A NEW FRIEND
'Good-morrow to the day so fair,
Good-morrow, sir, to you.'
One hot afternoon, when the holidays were about three weeks old, found
Peggy wandering disconsolately round the farmyard alone. Lilian was
away, spending a few days in Shrewsbury with a distant cousin; Father
had gone to Warford, and had taken Bobby with him; even Rollo had
disappeared on some mysterious errand not entirely disconnected with
bones, so the young lady was left for once to her own devices.
Aunt Helen had broadly hinted that an hour's practice of much-neglected
pieces upon the piano in the Rose Parlour would be a profitable means of
employing the time, and the fear lest this threat should become an
actual command caused Peggy to shun the neighbourhood of the house with
elaborate care, and betake herself, with a selection of pets, to the
barn.
But the rabbits were stupid and sleepy this afternoon. Even Jack, the
magpie, seemed to feel the heat, and refused to amuse his young
mistress, while Prickles snored on in his box of hay, oblivious to all
coaxings and blandishments.
'Bother the creatures!' said Peggy at last, giving it up in despair. 'If
they want to go to sleep, I suppose they must! I wonder if it would be
worth while going down to the harvest field? I'm afraid David wouldn't
let me drive the reaper. No, I know what I'll do.'
And she jumped up, full of a new idea which had suddenly flashed into
her mind.
Down the pasture she pelted, her red hat looking like a new species of
poppy among the grass, and, taking a flying leap over the fence, made
her way along the dusty road to a place where a large willow overhung
the path.
The tree was old, so old and decayed that the upper side of the trunk
had worn away altogether, leaving nothing but a hollow, crumbling shell,
as rotten and dry as matchwood. Into this cavity Miss Peggy proceeded to
creep, where, concealed by the new branches which had grown from the old
stump, she found she could lie at full length, quite hidden from sight,
while through a hole in the bark she could obtain an excellent view of
every one who passed in the road below. The first to come by was Mr.
Griffiths, the stout old miller, mounted on his equally fat horse, the
two jogging comfortably along, almost asleep in the sunshine. Peggy
allowed him to get well beneath her, then, taking a pebble from her
pocket, she let it fall plump in the middle of his white hat. The miller
sat up with a jump, and reined in the old horse, staring into the tree
with such blank amazement on his rubicund countenance that Peggy had to
stuff her fingers into her mouth to stifle her mirth.
'Shoo! Hi!' cried Mr. Griffiths, clapping his hands.
But, like Brer Rabbit, Peggy 'lay low and said nuffin',' and the old man
rode slowly on, turning round in his saddle for a last lingering look
as he went.
Encouraged by this success, Peggy's next venture was on a pedlar, who
came down the road with a pack on his back and a thick stick in his
hand. I am afraid this time her stone was bigger, for it bounced with
such effect on his shoulder, that he turned round with a flow of
language far from elegant, shaking his fist at the tree with so much
fury that Peggy was in terror lest he should climb up to find the author
of the assault; but he evidently thought the day too hot for such
exercises, and with a final abusive epithet walked away muttering curses
on all the children in creation.
'It's not safe to use stones,' thought Peggy. 'They know someone must be
up here to drop them. I'll try little pieces of wood instead, and then
they'll think it's a bird or a squirrel.'
After that, she had excellent sport, for the women were beginning to
return from Warford Market with their empty baskets, and she was able to
cause wonder and mystification in many a rustic breast, without the
slightest chance of discovery.
She was growing almost tired of the fun, when she heard a cheery
whistle, and a boy of about fourteen came sauntering slowly down the
road. He was rather a nice-looking boy, with merry brown eyes, a
freckled nose, and frizzy chestnut hair, which stood up like a mop all
over his head, and he had a particularly jolly, breezy air about him.
Peggy had acquired such practice at her interesting occupation by this
time that she was able to drop her piece of wood neatly down the back of
his neck exactly at the moment he passed below.
'Hello!' cried the boy, turning round, and flinging a stone into the
tree. 'A squirrel, I'll be bound! I guess it's no use you hiding 'way up
there, old fellow! I'll unearth you before you're much older!' And he
commenced such an onslaught of stones that, to avoid the descending
shower, Peggy tried to creep deeper into the hollow cavity where she was
lying.
But the poor, rotten old tree could stand the strain no longer, and,
with an awful crash, down came the overhanging bough, bringing Peggy to
the ground with a good deal more speed than elegance.
'I say! What the dickens! Great Scott! Are you hurt?' exclaimed the boy,
regarding with much astonishment the crumpled heap of sailor frock,
brown curls, and splinters of willow-wood that had suddenly descended at
his feet.
Peggy got up, feeling tenderly at her shins, which had suffered most in
the fall.
'I don't think I'm quite killed,' she replied slowly. 'But I've no doubt
there'll be heaps of bruises to-morrow.'
'So you were the squirrel! It was rather a cute dodge, and well done. I
guess you're something of a tomboy, young lady, aren't you?' said the
boy, grinning appreciatively.
'No, I'm not,' said Peggy, indignant at the old reproach; 'I'm only fond
of a little fun. I know who _you_ are. You're the boy who's staying with
Miss Forster at the Willows. I saw you in church on Sunday;' and she
nodded convincingly.
'Why, I believe I saw you, too! You dropped your collection money, and
made a rabbit out of your pocket-handkerchief,' chuckling at the
remembrance.
'Aren't you Miss Forster's nephew? What's your name? Why have you never
been to Gorswen before? Where is your home?' asked Peggy, wondering at
his slight American accent.
The boy whistled.
'Whew! what a catechism! My name's Archie, if you want to know, and my
godfathers and godmother gave it to me at my baptism. Yes, Miss Forster
is my aunt, and I haven't been to Gorswen before, because I was raised
in Colorado, and that's a little too far for chance visits; but I'm
going to locate here now most of the time, I guess. Is there anything
else you would like to ask?'
And the brown eyes looked at her quizzically.
'Yes, I should,' admitted Peggy frankly. 'I want to know what you're
doing in the corner of Miss Forster's garden. I can hear you sawing and
hammering there every morning.'
'I wonder you don't come to see!'
'Well, I would if anyone _invited_ me!'
The boy laughed.
'All right!' he said good-naturedly. 'Come along now, and I'll show you,
if you like. If we cut over the hedge here we can drop straight down
into the garden without going round by the road. I guess a girl who can
climb a tree to play squirrel won't shy at a fence. Eh, Miss Tomboy?'
Peggy replied by lightly vaulting over the obstacle, and following her
new friend with much promptitude, giving him a condensed history of
herself and family as she ran to keep up with his long strides.
'Here we are!' cried the boy, jumping over the little stream that
bounded the Willows garden, and watching Peggy's heroic leap after with
an eye of secret approval. 'There, now, if you want to see what I have
been doing, you can!'
He put his hands in his pockets, and whistled carelessly, but it was
evident, all the same, that he was pleased to show off his handiwork,
even to a little girl. Peggy gave a gasp of astonishment and delight,
for by the side of the stream was fixed the prettiest little miniature
water-wheel, which was turning round as merrily as the miller's own.
'Oh, how lovely!' she cried. 'You don't mean to say you made that
yourself?'
For the efforts of Joe and Bobby at carpentry were generally of a very
rough description.
'Of course I did. Do you reckon I'd get the village joiner to fix it?
Precious much good he'd be at a job like this, the clumsy old idiot! But
the wheel's nothing. Come over here, and you'll see what it turns!'
'A grindstone! How splendid! Why, it's going round ever so fast when you
put on that catch!'
'I can grind your pen-knife for you, if you like,' suggested Archie
magnanimously. 'I'd admire to do it.'
'Haven't got one,' said Peggy sadly. 'I lost mine out of my pocket the
other day, when I fell into the stream.'
'Ah! girls have such stupid pockets, they never can keep anything in
them. Never mind, perhaps this will be more in your line;' and lifting
up a lid, he showed a tiny churn, calculated to fill the feminine soul
with rapture.
'You could put some cream in that, and make enough butter for your tea,'
he said, when Peggy had exhausted her list of admiring adjectives. 'I'll
let you do it some time, if you want. But if you like the churn, what do
you think of this, now?' And, stooping forward, he moved a switch, and
the strains of a little musical-box were heard playing 'The Last Rose of
Summer' with wonderfully correct time and tune.
'You'll never persuade me you made that, too!' cried Peggy, turning upon
him with wide-open eyes.
'Indeed I did!' laughed Archie. 'Oh, it's not so difficult, after all.
See, I'll show it to you. It's only made with pins set round in a circle
on a piece of board, with a nail on a pivot in the centre to revolve
round and strike them. The hard part of it was to set the pins just
right. You see, the shortness or longness of them makes the difference
in the notes, and the distance between gives the time. It took me a
jolly long while to puzzle it all out, I can tell you!'
'I think you're a genius!' declared Peggy, who was absolutely steeped in
admiration.
'Why, no!' said the boy. 'But I reckon to go in for engineering some
time, so it's all practice, you see. When I can get some more tools and
things I want to set up a hydraulic pump to water the garden. I believe
I could put electric light all over the house, if aunt would only let me
try.'
'I'm afraid you might blow us all up, my dear boy!' exclaimed the
pleasant voice of Miss Forster, who had joined them unobserved. 'So you
have been making Peggy's acquaintance? She had better stay to tea, now
she is here. I will send a message up to the Abbey to say we are keeping
her.'
Peggy beamed with delight, for she wanted to see more of Archie's
wonderful work, and also the cakes and jam at the Willows had a
reputation for excellence quite unsurpassed in the neighbourhood.
Miss Forster was a little elderly lady, with a neat, bird-like
appearance, and a brisk, cheerful manner, who seemed to match the prim,
square house with its green door and brass knocker, and white sun-blinds
over the windows. Everything about the place was kept in the most
exquisite order--never a weed on the paths nor a daisy on the
lawns--while indoors the old-fashioned rooms were the very perfection of
neatness, and the polish on the Chippendale furniture was a thing to
wonder at.
When Miss Forster had adopted her brother's youngest boy from Colorado,
her neighbours held up their hands in amazement, and suggested that one
of her London nieces would have proved a far more satisfactory
companion. But Miss Forster herself thought otherwise.
'My nieces are dear girls,' she said, 'but they take all I say for
gospel, and have not an original idea among them. I want some fresh
young life in the place, to keep me from quite stagnating. Archie brings
a breath of the new world with him, and outside interests which I hope
may prevent me from falling into the narrow rut that is so often the
fate of elderly spinsters in retired villages. It is quite possible that
he may upset the house in some slight degree, but on the whole it is
good for me to have my little ways interfered with. One is apt to get
into the habit of thinking that the set of a curtain, or a speck of dust
on the mirror, are of more importance than the affairs of the universe.'
Since his arrival, Archie had certainly done his best to preserve his
aunt from any danger of stagnation, for his fertile brain kept her in a
perpetual tremor as to what the 'dear boy' would do next.
'We work everything by machinery out in America, you know, aunt,' he
explained. 'And it feels just terribly behind the times to come home and
find you jogging on in the same hum-drum way this old country has done
since the conquest. I guess if you could come out to Colorado, you'd get
an eye-opener!'
Miss Forster opened her eyes wide enough, as it was, to see a neat
telephone, made of two empty cocoa-tins and a piece of waxed string,
fixed up between the house and the stables, while a small windmill on
the scullery roof turned the coffee-grinder in the kitchen, to the huge
amazement and delight of the cook. She had gasped a little at the
incubator, made of an old biscuit-tin, and placed on the greenhouse
pipes.
'Would not a good sitting hen be really better, my dear boy?' she
suggested mildly. 'I don't see what you are going to do with the young
chicks when you hatch them out.'
'Oh, I'll have fixed up a foster-mother before the three weeks are up,'
said Archie. 'I'm lining a shallow box with plaster of Paris, and
sticking it full of feathers while it's wet. Then, if I keep it on the
hot pipes, it will feel for all the world like an old hen, and I don't
believe there'll be a chick that'll find out the difference!'
There seemed to be no end to Master Archie's wonderful inventions. The
boy had a great talent for mechanics, and was very painstaking in
carrying out all the minute details of his work. Most of his schemes
were really of use in the household, though occasionally some of them
were not attended with quite the success they deserved. He had hung the
great dinner-bell in the cherry-tree, and fastened a string from it to
his bed-post, so that he might scare the birds from the fruit in the
early morning; but unfortunately he had flung out his arms in his sleep
and set the bell ringing soon after midnight, bringing the neighbours
hurrying up to the Willows, thinking it was an alarm of fire. He had
manufactured a marvellous hat-grip, warranted to defy the windiest of
weather, and presented it to the housemaid; but when the poor girl tried
to take off her Sunday hat, she found it so tightly fixed to her hair
that it took the combined efforts of the other servants, aided by the
liberal use of a pair of scissors, to remove the construction from her
head. He had fixed a fire-escape to the landing window, and nearly
killed the trusting parlour-maid by letting her down in a blanket 'just
for practice,' while the cook was soaked through in a sudden application
of the hose-pipe to quench imaginary flames in the region of the
back-kitchen.
But I think the crowning achievement was an automatic currying-brush,
which was to be wound up and fixed on to the horse's back, and was to do
the work 'in just half the time old Fleming takes pottering over it.'
'Don't ee, now, Master Archie--don't ee, now!' remonstrated the poor old
coachman, with dismay in his soul. 'Horses is kittle cattle, and it
aren't right to play no tricks with 'em!'
'Don't you be alarmed, Fleming. I guess Captain will like it just
first-rate. He'll find it sort of soothing, and it'll put such a gloss
on him you'll be able to see your face in his coat. If it works all
right, I'll rig up an arrangement to milk the cows next.'
And the confident inventor wound up his little machine, and started it
on Captain's fat back. But the old horse would have nothing to say to
such a newfangled contrivance, and, with a snort of alarm, had nearly
kicked through the side of his stall, sending the currying-brush flying
in one direction and Master Archie head over heels in another.
'I reckon he's rather too old to catch on to it,' said the boy,
determined not to own himself beaten, as he picked up the ruins of his
clock-work. 'It would be best to start on a colt, and put it in as part
of the training. Never mind, I can use the wheels to make an alarum,
and fix it up in the harness-room, to go off at any time you like,
Fleming!'
But Fleming showed such a rooted distrust for anything that was intended
to 'go off,' and, indeed, such absolute abhorrence of any further
mechanical contrivance in the vicinity of the stables, that Archie had
transferred his attentions to the garden, where he was full of a scheme
for utilizing the water power of the little stream to irrigate the soil,
after the fashion of the Nile in Egypt, in a series of canals between
the beds, and had already made the hose-pipe work with capital effect by
means of a siphon and an old barrel.
This was a form of amusement which appealed far more to Miss Forster's
mind, for her flowers suffered much from drought in summer time, and she
was a keen competitor at the local horticultural shows, exhibiting some
of the largest carnations and the roundest dahlias in the neighbourhood.
So she watched with delight the growth of the hydraulic pump, groaning a
little over the dirty boots and muddied clothes that ensued, but
assuring her friends that the 'dear boy' was a perfect genius, and would
make his mark in the world, and relating the story of his achievements
with most unbounded pride and satisfaction.