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HOODIE
by
MRS. MOLESWORTH
Illustrated by Lewis Baumer
W. & R. Chambers. Limited.
London and Edinburgh.
1897
Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
[Illustration: "Nobody loves poor Hoodie."]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. AT WAR WITH THE WORLD
CHAPTER II. HOODIE GOES IN SEARCH OF A GRANDMOTHER
CHAPTER III. LITTLE BABY AND ITS MOTHER
CHAPTER IV. MAUDIE'S GODMOTHER
CHAPTER V. STORIES TELLING
CHAPTER VI. "THE CHINTZ CURTAINS"
CHAPTER VII. TWO TRUES
CHAPTER VIII. HOODIE'S FOUNDLING
CHAPTER IX. THE GOLDEN CAGE
CHAPTER X. FLOWN
CHAPTER XI. HOODIE'S DISOBEDIENCE
CHAPTER XII. HOODIE AWAKES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
"Nobody loves poor Hoodie"
"I had my basket on my arm, and the big doggie stood beside me"
"It's just like Martin's cottage"
"Who is zou, please?"
Poor Cross
"Up in the nursley," said Hoodie coolly
"Has zou had a nice sleep?"
"He took off the cap and bowed low"
Hec and Duke ... sticking daisies on to a thorn
"If peoples interrumpt, I wish they'd finish their interrumpting,
and not stop in the middle"
"The darling," said Hoodie ecstatically
Hec refused to be comforted
"Please 'agive me and kiss me"
"Slowly and cautiously, whistling softly all the time"
"Oh dear," she exclaimed. "Are the flowers all gone?"
"Tell Martin they're for Miss Maudie with Miss Hoodie's love"
Finis
[Illustration: HOODIE]
CHAPTER I.
AT WAR WITH THE WORLD.
"Who would think so small a thing
Could make so great a pother?"
A pretty, cheerful nursery--a nursery in which surely children could not
but be happy--with pictures on the walls and toys in the glass-doored
cupboard, and rocking-horse and doll-house, and everything a child's
heart could wish for. Spring sunshine faint but clear, like the first
pale primrose, peeping in at the window, a merry fire crackling away in
the tidy hearth. And just in front of it, for it is early spring only, a
group of children pleasant to see. A soft-haired, quiet-eyed little
girl, a book open upon her knee, and at each side, nestling in beside
her, a cherub-faced dot of a boy, listening to the story she was reading
aloud.
Such a peaceful, pretty picture! Ah yes--what a pity to disturb it. But
I must show you the whole of it. Into this pretty nursery flies another
child--a tiny fairy of a girl, tiny even for her years which are but
five--in she flies, down the long passage which leads to the children's
quarters, in at the nursery door, which, in spite of her hurry, she
carefully closes, and seeing that the other door is open closes it too,
then, flying back to the centre of the room, deliberately sets to work
to--children, can you guess?--to _scream_!
She sheds no tears, there is no grief, only wrath, great and furious, in
the little face which should have been so pretty, in the big blue eyes
which should have been so sweet. She shakes herself till her fair,
fluffy hair is all in a "touzle," she dances with rage till her neck and
arms are crimson, from time to time in the middle of her screams calling
out at the pitch of her voice,
"I don't love _any_ body. I don't want _any_ 'sing. I don't like _any_
'sing. Go away ugly evybody. I don't love Pince. Go away ugly Pince."
The girl by the fire looked up for a moment.
"Prince isn't here," she said. "Oh, Hoodie," she went on wearily, "how
_can_ you--how can you be so naughty?"
Hoodie turned towards her sister.
"I don't love _zou_, Maudie. Naughty, ugly Maudie. Pince _sall_ be
here. Naughty Maudie. I _sall_ be naughty. I don't love _any_ body."
"Nebber mind, Maudie dear, nebber mind naughty Hoodie. Hoodie's always
naughty. Please go on, Maudie," said one of the two little boys.
Magdalen tried to go on. But in the midst of such a din, it was very
difficult to make herself heard, and at last she gave up in despair.
"It's no good, Hec," she said, "I can't go on. Hoodie spoils everything
when she gets like that."
The little fellows' faces lengthened.
"Hoodie 'poils ebery'sing," they murmured.
Just then the door opened.
"Miss Hoodie," said the maid who came in, "Miss Hoodie again! And Sunday
morning too--the day you should be extra good."
"The day she is nearly always extra naughty," said Magdalen, with the
superiority of eight years old. "It's no good speaking to her, Martin.
She's going to go on--she shut the doors first."
Martin seated herself composedly beside the three children.
"I never did see such a child," she said; "no, never. You would think,
Miss Maudie, she might stop if she liked, seeing how she can keep it in
like, as long as she's afraid of her Mamma hearing. If she can keep it
in till she shuts the doors, she might keep it in altogether, you would
think."
"Stop! of course she can stop if she likes," said Magdalen. "What was it
set her off, Martin, do you know?"
"Something about Prince," replied Martin. "Thomas said she was trying to
get him to come up-stairs with her, and he whistled to him, not knowing,
and Prince ran away from her."
"Hoodie's keeped all her bicsits for Pince, for a treat for him for
Sunday," said little Hec, with some evident sympathy for Hoodie.
"She shouldn't be so silly then," said Maudie. "What do dogs know about
its being Sunday, and treats? I know Hoodie always spoils _our_ Sundays,
and we're better than dogs."
"I don't love you, naughty Maudie. I don't love _any_ body," screamed
Hoodie.
"It certainly doesn't look as if you did, and very soon nobody will love
you, Miss Hoodie, if you go on so," said Martin, virtuously.
"I wish," said Duke, the second twin, "I wish papa would build anoder
_gate_ big house and put Hoodie to live there all alone, don't you,
Maudie? A gate big house where not nobody could hear her sceaming."
Great applause followed this brilliant idea--but the laughter only
increased Hoodie's fury. Duke was the next she turned upon.
"I don't love you, naughty, ugly Duke," she screamed. "I don't love
_any_ body. Go away evybody, go away, go _away_, go AWAY."
Such was Hoodie--poor Hoodie--at five years old!
What had made her so naughty? That was the question that puzzled
everybody concerned--not forgetting Hoodie herself.
"I didn't make myself. 'Tisn't my fault. God should have made Hoodie
gooder," she would say defiantly.
And was it not a puzzle? There was Maudie, just as nice and good a
little girl as one would wish to see, and Hec and Duke, both
comfortable, good-natured little fellows--all three, children to whom
things came right, and whose presence in the world seemed as natural and
pleasant a thing as that of birds in the trees or daisies in the grass.
Why should not Hoodie be like them? She was born in July--one bright
sunny day when all the world was rejoicing--and little Maudie had been
so pleased to have a baby sister, and her godmother had begged that she
might be called "Julian," and everybody had, for a time, made much of
her. But, alas, as the years went on, they told a different
tale--governesses and nurses, sister and brothers, it was the same story
with all--Hoodie's temper was the strangest and the worst that ever a
child had made herself and other people miserable by.
"I could really fancy," said Maudie one day, "I could really fancy, if
there _were_ such things as fairies, you know--that one of them had been
offended at not being asked to Hoodie's christening."
And when Hoodie grew old enough to hear fairy tales, this speech of
Maudie's came back to her mind, and she wondered, with the strange
unexpressed bewilderment of a child, if indeed there were some mystery
about her naughtiness--some spell cast upon her which it was hopeless to
try to break. For she knew she was naughty, very naughty--she never
thought of denying it. Only deep down _somewhere_ in her--where, she
could not have told--there was a feeling that she did not _want_ to be
naughty--she did not _like_ being naughty--there was a mistake about her
somehow or somewhere, which nobody could understand or ever would, and
which it never entered her head to try to explain to any one.
The screaming went on steadily--agreeably for Hoodie herself, it is to
be hoped, for it certainly was anything but pleasant for other people.
Suddenly there came a lull--a step was heard coming along the passage,
and light as it was, Hoodie's quick ears were the first to hear it. It
was mother!
Hoodie's power of self-control was really very great--her screams ceased
entirely, only, as her fury had this time been _very_ great even for
her, it had naturally arrived at tears and sobs, and in consequence she
was not able all at once to stifle the sobs that shook her, or even by
scrubbing at her poor eyes with all her might, with a rather grimy
little ball which she called her "pocket-hankerwich," could she succeed
in destroying all traces of the storm. She ran over to the window and
stood with her back to the door, staring, or pretending to stare, down
at the pretty garden beds, gay with crocuses and snowdrops. But mother's
eyes were not to be so easily deceived. One glance at the peaceful,
though subdued group round the fireplace, one anxious look at the little
figure standing solitary by the window, its fat dimpled shoulders
convulsively heaving every moment or two, its face resolutely turned
away, and mother knew all.
"What is wrong with Miss Julian?" she asked.
"Really, ma'am, I can't quite say. I was down-stairs and when I came
back she was in one of her ways, and you know, ma'am, it is no use
speaking to her while she's like that. It was just some trifle about
Prince, but if it wasn't that it would be something else."
Martin's tone was slightly querulous, but Mrs. Caryll could not resent
it. Martin as a rule was so good and patient with the children, and with
the other three--Maudie and the boys--there was never a shadow of
trouble. Even to Hoodie she was really kind, and though sometimes it did
seem as if she did not take what is called "quite the right way with
her," it would hardly have been fair to blame her for that, seeing that
this mysterious right way in Hoodie's case, was quite as great a puzzle
as the passage round the North Pole! So great a puzzle indeed that its
very existence had come to be doubted, for hitherto one thing only about
it was certain--no one had ever succeeded in finding it.
On the whole, mother herself managed Hoodie better than any one else,
but that, I fear, is not saying much. For whenever, after a long talk
and many tears, Mrs. Caryll left the nursery with a somewhat lightened
heart, thinking that for some time to come at least there was going to
be peace, she was almost _sure_ to be disappointed. Generally these very
times were followed by the worst outbreaks, and in despair Mrs. Caryll
would leave off talks and gentle measures and simply lock the
aggravating little girl into her bedroom, whence in a few hours, the fit
having at last worked itself off, Hoodie would emerge, silent indeed,
but _so_ cross, so unbearably irritable, that no one in the nursery
dared look at her, much less speak to her, till a night's rest had to
some extent soothed her down.
It really seemed as if, as Martin said, there was nothing to do but
leave her to herself, and it was with a terror of making things worse
that Hoodie's mother now stood and looked at her, asking herself what
_would_ be best to do.
"Perhaps it would have been better," she said to herself, "if I had
taken no notice of anything wrong," for she believed that Hoodie's
intense mortification at _mother's_ knowing of her naughtiness was what
gave her more influence over her than any one else. But it was not quite
the kind of influence she most cared to have--mortification, to my
thinking, never does any one any good, but only fosters the evil _roots_
from whence all these troubles spring. "If Hoodie cared about my knowing
for fear of it grieving me, I would understand better how to manage
her," thought Mrs. Caryll. "But if it were so she would show her sorrow
in a different way. It is her pride, not her love, that is concerned."
She was right, but wrong too. Hoodie was proud, but also intensely
loving. She did grieve in her own wild, unreasonable way, at distressing
her mother, but most of all she grieved that _she_ should be the cause
of it. It would have made her sorry for mother to be grieved by Maudie
or the boys, but still that would have been different. It was the misery
of believing herself to be always the cause of the unhappiness that
seemed to come back and back upon her, making the very time at which she
was "sorriest," the time at which it was hardest to be good.
Hoodie's mother stood and considered. Then she crossed the room and
touched her little girl on the neck. The bare white dumpling of a
shoulder just "shruggled itself up" a little higher, but Hoodie gave no
other sign of having felt anything.
"Hoodie," said her mother.
No reply.
"_Hoodie_," a little louder.
Hoodie _had_ to look round. What a face! Red eyes, tangled hair,
frowning forehead, tight shut lips. No, the good angels had not yet
found their way back to Hoodie's heart--the little black dog was still
curled up on her back, scowling at every one that came near.
"Hoodie," said her mother very quietly, "come with me to my room."
Hoodie did not resist. She allowed her mother to take her hand and lead
her away. As the door closed after them Maudie gave a sigh of relief.
"Let's go on with our reading as long as we can," she said. "Hoodie will
be worse than ever after she comes back. As soon as ever mother has gone
down again and she thinks she won't hear, she'll begin again. Won't she,
Martin?"
"She often is like that," said Martin, "but perhaps she'll be better
to-day. Go on reading, Miss Maudie, and take no notice of her when she
comes in."
In about ten minutes the door opened and Hoodie appeared. She marched in
with a half-defiant air--evidently "humble-pie" had at present no
attraction for her. No one took any notice of her. This did not suit
Hoodie. She dragged her little chair across the room and placed it
beside her sister's.
"Doin' to be dood," she announced.
"I'm glad to hear it, Miss Hoodie," said Martin.
"Doin' to be dood. Maudie, litsen," said Hoodie impatiently, giving
Magdalen's chair a jerk, "doin' to be _dood_."
"Very well, Hoodie, only please don't pull my chair," said Maudie, in
some fear and trembling.
"You're not to read, you're to litsen when I speak," said Hoodie, "and I
will pull your chair, if I like. I love mother, don't love _you_,
Maudie, ugly 'sing that you is."
Maudie did not answer. She glanced up at Martin for advice.
"Well, Miss Maudie," said Martin cheerfully, "aren't you going on with
your story?"
"It's done, Martin, you forget," said Maudie.
Martin gave her a glance which Maudie understood. "Say something to take
off her attention," was the interpretation of it.
"I'll look for another. Don't run away, Hec and Duke," said the elder
sister quickly. "I am afraid there is nothing in this book but what we
have read lots of times," she added, after turning over the leaves for a
minute or two. "I wish it was somebody's birthday soon, and then we'd
get some new stories."
"My birthday next," observed Hoodie, complacently.
"No, Hoodie, 'tisn't," exclaimed both the boys, "'tisn't your birthday
nextest. 'Tis ours. Aren't it now, Martin? You told us."
"Yes, dears, it is yours next. In June, Miss Hoodie dear, is theirs,
you know, and yours won't be till July."
Martin made the statement gingerly. She was uncommonly afraid of what
she might be drawing on herself by her venturing to disagree with the
small autocrat of the nursery. To her surprise Hoodie took the
information philosophically, relieving her feelings only by a piece of
biting satire.
"That's acos the months is wrong. When _I_ make the months they will
come 'July, June,' not 'June, July,'" she said.
Hec and Duke thought this so original that they began laughing. A
doubtful expression crept over Hoodie's face. Should she resent it, or
laugh with them? Martin took the bull by the horns.
"Shall I tell you a story, my dears?" she said, "of what I once did on
one of my birthdays when I was little? It came into my mind the other
day, and I wonder I never told it you before, for it's something like
the story of 'Little Red Riding Hood,' that Miss Hoodie got her name
from."
"No, no, Martin. Hoodie didn't get her name from that," said Maudie
eagerly. "It was this way. Mother got her a little hood _like_ Red
Riding Hood's in our picture--only it was pink and not scarlet, and
Hoodie liked it so, she screamed when they took it off, and once she
was ill and she screamed so for it that they had to put it on her even
in bed, and she had it on three days running."
"Zee days zunning," repeated Hoodie, nodding her head with great
satisfaction. She was evidently very proud of this legend of her
infancy.
"Dear me!" said Martin, "that was a funny fancy, to be sure. But the
hood wouldn't be so pretty after that."
"No, of course," said Maudie. "It was all crumpled up and spoilt. And
mamma got her a new one, but Hoodie wouldn't have it on, and so after
that she didn't have hoods any more, only she was always called Hoodie."
"Always called Hoodie," reiterated the heroine of this remarkable
anecdote, quite restored to good humour by finding herself looked upon
as a historical character.
"And now, Martin, what did you do on your birthday?" said Magdalen.
"It was when I was eight," said Martin. "We lived in the country and we
had a nice little farm. My father managed the farm and my mother had the
dairy. And my old grandmother lived about three miles off in a little
cottage near a wood--that was one thing that made me say it was like Red
Riding Hood. I was very fond of going to see my grandmother, and I
always counted it one of my treats. So the day before my birthday mother
said to me, 'Janie, you shall go to your grandmother's to-morrow, if you
like, as it is your birthday, and I'll pack a little basket for you to
take to her, with some fresh eggs and butter. And I'll make a little
cake for you to take too, and you shall stay to tea with her and have
the cake to eat.'"
"Had it pums in?" said Hec.
"And laisins?" added Duke.
"Silly boy," said Hoodie from the elevation of her five years, "pums
_is_ laisins."
"Oh," said Duke submissively.
"Do on, Martin, do on, kick, kick, Martin," said Hoodie, "gee-up-ping"
on her footstool as if Martin was a lazy horse she was trying to make go
faster.
"Well," continued Martin, "I was pleased to go as you can fancy, and the
next afternoon off I set. It was such a nice day. The flowers were just
at their best--I stopped more than once to gather honeysuckle and twist
it round the handle of the basket, it looked so pretty, and when I got
to the little wood near which stood grandmother's cottage, I could
hardly get on for stopping to look at the flowers that peeped out at the
edge that skirted the road. And then I thought to myself how beautiful
it must be further in the wood, and what a lovely bunch of cowslips I
might gather. There was a little stile just where I was standing--I
climbed over it and put the basket down on the ground, as I could not
run with it in my hand, and then off I set, down a little path between
the trees, glancing at every side as I ran, for the flowers I wanted.
But I was disappointed--in the wood the flowers were not near so pretty
as at the edge, and after picking a few, I threw them away again and
turned back to the stile, where I had left my basket. But fancy my
trouble when I found it was not there! I had been away such a short
time, I could not believe it was really gone. I searched and I
searched--all in vain--it was really _gone_--so at last I sat down and
cried. I cried till I was tired of crying, and then I got up and walked
slowly on to grandmother's. She was so kind I knew she would not scold
me, but still she would be sorry and disappointed. And I really felt as
if I would be too ashamed ever to go home and tell mother. When I got to
grandmother's and walked up the little path to the cottage door--she had
a nice little garden with roses and stocks and gilly-flowers and
sweet-williams and lots of other nice old flowers--I was surprised to
see it closed. It was not often grandmother was out of an afternoon,
and besides, being my birthday, she might have known I would likely be
coming to see her.
"'Everything's gone wrong with me to-day,' I said to myself, and vexed
to think of the lost basket and the long hot walk back in the sun, I sat
down on the little bench at the door and began to cry again. It seemed
too bad that my birthday should be spoilt like that. I had cried so much
that my eyes were sore, and I leant my head against the back of the
bench--it stood in a sort of little arbour--and closed them. I was not
sleepy, I was only tired and stupid-like, but you can't fancy how
startled I was when suddenly I felt something lick my hand, which was
hanging down at my side. I opened my eyes and jumped up. There stood
beside me a great big dog--a dog I had never seen before, looking up at
me with his gentle, soft eyes, while on the ground at my feet was my
lost basket! I was so delighted that I couldn't feel frightened,
besides, who could have been frightened of such a dear, kind-looking
dog? I threw my arms round his neck and hugged him, and told him he was
a darling to have found my basket, and for a minute or two I really
thought to myself he must be a sort of fairy--he seemed to have come so
wonderful-like, all of a sudden. Just then I heard voices coming along
the road. I ran to the gate to see who it was, and there, to my joy,
was grandmother, and beside her a neighbour of hers, a gamekeeper I had
seen now and then. I had my basket on my arm and the big doggie stood
beside me."
[Illustration: "I had my basket on my arm and the big doggie stood
beside me."]