PRISSY'S PICNIC.
But just at this moment an important personage stalked through the
great broken-down doorway by which kings and princes most magnificent
had once entered the ancient Castle of the Lorraines. He stood a
moment or two on the threshold behind Nosie Cuthbertson, silently
contemplating his courageous doings.
Presently a little stifled cry escaped from Prissy, caused by one of
Nosie's refinements in torture, which consisted in separating her
fingers and pulling two in one direction and two in the other. Nosie
was a youth of parts and promise, who had already proceeded some
distance on his way to the gallows.
But the Important Personage, who was no other than Nipper Donnan
himself, did not long remain quiescent. He advanced suddenly, seized
Nosie Cuthbertson by the scruff of the neck, kicked him several times
severely, tweaked his ear till it looked as if it had been constructed
of the best india-rubber, and then ended by tumbling him into the
moat, where he disappeared as noiselessly as if he had fallen into
green syrup.
"Now, what's all this?" cried the lordly Nipper, whose doings among
his own no man dared to question, for reasons connected with health.
At the first sight of him Bob Hetherington had quietly shouldered his
musket, and begun pacing up and down with his nose in the air, as if
he had never so much as dreamed of going near Prissy's basket.
"What's all this, I say--you?" demanded his captain.
"I don't know any bloomin' thing about it----" began Bob, with whom
ignorance, if not honesty, was certainly the best policy.
"Salute!" roared his officer; "don't you know enough to salute when
you speak to me? Want to get knocked endways?"
Sulkily Bob Hetherington obeyed.
"Well?" said Nipper Donnan, somewhat appeased by the appearance of
Nosie Cuthbertson as he scrambled up the bank, with the green scum of
duckweed clinging all over him. He was shaking his head and muttering
anathemas, declaring what his father would do to Nipper Donnan, when
within his heart he knew that first of all something very painful
would be done to himself by that able-bodied relative as soon as ever
he showed face at home.
"This girl she come to the drawbridge and hollered--that's all I
know!" said the sentry, disassociating himself from any trouble as
completely as possible. Bob felt that under the circumstances it was
very distinctly folly to be wise. "I don't know what she hollered, but
Nosie he runs an' begins twisting her arm, and then the girl she
begins to holler again!"
"I didn't mean to," said Prissy tremulously, "but he _was_ hurting so
dreadfully."
"Come here, you!" shouted Nipper to the retiring Nosie. Whereupon that
young gentleman, hearing the dreadful voice of his chief officer, and
being at the time on the right side of the moat, did not pause to
respond, but promptly took to his heels in the direction of the town.
"Run after him and bring him back, two of you fellows! Don't dare come
back without him!" cried Nipper, and at his word two big boys detached
themselves from the doorposts in which the guard was kept, and dashed
after the deserter.
"Oh, don't hurt him--perhaps he didn't mean it!" cried the universally
sympathetic Prissy. "He didn't hurt me much after all, and it is quite
better now anyway."
Nipper Donnan could, as we know, be as cruel as anybody, but he liked
to keep both the theory and practice of terror in his own hands.
Besides, some possible far-off fragrance from another life stirred in
him when he saw the slim girlish figure of Prissy Smith, clad all in
white with a large sun-bonnet edged with pale green, standing on the
bank and appealing to him with eyes different from any he had ever
seen. He wanted, he knew not why, to kick Nosie Cuthbertson--kick him
much harder than he had done before he saw whom he was tormenting. He
had never particularly noticed any one's eyes before. He had thought
vaguely that every one had the same kind of eyes.
[Illustration: "THE RETURN OF THE TWO SWIFT FOOTMEN."]
"Well, what do you want?" he said gruffly. For with Nipper and his
class emotion or shamefacedness of any kind always in the first
instance produces additional dourness.
Prissy smiled upon him--a glad, confident smile. She was the daughter
of one war chief, the sister of another, and she knew that it is
always best and simplest to treat only with principals.
"You know that I didn't come to spy or find out anything, don't you?"
she said; "only I was so sorry to think you were fighting with each
other, when the Bible tells us to love one another. Why can't we all
be nice together? I'm sure Hugh John would if you would----"
"Gammon--this is our castle," said Nipper Donnan sullenly, "my father
he says so. Everybody says so. Your father has no right to it."
"Well, but--" replied Prissy, with woman's gentle wit avoiding all
discussion of the bone of contention, "I'm sure you would let us come
here and have picnics and things. And you could come too, and play at
soldiers and marching and drills--all without fighting to hurt."
"Fighting is the best fun!" snarled Nipper; "besides, 'twasn't us that
begun it."
"Then," answered Prissy, "wouldn't it be all the nicer of you if you
were to stop first?"
But this Nipper Donnan could not be expected to understand. A
diversion was caused at this moment by the return of the two swift
footmen, with the culprit Nosie between them, doing the frog's march,
and having his own experiences as to what arm-twisting meant.
"Cast him into the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat!" thundered
the brigand chief.
"Can't," said the elder of the two captors, one Joe Craig, the son of
the Carlisle carrier; "can't--we couldn't get him out again if we
did!"
"Well then,"--returned the great chief, swiftly deciding upon an
alternative plan, as if he had thought about it from the first, "chuck
him down anywhere on the stones, and get Fat Sandy to sit on him."
[Illustration: "HYDRAULIC PRESSURE."]
Joe Craig obediently saluted, and presently sundry moans and sounds of
exhausted breath indicated that Nosie Cuthbertson was being subjected
to hydraulic pressure by the unseen tormentor whom Nipper Donnan had
called Fat Sandy. Prissy felt that nothing she could say would for
the present lessen Master Nosie's griefs, so she went on to accomplish
her purpose by other means.
"If you please, Mr. Captain," she said politely, "I thought you would
like to taste our nice sheep's-head-pie. Janet makes it all out of her
own head. Besides, there are some dee-licious fruits which I have
brought you; and if you will let me come in, I will make you some
lovely tea?"
Nipper Donnan considered, and at last shook his head.
"I don't know," he said, "'tisn't regular. How do we know that you
aren't a spy?"
"You could bind my eyes with a napkin, and----"
"That's the thing!" cried several of Nipper's followers, who scented
something to eat, and who knew that the commissariat was the weak
point in the defences of the Castle of Windy Standard under the
Consulship of Donnan.
"Well," said the chief, "that's according to rule. Here, Timothy
Tracy, tell us if that is all right."
Whereupon uprose Timothy Tracy, a long lank boy with yellowish hair
and dull lack-lustre eyes, out of a niche in the wall and unfolded a
number of "The Wild Boys of New York." He rustled the flaccid,
ill-conditioned leaves and found the place.
"'Then Bendigo Bill went to the gateway of the stockade to interview
the emissary of the besiegers. With keen unerring eyes he examined
his credentials, and finding them correct, he took from the breast of
his fringed buckskin hunting-dress a handkerchief of fine Indian silk,
and with it he swathed the eyes of the ambassador. Then taking the
envoy by the hand he led him past the impregnable defences of the
Comanche Cowboys into the presence of their haughty chief, who was
seated with the fair Luluja beside him, holding her delicate hand, and
inhaling the fragrance of a choice Havanna cigar through his noble
aquiline nose.'
"That's all it says," said Timothy Tracy, succinctly, and straightway
curled himself up again to resume his own story at the place where he
had left it off.
"Well, that's all pretty straight and easy. Nobody can say fairer nor
that," meditated Bob Hetherington.
"Shut up!" said his chief; "who asked for your oar? I'll knock the
bloomin' nut off you if you don't watch out. Blindfold the emissary of
the enemy, and bring her before me into the inner court."
And with this peremptory command, Nipper Donnan disappeared.
But the order was more easily given than obeyed. For not only could
the entire array of the Comanche Cowboys produce nothing even
distantly resembling Indian silk (which at any rate was a counsel of
perfection), but what was worse, their pockets were equally destitute
of common domestic linen. Indeed the proceedings would have fallen
through at this point had not the ambassadress offered her own. This
was knotted round her brows by Joe Craig, with the best intentions in
the world.
Immediately after completing the arrangement, he stepped in front of
Prissy and said, thrusting his fist below her nose, "Tell me if you
see anything--mind, true as 'Hope-you-may-Die!'"
"I do see something, something very dirty," said Prissy, "but I can't
quite tell what it is."
"She _can_ see, boys," cried Joe indignantly, "it's my hand."
Every boy recognised the description, and the handkerchief was once
more adjusted with greater care and precision than before, so that it
was only by the sense of smell that Prissy could judge of the
proximity of Joe Craig's fingers.
"Please let me carry my basket myself--I've got my best china
tea-service in it--and then I will be sure that it won't get broken."
A licentious soldiery was about to object, but a stern command issued
unexpectedly from one of the arrow-slits through which their chief had
been on the watch.
"Give the girl the basket! Do you hear--you?"
And in this manner Prissy entered the castle, guarded on either side
by soldiers with fixed (wooden) bayonets. And at the inner and outer
ports, the convoy was halted and asked for the pass-word.
"_Death!_" cried Joe Craig, at the pitch of his voice.
"_Vengeance!_" replied the sentry. "Pass, '_Death_'!"
At last Prissy felt the grass beneath her feet, and the handkerchief
being slipped from her eyes, she found herself within the courtyard of
the castle. The captain of the band sat before her with a red sash
tied tightly about his waist. By his side swung a butcher's steel,
almost as long and twice as dangerous as a sword.
Prissy began her mission at once, to allow Captain Donnan no time to
order her out again, or to put her into a dungeon, as he had done with
Hugh John.
"I think we had better have tea first," she said. "Have you got a
match-box?"
She could not have taken a better line. Nipper Donnan stepped down
from his high horse at once. He put his hand into his pocket. "I have
only fusees," he said grandly, "but perhaps they will do. You see
regular smokers never use anything else."
"Oh yes, they will do perfectly," returned Prissy sweetly, "it is just
to light the spirit-lamp. See how nicely it fits in. Isn't it a
beauty? I got that from father on my birthday. Wasn't it nice of him?"
Nipper Donnan grunted. He never found any marked difference between
his birthday and any other day. Nevertheless he stood by and assisted
at the making of the tea, a process which interested him greatly.
"I shall need some more fresh spring water for so many cups," said
Prissy, "I only brought the full of the kettle with me."
The chief slightly waved a haughty hand, which instantly impelled Joe
Craig forward as if moved by a spring. "Bring some fresh water from
the well!" he commanded.
Joe Craig took the tin dipper, and was marching off. Prissy looked
distressed.
"What is it?" said the robber chief. Now Prissy did not want to be
rude, but she had her feelings.
"Oh, please, Mr. Captain," she said, "his hands--I think he has
perhaps been working----"
Nipper Donnan had no fine scruples, but he respected them in such an
unknown quantity as this dainty little lady with the green trimmed
sun-bonnet and the widely-opened eyes.
"Tracy, fetch the water, you lazy jaundiced toad!" he commanded. The
sallow student rose unwillingly, and moved off with his face still
bent upon the thrilling pages of "The Wild Boys of New York," which he
held folded small in his hand for convenience of perusal.
Presently the tea being made, the white cloth was laid on the grass,
and the entire company of the Smoutchy Boys crowded about, always
excepting the sentinels at the east and west doors, who being on duty
could not immediately participate. The sheep's-head-pie, the bread,
the butter, the fruits were all set out in order, and the whole
presented such an appearance as the inside of the Castle of Windy
Standard had never seen through all its generations.
Prissy conducted herself precisely as if she had been dispensing
afternoon tea to callers in the drawing-room, as, since her last
birthday, her father had occasionally permitted her to do.
"Do you take sugar?" she asked, delicately poising a piece in the
dolls' sugar-tongs, and smiling her most politefully conventional
smile at Nipper Donnan.
The brigand chief had never been asked such a question before, and had
no answer of the usual kind at hand. But he replied for all that.
"_Rather!_" he cried in a burst, "if the grocer's not lookin'!"
"I mean in your tea! Do you take sugar in your tea?"
Prissy was still smiling.
Nipper appeared to acquiesce. Two knobs of sugar were dropped in. The
whipped cream out of the wide-mouthed bottle was spooned delicately on
the top, and with a yet more charming smile the cup was passed to him.
He held it between his finger and thumb, as an inquiring naturalist
holds a rare beetle. Then he put it down on a low fragment of wall and
looked at it.
"One lump or two?" queried Prissy again, graciously transferring her
attentions to Joe Craig.
"Eh, what?" ejaculated that warrior. Prissy repeated her question.
"As many as I can get!" cried the boy.
So one by one the brigands were served, and the subdued look which
rests upon a Sunday-school picnic at the hour of refreshment settled
down upon them. The Smoutchy boy is bad and bold, but he does not like
you to see him in the act of eating. His instinct is to get behind a
wall, or into the thick of a copse and do it there. A similar feeling
sends the sparrow with a larger crumb than the others into the
seclusion of his nest among the ivy.
Nevertheless the bread and jam, the raisins, and the sheep's-head-pie
disappeared 'like snow off a dyke.' The wonder of the thimbleful cups,
continually replenished, grew more and more surprising; and, winking
slyly at each other the Smoutchies passed them in with a touch of
their caps to be filled and refilled again and again. Prissy kept the
kettle beside her, out of which she poured the water brought by
Timothy Tracy as she wanted it. The golden colour of the tea
degenerated, but so long as a few drops of milk remained to mask the
fraud from their eyes, the Smoutchies drank the warm water with equal
relish.
"Besides it's so much better for your nerves, you know!" said Prissy,
putting her action upon a hygienic basis.
At first the boys had been inclined to snatch the viands from the
table-cloth, and there was one footprint on the further edge. But the
iron hand of Nipper Donnan knocked two or three intruders sprawling,
and after that the eatables were distributed as patiently and exactly
as at a Lord Mayor's banquet.
"Please will you let that boy get up?--I think he must have been sat
upon quite long enough now," said Prissy, who could not bear to listen
to the uneasy groaning of the oppressed prisoner.
The chief granted the boon. The sitter and his victim came in and
were regaled amicably from one plate. "Pieces" and full cups of tea
were despatched to the distant sentinels, and finally the whole
company was in the midst of washing up, when Prissy, who had been
kneeling on the grass wiping saucers one by one, suddenly rose to her
feet with a little cry.
"Oh, it is so dreadful--I _quite_ forgot!"
The Smoutchies stood open-mouthed, some holding dishes, some with
belated pieces of pie, some only with their hands in their pockets,
but all waiting eagerly for the revelation of the dreadful thing which
their hostess had forgotten.
"Why, we forgot to say grace!" she cried--"well, anyway I am glad I
remembered in time. We can say it now. Who is the youngest?"
The boys all looked guiltily at each other. Prissy picked out a small
boy of stunted aspect, but whose face was old and wizened. He had just
put a piece of tobacco into his mouth to take away the taste of the
tea.
"You say it, little boy," she said pointedly, and shut her eyes for
him to begin.
The boy gasped, glanced once at his chief, and made a bolt for the
door, through which he had fled before the sentinels had time to stop
him. At the clatter Prissy opened her eyes.
"What is the matter with that boy? Couldn't he say grace? Didn't he
remember the beginning? Well, you say it then----"
Nipper Donnan shook his head. He had a fine natural contempt for all
religious services in the abstract, but when one was brought before
him as a ceremony, his sense of discipline told him that it must
somehow be valuable.
"Better say it yourself," he suggested.
Whereat Prissy devoutly clasped her hands and shut her eyes.
There was a smart smack and something fell over. Prissy opened her
eyes, and saw a boy sprawling on the grass.
"Right," said Nipper Donnan cheerfully, "go ahead--Joe Craig laughed.
I'll teach him to laugh except when I tell him to."
So Prissy again proceeded with a grace of her own composition:
"_God bless our table,
Bless our food;
And make us stable,
Brave and good._"
After all was over Prissy left the Castle of Windy Standard, without
indeed obtaining any pledge from the chief of the army of occupation,
but not without having done some good. And she went forth with dignity
too. For not only did the robber chieftain provide her with an escort,
but he ordered the ramparts to be manned, and a general salute to be
fired in her honour.
Prissy waved her hand vigorously, and had already proceeded a little
way towards the stepping-stones, when she stopped, laid down her
basket, and ran back to the postern gate. She took her little
tortoise-shell card-case out of her pocket.
"Oh, I was nearly forgetting--how dreadfully rude of me!" she said,
and forthwith pulled out a card on which she had previously written
very neatly:
+---------------------------------------+
| |
| _Miss Priscilla Smith_ |
| |
|_At Home Every Day_ |
+---------------------------------------+
She laid it on the stones, and tripped away. "I'm sorry I have not my
brother's card to leave also," she said, looking up at the brigand
chief, who had been watching her curiously from a window.
"Oh," said Nipper Donnan, "we shall be pleased to see him if he drops
in on Saturday--or any other time."
Then he waited till the trim white figure was some distance from the
gateway before he took his cap from his head and waved it in the air.
"Three proper cheers for the little lady!" he cried.
And the grim old walls of the Castle of Windy Standard never echoed to
a heartier shout than that with which the Smoutchy boys sped Miss
Priscilla Smith, the daughter of their arch enemy, upon her homeward
way.
Prissy poised herself on tiptoe at the entrance of the copse, and blew
them a dainty collective kiss from her fingers.
"Thank you so much," she cried, "you are very kind. Come and see me
soon--and be sure you stop to tea."
And with that she tripped swiftly away homeward with an empty basket
and a happy heart.
That night in her little room before she went to sleep she read over
her favourite text, "Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be
called the children of God."
"Oh dear," she said, "I should so like to be one some day."