A JOURNEY NORTH
Milly and Oliver lived at Willingham, a little town in Oxfordshire, as I
have already told you. Their father was a doctor, and they lived in an
old-fashioned house, in a street, with a long shady garden stretching
away behind it. Milly and Oliver loved their father, and whenever he put
his brown face inside the nursery door, two pairs of little feet went
running to meet him, and two pairs of little hands pulled him eagerly
into the room. But they saw him very seldom; whereas their mother was
always with them, teaching them their lessons, playing with them in the
garden, telling them stories, mending their frocks, tucking them up in
their snug little beds at night, sometimes praising them, sometimes
scolding them; always loving and looking after them. Milly and Olly
honestly believed that theirs was the best mother in the whole world.
Nobody else could find out such nice plays, or tell them such wonderful
stories, or dress dolls half so well. Two little neighbours of theirs,
Jacky and Francis, had a poor sick mother who always lay on the sofa,
and could hardly bear to have her little boys in the room with her.
Milly and Oliver were never tired of wondering how Jacky and Francis got
on with a mother like that. "How funny, and how dreadful it must be.
Poor Jacky and Francis!" It never came into their, heads to say, "Poor
Jacky's mother" too, but then you see they were such little people, and
little people have only room in their heads for a very few thoughts at a
time.
However, Milly had been away from her mother a good deal lately. About
six months before my story begins she had been sent to school, to a
kindergarten, as she was taught to call it. And there Milly had learnt
all kinds of wonderful things--she had learnt how to make mats out of
paper, blue mats, and pink mats, and yellow mats, and red mats; she had
learned how to make a bit of soft clay look like a box, or a stool, or a
bird's nest with three clay eggs inside it; she had begun to add up and
take away; and, above all, she had begun to learn geography, and
Fräulein--for Milly's mistress was a German, and had a German name--was
just now teaching her about islands, and lakes, and capes, and
peninsulas, and many other things that all little girls have to learn
about some time or other, unless they wish to grow up dunces.
As for Milly's looks, I have told you already that she had blue eyes and
a turn-up nose, and a dear sensible little face. And she had very thick
fair hair, that was always tumbling about her eyes, and making her look,
as nurse told her, like "a yellow owl in an ivy bush." Milly loved most
people, except perhaps John the gardener, who was rather cross to the
children, and was always calling to them not to walk "on them beds," and
to be sure not to touch any of his fruit or flowers. She loved her
father and her mother; she loved Olly with all her whole heart, though
he was a tease, she loved her nurse, whom she and Olly called Nana, and
who had been with them ever since Milly was born; and she loved
Fräulein, and was always begging flowers from her mother that she might
take them to school for Fräulein's table. So you see Milly was made up
of loving. And she was a thoughtful little girl too, tidy with her
dress, quick and quiet at her lessons, and always ready to sit still
with her fairy-book or her doll, when mother was busy or tired. But
there were two things in which Milly was not at all sensible in spite of
her sensible face. She was much too ready to cry when any little thing
went wrong, and she was dreadfully afraid of creatures of all sorts. She
was afraid of her father's big dog, she was afraid of the dear brown cow
that lived in the field beyond the garden, she was afraid of earwigs. I
am even ashamed to say she was afraid of spiders. Once she ran away as
if a lion were behind her from a white kitten that pulled her dress with
its frolicsome paws to make her play with it; but that, Milly would tell
you, was "when I was little," and she was quite sure she was a good deal
braver now.
Now what am I to tell you about Olly?
Olly was just a round ball of fun and mischief. He had brown hair, brown
eyes, a brown face, and brown hands. He was always touching and meddling
with everything, indoors and out, to see what was inside it, or what it
was made of. He liked teasing Milly, he liked his walks, he liked his
sleep in the morning, he liked his dinner, he liked his tea, he liked
everything in the world, except learning to read, and that he hated. He
could only do one thing besides mischief. He could sing all kinds of
tunes--quick tunes, slow tunes, and merry tunes. He had been able to
sing tunes ever since he was quite a tiny baby, and his father and
mother often talked together of how, in about a year, he should be
taught to play on the piano, or perhaps on the violin, if he liked it
better. You might hear his sharp, shrill little voice, singing about the
house and the garden all day long. John the gardener called it
"squealin'," and told Olly his songs were "capital good" for frightening
away the birds.
Now, perhaps, you know a little more about Milly and Olly than you did
when I began to tell you about them, and it is time you should hear of
what happened to them on that wonderful journey of theirs up to the
mountains.
First of all came the packing up. Milly could not make up her mind about
her dolls; she had three--Rose, Mattie, and Katie--but Rose's frocks
were very dirty, Mattie had a leg broken, and Katie's paint had been all
washed off one wet night, when Olly left her out on the lawn. Now which
of these was the tidiest and most respectable doll to take out on a
visit? Milly did not know how to settle it.
[Illustration: "'I can't do without my toys, Nana'"]
"I think, Nana," she said at last to her nurse, who was packing the
children's trunk, "I will take Katie. Mother always sends us away when
we get white faces to make us look nice and red again; so, perhaps, if I
take Katie her colour will come back too, you know."
"Perhaps it will, Miss Milly," said nurse, laughing; "anyhow, you had
better give me the doll you want directly, for it is time I packed all
the toys now. Now, Master Olly, you know I can't let you take all those
things."
For there was Olly dragging along his wheelbarrow heaped up with toys
with one hand, and his cart and horse with a box of bricks standing up
in it with the other. He would not listen to what Milly said about it,
and he would scarcely listen to nurse now.
"I can't do without my toys, Nana. I _must_ do mischief if you won't let
me take all my toys; I can't help it."
"I haven't got room for half those, Master Olly, and you'll have ever so
many new things to play with when we get to Ravensnest."
"There'll be the new children, Olly," said Milly, "and the little rivers
and all the funny new flowers."
"Those aren't toys," said Olly, looking ready to cry. "I don't know
nothing about them."
"Now," said nurse, making a place in the box, "bring me your bricks and
your big ball, and your picture-books. There, that's all I can spare
you."
"Wait one minute," said Olly, rushing off; and just then Mrs. Norton
called nurse away to speak to her in the drawing-room. When nurse came
back she saw nobody in the nursery. Milly had gone out in the garden,
Olly was nowhere to be seen. And who had shut down the trunk, which was
open when she left it? Me-ow, sounded very softly from somewhere close
by.
"Why--Spot! Spot!" called nurse.
Me-ow, Me-ow, came again; a sad choky little mew, right from the middle
of the children's trunk. "Master Olly and his tricks again," said nurse,
running to the box and opening it. There, on the top, lay a quantity of
frocks that nurse had left folded up on the floor, thrown in anyhow,
with some toys scattered among them, and the frocks and toys were all
dancing up and down as if they were bewitched. Nurse took out the
frocks, and there was the children's collar-box, a large round
cardboard-box with a lid, jumping from side to side like a box in a
fairy tale; and such dreadful pitiful little mews coming from the
inside! Nurse undid the lid, and out sprang Spot like a flash of
lightning, and ran as if she were running for her life out of the door
and down the stairs, and safe into the kitchen, where she cuddled
herself up in a corner of the fender, wishing with all her poor
trembling little heart that there were no such things in the world as
small boys. And then nurse heard a kind of kicking and scuffling in the
china cupboard, and when she opened it there sat Olly doubled up, his
brown eyes dancing like will-o'-the-wisps, and his little white teeth
grinning.
"Oh! Nana, she _did_ make a funny me-ow! I just said to her, Now,
Spottie, _wouldn't_ you like to go in my box? and she said, Yes; and I
made her such a comfy bed, and then I stuck all those frocks on the top
of her to keep her warm. Why did you let her out, Nana?"
"You little mischief," said Nana, "do you know you might have smothered
poor little Spot? And look at all these frocks; do you think I have got
nothing better to do than to tidy up after your tricks?"
But nurse never knew how to be very hard upon Olly; so all she did was
to set him up on a high chair with a picture-book, where she could see
all he was doing. There was no saying what he might take a fancy to pack
up next if she didn't keep an eye on him.
Well, presently all the packing was done, and Milly and Olly had gone to
say good-bye to Fräulein, and to Jacky and Francis. Wednesday evening
came, and they were to start early on Thursday morning. Olly begged
nurse to put him to bed very early, that he might "wake up krick"--quick
was a word Olly never could say. So to bed he went at half-past six, and
his head had scarcely touched the pillow two minutes before he had gone
cantering away into dreamland, and was seeing all the sights and hearing
all the delicious stories that children do see and hear in dreamland,
though they don't always remember them when they wake up. Both Milly and
he woke up very early on Thursday morning; and directly his eyes were
open Olly jumped out of bed like an india-rubber ball, and began to put
on his stockings in a terrible hurry. The noise of his jump woke nurse,
and she called out in a sleepy voice:
"Get into bed again, Master Olly, directly. It is only just six o'clock,
and I can't have you out of bed till seven. You'll only be under my
feet, and in everybody's way."
"Nana, I won't be in _anybody's_ way," exclaimed Olly, running up to her
and scrambling on to her bed with his little bare toes half way into his
stockings. "I can't keep still in my bed all such a long time. There's
something inside of me, Nana, keeps jumping up and down, and won't let
me keep still. Now, if I get up, you know, Nana, I can help you."
"Help me, indeed!" said nurse, kissing his little brown face, or as much
of it as could be seen through his curls. "A nice helping that would be.
Come back to bed, sir, and I'll give you some picture-books till I'm
ready to dress you."
So back to bed Master Olly went, sorely against his will, and there he
had to stay till nurse and Milly were dressed, and the breakfast things
laid. Then nurse gave him his bath and dressed him, and put him up to
eat his bread and milk while she finished the packing. Olly was always
very quiet over his meals, and it was the only time in the day when he
was quiet.
Presently up rattled the cab, and down ran the children with their
walking things on to see father and John lift the boxes on to the top;
and soon they were saying good-bye to Susan the cook, and Jenny the
housemaid, who were going to stay and take care of the house while they
were away; and then crack went the whip, and off they went to the
station. On the way they passed Jacky and Francis standing at their
gate, and all the children waved their hats and shouted "Hurrah!
hurrah!" At the station nurse kept tight hold of Olly till father had
got the tickets and put all the boxes into the train, and then he and
Milly were safely lifted up into the railway carriage, and nurse and
father and mother came next, with all the bags and shawls and umbrellas.
Such a settling of legs and arms and packages there was; and in the
middle of it "whew" went the whistle, and off they went away to the
mountains.
But they had a long way to go before they saw any mountains. First of
all they had to get to Bletchley, and it took about an hour doing that.
And oh! what a lovely morning it was, and how fresh and green the fields
looked as the train hurried along past them. Olly and Milly could see
hundreds and thousands of moon-daisies and buttercups growing among the
wet grass, and every now and then came great bushes of wild-roses, some
pink and some white, and long pools with yellow irises growing along the
side; and sometimes the train went rushing through a little village, and
they could see the little children trotting along to school, with their
books and slates tucked under their arms; and sometimes they went along
for miles together without seeing anything but the white-and-brown cows
in the fields, and the great mother-sheep with their fat white lambs
beside them. The sun shone so brightly, the buttercups were so yellow,
the roses so pink, and the sky so blue, it was like a fairy world. Olly
and Milly were always shouting and clapping their hands at something or
other, for Milly had grown almost as wild as Olly.
Sh-sh-sh-sh went the train, getting slower and slower till at last it
stopped altogether.
"Bletchley, Bletchley!" shouted Olly, jumping down off the seat.
"No, my boy," said his father, catching hold of him, "we shall stop five
more times before we get to Bletchley; so don't be impatient."
But at last came Bletchley, and the children were lifted out into the
middle of such a bustle, as it seemed to Milly. There were crowds of
people at the station, and they were all pushing backward and forward,
and shouting and talking.
"Keep hold of me, Olly," said Milly, with an anxious little face. "Oh,
Nana, don't let him go!"
But nurse held him fast; and very soon they were through the crowd, and
father had put them safe into their new train, into a carriage marked
"Windermere," which would take them all the way to their journey's end.
"That was like lions and bears, wasn't it, mother?" said Olly, pointing
to the crowd in the station, as they went puffing away. Now, "lions and
bears" was a favourite game of the children's, a romping game, where
everybody ran about and pretended to be somebody else, and where the
more people played, and the more they ran and pushed and tumbled about,
the funnier, it was. And the running, scrambling people at the station
did look rather as if they were playing at lions and bears.
And now the children had a long day before them. On rushed the train,
past towns and villages, and houses and trains. The sun got hotter and
hotter, and the children began to get a little tired of looking out of
window. Milly asked for a story-book, and was soon very happy reading
"Snow White and Rose Red." She had read it a hundred times before, but
that never mattered a bit. Olly came to sit on nurse's knee while she
showed him pictures, and so the time passed away. And now the train
stopped again, and father lifted Olly on his knee to see a great church
far away over the houses, and taught him to say "Lichfield Cathedral."
And then came Stafford; and Milly looked out for the castle, and
wondered whether the castles in her story-books looked like that, and
whether princesses and fairy godmothers and giants ever lived there in
old times.
After they had left Stafford, Olly began to get tired and fidgety. First
he went to sit on his father's knee, then on mother's, then on
nurse's--none of them could keep him still, and nothing seemed to amuse
him for long together.
"Come and have a sleep, Master Olly," said nurse. "You are just tired
and hot. This is a long way for little boys, and we've got ever so far
to go yet."
"I'm not sleepy, Nana," said Olly, sitting straight up, with a little
flushed face and wide-open eyes. "I'm going to keep awake like father."
"Father's going to sleep, then," said Mr. Norton, tucking himself up in
a shady corner; "so you go too, Olly, and see which of us can go
quickest."
When Olly had seen his father's eyes tight shut, and heard him give just
one little snore--it was rather a make-believe snore--he did let nurse
draw him on to her knee; and very soon the little gipsy creature was
fast asleep, with all his brown curls lying like a soft mat over nurse's
arm. Milly, too, shut her eyes and sat very still; she did not mean to
go to sleep, but presently she began to think a great many sleepy
thoughts: Why did the hedges run so fast? and why did the telegraph
wires go up and down as if they were always making curtsies? and was
that really mother opposite, or was it Cinderella's fairy godmother? And
all of a sudden Milly came bump up against a tall blue mountain that had
a face like a man, and cried out when she bumped upon it!
"Crewe, I declare," exclaimed father, jumping up with a start. "Why,
Olly and I have been asleep nearly an hour! Wake up, children, it's
dinner-time."
Nurse had to shake Olly a great many times before he would open his
sleepy eyes, and then he stood up rubbing them as if he would rub them
quite away. Father lifted him out, and carried him into a big room, with
a big table in it, all ready for dinner, and hungry people sitting round
it. What fun it was having dinner at a station, with all the grown-up
people. Milly and Olly thought there never was such nice bread and such
nice apple-tart. Nothing at home ever tasted half so good. And after
dinner father took them a little walk up and down the platform, and at
last, just as it was time to get into the train again, he bought them a
paper full of pictures, called the _Graphic_, that amused Olly for a
long way.
But it was a long long way to Windermere, and poor Milly and Olly began
to get very tired. The trees at Wigan did make them laugh a little bit,
but they were too tired to think them as funny as they would have
thought them in the morning. They are such comical trees! First of all,
the smoke from the smoky chimneys at Wigan has made them black, and
stopped the leaves from growing, and then the wind has blown them all
over on one side, so that they look like ugly little twisted dwarfs, as
if some cruel fairy had touched them with her wand. But Olly soon forgot
all about them; and he began to wander from one end to the other of the
carriage again, scrambling and jumping about, till he gave himself a
hard knock against the seat; and that made him begin to cry--poor tired
little Olly. Then mother lifted him on to her knee, and said to him,
very softly, "Are you very tired, Olly? Never mind, poor little man, we
shan't be very long now, and we're all tired, darling--father's tired,
and I'm tired; and look at Milly there, she looks like a little white
ghost. Suppose you be brave, and try a little extra hard to be good.
Then mother'll love you an extra bit. And what do you think we shall see
soon? such a lovely bit of blue sea with white ships on it. Just you
shut your eyes a little bit till it comes, I'll be sure to tell you."
And sure enough, after Lancaster, mother gave a little cry, and Olly
jumped up, and Milly came running over, and there before them lay the
dancing windy blue sea, covered over with little white waves, running
and tumbling over each other. And on the other side of it, what did the
children see?
"Mother, mother! what is it?" cried Olly, pointing with his little brown
hand far away; "is it a fairy palace, mother?"
"Perhaps it is, Olly; anyway, the hill-fairies live there. For those are
the mountains, the beautiful mountains we are going to see."
"But how shall we get across the sea to them?" asked Milly, with a
puzzled face.
"This is only a corner of the sea, Milly--a bay. Don't you remember bays
in your geography? We can't go across it, but we can go round it, and we
shall find the mountains on the other side."
Oh! how fast the train seemed to go now that there was something to look
at. Everywhere mountains were beginning to spring up. And when they had
said good-bye to the sea, the mountains began to grow taller and taller.
What had happened to the houses too? They had all turned white or gray;
there was no red one left. And the fields had stone walls instead of
hedges; and inside the walls there were small sheep, about as big as the
lambs they had seen near Oxford in the morning.
Oxenholme, Kendal, Windermere. How glad the tired children were when the
train ran slowly down into Windermere station, and they could jump out
and say good-bye to it for a long, long time! They had to wait a little,
till father had found all the boxes and put them in the carriage that
was waiting for them, and then in they tumbled, nurse having first
wrapped them up in big shawls, for it was evening now, and the wind had
grown cold. That was a nice drive home among the mountains. How tall and
dark and quiet they were. And what was this shining on their left hand,
like a white face running beside them, and peeping from behind the
trees? Why, it was a lake; a great wide lake, with tiny boats upon it,
some with white sails and some without.
"Mother! mother! may we go in those boats some day?" shouted Olly, in a
little sharp tired voice, and his mother smiled at him, and said--"Yes,
very likely."
How happy mother looked. She knew all the mountains like old friends,
she could tell all their names; and every now and then, when they came
to a house, she and father would begin to talk about the people who
lived in it, just as if they were talking about people they knew quite
well. And now came a little town, the town of Wanwick mother called it,
right among the mountains, with a river running round it, and a tall
church spire. It began to get darker and darker, and the trees hung down
over the road, so that the children could hardly see. On they went, and
Olly was very nearly asleep again, when the carriage began to crunch
over gravel, and then it stopped, and father called out--"Here we are,
children, here we are at Ravensnest."
And out they all jumped. What were those bright lights shining? Olly and
Milly hardly knew where they were going as nurse took them in, and one
of Uncle Richard's servants showed them the way upstairs to the nursery.
Such a nice nursery, with candles lit, and a little fire burning, two
bowls of hot bread and milk on the table, and in the corner two little
white beds, as soft and fresh as nests! In twenty minutes Olly was in
one of these little white beds, and Milly in the other. And you may
guess whether they were long about going to sleep.