Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: NOBBLES WAS TIGHTLY GRASPED IN HIS HAND.]
'Me and Nobbles'
By
AMY LE FEUVRE
Author of 'Probable Sons,' 'Teddy's Button,' 'Jill's Red Bag,'
'Odd,' 'His Little Daughter,' etc.
London
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 Beuverie Street and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard, E.C. 4.
1908
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PROLOGUE
I.--'MASTER MORTIMER'
II.--'HE MAY COME TO-MORROW!'
III.--THE BEAUTIFUL PICTURE
IV.--HIS NEW FRIEND
V.--NOBBLES' MISFORTUNE
VI.--HIS FATHER
VII.--HIS NEW HOME
VIII.--A LETTER FROM ABROAD
IX.--'SHE HAS LEFT US!'
X.--'WE'RE GOING TO FIND A GOVERNESS!
XI.--BOBBY'S VISITOR
XII.--'A DELIGHTFUL TIME
XIII.--THE WEDDING
XIV.--'NEARLY DROWNED'
XV.--THE OLD HOUSE AGAIN
'ME AND NOBBLES.'
PROLOGUE.
[_To be skipped by children if they like._]
It was a very silent old house.
Outside, the front windows stared gravely down upon the tidy drive with
its rhododendron shrubberies, the well-kept lawn with the triangular
beds, and the belt of gloomy fir trees edging the high brick wall that
ran along the public road. The windows were always draped and
curtained, and opened one foot at the top with monotonous regularity.
No one was ever seen leaning out of them, or even pushing back the
curtains to widen their view. There was a broad flight of steps, and a
ponderous door which, when opened, disclosed a long hall, at the end of
which was a gaily flowered conservatory. Instinct made people tread
gently upon the thick Turkey rugs that were laid upon the polished
floor; there was a stillness in the house that seemed to chill one. If
you peeped into the big dining-room, the portraits upon the wall eyed
you with disapproval; the table, which was always laid with snowy-white
cloth and shining silver, seemed severely austere and formal; the high
back chairs and the massive sideboards bade you respect their age.
The drawing-room was quite as awe-inspiring, for the blinds were nearly
always down, and it had a musty unused scent telling you that its
grandeur was not for daily use. The library was gloomier still. Its
windows were of stained glass; books of the dingiest hue surrounded
you; they lined the walls; and the furniture and carpet matched them in
tone. Ghostly busts on pedestals, scientific machines, and a huge
geographical and astronomical globe added to its gloom. The sun had a
way of only hastily shining in when he could not help himself, and he
left it till the last moment just before he went to bed. He was not
fond of that room, and there was no one in the house that was.
Then there was the morning room, and this was where old Mrs. Egerton
spent most of her day. She was a tall severe old lady with no sense of
humour and a very strong will. She spent an hour after breakfast with
her cook, for housekeeping was her hobby; then she sat at her table
writing letters and doing her accounts till luncheon, after which she
always went for a drive. In the evening after dinner she read the
paper or some solid book, knitted, and retired early to bed. Her
daughter, Miss Anna Egerton, was very like her, only she was seldom
seen indoors. She was full of good works, and was never idle, for she
had more business than she could possibly get through, and her days
were so crowded that meals seemed quite an effort. The man of the
house, Mrs. Egerton's son, was also always out, and when at home spent
his leisure moments in his smoking-room. London claimed most of his
time, for he was in a government office, and went to and fro by train,
thinking nothing of the hours spent twice a day in a railway carriage.
'A very dull house indeed,' a lady visitor thought at the end of her
first day there; and yet, in spite of its quietness, there were just a
few indications of another element that puzzled her.
Once she heard a patter of childish feet along the corridor past her
door, but that was very early in the morning before she was properly
awake, so she thought she must be dreaming. Then, in a secluded path
in the shrubberies, she came across a child's glove and a toy
watering-can, and as she was going downstairs to dinner, and was
passing a broad staircase window, she noticed upon its broad ledge a
little bunch of daisies. She looked at them and took them up in her
hand. She fancied, as she noted the droop of their stalks, that she
could see the impress still upon them of a hot, childish grasp, and as
she mused, she distinctly heard a childish chuckle of laughter not far
away.
'Is your house haunted?' she asked Miss Egerton at dinner.
'Indeed it is not. Why do you ask?'
'There is no child in the house is there?'
'Yes,' replied Miss Egerton, 'there is Vera's child.'
The visitor could not suppress her astonishment, and Mrs. Egerton,
noting it, said with extra severity: 'I like children to be kept in
their proper place. He has a good nurse, who looks after him entirely.
And I am thankful to say that the nurseries are at the top of the
house, so we are not being continually reminded of his presence.'
'He must be a very quiet child.'
There was no response. When Miss Egerton was alone with her friend she
gave her a little more information.
'When Vera went abroad with her husband her child was only a few months
old, and very delicate, so she was advised to leave him behind. She
sent him here at once, without first asking mother's permission to do
so, and mother did not like it. We do not care for children; but he is
no trouble. Mother visits the nurseries every morning and sees to his
comfort and health. When poor Vera died she determined to keep him for
good and all. His father never writes to us, or shows the slightest
interest in his child. We don't know in which quarter of the globe he
is. Of course a child in a house is rather a nuisance, but in another
year or two mother means to send him to a boarding-school.
'A child in the house.'
The words rang through the visitor's heart and brain. She began to
listen for the faint tokens of the little one's presence. She
meditated a raid upon the nursery, and a sally forth from it with the
child into the old garden below, where she and he would enjoy laughter
and play together. But a telegram called her suddenly away, and the
quiet of the house and garden remained undisturbed.
The footsteps still pattered at intervals; the hushed little voice and
gurgles of innocent laughter still echoed from distant corners. For
the child in the house was not a ghost, and his life is the one of
which I am about to tell you.
Chapter I.
'MASTER MORTIMER.'
He was known by the name of 'the Child' by his relations, but his nurse
called him Master Bobby. He would say if he were asked himself:
'My name is Robert Stuart Allonby.' And he would raise a pair of
wonderful brown eyes as he spoke, in anxious doubt as to whether his
name would be liked.
Bobby showed a good deal of anxiety about different things. His
favourite sentence was always, 'I wonder, Nurse ----' and very often,
noting the impatient frown on his nurse's face, he would stop there,
and turn away to his favourite corner in the window-seat, which he
shared with 'Nobbles,' the comfort of his life.
Bobby was a very small boy, but a big thinker, and he would have liked
to be a big talker, but grown-up people were not interested in what he
had to say. So he talked in a rapid undertone to 'Nobbles,' who always
understood, and who smiled perpetually into the earnest little face of
his master. 'Nobbles' had been given to him a very long time ago by a
sailor-brother of Nurse's, who came to tea at certain periods, and who
related the most wonderful stories of foreign parts. Jane, the
housemaid, always took tea in the nursery upon these occasions, and she
and Bobby listened with awed admiration to the handsome traveller.
'Nobbles' was only a walking-stick, with a wonderful little ivory head.
It was the head of a goblin, Nurse declared, but Bobby loved it.
Nobbles had very round eyes and a smiling mouth, two very big ears, and
a little red cap on his head. Bobby took him to bed with him every
night; he went out walks with him; he always had him with him in his
window corner; and it was Nobbles who was treated to all the delicious
secrets and plans which only a very lonely little boy could have
concocted.
Bobby's nursery was at the top of the house; he reached it by the back
stairs, and had to open a wooden gate at the top of them before he
could get to it. There were two rooms, one leading out of the other,
and both looked out at the back of the house. Bobby spent hours by the
window, and he knew every inch of the landscape outside.
First there was a paved yard with a high wall on one side, with a green
door in it, through which you passed into a walled kitchen garden.
This door was kept locked in fruit time; the gardener, old Tom, kept
one key, and Bobby's grandmother the other.
Old Tom was generally working in the kitchen garden, and Bobby watched
him from his window with keen interested eyes. Beyond this garden was
an orchard which ran down to the high-road. Bobby could not see this
road from his window, for a tall row of elms hid it from his view. In
the summer, when the windows were open, he could hear the hoot of the
motors as they tore along it. But he could see for miles beyond this
road. There was a stretch of green fields, two farms, and a range of
distant hills, behind which the sun always set. And when he got tired
of looking at all this, there was the sky; and the sky to him was a
never-ending joy. The clouds chasing each other across its infinite
blue, presented the most entrancing pictures to him. Monsters pursuing
their prey, ogres changing their shape as they flew, castles dissolving
into ocean waves, mermaids, angels, hunters, wolves, chariots and
horses. These, and hosts besides, all passed before him.
When it was dark in winter-time he would clamber down from his
window-seat and content himself with his toys. The nursery was very
plainly furnished. It had a square table in the middle of the room;
there was one cupboard for Bobby's toys, another for the nursery
crockery; a wooden rocking-chair, a low oak bench, and two rush chairs.
The floor was covered with red cocoanut matting. The fire was guarded
by a high wire screen, and above the mantelpiece hung a coloured
illustration of the battle of Waterloo. Bobby knew every man and horse
in it by name. He had his own stories for every one of them, and was
found more than once dissolved in tears after looking at it.
'That captain under his horse is so dreadfully hurt, his bones is
broken, and he was going home to his little boy!' he would say
pitifully, when Nurse would enquire the cause of his grief.
Nurse was a tall thin woman with a severe voice and a soft heart. But
though she adored her little charge she never let him know it, and the
only time she kissed him was when she tucked him up in his small bed at
night. Bobby was quite aware that the grown-up people in the house did
not care for him. This did not trouble him; he took it for granted
that all grown-up people were the same. With one exception, however.
In the depths of his heart he felt that his unknown father loved him.
One night after saying his prayers, and repeating the Lord's Prayer
sentence by sentence after his nurse, he said:
'Who's "Our Father?" Is it mine own, who's far away?'
'Dear, no!' said the nurse, in a shocked tone. ''Tis God Almighty, up
in heaven.'
'Then I shan't call him "Father," 'cause He isn't.'
'For shame, you wicked boy! God is everybody's Father, He loves you,
and gives you everything you want.'
'Does fathers always do that?'
'Of course they do. Fathers always love their children, and work for
them, and care for them. And the great God is called Father because He
loves you.'
Bobby thought over this. And he hugged the thought to his heart that
he had two fathers, both far away, but both loving him. He knew that
God was the nearest to him; he was told that He watched over him night
and day, and could always hear him when he spoke to Him. But his heart
went out to his earthly father in an unknown country. And he used to
be constantly picturing his return.
On the whole, though he had very big thoughts, and fits of dreaming,
Bobby was a happy, merry little soul. Sometimes he strayed along the
big passage and peeped through the green baize door which led down the
front stairs. He had a way of asking Jane what 'the House' was doing,
'the House' being his grandmother, and uncle and aunt, and their
visitors. Occasionally he would make breathless little excursions of
his own into the rooms which seemed so strange and wonderful to him.
This was generally in the very early morning, or in the afternoon, when
everyone was out of doors. Nurse would soon pursue him and bring him
back to his proper sphere; but he would have a delightful time whilst
the chase lasted, and the very difficulties that beset his
investigations made them the more exciting.
One bright spring afternoon he was turned into the kitchen garden to
play. Nurse had placed him under the charge of old Tom, for she was
busy with her machine, making some holland overalls for him, and she
was glad to have the nursery to herself. Bobby was in the seventh
heaven of delight. There was nothing he enjoyed so much as a talk with
Tom.
'And what's the first thing nice to eat that's coming out of the
ground?' he asked, his hands in his pockets and his legs well astride,
as he watched Tom sowing some seed in long drills across the square of
freshly dug ground.
Tom looked at him with a twinkle in his eye.
'Spring cabbages,' he said.
'But I mean fruit, not nasty vegtubbers! I sawed you taste a big white
ball, and then you frew it over the wall.'
''Twas a turnip, likely.'
'Let me taste a turnip.'
But Tom shook his head.
'Shall have your nurse at me a-sayin' I'm a-upsettin' your little
inside. Do you know who's a-comin' to-day?'
'No. Do tell me. Someone to the house?'
'It be Master Mortimer, the eldest son, who have been in furrin parts
so long, him what hangs up in the hall along with the master. You've
never seed him. He went off straight from school to India. He were a
favourit' of mine were Master Mortimer.'
'And he's coming to-day? Oh, I do hope I shall see him.'
Bobby capered at the thought.
''Tis any time to-day may bring him. His ship comed in yester morn.'
'I wonder if he's seen my father anywheres.'
'Ah! Best ask of him. Master Mortimer be a merry young gen'leman,
sure enough. But I reckon that time have sobered him!'
'Grown-up peoples aren't merry,' said the small boy, ''cept Sam Conway,
when he's drunk!'
Sam Conway was the cobbler, who was the village drunkard. Tom shook
his head reproachfully at the thought of him.
'And that there old soaker did marry my aunt's darter!' He continued a
grumbling discourse upon the evils of drink as he turned to his sowing,
and Bobby danced away down to the bottom of the garden, where he opened
the door into the orchard and found his way to his favourite corner.
This was an old apple-tree which grew close to the high wall that
separated the orchard from the public road. It was an easy tree to
climb, and from a comfortable perch upon the topmost bough he could
look out along the high-road. It was a broad, white, dusty road; on
market-days he was never absent from this seat; he loved watching the
farmers' carts, and the carriers, and the droves of sheep and cattle
that passed along to the town. There were other days when he watched
there, days when only motors whizzed by, or a few carriages and an
occasional cart rumbled along. But he never tired of his post, and his
face was always full of patient expectancy. He got up in the tree now,
and 'Nobbles' was tightly grasped in his hand.
'It may be "Nobbles" that they'll come together. It's a ship he'll
come in same as Master Mortimer, and the ship comed in yesterday--Tom
said so.'
His brown eyes scanned the horizon anxiously, and the hope that had
never died yet in his childish heart leaped up anew. Nobbles was stuck
into a crevice in the wall, and his smiling, ugly little head stared
out in the same direction as his master's.
'It may be a station fly, and it may be our carriage, and it may be a
motor,' pursued Bobby dreamily, 'but he's bound to come, I'm certain
sure!'
He was called into his dinner before a single carriage or cart had
passed him. But his little face was radiantly bright as he sat
opposite his nurse and ate his hot mutton and rice pudding at the
nursery table.
'I 'specs the House is very busy to-day,' he remarked with a knowing
little nod of his head. 'Which is Master Mortimer's room, Nurse?'
'Master Mortimer, indeed! Who's been talking to you of him I'd like to
know! You must be a good boy and stay quiet in the nursery. I've
never seen your grandmother so upset. She's proper excited, and won't
go out for her drive this afternoon, and I'm helping Jane get out all
the old bits of furniture that used to belong in his room before ever
he went abroad. 'Twas his only sending a telegram yesterday so sudden
like, and no letter nor nothing to prepare us, that has taken us so
aback. He's to have his old room, the one at end of the passage. It's
going to rain, so you'd best stay in the nursery this afternoon, and I
shall be busy.'
Bobby promised to be good, but with the sounds of such an unusual
bustle in the house what small boy could resist peeping through the
green baize door occasionally to see what was going on? And at last,
thinking the coast quite clear, he made one of his rapid rushes along
the corridor and into the room that was being prepared for the guest.
Here he gazed round him with innocent admiration. The room was barely
furnished, but a fox's brush and some sporting-prints round the walls,
one of which depicted a cock fight, interested him greatly. He was
standing on tiptoe at the dressing-table opening some little china
pots, when approaching footsteps made him start. Then, as the door
handle turned, he scrambled under the bed and lay still, hardly daring
to breathe. It was his grandmother with Jane. She was speaking in
rather an agitated voice.
'He slept in this room many years ago, Jane, and I wish things to be as
he left them. Yes, even this cricket bat that I have just found in the
attic. He used to have it in the corner by the fireplace, and I wish
you to place it there now.'
She came up to the bed, smoothed the pillow with her hand, looked at
the pictures on the walls, sighed, then went away, and Jane followed
her. Bobby crept out of his hiding-place feeling very guilty. Then he
eyed the cricket bat, lifted it, but found it very heavy.
'He won't be able to play with it if he hasn't a ball!' he said to
himself. 'Perhaps he'll come and ask me for mine!'
Very reluctantly he left the room and returned to the nursery, quite
unconscious that he had left behind him on the floor a tell-tale
reminder of his presence there.
Ail that day Bobby watched and waited for the expected arrival. He was
bitterly disappointed that bedtime came before there were any signs of
his uncle. Early the next morning he woke, wondering whether he had
come, and when Nurse told him that it was past ten o'clock before he
arrived, he eagerly enquired:
'And did he come quite by himself?'
'Of course, he did. I haven't seen him yet, but Jane says he's
wonderful good looking.'
When Bobby was dressed and Nurse had gone downstairs to fetch something
from the servants' hall, he ran to the green baize door and crept along
the passage to his uncle's bedroom. He listened outside, hoping he
might hear a strange voice or cough, but there was silence. Then he
peered down into a shining pair of boots which had evidently just been
cleaned and placed outside the door upon the mat.
He wondered how long it would take for his foot to grow big enough to
fill such a big boot. With a little chuckle of delight he slipped his
tiny feet into them and managed to walk one step forward without making
much noise. Finally, with another little snigger of laughter, he
thrust his chubby hand into the pocket of his overall and produced two
bright coloured marbles. He dropped one into each boot, murmuring as
he did so:
'For Master Mortimer, with mine own dear love.'
And then, rather aghast at his audacity, he fled along the passage to
his own territory, laughing softly as he went. After his nursery
breakfast he was turned into the kitchen garden again. He was never
supposed to play anywhere else, but he had a way of making little
excursions into the shrubberies. There were a good many hiding-places
in the old gardens. He considered it quite fairplay to haunt the shady
paths and even to make daring rushes out upon the lawn when no grown-up
was there. 'Children must keep out of sight,' had been dinned into his
ears by his careful nurse, and as long as he did that, he considered
that he played the game. He had no great desire to talk to any
grown-up person; he knew that he was voted a nuisance, and was quite
content to watch them from afar. But this unknown traveller interested
him greatly. He stole now into one of the shrubbery paths, and then
suddenly, coming towards him, he saw a tall dark man with bronzed skin,
a heavy moustache, and merry blue eyes. This much Bobby noted from the
depths of a laurel bush in which he had taken refuge. He thought
himself well hidden, and certainly his uncle was unaware of his close
presence. Suddenly, as he was passing him, close enough to touch had
he so wished, an impulse seized Bobby to speak.
Mr. Mortimer Egerton, sauntering lazily along in the morning sunshine
and smoking his beloved pipe, was startled when he heard a lisping
whisper:
'Where's mine father? Did you see him?'
It brought him to a standstill; there was a rustle in the bushes. He
probed them with his stick, but could see nothing. Then he gave chase,
and soon caught sight of a vanishing blue linen smock.
'I spy!' he shouted, and renewed his chase with vigour. But Bobby was
an experienced hider. He was small, and the bushes were thick and
high. Keeping well under cover, he reached the kitchen garden, and
heard his baffled uncle take a wrong turn into the rose walk that
stretched across the front lawn. Breathless and excited, the child
reached Tom.
'He's run after me. He was the hunter and I was a tiger in the jungle!
I seed him when he couldn't see me, and I likes him!'
'Which of course you is bound to do,' was Tom's ready response.
'Master Mortimer allays twisted most folk round his little finger.'
'I'll make him hunt me again,' said Bobby, a flush on his cheek and
fire in his eye. 'He couldn't catch me, Tom. I won't be catched by
him.'
'Master Mortimer allays used to do what he'd a mind to,' said old Tom
again.
Bobby looked at him thoughtfully. He was beginning to be afraid of
this uncle.