THE COURT OF QUEEN MAB.
"They were swans ... the ugly little duckling felt quite a strange
sensation as he watched them."--_The Ugly Duckling_.
During the short period which elapsed between Queen Mab's visit and the
end of the term Jack managed to steer clear of misfortune; but on the
last evening he must needs break out and come to grief again.
He incited the occupants of the Long Dormitory to celebrate the end of
work by a grand bolster fight, during the progress of which conflict a
pillow was thrown through the ventilator above the door. It so
happened that, at that moment, Mr. Copland was walking along the
passage; and a cloud of feathers from the torn case, together with
fragments of ground glass, being suddenly rained down on his
unoffending head, he was naturally led to make inquiries as to the
cause of the outrage. As might have been expected, Fenleigh J. was
found to be the owner of the pillow which had done the damage, and he
was accordingly kept back on the following day to pay the usual penalty
of an imposition.
"I'll take your luggage on with me," said Valentine. "You get out at
Hornalby, the first station from here, and it's only about a quarter of
a mile from there to Brenlands. Any one will tell you the way."
It turned out a wet evening. Queen Mab and her court had already been
waiting tea for nearly half an hour, when Valentine exclaimed, "Hallo!
here he is!"
The expected guest took apparently no notice of the rain; his cloth
cricket cap was perched on the back of his head, and he had not even
taken the trouble to turn up the collar of his jacket. He walked up
the path in a cautious manner, as though he expected at every step to
trip over the wire of a spring-gun; but when he came within a dozen
yards of the house he quickened his pace, for Aunt Mabel had opened the
door, and was standing ready to give him a welcome.
"Why, boy, how late you are! You must be nearly starving!"
"I couldn't come before," he began; "I had some work to do, and--"
"Yes, you rascal! I've heard all about it. Come in, and Jane shall
rub you down with a dry cloth."
Jack left off jingling his keys; he did not like being "rubbed down,"
but he submitted to the process with great good-humour. It was the
cosiest old kitchen; the table was the whitest, and the pots and pans
the brightest, that could be imagined; and Jane, the cook, groomed him
down as though brushing a damp jacket with a dry glass-cloth was the
most enjoyable pastime in life. In the parlour it was just the same:
the pretty china cups and saucers, and the little bunches of bright
flowers, only made all the nice things there were to eat seem more
attractive; and the company were as happy and gay as though it was
everybody's birthday, and they had all met to assist one another in
keeping up the occasion with a general merry-making. Jack alone was
quiet and subdued, for the simple reason that he had never seen
anything like it in his life before.
Queen Mab, strongly entrenched at the head of the table, behind the
urn, sugar basin, and cream jug, held this line of outworks against any
number of flank attacks in the shape of empty cups, the old silver
teapot apparently containing an inexhaustible supply of ammunition, and
enabling her to send every storming party back to the place from whence
it came, and even invite them to attempt another assault.
Once or twice Jack turned to find his aunt watching him with a look in
her eyes which caused his own face to reflect the smile which was on
hers. She was thinking, and had been ever since she had seen the
latest addition to her court coming slowly up the front path through
the dismal drizzle, of the old favourite story, and of that part in it
where the ugly duckling, overtaken by the storm, arrived in front of
the tumble-down little cottage, which "only remained standing because
it could not decide on which side to fall first."
When the meal was over, and while the table was being cleared, Jack
wandered out into the porch, and stood watching the rain. He had
hardly been there a minute before he was joined by Barbara.
"I say," she exclaimed, "why didn't you talk at tea time? I wanted to
ask you heaps of things. Your name's Jack, isn't it? Well, mine's
Barbara; they call me Bar, because it's the American for bear, and
father says I am a young bear. I want to hear all about that pillow
fight, and those races you had in the dormitory."
"Oh, they weren't anything! How did you get to hear about them?"
"Why, Val told us."
"Well, what a fellow he is! He's always talking about the rows I get
into."
"It doesn't matter; we thought it awful fun. Helen laughed like
anything, and she's very good. I say, can you crack your fingers?"
"No; but I can crack my jaw."
"Oh, do show me!"
Jack really did possess this gruesome accomplishment; he could somehow
make a blood-curdling click with his jawbone. When he did it in
"prep." his neighbours smote him on the head with dictionaries, and
when he repeated the performance in the dormitory, fellows rose in
their beds and hurled pillows and execrations into the darkness.
Barbara, however, was charmed.
"You are clever!" she cried; "I wish I could do it. Now, come back,
and sit by me; we're going to play games."
Jack, who had cherished some vague notion that every girl was something
between a saint and a bride-cake ornament, was agreeably surprised at
this conversation with his small admirer, and readily complied with her
request. Several of the games he had never seen before, but he made
bold attempts to play them some way or another, and soon entered into
the spirit of his surroundings.
In making words out of words his spelling was nearly as bad as
Barbara's, but he seemed to think his own mistakes a great joke, and
didn't care a straw how many marks he gave to the other players. In
"Bell and Hammer," however, he always managed to buy the "White Horse,"
while other people would squander their all in bidding for a card which
perhaps turned out after all to be only the "Hammer." At "Snap" he was
simply terrible; he literally swept the board, but kept passing
portions of his winnings under the table to Barbara, whose pile seemed
to be as inexhaustible as the widow's cruse. By the end of the evening
he was the life of the party, and no one would have believed that he
was the same boy who, a few hours ago, had come up the front path
wishing in his secret heart that he was safely back at Melchester
writing lines in the Upper Fourth classroom.
He and Valentine shared a delightful, old four-post bed, which in times
gone by had had the marvellous property of turning itself into a tent,
a gipsy van, or a raft, which, though launched from a sinking ship in
the very middle of a stormy ocean, always managed to bring its crew of
distressed mariners safely to shore in time to answer Queen Mab's
cheery call of "Tea's ready!"
"It is nice to be here," said Valentine, dropping his head upon the
pillow with a sigh of contentment. "Aren't you glad you came?"
"Yes," answered Jack. "Aunt Mabel seems so jolly kind and glad to see
you. I wish you hadn't told her about all those rows I got into; I
don't think she'll like me when she knows me better."
"Oh, yes, she will! Don't you like Helen?"
"Yes; I think she has the nicest face I ever saw. But she's too good
for me, Val, my boy. I think I shall get on better with Barbara; she's
more like a boy, and I don't think I shall ever be a ladies' man."
Valentine laughed; the idea of Fenleigh J. of the Upper Fourth ever
becoming a ladies' man was certainly rather comical.
"You'll like Helen when you get to know her. I wouldn't exchange her
as a sister for any other girl in the kingdom. Well--good-night!"
That one evening at Brenlands had done more towards forming a
friendship between the two boys than all the ninety odd days which they
had already spent in each other's company. The next afternoon,
however, they were destined to become still more united; and the manner
in which this came about was as follows.
During the morning the weather held up, but by dinner time it was
raining again.
"Bother it! what shall we do?" cried Valentine.
"I should think you'd better play with your tin soldiers," answered
Helen, laughing. "They always seem to keep you good."
Valentine hardly liked this allusion to his miniature army being made
in the hearing of his older schoolfellow, for boys at Melchester School
were supposed to be above finding amusement in toys of any kind. The
latter, however, pricked up his ears, and threw down the book he had
been reading.
"Who's got any tin soldiers?" he asked. "Let's see 'em." The boxes
were produced. "My eye!" continued Jack, turning out the contents,
"what a heap you've got! I should like to set them out and have a
battle. And here are two pea-shooters; just the thing!"
"You don't mean to say you're fond of tin soldiers, Jack?" said Aunt
Mabel. "Why, you're much too old, I should have thought, for anything
of that kind."
"I'm not," answered the boy; "I love tin soldiers, and anything to do
with war. Come on, Val, we'll divide the men and have a fight."
The challenge was accepted. There was an empty room upstairs, and on
the floor of this the opposing forces were drawn up, and a desperate
conflict ensued. The troops were certainly a motley crew; some were
running, some marching, and some were standing still; some had their
rifles at the "present," and some at the "slope;" but what they lacked
in drill and discipline, they made up in their steadiness when under
fire, and Jack showed as much skill and resource in handling them as
did their rightful commander. He set out his men on some thin pieces
of board, which could be moved forward up the room, it having been
agreed that he should be allowed to stand and deliver his fire from the
spot reached by his advancing line of battle. Each group of these
tag-rag-and-bobtail metal warriors was dignified by the name of some
famous regiment. Here was the "Black Watch," and there the "Coldstream
Guards;" while this assembly of six French Zouaves, a couple of
red-coats, a bugler, and a headless mounted officer on a three-legged
horse, was the old 57th Foot--the "Die-Hards"--ready to exhibit once
more the same stubborn courage and unflinching fortitude as they had
displayed at Albuera. Valentine held a position strengthened by
redoubts constructed out of dominoes, match-boxes, pocket-knives, and
other odds and ends. They were certainly curious fortifications; yet
the nursery often mimics in miniature the sterner realities of the
great world; and since that day, handfuls of Englishmen have built
breastworks out of materials almost as strange, and as little intended
for the purpose, and have fought desperate and bloody fights, and won
undying fame, in their defence.
"I'm going to be this chap, who takes on and off his horse," said Jack.
"Which is you?"
"Here I am," answered Valentine. "Now then, you fire first--blaze
away!"
As he spoke he picked up the veteran captain of the solid lead guards,
and set him down in the centre of the defending force, and so the
battle commenced. It was still raging when Jane came to say that tea
was ready; but the losses on both sides had been terribly severe. The
invading army still pressed forward, though the "57th" were once more
decimated by the withering fire; and nothing actually remained of the
"Coldstream Guards" but a kettle-drummer of uncertain nationality, and
a man carrying a red and green flag, which he might very possibly have
captured from some Sunday-school treat. The opposite side were in no
better plight: men were lying crushed under the ruins of the works
which they had so gallantly defended; and hardly enough artillerymen
were left to have pulled back, with their united efforts, the spring of
one of the pea cannons. The leaders on both sides remained unscathed,
and continued to brandish bent lead swords at each other in mutual
defiance.
"Make haste! you've got one more shot," said Valentine.
The pea-shooter was levelled and discharged, the veteran lead captain
tottered and tell, and thus the fight ended.
"Val, my boy, you're killed!" cried Jack. "No matter, it's the bed of
honour, old chap!"
"Oh, I don't mind!" answered the other, laughing. "_C'est la guerre_,
you know; come along. I'd no idea you were so fond of soldiers."
So they passed down to Queen Mab's merry tea-table, unsaddened by any
recollections of the stricken field, or of the lead commander left
behind among the slain.
The two boys talked "soldiering" all the evening; and the next morning,
when breakfast was nearly over, and Helen ran upstairs to inquire if
they meant to lie on till dinner-time, they were still harping away on
the same subject. The door was standing ajar, and she heard their
words.
"Don't move your knee," Jack was saying; "that's the hill where I
should post my artillery."
"Yes, that's all right," answered Valentine; "but you couldn't shell my
reserves if I got them down under cover of this curl in the
blanket.--All right, Helen! down directly!"
The sun was shining brightly, the fine weather seemed to have come at
last, and the question was how to put it to the best possible use.
"Why don't you children go and picnic somewhere?" said Queen Mab. "You
can have Prince and the carriage, and drive off where you like, and
have tea out of doors."
A general meeting was held in the hayloft directly after dinner for the
purpose of discussing this important question. Jack won a still higher
place in Barbara's affections by hauling himself up the perpendicular
ladder without touching the rungs with his feet; and though knowing
little or nothing about such things as picnics, he was ready with any
number of absurd suggestions.
"Let's go to Pitsbury Common," said Barbara; "there's such a lot of
jolly sandpits to roll about in, and we can burn gorse-bushes."
"Oh, no, don't let's go there!" answered Helen; "there's no place to
shelter in if it comes on rain, and when you're having tea the sand
blows about and gets into everything, so that you seem to be eating it
by mouthfuls."
"It's so nice having it out of doors," persisted Barbara.
"Well, let's go out in the road and sit with our feet in the ditch,
like the tramps do," said Jack. "I'll bring the tea in my sponge bag.
Rosher used to carry it about in his pocket, full of water for a little
squirt he was always firing off in the French class. Pilson had the
sentence, 'Give me something to drink;' and as soon as he'd said it, he
got a squirtful all over the back of his head, and Durand--"
"Oh, stop that!" said Valentine, laughing. "Look here! I vote we
drive over to Grenford, and call on the Fosbertons, and ask them to
lend us their boat; they'd give us lunch, and then we could take our
tea with us up the river. It's not more than six miles."
"Don't let's go there," said Barbara. "I hate them."
"Is Raymond away?" asked Helen.
"Yes; didn't you hear Queen Mab say he was going to spend his holidays
in London? Uncle James is rather a pompous old fellow, but we shan't
have to go there except for lunch; and father said we ought to call on
them while we're here; besides, it'll be jolly on the river. You know
them, don't you, Jack?"
"Well, I've _heard_ about them," answered the other. "I know that the
guv'nor's sister married old Fosberton, and that he got a lot of money
making tin tacks, or whatever it was; and now he fancies he's rather a
swell, and says he's descended from William the Conqueror's sea-cook,
or something of that sort. I don't want to go and see them; but I
don't mind having some grub there, if they'll lend us a boat."
"My senses! you ought to feel very much honoured at the thought of
going to lunch at Grenford Manor," said Helen, laughing.
"I'm sure I don't," answered her cousin. "I'd sooner have a feed in
old 'Duster's' shop at Melchester."
"Well, that's what we'll do," said Valentine. "We'll take a kettle and
some cups with us, and tea, and all that sort of thing, and go up the
river as far as Starncliff, and there we'll camp out and have a jolly
time."
With some reluctance the proposal was agreed upon. Had the company
foreseen the chain of events which would arise directly and indirectly
from this memorable picnic, they might have made up their minds to
spend the day at Brenlands.