MOONDI-MOONDI
“With fire and fierce drought on her tresses
Insatiable summer oppresses
Sere woodland and sad wildernesses,
And faint flocks and herds.”
Moondi-Moondi, Sunnymeade yclept, lay parched and panting beneath the
sun of another summer. Dr. Wise’s cottage showed little change; perhaps
the walls were dirtier, certainly there were more pencillings, and
the amateur scribblings of small fingers upon the verandah posts and
fences. You still fell over small boys in whatever part of the house
you essayed to walk, and _Human Buds, and our Responsibilities in the
Grafting of Them_, still stood in its now well-worn cover in a place on
the book-shelves convenient for reference.
Mrs. Wise had gone out for the day—a very rare occurrence. She had
driven off in the old buggy with the doctor and her youngest baby to a
station twenty miles away, to see some one who was staying there, and
had been at school with her.
She had left Clif with strict injunctions to take good care of Alf and
Richie, for it was Lizzie’s washing-day, and who else was there to put
to the task?
But quite early in the morning Teddie came rushing back to the house
with round eyes and a most red, excited face.
Clif was lying, face downwards, on the floor in the dining-room, with
Scott’s _Pirate_ for companion, and, as might be imagined, his charges
were following, unchecked, their own sweet wills. This morning this
happened to be scratching “capital A’s,” which they had just learned to
make, on the seats and backs of the chairs.
“Oh, guess,” cried Teddie, bursting in, “_guess_ what, Clif!”
“What?” said Clif, but the Pirate’s doings were too engrossing for him
to lift his eyes.
“‘Brownses’ is taken,” said Teddie, “and it’s a school that’s coming.”
Clif dropped his book and drew a great breath. School was what he had
ardently desired for almost two years. It had seemed so babyish, so
unmanly, to be kept hanging about home each and every day, doing a
few simple tasks amid all manner of interruptions, for his father and
mother to correct, pushing the perambulator up and down the paths or
the road, forced to play most of his time in the dull patch of ground,
called by courtesy the garden, so that he might keep a watch on those
restless spirits, Richie and Alf.
He got up, quite trembling with excitement.
“Let’s go and look,” he said, and the next minute was scrambling over
the fence that separated the two orchards.
No wonder Teddie had been excited at the change that had taken place
at “Brownses” since the day before. All the windows were flung open,
the almost obliterated “To Let” notice had gone, and a woman, who lived
near, was scrubbing away at the dirty floors.
The lads fairly fell upon her with their questions: “When was the
school coming? Which was going to be the school-room? Had the teacher
got maps and a black-board? Did she teach out of _Little Arthur’s
History_, or _The Royal_, and would they have arithmetic every day?”
The woman ran them out of the house at last with her broom and locked
herself in, and they were forced to walk around outside and make
conjectures about the things they could not find out.
At mid-day dinner, Lizzie was very irate over their neglect of their
two little brothers.
“That Richie went under the house after the cat,” he said, “and it had
a snake in its mouth.”
This was so every-day an occurrence, that Clif was not in the least
conscience-stricken.
“Old Blackeye wouldn’t have let him touch it,” he said; “she always
takes jolly good care no one gets a show to take it from her.”
“Well, Alf lighted a newspaper,” the girl continued, “he might have set
hisself afire. You’ll just stop here this afternoon, Master Clif, and
look after them, or I’ll tell the Missus.”
[Illustration: The woman ran them out of the house with her broom.]
Clif cudgelled his brain to think of something that would keep them
safely amused while he and Ted explored further. Whatever happened he
felt he must be on the scene every day now when the train came in, for
the woman had said that the new people might come any day. Ted was
equally convinced that he must, so there could be no relegating duty.
At last he hit on a plan, and told Lizzie he was going to take the
small ones out with him, which quite satisfied the girl. He told Teddie
his idea, and between them they purloined one of the clothes-lines,
some gingerbread, a bottle of jam, and a newspaper or two.
Then they set off with their troublesome charges. A quarter of an
hour’s walk away, at the head of the swamp creek, there were a number
of pools of water, very shallow at this dry time of the year. Clif
selected an isolated one that was far enough from the bush to be
tolerably safe from snakes, and yet close enough to be hidden from the
road. He helped the little lads to undress, and he put their clothes
in safety on the bough of a tree—part of his responsibility was to
keep them from ruining their clothes. Round each of their naked little
waists he tied a length of rope which he made fast to the tree. He told
them they were wild Indians, imprisoned for scalping whites, but that
he had begged the king to give them enough freedom to bathe when they
liked, as wild Indians went mad if they didn’t. He put the gingerbread,
the bottle of jam, and a spoon close to them, and he rapidly made a
fleet of paper boats for them to sail.
The little lads were capering with delight at the novel game, and
hardly noticed when the big boys slipped away.
“That’s great,” said Clif as they went back; “they can’t get into a bit
of harm, ’cause they can’t go past the length of the rope anywhere.
And they can’t hurt their blessed clothes; and they can’t get drowned
’cause the water’s not up to their knees; and they can’t catch cold,
it’s so hot. Come on, the train must be nearly in.”
“Tell you,” said Ted, “let’s hide in their garden and watch them;
they’d only stop at the station a minute or two, and they’d see us if
we followed.” Their mother had impressed it upon them very clearly the
last time the tenants moved into this house, that people hated little
boys to stand about and stare when they were moving, and that nice
gentlemanly boys would not think of even peeping through the cracks of
the fence.
Clif found his brother’s suggestion good.
“Near the side-room window there’s a tank, we could squeeze down in the
place where it doesn’t touch the wall and see everything,” he said.
“Come on,” said Ted, “I can hear the train.” And they swarmed over the
fence with no further ado.
For nearly an hour they crouched patiently in their uncomfortable
position before there was anything to see. Ted was just suggesting this
could not be the day, but at last there came rumbling along the old
patched-up cart of the blacksmith, the only one obtainable at short
notice. An idler, not more than half sober, walked beside it—the only
man obtainable at short notice. No one in the place had known the new
teacher was coming so soon, or there would have been quite an army
to offer help, for the people were kindly. But it happened that the
Sunday-school picnic was taking place a mile or two away, and the
village was deserted. Behind the cart walked a little lady in black,
with two little light-haired girls beside her, and a little dark-haired
one running in front.
They turned in at the gate. The boys wondered what made the lady look
as if she were going to cry as she gazed at the forlorn empty cottage.
The scrubbing woman had gone—indeed, so anxious to get to the picnic
had she been, she had not finished the work, meaning to come back to
it at night; the windows, though thrown up, had still a year’s dirt
upon them; there was a bucket of dirty water in the narrow hall; in the
kitchen there was a heap of old fish- and jam-tins and other rubbish.
The man was unloading the cart under protest; the boys watched him
bump in some packing-cases and flat cabin-boxes, a few chairs, two
mattresses, and a bundle of bed-laths. The little girls kept running to
and fro with the lighter bags and articles.
“Where is the rest of the beds?” said the lady, looking in dismay at
the now almost empty cart.
“Must ha’ left it at the station,” said the man laconically. He tipped
the cart at an angle and slid the piano-case off on to the footpath.
“Have to get two men to lift that in,” he said, “can’t shift a piano by
myself; ten bob, please, mum.”
The lady seemed afraid of him, and hurriedly gave him his
half-sovereign to get rid of him. He climbed into his cart and went
bumping off down the road again.
The forlorn little procession trailed slowly into the cottage and to
the very room beneath the window of which the boys were crouching. The
mother sat down on a packing-case, struggled to smile and say something
cheerful, but found it impossible and burst into tears instead, and the
three tired, dispirited little girls joined in heartily.
“Whatever’s up with them?” said Teddie, uneasily.
“They’re in black,” whispered Clif, “some one’s dead.”
“Come, Phyl, come, Dolly, this will never do,” said the mother, drying
her eyes after a little time, “we must make the best of it, little
daughters, and first of all we must get something to eat or we shall
all be ill.”
The little girls mopped their eyes and looked round mournfully.
“What can we get?” Phyl said.
“There are some of the sandwiches left,” said Dolly, but there was no
enthusiasm in her tone.
“There’s a little box of groceries at the top of this packing-case,”
Mrs. Conway said; “I put it there ready for an emergency, so we shall
have tea and sugar and butter, but I certainly don’t know what we shall
do for milk and bread.”
Weenie began to cry again dismally—hunger always reduced her to tears
more speedily than anything else.
“I wants some ben an’ milk,” she said, lapsing into the phrase of her
babyhood.
Clif stirred uneasily.
“I could get a loaf and some milk out of our kitchen in a minute,” he
whispered to Ted, “but p’raps they wouldn’t take it if they thought
we’d been peeping.”
“Let’s drop them through the window, and run away,” Ted suggested.
“You stop there,” Clif said, squeezing himself stealthily out of the
hiding-place. He crept along close to the house lest one of the little
girls should glance out the window and see him, and he climbed the
fence and reached his own kitchen in safety. He took the jug of milk
that had been set aside for tea and one of the two loaves of bread,
and went back, carefully slipping the jug through a broken paling and
dropping the loaf over in advance of himself.
Teddie reported that the lady was nearly crying again and the littlest
girl had hardly stopped a minute. They had gone into the kitchen to see
about a fire, and found it worse than any place in the house. And next,
they had hunted all over the house for the water-tap, and at last the
biggest little girl had gone outside and had noticed the tank. But,
when they tried it, it was quite empty.
“They almost saw me, too,” wound up Ted, “I couldn’t help breathing
once, and the middlest girl said, ‘Oh, come away quickly, I’m sure
there’s a frog there.’”
“Are they in this room yet?” asked Clif.
The little boy nodded.
“The lady’s trying to open one of the boxes, and she can’t,” he said.
Clif slipped along the ground to the front; the door was shut, but one
of the windows was open, so very very softly he climbed through, set
the jug and loaf on the floor, and retreated with heart beating rapidly.
The spice of excitement and daring was making the blood dance in
his veins. He pictured them going into that room with pleasure and
surprise: it would seem to them as if fairies had been there. He crept
round the house, looking for fresh worlds to conquer for them.
“How are they getting on?” he whispered to Teddie, who was still
peeping through the creeper round the window with absorbed eyes.
“She’s found the kettle,” reported Teddie, “it was in the little box,
but she can’t get the big one open; she’s trying to light a fire now in
the fire-place with the bits of wood the woman left and a newspaper;
she says the kitchen’s too dirty to go into.”
Clif peeped in, and a few moments’ watching sufficed to show him that
the fire would never burn—he was an authority on fire-making. The
lady was on her knees by the open fire-place; in the middle of it she
had put two or three small blocks of wood, and on the top of this a
newspaper crumpled up. Again and again she put a match to it, again
and again the paper caught, flared up, died down. Then she and two of
the little girls puffed at it with their lips till the tears ran down
their cheeks with the smoke and heat; the wood would crackle a moment,
show red for a minute or two, then die out to sulky blackness.
“And even if it does burn,” said Phyl, “what is the use of it without
water?”
The lady rose from her knees at last.
“I must go and ask help from some one,” she said; “there are two or
three cottages not very far down the road, perhaps there may be some
one there who would help a little.” She added a little bitterly: “In
England a new-comer would not have to go out in search for help, some
neighbour would have been to offer it. You may come with me, Phyl, we
may have to carry the water back.”
On their way up the hall they saw the bread and milk, and their
exceeding surprise and pleasure satisfied even Clif.
“We shall get some tea after all,” they said, and hurried off with
lighter hearts.
Dolly and Weenie, left behind, grew nervous in the strangely silent
place, and Clif perceived the fact. “Gr-r-r-r-r!” he said at the
window, and made a few more sounds calculated to terrify, an act that
caused Teddie the greatest amazement, it seemed such wanton cruelty.
Dolly seized Weenie’s hand.
“L-l-let’s go and wait at the gate,” she said, and they fled away
together.
It was then that Clif established himself in the place as a good fairy;
he thought it a great pity that people should be foolish enough to
object to little boys looking on, for he could have helped much better
if he had been admitted openly to the house. He sent Teddie off to
their own pump with the kettle and bade him bring back the axe. He had
a fire burning in a very few minutes, and the kettle sitting in a most
comfortable and ordinary way upon it; with the axe and a hammer he
broke the lids of two of the packing-cases, and was just starting on a
third, when he heard the footsteps coming back along the path.
He had only just time to scramble out of the window again with Teddie’s
help, before the new people were actually in the house.
More weary and dispirited than ever sounded the voices; they had
been able to make no one hear, it seemed, though they tried at four
cottages; every place was quite shut up.
“There’s a house at the back of this,” said Phyl, who had been looking
round; “I wonder would it be any use trying there,—why,—how,—_look_ at
the fire!”
They had reached the doorway by this time, and all sprang across the
room to the wonderful sight.
“There’s even water in the kettle,” Phyl said, the first to break the
silence of surprise.
Mrs. Conway looked round a little nervously.
“This is all very strange,” she said; “there must be some one in the
house; I—I can’t understand it all.”
Dolly grew a little pale.
“P’waps it’s a haunted house,” she whispered, “p’waps there are spiwits
in it.”
“Nonsense,” said her mother; “at all events it’s a very practical and
kindly spirit.” She went out and looked in every room; Dolly was able
to testify no one had been in or out of the gate, for she and Weenie
had stood there all the time.
“But there was a vewy dweadful noise once,” she said, with a glance of
fear over her shoulder.
Mrs. Conway raised her voice so that it would go through all the little
cottage.
“Is any one there?” she said. “Is any one in the house? if so, will
they please speak?”
“P’raps she won’t mind us,” whispered Teddie; “go on, say yes, they’re
getting frightened.”
Some brown wavy hair and a thin boy’s face, very red and ashamed of
itself, showed at the open window.
“It’s only me,” he said, with extreme depreciation in his tone, “and my
brother Teddie.”
Mrs. Conway held out a welcoming hand.
“Come in,” she said, “you have been very kind, little boys. Can you get
down there all right? This is Teddie, is it? And what is your name?
Clif? Clif Wise? What made you take such a funny way of doing good to
us?”
[Plate Illustration: “‘Come in,’ she said, ‘you have been very kind
little boys’”]
Clif grew redder than ever. He had climbed down at her request, and
Teddie had followed him, but he was very anxious now to depart by way
of the door.
“We’ll have to go now,” he said at last, after a minute or two’s
silence, during which Phyl and Dolly had studied him critically. “Come
on, Ted.”
But Mrs. Conway threw herself upon his protection in such a way that he
felt a most pleasurable thrill of manliness.
“If you would stay and help me for a little time I should be very
glad,” she said; “you see everything is so new and strange to us, we
don’t know where to turn for anything. For instance, where can we get
water from?—everything here seems empty.”
“You can get it at Johnson’s, the baker’s,” Clif said, “or over at
Green’s, the cottage with the painted roof, down the road. If you give
me threepence I’ll go and buy you a bucketful.”
“Threepence!” cried Mrs. Conway; “you don’t mean to tell me water costs
anything?”
Clif soothed her shyly.
“Not often,” he said; “in the winter you never have to buy it, and
sometimes in the summer there is enough, but whenever there is a
drought like this, everybody buys their drinking water from the people
who have big wells and tanks, and get what they want for washing or
baths from the pools at the head of the Swamp.”
The poor little lady looked quite stunned under this fresh blow. Surely
this was a very dreadful wilderness she had lighted upon.
“I—I think we had better have tea at once,” she said faintly. Phyl had
unpacked some cups and saucers, Dolly had found the butter, Weenie was
eating ravenously at the packet of sugar.
Phyl darted an ungrateful glance at their small benefactors; she
considered they need not have worried her mother about things like this
the first evening, and she thought it quite time they retired, since
there seemed nothing more they could do now but stand and stare.
While her mother stooped down to make the tea she slipped up to them.
“Is it easier for you to go by the front door or the back?” she said,
not loud enough however to be heard by her mother.
“The back,” said Clif, slow however to see they were dismissed, so
interested was he in watching proceedings.
“_Good_-bye,” said the little girl with an insinuating smile; she could
hardly have done it better if she had been a society woman.
Clif stared at her a moment—he had purposed staying here and helping
for hours.
But then he got very red and backed suddenly out of the doorway,
pulling Teddie after him.
“Where are the little boys?” said the mother when she turned round;
“how strange of them to go so suddenly!”
“It will be much nicer to have tea without them,” Phyl said,
establishing herself calmly on a hat-box; “I never saw anything like
the way they stared.”
“They were very nice little boys indeed,” said her mother warmly.
At that moment the very nice little boys were standing arraigned before
their justly irate parents, who, driving home late in the day, had
heard such pitiful crying not far from the roadway, they had gone in
search of it, and had found the poor little forgotten Red Indians. Red
Indians in very truth, for they were smeared from head to heel with the
crimson jam.
“It might have killed the poor little things,” said their mother in
great agitation.
“But it hasn’t,” said Clif consolingly; “they’ll be as right as ever in
the morning.”
And truly enough they were.