THE SURPRISE THAT FELL FLAT
It was the day that Auntie May and Tom and Beatrice were to come home,
and the children were very anxious to welcome them in some special
way. Welcoming always seems with children to mean doing something they
like, and that the grown-up people are not likely to like, and this is
exactly what happened.
They told Mrs. Gilmour a little about it, but not all, and asked if
she did not think dressing-up was the best way of welcoming father and
mother. It is extraordinary how naughty old ladies can be, far worse
than children, when they give their minds to it.
Mrs. Gilmour suggested that they should all take off their skirts to
begin with, and appear in their blue serge knickerbockers, and then she
would see what could be done. Rosamond dirtied her face and put on a
large tattered hat with no regular brim, and let one stocking fall down
to show her knee, cut on purpose, and she said she was a backwoodsman
out of Jules Verne. Kitty had already rather short hair, and she cut it
shorter herself, till in five minutes she looked exactly like a badly
barbered boy. Mrs. Gilmour let her. Did I not say she was a wicked
old lady? As for Amerye, she disappeared, and I heard that she went
into the housemaid's pantry and got her box of black lead and blacked
herself all over with it, imitating the sweep in the _Water-Babies_ who
went to sleep in little Ellie's room. She then went and lay down in
Beatrice's pretty bed. Mrs. Gilmour never missed her; she was so busy
knitting me a pair of socks--one could hardly call it a pair, Rosamond
said, the only thing to do was to call it a quartette. I wished to
oblige and share in the nice surprise they meant to give Beatrice, so
I kept them on, all except one; for I had to have a hind paw left free
ready to scratch myself with, and took up my place on the hall mat
about the time Auntie May was due. I always wait for her.
At last we heard the noise of wheels. Rosamond got behind the door, and
Mrs. Gilmour stood with her hand on Kitty's shoulder, who looked truly
hideous, and waited, all on the broad grin.
When the trap drove up there was only Auntie May in it, the others had
stopped at the east gate to speak to one of the foresters. So Auntie
May had the surprise all to herself, and she seemed more surprised than
pleased. She got out and cried out:
'They've sent me on to order tea. We are all frozen. How are you, Mrs.
Gilmour? Who is that boy you have got with you?'
'It is a little boy I borrowed to keep me company while you were all
away,' said Mrs. Gilmour, running her hands through Kitty's hair.
'What a queer-looking child! Looks as if he had water on the brain!'
Auntie May said in a low voice, but Kitty heard.
Then Auntie May took _me_ up in her arms and mumbled me, and kissed me.
'Sweetums! Didums! Who's been making a fool of you with your red socks?
Poor lamb, get out of them at once. I see they worry you. Mercy, who
is this?' as Rosamond bounced out at her. 'Rosamond, what an object!
Have you been gardening? You _are_ filthy. Don't come near me until you
are cleaned up, please. You seem all to have quite gone mad. But never
mind, so long as we get a cup of hot tea. Here's Beatrice at last.
Beatrice, I have ordered tea. I simply couldn't wait!'
Those idiotic children rushed off to the schoolroom in a body and
howled. Kitty had cut off her hair so that her own aunt did not know
her, and the chances were that her own mother wouldn't either, she
thought. In fact, the surprise had been a horrid failure. I could have
told her that her own mother would know her fast enough if she _chose_
to, and would, moreover, punish her well for having cut off her own fur
like that without waiting for the barber, who comes once a month to
barber them all properly.
Sure enough, there was an awful to-do, especially when they found
Amerye playing sweep in her mother's nice clean bed with pink hangings.
Kitty and Amerye were sent to bed without any supper except a bit
of dry bread, and Rosamond, not having done anything particular to
herself--trust her not to make herself ugly!--was scolded for having
allowed Kitty to cut her own hair all crooked across the forehead.
Only Mrs. Gilmour, the grown-up lady who had helped it all on, got off
without a scolding, as they always do.
I was scolded for one or two little things I had done while Auntie May
was away, and especially for the packet of tapestry nails or pins,
whatever you do call the horrid things that I shall never see again
without a shudder and feeling myself all over.
'I tell you what, May,' said Beatrice. 'I am resigned to Loki's passing
his nose over everything, reading postcards and docketing bills and
superintending the post generally, but when it comes to opening my
parcels for me, I do think it is too much. There were, I believe, a
thousand nails in that packet he demolished. I can't fag to count them
over now, but if their number is incomplete, I should say that the
balance was in your cat's stomach. _He_ knows, probably.'
I did _not_ know, they were such trifling, two-penny-halfpenny things
that one of them might easily have stuck to my tongue in turning them
over. The dread saddened my last days at Crook Hall.
On the whole it had been a very pleasant time. They had made me quite
one of the family, allowing me to share their meals, their pains, their
scoldings, and their games. No one could beat me at romps, but in the
six-to-seven, when they played card games, I was a little out of it.
There was the 'Kings of England' that Auntie May and Beatrice always
quarrelled over, and the 'Flower Loto' in which Auntie May, not being a
country person, seemed such a muff, and the 'Towns' game where Rosamond
was such a dab because of her good memory, and the 'Pictures in the
National Gallery' which was the one Kitty liked best. She was pretty
quick, but she made such a hash of the pronunciation of the names of
the pictures that the others laughed at her, and yet she generally won.
She would say, very politely, because she knew she could not pronounce
it:
'Will you give me please, Rosamond, the Fighting--oh dear, I can hardly
pernounce it--the Fighting Temenare, by Turner?'
'The Fighting Temeraire, I suppose you mean, Kitty,' Rosamond would
reply chillingly, not even troubling to say that she hadn't got it.
'Infant Samuel, Amerye? Look sharp!'
'Ain't got him, my dear child. Kitty, Infant Samuel?'
'Not at home, I regret to say. Rosamond, will you, if you please, give
me Dignity and _Imperence_, by Landseer, unless it is the one I see you
have just let fall into the _wasperbasket_.'
'I can give you Dignity,' said Rosamond, forking it up out of the
wastepaper basket, where, sure enough, it was where Kitty said it had
fallen. 'And you have got the other, haven't you, already?'
'They _do_ go together,' said Kitty, not seeing that Rosamond wanted to
snub her. And that's the way they went on.
It was lovely, and I could have stayed there for ever, only at home
Auntie May's papa was growing impatient. He wrote to Auntie May
continually, to ask why in the name of wonder, if Beatrice was better,
Auntie May didn't come home. He said slily he thought the maids were
getting into bad ways, and didn't prepare the cats' meals properly, and
that Petronilla was pining, and that her two kittens had ceased to obey
her, in fact were becoming unmanageable.
He asked who this Mr. Fox was, and seemed to think he was the reason
Auntie May didn't come home. I could have told him better than that,
for whenever Mr. Fox came Auntie May said, 'What a bore! I shall have
to shut poor Loki up. You hate the nasty man, Loki, don't you?'
'One tame cat always resents another,' said Mrs. Gilmour.
'Ah, do they? We shall be going home for Christmas,' said Auntie May,
'and then Mr. Fox will be able to breathe freely.'
'He lives in London in the winter, I believe,' said Beatrice.
'Well, London's wide. He won't need to run up against Loki and me any
more, unless he likes,' said Auntie May, and she packed up her trunks
(I know of nothing more delightful to sit in than a trunk on crackly
paper, until you are turned out) and back we went.
I had become quite a good traveller by this time, and had my system.
That is to lie quite still, curled round, to let nobody or nothing
disturb you, and not to be persuaded to look out of the basket for love
or fish till the train rushes through the tunnels into King's Cross
station.