The Minstrels at Home.
Though it wanted a good hour of the time at which Ralph, the splendid
blood-hound, was in the habit of awaking, stretching himself, and
yawning aloud by way of hinting to his little mistress that it was six
o’clock, and that all good girls who live in the woods and wilds should
be opening their eyes, the honest dog did not go to sleep again. He kept
watching the door and wondering.
“Where could Peggy have gone at such an early hour?” he thought to
himself.
Had she been intending to stay away a long while, she would have dressed
herself and said, “Good-bye, Ralph, and be good till I come back.” She
only just put on her Tammy, and went gliding out and away.
A whole half-hour passed, and then Ralph waxed very uneasy indeed.
He got up and stood for some time behind the door, sniffing and
listening, his noble head a trifle on one side. There were no signs of
Peggy in that direction. Then he stood at one of the windows for fully
five minutes, gazing sideways out at the sea. For his mistress had a
little tent she could easily carry, and often went to the beach to
bathe. But he could not see her now, and his anxiety increased. It would
not have been becoming in so noble a specimen of the race canine to lie
down and cry. Leave such conduct for tiny dogs, he thought.
Yet she was staying so long. What could be the matter? He walked up to
Kammie’s cage with outstretched neck, as if to ask him the question.
Kammie was a good specimen of that strange, weird-looking, and old-world
lizard called the chameleon, who stalks flies and little grubs when you
place him on the grass in the sunshine, or even in your bedroom; who
crawls about with marvellous slowness and deliberation, just one leg at
a time; who changes colour to match his surroundings; who has two large,
circular eyelids, a bright bead of an eye in the very centre of each,
and possesses the power of looking in two different directions at one
and the same time.
But Kammie was still exactly in the same position in which he had gone
to sleep at sunset on the previous evening. No use expecting an answer
from Kammie, so Ralph marched to the back door once again, and examined
the fastenings. He even shook them, but all in vain.
With a deep dog-sigh he lay down now; but presently on his listening
ear, from out the silent depths of the forest, fell a scream so pitiful
and so agonising that Ralph started to his feet, all of a tremble with
excitement.
Yes, yes; it was the voice of his dear little mistress! She must be in
danger, and he not there to protect her!
Once again it rose and died away in terror, like the half-smothered
shriek of one in a nightmare.
The dog hesitated no longer.
With a yelp which was half a bark, and which said plainly enough, “I am
coming,” he dashed his fore-paws against a window. The glass was
shivered into flinders, and Ralph sprang through, escaping with only a
cut or two, which he minded no more than my brave young reader would
mind the scratch of a pin or a thorn.
He ran hither and thither for a few seconds, uncertain.
But, see! the noble beast has found the trail, and with nose to the
earth, his long ears touching it, goes speedily onwards in the direction
Peggy had taken. On and on, and he is soon swallowed up in the woodland
depths. In less than five minutes he is out of the gloom and in the open
glade. He meets Peggy, frightened and fleeing. He dashes past her--no
time at present for even congratulations.
Now woe is me for the foremost of his mistress’s pursuers! Ralph bounds
at him, straight for his chest. Down rolls the Frenchman as if struck by
a war-rocket, and the blood-hound already has him by the throat. It is a
gurgling scream the man emits--a half-stifled cry for help. Then all is
over. No; the fellow is not killed, for brave little Peggy McQueen,
knowing well what would happen, has retraced her steps, and seized Ralph
by the collar. And this splendid hound lets Peggy haul him off, and the
villain slowly and timorously struggles to his feet, his shirt-front
stained with blood.
“_Merci, merci_,” he mutters, meaning “thanks, thanks.” “_Merci_, my
little forest flower. I meant not to harm you. _Non, ma petite!_”
But little Peggy looked quite the sylvan queen now, standing there
erect on the heath, her hand still on Ralph’s collar, her tippet of
fern-green slightly disarranged, the heightened tints upon her cheeks,
the sparkle in her eye, with sun-rays playing hide-and-seek amidst the
wealth of her wavy auburn hair. She seemed for a moment to fancy herself
on the stage acting in the play. One long brown arm was outstretched
towards the bush into which the other Frenchman had fled.
“Go at once,” she cried, in the voice of a tragedienne. “Go! The forest
around us holds no meaner reptile than thou. Go, and thank Heaven that
my faithful hound has not torn you limb from limb.”
She turned as she spoke, and walked slowly back towards the forest,
while the Frenchman slunk away to join his more fortunate companion.
As he turned to look back at the retreating figure of poor Peggy, he
shook his fist. “_Sacré!_ maiden!” he muttered to himself, “you have now
the best of it, but--Jules Furet’s time will come. Jules can afford to
wait.”
Just as she was, without pausing to divest herself of a single green
fern, but joyful now, and with the beautiful hound bounding on by her
side, only stopping now and then to awaken the echoes of the forest with
the melody of his baying, Peggy ran homewards through the dark wood,
never even pausing to breathe until she reached the camp and stood for a
moment to look at the sea.
That dear old sea, how she loved it! The Wandering Minstrels, with their
tents and their vans, were in the habit of hugging the shores of Merrie
England, only sometimes making a detour of a day or two into the
interior to visit some country town, but Peggy McQueen was always happy
when the sight of the ocean greeted her again on the horizon, with its
ships, its boats, and maybe, away in the offing, a steamer, the gray
smoke trailing snake-like far astern of it. And there were times when
the sea appeared quite unexpectedly, perhaps while they were jogging
quietly across some bare but beautiful heath, with no houses in sight,
no life near them except the wild birds, the soaring lark or lonesome
yerlin twittering on a bush of golden furze. On such occasions Peggy
would clap her tiny hands, and say to whoever might happen to be near
her--
“Oh, look, look! The sea, the darling sea!”
And there it would be, sure enough, though only a V-shaped patch of blue
between two distant hills.
There was always music to Peggy in either the sight or the sound of the
ocean, but when it was far away like this, and she could not hear its
voice, nor the solemn sound of its waves breaking on rocks or sand, she
always brought out her mandoline, and played to it, singing low the
while in childish, yet soft, sweet treble. There really was poetry and
romance too in the girl’s soul.
She did not stand long, however, on this bright May morn to look at her
sea. She was still in a state of great agitation; besides, it was
already six o’clock, and Giant Gourmand had opened his tent, and was
standing wonderingly looking at her and Ralph as they approached.
Peggy ran quickly past him, hardly condescending to listen to his
astonished exclamation of “Hoity toity, little wench!”
The giant was generally “awfully nice and good,” but on some
occasions--and this was one of them--absurdly stupid, and she felt she
would have liked to box his very large ears, just then, only she had no
time.
She hurriedly dressed herself, and soon came down the steps, smiling,
for anger had no abiding-place in Peggy’s breast. She sat down on a huge
tree-top and beckoned to her audience to step forward. Gourmand threw
his great bulk at her feet, and the white-faced, sad-eyed boy, Willie
Randolph the dwarf, lay down on the giant’s chest, and crossed his legs
like a tiny mite of a tailor.
The bloodhound also lay down, with his beautiful head upon his paws, his
eyes turned up towards his mistress’s face, love in them, that deep,
undying love that only dogs are capable of.
“Now, all be quiet,” said Peggy. “I have had such a fearful adventure,
and I want to tell you all about it. Ralph there knows all about it
already, but you don’t, Willie, nor you either, Gourmie, and Johnnie and
Daddy aren’t up yet. Well, listen. This is May morning, you know, and I
went away to the woods to wash my face in the dew, so that I shall be
beautiful all the year through.”
“O hark at the child!” cried the gruff-voiced Giant Gourmand. “Just as
if there were any need for her being more lovely than she is at
present.”
“Yes,” piped the dwarf, “hark at her! And look at her at the same time,
Gourmie! Look at the flowers in her hair! But what flower in all the
forest could be more sweet than she? Fairer is Peggy than the anemone,
that waves gently by the treefoot when spring zephyrs are blowing, or
floats coyly on the broad bosoms of yonder pond. Prettier is Peggy than
dog-rose on the hawthorn hedge asleep; more modest than mountain
daisy--the wee, crimson-tipped flower that met the poet in that evil
hour; more tender than the blossoms of the blue-eyed pimpernel,
more----”
But Peggy stamped her little foot as she bade him be silent, but the
glad look in her eye, and her heightened colour showed that young though
she was, the maiden could appreciate a compliment as much as e’en a lady
of the court of a king.
“Silence, small sir, or I shall hie me at once to my caravan, and you
will sigh in vain for the story of my strange adventure in the dewy
woods.”
“And yet, Miss Peggy,” the giant insisted, “hardly can I blame my little
friend if he waxes both eloquent and enthusiastic in your praise on
this lovely May morn.”
“Like Poppies red in the corn’s green is Peggy,” sighed the dwarf.
“Like moonlight on the ocean wave”--from the giant.
“Like music trembling o’er the sea.”
“Or elves that laugh among the ferns.”
“Like Naiads sporting in the fountain’s spray.”
“Or cloudlets sailing in the blue.”
“Like----”
“Really, gentlemen, I must curtail the exuberance of your poetic
fancies, for poor Ralph and I are getting plaguey hungry.”
“Go on, sweet maid. We listen to thy voice as to a houri from paradise.
Pray proceed.”
“You deserve not, sirs, to hear me speak. But--I was in the woods, and
had culled a few fresh wild flowers to--to--well to make a garland for
faithful doggie here. I paused for a moment at the forest’s edge to gaze
upon the sighing sea, when two villains sprang from their lair and bound
me in their iron embrace. Had I been anything save a poor gipsy girl, I
should have fainted dead away, and been carried prisoner to some
loathsome den, soon to be shipped to distant France. They offered me
riches untold if I would but go willingly and join the stage somewhere
abroad. My dancing they said would bring down the house, and all the
world would lie at my feet.
“But I would not hear of their gold, and jewels, and their gallants
gay.--What should I want with gallants gay?”
“While you have me, love,” interrupted the dwarf.
“And me,” sighed Gourmand.
“Had not honest Ralph rushed to my assistance, I should not now be here.
But see, my hand is cut, and my wrist is blue and swollen!
“And that is all my little adventure,” she added.
There was silence for long wondering seconds after the child had
finished. It was broken at last by Willie. He shook a hard, bony fist,
which really did not appear to be much bigger than a mole’s white hand.
“Oh,” he cried, a fire seemed to scintillate in his black, black eyes,
“if _I_ had only been there, Peggy, I would have----”
It may never be known what Willie would have done, for the giant
interrupted his speech in a way that was more comical than polite.
He laughed with a gruff “No, no, no!” and a deep-toned “Ha, ha, ha!”
that stirred the leaves in the bushes near them, and, as he laughed, he
hoisted Willie right up, and on to the sole of one of his monstrous
boots, then extended the leg in the air till the dwarf looked a mere
midget.
“There you are! Now we can see you. He, he, he! Ho, ho, ho,! Now we can
see you, Willie. Stand there and talk down to us what you would have
done.”
Nothing could have put wee Willie out of countenance. He smiled down
upon Peggy, and his smile was an ineffably sweet one, for dwarf though
he might be, his face and form were perfect.
“Peggy, love,” he said, “hand me up your maidenly little mandoline, and
I’ll sing you a song before I come down from my perch.”
Peggy ran laughing away, and soon returned with the instrument, and,
still standing there on the sole of the giant’s boot, he went through
his performance without moving a muscle, and as coolly as if he had been
on the platform before an audience of gaping rustics.
Then, laughing merrily, he sprang through the air and alighted on the
giant’s great head. But Gourmand’s head was a hard one, and wasn’t hurt
one little bit.
* * * * *
Sweet, soft, melodious music was now heard coming from behind the alder
clump. A sad and plaintive air from Gounod’s “Faust.”
“Oh,” cried Peggy, “that’s Father’s flute; he wants to play us in to
breakfast.”
Ah, breakfast is a magic word to denizens of the woods and wilds; and
now the giant, and the dwarf, and Ralph and Peggy, all made a somewhat
unromantic rush for the tent, and were soon seated, laughing and
talking, at the breakfast-table.