TREATING OF LARKIN AND HIS COMMISSION
"Well," said Lynn, looking across at "Tenby," "I'm glad it's going to be
lived in at last, poor thing. It makes me quite mis'rable to see it
standing there in the sun with its eyes shut up tight as if it wanted to
wake up on'y it darerunt."
"Like the Sleeping Beauty," said Pauline.
Lynn, in whose composition had run from babyhood a marked vein of
poetry, shook her hair back from her face.
"I made a song about it down at the waterfall the other day," she said.
"Only mamma wasn't here to write it down, and I didn't know if you could
spell all the words, Paul."
"What nonsense!" said Paul, "as if I couldn't spell any word a child
like you could think of."
"Well, write it then," urged Lynn, "and I can send it in my next letter
to mamma; the rhyums in it came quite right this time."
So Pauline, having nothing better to do, and anxious to display her
spelling prowess, fished out of her pocket a bit of pencil and one of
Octavius Smith's trade cards that drew attention to his prime line of
bacon. This last Larkin had pressed upon her that very morning, and
urged her to put it on the mantelpiece, where their visitors could see
it. They owed him a return. Morning after morning did he, after
receiving his orders from Miss Bibby at the kitchen door, ride his horse
to the road at one side of the house, where some well-grown pines made a
kindly screen, and there let the children, one after the other, have all
the delights of a stolen ride. The ever-present dread of Miss Bibby's
discovery naturally added a fearful joy to the proceedings "A judge's
eldest daughter astride a grocer's horse!" Pauline could readily imagine
the lady's tone of horror.
It seemed very easy repayment for the happiest moment of the dull day to
promise to put this advertisement in evidence. But at present it was
only the white back of the card that was pressed into service.
Lynn's eyes grew round and solemn, as they always did when she was
delivering herself of a "song." She stared hard at the shuttered house.
"Call it 'The Very Sad House,'" she said.
"'The Very Sad House,'" wrote Pauline obediently.
"No, cross that out," said Lynn; "I remember I thought of a better name.
It's called 'Forsaked.'"
Pauline grumbled at this. "You mustn't alter any more," she said; "even
writing very small I can't get much in."
"Well," said Lynn, "write this down." And she dictated slowly. And
slowly and a little painfully, for the space was cramped, Pauline
wrote:--
"'Silent and sad it wates by the road,
And it's eyes are shut with tears.
Oh, Tenby, my heart is so greavous for you,
You haven't woked up for years.
Why don't you open your eyelids up wide
And laugh and dance and frolick outside?
And why don't--'"
"There can't be any more," said Pauline inexorably; "I'm at the bottom
of the card."
"Oh," said the little poetess piteously, "you must put in the end
lines,--can't you turn over?"
"Well, go on," said Pauline--"but it's very silly. As if a house _could_
frolic outside of itself! Mother will laugh like anything."
But Lynn's face was trustfully serene. Mother never laughed.
"Go on," she said,--"the next line is, 'Out on the grass.'"
"I won't write stories," said Pauline decisively. "There's not a bit of
grass in that garden, and you know there isn't."
Lynn looked distressed.
"But there ought to be," she said.
"But there _isn't_," repeated Pauline; "and I tell you I won't write
untruths."
"Very well," said Lynn meekly, "it can be earth, only it doesn't sound
so green. Say,
'Out on the earth where the fairies play;
Come and play with us, oh, come and play.'"
"'Out on the earth where the fairies play,'" wrote Pauline, and the next
line said, "Prime middle cuts at Octavius Smith's, Elevenpence a pound."
"Here's Larkin," called Muffie excitedly, "an' he's coming very slowly,
so he can't be in a hurry. Let's ask him for another ride."
The four clambered on to the gate again.
Larkin was riding back with lowered crest.
He was a thin lad, small for fourteen, with sharp features and blue
eyes, and a head of hair nearer in shade to an orange than to the lowly
carrot to which red hair is popularly likened. He wore a khaki coat a
size too small for him, and an old Panama hat some big-headed "stranger"
had left behind. Round this latter dangled a string veil that he had
manufactured for himself against the ubiquitous and famous mountain fly.
But the flamboyant head drooped wretchedly just at present.
He pulled up at the gate, seeing Miss Bibby was not on guard, and poured
out a graphic account of the ride between himself and Howie. Browning's
"Ghent to Aix" was nothing to it, and "How we beat the Favourite" was
colourless narrative to the early part of Larkin's recital. But then the
tragedy happened. Larkin's horse got a pebble in its foot, and went dead
lame. Howie shot ahead and caught the lady of the house just as she was
reluctantly sallying forth to find one of his trade and leave her order.
"An' she's got a baby--patent foods and biscuits," said Larkin in a
choked voice, "and I saw quite four boys,--oatmeal, tins of jam, bacon,
butter,--I wouldn't have lost her for anything. An' only for giving you
kids a ride this morning I'd have heard sooner, an' got the start of
Howie."
The children felt quite crushed to think they were the cause of Larkin's
great loss. For a loss it was indeed; both boys received commissions on
the accounts of the new customers they obtained, and a lady with a baby
and four hungry boys, not to mention a maid or two, and possible
visitors, was not to be picked up every day.
Then Pauline had a brilliant thought.
"We know of another new one," she cried. "'Tenby' is taken; a man's
coming up by to-night's train. Howie doesn't know, no one knows but
ourselves,--that will make up to you, Larkin. Men eat more than babies."
Larkin was greatly excited. He made rapid plans: he would slip his cards
under the door to-night; he would present himself at the house the
moment it was unlocked in the morning. He would take butter, eggs,
sugar, with him, so that breakfast at least would be comfortable, and
the wife or housekeeper, or maiden sister, whichever the "man" brought
with him, would bless his thoughtfulness, and promptly promise her
custom.
Then his jaw dropped with a sudden recollection.
To-morrow was his holiday--the only whole week-day holiday he received
in six months. He had arranged to go home, as he always did, catching
the 11 o'clock train that night, and travelling through the midnight to
the highest point of the mountains, and into the early dawn down, down
the Great Zigzag on the other side, till he came out on the plain to a
little siding, where he scrambled out with his bundle, and shouldered it
briskly, and trudged along eight miles, perhaps, to a wretched selection
where his father, for his mother and six or seven children younger than
Larkin, fought the losing fight of the Man on the Land. A few hours
here, slipping his wages into his mother's reluctant hand, escorted by
his father round the place to see the latest devices for trapping
rabbits and other pests, telling his brothers stirring tales of the
struggles between himself and Howie, then the long tramp to the station,
and the travelling through the night again, snatching his only chance of
sleep sitting upright in his crowded carriage, he fitted his holidays
naturally into the Railway Commissioners' Cheap Excursion seasons. And
then the fight again in the new-born day with Howie.
The lad looked miserable. How could he give up such a holiday? Yet how
allow Howie an uncontested victory with the latest stranger?
Max and Muffie had run back along the path in pursuit of a lively
lizard. Only Lynn and Pauline, their sweet little faces ashine with
sympathy, hung on the gate.
The lad blurted out his highest hope to them. He gave his mother his
wages, of course, he told them, but he had been saving up his
commissions for a special purpose. He wanted to put "a bit of stuff" on
the Melbourne Cup.
"I know I'll win," he said, with glistening eyes. "It'll be five hundred
at least,--p'raps a cool thou,--then I'll buy Octavius and Septimus out,
and mother and the old man shall chuck up that dirty selection, and come
an' get all the custom here. And the kids can go to school, an' I'll get
Polly an' Blarnche a pianner." The rapt look of the visionary was on his
face.
But he was torn with the conflict; it was plain he must give up either
his holiday or his commission on the new "stranger."
Pauline's position as eldest had developed her naturally resourceful and
intrepid disposition.
"Larkin," she said, "I've thought what to do. You go and see your
mother. _We'll_ get you the new man's custom. And before Howie gets a
chance of it."
Then Anna appeared on the verandah, ringing the lunch bell violently,
and Larkin rode home his dead lame horse, and Pauline marched into the
house with her head up, the other children following and clamouring to
be told of her great plan.