A BRASS HELMET
Madam's breakfast was ready, and there was just time to cook the new-laid
egg and put it on the tray.
Terry got behind the open door, and great was her delight when she heard
Granny say:
"Why, Nancy, you don't mean to tell me that this is a new-laid egg! Where
can you have got it?"
"A nice little hen laid it for you, madam," said Nancy, "and may be there's
more where it come from."
"That is very good," said Granny. "What are the children doing at present,
Nancy?"
"They're just about goin' to get their breakfast, madam."
"Isn't it rather late for their breakfast?" said Granny.
"Both of them's been out, madam, and have got appetites like young
troopers," said Nancy evasively.
Terry listened with the keenest disappointment. Was Nancy not going to tell
Granny that it was she, Terry, who had got her that egg for her breakfast?
When the nursery meal appeared, Terry rushed forth her grievance.
"Oh, Nursey, you never told Granny who got her that egg! And after all the
trouble I took!"
"The trouble you took was all boldness and disobedience," said Nancy, "and
it's just the way you're to be punished by not letting her know. It isn't
to screen you that I'm not tellin' her the whole of your conduct, but only
just that I won't have her sick about it. It wasn't you at all that got the
eggs, but Misther Reilly; for there you were stuck in the dyke, with the
pony hurted, an you as far off as to-morrow from Connolly's farm."
"It's a worse punishment than if you beat me," said Terry. "And you said I
had an appetite like a trooper, and I haven't, for I can't eat a bit."
"You're a jolly goose, then!" said Turly. "Breakfast's awfully good, I can
tell you."
"If you don't eat, it doesn't matter," said Nurse. "It'll maybe make you
think again before you set off to run into such dangers. If your head had
come against a stone when the pony went down--"
"But it didn't," said Terry. "It wasn't the least bit like that. I just
came sitting on the grass quite comfortably. And I tried to get to
Connolly's, and I didn't want Jocko to be hurt."
"It isn't the least use talking to you," said Nancy; "but I've another
punishment for you. I've been talking to Madam about your practising, and
you've got to begin to it. I told her you'd be forgettin' all your music,
and she said you'd betther go to it afther breakfast this very mornin'."
Now if there was one thing in the world that Terry hated it was her
"practising". To sit hammering out five-finger exercises on a piano in a
lonely room, making a dreary, monotonous noise, trying to turn in her
fingers and thumbs at the right places, and doing the same thing over and
over again, while the hands of the clock crept slowly round; all this meant
a penance which was torture to the active little creature.
However, Terry accepted her sentence in silence. She never thought of
disobeying a direct command like this; for it was true, as she had often
said, that she never did a thing which she believed at the time to be
wrong. It would be clearly wrong to refuse to do her practising when Nurse
and Gran'ma had decreed that it was to be done, and so she recognized that
the hated ordeal must be faced.
She got out her "music", sheets covered with wicked-looking black notes,
having figures and crosses marked above them in pencil to show her where
to put her little fingers, which were always sure to get themselves in the
wrong places. Before descending to the large lonely drawing-room where the
practising had to be done, Terry made one last appeal to fate by opening
the door of Granny's bedroom ever so little and speaking in. Granny might,
after all, not be so severe in this matter as Nurse Nancy.
"Gran'ma, dear," said a little plaintive voice, "do you think I need go to
my practising quite so soon in the holidays?"
"Yes, my darling," answered Madam from among the curtains of her bed. "You
know your mother will expect you to play something pretty for her as soon
as she comes home."
Then Terry strove no more against her doom, but went down to the
drawing-room.
The drawing-room was a handsome old-fashioned apartment, but with that
depressing atmosphere which gathers into rooms, especially large ones,
which have ceased to be much lived in. The curtains drooped sorrowfully,
the carpet had a lonely, untrodden look; the chairs had an air of not
expecting to be sat upon, some Elizabethan portraits on the walls showed
stiff wooden personages, who seemed to have driven all the living persons
out of the room. When the piano was opened, the black and white keys
appeared cold and uninviting to the touch.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Terry. "An hour's practising! It is just twelve by
the clock now, and I shall have to strum till one!"
[Illustration]
She spent all the time she could in screwing the music-stool to the right
height for her little figure. It was no sooner up high enough than she
found she wanted it to go down, and then it would go down too low. At last
it was just as right as it could be, and there was nothing more to be done
with it.
Then the first two notes were struck by Terry's two little thumbs. How
strange and audacious they sounded in the silence of the lonely room! Terry
glanced over her shoulder at the pictures, and saw a long-faced man in a
pointed collar looking at her severely.
"Oh, how can I?" she exclaimed, dropping her hands into her lap. "How can I
if he goes on like that?"
She tried again, however, and this time succeeded in running a five-finger
exercise once up and once down.
"I forget how to do it, my fingers are all on the wrong notes. Miss
Goodchild says I have a taste for music. How can I have when I hate a
piano? I love beautiful sounds when I hear them, but these are not
beautiful sounds. I can't make anything but a dismal noise. Even the
long-ago people on the walls object to it. But I must do it again or it
won't be practising;" and this time Terry ran the five-finger exercise up
and down two or three times without stopping before she let her hands drop
again from the keys.
Suddenly a bright idea struck her.
"I wonder what o'clock it is!" she said to herself. "I must have been at
least half an hour in this room."
She got down from the high stool and walked slowly across the long room,
feeling that she was getting rid of a little time by restraining her usual
rapid movements. Arriving at the door she stood with her back to it for a
few moments, gazing all around.
"Could it ever have been a real everyday place to live in, like Granny's
sitting-room upstairs, or the day nursery? Granny says it was a lovely,
comfortable room when she was going about, and everybody was in it every
day. And certainly there are a lot of nice things in it, if they were only
shaken about. But there's nobody to shake them, and it's awfully ghosty,
and I do so feel afraid the ghosts will hear my bad playing and come to me.
Now, I'm sure it must be half an hour, and I may go and look at the clock!"
She slipped out of the door and closed it behind her quickly, as if she
feared invisible hands might catch her unawares to keep her within. Up two
flights of stairs she went, and looked at the clock on the landing.
"Only ten minutes past twelve!" she exclaimed in dismay. "Oh, that dreadful
old clock must have stopped herself on purpose! Now, I will just watch to
see. I don't believe she's moving at all." And Terry put her back against
the wall and fixed her eyes on her enemy.
"No; she's going," said Terry, as the minute-hand made a slight onward
jerk, "but she has gone slow just the very morning I have got to practise."
She went down to the hall, slowly, counting the steps, and stood in the
hall looking at everything as if she had never been there before.
"I wonder if I might curl in behind that door with a story-book," she
thought, "or even with nothing at all; where I could hear the sounds of the
other parts of the house! But no, I couldn't. I know it would be wrong,
because I've got to be a whole hour at my practising. And I don't want to
have two wrongnesses in one day, bad as I am."
She returned at once to the drawing-room, and, seating herself again at the
piano, went steadily up and down a whole scale, trying seriously to turn in
her thumbs at the right places and to put her fingers where they ought to
be when she wanted them. She really worked hard for five minutes, and then
stopped and congratulated herself that the hour must be nearly over.
"But I must play over Gran'ma's little tune," she said to herself.
"Gran'ma's so fond of it, and it is pretty, only I don't like his being
killed. Malbrook was killed, I know he was. Gran'ma told me so."
She got out an old music-book of Madam's young days, and turned to a page
on which were a number of small tunes of a few bars each, and each marked
with a name.
She began to play the old air of Malbrook, very sweetly and plaintively, so
as quite to justify Miss Goodchild's opinion that she had a taste for
music. But at the last bar Terry's little hands fell limp, and she burst
out crying.
"I know he was killed!" she said; "and what with Jocko's knees and
everything I can't bear it. I wonder if Turly would come down and sit with
me; that is if my hour isn't up."
Alas! the pitiless old clock informed her that she had still at least half
an hour of penance to undergo. Perceiving this she stole up softly to the
nursery.
"Turly, dear! Are you there, Turly?"
"Oh yes, I'm here!" said Turly. "Have you done your practising?"
"No, I haven't. I wish I had. And will you come down and sit with me,
Turly? The drawing-room is so lonely, and the time gets on so slow."
"It's silly to be lonely," said Turly. "I'm not a bit lonely here with my
bricks. But of course I'll come with you."
"Oh, thank you, Turly! Is Nursey with Gran'ma?"
"Yes."
"What does she look like, Turly?"
"Like always," said Turly.
"Is her nose long, Turly?"
"Isn't it always the same, Terry?"
"No, it isn't. When Nurse is angry her nose gets long and her mouth goes
down at the corners. And when she's pleased they both shorten up again."
"I didn't look at her as much as that," said Turly.
So Turly came and played in the drawing-room while Terry went on with her
practising. He made a play for himself which was not particularly good for
the furniture. A long train of wagons was constructed of chairs put on
their sides and one or two small old spider tables with their spindle legs
in the air. Turly dressed himself in a few of Granny's best oriental
embroideries, and armed himself with the brass fire-irons.
"It's war, you know!" he explained to Terry. "Play Malbrook again. But I'm
not going to be killed, I can tell you. I'd just like to see anybody trying
to do it."
"Oh, Turly, you must be killed, because you have no helmet! Oh, I know
where I can get you one!"
Terry sprang up and flew to where a small palm was standing, its garden-pot
enclosed in one made of Benares brass. She quickly lifted the palm out of
the brass pot, carried the pot across the floor, and turned it downwards,
like an extinguisher, on Turly's head. It just took his head in, coming
down a little over his eyes.
[Illustration]
"Now you are perfect!" cried Terry, clapping her hands.
"It isn't exactly all right," said Turly. "I should want to see a little
better. Push it a little farther back on me, Terry."
Terry tried to do so, but the pot would not move.
"My head is stuck into it," said Turly. "I'm afraid it will never come
off."
"Oh, Turly!"
"Never mind. I'll go on with the fighting, and perhaps some fellow will
shoot it off. My wagons are running away, and I must run after them."
In this manner the practising got finished, and the children hastened to
restore the furniture to its usual state in the room before the appearance
of Nurse Nancy, who might now be expected to look in at any moment. Two or
three times Turly had tried to remove his helmet, but had failed, and so it
was left on his head till all was in order. At last, however, the children
were confronted with a difficulty. The helmet had to come off Turly's head,
and it wouldn't.
"Oh, Turly, it must come off!" said Terry.
"Says it won't," said Turly. "Got wedged. Wish it was a little bit more up,
that a fellow could see better. Don't bother, Terry, perhaps it'll change
its mind. Won't it be a joke to see Nurse's face?"
The door opened on the moment, and the expected face was seen. Nurse Nancy
stood amazed.
"Turly, what do you mean by using your Gran'ma's nice things in such a
manner? That's one of the beautiful ornaments your uncle sent her from
India. Take it off directly, and put the palm back into it."
"It doesn't like the palm, Nurse. It would rather have me!" cried Turly,
dancing about impishly at the same time, trying to shake the pot off his
head by the movement.
"Do you mean to be disobedient, Turlough?"
"The pot is awfully disobedient," said Turly. "I tell you it won't come
off."
"We'll see about that," said Nurse Nancy, putting her hands to the pot. But
to her consternation it refused to move.
"Shake your head out of it, Turly!"
"I shook and shook, and it only gets tighter on. If I shake any more it
will come down about my neck, and my eyes will be gone up into it, and my
mouth and my nose!"
Here was a state of things. Nurse looked ready to faint, as she thought of
her boy being smothered before her eyes in a Benares pot.
"Oh, Turlough! why did you do anything so wild as putting your head into
that pot?"
"He didn't, Nursey," said Terry, trembling and pale. "It was I who put it
on his head for a helmet."
"I can believe it, Terencia Mary," said Nurse. "You are always the
ringleader. And why did they call you Mary, like your gentle mother and
grandmother? There's no Mary-ness in you, you shocking girl, that couldn't
do your little bit of practising without running after helmets."
Here another attempt was made to dislodge Turly's head, while Terry stood
wringing her hands.
"I say, Nurse," said Turly, "don't you go abusing Terry for nothing. I
dressed myself up as a soldier, and I was taking my wagons to the wars, and
I had everything right but a helmet, and Terry was afraid I might be shot,
so there! she isn't to be blamed for it."
"And your dinner ready, and you not able to take it," said Nurse.
"Oh, am I not? Just you see if I don't make use of my mouth as long as I've
got it."
"Come then," said Nurse; "and I must see about sending to Dublin for a
surgeon, though how I'm to manage all without your Gran'ma knowing, I'm
sure I'm at my wits' ends to guess."
Turly ate his dinner with great vigour, but Terry sat miserable and without
appetite.
"I put the pot on his head," she thought, "and it will require a surgeon
from Dublin to get it off. Will the surgeon have to cut part of his head
away? That is what surgeons do; they cut."
Just as her thoughts had arrived at this excruciating point, the pot
suddenly made a jerk and fell completely over Turly's face, covering his
chin.
Nurse and Terry shrieked, and Turly uttered some unintelligible sounds from
within the pot.
"He'll be smothered!" cried Nurse Nancy.
"What would the surgeon do if he were here?" asked Terry, with tears
streaming, then darted from the room saying: "I'll bring up Michael Lally
and Mr. Walsh!"
These two worthy men were on the scene in a few minutes, and Lally
instantly thought of a plan.
"We'll hang him up by the heels," he said.
So the two men took Turly in their arms and "up-ended" him; the consequence
being that the pot, being now in a straight position on the head, fell off.
Whereupon Turly was re-placed on his feet on the floor.
Then Nurse Nancy sat down and rocked herself and wept.
"I thought it would ha' been either a death or an operation!" she sobbed.
"Will I ever get over it?"