Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: A LITTLE BREEZE BLEW IN AT THE OPEN WINDOW,
AND THEN A RED AND BROWN BUTTERFLY FLEW IN.]
_THE RED CORD SERIES_
"The Comforter . . . whom the Father will send. . ."
LITTLE MISS
MOTH
THE STORY OF THREE MAIDENS
CHARITY, HOPE, AND FAITH
BY
AMY LE FEUVRE
Author of "Probable Sons," "Teddy's Button," "Tested,"
"Andy Man," "Chats with Children," etc.
[Illustration]
PICKERING & INGLIS
14 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E. C. 4
229 BOTHWELL STREET, GLASGOW, C. 2
THE RED CORD LIBRARY
OF HEALTHY MORAL STORIES
FOR ALL YOUTHFUL READERS
By JOHN BUNYAN
THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
By AMY LE FEUVRE
LITTLE MISS MOTH
TESTED
BY M. L. CHARLESWORTH
MINISTERING CHILDREN
THE BASKETMAKER'S SHOP
(A SEQUEL TO MINISTERING CHILDREN)
BY CHARLOTTE MURRAY
WARDLAUGH; OR, WORKERS TOGETHER
THROUGH GREY TO GOLD
STUART'S CHOICE
MURIEL MALONE
FROM SCHOOL TO CASTLE
BY PANSY
A NEW GRAFT ON THE FAMILY TREE
BY M. E. DREWSEN
GRACIE AND GRANT, A HIGHLAND TALE
NEDDIE GARDNER; OR, THE OLD HOUSE
BY GRACE PETTMAN
GIVEN IN EXCHANGE
BY J. GOLDSMITH COOPER
HOPE GLYNNE'S AWAKENING
BY SYDNEY WATSON
WOPS THE WAIF, A TALE OF REAL LIFE
Made and Printed In Great Britain
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A NEW HOME
II. FIRST ADVENTURES
III. AN INVITATION TO THE HALL
IV. CHARLIE'S RAFT
V. THE PIRATE
VI. CHARLIE STILL IN COMMAND
VII. THE PIRATE'S HOME
VIII. CHARITY PLAYS TRUANT
IX. FAITH'S OLD FRIEND
X. STRAWBERRY PICKING
XI. THE GREY DONKEY
XII. THE ACCIDENT
XIII. A WONDERFUL LEGACY
XIV. FAITH'S GIFTS
XV. THE PIRATE'S CHRISTMAS STORY
LITTLE MISS MOTH
CHAPTER I
A NEW HOME
THREE little girls were looking out of the window on a very wet
afternoon in March. They were so close together in age and height
that sometimes two of them were taken for twins, yet there was a year
between each of them. And they were unlike each other in looks.
Charity, the eldest, had a quantity of red auburn hair down her back.
She was very lively and talkative, and her eyes were always sparkling
with fun and happiness.
Hope, next to her in age, had fair golden hair and blue eyes; she was
sweet tempered and rather apt to be an echo of anyone with whom she was.
Faith, the youngest, was a quiet child, with short, dark, curly hair,
and thoughtful brown eyes. She had a very sweet little face, but looked
fragile and delicate beside her rosy, sturdy sisters.
It was not a very cheerful scene outside the window. One of those
quiet, dingy streets towards the outskirts of London, where rows of
houses faced each other, all exactly alike, and where the only traffic
was the tradesmen's carts rattling along, and an occasional cab or
motor. But the little girls were talking fast and happily. The rain
beating against the window panes did not depress them. The dark grey
sky, the wet pavements, the wind whirling the smoke along the street
from the chimneys opposite, the people hurrying by under sodden
umbrellas, all interested the six bright eyes.
And at last three voices shouted happily:
"Here she comes, Granny! Here's Aunt Alice!"
They left their post at the window and rushed to the door. Mrs. Blair,
their grandmother, who was sitting in an easy chair by the fire,
knitting small stockings, sprang up as if she were twenty instead of
nearly seventy. She took a small kettle off the hob, and poured the hot
water into a teapot.
Tea was laid on a round table in the middle of the room. There was only
a loaf of bread and a pot of treacle, but everything was very bright
and clean; and the little room looked quite cheerful in contrast to
the grey, dingy street outside. There was a canary hanging up in the
window, and a handsome black cat sat washing its face on the hearthrug.
Bright pictures were on the walls, and in the centre of the table was a
big bunch of yellow daffodils.
Now the door opened, and Aunt Alice appeared, with a bright, rosy face;
and her three small nieces were instantly hanging round her.
"Oh, Granny, she's got some primroses!"
"She's picked them herself!"
"And there's a parcel—very special for you!"
"Now let me speak, chicks! And first I must shed my wet shoes. Charity,
run and get me my slippers from upstairs. Yes, Faith, you can take
these out into the kitchen, and ask Mrs. Cox to dry them for me."
Aunt Alice bent down and kissed Granny.
"You do look cosy here. I shall be thankful to have a cup of tea!"
In a few minutes all were gathered round the table, and then Granny
opened her parcel, which contained a pound of golden butter.
"There!" said Aunt Alice. "What do you think of that? Old Mrs. Horn
sold it to me. They are not rationed in butter down there. And, Mother,
dear, I have had a very successful day, and the cottage is sweet. I
have seen Sir George, and he will let it for ten pounds a year. Think
of it, with no rates or taxes, and a garden big enough to grow our own
vegetables, and an orchard with six good apple trees in it!"
"And what about the water?"
"Quite a good well close to the house, and these primroses are out of
the orchard, and Mrs. Horn who lives only a field away will supply us
with milk."
"What is the cottage like?"
"There is a big kitchen and dairy; the kitchen larger than this; a tiny
best parlour, which I don't think we will use at all, and four good
bedrooms, and cupboards in every room built into thick walls."
Granny's eyes sparkled as brightly as the children's. "And when can we
have it?"
"Sir George said he would have it papered and painted throughout. It
is in good repair. His coachman lived there for ten years before he
went to the war, and his wife was a 'clean body,' so Mrs. Horn informed
me. Poor thing, she died a month after she had left it. She had a weak
heart, and she heard of her husband's death suddenly, and it just
killed her."
"Did you see Lady Melville?"
"Just for a moment. Sir George sent his love to you. He said it would
be like old times to see you again."
There was silence. The little girls were busy eating their bread and
treacle, but their ears were taking everything in.
"And is the cottage lonely?" asked Granny.
"No, I don't think so. It lies just off a road. There's not much
passing, but, Mother dear, you will revel in the peace and quiet after
this!"
Aunt Alice waved her hand out of the window. She was smiling brightly.
Granny looked at her rather wistfully. "And you have quite made up your
mind to give up your war work and come with us? You don't think I could
manage with the children?"
"I am sure you could not, Mother. There will be wood to be sawn, and
the garden to be tilled. Sir George has given us leave to gather all
the wood we want from his woods, but we can get no man or boy to help
us. Mrs. Horn told me that. She is running her small farm without any
man at all, her two daughters do everything. The children must make
themselves useful."
"And what about their lessons?"
Aunt Alice looked grave.
"I don't know. If we can't find any one to teach them, I suppose I must
try myself. There is the village school a mile off."
"No, Alice, I shall not let them sink to that."
Aunt Alice laughed and shrugged her shoulders
"Oh, Mother dear, we won't bring them up with empty brains as well as
empty purses! They will have to earn their own living, so they must
have a good education."
"Well, we will talk about that later."
"And we'll all have a slice of bread and butter now," said Aunt Alice
briskly. Then she turned to the children, and began to tell them of all
that she had seen and heard since she had left them two days ago.
And when tea was over, Charity slipped out to the kitchen. She was
longing to impress Mrs. Cox with the wonderful new life in front of
them.
Mrs. Cox was a thin, gaunt woman who came every day from eight o'clock
to six in the afternoon. She cleaned, she cooked, she washed and
ironed, and was the children's devoted friend. They were never tired
of listening to her stories, but Mrs. Cox always enjoyed very dismal
subjects. Funerals and illnesses were her chief topics; and her friends
seemed to the children to have had the most marvellous diseases, and
the most miraculous cures that they had ever heard.
"Oh, Mrs. Cox," cried Charity, dancing up to her, as she sat at the
kitchen table enjoying her cup of tea, "we're going to the country to a
house all our own, and no lodgers in the top floors of it, a house with
a well, and primroses, and apple trees, and we shall have butter—real
butter—every day, and a forest with big trees, and we shall pick up
wood in it and light our fires. And Aunt Alice will be home all day!"
Mrs. Cox stared at her.
"Ah, well, yer h'aunt did say to me times was hard, and you couldn't
h'afford to go on livin' here, that and the h'air raids—but never did
I think you'd all sink down to the country! 'Tis only where folks live
in their dotage, or sick children be sent for their 'olidays; nobody
with brains or money be content with such a hom'! Why, me sister Ivy
went down to a place there, an' were that skeered she's never prop'ly
recovered since. She left before the end o' her month; she said when
you looked out of the windys, there were nothin' but trees tapping
their branches on the windy panes, and earwigs a crawlin' inter the
beds, if you please, and you walks miles and never meets a single human
soul, an' the nights black pitch, so's the evenings out were a crool
joke! Not to speak of mud comin' up your legs over your boots—!"
"Go on—how perfectly lovely!" cried Charity with glowing eyes.
But Mrs. Cox shook her head gloomily, and refused to say another word.
"Granny lived in the country when she was little, and our Dad was born
in the country, and when Grand-dad was alive, he kept a school in the
country for little boys, and Granny used to love them, and they loved
her. And George Melville had curly hair, and Granny used to keep a bag
of chocolates in her room for him, and now he's grown-up, and has a big
house, and he's going to let Granny and us live in one of his small
houses. We're going to be awfully happy in the country, Aunt Alice says
everything is nice there."
Mrs. Cox gave an unbelieving sniff.
"Once I went on a Mothers' treat. It rained twelve hours on end—and
I sat on a damp log o' wood, and was ill in bed of rheumaticks for a
month h'after! Give me a proper Lunnon park for beauty. Why, the park
flowers beat the country ones holler!"
Charity left her. Mrs. Cox would not understand the joy of looking
forward to a move into an unknown country.
Two hours later, the three little girls were in bed in one room
upstairs. Aunt Alice and Granny always slept together.
They were talking hard over the prospect in front of them.
"I s'pose," said Hope with knitted brow, "that we're very, very poor.
It's only since Granny and Aunt Alice were doing up sums together in
their account books that they said they couldn't stay here any longer."
"No," said Charity; "it was when Faith was so ill the other day. The
doctor said Granny must take her to the country, and Granny shook her
head. And I heard her say to Aunt Alice after:
"'I should like to have something worth selling, my dear, but I've no
more jewels, and all our silver is gone, and the bits of furniture left
us are worth nothing.'
"Poor Granny! She wiped her spectacles when she said it, and she always
does that when she's unhappy."
"And we do wear out our shoes, and eat a lot," said little Faith with
fervour. "If we live in a cottage, p'raps it won't cost so much."
"And perhaps we shall be allowed to run about without shoes and
stockings," said Hope; "that would be lovely, like we did at the sea,
when Aunt Alice took us to Margate."
"I know one thing," said Charity, rolling round in bed in ecstasy; "I
mean to get lost in the wood as soon as ever I can."
"And I shall climb the apple trees," said Hope.
"And I shall sit on the well," said Faith, "and draw water up and down
in a bucket all day long!"
"And as for Mrs. Cox," said Charity, "she's only talking of the country
she's seen—not of our cottage, which is perfectly beautiful. Aunt Alice
says so!"
Then sleep overtook them, and when Granny came up to bed, she paid them
her usual nightly visit.
"Poor little souls!" she said. "Life will not be so difficult for us in
the country; we may be able to give them more pleasures."
The following days were full of bustle and excitement to the children.
They had been going to a small private day school a few streets away,
but now they were taken away from it, and Charity expressed a hope that
they would never go to another school as long as they lived.
"It's our names," she confided to her aunt; "why did our father and
mother give us such names? The girls all laugh at us, 'specially me!
'Charity' means everything nasty. If you live on people's charity, it
means you're a nobody, and Charity schools are for the very lowest. I
hate my name! I'm glad we're going to the country. Mrs. Cox says we
shall have nobody there to notice what we're called."
"I like your names," said Aunt Alice laughing. "Don't be a little
goose. Your Mother was a saint, and she got your names from the Bible,
and so far from 'Charity' being a name to be despised, it is the
greatest of all other names. We are told so, you read the chapter about
Charity and see all you ought to do if you're worthy of your name."
"Oh, I know! Granny read it to me once. It is in Corinthians, but I
couldn't be like that chapter, no, never!"
She shook her red hair vehemently and danced away. Charity was always
jumping or running or dancing; she hated keeping her legs still, and
school was a real trial to her.
Granny and Aunt Alice packed day after day. Mrs. Cox asked how they
were going to manage in the country if they had no one to clean for
them, and Hope asked her aunt anxiously about it, but she was laughed
at.
"I am going to stay at home, and do all Mrs. Cox's work. I must, that
is why I am leaving my work at the War Depôt. Don't you think I am able
to keep a cottage clean, Hope? You will all have to help. Granny is not
so young as she used to be, and we must spare her all heavy work."
"I love scrubbing," said Hope happily. "I hope you'll let me do that.
Are we as poor as Mrs. Cox is?"
"Poorer, I think," said Aunt Alice cheerfully.
Nothing seemed to depress her, and Granny was just as cheerful, so Hope
said to Mrs. Cox, "It will be all right, Mrs. Cox. Aunt Alice says it
will. We are going to do everything ourselves. We've got very poor, I
don't know how, but Granny always says a beggar is happier than a king!
And we shall love it all, I know we shall."
The day came when a cab drew up to the door, and the little girls with
their arms full of parcels and baskets followed Granny out of the house
in which they had spent most of their lives, and rolled away to the
big, bustling station. The journey in the train was a delight to them,
and when early in the afternoon they arrived at a quiet little station
called Deepcombe, and were told by their aunt that they must get out,
they looked round them with shining eyes noting every detail around
them.
There was a shabby little cart waiting for them outside the station,
and it was a tight fit to pack themselves and their luggage into it.
A girl drove it, and she and Aunt Alice walked up all the hills. It
seemed as if the road was never going to end, but the children had
plenty to see as they went along. Lambs in the meadows; primroses on
the banks, and pretty thatched cottages and farmhouses standing back
from the road.
Charity was loud in admiration and wonder, Hope asked questions about
everything. Little Faith was the silent one, she looked up into the
blue sky and across the green fields with a dreamy smile upon her small
white face.
Granny bent down to her once: "Are you tired, darling?"
Faith's back ached, but she never acknowledged it. She only smiled up
at her grandmother. "It's like heaven, I should think!" was all she
said.
Granny put her arm round her. Faith was very delicate, and she was
continually in her grandmother's thoughts. Granny often said to Aunt
Alice that Faith lived at Heaven's gates, and she was afraid that any
day she might slip inside them.
At last they reached the Cottage. It had a white gate which had been
freshly painted, and the door stood open; and kind Mrs. Horn had
lighted a fire, and put a kettle on to boil and was standing outside
the door, ready to welcome them.
The little girls tumbled over each other in their excitement to get
inside. It seemed at first like a doll's house to them; the stairs were
steep and narrow, and the rooms low, and the windows very small, but
they loved the quaint cupboards; and then they ran out into the garden
and orchard, and visited the well and picked some primroses, and whilst
Granny and Aunt Alice were seeing to the luggage being carried in,
their tongues wagged fast.
"It's all beautiful," said Charity, "just like the cottages in story
books; and I hope we'll never go back to London again in our lives!"
"And we can pick flowers wherever we see them," said Faith, "without
paying for them or having the keepers coming up to see what we're
doing."
"Where is the wood?" asked Hope.
Charity began to climb one of the apple trees.
"I think I see some trees over there," she said, pointing to the corner
of a field a short distance off. They were going to set off immediately
in search of it, when they heard their aunt call them in.
"You mustn't run away," she said; "we're all going to have some tea,
and then you must help me get your beds made up. There will be lots to
do before we go to bed to-night."
"Is this our furniture?" asked Charity, looking round the room, which
had only an empty glass-paned cupboard, a square table, a dresser, and
six wooden chairs.
"Yes, we've taken over the furniture left here, but we'll make this
kitchen quite pretty with nice curtains, and some cushions and some of
Granny's pretty things."
So they gathered round the table for their evening meal, and then till
bed-time Aunt Alice kept them all busy.
When they at last went up to the sloping-roofed bedroom where they were
to sleep, the little girls were too tired to talk any more.
It was Charity who said just before she dropped asleep:
"To-morrow—we'll find the wood, and then our adventures will begin."