“When there’s nobody to hear it, what’s the use? But I’m supposed
to keep it up as long as there’s anybody around. Oh, dear, I get
so tired hiding away behind the waterfall when people come. I just
couldn’t help coming out to see you. Do you like me?”
“Yes,” said Merrimeg.
“I like you too. Would you--do you think you could--kiss me?”
Merrimeg waded in to her and kissed her on the cheek. She gave a
great sigh.
“Now you’ve made me warm all over. I wish you’d stay with me. I can
show you things, lots of things. Wouldn’t you like to see them?”
“What kind of things?”
“Oh, all kinds. But you haven’t washed your face with May-dew yet,
have you?”
“No.”
“Because that would spoil it. Give me your hand, and I’ll take you
back there behind the waterfall.”
“Oh,” said Merrimeg. “I couldn’t--I--”
“Come along. Back of the waterfall I’ll show you lots of things. Hold
my hand tight. That’s right. Here we go.”
She pulled Merrimeg along to the waterfall. “Stoop down,” she said,
and pulled Merrimeg head-foremost into it. The water pounded on
Merrimeg’s back, and she gasped for breath. The next moment she was
through on the other side.
“Oh!” she cried. “I mustn’t! I must go back!”
“Please do come along with me,” said Myrma, and held her hand tight.
It was pitch dark. Merrimeg was rather frightened, but she was very
curious too. She let herself be led onward, and in a few moments they
began to go down hill. For a long, long time they walked down hill,
in the pitch dark. The way became steeper and steeper. “I’m afraid,”
whispered Merrimeg. “Why, it’s perfectly safe,” said Myrma. “I only
hope nobody’ll come to the brook while I’m away.”
They were deep, deep down in the earth when they stopped. Myrma
seemed to push against something, and in a moment a door opened, and
she drew Merrimeg through.
On the other side--really, it didn’t seem possible there could
be such a place, so deep underground. It was a long and beautiful
valley, with a blue roof high overhead, exactly like the sky. A road
ran down the valley between meadows all spangled with daisies and
buttercups. The light that spread everywhere was the soft light of
early morning. Here and there in the meadows were blossoming trees, a
lovely mass of pink and white. The scent of honeysuckle came on the
cool breeze.
“Isn’t it lovely!” said Merrimeg.
“Of course,” said Myrma. “It’s always lovely in springtime. I think
he’ll be here in a minute.”
“Who?” said Merrimeg.
“Old Porringer. He runs the stage-coach. He ought to be here by this
time--Here he comes!”
Down the road came a little glass coach, drawn by a pair of tiny
white ponies. On the coachman’s seat was a little old man with a
white beard. “Whoa!” he piped up, and drew in the ponies. Merrimeg
laughed at the sight of this little coach, made all of glass, and
the cunning little ponies, and the funny little old coachman.
“Anything to laugh at?” said the old coachman, sitting up straight.
“Never mind, Porringer,” said Myrma. “We want to take a trip with
you.”
“Where do you want to stop?” said Old Porringer.
“At number fifteen, number thirty-five, and number eighty,” said
Myrma.
“Jump in then,” said Old Porringer, and flourished his little whip.
Myrma opened the door of the glass coach, and the two little girls
got in and sat down. The ponies pranced, the coachman touched them
up with his whip, and away they went at a smart trot down the road.
Merrimeg laughed with glee.
“_Now_ aren’t you glad you came with me?” said Myrma.
“Do you suppose he’d let us drive the ponies?” said Merrimeg.
“Oh no,” said Myrma. “He has to be very careful. There are bad
creatures along the road, and they try to break the glass, and he
has to watch out for them. If they break it to pieces before he
gets to the end of the road, it’ll be a bad thing for you. They do,
sometimes. You never can tell.”
“Oh!” said Merrimeg, a little alarmed.
“All you have to do is to have a good time, and leave it to him.
He always has to start out each time with a new coach, because the
old one is broken to pieces by the time he gets to the end of the
road. But the less you think about it the better. Just look at those
buttercups in the meadow! I know how to tell whether you like butter.”
The coach sped merrily along, and the little girls chattered gaily.
Once there sprang up beside the road an ugly little imp with big
ears, who threw a stone after them; but Old Porringer whipped up the
ponies, and the stone missed the coach. The little girls laughed.
Merrimeg grew drowsy after a while, with the easy motion of the coach
and the soft spring air, and at last she put her head back and went
to sleep. She was awakened once by the sound of breaking glass, and
she found that a stone had come through a corner of the coach; but it
didn’t seem to matter, and she went to sleep again.
The next thing she knew, Myrma was shaking her arm. “We’re going to
stop now,” said Myrma, and Merrimeg sat up and rubbed her eyes.
She found she was looking into a mirror, which she hadn’t noticed
before, hanging opposite her in the coach. She saw herself in it. She
was a grown girl, seemingly about fifteen years old, and her hair
was done in a pigtail, and her dress was down to her ankles. She was
carrying school-books in her arm.
She wasn’t the least bit surprised, strange to say. It seemed as if
she had always been as old as that. She didn’t realize that it must
have been years and years since she started on this journey. Could
she have been asleep all that time? However, all she was thinking
about was, that if you multiplied _a_ + _b_ by _a_ - _b_, what was
the answer? She was about to open one of her school books, when the
coach stopped, and they got out before a large building which had a
sign on it with the number “15.”
Boys and girls of her own age were going into this building. Myrma
followed her in, but Merrimeg quite forgot about her companion. She
seemed to know exactly what to do. She walked down a hall and into
a schoolroom, and sat down at a desk. Other boys and girls were
at their desks, and the teacher, a tall lady with spectacles, was
writing with chalk on a blackboard.
Merrimeg felt a tug at her pigtail, and she turned round quickly. The
boy at the desk behind her was gazing hard at a book in his hand. He
was a jolly-looking boy.
“Did you pull my hair, Peter Prawn?” she said to him, in great
indignation.
The boy looked up innocently. “Who, me?” he said.
“Yes, you,” she said. “If you do that once more, I’ll--I’ll-- You’re
just horrid, and I wish you wouldn’t ever speak to me again. So
there.”
Master Peter laughed, and this made her angrier still. But she
couldn’t help thinking what a jolly laugh it was.
“Order!” said the teacher. “The class in algebra will come to order.
Answer to your names as I call the roll.”
Chalk, blackboard, _a + b_, _x - y_, teacher handing out papers, boys
playing tricks, girls passing notes,--all this dragged on forever and
forever, and there didn’t seem to be any hope of ever getting out;
but a bell rang at last, and school was over.
The glass coach was waiting outside. Merrimeg noticed that it was
broken in several places. Myrma took her hand, and they sat down
inside the coach. Old Porringer touched up his ponies, and away they
ran, faster than before.
“What’s the matter with your hair?” said Myrma.
Merrimeg looked at the end of her pigtail, and it was all green.
“Oh, it’s that horrid boy,” she said. “He’s dipped it in his
ink-well. I’ll never never speak to him again.”
The ponies trotted much faster down the valley now. The blossoms
had dropped from the trees, and the air was warmer and the light
brighter. Merrimeg yawned and closed her eyes. “I think I’ll take a
little nap,” she said.
When she woke up, the mirror was before her again, and she looked at
herself in it. She was a grown woman. Her hair was coiled at the back
of her head. She was tall and slender, and her head nearly touched
the roof of the coach. She looked as if she might have been about
thirty-five years old. Myrma looked very tiny beside her. The coach
was badly broken, in many places.
“Now we’re going to get out,” said Myrma, and the coach stopped
before a pretty little cottage covered with vines. Over the door was
the number, “35.”
“I’ll wait for you here,” said Myrma, and Merrimeg gathered up her
skirts and ran to the cottage door.
“Peter!” she cried; and the door opened, and a jolly-looking young
man, of about her own age, opened the door and took her into his
arms. He had very nice laughing eyes.
“Dearest!” he said.
“Oh, Peter!” she said. “Is he better now?”
“Yes, darling, it’s only measles. Nothing to worry about.”
“Mother! Mother!” came two voices from inside, and a boy of ten and a
girl of seven ran out and threw their arms about her. She kissed them
both, and they all went in together.
A little boy of three or four was lying in his crib, in a darkened
room, and she leaned over him and squeezed his hot little hand.
“Mother,” he said, “I want a drink of water.”
“You shall have it, darling,” she said; but Peter, her husband, had
already gone for it, and when he brought it, she said to him:
“Now, Peter, you and the children must stay out of this room. Has
Maggie brought the clean sheets yet?”
“She never does,” said Peter, “not unless you go after them first.”
“Then I’ll just go and get them; and remember to keep the children
out of here while I’m gone.”
“Hadn’t I better go for you?”
“No, I want to see her about the napkins too. I won’t be long.”
She kissed him, and patted the little boy in the crib, and waved
good-bye to the other two children, and ran out to the coach.
“Good-bye, dear little family!” she cried, and got into the coach.
“I’ll be back directly!”
Old Porringer touched up his ponies, and they bounded away.
“I’ll tell him where to stop,” said Merrimeg to Myrma. “I wonder why
it is that washerwomen are always so unreliable.”
It was very hot in the valley now. The weeds by the roadside were
tall, and bees were buzzing over the clover in the fields. It was
midsummer. The valley was narrower than before; hills were rising
more abruptly on either side. The ponies ran faster and faster.
“It does get so hot here in the summer,” said Merrimeg. “It’s very
trying for the children, especially when they’re sick.” She yawned.
“I’ve been up so much lately with the baby. But I mustn’t go to
sleep.” She closed her eyes, just to keep the light out; the motion
of the coach was very soothing; her head fell forward on her breast;
she was sound asleep.
She must have slept a long, long while. She awoke with a shiver. It
was snowing. The glass coach was broken, almost to pieces. The cold
wind blew the snow in upon her. It was growing dark, but she could
make out that high and gloomy mountains hemmed in the road closer and
closer on each side. The ponies sped so swiftly that they seemed to
be flying.
She looked at herself in the mirror opposite. She was old, very old.
Her face was wrinkled, but there was something sweet about it, too.
Her hair was snow-white, brushed smoothly from a part in the middle.
Her hands were knotted and trembling, and they rested together on the
head of a cane. She wore a dress of plain black silk, with lace about
the neck. She was quite small and bent. How many years she must have
been asleep in the coach! But she didn’t think of that.
“We’re nearly at the end of the road,” said Myrma.
“Yes, yes, my child,” said Merrimeg. “It’s good to be there at last.”
“We have to pass the giant, and then we’ll be safe,” said Myrma.
As she said this, a great dark figure rose up beside the road, and
hurled with both hands a mighty rock straight at the coach. The
mirror and all the front of the coach were struck into a thousand
splinters. Merrimeg laughed gently. “Nothing can harm me,” she said.
“That’s the last,” said Myrma. “Now we’ve escaped them all. We’ll get
to the end of the road in safety.”
“I can’t help thinking,” said the old lady, “that it’s rather a
frail coach for such a hard journey. It really ought to be made of
iron.” She smiled, as though she were alluding to the mistake of a
careless child. It was plain that she was not at all unhappy about it.
The coach stopped. A great wall of rock rose up darkly, just ahead.
It was the end of the road.
They stepped out onto the snowy ground, and Merrimeg turned round to
say good-bye. The old coachman touched his cap with his whip. The
ponies arched their necks and bowed and pawed the ground. There was
nothing left of the coach’s body except the seats.
Myrma took the old lady’s hand, and pointed towards a lighted window
which glowed in the darkness.
“Yes, I know,” said Merrimeg.
They stood before an old, old house, with a knocker on the door. Over
the knocker was the number “80.”
“Come in,” said Myrma, and she opened the door.
Inside was a warm and cosy room. Candles were glimmering on a
polished table, and a fire was sparkling on the open hearth. A
grandfather’s clock was going tick-tock in the corner.
Merrimeg gave a sigh of contentment. She sat down in an easy chair
before the fire, and sat there nodding her head at it and smiling to
herself. Her cane was resting against her knee. Her old hands were
folded in her lap.
“Bring them in,” she said, and Myrma went out through a rear door.
In a moment there were children’s voices in the room, crying
“Grandmother!” and half a dozen boys and girls, big and little, were
sitting round her on the floor, looking up at her fondly. She laid
her hand on the head of the littlest, and smoothed his curls. But she
kept nodding at the fire all the while, as if her thoughts were far
off.
“Mother,” said some grown-up voices, and two young men and a young
woman stood beside her, leaning down to her fondly. Still she kept
smiling at the fire, as if she were thinking of something else.
“It’s time for Peter to come,” she said in a low voice, as if to
herself. “He ought to be with me now.”
The grownups looked at each other and shook their heads.
“I remember,” she said, “how he used to tease me in school. Once he
dipped my hair in the green ink. Well, well. I used to get very angry
with him. But I think I was only pretending.”
Her head sank down a little on her breast.
“He had such nice laughing eyes when he was a boy. I suppose that’s
what made me love him first.”
She folded her hands again in her lap, and her head sank lower on her
breast.
“There’s no need to worry about the baby, Peter. I’ll sit up with
him to-night. You must go to bed now. You won’t be fit for anything
to-morrow if you don’t.”
Her voice was not more than a whisper now.
“No, I’m not sorry about anything. Everything’s been all right. I’ve
had you, and that’s enough. No, you mustn’t say that. Trouble? Yes,
but love makes even that beautiful too.”
She raised her head and gazed into the fire, and then closed her eyes.
“He’ll be here in time. He won’t leave me at the end of the road
alone. I’m there now, Peter. Yes. I do see you. It’s all right now.”
Her head began to droop down, little by little, onto her breast; and
as it was sinking, sinking, a new voice sounded in the room, and it
said:
“I believe it is, brother, I believe it is.”
“You’re always right, brother,” said another voice.
“Have you got the May-dew?” said the first voice.
“Right here, in the little bottle.”
“Then pour it out in my hand.”
It was Malkin and Nibby, the gnomes, and brother Nibby was holding
out a little bottle filled with what looked like water. He poured out
a little into the hollow of brother Malkin’s hand. Brother Malkin
rubbed it gently on the old lady’s cheek.
[Illustration: “HAVE YOU GOT THE MAY-DEW?”]
As he did so, all the others faded away out of sight, and left the
gnomes and Merrimeg alone in the room.
Brother Nibby poured out more of the May-dew into brother Malkin’s
hand, and Malkin rubbed it gently over the poor wrinkled old face.
The face began to take on color, and the wrinkles began to disappear.
“More, brother,” said Malkin.
In another moment the May-dew was all used up. The instant it was
gone--well, Merrimeg herself, a little girl, her own little self,
rosy-cheeked, barefoot, lively as a lark, was sitting in the chair
before the fire. She jumped down and cried out:
“What have you been doing to me, you naughty gnomes?”
“Rather cross to-day,” said Malkin.
“No, please, tell me! I’m sorry,” said Merrimeg.
“You tell her,” said Malkin.
“I think you’re the one to tell her, brother,” said Nibby. “You’re
so--”
“What did you have in that bottle?” said Merrimeg, rather impatiently.
“I thought she knew we had May-dew in it,” said Malkin.
“Yes, I certainly thought she knew that,” said Nibby.
“Have you been washing my face with May-dew?” said Merrimeg.
“I should think she’d know that without being told; wouldn’t you,
brother Nibby?” said Malkin.
“I should certainly think so, if you ask me,” said Nibby.
“Then let’s start home at once!” cried Merrimeg. “Mother will be
worried if I’m later than usual. Come along!”
Through the rear door they found their way to a cave in the mountain,
and at the end of this cave they found an underground stream, and
beside this stream they found the gnomes’ canoe. They were in it in a
jiffy, and in another jiffy the gnomes were paddling up stream for
dear life.
“Here we are,” said Malkin at last, and they got out at the bottom
of a ladder that climbed the wall of their tunnel. At the top of the
ladder Malkin pushed open a trapdoor, and they all went up through
the opening into the gnomes’ kitchen.
“I suppose we ought to invite her to stay and rest,” said Malkin.
“Just what I was going to say, if you hadn’t taken the words out of
my mouth,” said Nibby. “Suppose you--”
“Oh no, thank you, I can’t,” said Merrimeg. “But I’m ever so much
obliged to you, just the same, and now I’ve got to run home in a
hurry.”
“Quite polite, after all, brother,” said Malkin.
“Just what I was thinking,” said Nibby.
“Good-bye!” cried Merrimeg, and went up the ladder to the trapdoor
in the ceiling and out into the world. The sun was shining and the
squirrels were scampering up the trees and the birds were singing
and-- Away she flew as fast as her feet would carry her, through the
woods and down the village street and in at the back door of her own
house.
“Well!” said her mother, taking her hands out of the dough. “You must
have gone to the end of the world and back!”
“Yes’m,” said Merrimeg.
“Did you get your face washed with May-dew?”
“Yes, mother,” said Merrimeg.
[Illustration]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.