Of course Tommy was much too excited to sleep. When a girl called
Annabel is coming to live in your house for ever and ever it naturally
absorbs all your thoughts.
Annabel's father was a naval officer who was sailing away from
Plymouth for two years, and Annabel and Annabel's mother were to live
in Tommy's house until he came home again.
All Tommy's particular friends, with the single exception of Ruthie,
were looking forward to the coming of Annabel, but Tommy had made it
quite clear to them that only now and again would she be able to give
them much attention, as most of the time she would be helping him to
carry out the most wonderful of wonderful games.
A late train this very February night was to bring Annabel and her
mother to Draeth. Tommy reduced the bed clothes to indescribable
confusion while he waited for their coming.
"Mammy, has Annabel come yet? Mammy, what's Annabel like?"
Mrs. Tregennis came upstairs and for the twentieth time that day
described the little girl.
She had seen neither Annabel nor Annabel's mother. It was with the
naval officer himself that she had made all arrangements, and as he
had crisp, curly hair, and very blue eyes she decided that his little
daughter possessed these qualities too. Tommy, therefore, pictured
Annabel with golden curls, rosy cheeks, blue eyes and a merry smile.
"'N will she play with me, Mammy?"
"If you'm a brave good boy, she will. But no sliding down Skiddery
Rock, mind."
"'N shall I show her the Smuggler's Cave, 'n let her ride on Dobbin?
Oh, Mammy, I _wish_ as Annabel would come. You'll bring her straight
in to see me, Mammy, won't you, before her goes to bed?"
Mrs. Tregennis promised. "But you'll have to be very good, ma
handsome," she warned him, "or your Mammy'll be properly ashamed of ee
'longside Annabel."
For the first time Tommy felt the improvement of his moral character
to be a real need.
Mrs. Tregennis went downstairs to make final preparation for supper,
while Tommy left to himself passed into the realms of play-acting. The
_dramatis personæ_ were Tommy Tregennis, enacted by himself, and
blue-eyed, curly-haired Annabel, represented for the moment by the
pillow. There were others, too, scattered dimly in the shadows of the
room.
In the first act Tommy sat up in bed, clutched the pillow tightly, and
"I _love_ you," he said.
Then, in reply to an interruption from the shadows: "No, her _don't_
love ee, Jimmy Prynne!"
The setting of the second act was slightly different, as, by this
time, the sheets and blankets were lying in a disorderly heap upon the
floor. Tommy was kneeling in the middle of the cot digging a
wonderful castle in the sand, while the pillow (that is, Annabel),
looked on with admiring wonder. Those others, in the shadows, tried
hard to make fine castles too, but Annabel gave them never a look.
Before the curtain rose on the third act the real Annabel, accompanied
by her mother, entered the house. Ungraciously Tommy thumped the
pillow and flung it aside.
In vain he listened for ascending footsteps. Why didn't Mammy at once
tell Annabel that he was waiting for her, he wondered. At last, after
what seemed to him hours and hours, he heard them come upstairs.
There was a stumble, and a strange voice said: "Be careful, darling,"
then they came on again.
Oddly the footsteps did not stop at his door, and a moment later he
knew by the sounds overhead that Annabel and her mother were in their
own bedroom.
"Mammy!" he called.
At once she stood by his bed and, stooping, kissed him, with some new
quality in her kiss.
"Wants to see Annabel, Mammy," he said plaintively, rubbing tired
eyes. "Bring her to see me, Mammy."
Mrs. Tregennis hesitated, then stood in the doorway and spoke to the
visitors as they came downstairs. "My little Tommy's in bed, ma'am,
and can't go to sleep, he's so excited about seein' Annabel."
Mrs. Tregennis held out her hand to draw the child into the room.
"Oh," interposed Annabel's mother, scarcely pausing on the stairs,
"_Miss_ Annabel will speak to your boy in the morning, it is too late
to-night."
"I wants to see her now, Mammy. I wants to see her to wanst," wailed
Tommy, losing his shyness when confronted with the dread possibility
of having to wait all through the hours until morning. "I wants to see
her _now_, Mammy," and his voice rose higher.
The naval officer's wife held her daughter's hand and tightened her
lips. "He seems to be an undisciplined child," she said, and went down
to the sitting-room where supper was spread.
While Tommy sobbed in his pillow Mrs. Tregennis spoke out her mind to
her husband. "A blessin' she may be, I'm not for sayin' that she isn't
when I think of good money for two whole years. But she be a blessin'
in a thick disguise, Tom, so there 'tis, an' can't be no tizzer.
_Miss_ Annabel! _Miss_, mind you, Thomas Tregennis. I reckon she be
just like her mother though she be but a maid of five years old. Well,
I be main sorry for _'e_. 'Tis proper glad he'll be to be away these
two years, I'm thinkin'. Real glad he be, I guess."
When Tommy returned from school the following morning a sallow,
lank-haired girl stood in the doorway of the downstairs sitting-room.
"Come here, boy," she demanded imperiously.
Tommy looked at the unattractive stranger a full minute without
speaking; then--"Go out of my house," he said.
Two mothers rushed hurriedly forward.
"Tommy, Tommy," cried Mrs. Tregennis, "that do be Miss Annabel."
"What a _rude_ boy!" said the naval officer's wife.
Tommy took no notice of her. "'Tisn't Annabel," he said, shaking off
his mother's restraining hand. "Annabel has curls, an' is pretty, an'
smiles. That do be 'n ugly girl, that be."
Annabel ran forward and smacked him. "I hate you, boy," she cried.
Tommy was quite ready to fight, but his mother's grip prevented him;
all he could do was to make a hideous grimace as he was pushed
ignominously into the kitchen where the door was shut upon him.
Later in the morning the naval officer's wife summoned Mrs. Tregennis
to her sitting-room (the room on the ground floor on the left-hand
side of the door), and expressed her wishes and views. "I must live
quite economically," she explained. "I do not wish to spend much money
on food. I should like you to do all the shopping, but there must be
no extravagance and no waste. We shall eat very little meat, but
plenty of vegetables. I do not like to think of cows and sheep,
animals that lend charm and poetry to country life, being sacrificed
to the material needs of my babe and myself. Vegetarian dishes form
the only Christian menu. To-day we will have haricot beans made up
into some little delicacy, and for the second course a small rice
pudding. Please take a half-pennyworth of milk for me each day, and
skim off the cream that rises to the top for my afternoon tea."
"Oh, my blessed fäather; I've never met her like," confided Mrs.
Tregennis later to Aunt Keziah Kate who had just dropped in for a bit
of newsin'. "Two years of she'll about finish me, I reckon. Cream on
the top of a ha'porth of milk; my dear soul!"
Four weeks of the downstairs visitors had made Mrs. Tregennis quite
irritable and short-tempered, and when, towards the end of March, the
postman brought an unstamped letter she quite crossly refused to take
it in. It came by the afternoon delivery, and Tregennis went to the
door as his wife was upstairs.
"Ellen," he called, "here's a letter for ee, an' tuppence to pay."
"An' what'll I be payin' tuppence for?"
"It can't be left without; there's no stamp on 'e."
"Then it must be taken back. I don't want 'e." To emphasize her words
Mrs. Tregennis retreated from the head of the stairs and closed her
bedroom door.
Tregennis held the letter delicately between finger and thumb and
looked perplexedly at the postman, who tilted his official cap and
scratched his head.
At this moment the Naval Officer's wife came out of her room. "Are
there any communications for me?" she asked.
"No 'm, nothing at all," and Tregennis held up the unstamped letter to
the light, and tried in vain to penetrate the thickness of the
envelope.
"Ah, I see there is two-pence to pay," said Annabel's mother, who
still stood in the doorway. "Perhaps you have not the money; pray use
this." She thrust forward two pennies as she spoke.
Tregennis was a man by no means given to prejudices, but for this
woman he had conceived a violent dislike. "In no way thank ee, ma'am.
I have plenty of money here," and he slowly and carefully extracted
from the depth of his trouser pocket one penny and one halfpenny.
Shamefacedly he fumbled for a second halfpenny which could not be
found. First in one pocket, then in the other he felt, until the
postman showed some signs of impatience. The Naval Officer's wife
looked supercilious and returned to her room.
Tregennis, hot and uncomfortable and feeling like a thief, went to the
kitchen cupboard. From the right hand corner of the second shelf he
took a yellow china pig with a longways slit in its back. This rattled
as he moved it, for it was Tommy's moneybox. The only way in which the
capital invested in the pig could be recovered was to turn the animal
upside down and shake it in rapid jerks. Not infrequently it happened
that the coins lodged right across the slit instead of slipping
through. So it was to-day. At last one penny fell on the table and
rolled to the floor. Stooping, Tregennis secured the penny and handing
it to the now openly impatient postman received in exchange his own
halfpenny and the unstamped letter addressed to his wife.
He put the letter in a prominent place on the chimney-piece, propping
it up against one of the china dogs. Here Mrs. Tregennis found it a
little later. "Why, my blessed fäather," she exclaimed, when it caught
her eye, "we might be made of money. We might be the quality
themselves the way you do go flingin' away tuppences right and left.
Whatever made ee give tuppence for that?"
Tregennis jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "_She_ wanted to pay!"
"Well, that was proper sensible of ee, too, Tom," admitted his wife as
she took down the unstamped letter from the chimney-piece, turned it
over, and pushed her thumb under the flap.