"For some time, a quarter of an hour or so, I dare say, I stood at the
shop door very contentedly. It was very amusing, as my father had said,
to watch the bustle in the street. I don't think I looked much at the
things in the shop window; I'd seen so many of the toys inside. But
after awhile I began to wish that my father would be quick. He did seem
to be a very long time. I peeped in through the glass door, but I
couldn't see him anywhere near. I even opened it a tiny bit to listen
if I could hear his voice, but I couldn't. People often passed me to go
into the shop and to come out, but nobody specially noticed me; they
were all too busy about their own affairs; besides, there's nothing
uncommon in a little boy standing at a toy-shop window.
"It seemed to grow colder too. I should have liked to run up and down
on the pavement in front to warm myself a little; but I dared not move
from where I was. At last some one belonging to the shop happened to
come to the door to reach down some large toys hanging in the entrance,
and this shopman noticed me. By this time, though I scarcely knew it,
the tears were running down my face; I was growing so very tired with
waiting. He said to me--
"`Is there anything the matter? Have you hurt yourself?'
"I answered No, I was only waiting for my father who was in the shop.
`But I don't know why he's such a long time,' I said; `I am so tired of
waiting,' and somehow the saying it out made me begin to cry much more.
"The young man was very kind and seemed sorry for me. He wanted me to
come inside where it would be warmer, while he went to look for my
father; but I shook my head and told him that papa had said I must stay
just there where I was. I wouldn't even come the least bit inside the
door. I remembered papa's words so well--
"`Whatever you do, Charlie, don't move from there till I come back for
you!'
"In a few minutes the shopman came back again. He was shaking his head
now; there was no one in the shop with a little boy belonging to them.
There were one or two ladies whom he had asked, which I thought very
ridiculous, as if I could have mistaken papa for a lady, but there was
no gentleman at all, and he tried again to persuade me to come inside.
He said there must be some mistake; my father had most likely gone on
somewhere else; perhaps he'd be back in a little while; he'd never want
me to stay out there in the cold. But there was no getting me to move.
I can remember, even now, the sort of fixed feeling in my mind that I
_wouldn't_ do the least differently from what he had told me.
"Then the young man went off to fetch some one else--the owner of the
shop most likely. I remember two or three people coming up and all
talking to me and trying to get me to come inside. But I wouldn't--even
though by this time I couldn't leave off crying--I just went on shaking
my head and saying--
"He said I was to stay here."
"I dare say they thought me a very tiresome little boy, but they were
very kind. The young man, my first friend, brought me out a chair, and
then I heard them talking about what was to be done. They had asked me
my name, which I told them, but I couldn't tell them the name of the
hotel where we were staying, for I didn't know it, and I _wouldn't_ tell
them that it was in a street close by, because I was afraid they would
carry me off there. I think I was getting rather confused by this time;
I could only remember that I must stay where I was if ever I was to see
papa again. I heard them saying that the gentleman had only given his
country address, as the toys were to be sent straight home.
"After awhile, in spite of the cold and my unhappiness, I think I must
have fallen asleep a little. I was almost too young to be anxious about
my father and to fear that some accident must have happened to him, but
yet I can quite remember that I had really very dreadful feelings. As
the evening went on and the street grew darker and darker, and there
began to be fewer passers-by, it seemed worse and worse. Once I
remember bursting out into fresh crying at seeing, by the light of the
gas-lamp, a little boy passing along chattering merrily to the gentleman
whose hand he was holding. I felt like a poor shipwrecked mariner on a
desert island--all the lonelier that I was in the middle of a great
town.
"No doubt the shop people must have been getting uncomfortable and
wondering what was to come of it. It must have seemed very strange to
them; and, at last, the head man came out again and spoke to me--this
time rather sharply, perhaps he thought it the best thing to do--
"`Young gentleman,' he said, `this really can't go on! You must see you
can't sit there the whole night. Try and think again of the name of the
place you're staying at.'
"`I don't know it,' I said, and I dare say I seemed rather sulky, for he
grew crosser.
"`Well, if you can't or won't tell us, something'll have to be done,' he
answered. `It's the police's business, not ours, to look after strayed
children, or children that won't say where they come from. Here,
Smith,' he called out to the young shopman, `just look up and down the
street if there's a policeman to be seen.'
"He didn't really mean to do anything unkind, but he thought it the best
way to frighten me into coming inside the shop, or into telling where I
lived, for I don't think they quite believed that I didn't know. But
the word `policeman' terrified me out of my wits; I suppose I was
already half-stupefied with tiredness and crying. If I had dared, I
would have rushed out into the street and run off anywhere as fast as I
could. But, through all, the feeling never left me that I must stay
where I was, and I burst into loud screams.
"`Oh, papa, papa!' I cried, `why won't you come back? The police are
coming to take me; oh, papa, papa!'
"I was crying so that for a moment or two I didn't hear a bustle at the
other end of the shop. Then, all at once, I saw some one hurrying to me
from the door leading into the other street, and as soon as I saw who it
was, I rushed to meet him and threw myself into his arms, for of course
it was my father. I don't think, in all my life, I have ever felt
greater happiness than I did then.
"`Oh, Charlie,' he said, `my poor little boy! Have you been waiting
here all these hours--my good, obedient, little son?'
"Then he turned to the shopman who was now a little ashamed of himself--
I dare say the poor man had been getting really afraid that I was to be
left on his hands altogether--and explained the whole mistake. He had
gone straight on to the city after finishing his orders in the other
part of the shop, forgetting that the _last_ thing he had said to me was
to wait for him at the front door of the shop; for his thoughts were
very much taken up that morning with some very serious business, and it
was actually not till he got back to the hotel, late in the afternoon,
and found I wasn't there, that he remembered that the plan of my running
back alone had been given up.
"Then he was terribly frightened and rushed off to the shop, hardly
daring to hope he would find me still there. He kept saying he could
scarcely forgive himself, and even years after, I often heard him say
that he couldn't understand what had come over his memory that day.
"When the shop people saw how troubled he was about it, they began
telling him how they had tried to make me come inside, but that it had
been no use, and all the way home papa kept saying to me--
"`My faithful little Charlie'--which pleased me very much.
"He carried me to the hotel, and I felt so weak and tired that I didn't
mind, even though I was a big boy of six years old. And I remember,
even now, how delightful it was to get well warmed at the fire, and what
a nice tea papa ordered for me.
"And the next day I was none the worse; luckily I hadn't caught cold,
which papa was very glad of, as my mother came up to London that day to
meet us, and we all three travelled home together."
The children had been listening with all their ears to papa's story.
When he stopped Mary gave a deep sigh.
"That's a bee-yu-tiful story, papa," she said. "But it nearly made me
cry for the poor little boy."
"You shouldn't say that, Mary," said Leigh. "The poor little boy was
papa himself! Don't you understand?"
"Yes, in course I do," said Mary. "But papa _were_ a little boy then,
so I might call him the poor little boy."
"That's right, Mary," said her father. "Stick up for yourself when you
know what you mean to say. Yes, indeed, I did feel a very poor little
boy that day: the thought of it has always made me so sorry for children
who are lost, or think they're lost. It's a dreadful feeling."
"Papa," said Mary--she was trotting beside her father, holding his hand
very tight,--"I think, please, I don't want never to go to London, for
fear I should get losted; and, please, never take Leigh or Artie
either--not to London--'cos, you see, it was when you was a little boy
your papa nearly losted you, and Leigh and Artie are little boys."
"Rubbish, Mary," said Leigh. "I'm eight, and papa was only six, not
much bigger than you are now. If _I_ was with papa in London at a shop
I could find my way home ever so far; there's always people in the
street you can ask. It's not like getting lost when there's nobody to
tell you the way."
"The worst kind of getting lost," said Artie, "is in the snow. Up on
those mountains, you know, where the snow comes down so thick that you
can't see, and then it gets so deep that you are buried in it."
"Oh, how dedful!" said Mary; "you won't ever take us to that place, will
you, papa? I'd be more f'ightened than in London! Where is that
country, papa?"
"I suppose Artie means Switzerland," said their father.
"I mean the picture in my book," said Artie; "where there's dogs, you
know, snuffing to find the poor people under the snow."
"Oh, the great Saint Bernard mountain you mean!" said papa; "it's sure
to be that. You often see pictures of it in children's books; there are
such pretty stories about the good dogs and the kind monks who live
there."
"Can you teach any dogs to do things like that?" asked Leigh.
"No; they have to be a particular kind," answered papa; "but a dog like
your puppy can be taught to fetch anything out of the water, from a bit
of stick to a baby. He's what you call a retriever: that means fetching
or finding something. You can teach a good retriever almost anything."
"I thought so," said Leigh, nodding his head wisely. "I'll see what I
can't teach Fuzzy."
They were back in the park by this time. It was a beautiful May day,
almost as warm as summer. The children's father stood still and looked
round with pleasure.
"It is nice to have a holiday sometimes," he said. "What a lovely
colour the grass is in the sunshine!"
"And how happy the little lambs are; aren't they, papa?" said Mary. "I
wish I had one of my very own--like Mary and the lamb in my nursery
book."
"You couldn't have a lamb _and_ a dog," said Artie. "Fuzzy would soon
knock the lamb over."
"I never thought of that," said Mary. "Oh, papa dear," she went on, "I
do so want baby Dolly to get big quick! There's such lotses of pretty
things to show her in the world. The grass and the trees and the
lambs"--and while she spoke her blue eyes wandered all round her,--"and
the birds and the sky and--and--oh! the daisies, and"--as at that moment
she caught sight of the old woman at the lodge crossing the drive with
her red cloak on--"and old Mrs Crutch and her pussy-cat, and--"
"You're getting to talk nonsense, Mary," said Leigh. "Old Mrs Crutch
isn't a pretty thing!"
"Her _cloak's_ very pretty," said Mary, "and she does make such nice
ginger-b'ead cake."