A little girl sat sewing and crying on a garden seat. She had fair
floating hair, which the breeze blew into her eyes; and between the
cloud of hair, and the mist of tears, she could not see her work very
clearly. She neither tied up her locks, nor dried her eyes, however;
for when one is miserable, one may as well be completely so.
"What is the matter?" said the Doctor, who was a friend of the
Rector's, and came into the garden whenever he pleased.
The Doctor was a tall stout man, with hair as black as crows' feathers
on the top, and gray underneath, and a bushy beard. When young, he had
been slim and handsome, with wonderful eyes, which were wonderful
still; but that was many years past. He had a great love for children,
and this one was a particular friend of his.
"What is the matter?" said he.
"I'm in a row," murmured the young lady through her veil; and the
needle went in damp, and came out with a jerk, which is apt to result
in what ladies called "puckering."
"You are like London in a yellow fog," said the Doctor, throwing
himself on to the grass, "and it is very depressing to my feelings.
What is the row about, and how came you to get into it?"
[Illustration: THE BROWNIES.--_Page 34._]
"We're all in it," was the reply; and apparently the fog was
thickening, for the voice grew less and less distinct--"the boys and
everybody. It's all about forgetting, and not putting away, and
leaving about, and borrowing, and breaking, and that sort of thing.
I've had father's new pocket-handkerchiefs to hem, and I've been out
climbing with the boys, and kept forgetting and forgetting, and mother
says I always forget; and I can't help it. I forget to tidy his
newspapers for him, and I forget to feed Puss, and I forgot these;
besides, they're a great bore, and mother gave them to Nurse to do,
and this one was lost, and we found it this morning tossing about in
the toy-cupboard."
"It looks as if it had been taking violent exercise," said the Doctor.
"But what have the boys to do with it?"
"Why, then there was a regular turn out of the toys," she explained,
"and they're all in a regular mess. You know, we always go on till the
last minute, and then things get crammed in anyhow. Mary and I did
tidy them once or twice; but the boys never put anything away, you
know, so what's the good?"
"What, indeed!" said the Doctor. "And so you have complained of them?"
"Oh! no!" answered she. "We don't get them into rows, unless they are
very provoking; but some of the things were theirs, so everybody was
sent for, and I was sent out to finish this, and they are all tidying.
I don't know when it will be done, for I have all this side to hem:
and the soldier's box is broken, and Noah is lost out of the Noah's
Ark, and so is one of the elephants and a guinea-pig, and so is the
rocking-horse's nose: and nobody knows what has become of
Rutlandshire and the Wash, but they're so small, I don't wonder; only
North America and Europe are gone too."
The Doctor started up in affected horror. "Europe gone, did you say?
Bless me! what will become of us!"
"Don't!" said the young lady, kicking petulantly with her dangling
feet, and trying not to laugh. "You know I mean the puzzles; and if
they were yours, you wouldn't like it."
"I don't half like it as it is," said the Doctor. "I am seriously
alarmed. An earthquake is one thing: you have a good shaking, and
settle down again. But Europe gone--lost--Why, here comes Deordie, I
declare, looking much more cheerful than we do; let us humbly hope
that Europe has been found. At present I feel like Aladdin when his
palace had been transported by the magician; I don't know where I am."
"You're here, Doctor; aren't you?" asked the slow curly-wigged
brother, squatting himself on the grass.
"_Is_ Europe found?" said the Doctor tragically.
"Yes," laughed Deordie. "I found it."
"You will be a great man," said the Doctor. "And--it is only common
charity to ask--how about North America?"
"Found too," said Deordie. "But the Wash is completely lost."
"And my six shirts in it!" said the Doctor. "I sent them last Saturday
as ever was. What a world we live in! Any more news? Poor Tiny here
has been crying her eyes out."
"I'm so sorry, Tiny," said the brother. "But don't bother about it.
It's all square now, and we're going to have a new shelf put up."
"Have you found everything?" asked Tiny.
"Well, not the Wash, you know. And the elephant and the guinea-pig are
gone for good; so the other elephant and the other guinea-pig must
walk together as a pair now. Noah was among the soldiers, and we have
put the cavalry into a night-light box. Europe and North America were
behind the book-case; and, would you believe it? the rocking-horse's
nose has turned up in the nursery oven."
"I can't believe it," said the Doctor. "The rocking-horse's nose
couldn't turn up, it was the purest Grecian, modelled from the Elgin
marbles. Perhaps it was the heat that did it, though. However, you
seem to have got through your troubles very well, Master Deordie. I
wish poor Tiny were at the end of her task."
"So do I," said Deordie ruefully. "But I tell you what I've been
thinking, Doctor. Nurse is always knagging at us, and we're always in
rows of one sort or another, for doing this, and not doing that, and
leaving our things about. But, you know, it's a horrid shame, for
there are plenty of servants, and I don't see why we should be always
bothering to do little things, and--"
"Oh! come to the point, please," said the Doctor; "you do go round the
square so, in telling your stories, Deordie. What have you been
thinking of?"
"Well," said Deordie, who was as good tempered as he was slow, "the
other day Nurse shut me up in the back nursery for borrowing her
scissors and losing them; but I'd got 'Grimm' inside one of my
knickerbockers, so when she locked the door, I sat down to read. And I
read the story of the Shoemaker and the little Elves who came and did
his work for him before he got up; and I thought it would be so jolly
if we had some little Elves to do things instead of us."
"That's what Tommy Trout said," observed the Doctor.
"Who's Tommy Trout?" asked Deordie.
"Don't you know, Deor?" said Tiny. "It's the good boy who pulled the
cat out of the what's-his-name.
'Who pulled her out?
Little Tommy Trout.'
"Is it the same Tommy Trout, Doctor? I never heard anything else about
him except his pulling the cat out; and I can't think how he did
that."
"Let down the bucket for her, of course," said the Doctor. "But listen
to me. If you will get that handkerchief done, and take it to your
mother with a kiss, and not keep me waiting, I'll have you all to tea,
and tell you the story of Tommy Trout."
"This very night?" shouted Deordie.
"This very night."
"Every one of us?" inquired the young gentleman with rapturous
incredulity.
"Every one of you.--Now Tiny, how about that work?"
"It's just done," said Tiny.--"Oh! Deordie, climb up behind, and hold
back my hair, there's a darling, while I fasten off. Oh! Deor, you're
pulling my hair out. Don't."
"I want to make a pig-tail," said Deor.
"You can't," said Tiny, with feminine contempt. "You can't plait.
What's the good of asking boys to do anything? There! it's done at
last. Now go and ask mother if we may go.--Will you let me come,
doctor," she inquired, "if I do as you said?"
"To be sure I will," he answered. "Let me look at you. Your eyes are
swollen with crying. How can you be such a silly little goose?"
"Did you never cry?" asked Tiny.
"When I was your age? Well, perhaps so."
"You've never cried since, surely," said Tiny.
The Doctor absolutely blushed.
"What do you think?" said he.
"Oh, of course not," she answered. "You've nothing to cry about.
You're grown up, and you live all alone in a beautiful house, and you
do as you like, and never get into rows, or have anybody but yourself
to think about; and no nasty pocket-handkerchiefs to hem."
"Very nice; eh, Deordie?" said the Doctor.
"Awfully jolly," said Deordie.
"Nothing else to wish for, eh?"
"_I_ should keep harriers, and not a poodle, if I were a man," said
Deordie; "but I suppose you could, if you wanted to."
"Nothing to cry about, at any rate?"
"I should think not!" said Deordie.--"There's mother, though; let's go
and ask her about the tea;" and off they ran.
The Doctor stretched his six feet of length upon the sward, dropped
his gray head on a little heap of newly-mown grass, and looked up into
the sky.
"Awfully jolly--no nasty pocket-handkerchiefs to hem," said he,
laughing to himself. "Nothing else to wish for; nothing to cry about."
Nevertheless, he lay still, staring at the sky, till the smile died
away, and tears came into his eyes. Fortunately, no one was there to
see.
What could this "awfully jolly" Doctor be thinking of to make him cry?
He was thinking of a grave-stone in the churchyard close by, and of a
story connected with this grave-stone which was known to everybody in
the place who was old enough to remember it. This story has nothing to
do with the present story, so it ought not to be told.
And yet it has to do with the Doctor, and is very short, so it shall
be put in, after all.