OUR VISIT TO THE HALL
LYNETTE and I were very excited about going out to tea. We wanted to
dress ourselves long before Aunt Caroline would let us do so. Emma was
going to walk with us, and she talked a good deal about the squire's
big house. I wish they all came to our church, but they don't; they
attend another church nearer to them. I think the boys were rather
jealous of us, but I reminded them that there were no boys, and Denys
said a girls' tea-party was poor fun. Lynette was in wild spirits; I
told her if she did anything to disgrace us, I would run off home and
leave her. Of course she called me a prig, but I didn't care, for when
Lynette gets excited, she doesn't mind what she does.
She sobered down when we got up to the big front door. I think she was
rather frightened. I was, I know, when the footman took us up a very
broad staircase lined with pictures and books, and along huge passages
that seemed as if they would never end. At last he threw open a door,
and announced:
"The young ladies from the Rectory."
And then we found ourselves in a lovely big nursery, and Clarice
came up and shook hands with us. She took us over to the window
where Beatrice was lying on a sofa. She was just like Clarice, only
her cheeks were paler and her face thinner. There was rather a nice
governess in the room—Miss Tudor was her name, and Lynette actually
asked her if she was any relation to the Tudor kings! She didn't
mean it for cheek, she really thought she might be. She didn't seem
offended, for she laughed and said she was afraid she wasn't.
And then Clarice began showing us her big dolls' house and all her
toys. Lynette sat down on the floor at once by the dolls' house, and I
sat by the sofa and talked to Beatrice.
"Clarice told me about your washing," she said; "I wish I'd been there.
Tell me more."
So I told her about our donkey, and how we were trying to get money,
and she was frightfully interested.
And then Clarice came running up to us.
"Oh, Bee, we're having such fun with our dolls' house; Lynette has been
telling me such lovely things to do. We're making burglars climb down
the chimney and hide under the beds, and—" here she lowered her voice
to a whisper—"when Miss Tudor goes out of the room, we're going to make
a fire happen, and then we're going to be firemen, and get the garden
syringe, and syringe it with water."
Beatrice's eyes shone, but I had to spoil that game. I told them how we
had done that to our old dolls' house once. The boys did it. They put
a lighted match under one of the dolls' beds. Of course it was awfully
exciting, but the whole place caught on fire, and all our dolls were
burnt. And though it was great fun putting it out with water, mother
came in and made us promise we would never, never attempt such a thing
again. And I said, "If we make a mess with water again, we shall never
be allowed to come here."
Lynette looked at me very crossly.
"You're so stupid, Grizzy, you never like any fun!"
I think it's very hard to be thought stupid when you're trying to be
good, but I didn't say anything more, and then Lynette thought of
something else, and the next thing they were doing was turning the
dolls' house into a castle besieged with soldiers, and she and Clarice
were soon shrieking at the top of their voices as the lady dolls were
racing about trying to hide from the soldiers, and some of them were
being caught and killed.
Beatrice told me how tired she was of lying on a sofa, and how she
longed to get up and run round the room. And then she showed me some of
her books, and we played a funny game together—something like parlour
croquet—and then came tea. We were all the greatest of friends by
tea-time, and Clarice told us there were no other little girls like us
for miles and miles. Then we asked them to tell us all the clergymen's
names who lived near, and their families, and then all the squires, and
theirs, and they appeared to know everybody. The families seemed to be
mostly grown-ups, except where the boys are going to school, and there
are no girls there. It is funny, because where we've come from, we knew
quantities of girls and boys, and here in Lincolnshire there seems
hardly any. The country is empty, I suppose. I know every house seems
to be either the squire's or the clergyman's. Nobody else seems to live
in this part.
Beatrice said to me after tea, when Miss Tudor was out of the room:
"I'm so glad you aren't good. I thought clergymen's children were
always very goody; I shouldn't have liked you a bit if you had been
like that."
"Wouldn't you?" I said slowly, and feeling a little uncomfortable. "I
don't want to be goody, but I try to be good."
She stared at me.
"But it's much more fun to be naughty."
"I don't know," I said. "It seems so at the time, but it isn't
afterwards!"
"I wish there was no 'afterwards' in the world!" said Beatrice
impatiently. "This is an 'afterwards'—my lying on this horrid old sofa,
I mean. You see, I sprained my foot trying to climb a tree like a boy.
Miss Tudor told me to come down, but I laughed at her and went up
higher, and then I tumbled!"
"How dreadful!" I said. And then added, while I felt my cheeks get hot
and red, "That's just the kind of thing I should have done. It's the
only thing I want to be grown-up for—it's so awfully easy to be good
then."
"I like to be naughty best," said Beatrice firmly—"it's more fun."
"I wish you knew father," I said; "he likes us to have plenty of fun.
He keeps saying to Aunt Caroline, 'A loose rein, Caroline, with my wild
young colts, and as few orders and commands as you can help, for it
only incites to disobedience.'"
"What a nice father!" said Beatrice.
"He says," I went on, warming with my theme, "that if we obey God's
commands, we shall obey his. When I was a little girl, I used to read
over the Commandments in church, and I thought I never broke one of
them. I know better now. Father told us of three commands last Sunday;
they're lovely and short. 'Come,' 'Go,' 'Do.'"
Beatrice seemed rather interested.
"Tell me more. You are a funny girl; one moment you roar with laughter,
and the next you preach a sermon!"
So I told her as much as I could of father's sermon. "It's what a
faithful servant does," I said. "There's a knight buried in our church
who was 'always faithful' and 'always ready.' Father says he tries to
be that, and of course he is, but, when I don't forget, I'm going to
try to be it too!"
"And do you often forget?"
"Nearly always," I said, sighing.
Then Lynette and Clarice interrupted us; they wanted to dress up, so
I went with them into Clarice's bedroom, and we all put on different
things and came back and visited Beatrice. Clarice was an old beggar
woman in a shawl and apron, and a long black skirt, and a red
handkerchief tied round her head. And Lynette was an Indian in bath
towels and striped silk rug. And I was a fashionable American lady,
with a long train I made out of a counterpane, and some feathers and
flowers in my hair. And we all told her our stories and said we had
come over to England to see her because we heard she was so rich and
good. And then Lynette said she would give an Indian dance, and she got
up on the table, and spun round and round till she made us giddy, and
Beatrice laughed till she cried.
And then we were told that Emma had come to take us home. So we said
good-bye, and they begged us to come again soon.
We enjoyed ourselves awfully, and Lynette said to me coming home:
"You see, it was rather a good thing I drove off in the pony-carriage,
for that has made us know Clarice and Beatrice."
"No," I said, "it was a good thing you told father about it, as he made
you write the note. And I believe that made Lady Laura come to see us."
When we got home, we found the boys very busy counting out their money.
Denys had made one shilling and tenpence by some fish which he had
caught and sold at two or three different farm-houses, and Aylwin had
three shillings from Mr. Cummins. He had given him sixpence a day for
his work in the hayfield.
"It has been earned by the sweat of the brow," Aylwin said proudly,
"but it's all I shall get, for there are no more hayfields to be
worked. And it's school next week."
We counted our money up anxiously; it was not nearly enough to buy
a donkey, but we were hopeful about getting more. Lynette could go
on making toffee, and I could go on picking flowers, and sending
vegetables to market. Denys could go on fishing, for the farmers' wives
all liked to get fish, but Aylwin would have to get some other plan
quickly.
"Shan't!" he said. "I have worked harder than the whole lot of you put
together. I've done my share nobly!"
"Three shillings isn't very much," I said.
"It's the quality, not the quantity, you have to consider," said
Aylwin, beginning to argue. "These three shillings repre—sent—" he
brought out the long word with a slow drawl—"a huge lot of heavy toil.
Which would you value most for a birthday present—a book that some one
threw away and which was picked up and given to you, or a book that
had taken the earnings of a year to buy, and had quite exhausted the
strength of the one who bought it?"
I was much impressed, but Denys wasn't a bit.
"You're a lazy sluggard," he said; "I know you rested half the time in
the hayfields, and drank lots of cider."
Then after a lot more talking, Aylwin said he would take one whole
week's rest, and then start another plan.
"My body is so tired that my brain won't think, and I must rest it
thoroughly. And I tell you, I'll take care my next plan is as jolly
easy as yours is!"
When Saturday choir practice came round again, and I was singing away
just opposite the knight, I thought of father's sermon and of "Semper
fidelis, semper paratus." I thought of what father wanted me to do. But
I still felt I hadn't the courage to do it. Denys would laugh at me, I
thought, and I should never hear the last of it. We hate children who
are always trying to teach others how to behave, and if I had a class,
he would be always teasing me about it.
Before I went to bed, I added a little bit in my prayers. I asked God
to make me brave enough to do it. And then I felt almost afraid of
being made brave. It was dreadful of me, and my last prayer was made in
bed before I went to sleep. I said, "O God, answer my prayer, even if I
don't want You to."
On Sunday morning we were all at breakfast. Aunt Caroline very often
gets up from the table and leaves us to finish by ourselves, as she has
to go to the school.
She was just leaving us, when to our astonishment Denys sprang up from
his seat too, after hastily swallowing the last drop of his tea. He was
rather red in the face, but he said:
"I'm coming to school with you, Aunt C. I'm going to take the infants'
class."
Aunt Caroline took it very quietly, but if a cannon had been roared off
in our ears, we couldn't have been more astonished.
"I have so often suggested that one of you should do it," said Aunt
Caroline. "The poor babies cannot understand my class at all."
Denys dashed out of the room.
Aylwin cast up his eyes to the ceiling, and raised his hands mockingly.
"Sky, fall!" he ejaculated.
Lynette began to giggle.
"Fancy Denys teaching the infants! He won't know what to teach them
except 'good form'!"
I felt literally crushed to the earth. If only I had known!—If only I
had known! The very one I was afraid of, was doing what I ought to have
done; I had lost my opportunity for ever. I went out into the garden
and had a good cry in the shrubbery. And oh, how I admired Denys! He
is always doing those kind of things. He never talks, and sometimes
pretends he doesn't care, and then he suddenly gets up and goes and
does it. It makes me wish so to be like him.
"I'll have a good joke over this baby teaching," said Aylwin to me, as
we walked to church together.
"No, you mustn't," I said, "because it's very good of Denys to do it,
and I know it's father's sermon last Sunday has made him. It nearly
made me, only I was afraid you would all laugh at me, and so I didn't,
and Denys has done it instead. And do you know, Aylwin, all breakfast I
was getting up courage to say what he did, and—I was just too late."
Aylwin looked at me curiously, but he said nothing, and when we saw
Denys at dinner-time, none of us said anything to him about it; we just
pretended nothing had happened. I'm wondering so if Denys is getting
good. He always says he isn't; I think he would be simply furious if
I was to say he was. But we never can talk about good things to each
other—we think it's priggish.
Now I must come to Monday morning, and to the great surprise that came
to us. Puff has been saying every day that he is going to get a letter
from God with the money for the donkey. And every morning, he runs out
to the postman. I don't know what he thinks of him, but we heard Puff
say the other morning:
"Are you tru'fully sure there's no letter for me, for I'm 'specting one
from God, and it will be a heavy one, I can tell you!"
On Monday he brought the letters in and gave them to father; and,
sorting them out, father said suddenly:
"Is there a Master George Marjoribanks in the room?"
"It's me!" yelled Puff, dancing round him in a perfect frenzy of
excitement. "Let me open it my own self! Oh! It hasn't any money at
all."
He was holding it in his hand, and there was bitter disappointment in
his voice.
"Open it!" said father, in a curious tone.
Puff opened it. Three postal orders were done up in a sheet of paper,
and across it was written:
"From Granny. For a donkey."
And the postal orders were for £1 each.
We could hardly believe it. Granny very seldom gave us money—only on
birthdays. Of course I knew that Aunt Caroline must have told her how
hard Puff was praying for it and expecting it. Puff's face was a study
when it was explained to him. His eyes looked as if they were going to
start out of his head, and then he puffed out his chest.
"O' course," he said. "I knows very well what's happened. Father says
God gives a lot of His money to peoples to take care of, and so He was
too busy to send it Hisself, so He tolded granny to do it."
"I think you've hit upon the truth, Puff," said father, kissing his
curly head.
Puff looked round at us with great solemn eyes.
"It's me that's gotted it," he said. "My plan is the bestest one of
all."
We were too surprised to speak. Father murmured to himself:
"Of such is the kingdom of heaven."
And then we couldn't help sending up a wild cheer. The donkey was as
good as bought, and we would have some money over. Denys said at once
that it would do for a saddle, but father said that we might get a
second-hand cart and a donkey too for three pounds, perhaps. But father
always thinks things are cheaper than they are.