green bank where she could sit down.
It was close by some public gardens, and the people were coming and
going. She fell into a doze as she sat with her mother watching her,
and in her half-dream she heard the voices of the passers-by, and what
they said about her, till suddenly a voice which she remembered made
her wake with a start, and as she opened her frightened eyes, there,
with his pack on his back, and his cunning eyes fixed upon her, stood
the pedlar.
"Stop him!" cried Hulda, starting up. "Mother, help me to run after
him!"
"After whom, my child?" asked her mother.
"After the pedlar," said Hulda. "He was here but now, but before I had
time to speak to him, he stepped behind that thorn-bush and
disappeared."
"So that is Hulda," said the pedlar to himself, as he went down the
steep path into the middle of the world. "She looks as if a few days
more would be all she has to live. I will not come here any more till
the spring, and then she will be dead, and I shall have nothing to
fear."
But Hulda did not die. See what a good thing it is to be kind. The
soft, warm air of the south revived her by degrees--so much, that by
the end of the year she could walk in the public garden and delight in
the warm sunshine; in another month she could ride with her father to
see all the strange old castles in that neighborhood, and by the end
of February she was as well as ever she had been in her life; and all
this came from her desire to do good to the fairy by going to the
south.
"And now," thought the pedlar, "there is no doubt that the daisies are
growing on Hulda's grave by this time, so I will go up again to the
outside of the world, and sell my wares to the people who resort to
those public places."
So one day when in that warm climate the spring flowers were already
blooming on the hillsides, up he came close to the ruined walls of a
castle, and set his pack down beside him to rest after the fatigues
of his journey.
"This is a cool, shady place," he said, looking round, "and these dark
yew-trees conceal it very well from the road. I shall come here always
in the middle of the day, when the sun is too hot, and count over my
gains. How hard my mistress, the Lizard, makes me work! Who would have
thought she would have wished to deck her green head with opals down
there, where there are only a tribe of brown gnomes to see her? But I
have not given her that one out of the ring which I stole, nor three
others that I conjured out of the crozier of the priest as I knelt at
the altar, and they thought I was rehearsing a prayer to the Virgin."
After resting some time, the pedlar took up his pack and went boldly
on to the gardens, never doubting but that Hulda was dead; but it so
happened that at that moment Hulda and her mother sat at work in a
shady part of the garden under some elder-trees.
"What is the matter, my sweet bird?" said Hulda, for the bird pecked
her wrist, and fluttered its wings, and opened its beak as if it were
very much frightened.
"Let us go, mother, and look about us," said Hulda.
So they both got up and wandered all over the gardens; but the pedlar,
in the meantime, had walked on toward the town, and they saw nothing
of him.
"Sing to me, my sweet bird," said Hulda that night as she lay down to
sleep. "Tell me _why_ you pecked my wrist."
Then the bird sang to her:
"Who came from the ruin, the ivy-clad ruin,
With old shaking arches, all moss overgrown,
Where the flitter-bat hideth,
The limber snake glideth,
And chill water drips from the slimy green stone?"
"Who did?" asked Hulda. "Not the pedlar, surely? Tell me, my pretty
bird." But the bird only chirped a little and fluttered its golden
wings, so Hulda ceased to ask it, and presently fell asleep, but the
bird woke her by pecking her wrist very early, almost before sunrise,
and sang:
"Who dips a brown hand in the chill shaded water
The water that drips from a slimy green stone?
Who flings his red cap
At the owlets that flap
Their white wings in his face as he sits there alone?"
Hulda, upon hearing this, arose in great haste and dressed herself;
then she went to her father and mother, and entreated that they would
come with her to the old ruin. It was now broad day, so they all three
set out together. It was a very hot morning, the dust lay thick upon
the road, and there was not air enough to stir the thick leaves of the
trees which hung overhead.
They had not gone far before they found themselves in a crowd of
people, all going toward the castle ruin, for there, they told Hulda,
the pedlar, the famous pedlar from the north, who sold such fine
wares, was going to perform some feats of jugglery of most surprising
cleverness.
"Child," whispered Hulda's mother, "nothing could be more fortunate
for us; let us mingle with the crowd and get close to the pedler."
Hulda assented to her mother's wish, but the heat and dust, together
with her own intense desire to rescue the lost wand, made her tremble
so that she had great difficulty in walking. They went among gypsies,
fruit-women, peasant girls, children, travelling musicians, common
soldiers, and laborers; the heat increased, and the dust and the
noise, and at last Hulda and her parents were borne forward into the
old ruin among a rush of people running and huzzaing, and heard the
pedlar shout to them:
"Keep back, good people; leave a space before me; leave a large space
between me and you."
So they pressed back again, jostling and crowding each other, and left
an open space before him from which he looked at them with his cunning
black eyes, and with one hand dabbling in the cold water of the spring.
The place was open to the sky, and the broken arches and walls were
covered with thick ivy and wall flowers. The pedlar sat on a large
gray stone, with his red cap on and his brown fingers adorned with
splendid rings, and he spread them out and waved his hands to the
people with ostentatious ceremony.
"Now, good people," he said, without rising from his seat, "you are
about to see the finest, rarest, and most wonderful exhibition of the
conjuring art ever known!"
"Stop!" cried a woman's voice from the crowd, and a young girl rushed
wildly forward from the people, who had been trying to hold her back.
"I impeach you before all these witnesses!" she cried, seizing him by
the hand. "See justice done, good people. I impeach you, pedlar.
Where's the ring--my mother's ring--which you stole on Midsummer's day
in the castle?"
"Good people," said the pedlar, pulling his red cap over his face, and
speaking in a mild, fawning voice, "I hope you'll protect me. I hope
you won't see me insulted."
"My ring, my ring!" cried Hulda; "he wore it on his finger but now!"
"Show your hand like a man!" said the people. "If the lady says
falsely, can't you face her and tell her so? Never hold it down so
cowardly!"
The pedlar had tucked his feet under him, and when the people cried
out to him to let the rings on his hand be seen, he had already
burrowed with them up to his knees in the earth.
"Oh, he will go down into the earth!" cried Hulda. "But I will not let
go! Pedlar, pedlar, it is useless! If I follow you before the Lizard,
your mistress, I will not let go!"
The pedlar turned his terrified, cowardly eyes upon Hulda, and sank
lower and lower. The people were too frightened to move.
"Stop, child," cried her mother. "Oh, he will go down and drag thee
with him."
But Hulda would not and could not let go. The pedlar had now sunk up
to his waist. Her mother wrung her hands, and in an instant the earth
closed upon them both, and, after falling in the dark down a steep
abyss, they found themselves, not at all the worse, standing in a
dimly lighted cave with a large table in it piled with mouldy books.
Behind the table was a smooth and perfectly round hole in the wall
about the size of a cartwheel.
Hulda looked that way, and saw how intensely dark it was through this
hole, and she was wondering where it led to when an enormous green
Lizard put its head through into the cave, and gazed at her with its
great brown eyes.
"What is thy demand, fine child of the daylight?" said the Lizard.
"Princess," replied Hulda, "I demand that this thy servant should give
up to me a ring which he stole in my father's castle when I was a
child."
The pedlar no sooner heard Hulda boldly demand her rights than he fell
on his knees and began to cry for mercy.
"Mercy rests with this maiden," said the Lizard. At the same time she
darted out her tongue, which was several yards in length and like a
scarlet thread, and with it stripped the ring from the gnome's finger
and gave it to Hulda.
"Speak, maiden, what reparation do you demand of this culprit, and
what shall be his punishment?"
"Great princess," replied Hulda, "let him restore to me a golden wand
which I sold to him, for it belongs to a fairy whom he has long
persecuted."
"Here it is, here it is!" cried the cowardly gnome, putting his hand
into his bosom and pulling it out, shaking all the time, and crying
out most piteously, "Oh, don't let me be banished from the sunshine!"
"After this double crime no mercy can be shown you," said the Lizard,
and she twined her scarlet tongue round him, and drew him through the
hole to herself. At the same instant it closed, and a crack came in
the roof of the cave, through which the sunshine stole, and as Hulda
looked up in flew a brown moth and settled on the magic bracelet. She
touched the moth with the wand, and instantly it stood upon her
wrist--a beautiful and joyous fairy. She took her wand from Hulda's
hand, and stood for a moment looking gratefully in her face without
speaking. Then she said to the wand:
"Art thou my own again, and wilt thou serve me?"
"Try me," said the wand.
So she struck the wall with it, and said, "Cleave, wall!" and a hole
came in the wall large enough for Hulda to creep through, and she
found herself at the foot of a staircase hewn in the rock, and, after
walking up it for three hours, she came out in the old ruined castle,
and was astonished to see that the sun had set. The moment she
appeared her father and mother, who had given her over for lost,
clasped her in their arms and wept for joy as they embraced her.
"My child," said her father, "how happy thou lookest, not as if thou
hadst been down in the dark earth!"
Hulda kissed her parents and smiled upon them; then she turned to look
for the fairy, but she was gone. So they all three walked home in the
twilight, and the next day Hulda set out again with her parents to
return to the old castle in Norway. As for the fairy, she was happy
from that day in the possession of her wand; but the little golden
bird folded its wings and never sang any songs again.
SNAP-DRAGONS--A TALE OF CHRISTMAS EVE
By Juliana Horatia Ewing
Once upon a time there lived a certain family of the name of Skratdj.
(It has a Russian or Polish look, and yet they most certainly lived in
England.) They were remarkable for the following peculiarity: They
seldom seriously quarrelled, but they never agreed about anything. It
is hard to say whether it were more painful for their friends to hear
them constantly contradicting each other, or gratifying to discover
that it "meant nothing," and was "only their way."
It began with the father and mother. They were a worthy couple, and
really attached to each other. They had a habit of contradicting each
other's statements, and opposing each other's opinions, which, though
mutually understood and allowed for in private, was most trying to the
bystanders in public. If one related an anecdote, the other would
break in with half a dozen corrections of trivial details of no
interest or importance to any one, the speakers included. For
instance: Suppose the two dining in a strange house, and Mrs. Skratdj
seated by the host, and contributing to the small talk of the
dinner-table. Thus:
"Oh, yes. Very changeable weather indeed. It looked quite promising
yesterday morning in the town, but it began to rain at noon."
"A quarter-past eleven, my dear," Mr. Skratdj's voice would be heard
to say from several chairs down, in the corrective tones of a husband
and father; "and really, my dear, so far from being a promising
morning, I must say it looked about as threatening as it well could.
Your memory is not always accurate in small matters, my love."
But Mrs. Skratdj had not been a wife and a mother for fifteen years,
to be snuffed out at one snap of the marital snuffers. As Mr. Skratdj
leaned forward in his chair, she leaned forward in hers, and defended
herself across the intervening couples.
"Why, my dear Mr. Skratdj, you said yourself the weather had not been
so promising for a week."
"What I said, my dear, pardon me, was that the barometer was higher
than it had been for a week. But, as you might have observed if these
details were in your line, my love, which they are not, the rise was
extraordinarily rapid, and there is no surer sign of unsettled
weather. But Mrs. Skratdj is apt to forget these unimportant trifles,"
he added, with a comprehensive smile round the dinner-table; "her
thoughts are very properly absorbed by the more important domestic
questions of the nursery."
"Now I think that's rather unfair on Mr. Skratdj's part," Mrs. Skratdj
would chirp, with a smile quite as affable and as general as her
husband's. "I'm sure he's _quite_ as forgetful and inaccurate as _I_
am. And I don't think _my_ memory is at _all_ a bad one."
"You forgot the dinner-hour when we were going out to dine last week,
nevertheless," said Mr. Skratdj.
"And you couldn't help me when I asked you," was the sprightly retort.
"And I'm sure it's not like you to forget anything about _dinner_, my
dear."
"The letter was addressed to you," said Mr. Skratdj.
"I sent it to you by Jemima," said Mrs. Skratdj.
"I didn't read it," said Mr. Skratdj.
"Well, you burnt it," said Mrs. Skratdj; "and, as I always say,
there's nothing more foolish than burning a letter of invitation
before the day, for one is certain to forget."
"I've no doubt you always do say it," Mr. Skratdj remarked, with a
smile, "but I certainly never remember to have heard the observation
from your lips, my love."
"Whose memory's in fault there?" asked Mrs. Skratdj, triumphantly; and
as at this point the ladies rose, Mrs. Skratdj had the last word.
Indeed, as may be gathered from this conversation, Mrs. Skratdj was
quite able to defend herself. When she was yet a bride, and young and
timid, she used to collapse when Mr. Skratdj contradicted her
statements, and set her stories straight in public. Then she hardly
ever opened her lips without disappearing under the domestic
extinguisher. But in the course of fifteen years she had learned that
Mr. Skratdj's bark was a great deal worse than his bite. (If, indeed,
he had a bite at all.) Thus snubs that made other people's ears
tingle, had no effect whatever on the lady to whom they were
addressed, for she knew exactly what they were worth, and had by this
time become fairly adept at snapping in return. In the days when she
succumbed she was occasionally unhappy, but now she and her husband
understood each other, and, having agreed to differ, they,
unfortunately, agreed also to differ in public.
Indeed, it was the bystanders who had the worst of it on these
occasions. To the worthy couple themselves the habit had become second
nature, and in no way affected the friendly tenor of their domestic
relations. They would interfere with each other's conversation,
contradicting assertions, and disputing conclusions for a whole
evening; and then, when all the world and his wife thought that these
ceaseless sparks of bickering must blaze up into a flaming quarrel as
soon as they were alone, they would bowl amicably home in a cab,
criticizing the friends who were commenting upon them, and as little
agreed about the events of the evening as about the details of any
other events whatever.
Yes; the bystanders certainly had the worst of it. Those who were near
wished themselves anywhere else, especially when appealed to. Those
who were at a distance did not mind so much. A domestic squabble at a
certain distance is interesting, like an engagement viewed from a
point beyond the range of guns. In such a position one may some day be
placed oneself! Moreover, it gives a touch of excitement to a dull
evening to be able to say _sotto voce_ to one's neighbor, "Do listen!
The Skratdjs are at it again!" Their unmarried friends thought a
terrible abyss of tyranny and aggravation must lie beneath it all, and
blessed their stars that they were still single and able to tell a
tale their own way. The married ones had more idea of how it really
was, and wished in the name of common sense and good taste that
Skratdj and his wife would not make fools of themselves.
So it went on, however; and so, I suppose, it goes on still, for not
many bad habits are cured in middle age.
On certain questions of comparative speaking their views were never
identical. Such as the temperature being hot or cold, things being
light or dark, the apple-tarts being sweet or sour. So one day Mr.
Skratdj came into the room, rubbing his hands, and planting himself at
the fire with "Bitterly cold it is to-day, to be sure."
"Why, my dear William," said Mrs. Skratdj, "I'm sure you must have got
a cold; I feel a fire quite oppressive myself."
"You were wishing you'd a sealskin jacket yesterday, when it wasn't
half as cold as it is to-day," said Mr. Skratdj.
"My dear William! Why, the children were shivering the whole day, and
the wind was in the north."
"Due east, Mrs. Skratdj."
"I know by the smoke," said Mrs. Skratdj, softly, but decidedly.
"I fancy I can tell an east wind when I feel it," said Mr. Skratdj,
jocosely, to the company.
"I told Jemima to look at the weathercock," murmured Mrs. Skratdj.
"I don't care a fig for Jemima," said her husband.
On another occasion Mrs. Skratdj and a lady friend were conversing.
* * * "We met him at the Smith's--a gentlemanlike, agreeable man,
about forty," said Mrs. Skratdj, in reference to some matter
interesting to both ladies.
"Not a day over thirty-five," said Mr. Skratdj, from behind his
newspaper.
"Why, my dear William, his hair's gray," said Mrs. Skratdj.
"Plenty of men are gray at thirty," said Mr. Skratdj. "I knew a man
who was gray at twenty-five."
"Well, forty or thirty-five, it doesn't much matter," said Mrs.
Skratdj, about to resume her narration.
"Five years matters a good deal to most people at thirty-five," said
Mr. Skratdj, as he walked towards the door. "They would make a
remarkable difference to me, I know;" and with a jocular air Mr.
Skratdj departed, and Mrs. Skratdj had the rest of the anecdote her
own way.
* * * * *
The Spirit of Contradiction finds a place in most nurseries, though to
a very varying degree in different ones. Children snap and snarl by
nature, like young puppies; and most of us can remember taking part in
some such spirited dialogues as the following:
"I will."
"You can't."
"You shall."
"I won't."
"You daren't."
"I dare."
"I'll tell mamma."
"I don't care if you do."
It is the part of wise parents to repress these squibs and crackers of
juvenile contention, and to enforce that slowly learned lesson, that
in this world one must often "pass over" and "put up with" things in
other people, being oneself by no means perfect. Also that it is a
kindness, and almost a duty, to let people think and say and do things
in their own way occasionally.
But even if Mr. and Mrs. Skratdj had ever thought of teaching all this
to their children, it must be confessed that the lesson would not have
come with a good grace from either of them, since they snapped and
snarled between themselves as much or more than their children in the
nursery.
The two elders were the leaders in the nursery squabbles. Between
these, a boy and a girl, a ceaseless war of words was waged from
morning to night. And as neither of them lacked ready wit, and both
were in constant practice, the art of snapping was cultivated by them
to the highest pitch.
It began at breakfast, if not sooner.
"You've taken my chair."
"It's not your chair."
"You know it's the one I like, and it was in my place."
"How do you know it was in your place?"
"Never mind. I do know."
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do."
"Suppose I say it was in my place."
"You can't, for it wasn't."
"I can, if I like."
"Well, was it?"
"I sha'n't tell you."
"Ah! that shows it wasn't."
"No, it doesn't."
"Yes, it does." Etc., etc., etc.
The direction of their daily walks was a fruitful subject of
difference of opinion.
"Let's go on the Common to-day, nurse?"
"Oh, don't let's go there; we're always going on the Common."
"I'm sure we're not. We've not been there for ever so long."
"Oh, what a story! We were there on Wednesday. Let's go down Gipsey
Lane. We never go down Gipsey Lane."
"Why, we're always going down Gipsey Lane. And there's nothing to see
there."
"I don't care. I won't go on the Common, and I shall go and get papa to
say we're to go down Gipsey Lane. I can run faster than you."
"That's very sneaking; but I don't care."
"Papa! papa! Polly's called me a sneak."
"No, I didn't, papa."
"You did."
"No, I didn't. I only said it was sneaking of you to say you'd run
faster than me, and get papa to say we were to go down Gipsey Lane."
"Then you did call him sneaking," said Mr. Skratdj. "And you're a very
naughty, ill-mannered little girl. You're getting very troublesome,
Polly, and I shall have to send you to school, where you'll be kept in
order. Go where your brother wishes at once."
For Polly and her brother had reached an age when it was convenient,
if possible, to throw the blame of all nursery differences on Polly.
In families where domestic discipline is rather fractious than firm,
there comes a stage when the girls almost invariably go to the wall,
because they will stand snubbing, and the boys will not. Domestic
authority, like some other powers, is apt to be magnified on the
weaker class.
But Mr. Skratdj would not always listen even to Harry.
"If you don't give it me back directly, I'll tell about your eating
the two magnum-bonums in the kitchen garden on Sunday," said Master
Harry, on one occasion.
"'Telltale tit!
Your tongue shall be slit,
And every dog in the town shall have a little bit,'"
quoted his sister.
"Ah! You've called me a telltale. Now I'll go and tell papa. You got
into a fine scrape for calling me names the other day."
"Go, then! I don't care."
"You wouldn't like me to go, I know."
"You daren't. That's what it is."
"I dare."
"Then why don't you?"
"Oh, I am going; but you'll see what will be the end of it."
Polly, however, had her own reasons for remaining stolid, and Harry
started. But when he reached the landing he paused. Mr. Skratdj had
especially announced that morning that he did not wish to be
disturbed, and though he was a favorite, Harry had no desire to invade
the dining-room at this crisis. So he returned to the nursery, and
said, with a magnanimous air, "I don't want to get you into a scrape,
Polly. If you'll beg my pardon I won't go."
"I'm sure I sha'n't," said Polly, who was equally well informed as to
the position of affairs at headquarters. "Go, if you dare."
"I won't if you want me not," said Harry, discreetly waiving the
question of apologies.
"But I'd rather you went," said the obdurate Polly. "You're always
telling tales. Go and tell now, if you're not afraid."
So Harry went. But at the bottom of the stairs he lingered again, and
was meditating how to return with most credit to his dignity, when
Polly's face appeared through the banisters, and Polly's sharp tongue
goaded him on.
"Ah! I see you. You're stopping. You daren't go."
"I dare," said Harry; and at last he went.
As he turned the handle of the door, Mr. Skratdj turned round.
"Please, papa--" Harry began.
"Get away with you!" cried Mr. Skratdj. "Didn't I tell you I was not
to be disturbed this morning? What an extraor--"
But Harry had shut the door, and withdrawn precipitately.
Once outside, he returned to the nursery with dignified steps, and an
air of apparent satisfaction, saying:
"You're to give me the bricks, please."
"Who says so?"
"Why, who should say so? Where have I been, pray?"
"I don't know, and I don't care."
"I've been to papa. There!"
"Did he say I was to give up the bricks?"
"I've told you."
"No, you've not."
"I sha'n't tell you any more."
"Then I'll go to papa and ask."
"Go by all means."
"I won't if you'll tell me truly."