THE VISITORS.
The children were far quicker than usual in carrying out Miss
Thompson's directions and preparing themselves for tea. They were
exceedingly curious to see the visitors, who, contrary to all custom,
seemed to have been shown into the school-room instead of the
drawing-room. And yet they were also a little shy, so that there was
none of the usual crowding at the doorway in trying who should enter
first. The younger ones very contentedly stood aside and allowed Madge
to take the lead without a murmur.
An elderly person, in a large black velvet bonnet, sat with her back to
the window, a very gaily-dressed little girl standing by her side. The
children looked vacantly from one to the other, wondering why they had
come.
"Well, Madge!" exclaimed Miss Thompson, "how much longer are you going
to stand there before you speak to Mrs. Winter, who has come all the
way from Churchbury to bring you a present?"
"Of course it's Mrs. Winter!" cried Madge, who had really been
completely mystified by the presence of the best black velvet bonnet,
so unlike the rather shabby straw hat in which Mrs. Winter had helped
to search for the missing brown bag.
"And this is Mrs. Winter's grandchild," continued Miss Thompson. "Her
name is Ann--"
"Is that Ann?" cried three excited voices; and the children pressed
eagerly forward to have a good look at the little girl who, though
scarcely older than themselves, was frequently left in charge of a real
shop.
Ann was a large solid-looking girl of thirteen, in a red cashmere frock
that was hardly as bright as her plump cheeks. Her hair had evidently
been plaited very tightly overnight, so that it stood out in a frizzled
mass all round her head. The whole effect was very large and bright.
"I have brought you a new pet," said Mrs. Winter addressing Madge;
"something you have seen before, but it looks rather different now."
She opened a large basket that was on the floor beside her, and lifted
out a pretty tortoise-shell cat.
"What a love!" cried Madge. "Is it the kitten we found in the cellar?
But it looks quite big and fat now, only the colour is the same."
"Ah, it's wonderful what care and good feeding will do for any animal!"
observed Mrs. Winter. "You remember how scared the poor creature was
at first? Well, now she is so tame that she will sit on my shoulder.
Just see."
While the cat exhibited two or three little tricks, such as standing on
her hind legs to eat a bit of bread, Mrs. Winter explained that she had
always intended to make a present of the pretty creature to the young
lady who had been so frightened by her in the cellar.
"So, this being early-closing day in the town, I borrowed Mrs. Smith's
pony-trap and drove out, bringing little Ann with me for company," she
said.
"And Mrs. West wishes you to rest and have some tea before you return,"
added Miss Thompson. "So let us all sit down at once, and Pussy shall
have a saucer to herself in the corner of the room."
When tea was finished the children asked permission to show Ann their
gardens, and pick her a bunch of flowers before she returned to the
town. Mrs. Winter preferred sitting indoors in the shade, until her
grandchild was ready to start.
It must be owned that as long as they were in the schoolroom Ann had
proved disappointingly dull. Instead of enlightening them on her
method of keeping shop when she was left in sole charge, she sat
stolidly munching cake, and hardly replying when she was spoken to by
Miss Thompson. In point of fact poor Ann was rendered desperately shy
by being dressed up in all her finest clothes to come on this important
visit. All the way to Beechgrove her grandmother had been warning her
that she must behave beautifully if they were asked to go inside the
house, and the consequence was that the poor girl was almost afraid to
speak, for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. But when once in
the garden her shyness of the young ladies rapidly faded away.
"Do you ever climb trees or sail boats in ditches?" inquired Madge,
when they had at last got on easy conversational terms with their
visitor.
Ann explained that there were only a limited number of trees in
Churchbury, and that the police forbid any interference with them. "Of
course some of the children sail their boats in the gutters after a
storm," she added; "but Mother wouldn't like us to do that. She always
makes us keep ourselves to ourselves."
"But here it's quite different!" broke in Madge. "We do just what we
like, only there is rather a fuss if we tear our clothes very badly.
You might begin on an easy tree."
"Perhaps she would like to see the pigs and cows first?" interposed
Betty, who could not help noticing that their guest showed some natural
reluctance to risk the red cashmere frock among unknown and probably
prickly branches.
Ann had been afraid to say that she did not at all wish to climb trees,
but she eagerly grasped at this chance of a reprieve, and they all set
off towards the pig-sty. Now the young Wests always regarded the
little farmyard over which Barton presided as far the most interesting
part of Beechgrove. If their mother had visitors she invariably took
them to see the greenhouses, a dull sort of entertainment, as it seemed
to the children. Certainly some people would stand for half an hour in
front of a row of pots asking questions and reading the names on wooden
labels. It seemed incredible that they should derive amusement from
this monotonous performance, so the children concluded that they did it
merely because some such absurd custom was demanded by good manners of
all guests. Now, looking at the pigs was quite a different affair.
There was some pleasure to be got out of that, and as Ann stood on
tiptoe to peep over the wooden door of the sty they felt convinced that
they were giving her an unusual treat.
Unfortunately, one has to be accustomed to pigs to appreciate them
properly. When a gigantic old sow was at last lured out of her
sleeping apartment by a shower of acorns, artfully thrown against her
flabby sides, the Wests shrieked with delight because she was followed
by her whole family.
"I never saw them all out before although they are nearly a month old,"
observed Madge, wishing delicately to impress upon the stranger that
she was unusually lucky.
"We never saw them all out before," echoed John. "You see there are
three in the trough, and one all sticky who has just crawled out, that
makes four. Then there are five squeezed up in the mud behind the
sow's back and two under her snout, so you can see the whole eleven at
once. She had thirteen, but two of them were squashed to death the
first day. Barton found them both flat; he says she must have slept on
top of them by mistake. Our sows generally do when they have a lot of
children."
"Do you notice that little black one with a white patch under his right
eye?" inquired Betty, feeling that it was now her turn to do the
honours of the pig-sty. "We call him Spot. He is such a little love,
only horribly greedy. That is why he is in such a mess, he will crawl
in the trough and get covered with milk. Sometimes Barton brings him
outside for us to pat. I wonder if we could possibly get him for
ourselves if we poked the sow off with sticks so that she shouldn't
push through the door when it is opened?"
"Oh, don't try! Please don't open the door!" begged Ann. "I couldn't
bear to have those horrid smelly creatures coming after me. I know I
should scream if they got loose!"
"Don't you like pigs, then?" This inquiry came in tones of
astonishment from all three children.
"Like them? No! They smell that horrid it quite upsets me!" Poor
Ann's disgust was so genuine that she quite forgot to speak as
correctly as she had succeeded in doing up to this point.
It was in vain that the Wests pointed out how baby pigs are quite as
pretty as kittens or puppies when they roll playfully over on their
mother's fat sides. Ann only held her nose and turned away her face;
even when Spot went through the most ridiculous antics, pulling his
little brother Whitey all about the sty by his tail, she expressed no
admiration.
"Well, if you really don't like them I suppose we had better go and see
the cows," said Madge rather impatiently. It is always disappointing,
and gives very unnecessary trouble, when visitors will not share one's
own tastes. Madge had relied on the pigs as an enormous attraction to
a town child, and she was proportionately irritated when the
entertainment failed. "I suppose you don't think cows dirty?" she
asked with elaborate politeness.
No, Ann had no objection to cows. On the contrary, she knew a milkman
who kept some cows on the outskirts of the town, and she sometimes went
there and had a tumbler of new milk for a treat. To be sure she felt a
little timid when Madge pushed a cabbage into her hand, and told her to
feed a large red cow with particularly sharp horns. The children had a
habit of each adopting a cow and feeding it themselves when there were
any cabbages or pea-stalks to spare. Every cow, of course, had a name.
"That red one is quite new. She only came on Saturday," observed John.
"So we haven't yet settled who she is to belong to, and that is why you
can feed her. But we are going to call her Spiteful, because she
shakes her head so crossly and has such very sharp horns."
This was rather a formidable introduction to a cow, and it is not to be
wondered at that Ann soon incurred the scorn of the other children by
dropping her cabbage on the ground and retiring behind the railings.
She afterwards accused Spiteful of having tried to bite her.
"Well, if you don't care for feeding the animals perhaps you would like
to play in the hay-loft?" said Madge with calm patience.
"Oh, yes! That is just what I should like!" cried Ann eagerly. A loft
seemed to present fewer possibilities of danger than any of the other
places of amusement to which they had yet taken her.
There was a little difficulty about climbing a ladder out of the yard.
Ann was awkward, and the red cashmere dress being rather long she
continually tripped over it. But when they had once safely reached the
loft they had a grand game of play among the great heaps of hay and
straw, scattering them untidily all over the neatly-swept floor in a
way that was certain to drive Barton almost wild whenever he discovered
it.
The distant ringing of a large bell at last broke in upon the
children's shouts.
"That is to call us," explained Madge. "They always ring it when we
are out in the fields and forget tea. But it can't be tea now because
we have had it. I expect Mrs. Winter wants to go home."
"Oh, whatever will Grandmama say when she sees my dress!" wailed Ann as
they emerged from the gloom of the loft into full daylight. "It was
new to go to London," she continued sadly; "and Mother said it would do
to wear on Sundays all through the year."
The red cashmere had indeed suffered sadly. It bore greasy traces of
having been in contact with the pig-sty door all down its front, and
was also torn in more than one place. Mrs. Winter was very much
distressed by her grandchild's appearance when they returned to the
house, and scolded her somewhat severely for having behaved in a rough
and unmannerly fashion when out on a visit. Poor Ann burst into tears,
and was only partially comforted when Miss Thompson took her upstairs
and kindly stitched together the worst of the rents so that she might
not look absolutely ragged on her way home.
When the little pony cart drove away from the door Madge returned
rather thoughtfully to the schoolroom with the tortoise-shell cat in
her arms.
"It seems a curious thing," she said, "that people are not always happy
when you mean them to be. I thought Ann would like the same things as
we do, and after all she has gone away almost crying, and hasn't
enjoyed herself a bit."
"Another time," answered Miss Thompson, "when you really wish to give
your guests pleasure, you had better consult their tastes instead of
your own. If you had only considered for a moment, it was not probable
that a town child would be as familiar with animals as you are; and it
was also easy to see that Ann had been dressed in her best clothes for
the afternoon and was afraid of hurting them."
"Perhaps so," said Madge. "But I always think it's rather stupid of
people who don't like the same things as we do, don't you?"