Downstairs in the kitchen Tommy was being comforted by his mother. In
the upstairs sitting room Annabel and Miss Margaret sat together and
Miss Margaret was wondering how she should begin what she had to say.
Annabel's expression was one of sullen obstinacy, her lips were still
set in a hard, straight line, and her eyes followed the intricacies of
the pattern of the Brussels carpet. Miss Margaret hesitated to ask the
child if it was she who had torn up the blades of grass, for she
feared to prepare the way for a lie.
"I am so sorry you spoiled Tommy's garden this afternoon, Annabel,"
she ventured.
Annabel's eyes were still on the carpet, and with her toe she outlined
a full-blown rose. "It wasn't a garden; it was just bits of grass,"
she asserted.
"It was only bits of grass to you," Miss Margaret agreed, "but Tommy
had watched it and watered it for weeks, and to him it was a real
garden. Now you have spoiled it all, and made Tommy very unhappy."
"_I hate him_," said Annabel, defiantly, between closed teeth.
"Yes, I know, of course you do," and for the first time Annabel looked
up.
Then Miss Margaret drew her to her. "I say, Annabel, don't you think
you and Tommy and I might be real good friends now, and all just be
very nice to each other?"
Then Annabel's lips trembled; but no tears fell.
"Does Tommy know?" she asked, and when she was told that he did not
she went out of the room and stood at the top of the stairs. Bending
forward, her hands resting on her knees, she peered down the steep
staircase.
"Tommy," she called, "Tommy Tregennis," but there was no response.
"Tommy Tregennis, come here!" The call was louder this time.
"Tommy, Miss Margaret and me wants you."
At this Tommy's head was poked round the kitchen door.
All Annabel's usual diffidence in Tommy's company had vanished.
"Come here, Tommy!" she insisted, and Tommy, impelled by some new
quality in her, walked slowly up the stairs.
"Tommy," said Annabel, rather hesitatingly, but looking straight into
his eyes; "Tommy, I rooted up your garden."
For the second time that day Tommy hit her quite hard.
"Tommy!" called Miss Margaret, in a stern voice, and Tommy, followed
by Annabel, obeyed the summons.
Then Miss Margaret explained to Tommy that he had often been very rude
and unkind to Annabel, and that in the future they must all be
friends. Whereupon Annabel held out her hand to Tommy, and Tommy
promptly pushed it away.
Miss Margaret was wisely blind to this by-play, and began to unfold a
plan she had formed.
"I'm thinking about the garden," she said, meditatively, and the
children forgot each other and gave their attention to her.
"I think it will grow again; but it will be very slow. Wouldn't it be
rather nice to plant some other flowers, and take care of them until
the grasses come again?"
"How?" demanded Tommy.
"I thought we might have boxes made to stand on the ground under the
window, and----"
"Not on my garden," interrupted Tommy.
"No, most certainly not. Not right on your garden, but quite close up
to the windows. One will be an unusual shape, because under the
kitchen window there's the drain to think of, too." Miss Margaret
looked out. "It isn't raining now; shall we go and measure the lengths
of our boxes?"
Downstairs they ran, borrowed Mrs. Tregennis's inch-tape, and outside
under the windows they all three measured.
Here Miss Dorothea, returning from the shelter of the caves, found
them and went with them up Main Street to the carpenter's, where they
gave the order for the boxes to be made, painted green, and delivered
on Monday without fail.
At the green-grocer's they ordered good soil for the new garden and
sturdy little wall-flower plants full of tightly closed buds. Here,
too, Miss Margaret bought Californian oranges, and paid for
rosy-cheeked apples to be sent with the soil and plants on Monday.
"Now then, home and tea," she ordered; but at the cobbler's window she
stopped.
"He lodges with my Aunt Martha," volunteered Tommy.
But the Blue Lady was not thinking of the cobbler, whose form could be
dimly descried through the screen of hanging laces, patches of leather
and cards of boot-protectors with which the window was dressed.
"It's Friday to-day," she said, impressively.
"Why shouldn't we have it to-morrow?"
"Have what?" asked Miss Dorothea. "What are you talking about?"
"Why, the pony and trap, of course," and Miss Margaret pointed to a
little card in a corner pane, on which was unevenly printed:
PONY AND GINGLE ON HIRE
"For us," said Annabel. "I never!" and the children seized each
other's hands in their excitement; but whose hand was put out first
this time it was impossible to say.
There was scarcely room for them all in the shop of the cobbler who
lodged with Aunt Martha. Miss Margaret bought from him numbers of
pairs of cheap boot-laces, for which she had no possible use, because
she was a little ashamed of their invasion of the tiny shop, when she
learned that the pony and trap did not belong to him, but was
advertised by him for a friend who lived at West Draeth, just to do 'e
a turn. In the name of his friend, the cobbler promised that if the
sun shone the following morning "the gingle 'e should be at the door
of Tommy's house at ten o'clock without fail!"
In spite of his repeated assurance that there should be no mistake,
Tommy was seized with a sudden misgiving on the way home and ran back
to remind him not to forget.
"I've spoken to 'e," he panted, when he was in line again, "an' 'e
says it'll be there." Then "I'm goin' to tell my Mammy," he shouted,
and was off once more.
When the others reached the house Tommy was in the middle of a voluble
and wholly unintelligible explanation, from which Mrs. Tregennis tried
vainly to extract some meaning.
"Will you have an orange, Annabel?" asked Miss Margaret at the door.
All Annabel's affectation had dropped from her this evening: she was
just a normal child. As such she nodded, smiling broadly.
"Catch then," and Annabel made a careful cup of her hands, and caught.
As the ladies went upstairs they were followed by Mrs. Tregennis with
the tea.
"Mrs. Tregennis, will you have an orange?"
[Illustration: AT THE COBBLER'S WINDOW SHE STOPPED.]
"No, thank you, Miss, an' that I won't. Mrs. Radford's just been
sayin' as how they must have cost you fourpence apiece, so really,
Miss, I couldn't eat one of they, no, not if it was ever so."
"Does Mrs. Radford still think we are rapidly coming to the end of our
money?" asked Miss Dorothea.
"Yes, Miss, indeed she does; she says 'tis like Oldham wakes, whatever
they be, an' that it can't last out."
"Are you afraid, too?"
"Me afraid? an' that I'm not, an' you as always pays over an' above
for what you have."
Mrs. Tregennis still stood in the doorway, holding the teapot in her
right hand, and here Tommy joined her.
"Well, then," Miss Margaret's voice was quite pleading, "won't you
have an orange?"
Mrs. Tregennis put the teapot down on the brown tile that served as a
stand. "I simply couldn't, Miss," she stated emphatically; "it would
choke me, that it would."
"Do you think it would be safe to experiment on Tommy? Tommy, would
you choke if you were to eat one of the oranges we bought this
afternoon?"
In reply Tommy stretched out both hands for the fruit, and his teeth
had met in the thick rind before Mammy could improve his manners.
"An' what do you say, my son? I'd be ashamed!"
"Thank you," said Tommy, removing a large piece of orange peel from
between his teeth.
"I should say 'Miss,' ma lovely," still corrected Mammy, but by this
time a little fountain of sweet, yellow juice spurted upwards from the
orange, and Tommy, sucking vigorously, walked away.
Later in the evening, as the ladies were going out once more Mrs.
Radford opened her door and beckoned them into the room.
"It was kind of you to ask my babe to drive with you to-morrow," she
said, in her most mincing tones, "but I have always most carefully
protected her from the society of common children, and I would rather
keep her by my side."
So the ladies went round to see Auntie Jessie, with the result that in
all Draeth no child went to bed that night more happily than Ruthie
Tregennis, Tommy's cousin and future wife.
But Annabel's pillow was wet!