ANOTHER DREADFUL SCRAPE.
The next morning Bryda was awakened from her pleasant morning sleep
by a strange sound. Her window was partly open, but something struck
against the upper sash; it was not a bird that had lost its way, nor
a wasp come to look for jam, for as Bryda raised her head something
that could only be a handful of light gravel or shot struck the
window again, and at the same time a clear, shrill whistle sounded
outside.
Bryda hastily sprang up. One does not care much about dress at nine
years old, so in white nightdress and dark twisted hair she
fearlessly put her head out of the window, and saw, to her delight,
her cousin, Maurice Gray, a boy some two years younger than herself,
with his queer, ugly little Scotch terrier, Toby, standing on the
lawn. She need not be sad for want of a playmate to-day.
[Illustration: Maurice Gray with his queer little Scotch terrier
Toby.]
"Get up and dress!" cried Maurice. "Aren't you ashamed, my Lady
Lie-in-bed? Come out directly!"
Bryda did not need a second invitation. A very short time indeed
passed before she was by Maurice's side.
His father had brought him over, he said; his father wanted to see
grandfather about some business, so he had started off very early.
Maurice was dreadfully hungry, and, as the grannies never breakfasted
till ten, he and Bryda each got a thick slice of bread and jam from
the good-natured cook, and then went off to the garden, Bryda running
races with Toby, who mostly had the best of it. You see he had four
legs to Bryda's two.
They went to the vinery, and acted a little play, which, however,
wanted a few more actors sadly. It was so puzzling for Bryda to be
both the imprisoned princess and the ogre at once; and when Maurice,
the valiant knight, slew Toby for a dragon, and stepped over his
corpse (or would have done, if Toby had been a little more dead, and
not run away every other minute), it got really puzzling, and it was
well that the breakfast-bell rang at that moment.
Breakfast was rather a long, dull affair. Uncle James, Maurice's
father, explained to grandfather a great deal about a drainage
scheme; and grandmother, every five minutes, asked her maid Martha,
who stood behind her chair, to tell her what it was all about, which
Martha had to do in very loud whispers over and over again.
Maurice and Bryda were very glad to run out again, with special
directions from grandmother to keep off wet grass, and not get into
mischief. This, they thought, could not possibly happen. This time
they rambled into the farmyard. Bryda would not look for more
kittens, but tried to make friends with some small balls of fluff,
which meant some day to be turkeys. At one corner of the yard was a
deep tank, or little pond, full of a dark brown, rather thick fluid,
which was used in the garden and fields, and had a great effect in
the way of making things grow. Bryda and her cousin stood looking at
it.
"I declare," said Bryda, "it's like the Styx!"
"I don't see any sticks," said ignorant Maurice, who had never
learned that the old heathens believed the souls of dead people went
in a ferryboat across a dark river called the Styx, and that the old
man who rowed the boat was called Charon.
Bryda thought it would be capital fun to act this little scene.
Certainly the treacle-colored stuff in the pool looked nasty enough
to do very well for this dark river.
As to Maurice, he was younger than his cousin, and when they were
together she always invented the games, although he had been to
school already, and thought girls generally were very little use.
So when Bryda explained what she wanted to do, he only said that he
did not know how to act a story that he had never heard; to which
Bryda only answered quietly, and as if it were a fact no one could
think of doubting for a moment, "You don't know anything about
anything, Maurice. Sit down there--no! not on a cabbage, but on the
wheelbarrow--and I will tell you all about it."
So she told him the story, in the middle of which the wheelbarrow
upset, because Maurice laughed. So he sat on a log of wood, and
Bryda picked up the wheelbarrow, got into it, and began in the words
of one of her lesson-books, with a little alteration to suit the
occasion.
"Friend! Roman! Countryman! lend me your ears! I am Charon----"
"What?" asked Maurice.
"Don't spoil my speech! You may only say 'Hear, hear!' as they do in
Parliament."
"But suppose I don't want to hear?"
Bryda had no notion of what they would do under such unlikely
circumstances; so, after thinking a little, she merely said, "Don't
be silly, Maurice!" And that sort of answer puts an end to any
argument quite easily.
"This is my dog Cerberus, with three heads," went on Bryda, pointing
to Toby.
"My! what a lot of bones he would eat!" said his master.
Bryda suddenly jumped down from her rather unsteady pulpit.
"Oh, we _will_ have fun! Here, Maurice, put on my white pinafore.
You shall be a ghost, and I will get into the tub with my dog
Cerberus, and ferry you over the river," she said.
"It won't hold two," said Maurice, looking rather doubtfully at the
rotten tub which Bryda pushed into the filthy waters, making a splash
and a most horrible smell as it went in.
"Oh, ghosts don't want much room! Now, Cerberus, in you go!" and in
the poor dog went, hastily and ungracefully; being, in fact, thrown
in head foremost.
After one howl he resigned himself, and lay down at the bottom of the
tub, into which unsteady boat Bryda, armed with her own small spade,
followed with Maurice's help.
Having balanced herself by crouching down, so as to bring the center
of gravity to the right place, she proceeded to paddle, or, as she
called it, to row with the little wooden spade, splashing a good
deal, and, of course, making the tub turn round and round, and
wriggle very uncomfortably in the pool.
[Illustration: (Bryda floating in the tub)]
"Well, it doesn't matter," said Charon, giving up in despair, and
looking very red in the face. "We can pretend I crossed the Styx to
fetch you. Now I must speak to the soul in Latin, because, of
course, Charon and Cerberus talked Latin always."
"I suppose Cerberus barked in Latin--all three mouths at once," said
Maurice; "what a horrid row it must have been!"
"Now talk away," said Bryda.
"But we don't know Latin; I've only just begun at _hic, hoec, hoc_."
"That doesn't matter; we must make it up, of course. If we put 'us'
or 'o' at the end of every word it will sound exactly like the stuff
Cousin Ronald learns. Now: Poor-us soul-us, do-us you-us want-o to
cross over-o?"
"Yes-o," replied Maurice promptly.
"Then-us come-o--oh! oh!" screamed Bryda, making the last word very
long indeed; for she trod on the one tail of the dog Cerberus,
causing that remarkable animal to jump up howling. Charon's
ferryboat was not built to allow of athletic sports on board, so it
went over, and Bryda went in.
Oh, dear! what word can describe the filthy mess into which Bryda was
plunged up to her waist! the smell of it, and the chill, horrible
feeling! Fortunately, she had just taken Maurice's hand, to help in
"the soul," who indeed felt very lucky to escape such a voyage!
Maurice was able to help her, but, soaked to the waist and ready to
cry, she scrambled up to dry land.
By way of mending matters, the dog Cerberus, who may be supposed to
have become Toby again, had gone in altogether, and was rather
pleased with himself. So he came and had a good shake close to
Bryda, so as to splash all the rest of her small person, and then ran
round and round, expressing his delight by all sorts of queer noises.
But, oh! here was a mess! And this after the trouble of yesterday,
and all Bryda's good resolutions! It was too dreadful, and tears
came fast to her eyes.
But kind Maurice, instead of laughing, pitied her. "Don't cry," he
said; "can't you wash?"
"I might _run_," said Bryda dolefully, remembering what dreadful
things happened to frocks that "ran."
"That stuff might run off," said Maurice; "come on."
And she followed meekly to the nearest greenhouse, where was a large
tub of fresh water, and beside it a big squirt or syringe used for
watering plants high up in the greenhouse.
"Oh, Maurice dear, I never will call you stupid again!" cried Bryda,
delighted, as Maurice filled the syringe and set to work upon her.
What fun that was! It was almost worth the fright of that horrid
splash, and almost--not quite, perhaps--worth the disgrace Bryda
would certainly be in with nurse. Such peals of laughter followed
each shower that the quiet cows in the fields beyond lifted up their
great heavy heads, and stared with brown eyes of mild astonishment.
[Illustration: Maurice filled the syringe and set to work.]
Can you imagine the sort of figure Bryda was when grandmother came
out in her wheel-chair to take a turn in the sunshine? Soaked from
head to foot; streams of clean water, and others of the horribly
smelling stuff into which she had plunged, pouring off her in all
directions! She did indeed look a miserable little guilty thing,
hanging her head while grandmother looked at her through her gold
eyeglass, evidently so surprised and shocked that she could find no
words for a few minutes, and at last could only tell her she must
never! never! never! do such dreadful things again. If she did, the
consequences would be
* * * * * *
This row of stars must stand for those dreadful consequences, for
Bryda never heard them! Uncle James and grandfather had come up by
this time, and she fled, as fast as wet, clinging clothes would let
her, to the house. It was "out of the frying-pan into the fire,"
though, for nurse's wrath was really something too dreadful; and the
way in which she ended, by saying that she supposed Miss Bryda would
like better to make mud pies in the streets than to play with other
Christians, hurt the child's feelings dreadfully. I am sorry to say
she walked out of the nursery with damp, smooth hair and a clean
frock, but with her head so very much in the air that her namesake,
Saint Bride, or Bridget, or Bryda, would have been quite shocked.
"You see, Cousin Salome," she said afterward, "it was such a dose of
disgraces, and I meant to be so wise, and clever, and useful."
"Did you _ask_ to be made wise, and clever, and useful?" asked Salome
gently.
Bryda hung her head. She had forgotten that. I am afraid she
dressed so quickly in the morning to join Maurice that she never
remembered to ask the Helper of the helpless to make her what she
would like to be.
"I have been so miserable, Cousin Salome," she added; "I don't
believe Mary, Queen of Scots, could have been more wretched if she
had had her head cut off three times running."
How this was to be managed did not seem to strike Bryda as puzzling.
She and Maurice had so often acted the execution of Mary of Scotland,
with an armchair for the block, and an umbrella for an ax, that they
were quite used to the queen having her head cut off very often
without minding it in the least, or being any the worse for it
afterward.
But, certainly, it is very tiresome when our most amusing games end
in some mischief that we never dreamed of doing! It was not so very
long before this dreadful accident in the tub that Bryda, who had
been reading English history, told Maurice they would act King Canute
and his courtiers on the seashore.
So she put two chairs, and collected all the water she could from
every jug and water-bottle she could find, so as nearly to fill a
bath placed in front of the two chairs on which she and Maurice sat.
"So they put chairs close by the seashore as the tide came in,"
related Bryda, "and the little waves came nearer and nearer. And the
courtiers said, 'O king, let us move a little higher up.' But Canute
said, 'Why should we? Did you not say I was such a great king that
no doubt even the sea would obey me?' And the courtiers held their
stupid tongues, for they knew very well that they had said so. But
the tide kept on coming, and presently the courtiers got up and ran
away, for the water was halfway up the legs of their chairs, and they
had already been sitting with their knees up to their noses."
But here Bryda, trying to get herself into this graceful position,
lost her balance, and rolled off her chair, falling on the edge of
the bath; which, of course, upset, and made a higher tide in the
nursery than had ever been seen there before, for the water flowed in
every direction, and the children, ashamed and frightened though they
were, could not help laughing at the way in which a pair of Bryda's
shoes floated about like little canoes, till one that had a hole at
the side turned over and went down.
This happened at Bryda's own home, before her father and mother went
away. Mother was not pleased, of course; but still she was not quite
so dreadfully shocked as the grannies were at the adventure in the
old tub.