“There is a back way on to the lawn,” said Mrs. Philidore Stossen to her
daughter, “through a small grass paddock and then through a walled fruit
garden full of gooseberry bushes. I went all over the place last year
when the family were away. There is a door that opens from the fruit
garden into a shrubbery, and once we emerge from there we can mingle with
the guests as if we had come in by the ordinary way. It’s much safer
than going in by the front entrance and running the risk of coming bang
up against the hostess; that would be so awkward when she doesn’t happen
to have invited us.”
“Isn’t it a lot of trouble to take for getting admittance to a garden
party?”
“To a garden party, yes; to _the_ garden party of the season, certainly
not. Every one of any consequence in the county, with the exception of
ourselves, has been asked to meet the Princess, and it would be far more
troublesome to invent explanations as to why we weren’t there than to get
in by a roundabout way. I stopped Mrs. Cuvering in the road yesterday
and talked very pointedly about the Princess. If she didn’t choose to
take the hint and send me an invitation it’s not my fault, is it? Here
we are: we just cut across the grass and through that little gate into
the garden.”
Mrs. Stossen and her daughter, suitably arrayed for a county garden party
function with an infusion of Almanack de Gotha, sailed through the narrow
grass paddock and the ensuing gooseberry garden with the air of state
barges making an unofficial progress along a rural trout stream. There
was a certain amount of furtive haste mingled with the stateliness of
their advance, as though hostile search-lights might be turned on them at
any moment; and, as a matter of fact, they were not unobserved. Matilda
Cuvering, with the alert eyes of thirteen years old and the added
advantage of an exalted position in the branches of a medlar tree, had
enjoyed a good view of the Stossen flanking movement and had foreseen
exactly where it would break down in execution.
“They’ll find the door locked, and they’ll jolly well have to go back the
way they came,” she remarked to herself. “Serves them right for not
coming in by the proper entrance. What a pity Tarquin Superbus isn’t
loose in the paddock. After all, as every one else is enjoying
themselves, I don’t see why Tarquin shouldn’t have an afternoon out.”
Matilda was of an age when thought is action; she slid down from the
branches of the medlar tree, and when she clambered back again Tarquin,
the huge white Yorkshire boar-pig, had exchanged the narrow limits of his
stye for the wider range of the grass paddock. The discomfited Stossen
expedition, returning in recriminatory but otherwise orderly retreat from
the unyielding obstacle of the locked door, came to a sudden halt at the
gate dividing the paddock from the gooseberry garden.
“What a villainous-looking animal,” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen; “it wasn’t
there when we came in.”
“It’s there now, anyhow,” said her daughter. “What on earth are we to
do? I wish we had never come.”
The boar-pig had drawn nearer to the gate for a closer inspection of the
human intruders, and stood champing his jaws and blinking his small red
eyes in a manner that was doubtless intended to be disconcerting, and, as
far as the Stossens were concerned, thoroughly achieved that result.
“Shoo! Hish! Hish! Shoo!” cried the ladies in chorus.
“If they think they’re going to drive him away by reciting lists of the
kings of Israel and Judah they’re laying themselves out for
disappointment,” observed Matilda from her seat in the medlar tree. As
she made the observation aloud Mrs. Stossen became for the first time
aware of her presence. A moment or two earlier she would have been
anything but pleased at the discovery that the garden was not as deserted
as it looked, but now she hailed the fact of the child’s presence on the
scene with absolute relief.
“Little girl, can you find some one to drive away—” she began hopefully.
“_Comment_? _Comprends pas_,” was the response.
“Oh, are you French? _Êtes vous française_?”
“_Pas de tous_. _’Suis anglaise_.”
“Then why not talk English? I want to know if—”
“_Permettez-moi expliquer_. You see, I’m rather under a cloud,” said
Matilda. “I’m staying with my aunt, and I was told I must behave
particularly well to-day, as lots of people were coming for a garden
party, and I was told to imitate Claude, that’s my young cousin, who
never does anything wrong except by accident, and then is always
apologetic about it. It seems they thought I ate too much raspberry
trifle at lunch, and they said Claude never eats too much raspberry
trifle. Well, Claude always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch,
because he’s told to, and I waited till he was asleep, and tied his hands
and started forcible feeding with a whole bucketful of raspberry trifle
that they were keeping for the garden-party. Lots of it went on to his
sailor-suit and some of it on to the bed, but a good deal went down
Claude’s throat, and they can’t say again that he has never been known to
eat too much raspberry trifle. That is why I am not allowed to go to the
party, and as an additional punishment I must speak French all the
afternoon. I’ve had to tell you all this in English, as there were words
like ‘forcible feeding’ that I didn’t know the French for; of course I
could have invented them, but if I had said _nourriture obligatoire_ you
wouldn’t have had the least idea what I was talking about. _Mais
maintenant_, _nous parlons français_.”
“Oh, very well, _trés bien_,” said Mrs. Stossen reluctantly; in moments
of flurry such French as she knew was not under very good control.
“_Là_, _à l’autre côté de la porte_, _est un cochon_—”
“_Un cochon_? _Ah_, _le petit charmant_!” exclaimed Matilda with
enthusiasm.
“_Mais non_, _pas du tout petit_, _et pas du tout charmant_; _un bête
féroce_—”
“_Une bête_,” corrected Matilda; “a pig is masculine as long as you call
it a pig, but if you lose your temper with it and call it a ferocious
beast it becomes one of us at once. French is a dreadfully unsexing
language.”
“For goodness’ sake let us talk English then,” said Mrs. Stossen. “Is
there any way out of this garden except through the paddock where the pig
is?”
“I always go over the wall, by way of the plum tree,” said Matilda.
“Dressed as we are we could hardly do that,” said Mrs. Stossen; it was
difficult to imagine her doing it in any costume.
“Do you think you could go and get some one who would drive the pig
away?” asked Miss Stossen.
“I promised my aunt I would stay here till five o’clock; it’s not four
yet.”
“I am sure, under the circumstances, your aunt would permit—”
“My conscience would not permit,” said Matilda with cold dignity.
“We can’t stay here till five o’clock,” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen with
growing exasperation.
“Shall I recite to you to make the time pass quicker?” asked Matilda
obligingly. “‘Belinda, the little Breadwinner,’ is considered my best
piece, or, perhaps, it ought to be something in French. Henri Quatre’s
address to his soldiers is the only thing I really know in that
language.”
“If you will go and fetch some one to drive that animal away I will give
you something to buy yourself a nice present,” said Mrs. Stossen.
Matilda came several inches lower down the medlar tree.
“That is the most practical suggestion you have made yet for getting out
of the garden,” she remarked cheerfully; “Claude and I are collecting
money for the Children’s Fresh Air Fund, and we are seeing which of us
can collect the biggest sum.”
“I shall be very glad to contribute half a crown, very glad indeed,” said
Mrs. Stossen, digging that coin out of the depths of a receptacle which
formed a detached outwork of her toilet.
“Claude is a long way ahead of me at present,” continued Matilda, taking
no notice of the suggested offering; “you see, he’s only eleven, and has
golden hair, and those are enormous advantages when you’re on the
collecting job. Only the other day a Russian lady gave him ten
shillings. Russians understand the art of giving far better than we do.
I expect Claude will net quite twenty-five shillings this afternoon;
he’ll have the field to himself, and he’ll be able to do the pale,
fragile, not-long-for-this-world business to perfection after his
raspberry trifle experience. Yes, he’ll be _quite_ two pounds ahead of
me by now.”
With much probing and plucking and many regretful murmurs the beleaguered
ladies managed to produce seven-and-sixpence between them.
“I am afraid this is all we’ve got,” said Mrs. Stossen.
Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the earth or to their
figure.
“I could not do violence to my conscience for anything less than ten
shillings,” she announced stiffly.
Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under their breath, in which
the word “beast” was prominent, and probably had no reference to Tarquin.
“I find I _have_ got another half-crown,” said Mrs. Stossen in a shaking
voice; “here you are. Now please fetch some one quickly.”
Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession of the donation, and
proceeded to pick up a handful of over-ripe medlars from the grass at her
feet. Then she climbed over the gate and addressed herself
affectionately to the boar-pig.
“Come, Tarquin, dear old boy; you know you can’t resist medlars when
they’re rotten and squashy.”
Tarquin couldn’t. By dint of throwing the fruit in front of him at
judicious intervals Matilda decoyed him back to his stye, while the
delivered captives hurried across the paddock.
“Well, I never! The little minx!” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen when she was
safely on the high road. “The animal wasn’t savage at all, and as for
the ten shillings, I don’t believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a penny of
it!”
There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judgment. If you examine the
books of the fund you will find the acknowledgment: “Collected by Miss
Matilda Cuvering, 2s. 6d.”