crackling in the flames, and Teddy and George began to dream about guns,
but still they didn't wake up. They only moved a little uneasily, and it
was somebody shouting that finally woke them, just as it was a neighbour
banging at the front door that roused Auntie Kate from her dreams.
"Hurry up!" cried the neighbour, "your house is on fire!" and Auntie
Kate was so flustered that she quite forgot where she had put her
clothes, and rushed downstairs in her nightdress. As for Teddy and
George, their room was full of smoke, and they bolted out of it,
coughing and spluttering, and met Doris coming down from the attic,
pushing Jimmy and Jocko in front of her.
The kitchen door had now swung open, and the flames were darting across
the hall; and clouds of smoke were rolling upstairs like a sour and
suffocating fog.
"Never mind," said Doris. "Hold your breath, and run downstairs as quick
as you can," and soon they were all standing together in the street,
while some of the neighbours were running for the fire-engine.
It had stopped raining, but the pavement felt all cold and clammy as
they stood upon it with their bare feet, and it seemed funny to be out
in the dark with nothing on but their nightgowns. Auntie Kate had fled
into an opposite house, because she couldn't bear that so many people
should see her; but Teddy and George were rather enjoying themselves,
though Jimmy and Jocko had begun to cry. Then Doris looked round,
"Where's Christopher Mark?" she cried, and everybody looked at everybody
else, and Doris knew that he must be still asleep in his little
dressing-room upstairs. She rushed into the house, but the leaping
flames had already begun to curl round the banisters; and the lady next
door caught hold of her arm and told her that it would be madness to try
and rescue him. But Doris shook her off and ran across the hall, and
dashed blindly up the burning staircase.
"Oh, St Uncus!" she said, "come and help me; come and help me to save
Christopher Mark."
The sound of the flames was like the roar of an engine, and the smoke
was thicker than the blackest night. But at the top of the stairs she
suddenly heard a whisper, "It's all right, my dear, I'm here."
And then she laughed, and found Christopher Mark fast asleep, hugging
his white rabbit; and in another few seconds she was out in the street
again, with Christopher Mark safe in her arms.
Some of the people cheered her and patted her on the back, and began to
tell her how brave she had been; and she was rather pleased, of course,
especially when she thought of Mummy, who would be sure to hear about it
in hospital. But she wasn't conceited, because she knew that she had
been helped by a little saint with a crooked back, who served God by
keeping an eye on all the staircases in the world.
Never a babe in Port of Spain,
Peabody Buildings, Portland Maine,
Limerick, Lima, Boston, York,
Nottingham, Naples, Cairo, Cork,
Milton of Campsie, Moscow, Mull,
Halifax, Hampstead, Hobart, Hull,
Never a baby climbs a stair
But little St Hook is waiting there.
OLD MOTHER HUBBARD
[Illustration: Mother Hubbard's]
X
OLD MOTHER HUBBARD
Cuthbert was very sorry when he heard about the fire at Doris's house,
and when he next saw her in the street, he almost crossed the road to
speak to her. But she hadn't spoken to him for so long that he had
resolved not to talk to her unless she spoke to him first. Doris and
Jimmy and Jocko were now staying with some people called Brown; and
Doris's mother and the twins and Christopher Mark were staying with
Gwendolen's aunt and Captain Jeremy. It was rather fun staying with the
Browns, but on the whole Doris was rather sad, because it would be two
months, so the builders said, before they could all be at home together
again.
Cuthbert knew about this, because Marian had told him; and that was why
he nearly crossed the road. But he decided not to, and he didn't see
Doris again until the second day of the holidays. That was the Thursday
before Christmas, and it was a grey day and very cold, with a strong
wind blowing out of the north-east, and all the houses looking huddled
and shrunken. It was early in the afternoon, and he had just been to
call for Edward, but Edward had gone out to sit by the railway. He was
collecting the numbers on engines, and had already got thirty-seven.
Cuthbert was collecting too, but he was collecting the dates on pennies,
so he didn't feel inclined to go and sit with Edward; and it was just as
he was wondering what to do that he saw Doris turn the corner. For a
moment he thought that he would pretend not to see her, but she was all
alone, and it suddenly occurred to him that it would be rather a good
idea to take her out to tea at Uncle Joe's.
So he stopped and asked her, and she was very glad, because she had
nothing particular to do; and she told him all about St Uncus and the
fire and what it was like being nearly burnt to death.
"Let's cut across the fields," she said, "past old Mother Hubbard's.
It's jolly cold. I think it's going to snow."
"I hope it is," said Cuthbert. "But it's not so cold as the day on which
we found the ice-men."
But it was quite cold enough, with the horses in the fields standing
dismally under the naked hedges, and the black north-easter crumbling
the ridges of the plough-lands until they looked like pale-coloured
powdered chocolate.
"I shall be jolly glad," said Cuthbert, "when we get to Uncle Joe's,"
and just then they passed Mother Hubbard's--a melancholy house standing
by itself, with all its blinds and curtains drawn.
It was always like that, and behind it were some ruined stables, with a
tin roof that flapped up and down; and a big yellow dog on a long chain
ran out and yelped at them as they passed. This was called Mother
Hubbard's house, because it belonged to a Miss Hubbard who lived there
all by herself, and who had allowed nobody to enter the door since her
father had died fifty years ago.
He had been a proud old general with a bad temper; and some people said
that he had driven Miss Hubbard mad, but other people said that she was
only queer, and hated everybody except her dog. Occasionally she could
be seen peering round one of the blinds, or feeding her dog in the
ruined stables; and once a week she went into the town with a big bag to
do her shopping. The shop-people said that she was very polite, and so
did the postman, who sometimes took her a letter. But she always kept
her own counsel, and nobody could ever make her talk. Why she lived like
that, nobody knew. Some people said that it was because she was so poor,
and because her father had made her promise never to let people know how
poor she was. But other people said that she was really rather rich, and
that she must have had some great trouble. She was very old--nearly
eighty--although her eyes were clear and so were her cheeks; but there
were still a few people who remembered her as a girl galloping on
horseback over the fields.
"Silly old thing," said Doris, as they left her house behind them. "I
shouldn't be surprised if she was a witch."
But Cuthbert said that there weren't any such things, and perhaps she
had killed somebody and had a guilty conscience.
Then they crossed a road, and climbed over a stile, and skirted a great
field pricked with tiny wheat-blades; and then they slipped down a
rather steep bank into a sheltered lane still wet with mud. They had
already forgotten old Mother Hubbard, and the next moment they forgot
her still more; for just then there came clattering down the lane a
young man on horseback, splashed to his eyes. His bowler hat was crammed
down on his head, and he shouted at them as he galloped by. "Which way
have they gone?" he cried, but he never stopped for an answer, and soon
there came some more riders, both men and women. They had evidently come
down the lane to avoid a big ploughed field that lay between high hedges
on the other side of it, for Cuthbert and Doris presently saw them turn
sharply to the right into a grass meadow where it was easier to gallop.
"It's the hunt," said Doris. "Let's run after them," so they turned and
ran down the lane, and saw the riders, one by one, jumping over a gate
on the far side of the meadow. Then they crossed the meadow and
scrambled over the gate just in time to see the last of the horsemen
disappearing over another hedge a couple of hundred yards away.
"We shall never catch them," said Cuthbert, but just then they heard a
horn blowing. "It's the fox," cried Doris. "They've seen the fox," and
half a minute later, from a little rise in the ground, they saw the
whole hunt streaming away from them.
They were so hot now that they had forgotten all about the wind and the
grey clouds gathering over the downs, and their only thought was to be
up among the horses and their jolly, red-cheeked riders. So they ran
down the rise and across another road and over some more fields and past
a wood, until they came at last to a stream, running rather sluggishly
between some pollarded willows. On one of these there was a man
standing, and he waved his hand to them as they came up.
"They're coming back," he said. "Keep along the stream, and I'll lay a
dollar you'll see some fun."
It was now nearly four, and the light was beginning to fade, and they
were ever so far from Uncle Joe's; but they pushed their way through the
tangled grass until they came to a plank across the stream. This led
them out beside a hazel copse, and just as they were wondering which way
to go they heard the horn again, not very far away, and the clear, deep
calling of the hounds. Something cold fell on Cuthbert's cheek.
"Hullo!" he said, "it's beginning to snow." And then a burly man on a
big grey mare came crashing through the undergrowth on the other side of
the stream. He gave a shout, and they jumped aside as his horse rose to
clear the water; but the next moment he was sprawling on the ground in
front of them, with his scarlet coat about his ears.
They heard him swear, but as he picked himself up and helped his horse
out of the stream he began to laugh, and soon he was in the saddle again
and vanishing into the dusk. For a minute or two they waited, but nobody
else came. An old cock pheasant rattled out of the hazel copse. The horn
blew once more, and then all was still. Their breath stood like smoke
upon the air.
Then Doris suddenly stooped and picked up a coin that had been half
trampled into the bank.
"Hullo!" she said, "he's dropped a penny. You'd better add the date of
it to your collection."
Cuthbert took it from her, but the penny was an old one, and the date
was difficult to see. The snow began to fall upon them in heavy flakes.
Cuthbert took out his handkerchief and polished the coin. And then an
odd thing happened, for suddenly, as he polished, the stream and the
hazel copse seemed to fade away; and it was another girl--a grown-up
girl--who had just given him the penny.
"A penny for your thoughts," she said, and Cuthbert knew that she wasn't
speaking to him, but to somebody else; and the thoughts that came into
his head weren't his own, but a grown-up man's. He knew that they were
somebody else's thoughts, because he was thinking his own thoughts too;
and the other person's thoughts were of two kinds--the weak thoughts
that he decided to tell the girl, and the strong thoughts that went into
the penny.
The thoughts that he told the girl were that, when he got to South
America, he was going to spend his spare time studying the birds there.
He was going to write a book about them, and perhaps, when he had
written his book, he would get a job looking after a museum. But his
strong thoughts, that he didn't tell her, were "I love you and want to
marry you; but I mustn't tell you that, because I'm only a carpenter,
and you're a lady, and ever so far above me."
"What's the matter?" said Doris.
Cuthbert gave her the penny.
"It's a queer sort of penny," he said. "Catch hold of it."
Doris took it.
"I don't see anything queer in it," she said. So Cuthbert polished it
once more. This time he polished it harder, so that when he gave it to
Doris again it was quite warm from the polishing; and Doris seemed to be
standing in a strange sort of room, full of old-fashioned furniture and
heavy ornaments. The same girl said, "A penny for your thoughts," and
the same thoughts came to her as had come to Cuthbert. The day drew in.
It was almost dark now, and the snow was glistening on their shoulders.
"I know what's happened," she said. "His real thoughts were so strong
that they all went into the penny."
Cuthbert nodded.
"That's what I thought," he said. "And when you rub the penny they all
come out."
"Did you notice the girl's dress?" asked Doris, "and the way her hair
was done, and the blue china dog on the mantelpiece?"
Cuthbert shook his head.
"Let's have another go," he said, and he rubbed the penny again as hard
as he could.
This time he noticed the room, with its queer high-backed piano, and a
picture of people hunting hanging on the wall, and the blue china dog,
and the girl's dress, and the curious way in which she had done her
hair. It was pulled back from her forehead into a smooth sort of bundle
behind her head; and her dress was all in terraces, like a wedding-cake,
or a theatre turned upside down.
"It must have been a good long time," said Cuthbert, "since she gave him
the penny. Do you think he was the man who fell off the horse?"
"Oh, he couldn't have been," said Doris. "He was much too young; and
besides I'm sure that he was never a carpenter."
She shivered a little.
"We ought to be getting home," she said, but Cuthbert lingered for a
moment, looking at the penny.
"I expect hundreds of people," he said, "have had it in their pockets
and never known what was inside it."
"I daresay," said Doris, "but I know I'm jolly hungry, and we must be
miles away from anywhere."
Nor were they quite sure where anywhere was, but they crossed the plank
again and started for home, with the snow driving past their ears and
piling up in front of their feet. Grey-capped hedges loomed up before
them, rising unexpectedly out of the darkness; and so thick lay the snow
that they were never able to tell whether the next field was a ploughed
one. But they passed the tree--or they thought that they did--on which
the man had been standing; and they crossed the road--or they thought
that they did--that they had crossed after running down the rise. But
the hours went by, and they felt emptier and emptier, and several times
they stumbled into snow-filled ditches; and the snow roared past them
in angry whiteness, and melted upon their necks and trickled down their
backs.
Longingly they thought then of Uncle Joe's and of plates of hot muffins
before the fire, and even more longingly of supper at home, with bowls
of steaming bread and milk. But every field seemed endlesser than the
last, and the snow grew deeper and ever more deep; and the night closed
down upon them like a lid, and their feet felt heavier than ten-pound
weights.
"I believe we're lost," said Cuthbert, but Doris didn't seem to hear,
and so they toiled on with sinking hearts, and then at last, just as
they were almost spent, they suddenly knocked their knees against a
little gate. It was the sort of gate that leads into a garden path; and
though they could see no sign of this, or even of a light, they pushed
it open with a great effort, and went plunging into the snow beyond.
Sometimes people have been frozen close to a house, but in a little
while they saw a great dark shadow; and then to their joy they found
themselves in front of a door, with a gleam of light shining through the
letter-box. For a long time they knocked, but nobody came; and several
times they shouted through the letter-box. But still nobody came, and
then from behind the house they heard the barking of a dog.
Doris gripped Cuthbert's arm.
"It's old Mother Hubbard's," she said. "That's her dog. I know it's
bark."
"Then we'll never get in," said Cuthbert, but just as he said that they
heard footsteps coming down the hall.
"Who's there?" said a voice. It had an odd sort of creak in it, like the
creak of a drawer that is seldom opened. Cuthbert told her; and then,
after a long pause, the door moved a little on its hinges. An eddy of
snow whirled in in front of them, and the door swung back an inch or two
more.
"You'd better come inside," said Miss Hubbard, and they went into the
hall, her first guests for fifty years. She stood looking at them over a
flickering candle. Her eyes were frostier than the wind outside. The air
of the house smelt like a tomb. They could hear the ticking of several
clocks.
"You'd better come into the scullery," she said, "and shake the snow
off," and she led them in silence to the back of the house, where she
left them alone for nearly twenty minutes before she came back to ask
them in to tea.
"It's in the drawing-room," she said, "and I hope you won't talk. I'm
very strong and I have a big dog."
So they followed her into the drawing-room, and then a second, and even
more wonderful, thing happened. Cuthbert stopped short, and so did
Doris, and old Miss Hubbard switched round and stared at them.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "What are you gaping at?"
"Why, it's the penny room!" said Cuthbert; and so it was. For there was
the queer high-backed piano; and there was the picture of people
hunting; and there were the old-fashioned heavy ornaments.
"But where's the dog," said Doris, "the blue china dog that used to
stand on the mantelpiece?"
Old Miss Hubbard had turned quite white.
"The blue china dog?" she asked. "What do you know about that? It was
broken thirty years ago."
"But it's the same room," said Cuthbert, "and there was a girl in it,
and she gave a man a penny for his thoughts."
Old Miss Hubbard began to tremble. She sat down heavily, and her eyes
looked frightened.
"But how do you know?" she asked. "You're only children; and that was
more than fifty years ago."
Cuthbert felt in his pocket and pulled out the penny.
"This is the penny," he said, "that the girl gave him. We've just found
it, quite by accident. And he didn't tell her all of his thoughts. He
only told her some of them. The rest are in here, and we made them come
out."
He began to polish it again with his handkerchief; and then he gave it
to her, and they stood watching her. For about five minutes she sat
quite still; and then she looked up, and her voice had changed a little.
"If I tell you a story," she said, "will you let me keep it?"
Cuthbert looked at Doris, and Doris nodded her head.
"Why, of course," said Cuthbert. "We should be very pleased."
So while they were having tea she told them that long ago a girl had
lived in that house, and that she fell in love with a young man, who was
a carpenter by trade. But he was also a naturalist, and especially fond
of birds, and he wanted to discover all sorts of things about them; and
one day he told the girl that he was just going away to work on a
railway in South America. Then he hesitated, as if he wanted to tell her
something else, and she gave him a penny for his thoughts; and then he
left the house, and was drowned at sea, and the girl never knew whether
he had loved her or not.
"It was very silly of him," said Miss Hubbard, "not to have told her.
But perhaps the girl was sillier still. For she was so sad that she
wasted her whole life; and now it seems that he loved her after all."
Then she went to the window and pulled up the blind. The storm had died
down, and it had stopped snowing. Brighter than eyes at a Christmas
party, the stars in their thousands shone in the sky. Cuthbert and Doris
said that they must be going; and old Miss Hubbard took them to the
front door.
"You must come and see me again," she said. "Come as often as you like;
and perhaps next time you'll bring some of your friends."
"But she never told us," said Cuthbert, "who the girl was."
"Why, you silly," said Doris, "it was Miss Hubbard herself."
Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
To fetch her poor dog a bone,
But this Mother Hubbard in her heart's cupboard
Lives in the dark alone.
Sorrow's grey dust on the chandelier
Never a sun-ray sees,
Never a finger stirs the blind,
Nor the harpsichord's yellow keys.
Dumb is the clock with the china face,
The carpet moulds on the floor;
Oh, won't you come down to her house with me
And open Miss Hubbard's door?
MARIAN'S PARTY
[Illustration: The Little Temple]
XI
MARIAN'S PARTY
For a whole month after Cuthbert and Doris had had tea with old Miss
Hubbard the snow lay white upon the ground, and the ice grew thick over
the ponds. Day after day during the Christmas holidays the children went
skating or tobogganing; and Cuthbert and Doris learnt to waltz on
skates, and even Marian learnt to cut threes. And then the frost broke,
and it rained all through February, and then came March with its
blustering winds. Sometimes it was an east wind, drying the wet fields
or powdering them over with tiny snowflakes; and sometimes it was a west
wind, shouting in the tree-tops, with its arms full of sunshine and
golden clouds; and the week before Marian's birthday, which was on the
27th, was the windiest week of all, chasing people's hats across the
tram-lines, and blowing the chimney-smoke down into their sitting-rooms.
Marian always had a party on her birthday, and this year it was going to
be a specially nice one. Twelve of her friends were coming, and so was
Uncle Joe, and so were Captain Jeremy and Gwendolen's aunt. So was Mr
Parker, who lived with Uncle Joe, and so was Lancelot, the bosun's mate;
and the most wonderful thing of all, so was old Miss Hubbard.
It had been Cuthbert's idea to ask Miss Hubbard, and she had promised to
come on one condition--that she might be allowed to bring the
birthday-cake and the nine candles to stick into it. For Marian was
going to be nine, and it was nearly two years since she had met Mr Jugg;
and she sometimes wondered--it seemed so long ago--if she had ever seen
him at all. Cuthbert used to tease her by pretending that she hadn't,
and that Mr Jugg was only a dream, just as he used to tease her by
telling her that the 27th of March was a silly sort of day on which to
have a birthday. That was because his own birthday came in April, so
that it was always in the holidays; but Uncle Joe, who knew a lot about
birthdays, used to take Marian's side. March was the soldier's month, he
said, full of bugles, and one of the best months to be born in; while,
as for Cuthbert, anyone could tell by listening to him that he had come
in April with all the other cuckoos.
So Marian was naturally rather excited; and then, on the very morning of
her birthday, Cuthbert woke up with a strawberry-coloured tongue and a
chest as red as a cooked lobster. That was just the sort of thing,
Marian thought, that Cuthbert would do, although she knew that she ought
to feel sorry for him; and then the doctor came and said that he had
scarlet fever, and that was the end of Marian's party. For Mummy had to
put on an overall and begin to nurse Cuthbert, and a big sheet was hung
across the bedroom door, and Mummy had to sprinkle it with carbolic
acid, and of course Marian wasn't allowed to go to school. But she could
go for walks, said the doctor, as long as she went by herself and
didn't go near anybody, or travel in trams and things; and so she spent
the morning in taking notes to her friends, telling them that there
wasn't to be a party after all. As for Uncle Joe, Mummy sent him a
message by a carrier who passed near his house. "And the first thing in
the afternoon," she said to Marian, "you must slip across the fields to
old Miss Hubbard's."
Now a little girl whose only brother has just been silly enough to get
scarlet fever is one of the loneliest people in the world; and that was
just how Marian felt. Even her mummy tried to keep away from her,
because she was nursing Cuthbert, who was so infectious; and she had had
strict orders when she arrived at Mother Hubbard's not to go inside her
house.