Alice said, "The gift of money might be deemed an insult by that proud,
patriotic spirit. Besides, we haven't more than eighteenpence among us."
We had put what we had to father's L12 to buy the baccy and pipes.
The Mouse then said, "Couldn't we make her a flannel petticoat and leave
it without a word upon her doorstep?"
But every one said, "Flannel petticoats in this weather?" so that was no
go.
Noel said he would write her a poem, but Oswald had a deep, inward
feeling that Mrs. Simpkins would not understand poetry. Many people do
not.
H. O. said, "Why not sing 'Rule Britannia' under her window after she
had gone to bed, like waits," but no one else thought so.
Denny thought we might get up a subscription for her among the wealthy
and affluent, but we said again that we knew money would be no balm to
the haughty mother of a brave British soldier.
"What we want," Alice said, "is something that will be a good deal of
trouble to us and some good to her."
"A little help is worth a deal of poetry," said Denny. I should not have
said that myself. Noel did look sick.
"What _does_ she do that we can help in?" Dora asked. "Besides, she
won't let us help."
H. O. said, "She does nothing but work in the garden. At least if she
does anything inside you can't see it, because she keeps the door shut."
Then at once we saw. And we agreed to get up the very next day, ere yet
the rosy dawn had flushed the east, and have a go at Mrs. Simpkins's
garden.
We got up. We really did. But too often when you mean to, over night, it
seems so silly to do it when you come to waking in the dewy morn. We
crept down-stairs with our boots in our hands. Denny is rather unlucky,
though a most careful boy. It was he who dropped his boot, and it went
blundering down the stairs, echoing like thunder-bolts, and waking up
Albert's uncle. But when we explained to him that we were going to do
some gardening he let us, and went back to bed.
Everything is very pretty and different in the early morning, before
people are up. I have been told this is because the shadows go a
different way from what they do in the awake part of the day. But I
don't know. Noel says the fairies have just finished tidying up then.
Anyhow it all feels quite otherwise.
We put on our boots in the porch, and we got our gardening tools and we
went down to the white cottage. It is a nice cottage, with a thatched
roof, like in the drawing-copies you get at girls' schools, and you do
the thatch--if you can--with a B.B. pencil. If you cannot, you just
leave it. It looks just as well, somehow, when it is mounted and framed.
We looked at the garden. It was very neat. Only one patch was coming up
thick with weeds. I could see groundsell and chickweed, and others that
I did not know. We set to work with a will. We used all our
tools--spades, forks, hoes, and rakes--and Dora worked with the trowel,
sitting down, because her foot was hurt. We cleared the weedy patch
beautifully, scraping off all the nasty weeds and leaving the nice clean
brown dirt. We worked as hard as ever we could. And we were happy,
because it was unselfish toil, and no one thought then of putting it in
the Book of Golden Deeds, where we had agreed to write down our
virtuous actions and the good doings of each other, when we happen to
notice them.
We had just done, and we were looking at the beautiful production of our
honest labor, when the cottage door burst open, and the soldier's
widowed mother came out like a wild tornado, and her eyes looked like
upas-trees--death to the beholder.
"You wicked, meddlesome, nasty children!" she said, "ain't you got
enough of your own good ground to runch up and spoil but you must come
into _my_ little lot?"
Some of us were deeply alarmed, but we stood firm.
"We have only been weeding your garden," Dora said; "we wanted to do
something to help you."
"Dratted little busybodies," she said. It was indeed hard, but every one
in Kent says "dratted" when they are cross. "It's my turnips," she went
on, "you've hoed up, and my cabbages. My turnips that my boy sowed afore
he went. There, get along with you, do, afore I come at you with my
broom-handle."
She did come at us with her broom-handle as she spoke, and even the
boldest turned and fled. Oswald was even the boldest.
"They looked like weeds right enough," he said.