FIR-TREE COTTAGE
To-morrow morning came all too soon. A pleasant letter from Aunt Grace
arrived at breakfast-time, containing a warm invitation for Punch to
take up his abode at Woodsleigh, which was a great relief and pleasure
to the rest of the party, but otherwise the day was a trying one. Mary
went about with a duster swathed round her head, as she always did during
the spring-cleaning, and there was a general feeling of bustle and
discomfort. The children wandered restlessly from room to room, trying to
help, but usually only succeeded in being in the way, and secretly they
rather longed for the cab which was to take them to the station in time
for the 11.35 train.
The cab came at last, and less than a quarter of an hour later they found
themselves installed with Punch and endless baggage in a second-class
railway carriage, while Mary stood on the platform smiling bravely.
Another few minutes, and the train was starting with a shriek and a pant.
All three children leaned out of the window, waving frantically, till
the line curved round a corner and Mary and her fluttering handkerchief
were lost to sight. After that it was Punch who saved the situation.
All his journeys to the seaside had failed to accustom him to railway
travelling, and he now took refuge under the seat, looking so cowed and
miserable that nobody could think of anything but how to comfort and
reassure him. They were so much occupied with this as to be quite taken
by surprise at reaching their destination in what seemed an astonishingly
short time.
The only people waiting on Woodsleigh platform were a lad who served both
as porter and ticket-collector and Aunt Grace herself—an Aunt Grace who
looked wonderfully young and pretty to be aunt and guardian to such a
big girl as Emmeline. She was, in fact, very much what her niece Kitty
might become a few years hence when transformed from a tomboy into
a fashionable, grown-up young lady. She hurried forward to open the
carriage door for the children, and greeted the whole party, including
Punch, with such frank delight at seeing them that not even Emmeline
could help being charmed, and a limpet-like twin was soon clinging to
either side of her in a devoted, if rather inconvenient, fashion.
‘We shall have to leave the boxes to be brought up by the milk-cart in
the course of the afternoon,’ explained Aunt Grace when the luggage had
all been taken out of the train. ‘We’re very primitive at Woodsleigh, and
the milk-cart’s the only thing we can boast of in the way of a public
conveyance. It won’t come till later on in the afternoon, but I can lend
brushes and sponges, so I hope you’ll be able to manage all right till
then.’
‘We did wash our hands just before coming, and Mary brushed all our
hairs,’ Micky was careful to assure her, ‘so you needn’t trouble to lend
us things. But thank you all the same,’ he added hastily, for fear of
hurting her feelings.
‘Micky, you _know_ Mary always makes us wash our hands and faces after
railway journeys!’ said Emmeline—a remark which Micky, who was just then
stooping down to undo Punch’s lead, found it convenient not to hear.
‘I hope before long to get a donkey and donkey-cart of our own,’ observed
Aunt Grace as they left the station and came out into a village street;
‘then we shan’t have to depend on the milk-cart, and it will be much more
convenient altogether.’
‘Oh, Aunt Grace, how lovely!’ exclaimed Kitty, giving a joyous little
skip. ‘Donkeys are such dears!’
‘I shall ride ours bare-back,’ announced Micky, ‘and teach him all sorts
of tricks.’
‘I’m always so glad to think of a donkey having a good home,’ said
Emmeline; ‘people are so cruel to them sometimes. When we stayed at the
seaside, it often made us quite sad to see how they were ill-treated.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Aunt Grace; ‘it is very sad. Two or three years ago
I was staying at the seaside with some children, who made a special
point of hiring the ones with unkind masters for extra long rides, and
never letting them be whipped, so as to give them a rest from being
ill-treated.’
‘I wish I knew those nice children,’ said Kitty.
‘And I expect they found the donkeys really went quite as well, didn’t
they, Aunt Grace?’ asked Emmeline, who had not yet learned that virtue
often has to be its own reward.
‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t say they did,’ owned Aunt Grace with a little
twinkle in her eye; ‘at the best of times they went at a slow and stately
pace somewhat resembling a funeral procession, and at the worst of times
they sat down comfortably in the middle of the road and refused to budge.
Still, I don’t doubt that if my friends had had the bringing up of those
donkeys from the first, they would have gone all right without being
beaten. It was simply that the poor creatures had got so used to it that
they didn’t understand anything else.’
‘Aren’t we nearly at your house?’ asked Kitty presently; ‘we seem
getting quite outside the village now.’
‘No, we have still about ten minute’s walk before we get to Fir-tree
Cottage,’ replied Aunt Grace; ‘it stands right away from other houses,
just outside a large wood. It’s very nice in most ways being quite out of
the village, for it makes one so much freer to do just as one likes, but
it’s rather inconvenient sometimes being so far from the station. It’s
really not so very much farther to Chudstone Station—the one you passed
next before Woodsleigh; indeed, when I have plenty of time, I sometimes
start from there instead of from Woodsleigh, for it makes a delightful
walk through the wood.’
‘How jolly to live in a cottage and so near a wood!’ cried Kitty, giving
another little skip.
‘As to living in a cottage, I’m afraid you won’t find it quite your idea
of one,’ said Aunt Grace, ‘though it really _was_ one before grandfather
built on the front part of the house. The wood’s real enough though, and
begins only just outside our back-garden gate, which is very charming of
it.’
‘I thought grandfather was a Professor,’ remarked Micky, looking puzzled.
‘Why, so he was,’ said Aunt Grace.
‘But if he built the front part of the house he must have been a
stone-mason, like Mary’s brother,’ objected Micky.
‘Aunt Grace didn’t mean that he built it with his own hands, you silly
child!’ said Emmeline, laughing.
‘But I don’t wonder Micky thought I did,’ said Aunt Grace kindly; ‘it was
very natural.’
Aunt Grace was right in saying that Fir-tree Cottage was not the kind
of cottage to which the children were used. It was what they considered
quite a large house, standing well back from the road among lawns and
shrubberies, and when they walked in at the front door they found
themselves, not in the poky little passage that Kitty had been picturing
to herself from her remembrances of seaside lodgings, but in a hall as
large as the one at their old home, and far more charming, for it was
bright with ferns and flowering plants and cosy with cushioned seats and
lion-skin rugs. In this hall they were met by a rather austere-looking
person whom Aunt Grace called Jane.
‘Jane was my nurse when I was a little girl,’ she said, ‘so we are very
old friends, and now she is going to help look after you;’ at which Jane
smiled grimly, and Emmeline thought how horrid it would be to have her to
look after them instead of kind, gentle Mary.
‘Now, we must certainly take Punch to be introduced to Cook,’ said Aunt
Grace; ‘she’s a splendid person for animals.’
This introduction was so successful that Emmeline forgot all disagreeable
impressions. Cook was found in her bright airy kitchen with its red-tiled
floor and rows of shining dish-covers, and she and Punch seemed quite
delighted with one another. ‘That’s a rare nice little dog,’ she kept
saying as he smelt round her skirts with marked approval. ‘Have you
shown them the kennel, miss?’ she added. ‘I give that a good scrubbing
yesterday as soon as ever I heard he was coming, so that will be all nice
and fresh for him now. There’s clean straw in too.’
‘We must go and admire it,’ said Aunt Grace, and they went through the
scullery and out into the back-yard, in one corner of which was an
enormous dog-kennel.
‘The last dog who lived here was a St. Bernard,’ explained Aunt Grace,
‘so Punch will find his quarters very roomy ones.’
‘Aunt Grace, you aren’t going to keep him chained up except when he goes
for walks, are you?’ asked Kitty.
‘Why, of course not,’ said Aunt Grace; ‘this is his private bedroom,
that’s all, and I no more expect him to stay here all day than I shall
expect _you_ to stay in your bedrooms.’
This so greatly relieved the children that they were in a mood to be
delighted with everything when Aunt Grace led them upstairs to show
them their own bedrooms. She took them first to the room which the two
girls were to share, and they both exclaimed at the sight of its dainty
white-painted furniture and fresh muslin hangings. In each half of the
room was a little white bed, a white wash-hand stand, and a white chest
of drawers with a looking-glass standing on the top of it.
‘It’s quite like grand grown-up ladies, both of us having a wash-stand
and a dressing-table to ourselves,’ said Kitty, with much satisfaction;
‘there was only one of each in the night-nursery at home.’
‘They are such pretty ones, too,’ said Emmeline. ‘I do love white enamel.’
‘I’m very glad you like them,’ said Aunt Grace, looking pleased; ‘I
always think one has so much more heart in keeping one’s room tidy if the
furniture’s nice.’
‘Yes, you won’t have to leave your things about here, Kitty,’ remarked
Emmeline, in her elder-sisterly way.
Kitty was not listening; she had rushed to the window. ‘I do believe—yes,
you really _can_ just see the sea!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Aunt Grace, may
we go there every day?’
‘I’m afraid it’s rather too far off to go there every day,’ said Aunt
Grace; ‘it’s a good five miles. Still, I hope we shall be able to go
there quite often—at all events when we’ve got our donkey-cart.’
There was a door between the girls’ room and the next, which Aunt Grace
pointed out to them. ‘My room is the next,’ she said, ‘so you’ll be able
to run in for any help you want. Jane will come in and do your hair in
the mornings, but of course she won’t always be there for the odds and
ends of things that need doing.’
‘I’ve done my own hair for quite a long time,’ Emmeline was careful to
inform her.
Aunt Grace did not seem much impressed. ‘That’s a good thing,’ she
observed cheerfully.
They went to Micky’s room after that. They had to cross the passage and
go down some steps in order to reach it, for it was in the part of the
house which had been the original Fir-tree Cottage, where the rooms
were all much lower—like cottage rooms in fact. There were but two of
them on the upstairs floor, and the other one was to be the schoolroom.
Underneath these two rooms were two others, now used as the scullery and
larder. Micky’s room was not quite so daintily furnished as his sisters’,
but it had a delightful view out on to the lawn and wood beyond, which
made it a very pleasant one. What especially gratified Micky, however,
was its being alone. ‘You need a man to sleep in this part of the
house,’ he remarked; ‘burglars would be sure to choose it to attack,
because they’d think there would be fewer people to shoot them, so it’s a
jolly good thing it’s me you’ve put here, and not the girls.’
‘Micky always sleeps with his gun at the foot of his bed, _just in
case_,’ said Kitty.
Just at that moment the dinner-bell rang.
‘Well, I must run and get ready,’ said Aunt Grace. ‘Can I lend anybody
anything?’
‘Thank you; we should be very grateful for a sponge,’ said Emmeline,
‘and, Aunt Grace, Micky _must_ wash, mustn’t he? Just look at his hands!’
Micky made a face at her, and Aunt Grace said calmly: ‘I expect he will
wash: gentlemen usually do. But I feel it’s a question we must leave to
himself—at all events till his luggage comes.’
Emmeline flushed crimson. Then a choky feeling came into her throat;
her eyes began to sting, and she had to hurry out of the room lest she
should burst out crying. It was not only that she was hurt for herself,
but her sense of loyalty was grieved. Mary had always made Micky wash his
hands before dinner. It would always be like this, she said to herself.
The others would leave off all the good ways they had been taught, and
whenever Emmeline, the only one who would never forget, tried to remind
them, Aunt Grace would snub her.
The chokiness and the stinging gradually passed off, and Emmeline could
trust her voice again.
‘Kitty, you really needn’t have gone and told Aunt Grace about our only
having one wash-stand and dressing-table at home,’ she snapped, as they
were washing their hands.
‘Why ever not?’ asked Kitty, opening her eyes.
‘It makes us seem such babies,’ said Emmeline, crossly; ‘and, though of
course you and Micky _are_ babies, it’s rather hard on me.’
Fortunately Kitty was both sweet-tempered and tactful, so she made no
answer, and the subject dropped. Emmeline, however, went down to the
dining-room in anything but a good temper. Even the sight of Micky with
spotlessly clean face and hands failed to soothe her; it was exactly like
Micky to go and wash his hands just in order to make her seem in the
wrong.
‘I think this clock is a little bit slow,’ said Aunt Grace, after a few
minutes of eager chatter on the twins’ part and silence on Emmeline’s,
which an onlooker might have described as sulky, but which she herself
considered dignified. ‘Would you mind telling me the right time by that
lovely little watch of yours, Emmeline?’
Wily Aunt Grace! That little gold watch which had been given her by her
mother was the pride and joy of Emmeline’s heart. Nothing so delighted
her as to be asked the time. She gave the required information with the
utmost graciousness; the dining-room clock was exactly three minutes
slow, it seemed, by the right time. Aunt Grace actually left her seat
then and there and went to the mantelpiece to move on the minute-hand
three spaces, and Emmeline began to wonder whether a person who cared so
much about the right time, and showed such a proper amount of faith in
her gold watch, could be so very worldly after all!
The children and Aunt Grace were just setting out for an exploring
expedition in the wood after dinner when Emmeline suddenly felt Micky,
who was walking by her side a little behind the others, press a hot,
sticky coin into her hand.
‘Why, what is it?’ she asked, with a wonder which did not grow less when
she discovered that it was a penny.
‘It’s to make up for making that face,’ said Micky, who had grown very
red. ‘It was beastly rude of me, but for the moment I had quite forgotten
about you being a girl.’
[Illustration: KITTY GAVE SUCH A BOUND OF DELIGHT THAT SHE NEARLY UPSET
HER TEA.]
‘Micky darling,’ said Emmeline, so much touched and ashamed that the
tears quite came into her eyes this time, ‘I really can’t take your
penny. Besides, it was all my fault for interfering.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Micky stoutly. ‘And anyhow, please do take it. I
shan’t feel a gentleman again till you do. Perhaps,’ he added as an
afterthought, ‘you might spend it on some marbles. I’ve lost so many of
mine down the mouse-hole and other places that there really aren’t enough
now when Kitty wants to play too, and perhaps if you had some of your own
you wouldn’t mind lending them us sometimes. But don’t, of course, get
them unless you like; it’s only a suggestion.’