CHAPTER II WHICH INTRODUCES THE HEROINE’S GODMOTHER
CHAPTER III WHICH TELLS OF A KEY-HOLE IN A WALL
CHAPTER IV WHICH INTRODUCES SWEET WILLIAM
CHAPTER V IN WHICH THE HEROINE DISTINGUISHES HERSELF
CHAPTER VI IN WHICH THE HEROINE TAKES ADVICE
CHAPTER VII IN WHICH MASTER MUSTARDSEED TELLS HIS STORY
CHAPTER VIII IN WHICH THE HEROINE MAKES THE FIRST USE OF HER LATCHKEY
CHAPTER IX IN WHICH SWEET WILLIAM TELLS A STORY
CHAPTER X IN WHICH THE HEROINE HAS A BIRTHDAY
CHAPTER XI IN WHICH THE HEROINE IS GIVEN A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER XII IN WHICH THE HEROINE PRESENTS HER LETTER OF INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER XIII IN WHICH GREAT GOOD FORTUNE BEFALLS THE HEROINE
CHAPTER XIV IN WHICH THE MERMAN TELLS HIS STORY
CHAPTER XV IN WHICH THE TWIN SISTERS TELL A STORY BETWEEN THEM
CHAPTER XVI IN WHICH THE HEROINE HEARS SOME STARTLING NEWS
CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH SWEET WILLIAM TELLS ANOTHER STORY
CHAPTER XVIII OF WHICH THE SCENE IS LAID IN A SICK-ROOM
CHAPTER XIX IN WHICH QUEEN MAB TELLS HER STORY
CHAPTER XX IN WHICH THE HEROINE MAKES FRIENDS WITH A SPIRIT
CHAPTER XXI IN WHICH THE WHITE LÉTICHE TELLS HER STORY
CHAPTER XXII WHICH HERALDS A CHANGE
THE FAIRY LATCHKEY
CHAPTER I
WHICH INTRODUCES THE HEROINE, AND OTHERS
There was nothing at all remarkable about her, excepting her name, which
was Philomène Isolde, and the fact that a knot of green ribbon had been
sewn upon her christening dress; but the dress had long since lain
folded in a drawer, and her father as often as not called her “Little
Miss Muffet,” because she was very fond of curds and whey, and very much
afraid of spiders. When he did call her “Philomène,” it meant that he
was too busy to have her in the room with him. Unlike most people, she
was satisfied with her own name, indeed she was proud of it; for Daddy
had told her that Philomène meant “beloved,” and as for Isolde, that was
Godmother’s own name. “And Isolde,” said Godmother, “was a real
Princess.”
“I wish I were a real Princess,” said Philomène, and waited for Nurse to
add, “If wishes were horses, Miss, beggars might ride,” which she
forthwith did.
Philomène was not a pretty child, but neither was she exactly plain, for
she had small hands and feet, and a trim little figure, hazel eyes and
plenty of soft mouse-coloured hair. And if there was nothing unusual
about her appearance, there was certainly nothing unusual about her
home, for she lived in a commonplace suburb of London, in a commonplace
villa called Sideview. The house undoubtedly had two sides, but scarcely
any view, unless the strip of back-garden counted as such. The
drawing-room and dining-room opened out of a narrow hall, and both had
about them the chill and mustiness of disuse, for since the death of
Philomène’s mother the drawing-room had seen no more parties, and her
father, who was a hard-working doctor, as often as not snatched his
hurried meals in the study, rather than in the dining-room. Philomène’s
own bedroom and schoolroom, on the upper landing, were large airy rooms
for the size of the house.
At the foot of her bed stood a screen, upon which Froggy went a-wooing,
and Little Red Ridinghood carried her covered basket through the wood,
and on the wall opposite hung a picture of a young shepherdess, clasping
her crook, and kneeling in the shade of a spreading oak-tree. As there
was no flock in sight, Philomène at first supposed her to be Bo-peep
before her sheep came home, but Godmother had told her that it was Joan,
the Maid of Orleans, who died for love of France and of the truth; and
from that time forward, on winter evenings when the salamanders began
their torch-light revels on the hearth, Philomène would lie in bed and
watch the ruddy reflection brighten and broaden among the branches of
the oak, wrapping the frail young figure in a winding-sheet of flame,
and placing the hard-won wreath of martyrdom upon her hair.
Over the mantelpiece in the schoolroom next door, hung another picture,
one which had belonged to Philomène’s mother. There was a road white
with dust in the foreground, disappearing amidst a clump of trees, above
which floated a wreath of blue smoke. Down to the road there sloped a
bank of grass, and here sat a woman with a child in her lap, while a
bird on the wing paused to peck from an ear of corn which the baby held
in his hand. Beside the two an old man with kind eyes and work-worn
hands was unsaddling a small grey donkey, and a little further down the
road stood a ruined shrine with a broken idol. Philomène liked the
donkey with its long ears and sad eyes, and felt grateful to the old man
for allowing it to nibble the grass at will.
It was in the schoolroom that Philomène kept her toys. There was the
dolls’ house and the dolls’ kitchen, and the musical box, and the
paint-box with its palettes and saucers and brushes. Last, but by no
means least, came the book-shelf. It held all Mrs Ewing’s stories, and
all Mrs Molesworth’s, Grimm, and Hans Andersen, and many more besides.
Philomène used to act all the stories out of these books, but it is dull
work to be both players and audience yourself, and it needs an
imagination bordering on genius to ride alone upon a bed, and persuade
your heart of hearts that it is Pegasus, the wonderful winged horse.
“And nothing ever happens to me,” mused Philomène, “as it happens to
people in books. I do not live in a chateau with a terrace and a raven,
like Jeanne in ‘The Tapestry-Room,’ and when I play with the reels in
Nurse’s work-box they do not behave in the least like Louisa’s reels in
‘Tell Me a Story.’ I suppose it is because I am just ordinary.”
It was a depressing thought, but facts could not be shelved. Philomène’s
cuckoo clock certainly acted very differently from Griselda’s. So far
from inviting her to climb up by the two long dangling chains, and take
a seat opposite to him on a red velvet arm-chair, this disobliging bird
uttered his “cuckoos” in a hasty, perfunctory manner, and then shut to
the door of his house with a snap, as who should say, “That’s over till
next time.”
In the schoolroom window hung a cage with a canary in it; he was of a
bright yellow, all but his head, which was green, and Philomène had
christened him Master Mustardseed, after one of the fairy pages in
“Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Now this canary had something of a history.
To begin with, he had had a predecessor, a canary that had been yellow
all over, and so tame that he would perch upon Philomène’s needle when
she sewed, or upon her book when she read. Then one day the old
maidservant, Lilian Augusta, had left the schoolroom window open and the
cage-door ajar, and the canary flew out, never to return, and there was
lamentation at Sideview. But a few days later a strange thing happened.
Through the open window, into the empty cage, flew another canary, this
time with a little head as green and velvety as moss; Master
Mustardseed, in short, who had remained with his new mistress ever
since.
Besides her canary, Philomène had another pet, a white cat called Queen
Mab, with paws as soft as pussy-willow and a footfall as light as any
snowflake. Now this was how Queen Mab had first come to Sideview:—It was
Christmas Eve, and Philomène stood at the dining-room window, listening
to the waits, who were singing a Christmas carol:
“He lies ’mid the beasts of the stall,
Who is Maker and Lord of us all.
The winter wind blows cold and dreary;
See, he weeps, the world is weary,
Lord, have pity and mercy on me.
Come, come, come to the manger,
Kneel ye now to the newborn King;
Sing, sing, chorus of angels,
Stars of the morning, o’er Bethlehem sing!”
After that they moved on to the next house, and began the second verse.
“He leaves all his glory behind,
To be born and to die for mankind;
’Midst grateful beasts his cradle chooses,
Thankless man his love refuses.
Lord, have pity and mercy on me.”
It was bitterly cold. Philomène closed the window, and as she did so a
mew caught her attention. In another moment she had the hall-door open,
and a gust of icy air met her, as though the very wind were trying to
force its way into the house for shelter. Upon the doorstep sat a white
kitten, draggled and shivering. Philomène picked it up at once, shut the
door, and ran upstairs to the schoolroom, all in a flutter of pity and
excitement. Nurse looked up from her sewing, and stared at her aghast.
“Well, Miss Philomène,” she exclaimed at length, “I wonder what you will
be up to next? Put that dirty little cat down this minute.”
Philomène obeyed. “I wanted it to have some of the milk that was left
over from supper,” she protested timidly.
“And so it may,” retorted Nurse, whose bark was worse than her bite, “so
long as you don’t go on holding it against your dress.”
So Philomène took a saucer, and busied herself with the kitten on the
hearth-rug. This was a bearskin, and had figured many a time in solitary
games of Beauty and the Beast, for it had served as the hero’s costume
till he finally became a prince and discarded it, when Philomène, whose
housewifely little soul disliked waste, had made the princess suggest
that it should be lined with red flannel, and turned into a useful rug
for the throne-room. The kitten lapped up the milk eagerly, and settled
itself comfortably in front of the fire.
“And now you had better put it back where it came from, Miss,” said
Nurse.
“The saucer?” inquired Philomène blankly.
“No, child, the cat.”
“But it came from the doorstep!” exclaimed Philomène, and seeing no
relenting in Nurse’s face, she burst into tears. At this moment her
father came into the room.
“What? Tears, little maid?” he called out in surprise.
“Oh, Daddy, it’s so cold outside, and it hasn’t done anybody any harm,
and it won’t have any Christmas, and perhaps it’s one of the ‘grateful
beasts’ in the carol,” sobbed Philomène.
“It certainly seemed grateful enough for the milk,” said Nurse, who had
not listened to the waits, and was of a literal turn of mind, “but I
don’t much fancy a stray cat in the kitchen all the same.”
The doctor sat down in the red-cushioned rocking-chair, and took his
child on his knee. He was a tall, well-made man with dark hair, keen
eyes, and a somewhat abrupt manner, but he was never anything but gentle
with his little daughter, and Philomène’s sobs subsided as he stroked
her hair and patted her cheek.
“Look here, little Miss Muffet,” he said, “I will tell you what we will
do. We will ask Nurse to let us keep the pussy over-night, and later on
we will advertise in the newspaper, just as we did for Master
Mustardseed, and if it doesn’t seem to belong to anyone or to come from
anywhere in particular, you shall have it for your own, and Nurse won’t
mind it if it catches the mice in the scullery, will she?”
Philomène’s face cleared, and she looked beseechingly at Nurse. “You are
master in this house, sir,” admitted Nurse, “and it seems useless to
fight against this love of dumb things. Cats especially do seem to run
in families.”
So the white kitten stayed, and grew into a white cat, glossy and
well-liking, that followed Philomène about the house “like a dog,” said
the people who had never taken the trouble to befriend a cat.