very funny and
enlightening things from copper, even from halfpennies, although it is
true that they do drop their _h_’s and are often exceedingly unwashed).

“Well, to get on with my story: when the gentleman had finished
dressing he put us all into his pockets again and went downstairs. Me
he put in his left-hand trouser pocket with the half-crown and the
florin; the pennies in his right, and the sovereign in his waistcoat.
And here let me say that it is much more comfortable to be a man’s
money than a woman’s. Men put us in their pockets and keep us cosy:
women put us in purses, where we can hardly breathe.

“Directly after breakfast my gentleman hurried off to the Notting
Hill Gate Tube station, and pushed me through a pigeon-hole to the
ticket-seller, who laid me on the counter before him with a great many
other coins all spread out. Before, however, I could say anything more
than just ‘How do you do?’ to them, I was taken up again and given in
change to another traveller.

“This traveller had a little boy with him on his way back to school
from Liverpool Street, and I very nearly passed into his possession as
a tip, but just at the last moment the traveller thought better of it,
and instead of giving the little boy a single shilling gave him half a
crown (as all fathers and uncles ought to do at the very least), and so
I went back into his pocket again.

“After the boy had gone I had a busy two hours in the city. I was first
paid away to a ’bus conductor, and was given by him in change to a lady
on her way to a special service at St. Paul’s. I was there laid in a
collection plate, which usually means a long rest for us; but happily
one of the clergymen wanted a pound’s worth of silver, and I had the
luck to be among it. He paid me to a cabman who took him to the Royal
Academy, and by this cabman I was soon after given as change to a
gentleman whom he drove from the Albany to Waterloo. This gentleman
dropped me into a pocket full of money and settled down in the corner
of a railway carriage to read the paper and smoke a cigar.

“‘Do you know where we are going?’ said one of the other coins to me.
‘We are going to the races. We may have some fun.’

“This pleased me very much, for I had never been to the races in my
life, but had heard much about them from time to time.

“‘Sometimes we make a lot of money for our master,’ the coin continued,
‘but sometimes he loses us for ever.’

“‘Yes,’ said a very fat five-shilling piece, who was hurting me
horribly by the way he leaned against me, ‘but, of course, you
[meaning me] are too small to make any money. It is fellows like me,
and sovereigns and half-sovereigns, that make the money.’

“None the less, as it happened, I made some too, although I had a
dreadful shock for a moment when my master gave me to a man for a
race-card, and I thought I should never have any fun at all. Luckily,
however, the race-card man was thirsty, and I found my way into a till,
and then I was given as change to a waiter, and soon after realized
that I was in the till of the members’ restaurant.

“There, for the first time in my life, I met a bank-note. The delicate,
fragile thing! She was very proud, but quite affable. We call them
Duchesses. You should hear them rustle as they move! They don’t live
with us, of course; they live in leather cases in the more fashionable
parts of the clothing, but now and then we find ourselves in the
same plate at restaurants, and I tell you it is a great moment for
a shilling when that happens. How one’s heart beats! That was what
occurred on this very occasion. I went out of the till in company with
this beautiful, refined creature, and the gentleman to whom we were
carried gave me back to the waiter as a tip.

“No sooner was lunch over than the waiter ran out on the course with me
in his hand, and went up to a man who was standing on a box, and asked:
‘What price Flatiron?’ and the man said, ‘Tens.’ Then the waiter handed
me to the man, and he dropped me into a bag full of other money, both
silver and gold, and gave the waiter a ticket.

“‘Who are you on?’ the other coins asked me eagerly. I had no notion
what they meant. ‘What is the name of your horse?’ they said. This
puzzled me even more, and I said I didn’t know any names of horses, but
the waiter had asked about a flatiron. ‘That’s it,’ said the others;
‘that’s your horse.’ And then I found that several others of them were
there for Flatiron’s sake too, while the others were for other horses,
such as Saucy Sally, and Pink Pearl, and Rufus, and See-you-later.

“Every moment other coins came tumbling in, and then the race began.
We could not see it, of course, but we could hear the cries of the
crowd, and we rattled about in our excitement as the names of our own
horses reached us. At last it was over, and we heard the man groan out
that Flatiron had won. And very soon the waiter came for his winnings,
and a half-sovereign and I were handed to him. I tell you I was proud
to think that I had been the means of bringing one of those conceited
half-sovereigns to life again, but he would not even say ‘Thank you.’

[Illustration: A BLUE RIBBON WAS THREADED THROUGH ME, AND I WAS HUNG
ROUND A LITTLE GIRL’S NECK.]

“The waiter spat on both of us for luck, and put us in his pocket, and
then went off to a refreshment tent, where I was pushed across a wet
counter and again dropped into a till, quite damp, but happily I was
taken out again before I could catch cold, and given as change to the
chauffeur of a motor-car.

“Almost immediately after that the chauffeur started his car and drove
his master back to London. I could not see anything--a coin very rarely
can--but I felt the vibration of the engine, and every now and then I
heard the horn blow.

“The interesting part of the ride, however, was the talk I had with a
shilling with a hole in it. ‘Whatever you do,’ he said, ‘don’t ever let
them bore a hole in you. Life isn’t worth living after that. It’s not
so much that it hurts as that no one will take you. I had a hole bored
in me when I was quite new, and a blue ribbon was threaded through
me, and I was hung round a little girl’s neck. That was all right,
especially as we used to go to all kinds of places together, even to
the pantomime and “Peter Pan,” and from where I used to hang I could
see too; but one day, in a crowd in London, a thief with a pair of
scissors cut the ribbon and pulled me off, and I have never been happy
since. I have been in many persons’ possession, but I see nothing of
life, because I change hands only at night. When it is light the people
won’t have me. They call out, “Hi, this shilling won’t do!” and push
me back again. I can’t buy anything by day at all, but at night I am
slipped into cabmen’s hands. It is very uncomfortable for me, for not
only am I condemned to a kind of furtive, dishonest life, but I have to
hear the dreadful things the cabmen say when they discover me.

“‘There is only one worse thing,’ he went on, ‘and that is to be a bad
shilling. But there aren’t many of those made, because it doesn’t pay
to make false coins so small. The coiners spend their time on bad
half-crowns and florins, which cost hardly any more to make than a
shilling and are worth ever so much more.’

“He went on to tell me of a bad half-crown that he once knew which was
now nailed to the counter of a tobacconist’s in Bermondsey. ‘Think of
it,’ he said, ‘nailed to a counter. Never able to move again: never
able to buy another thing for ever and ever!’ We both shuddered.

“Directly the car was in its garage the chauffeur hurried to his
lodgings and changed his clothes and went out to enjoy himself. It was
now about half-past six. He put his money into different pockets, and I
found myself with half a crown and a florin. They were fairly sociable,
especially when they knew I had won money at the races, but I had their
company only a very short time, for suddenly I began to feel myself
sinking. I cried out for help, but all in vain; and in a moment I fell
with a rush and knew no more until I awoke to find myself in the mud
of the street.

“There was a hole in the pocket!

“I lay there for a long time in an agony of fear that I should be run
over. I heard the beat of horses’ feet close to me and the rumbling
of wagons that shook the ground, and now and then a motor-car dashed
by and turned me cold with fear. But as no harm came to me I realized
that I must have fallen--I could not see for mud--very near the gutter;
perhaps quite in it.

“‘I do wish some one would pick me up,’ I thought, ‘but I don’t see
how they can, for if I can’t see them for mud, they can’t see me for
mud.’ Just as I was saying this to myself, I felt a great splash on my
face, and then another and another. A shower, and a very heavy one, had
begun. In spite of the wet this made me very happy, for I was gradually
being washed clean, and ‘now,’ thought I, ‘I shall be seen.’

“It happened exactly as I guessed, for almost immediately afterwards
a hand pounced down on me and picked me up, and I heard a man’s voice
say, ‘Well, I’m blowed if it ain’t a bob!’ I almost screamed as he put
me between his teeth and bit me. ‘And a good’un too,’ he added, and
then addressing the woman with him, who was leading a little boy, he
said: ‘Come on, old girl, and we’ll have some dinner after all,’ and we
all went off to the nearest Lockhart’s refreshment-room and sat down at
a table by the fire.

“‘What shall it be, missis?’ the man asked. ‘Two pots of splash for me
and you, and three doorsteps and a mug of chalk for his nibs?’

“The woman said that would do nicely, and the man went off to get the
things from the counter, and as he had to give me in payment that was
the last I saw of him and his family; for which I was sorry, for they
were nice kindly sort of people although so poor. But I was able to
see what he meant by his strange words, for he took back with him two
cups of coffee, and three thick slices of bread and butter, and a mug
of milk.

“Half an hour later I was given in change to a jolly navvy who was
having an evening out with his girl. They had finished their supper and
were now on their way to the circus. He held me in his hand until we
got to the gallery door, and then I was pushed through a little grating
and once again flung into a crowded till.

“There I felt I was doomed to stay for some time, for it was late and
no one else was likely to come in. However, I did not mind much, for I
was very tired and my head buzzed. ‘A shilling’s,’ I said to myself,
as I lay there, ‘is a very disappointing life. Here am I lying in the
till of a circus ticket-office and seeing nothing, while my late owner,
who but for me would not be at the circus at all, is having all the
fun.’ Where I lay I could faintly hear the band and the laughter. ‘But
for me,’ I continued, ‘why, but for me and other coins people couldn’t
do anything at all. It is we who give them their power. Just see what
I have done this very day since I got up--I have bought tickets and
food and drink and cab-rides for many people; I have been put into the
plate at church and I have won ten shillings at the races; I have given
pleasure and profit; I have fed the hungry; and I have just sent two
worthy persons into the gallery of this circus. Not a bad day’s work!’

“So saying I composed myself to sleep, but just at that moment one of
the managers came round to ask for some change, and once again I was
sent out into the world. The manager put on his hat and overcoat and
started for home, giving me for his ticket at the station, where I
passed out again as change to a gentleman who was going to Notting
Hill Gate, who put me in his pocket and did not take me out until he
went to bed. And would you believe it? when I looked round I found I
was on the very same dressing-table on which I had awakened in the
morning, with my friend the silver-backed brush beside me.

“‘Then he didn’t spend you to-day?’ said the hair-brush, as soon as the
man had gone to bed, and we could get a little time to ourselves.

“‘Oh, didn’t he?’ I exclaimed. ‘Why, I’ve been all over London, in all
kinds of pockets to-day. I’ll tell you all about it.’

“Which I did; so that you and the hair-brush are now equally wise.”

And there the shilling’s story ended.

* * * * *

But did it ever occur to you before what a traveller a coin can be,
and that it is quite possible to get again at night the same coin you
parted with in the morning?

THE RING OF FORTITUDE

When Priscilla had been a very good girl her mother allowed her as a
special treat to play with her jewel-case. Of course Priscilla had
to be very careful, which, indeed, she was by nature, having for the
most part a place for everything, and everything in its place. She
used to sit on the floor with the jewel-case before her, and take the
rings and brooches and pendants and necklaces and bracelets and pins
out one by one, and hold them up to the light and make them flash, and
then put them on. There were diamonds and pearls, and a large opal in
which you saw deep down in its milky depths little glints of burning
crimson and dancing green. But of all the jewels Priscilla liked best a
turquoise-ring, which her mother had ceased to wear. Priscilla would
very much have liked this ring for her own; but her mother did not care
for little girls to wear rings at all, except--but that is what I am
going to tell you.

One day, soon after Priscilla was eleven, she had a bad toothache. It
grew no better as the time went on, although she rubbed the tooth with
medicine which her mother sent for; and afterwards she held a clove in
her mouth, according to the advice of a charwoman who happened to be
working in the house that day; and then lay down with a piece of brown
paper against her cheek, soaked in vinegar and then peppered, according
to the advice of the cook; and later sat close to the fire with the
heat on the toothache side, according to the advice of the housemaid;
and finally sponged her cheek with almost boiling water, according to
the advice of the nurse. Nothing did the tooth any good. It ached most
of the night, and the next morning poor Priscilla, with very red eyes,
was led away to the dentist’s by her nurse.

Of course directly she found herself on the terrible doorstep waiting
for the horrible door to open, her toothache went away absolutely; but
none the less she had to go into the waiting-room, and look at old
_Punches_ and old _Illustrated London Newses_ for a long time until
the dentist was ready, while fresh people came in and sat down with
a sigh, including one old gentleman with a left cheek like the glass
of a bull’s-eye lantern; and then Priscilla’s turn came and she went
upstairs and for half an hour the dentist tortured her.

It was a tooth which, he said, must be saved and not extracted, and so
he got out his little needles and his little looking-glass, and was
exceedingly cruel--although by nature one of the kindest men living,
who would not wittingly hurt a fly except for its own good--as in the
case of Priscilla. And when the half-hour was finished he had only just
begun, and he told her to come again in four days’ time and he would
try and finish it.

“Will it hurt again then?” Priscilla asked.

“I’m afraid it will,” said the dentist.

Poor Priscilla! The tooth went on steadily grumbling with pain, and
Priscilla’s nerves were all upset, so that, although she was naturally
brave, she could think of nothing but the next dreadful time, and as it
drew nearer and nearer she broke down completely.

“I’m very sorry, mother,” she said, “but I really don’t think I can,”
and so saying she burst into sobs.

“If you will get on your things and come with me to the Stores,” said
her mother, “I think I can help you.”

Priscilla brightened at once. She liked going to the Stores, not only
because it was exciting to buy things and be among so much to buy,
but also because she was always interested in the fat commissionaire
with the dog-chains at the top of the steps, who knew all the dogs of
Westminster intimately.

When they got to the Stores, and Smike had been chained up, Priscilla’s
mother led the way to the jewellery department, and, singling out one
of the assistants, she said, “Is my ring done yet?”

“Yes,” said he; “it has just come back.” And he took out of a drawer
a little box, and out of the box a ring, and handed it to Priscilla’s
mother. And Priscilla’s mother handed it to Priscilla and said, “See if
it fits, dear.” And, behold! it was the turquoise-ring she had always
loved so much, and, although it was rather loose, it fitted well enough
for Priscilla to refuse to let the Stores have it again to alter it. In
this decision she was supported by her mother, who said that it should
come back again after a day or two. And so the assistant gave Priscilla
the little box, and off they went home.

On their way Priscilla’s mother explained to Priscilla the value of the
ring.

“It is for you to wear,” she said, “only when you feel you want some
extra help to enable you to bear up, as you do to-day. Let us call it
the ring of fortitude, and every time you look down and see it, or feel
it on your finger, you will remember what it means and why it is there,
and that will give you courage. Why, you are much braver already.”

And it is true that Priscilla was. She almost skipped along beside her
mother, and all that day she fondled the ring and forgot all about her
tooth and the dentist, even about the perfectly hateful buzzing thing
that he drills holes with.

She had a good night, and went off to him in the morning almost
smiling, and whether it was that the ring helped her not to feel,
or whether the dentist really did not hurt, I don’t know, but it is
certain that she had almost a pleasant sitting in his detestable chair.

In addition to the ring of fortitude, Priscilla had been given a
shilling to buy some cakes for tea from a little shop off Regent
Street that was famous in her family for a certain kind of scone.
The dentist’s man called a cab, and she and her nurse drove off very
happily for the cakes and then all down Regent Street and through St.
James’s Park home.

It was upon hearing her mother’s first words, “Was the ring good to
you?” that Priscilla realized that she was no longer wearing it!

Her heart stood still.

She searched her gloves and her clothes and the bag with the cakes in
it, and then she searched them again; but to no purpose.

Priscilla was the most miserable child in London. She would rather,
she felt, have forty toothaches.

Directly after lunch, which she had the utmost difficulty in eating,
she and her mother hurried off to the confectioner’s to see if the ring
was there; but it was not.

Then they went off to Scotland Yard to describe it to the police and
see if the cabman had by any chance found it and taken it there.

The Lost Property Office at Scotland Yard is divided into two parts,
one for umbrellas and the other for miscellaneous things. Every day
hundreds of persons seem to make a point of leaving something in a cab,
and the doors of these offices are swinging continuously to let the
losers in and out. A very nice policeman took down the particulars of
the ring--what it was like, when and where Priscilla remembered seeing
it last, the time she got into the cab and the time she left it, and so
forth. Then he told them that if it were brought in they should have a
letter.

But the letter did not come, and day after day passed, and Priscilla
grew so tired of looking at cabmen in the hope of seeing her own
cabman again that she slept badly and became pale and nervous, for she
dreamed every night of nothing but hansoms, not only in the streets,
but indoors too, and even upstairs, driven by men without faces at all.
And they never said anything to her, but just drove on and on, never
stopping to pick up passengers or put them down. The world was full of
cabmen, cabmen, cabmen....

The doctor said that unless something happened to divert her mind
Priscilla would be really ill.

But something did happen.

* * * * *

One evening, nearly a fortnight later, Priscilla’s father was sitting
by the fire reading a book he had bought at a book-stall that
afternoon. It was the life of an actor named Charles Mayne Young, who
lived a hundred years ago, and it was full of odd and interesting
things. Suddenly he said, “Listen to this,” and read to Priscilla and
her mother the following story, which was told to Mr. Young’s son by a
Brighton magistrate after dinner on Christmas Day, 1827:

“Some few years ago, a gentleman, a bachelor, residing in lodgings
on the first floor of a respectable but small house in this town,
appeared before the bench of magistrates with a charge against the
maid of his lodging of having robbed him of a ring.

“It appeared that he occupied the front drawing-room on the first
floor and slept in the back; that one night, having undressed by the
drawing-room fire and wound up his watch, he deposited it, with his
chain, two seals, and a ring attached to it, on the chimney-piece,
and jumped into bed in the next room. In the morning, on dressing
himself and going to the chimney-piece for his watch, he discovered
that the ring, which he valued, was gone. As he was in the habit
of sleeping with the folding-doors between the rooms ajar, and was
always a light sleeper, he felt confident that no one had entered the
room since he had left it overnight except the maid, who had come in
early, as usual, to dust and sweep the room and lay the table for
breakfast. The servant was so neat in her person, so pretty, gentle,
and well conducted, that he felt loath to tell her his suspicions;
but the moral certainty he entertained of her guilt, and the great
value he set on the ring, determined him to conquer his scruples. On
hearing herself charged with the theft, she started and stared, as
if doubting the evidence of her ears, indignantly denied the charge,
burst into tears, and told her mistress that she would not remain
another hour under her roof, for that her lodger had taxed her with
dishonesty. The landlady espoused the cause of her maid, and used
such strong language against her accuser, that his blood in turn
was roused, and he resolved to bring the matter to a determinate
issue before the magistrates. My friend said he was on the bench,
and that, prepossessed as he and his coadjutors were by the girl’s
looks and manners, they felt quite unable to resist the weight
of circumstantial evidence produced against her, and never had a
moment’s hesitation in committing her for trial at the next assizes.

“Five or six weeks after she had been in jail the prosecutor went
into Shaw’s, the pastry-cook’s in the Old Steyne, for an ice. While
he was pausing deliberately between each spoonful, the sun burst
forth in all its strength, and darted one of its beams along the
floor of the shop, bringing into light an object which glistened
vividly between the joists of the flooring. He took out his penknife,
inserted the point of it between the boards, and, to his utter
amazement, fished up his lost ring. He ran back to his lodgings,
and, on referring to his diary, he found that, on the evening of the
very night on which he had left his watch and its appendages on the
chimney-piece, he had been at Shaw’s having some refreshment; and he
conjectured that, as half the split ring from which his seals hung
had been for some time a good deal wrenched apart, it must have come
into contact with the edge of the counter, and thus liberated the
ring from its hold; that it had fallen on the ground, been trodden
under the feet of some of the visitors to the shop, and in this way
been wedged in between the boards of the flooring. Stung to the
quick by self-reproach, at the thought of having tarnished the good
name of an innocent girl by false accusation, and of having exposed
her to the unmerited sufferings of prison life, he instantly took
a post-chaise and drove off to the jail in which she was confined,
asked every particular about her from the governor, and found him
enthusiastic in his admiration of her, and utterly incredulous of
her guilt. ‘She’s the gentlest, sweetest-tempered creature we have
ever had within these walls, and nothing shall make me believe she
is a thief,’ said he. ‘No more she is,’ was the eager answer. ‘She
has been falsely charged by me, and I have come to make her every
reparation in my power.’ In one brief word, he offered her his hand,
and married her.”

“There!” said Priscilla’s father, when he had finished. “Why shouldn’t
our ring have fallen into a crack at the pastry-cook’s in just the same
way? You say it was a little bit loose, and Priscilla remembers taking
off her glove in the shop. It’s an old shop, isn’t it?” he added.

“Yes,” said Priscilla’s mother, “very old.”

“Then very likely there are wide cracks in the floor, or even holes?”

“Quite likely,” said Priscilla’s mother.

“Then I think I’ll go at once and see.” Priscilla’s father was very
impulsive, and when he thought of a thing he liked to do it.

“Oh, father, may I come too?” cried Priscilla.

“It will make you so late for bed,” said her father.

“Only this once,” Priscilla urged.

“And the shop will be shut,” said her mother.

“Oh, I’ll get them to let me in!” said her father.

“Do let me go, do!” said Priscilla. “I may, mayn’t I?”

“Very well,” said her father; “but you must wrap up very warm.”

So Priscilla’s father filled his pipe, and Maggie stood on the steps
and blew twice, and soon a cab came, and off they bowled to the little
street off Regent Street.

Priscilla’s mother was quite right. The shop was shut; but Priscilla’s
father hammered on the side door, and soon it was opened by a very
little servant in a cap all on one side.

“Is Mr. Dear in?” asked Priscilla’s father.

“No, he’s not,” said the very little servant.

“Is Mrs. Dear in?” asked Priscilla’s father.

“There isn’t a Mrs. Dear,” said the very little servant.

“Then who is there?” asked Priscilla’s father.

“There’s Miss Dear,” said the very little servant. “Mrs. Dear died
years ago, on the day after the Diamond Jubilee.”

“Is Miss Dear in?” asked Priscilla’s father.

“No; Mr. Dear and Miss Dear have both gone to Maskelyne and Devant’s,”
said the very little servant, with a husky note in her voice that
suggested she wished she was there too. “They have free seats,” she
added, quite unnecessarily, “for putting the bill in the window.”

“Then there’s no one at home but you?” said Priscilla’s father.

“Only the bakers,” said the very little servant, “but they’re busy at
the back.”

“May I go into the shop for a minute?” said Priscilla’s father.

[Illustration: “WILL YOU TELL ME WHAT MR. DEAR IS LIKE?”]

“No, you mayn’t,” said the very little servant very decidedly, half
closing the door as she spoke, and Priscilla’s father saw at once that
it would be quite useless to try and get her to believe that he was not
a thief.

“All right,” he said; “don’t be frightened. But will you tell me what
Mr. Dear is like, because I am going to Maskelyne and Devant’s to try
and find him.”

The very little servant, keeping the door nearly shut and speaking
through the crack, was willing to sketch her master and mistress.
Mr. Dear, she said, had white whiskers on each cheek and a pair of
perfectly round spectacles. (“Like an owl,” Priscilla thought.) And
Miss Dear was wearing a hat with about half a pint of cherries on it,
she should think. And they would be in the balcony.

So off went Priscilla and her father to Maskelyne and Devant’s, and
they had no difficulty in distinguishing Mr. and Miss Dear, but as the
performance was going on, it was some time before there was an interval
in which they could be approached. Priscilla did not mind that at all,
for the most wonderful things were happening on the stage, where people
were appearing and disappearing at the word of command, and, no matter
how carefully you watched them, the conjuror always turned out to be
somebody else. And there was a Japanese juggler who climbed up a pole
that was balanced on another Japanese juggler’s shoulder.

When the interval came at last--all too soon--Priscilla’s father
squeezed along the seats and introduced himself to Mr. Dear, and
Priscilla saw them talking very intently, and now and then they looked
at her, and then her father beckoned to her to come, and she squeezed
along too, and Mr. Dear and Miss Dear made room for her, and they all
sat together for the rest of the performance, and Miss Dear offered a
bag of sweets from time to time, with

O. W. DEAR,
PASTRYCOOK AND CONFECTIONER,

printed on it. And all the time, no matter what was happening on the
stage, Miss Dear was saying, “Well, there!” “Oh, dad, did you see
that!” “Well I never!” And once, when Mr. Devant drew a rabbit out of a
gentleman’s collar, she cried, “Oh, actuality!”

And then “God save the King” was played, and they all trooped out
into Regent Street, and Miss Dear and Priscilla followed Mr. Dear and
Priscilla’s father (who were talking about the Government) down to the
shop. When the very little servant saw them all together her eyes grew
twice as big as before. But her master told her to get them the key of
the shop quickly, and while she was gone they all stood there in the
narrow passage, surrounded by the smell of new bread. Then Mr. Dear
unlocked the door into the shop, and lit the gas, and then he fetched
a candle, and Priscilla showed them where she was standing when she
bought the cakes, and her father and Mr. Dear went down on their hands
and knees and groped about very carefully, moving only a very few
inches at a time.

“What about this hole?” said Priscilla’s father at last.

“Yes,” said Mr. Dear, “it is rather a big one. Can you see anything
shine?”

Priscilla’s father screwed his head down and twisted every way, while
he held the candle so as to throw light into the blackness.

“No, I can’t,” he said. “But how about opening it up?”

“Lizzie,” said Mr. Dear to his daughter, “run and get a hammer.”

Miss Dear hurried off.

“And you, little Missie,” said Mr. Dear to Priscilla, “you lift down
that jar at the end of the second row, and you’ll find something nice
to go on with while we’re busy.”

Priscilla found the jar and opened it, and it was full of chocolates
with “hundreds and thousands” sprinkled on the top.

When Miss Dear returned with the hammer and the very little servant,
Mr. Dear began to wrench up the board. It was very rotten, and came
away easily, leaving plenty of room for his hand to grope about. Mr.
Dear dipped into the black dust several times, and placed a heap on the
floor each time, until the place was empty.

“Now,” he said, “what shall we find?” And, placing the two candles
close to the heap of dirt, he began to examine it, while Priscilla’s
father and Priscilla and Miss Dear and the very little servant all
crouched down on the floor and looked on. Priscilla’s heart beat like a
motor-car standing still.

“Bless my soul,” said Mr. Dear suddenly, “if here isn’t half a
sovereign?”

“Fancy that!” said Miss Dear.

“Yes,” said Priscilla’s father, “and here’s a halfpenny.”

“Well, I never!” said Miss Dear.

“Pins,” said Mr. Dear, “by the hundred.”

“And here’s a pencil,” said Priscilla’s father.

“And--yes--no--yes--if it isn’t a ring?” cried Mr. Dear, holding
something up.

“Oh, actuality!” said Miss Dear.

Priscilla seized it with a gasp of joy. “It is!” she exclaimed. “Yes,
it is.”

It was the ring. Priscilla rubbed it clean, and the gold was as golden
as ever, and the turquoise had the same darling blue.

“Well,” said Mr. Dear, “if that isn’t the queerest go?”

Priscilla was so happy she nearly cried, and Miss Dear kissed
Priscilla, and kissed dad, and the very little servant jumped about,
and Mr. Dear kissed Miss Dear, and kissed Priscilla, and wrung
Priscilla’s father’s hand. They both said, “What an extraordinary
coincidence!” And Priscilla’s father promised Mr. Dear a copy of the
book as soon as he could get one, and Mr. Dear said it ought to be in
the _Daily Mail_.

And then Priscilla and her father said “Good-night” and “Thank you”
several times, and at last got away and hurried home to relieve the
mind of Priscilla’s mother, who, as you may suppose, was wondering what
had become of them.

* * * * *

That is only one story of the ring of fortitude. There are several
others, which I may tell you at another time--how it comforted
Priscilla in other times of need, and gave her strength, and how now
and then she lent it to others, and it helped them too. But if you
are inclined to doubt such a strange coincidence as I have related,
you have only to go into Mr. Dear’s shop--O. W. Dear, Pastrycook and
Confectioner--and just mention the topic of a lost ring, and he will
not only tell you the whole story from beginning to end, but show you
the Life of Young, and also the crack in the floor; and Miss Dear will
bear him out.

But don’t forget to buy a teacake, for he makes the best in London.

THE END

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
ON
ANNE’S TERRIBLE GOOD NATURE
ETC.

“Mr. E. V. Lucas has a sure knowledge of the way to please a child.
‘Anne’s Terrible Good Nature’ is as good a set of short stories for
children as could be made.”--_Nation._

“All Mr. E. V. Lucas’s books for children are delightful.... In
‘Anne’s Terrible Good Nature’ he is fantastical and suggestive, and
often full of information for childish minds--and he is always very
sympathetic.”--_Queen._

“A volume of capital stories for children. In fact, they are so
pleasantly written that grown-ups can read them with equal interest.
Mr. Lucas’s touch is so light and his humour so easy, indeed, that
whatever he writes makes agreeable reading.... Many stories, all of
which are good.”--_Westminster Gazette._

“I have read every word of every story, and enjoyed each word of
each.”--_Daily Chronicle._

“We recommend with every confidence to ladies and gentlemen between
the ages of seven and fourteen this volume of short stories.... About
all his plots there is a glowing consciousness of the deliciousness of
doing good things to please other people.”--_Tablet._

“The name of the author is almost a guarantee for the quality of the
tales. These are delightfully written, and make the most wholesome of
reading for young folks.”--_Scotsman._

“It is a delightful book for children.”--_Nottingham Guardian._

“There is not a word in this book which a child would not understand,
and the incidents follow each other as a child desires that they
should, making clear tales with such plots as children love.”--_Morning
Post._

“Sly or jovial fun, tenderness, boyishness, knowledge of children--all
sorts of things which are quite impossible to resist. And there are Mr.
A. H. Buckland’s pictures, too.”--_Times._

“Really good, useful, and amusing stories for children.”--_School
Guardian._

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Anne's terrible good nature : And other stories for children" ***

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