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[Illustration: (signed) Juliana Horatia Ewing.]
LAST WORDS.
A Final Collection of Stories.
BY
JULIANA HORATIA EWING,
AUTHOR OF "JAN OF THE WINDMILL," "SIX TO SIXTEEN," "A GREAT
EMERGENCY," "WE AND THE WORLD," "JACKANAPES, AND OTHER TALES,"
"MELCHIOR'S DREAM, BROTHERS OF PITY, AND OTHER TALES," "LOB
LIE-BY-THE-FIRE, THE BROWNIES, AND OTHER TALES," "MRS.
OVERTHEWAY's REMEMBRANCES," "A FLAT IRON FOR A FARTHING."
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. D. MURPHY._
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1891.
_Copyright, 1891_,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
* * * * *
PREFACE.
"Mary's Meadow" first appeared in the numbers of _Aunt Judy's
Magazine_ from November 1883, to March 1884. It was the last serial
story which Mrs. EWING wrote, and I believe the subject of it arose
from the fact that in 1883, after having spent several years in moving
from place to place, she went to live at Villa Ponente, Taunton, where
she had a settled home with a garden, and was able to revert to the
practical cultivation of flowers, which had been one of the favorite
pursuits of her girlhood.
The Game of the Earthly Paradise was received with great delight by
the readers of the story; one family of children adopted the word
"Mary-meadowing" to describe the work which they did towards
beautifying hedges and bare places; and my sister received many
letters of enquiry about the various plants mentioned in her tale.
These she answered in the _Correspondence_ columns of the Magazine,
and in July 1884, it was suggested that a "Parkinson Society" should
be formed, whose objects were "to search out and cultivate old garden
flowers which have become scarce; to exchange seeds and plants; to
plant waste places with hardy flowers; to circulate books on gardening
amongst the Members;" and further, "to try to prevent the
extermination of rare wild flowers, as well as of garden treasures."
Reports of the Society, with correspondence on the exchanges of plants
and books, and quaint local names of flowers, were given in the
Magazine until it was brought to a close after Mrs. EWING'S death: but
I am glad to say that the Society itself is still in existence, and
any one who wishes to procure a copy of its Rules can do so by sending
a stamped envelope to the Secretary, _Miss Alice Sargant, 7 Belsize
Grove, N. W._ Miss SARGANT was the originator of the scheme, so its
management remains in the best possible hands, and Professor OLIVER,
of Kew Gardens, has consented to become President in Mrs. EWING'S
place. She owed to him her first introduction to _Paradisi in sole
Paradisus terrestris_, as well as many other kind acts of help on
flower subjects.
HORATIA K. F. GATTY.
_May, 1886._
* * * * *
CONTENTS
MARY'S MEADOW,
LETTERS FROM A LITTLE GARDEN,
SNAP-DRAGONS,
DANDELION CLOCKS,
THE BLIND MAN AND THE TALKING DOG,
SO-SO,
THE TRINITY FLOWER,
THE KYRKEGRIM TURNED PREACHER,
LADDERS TO HEAVEN,
SUNFLOWERS AND A RUSHLIGHT,
TINY'S TRICKS AND TOBY'S TRICKS,
THE OWL IN THE IVY BUSH,
* * * * *
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart
Could have recover'd greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
* * * * *
O that I once past changing were,
Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at Heaven, growing and groaning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.
* * * * *
These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
--GEORGE HERBERT
MARY'S MEADOW.
CHAPTER I.
Mother is always trying to make us love our neighbors as ourselves.
She does so despise us for greediness, or grudging, or snatching, or
not sharing what we have got, or taking the best and leaving the rest,
or helping ourselves first, or pushing forward, or praising Number
One, or being Dogs in the Manger, or anything selfish. And we cannot
bear her to despise us!
We despise being selfish, too; but very often we forget. Besides, it
is sometimes rather difficult to love your neighbor as yourself when
you want a thing very much; and Arthur says he believes it is
particularly difficult if it is your next-door-neighbor, and that that
is why Father and the Old Squire quarrelled about the footpath through
Mary's Meadow.
The Old Squire is not really his name, but that is what people call
him. He is very rich. His place comes next to ours, and it is much
bigger, and he has quantities of fields, and Father has only got a
few; but there are two fields beyond Mary's Meadow which belong to
Father, though the Old Squire wanted to buy them. Father would not
sell them, and he says he has a right of way through Mary's Meadow to
go to his fields, but the Old Squire says he has nothing of the kind,
and that is what they quarrelled about.
Arthur says if you quarrel, and are too grown-up to punch each other's
heads, you go to law; and if going to law doesn't make it up, you
appeal. They went to law, I know, for Mother cried about it; and I
suppose it did not make it up, for the Old Squire appealed.
After that he used to ride about all day on his grey horse, with
Saxon, his yellow bull-dog, following him, to see that we did not
trespass on Mary's Meadow. I think he thought that if we children were
there, Saxon would frighten us, for I do not suppose he knew that we
knew him. But Saxon used often to come with the Old Squire's Scotch
Gardener to see our gardener, and when they were looking at the wall
fruit, Saxon used to come snuffing after us.
He is the nicest dog I know. He looks very savage, but he is only very
funny. His lower jaw sticks out, which makes him grin, and some people
think he is gnashing his teeth with rage. We think it looks as if he
were laughing--like Mother Hubbard's dog, when she brought home his
coffin, and he wasn't dead--but it really is only the shape of his
jaw. I loved Saxon the first day I saw him, and he likes me, and
licks my face. But what he likes best of all are Bath Oliver Biscuits.
One day the Scotch Gardener saw me feeding him, and he pulled his red
beard, and said "Ye do weel to mak hay while the sun shines, Saxon, my
man. There's sma' sight o' young leddies and sweet cakes at hame for
ye!" And Saxon grinned, and wagged his tail, and the Scotch Gardener
touched his hat to me, and took him away.
The Old Squire's Weeding Woman is our nursery-maid's aunt. She is not
very old, but she looks so, because she has lost her teeth, and is
bent nearly double. She wears a large hood, and carries a big basket,
which she puts down outside the nursery door when she comes to tea
with Bessy. If it is a fine afternoon, and we are gardening, she lets
us borrow the basket, and then we play at being weeding women in each
other's gardens.
She tells Bessy about the Old Squire. She says--"He do be a real old
skinflint, the Old Zquire a be!" But she thinks it--"zim as if 'twas
having ne'er a wife nor child for to keep the natur in 'un, so his
heart do zim to shrivel, like they walnuts Butler tells us of as a
zets down for desart. The Old Zquire he mostly eats ne'er a one now's
teeth be so bad. But a counts them every night when's desart's done.
And a keeps 'em till the karnels be mowldy, and a keeps 'em till they
be dry, and a keeps 'em till they be dust; and when the karnels is
dust, a cracks aal the lot of 'em when desart's done, zo's no one
mayn't have no good of they walnuts, since they be no good to he."
Arthur can imitate the Weeding Woman exactly, and he can imitate the
Scotch Gardener, too. Chris (that is Christopher, our youngest
brother), is very fond of "The Zquire and the Walnuts." He gets nuts,
or anything, like shells or bits of flower-pots, that will break, and
something to hit with, and when Arthur comes to "_The karnels is
dust_," Chris smashes everything before him, shouting, "_A cracks aal
the lot of 'em_" and then he throws the bits all over the place, with
"_They be no good to he_."
Father laughed very much when he heard Arthur do the Weeding Woman,
and Mother could not help laughing, too; but she did not like it,
because she does not like us to repeat servants' gossip.
The Weeding Woman is a great gossip. She gossips all the time she is
having her tea, and it is generally about the Old Squire. She used to
tell Bessy that his flowers bloomed themselves to death, and the fruit
rotted on the walls, because he would let nothing be picked, and gave
nothing away, except now and then a grand present of fruit to Lady
Catherine, for which the old lady returned no thanks, but only a rude
message to say that his peaches were over-ripe, and he had better have
sent the grapes to the Infirmary. Adela asked--"Why is the Old Squire
so kind to Lady Catherine?" and Father said--"Because we are so fond
of Lords and Ladies in this part of the country." I thought he meant
the lords and ladies in the hedges, for we are very fond of them. But
he didn't. He meant real lords and ladies.
There are splendid lords and ladies in the hedges of Mary's Meadow. I
never can make up my mind when I like them best. In April and May,
when they have smooth plum-colored coats and pale green cowls, and
push up out of last year's dry leaves, or in August and September,
when their hoods have fallen away, and their red berries shine through
the dusty grass and nettles that have been growing up round them all
the summer out of the ditch.
Flowers were one reason for our wanting to go to Mary's Meadow.
Another reason was the nightingale. There was one that used always to
sing there, and Mother had made us a story about it.
We are very fond of fairy books, and one of our greatest favorites is
Bechstein's "As Pretty as Seven." It has very nice pictures, and we
particularly like "The Man in the Moon, and How He Came There;" but
the story doesn't end well, for he came there by gathering sticks on
Sunday, and then scoffing about it, and he has been there ever since.
But Mother made us a new fairy tale about the nightingale in Mary's
Meadow being the naughty woodcutter's only child, who was turned into
a little brown bird that lives on in the woods, and sits on a tree on
summer nights, and sings to its father up in the moon.
But after our Father and the Old Squire went to law, Mother told us we
must be content with hearing the nightingale from a distance. We did
not really know about the lawsuit then, we only understood that the
Old Squire was rather crosser than usual; and we rather resented being
warned not to go into Mary's Meadow, especially as Father kept saying
we had a perfect right so to do. I thought that Mother was probably
afraid of Saxon being set at us, and of course I had no fears about
him. Indeed, I used to wish that it could happen that the Old Squire,
riding after me as full of fury as King Padella in the "Rose and the
Ring," might set Saxon on me, as the lions were let loose to eat the
Princess Rosalba. "Instead of devouring her with their great teeth, it
was with kisses they gobbled her up. They licked her pretty feet, they
nuzzled their noses in her lap," and she put her arms "round their
tawny necks and kissed them." Saxon gobbles us with kisses, and
nuzzles his nose, and we put our arms round his tawny neck. What a
surprise it would be to the Old Squire to see him! And then I wondered
if my feet were as pretty as Rosalba's, and I thought they were, and I
wondered if Saxon would lick them, supposing that by any possibility
it could ever happen that I should be barefoot in Mary's Meadow at
the mercy of the Old Squire and his bull-dog.
One does not, as a rule, begin to go to bed by letting down one's
hair, and taking off one's shoes and stockings. But one night I was
silly enough to do this, just to see if I looked (in the mirror) at
all like the picture of Rosalba in the "Rose and the Ring." I was
trying to see my feet as well as my hair, when I heard Arthur jumping
the three steps in the middle of the passage between his room and
mine. I had only just time to spring into the window seat, and tuck my
feet under me, when he gave a hasty knock, and bounced in with his
telescope in his hand.
"Oh, Mary," he cried, "I want you to see the Old Squire, with a
great-coat over his evening clothes, and a squosh hat, marching up and
down Mary's Meadow."
And he pulled up my blind, and threw open the window, and arranged the
telescope for me.
It was a glorious night. The moon was rising round and large out of
the mist, and dark against its brightness I could see the figure of
the Old Squire pacing the pathway over Mary's Meadow.
Saxon was not there; but on a slender branch of a tree in the hedgerow
sat the nightingale, singing to comfort the poor, lonely old Man in
the Moon.