Produced by Lionel Sear
Illustration: "Flowers, Ma'am? Tuppence and a penny a bunch."
(Artist unattrib.)
BETTER THAN PLAY.
By
MABEL QUILLER-COUCH.
Author of "A waif and a Welcome," "Zach and Debby,"
"The Story of Jessie," etc.
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 Bouverie Street and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard, E.C.4
CONTENTS.
Chapter.
I. WASHING DAY TEMPERS.
II. HOW THE DAY ENDED.
III. THE LITTLE HERB-BED.
IV. SAGE BUSHES AND ROSE BUSHES.
V. WHAT AUNT MAGGIE SUGGESTED.
VI. FIRST CUSTOMERS.
VII. WHAT LAY BEYOND THE MILESTONE.
VIII. ROCKET'S HELP IS REQUIRED.
IX. HOME AGAIN.
X. CHRISTMAS.
XI. A STEP FORWARD.
XII. SUCCESS.
CHAPTER I.
WASHING DAY TEMPERS.
Down at the Henders' cottage all was misery and discomfort; the house was
full of bad temper, steam, and the smell of soap-suds. It was
washing-day, and the children hated washing-day. For one thing, Aunt Emma
was always very cross, and for another, they never knew what to do with
themselves. They were not allowed indoors, for they "choked up the
place," she said, "and there wasn't room to move,"; so they had to stay
outside; but they must make no noise, for she could not bear it, and they
must not wander away to play, for they might be wanted at any minute, to
run an errand, or chop up a few sticks. Bella, too, the eldest of them
all, was needed every now and again to hang a few things on the bushes;
but that was all the break they had in the weary day.
Bella often wished her aunt would let her do more to help her. She was
sure she could, and it would have been ever so much more pleasant than
standing around seeing everything go wrong, yet doing nothing.
Her aunt was always scolding her for being idle, and grumbling at the
amount of work she herself had to do; yet, if Bella attempted to help in
any way, there was a great to-do, and her aunt grew so angry about it that
Bella soon gave up attempting. It grieved her dreadfully, though.
The home had been so different when her mother was alive, so neat and
pretty, and all of them so happy.
There had rarely been any scolding, and certainly there was never any
grumbling about the work.
"Why, work is pleasure, if you take it in the right spirit," Mrs. Hender
used to say, cheerfully; "it means life and happiness--but everything
depends, of course, on the spirit in which you take it."
Certainly Aunt Emma did not take it in 'the right spirit.' She was always
grumbling, and never what you would call cheerful. If she had to go up
the few stairs to the bedrooms, she grumbled, and if she had to go to the
door to answer a knock, she grumbled. If the children used an extra cup,
or the windows got dirty, or the steps muddy, she complained bitterly of
the hardship it was to her. And few things are harder to bear than to
have to live with a perpetual grumbler, to listen to constant complaints,
--especially, too, if the grumbler will not let any one help her to do the
work she grumbles so much about. A grumbler spoils every one's pleasure,
and gets none herself; and the worst of it is, it is a disease that grows
on one terribly.
In the Henders' case it was doing great harm, as Bella was old enough to
see. Her father had always, in the old days, come home after his work,
and, after they had all had a cosy meal together, had worked in the garden
through the summer evenings, or, in the winter, sat by the fire reading
the paper or a book to his wife while she sewed. He had long since ceased
all that, though, for one can't sit and read in any comfort in a kitchen
that's all of a muddle, and to a woman who is grumbling all the time; and
soon he found there was a cosy, quiet resting-place at the 'Red Lion,'
with plenty of cheerfulness and good temper, and no grumbling.
The children, too, never came indoors if they could stay out, and as Aunt
Emma complained of their noise if they played in the garden, they
naturally went farther away, if they could manage to escape.
But for Bella, this was not so easy. She was useful, though her aunt
would never admit it, and she liked to have her within call. There was
nowhere that Bella cared to go, except to Mrs. Langley's, farther down the
lane, and thither Miss Hender did not allow her to go very often, though
no one knew why.
Mrs. Langley, or 'Aunt Maggie,' as the children had been taught to call
her, had been their mother's greatest friend and nearest neighbour,
and during their mother's lifetime they had felt almost as much at home in
her house as in their own. Little Margaret, indeed, had been called after
her.
Altogether life was very, very different now, and to Bella's mind the
present seemed anything but a happy time.
She sat on the step to-day, and looked soberly at the sky. The weather
was dull and gloomy, with a moisture in the air which would entirely keep
the clothes from drying; and a bad drying day is in itself enough to try
the temper of the most amiable of washerwomen.
"Oh, I do wish the sun would shine," she thought anxiously; "it would make
such a difference." Bella spent her days in a state of mingled hope and
dread--hope that things would happen to please her aunt, and dread of
things happening to ruffle her.
The baker's cart drew up at the gate, and the man, springing lightly down,
came up the garden-path with a basket of loaves. "Now she will be vexed
at having to answer the door," thought Bella. "I wish I knew what bread
to take in."
That, however, was more than she dare do, so she contented herself with
going in, to warn her aunt of the baker's approach.
"The baker is coming, Aunt Emma," she said quietly.
"Well, s'posing he is! Surely you'm old enough to take the bread from
him; or do you want me to do it while you look on? It won't soil your
hands to touch a loaf of bread."
"How many loaves shall I take in?" asked Bella patiently.
"Oh, I don't know! I don't know what we've got, and I can't stay to see.
Three would do, I should hope."
Bella looked at the baker's basket, and her spirit sank; there were pale
loaves and brown ones, and loaves of all shapes. Which should she take?
Which would please her aunt? At last she picked up what she thought was a
nice tempting-looking one. Surely that would do for one, she thought.
The baker interposed. "Miss Hender don't like that shape," he said
shortly; "she thinks 'em too crusty. Most folks prefer 'em," he added
meaningly.
Bella laid down the loaf and took up another.
"Miss Hender don't----" the man began again, but stopped. What did it
matter to him, he thought, what the cross-grained woman liked or didn't
like? He had trouble enough when she came to the door herself; so he
hastily put two other loaves in Bella's hands, and left as quickly as he
could.
Of course, when Aunt Emma caught sight of the loaves, there was a nagging
and a scolding. They were wrong in shape and colour and size, and
everything else. "I should have thought a great girl like you might have
known the kind of loaf we generally have, and not have taken in such
things as those!"
"As you are always complaining of those we do have, I thought you'd like a
change," was the retort that trembled on Bella's lips, but she kept the
words back. "I thought these looked nice," was all she said.
Indeed, they looked so nice and smelt so deliciously, she could have eaten
a large crust of one then and there. She was very hungry, poor child; but
on washing-days the children were not expected to be hungry, and, as a
rule, no meal was got for any one between breakfast and the evening one,
when their father came home. On washing-days nothing could be attended to
but the washing.
Bella heard little Margery crying softly in the garden. The child was
hungry too, she knew. She was but four years old, and she needed
something. Bella's heart ached for her baby sister, the little one who
had been the pet and darling of the household during her mother's
lifetime. As she listened to the plaintive crying, the thought would come
into her mind, "What would her mother feel if she knew that her baby was
hungry, and neglected and unhappy?" and at last she could bear the thought
and the crying no longer. Summoning up all her courage, she went out to
the scullery, where her aunt was bustling about, grumbling to herself all
the time.
"Aunt Emma," she said half-timidly, "may I give Margery something to eat?
She is so hungry. I hear her crying."
Miss Hender did not answer. "Have you seen the poker?" she demanded,
impatiently. "One of those boys has walked off with it, I'll be bound!
and here is my fire going out for the want of a stirring up. How anybody
can be expected to get on where there's a parcel of children----"
"I am sure the boys haven't had it, Aunt Emma," declared Bella patiently.
"I saw it here just now, and they haven't moved from the garden; they've
been reading all the morning."
"Well, I can't waste any more time," cried the angry woman, "I'll take
this," and impetuously catching up the stick that she used for lifting the
clothes out of the copper, she thrust it into the fire.
Bella stood by wondering and embarrassed. The fire burnt up the better
for its stirring, it is true, but the stick was ruined for its usual
purpose. Blackened and charred as it was, it was only fit for putting
back into the fire again as fuel. Even to Bella's childish mind the
foolishness and wickedness of such a hasty action was only too plain.
A moment later, when the copper-stick itself was wanted, it was unusable,
and there was no other at hand. One would have to be bought, or made,
or found. While looking for something that would do in place of it, the
poker was found lying on the table, amongst the pans and things littered
there. This only made Miss Hender more irritable than before.
"To think it should have been there all the time, and me wasting all that
time looking for it!" she exclaimed, as indignantly as though the poker
were actually to blame.
In the corner of the scullery was a chair with one leg loose, waiting for
the father to find time to mend it. Miss Hender's flashing eye fell on
this, and seizing the leg and plunging it into the boiling copper, she
lifted out the clothes into the washing-tray with it. The chair leg was
dusty and it was covered with yellow varnish and paint, but in her foolish
and senseless rage she never stopped to think of this, and for months and
months after the stains on the clothing stood as a reminder and a
reproach, for not even time and frequent washings could remove them
altogether.
Bella turned away miserable enough. The chair was ruined, of course, as
well as the clothes, and she was old enough to understand the wicked waste
such an outburst of temper may cause.
"It was one of those mother saved up for and bought," she said to herself,
the tears welling up in her eyes, "and she was so proud of them.
I wish father had mended it at once, then it wouldn't have been lying
about in the scullery, in her way."
A voice from the garden, though, drove the other thoughts from her mind;
it was Margery's calling softly to her, "Bella, I'm so hungry. Give
Margery something to eat, she's so hungry."
Bella's misery deepened to anger against the cause of all this
wretchedness; the bad-tempered woman who was spoiling all their happiness.
"It isn't her house," she argued to herself; "it's father's house, and
ours, and I am sure he wouldn't have Margery or any of us go hungry.
It is cruel to starve a little thing like that, and I've a good mind to go
to the larder and get her something to eat."
But fear of the storm such an act would raise, and fear lest some of it
should fall on Margery, a feeling of respect too for her aunt's authority,
kept her from doing this, but did not lessen her determination to relieve
her little sister's wants, and an idea came to her that sent her quickly
to the garden with a brightened face.
"Tom," she said softly to the elder of her two brothers, "Margery is so
hungry, and I believe there won't be any dinner at all to-day.
Aunt Emma hasn't said anything about it, and she's in an awful temper."
Tom and Charlie groaned, "And we're starving!"
"I shall go and pull up a turnip to eat," said Charlie defiantly.
"I wish the apples were big enough to be any good."
"I wish I'd got a penny to buy some buns," said Tom.
Bella's face grew thoughtful. She had four-pence of her own in her
money-box, that she had been saving to buy herself a pair of gloves for
Sundays. She had long wanted them, and twopence more would enable her to
get them, but----
"I'll give you a penny each to buy some buns," she said impulsively,
"if you will do something first, and promise to be very careful."
Of course they both promised vigorously.
"Well, I want you to take Margery down the lane to Aunt Maggie, and ask
her if she will give her something to eat. I am sure she will, if she
knows how hungry she is. Then you can run and buy your buns, and you must
go back and fetch Margery again, and bring her home, without Aunt Emma's
knowing anything about it. It would only make her more angry."
Of course the boys promised again to do their best. A whispered word
stopped Margery's wailing, the pennies were soon abstracted from the
money-box, and then the little trio made their way quietly down the
garden, and out at the gate into the lane. Once outside their pace,
spurred by hunger, quickened considerably, and famished little Margery was
very soon sitting perfectly happy in Aunt Maggie's kitchen, with a mug of
milk before her and a large slice of bread and butter and sugar.