_Chapter I: Buried Treasure_
I
Probably our father would never have chosen Mrs. Handsomebody to be our
governess and guardian during the almost two years he spent in South
America, had it not seemed the natural thing to hand us over to the
admirable woman who had been his own teacher in early boyhood.
Had he not been bewildered by the sudden death of our young mother, he
might have recalled scenes between himself and Mrs. Handsomebody that would
have made him hesitate to leave three stirring boys under her entire
control. Possibly he forgot that he had had his parents, and a doting aunt
or two, to pad the angularities of Mrs. Handsomebody's rule, and to say
whether or not her limber cane should seek his plumpest and most tender
parts.
Then, too, at that period, Mrs. Handsomebody was still unmarried. As Miss
Wigmore she had not yet captured and quelled the manly spirit of Mr.
Handsomebody. From being a blustering sort of man, he had become, Mary
Ellen said, very mild and fearful.
On his demise Mrs. Handsomebody was left in solitary possession of a tall,
narrow house, in the shadow of the grey Cathedral in the rather grey and
grim old town of Misthorpe. Here, Angel and The Seraph and I were set down
one April morning, fresh from the country house, where we had been born;
our mother's kisses still warm, one might say, on our round young cheeks.
Unaccustomed to restraint, we were introduced into an atmosphere of
drabness and restraint, best typified, perhaps, by the change from our
tender, springy country turf, to the dry, blistered planks of Mrs.
Handsomebody's back yard. Angel, fiery, candid, inconstant; the careless
possessor of a beautiful boys' treble, which was to develop into the
incomparable tenor of today--next, myself, a year younger, but equally tall
and courageous, in a more dogged way--then, The Seraph, three years my
junior, he was just five, following where we led with a blind loyalty,
"Stubborn, strong and jolly as a pie."
Truly when I think of us, as we were then, and when I remember how we came
like a wild disturbing wind into that solemn house, I am inclined to pity
Mrs. Handsomebody.
Even when she sent us to bed in the colossal four-poster, in the middle of
the afternoon, we were scarcely downcast, for it was not such a bad
playground after all, and by drawing the curtains, we could shut ourselves
completely away from the world dominated by petticoats.
Then there was Mary Ellen, with her "followers," always our firm ally,
brimming with boisterous good health. Looking back, I am convinced that
Mrs. Handsomebody deserves our sympathy.