A DOUBTFUL BLESSING—A FAMILY FAILING—OLD BATTLES—THE
CANAL-CARRIER'S HOME.
When we found that Rupert's leg was not broken, and that it was only a
severe blow on his knee, we were all delighted. But when weeks and
months went by and he was still lame and very pale and always tired,
we began to count for how long past, if the leg had been broken, it
would have been set, and poor Rupert quite well. And when Johnny
Bustard said that legs and arms were often stronger after being broken
than before (if they were properly set, as his father could do them),
we felt that if Gregory would bowl for people's shins he had better
break them at once, and let Mr. Bustard make a good job of them.
The first part of the time Rupert made light of his accident, and
wanted to go back to school, and was very irritable and impatient. But
as the year went on he left off talking about its being all nonsense,
and though he suffered a great deal he never complained. I used quite
to miss his lecturing me, but he did not even squabble with Henrietta
now.
This reminds me of a great fault of mine—I am afraid it was a family
failing, though it is a very mean one—I was jealous. If I was
"particular friends" with any one, I liked to have him all to myself;
when Rupert was "out" with me because of the Weston affair, I was
"particular friends" with Henrietta. I did not exactly give her up
when Rupert and I were all right again, but when she complained one
day (I think _she_ was jealous too!) I said, "I'm particular friends
with you _as a sister_ still; but you know Rupert and I are both
boys."
I did love Rupert very dearly, and I would have given up anything and
everything to serve him and wait upon him now that he was laid up; but
I would rather have had him all to myself, whereas Henrietta was now
his particular friend. It is because I know how meanly I felt about it
that I should like to say how good she was. My Mother was very
delicate, and she had a horror of accidents; but Henrietta stood at
Mr. Bustard's elbow all the time he was examining Rupert's knee, and
after that she always did the fomentations and things. At first Rupert
said she hurt him, and would have Nurse to do it; but Nurse hurt him
so much more, that then he would not let anybody but Henrietta touch
it. And he never called her Monkey now, and I could see how she tried
to please him. One day she came down to breakfast with her hair all
done up in the way that was in fashion then, like a grown-up young
lady, and I think Rupert was pleased, though she looked rather funny
and very red. And so Henrietta nursed him altogether, and used to read
battles to him as he lay on the sofa, and Rupert made plans of the
battles on cardboard, and moved bits of pith out of the elder-tree
about for the troops, and showed Henrietta how if he had had the
moving of them really, and had done it quite differently to the way
the generals did, the other side would have won instead of being
beaten.
And Mother used to say, "That's just the way your poor father used to
go on! As if it wasn't enough to have to run the risk of being killed
or wounded once or twice yourself, without bothering your head about
battles you've nothing to do with."
And when he did the battle in which my father fell, and planted the
battery against which he led his men for the last time, and where he
was struck under the arm, with which he was waving his sword over his
head, Rupert turned whiter than ever, and said, "Good Heavens,
Henrietta! Father _limped_ up to that battery! He led his men for two
hours, after he was wounded in the leg, before he fell—and here I
sit and grumble at a knock from a cricket-ball!"
Just then Mr. Bustard came in, and when he shook Rupert's hand he kept
his fingers on it, and shook his own head; and he said there was "an
abnormal condition of the pulse," in such awful tones, that I was
afraid it was something that Rupert would die of. But Henrietta
understood better, and she would not let Rupert do that battle any
more.
Rupert's friends were very kind to him when he was ill, but the
kindest of all was Thomas Johnson.
Johnson's grandfather was a canal-carrier, and made a good deal of
money, and Johnson's father got the money and went on with the
business. We had a great discussion once in the nursery as to whether
Johnson's father was a gentleman, and Rupert ran down-stairs, and into
the drawing-room, shouting, "Now, Mother! _is_ a carrier a gentleman?"
And Mother, who was lying on the sofa, said, "Of course not. What
silly things you children do ask! Why can't you amuse yourselves in
the nursery? It is very hard you should come and disturb me for such a
nonsensical question."
Rupert was always good to Mother, and he shut the drawing-room door
very gently. Then he came rushing up to the nursery to say that Mother
said "Of course not." But Henrietta said, "What did you ask her?" And
when Rupert told her she said, "Of course Mother thought you meant one
of those men who have carts to carry things, with a hood on the top
and a dog underneath."
Johnson's father and grandfather were not carriers of that kind. They
owned a lot of canal-boats, and one or two big barges, which took all
kinds of things all the way to London.
Mr. Johnson used to say, "In my father's time men of business lived
near their work both in London and the country. That's why my house is
close to the wharf. I am not ashamed of my trade, and the place is
very comfortable, so I shall stick to it. Tom may move into the town
and give the old house to the foreman when I am gone, if he likes to
play the fine gentleman."
Tom would be very foolish if he did. It is the dearest old house one
could wish for. It was built of red brick, but the ivy has covered it
so thickly that it is clipped round the old-fashioned windows like a
hedge. The gardens are simply perfect. In summer you can pick as many
flowers and eat as much fruit as you like, and if that is not the use
and beauty of a garden, I do not know what is.
Johnson's father was very proud of him, and let him have anything he
liked, and in the midsummer holidays Johnson used to bring his
father's trap and take Rupert out for drives, and Mrs. Johnson used
to put meat pies and strawberries in a basket under the seat, so that
it was a kind of picnic, for the old horse had belonged to Mr.
Bustard, and was a capital one for standing still.
It was partly because of the Johnsons being so kind to Rupert that
Johnson Minor and I became chums at school, and partly because the
fight had made us friendly, and I had no Rupert now, and was rather
jealous of his taking completely to Henrietta, and most of all, I
fancy, because Johnson Minor was determined to be friends with me. He
was a very odd fellow. There was nothing he liked so much as wonderful
stories about people, and I never heard such wonderful stories as he
told himself. When we became friends he told me that he had never
meant to bully me when he asked about my father; he really did want to
hear about his battles and so forth.
But the utmost I could tell him about my father was nothing to the
tales he told me about his grandfather, the navy captain.