I.

How the Squire came to give in to it, was beyond the ken of mortal man.

Tod turned crusty; called the young ones all the hard names in the

dictionary, and said he should go out for the night. But he did not.

"Just like her!" cried he, with a fling at Mrs. Todhetley. "Always

devising some rubbish or other to gratify the little reptiles!"

The "little reptiles" applied to the school children at North Crabb.

They generally had a treat at Christmas; and this year Mrs. Todhetley

said she would like it to be given by us, at Crabb Cot, if the Squire

did not object to stand the evening's uproar. After vowing for a day

that he wouldn't hear of it, the Squire (to our astonishment) gave in,

and said they might come. It was only the girls: the boys had their

treat later on, when they could go in for out-of-door sports. After the

pater's concession, she and the school-mistress, Miss Timmens, were as

busy planning-out the arrangements as two bees in a honeysuckle field.

The evening fixed upon was the last in the old year--a Thursday. And the

preparations seemed to me to be in full flow from the previous Monday.

Molly made her plum-cakes and loaves on the Wednesday; on the Thursday

after breakfast, her mistress went to the kitchen to help her with the

pork-pies and the tartlets. To judge by the quantity provided, the

school would require nothing more for a week to come.

The Squire went over to Islip on some matter of business, taking Tod

with him. Our children, Hugh and Lena, were spending the day with the

little Letsoms, who would come back with them for the treat; so we had

the house to ourselves. The white deal ironing-board under the kitchen

window was raised on its iron legs; before it stood Mrs. Todhetley and

Molly, busy with the mysteries of pastry-making and patty-pan filling.

I sat on the edge of the board, looking on. The small savoury pies were

done, and in the act of baking, a tray-load at a time; every now and

then Molly darted into the back kitchen, where the oven was, to look

after them. For two days the snow had come down thickly; it was falling

still in great flakes; far and near, the landscape showed white and

bright.

"Johnny, if you will persist in eating the jam, I shall have to send you

away."

"Put the jar on the other side then, good mother."

"Ugh! Much jam Master Johnny would leave for the tarts, let him have his

way," struck in Molly, more crusty than her own pastry, when I declare I

had only dipped the wrong end of the fork in three or four times. The

jam was not hers.

"Mind you don't give the young ones bread-and-scrape, Molly," I

retorted, catching sight of no end of butter-pats through the open door.

At which advice she only threw up her head.

"Who is this, coming up through the snow?" cried the mater.

I turned to the window and made it out to be Mrs. Trewin: a meek little

woman who had seen better days, and tried to get her living as a

dressmaker since the death of her husband. She had not been good for

very much since: never seemed quite to get over the shock. Going out one

morning, as usual, to his duties as an office clerk, he was brought home

dead. Killed by an accident. It was eighteen months ago now, but Mrs.

Trewin wore deep mourning still.

Not standing upon ceremony down in our country, Mrs. Todhetley had her

brought into the kitchen, going on with the tartlets all the same, while

she talked. Mrs. Trewin was making a frock for Lena, and had come up to

say that the trimming ran short. The mater told her she was too busy to

see to it then, and was very sorry she had come through the snow for

such a trifle.

"'Twas not much further, ma'am," was her answer: "I had to go out to the

school to fetch home Nettie. The path is so slippery, through the boys

making slides, that I don't altogether like to trust the child to go to

and fro to school by herself."

"As if Nettie would come to any harm, Mrs. Trewin!" I put in. "If she

went down, it would only be a Christmas gambol."

"Accidents happen so unexpectedly, sir," she answered, a shadow crossing

her sad face. And I was sorry to have said it: it had put her in mind of

her husband.

"You are coming up this evening, you know, Mrs. Trewin," said mother.

"Don't be late."

"It is very good of you to have asked me, ma'am," she answered

gratefully. "I said so to Miss Timmens. I'm sure it will be something

new to have such a treat. Nettie, poor child, will enjoy it too."

Molly came banging in with a tray of pork-pies, just out of the oven.

The mater told Mrs. Trewin to take one, and offered her a glass of beer.

But, instead of eating the pie, she wrapped it in paper to take with her

home, and declined the beer, lest it should give her a headache for the

evening.

So Mrs. Trewin took her departure; and, under cover of it, I helped

myself to another of the pork-pies. Weren't they good! After that the

morning went on again, and the tart-making with it.

The last of the paste was being used up, the last of the jam jars stood

open, and the clock told us that it was getting on for one, when we had

another visitor: Miss Timmens, the schoolmistress. She came in, stamping

the snow from her shoes on the mat, her thin figure clad in an old long

cloth cloak, and the chronic redness in her face turned purple.

"My word! It is a day, ma'am, this is!" she exclaimed.

"And what have you come through it for?" asked Mrs. Todhetley. "About

the forms? Why, I sent word to you by Luke Mackintosh that they would be

fetched at two o'clock."

"He never came, then," said Miss Timmens, irate at Luke's negligence.

"That Mackintosh is not worth his salt. What delicious-looking

tartlets!" exclaimed she, as she sat down. "And what a lot of them!"

"Try one," said the mother. "Johnny, hand them to Miss Timmens, and a

plate."

"That silly Sarah Trewin has gone and tumbled down," cried Miss Timmens,

as she thanked me and took the plate and one of the tartlets. "Went and

slipped upon a slide near the school-house. What a delicious tart!"

"Sarah Trewin!" cried the mater, turning round from the board. "Why, she

was here an hour ago. Has she hurt herself?"

"Just bruised all the one side of her black and blue, from her shoulder

to her ankle," answered Miss Timmens. "Those unruly boys have made

slides all over the place, ma'am; and Sarah Trewin must needs go down

upon one, not looking, I suppose, to her feet. She had only just turned

out of the schoolroom with Nettie."

"Dear, dear! And she is so unable to bear a fall!"

"Of course it might have been worse, for there are no bones broken,"

remarked Miss Timmens. "As to Nettie, the child was nearly frightened

out of her senses; she's sobbing and crying still. Never was such a

timid child as that."

"Will Sarah Trewin be able to come this evening?"

"Not she, ma'am. She'll be as stiff as buckram for days to come. I'd

like to pay out those boys--making their slides on the pathway and

endangering people's lives! Nicol's not half strict enough with them;

and I'm tired of telling him so. Tiresome, rude monkeys! Not that my

girls are a degree better: they'd go down all the slides in the parish,

let 'em have their way. What with them, and what with these fantastical

notions of the new parson, I'm sure my life's a martyrdom."

The mother smiled over her pastry. Miss Timmens and the parson, civilly

polite to one another, were mentally at daggers drawn.

The time I am writing of was before the movement, set in of later years,

for giving the masses the same kind of education as their betters;

but our new parson at Crabb was before his age in these ideas. To

experienced Miss Timmens, and to a great many more clear-sighted people,

the best word that could be given to the movement was "fantastical."

"He came in yesterday afternoon at dusk," she resumed, "when I was

holding my Bible Class. 'And what has been the course of instruction

to-day, Miss Timmens?' asked he, as mild as new milk, all the girls

gaping and staring around him. 'It has been reading, and writing, and

summing, and spelling, and sewing,' said I, giving him the catalogue in

full: 'and now I'm trying to teach them their duty to Heaven and to one

another. And according to my old-fashioned notion, sir,' I summed up,

'if a poor girl acquires these matters thoroughly, she is a deal more

fitted to go through life in the station to which God has called her

(as the catechism says), than she would be if you gave her a course of

fine mincing uppishness, with your poetry and your drawing and your

embroidery.' Oh, he gets his answer from me, ma'am."

"Mr. Bruce may be kind and enlightened, and all that," spoke Mrs.

Todhetley, "but he certainly seems inclined to carry his ideas beyond

reasonable bounds, so far as regards these poor peasant children."

"Reasonable!" repeated Miss Timmens, catching up the word, and rubbing

her sharp nose with excitement: "why, the worst is, that there's no

reason in it. Not a jot. The parson's mind has gone a little bit off

its balance, ma'am; that's my firm conviction. This exalted education

applied to young ladies would be all right and proper: but where can be

the use of it to these poor girls? What good will his accomplishments,

his branches of grand learning do them? His conchology and meteorology,

and all the rest of his ologies? Of what service will it be to them in

future?"

"I'd have got my living nicely, I guess, if I'd been taught them

things," satirically struck in Molly, unable to keep her tongue still

any longer. "A fine cook I should ha' made!--kept all my places a

beautiful length of time; I wouldn't come with such flighty talk to the

Squire, Miss Timmens, if 'twas me."

"The talk's other people's; it isn't mine," fired Miss Timmens, turning

her wrath on Molly. "That is, the notions are. You had better attend to

your baking, Molly."

"So I had," said Molly. "Baking's more in my line than them other

foreign jerks. But well I should have knowed how to do it if my mind

had been cocketed up with the learning that's only fit for lords and

ladies."

"Is not that my argument?" retorted Miss Timmens, flinging the last word

after her as she went out to her oven. "Poor girls were sent into the

world to work, ma'am, not to play at being fine scholars," she added to

Mrs. Todhetley, as she got up to leave. "And, as sure as we are born,

this new dodge of education, if it ever gets a footing, will turn the

country upside down."

"I'm sure I hope not," replied the mother in her mild way. "Take another

tart, Miss Timmens. These are currant and raspberry."