CARROTS IN TROUBLE.
"But bitter while they flow, are childish tears."
"Now Carrots," said Mott, when he had eaten what he considered might
possibly support him for the next two hours, "now Carrots, let's have
the paint-box. You needn't disturb yourself," he continued, for Carrots
was preparing to descend from his high chair, "I know where you keep it;
it's in your drawer, isn't it. Which is his drawer, nurse? It'll be a
good opportunity for me to see if he keeps it tidy."
"No, no, let me get it myself," cried Carrots, tumbling himself off his
chair anyhow in his eagerness. "Nurse, nurse, don't tell him which is
mine; don't let him take my paint-box, let me get it my own self."
Nurse looked at him with some surprise; it was seldom the little boy so
excited himself.
"Master Mott won't hurt your drawer, my dear," she said; "you don't mind
his having your paint-box, I'm sure. But do let him get it out himself,
if he wants, Master Maurice, there's a dear boy," she continued, for
Maurice was by this time ferreting in Floss's drawer with great gusto,
and in another moment would have been at Carrots'! But Carrots was at it
before him. He pulled it open as far as he could, for in consequence of
Mott's investigations in the upper storey, he could not easily penetrate
to his own quarters. But he knew exactly where the paint-box lay, and
managed to slip it out, without Maurice's noticing what he was doing.
His triumph was short-lived, however; before he could open the box, Mott
was after him.
"Hi, you young sneak!" he cried, "what are you after now? Give me the
box; I believe you want to take the best paints out before you lend it
to me," and he wrenched the paint-box out of his little brother's hands.
"I don't, I don't," sobbed Carrots, sitting down on the floor and crying
bitterly; "you may have all the paints, Mott, but it's my secret, oh, my
secret!"
"What are you talking about?" said Mott roughly, pulling out the lid as
he spoke. The box had been all tumbled about in the struggle, and the
paints came rattling out, the paints and the brushes, and the little
saucers, and with them came rolling down on to the floor, children, you
know what--the "fairies' sixpenny," the little bright shining yellow
half-sovereign!
A strange change came over Mott's face.
"Nurse," he cried, "do you see that? What does that mean?"
Nurse hastened up to where he was standing; she stared for a moment in
puzzled astonishment at the spot on the carpet to which the toe of
Maurice's boot was pointing, then she stooped down slowly and picked up
the coin, still without speaking.
"Well, nurse," said Maurice, impatiently, "what do you think of that?"
"My half-sovereign," said nurse, as if hardly believing what she saw.
"Of course it's your half-sovereign," said Mott, "it's as plain as a
pike-staff. But how did it come there, that's the question?"
Nurse looked at Carrots with puzzled perplexity. "He couldn't have
known," she said in a low voice, too low for Carrots to hear. He was
still sitting on the floor sobbing, and through his sobs was to be heard
now and then the melancholy cry, "My secret, oh, my poor secret."
"You hear what he says," said Maurice; "what does his 'secret' mean but
that he sneaked into your drawer and took the half-sovereign, and now
doesn't like being found out. I'm ashamed to have him for my brother,
that I am, the little cad!"
"But he couldn't have understood," said nurse, at a loss how otherwise
to defend her little boy. "I'm not even sure that he rightly knew of my
losing it, and he might have taken it, meaning no harm, not knowing what
it was, indeed, very likely."
"Rubbish," said Maurice. "A child that is going without sugar to get
money instead, must be old enough to understand something about what
money is."
"But that was _my_ plan; it wasn't Carrots that thought of it at all,"
said Floss, who all this time had stood by, frightened and distressed,
not knowing what to say.
"Hold your tongue, Floss," said Maurice, roughly; and Floss subsided.
"Carrots," he continued, turning to his brother, "leave off crying this
minute, and listen to me. Who put this piece of money into your
paint-box?"
"I did my own self," said Carrots.
"What for?"
"To keep it a secret for Floss," sobbed Carrots.
Maurice turned triumphantly to nurse.
"There," he said, "you see! And," he continued to Carrots again, "you
took it out of nurse's drawer--out of a little paper packet?"
"No," said Carrots, "I didn't. I didn't know it was nurse's."
"You didn't know nurse had lost a half-sovereign!" exclaimed Mott,
"Carrots, how dare you say so?"
"Yes," said Carrots, looking so puzzled, that for a moment or two he
forgot to sob, "I did know, Floss told me."
"Then how _can_ you say you didn't know this was nurse's?" said Mott.
"Oh, I don't know--I didn't know--I can't under'tand," cried Carrots,
relapsing into fresh sobs.
"I wish your mamma were in, that I do," said nurse, looking ready to cry
too; by this time Floss's tears were flowing freely.
"She isn't in, so it's no good wishing she were," said Maurice; "but
papa is," he went on importantly, "and I'll just take Carrots to him and
see what _he'll_ say to all this."
"Oh, no, Master Mott, don't do that, I beg and pray of you," said nurse,
all but wringing her hands in entreaty. "Your papa doesn't understand
about the little ones; do wait till your mamma comes in."
"No, indeed, nurse; it's a thing papa _should_ be told," said Mott, in
his innermost heart half inclined to yield, but working himself up to
imagine he was acting very heroically. And notwithstanding nurse's
distress, and Floss's tears, off he marched his unfortunate little
brother to the study.
"Papa," he said, knocking at the door, "may I come in? There's something
I must speak to you about immediately."
"Come in, then," was the reply. "Well, and what's the matter now? Has
Carrots hurt himself?" asked his father, naturally enough, for his
red-haired little son looked pitiable in the extreme as he crept into
the room after Maurice, frightened, bewildered, and, so far as his
gentle disposition was capable of such a feeling, indignant also, all at
once.
"No," replied Maurice, pushing Carrots forward, "he's not hurt himself;
it's worse than that. Papa," he continued excitedly, "you whipped me
once, when I was a little fellow, for telling a story. I am very sorry
to trouble you, but I think it's right you should know; I am afraid you
will have to punish Carrots more severely than you punished me, for he's
done worse than tell a story." Maurice stopped to take breath, and
looked at his father to see the effect of his words. Carrots had
stopped crying to listen to what Maurice was saying, and there he
stood, staring up with his large brown eyes, two or three tears still
struggling down his cheeks, his face smeared and red and looking very
miserable. Yet he did not seem to be in the least ashamed of himself,
and this somehow provoked Mott and hardened him against him.
"What's he been doing?" said their father, looking at the two boys with
more amusement than anxiety, and then glancing regretfully at the
newspaper which he had been comfortably reading when Mott's knock came
to the door.
"He's done much worse than tell a story," repeated Maurice, "though for
that matter he's told two or three stories too. But, papa, you know
about nurse losing a half-sovereign? Well, _Carrots_ had got it all the
time; he took it out of nurse's purse, and hid it away in his paint-box,
without telling anybody. He can't deny it, though he tried to."
"Carrots," said his father sternly, "is this true?"
Carrots looked up in his father's face; that face, generally so kind and
merry, was now all gloom and displeasure--why?--Carrots could not
understand, and he was too frightened and miserable to collect his
little wits together to try to do so. He just gave a sort of little
tremble and began to cry again.
"Carrots," repeated his father, "is this true?"
"I don't know," sobbed Carrots.
Now Captain Desart, Carrots' father, was, as I think I have told you, a
sailor. If any of you children have a sailor for your father, you must
not think I mean to teach you to be disrespectful when I say that
sailors _are_, there is no doubt, inclined to be hot-tempered and hasty.
And I do not think on the whole that they understand much about
children, though they are often very fond of them and very kind. All
this was the case with Carrots' father. He had been so much away from
his children while they were little, that he really hardly knew how
they had been brought up or trained or anything about their childish
ways--he had left them entirely to his wife, and scarcely considered
them as in any way "_his_ business," till they were quite big boys and
girls.
But once he did begin to notice them, though very kind, he was very
strict. He had most decided opinions about the only way of checking
their faults whenever these were serious enough to attract his
attention, and he could not and would not be troubled with arguing, or
what he called "splitting hairs," about such matters. A fault was a
fault; telling a falsehood was telling a falsehood; and he made no
allowance for the excuses or "palliating circumstances" there might be
to consider. One child, according to his ideas, was to be treated
exactly like another; why the same offence should deserve severer
punishment with a self-willed, self-confident, bold, matter-of-fact lad,
such as Maurice, than with a timid, fanciful, baby-like creature as was
his little Fabian, he could not have understood had he tried.
Nurse knew all this by long experience; no wonder, kind though she knew
her master to be, that she trembled when Mott announced his intention of
laying the whole affair before his father.
But poor Carrots did not know anything about it. "Papa" had never been
"cross" to him before, and he was far from clearly understanding why he
was "cross" to him now. So he just sobbed and said "I don't know," which
was about the worst thing he could possibly have said in his own
defence, though literally the truth.
"No or yes, sir," said Captain Desart, his voice growing louder and
sterner--I think he really forgot that it was a poor little shrimp of
six years old he was speaking to--"no nonsense of 'don't knows.' Did you
or did you not take nurse's half-sovereign out of her drawer and keep
it for your own?"
"No," said Carrots, "I never took nucken out of nurse's drawer. I never
did, papa, and I didn't know nurse had any sovereigns."
"Didn't you know nurse had _lost_ a half-sovereign? Carrots, how can you
say so?" interrupted Mott.
"Yes, Floss told me," said Carrots.
"And Floss hid it away in your paint-box, I suppose?" said Mott,
sarcastically.
"No, Floss didn't. I hided the sixpenny my own self," said Carrots,
looking more and more puzzled.
"Hold your tongue, Maurice," said his father, angrily. "Go and fetch the
money and the tomfool paint-box thing that you say he had it in."
Mott did as he was told. He ran to the nursery and back as fast as he
could; but, unobserved by him, Floss managed to run after him and crept
into the study so quietly that her father never noticed her.
Maurice laid the old paint-box and the half-sovereign down on the table
in front of his father; Captain Desart held up the little coin between
his finger and thumb.
"Now," he said, "Carrots, look at this. Did you or did you not take this
piece of money out of nurse's drawer and hide it away in your
paint-box?"
Carrots stared hard at the half-sovereign.
"I did put it in my paint-box," he said, and then he stopped.
"What for?" said his father.
"I wanted to keep it for a secret," he replied. "I wanted to--to--"
"_What?_" thundered Captain Desart.
"To buy something at the toy-shop with it," sobbed Carrots.
Captain Desart sat down and looked at Mott for sympathy.
"Upon my soul," he said, "one could hardly believe it. A child that one
would think scarcely knew the value of money! Where can he have learnt
such cunning; you say you are sure he was told of nurse's having lost a
half-sovereign?"
"Oh, yes," said Mott; "he confesses to that much himself."
"Floss told me," said Carrots.
"Then how can you pretend you didn't know this was nurse's--taking it
out of her drawer, too," said his father.
"I don't know. I didn't take it out of her drawer; it was 'aside Floss's
doll," said Carrots.
"He's trying to equivocate," said his father. Then he turned to the
child again, looking more determined than ever.
"Carrots," he said, "I must whip you for this. Do you know that I am
ashamed to think you are my son? If you were a poor boy you might be put
in prison for this."
Carrots looked too bewildered to understand. "In prison," he repeated.
"Would the prison-man take me?"
"What does he mean?" said Captain Desart.
Floss, who had been waiting unobserved in her corner all this time,
thought this a good opportunity for coming forward.
"He means the policeman," she said. "Oh, papa," she went on, running up
to her little brother and throwing her arms round him, the tears
streaming down her face, "oh, papa, poor little Carrots! he _doesn't_
understand."
"Where did _you_ come from?" said her father, gruffly but not unkindly,
for Floss was rather a favourite of his. "What do you mean about his not
understanding? Did you know about this business, Floss?"
"Oh no, papa," said Floss, her face flushing; "I'm too big not to
understand."
"Of course you are," said Captain Desart; "and Carrots is big enough,
too, to understand the very plain rule that he is not to touch what
does not belong to him. He was told, too, that nurse had lost a
half-sovereign, and he might then have owned to having taken it and
given it back, and then things would not have looked so bad. Take him up
to my dressing-room, Maurice, and leave him there till I come."
"May I go with him, papa?" said Floss very timidly.
"No," said her father, "you may not."
So Mott led off poor weeping Carrots, and all the way upstairs he kept
sobbing to himself, "I never touched nurse's sovereigns. I never did. I
didn't know she had any sovereigns."
"Hold your tongue," said Mott; "what is the use of telling more stories
about it?"
"I didn't tell stories. I said I hided the sixpenny my own self, but I
never touched nurse's sovereigns; I never did."
"I believe you're more than half an idiot," said Mott, angry and yet
sorry--angry with himself, too, somehow.
Floss, left alone with her father, ventured on another appeal.
"You won't whip Carrots till mamma comes in, will you, papa?" she said
softly.
"Why not? Do you think I want her to help me to whip him?" said Captain
Desart.
"Oh no--but--I think perhaps mamma would understand better how it was,
for, oh papa, dear, Carrots _isn't_ a naughty boy; he never, never tells
stories."
"Well, we'll see," replied her father; "and in the meantime it will do
him no harm to think things over by himself in my dressing-room for a
little."
"Oh, poor Carrots!" murmured Floss to herself; "it'll be getting dark,
and he's all alone. I _wish_ mamma would come in!"