"Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?" and nobody, as so often
happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said--
"Good gracious, look there!" and we looked there, and where we were to
look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that
the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange
blobbiness of knobbly bumps along the top, that looked exactly like
human heads.
It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that
human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on
pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the
castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but
real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.
They were, in fact, the village children.
"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.
"There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast left," said Mrs. Bax.
"Shall we----?"
So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the
bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up
all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were
sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs,
and we were quite glad that they should have them--really and truly we
were, even H.O.!
They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would
choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little
you are other people's sort. So, after they had eaten all there was,
when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we
ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and
though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we
understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them
understand the very simplest thing.
But they could play all the ring games, and "Nuts and May," and "There
Came Three Knights"--and another one we had never heard of before. The
singing part begins:--
"Up and down the green grass,
This and that and thus,
Come along, my pretty maid,
And take a walk with us.
You shall have a duck, my dear,
And you shall have a drake,
And you shall have a handsome man
For your father's sake."
I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will
write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.
The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul--I expect it is but
seldom they are able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement. And
when we'd been at it some time we saw there was another head looking
over the wall.
"Hullo!" said Mrs. Bax, "here's another of them, run along and ask it to
come and join in."
She spoke to the village children, but nobody ran.
"Here, you go," she said, pointing at a girl in red plaits tied with
dirty sky-blue ribbon.
"Please, miss, I'd leifer not," replied the red-haired. "Mother says we
ain't to play along of him."
"Why, what's the matter with him?" asked Mrs. Red House.
"His father's in jail, miss, along of snares and night lines, and no one
won't give his mother any work, so my mother says we ain't to demean
ourselves to speak to him."
"But it's not the child's fault," said Mrs. Red House, "is it now?"
"I don't know, miss," said the red-haired.
"But it's cruel," said Mrs. Bax. "How would you like it if your father
was sent to prison, and nobody would speak to you?"
"Father's always kep' hisself respectable," said the girl with the dirty
blue ribbon. "You can't be sent to gaol, not if you keeps yourself
respectable, you can't, miss."
"And do none of you speak to him?"
The other children put their fingers in their mouths, and looked silly,
showing plainly that they didn't.
"Don't you feel sorry for the poor little chap?" said Mrs. Bax.
No answer transpired.
"Can't you imagine how you'd feel if it was _your_ father?"
"My father always kep' hisself respectable," the red-haired girl said
again.
"Well, I shall ask him to come and play with us," said Mrs. Red House.
"Little pigs!" she added in low tones only heard by the author and Mr.
Red House.
But Mr. Red House said in a whisper that no one overheard except Mrs. R.
H. and the present author.
"Don't, Puss-cat; it's no good. The poor little pariah wouldn't like it.
And these kids only do what their parents teach them."
If the author didn't know what a stainless gentleman Mr. Red House is he
would think he heard him mutter a word that gentlemen wouldn't say.
"Tell off a detachment of consolation," Mr. Red House went on; "look
here, _our_ kids--who'll go and talk to the poor little chap?"