The Girls and I: A Veracious History

Only it was rather inconvenient, and mother looked pretty blank the morning she got the letter. He wasn't going to stay long – he had some other visits to pay before he settled down for his usual two months or so of the season in town. He would only stay about ten days.

'Just till we are all leaving,' said poor mums. 'And I know he will want me all day, – and I'd gladly be with him all day – but I am so busy.'

'So am I,' said father, looking rather flabbergasted himself. 'But we must just do the best we can, Valeria. You tell him frankly that you are and must be very busy, and I will tell him that my new book is announced, and yet I have a good deal to do to it still.'

'Yes,' sighed mums,' I must do my best. But it is a pity. He says he is anxious to see the children for himself – to make sure they are coming round satisfactorily. Poor gran, and he doesn't say one word about that unlucky brooch. He has been very good about it.'

'Perhaps he thinks every one concerned has been sufficiently punished about it,' said father.

And Anne, who was down at breakfast with us, grew very red, and looked down at her plate.

Well, gran came, and I think mums managed beautifully, though she must have been pretty tired. We rather went to the wall. That's to say I did, for there was an end of all my nice quiet times with mums – afternoon teas in the little drawing-room, and driving out with her to shop. The doctor ordered drives for the girls now – for Anne, and Serena, and Maud, that's to say, – so they took turns of it in the victoria every fine afternoon. I didn't envy them the days gran went too, for if there's one thing I hate it's the back seat of a victoria, and it gives such a messy look to the turn-out, I think.

Those days I was a good deal with Hebe, reading to her in the afternoons, and sitting with her to make up for mums being so little with her. Gran used to come sometimes, and I had to go on reading aloud just the same, with him listening. I didn't like it at all.

But he was very kind. He never went out scarcely without bringing in some present for some of us, especially Hebe – either fruit, or cakes, not too rich, but very good, or new story-books, or some kind of puzzle or game. He was really very jolly that time.

We were awfully pleased though when the day came at last for us all to start. We were to go first – the three girls, and nurse, and I, – and mums, and Hebe, and Rowley were to go down to Ventnor the next day. Father was to take them, for poor Hebe could scarcely walk yet Gran went off on his visit the afternoon of our day. He said he couldn't leave till he had seen us off, and he actually came to the station with us – he and his man. Fancy that!

And it was rather lucky for us, for he would have us travel first-class, and mums had only meant us to go second. I must say first is ever so much nicer, and it's rubbish of people to say they like second better. It's only silly people, who are ashamed to say they do it for saving reasons. I can't understand that sort of being ashamed.

Then gran tipped the guard, so that he came at every station to ask if we wanted anything. We never did, but it felt rather grand. Altogether, the journey was very nice, and we hadn't time to feel very sad at leaving dear mums and Hebe, though all the way I kept thinking of my last going there with mother.

It was a fine day, though not so bright as the other time. When we got to Fewforest there was a big fly waiting for us, and a spring cart from the farm for the luggage. And no sooner did Serry catch sight of it than she tugged my arm, and said quite loud —

'Is that the red-eared boy, Jack?'

She is so silly, I wonder he didn't hear her.

It was he, sure enough, as red as ever, and grinning now as well, like an old acquaintance. The driver of the fly, on the contrary, was a rather grumpy man. I had been thinking of asking nurse to let me go outside, but when I saw his face I didn't. No chance of him letting me drive part of the way, even though the horse was about a hundred years old, and went jog-jogging along as if it meant to take a month to get to Mossmoor. I can generally tell something about people by the look of their faces.

So we all squashed inside – nurse and us four. It wasn't a very great squash, for the fly was a regular old-fashioned roomy one. Once upon a time I daresay it had been some lady's grand 'coach' in which she drove about paying all her visits. I happened to say this to Anne, and she liked the idea. She said she thought she would write a story, and call it The History of a Chariot. I don't know if she ever has.

When we got to Mossmoor the stupid coachman was going to drive us into the stable-yard, which would quite have stopped the niceness of our first arriving, especially as I caught sight of dear old Mrs. Parsley standing at the front door with her best cap on, all in a flutter to welcome us. (I didn't call her 'dear old Mrs. Parsley' to myself then: it's since I've got to know her. And I couldn't have told it was her best cap; it wasn't for some time that we got to understand her caps. They were like degrees of comparison, both upwards and downwards, for she had always about six going at a time.) So I holloaed out to the driver to stop at the little gate, and he did, though he growled and grumbled. He is so surly; his name's Griffin, and he and the fly belong to the 'Yule Log' at Fewforest, North end. There's no inn at South end. I was only just in time, for you can't turn, farther up the lane, unless you drive on a bit, or turn in the stable-yard. You see it was a good thing for the girls that I'd been there before, and knew all the ins and outs of the place, wasn't it?

It was fun showing them the rooms and everything. And even though I had described them as particularly as I could, they all declared – nurse too – that I hadn't made them out half nice enough. I was glad of that.

We had plenty of time to poke about, because the luggage hadn't yet come. And Mrs. Parsley had tea set out all ready; she wasn't one of those horrid landladies who won't give anything at the first start for fear they should possibly not be paid back for it. I'm sure she never charged anything for the cake she'd made us, and the jam and honey, that first night, though there was precious little over of any of them when we'd finished.

CHAPTER X
A LONG AGO ADVENTURE

We were very busy and happy the next morning getting all our things settled, and making the summer kitchen look as pretty as we could. We had brought one or two folding chairs and some rugs and table-covers to brighten it up, and it did look very nice indeed.

It was a good thing we were taken up that way, for – wasn't it provoking? – that first day it took it into its head to rain! All the morning at least, though it cleared up about our dinner-time. But it was very tiresome, for though it was quite mild, it was of course damp under foot, and nurse wouldn't hear of us going a nice scrambly walk as we had planned. And she would come with us. I daresay she was right, but it was a bore.

'Which way shall we go, Jack?' said Anne, when we were all ready to start and nurse had satisfied herself that the girls had all got their thickest boots on, and waterproofs and umbrellas in case it came on to rain again.

Nurse had been consulting Mrs. Parsley, I'm sure.

'We must keep to the high-road,' she said. 'It dries up very quickly as it's a sandy soil.'

'Anne wasn't asking you, nurse,' said Serry rather pertly. 'She was asking Jack.'

'All the same, Miss Serena, I must do my duty,' said nurse. 'I am in charge of you, and your mamma wouldn't be pleased if I let you all go stravaging over the wet fields to get bad colds and pleurisys and newmens, and what not.'

'Newmens,' said Anne, 'what do you mean?'

But nurse was put out, and wouldn't explain. It wasn't till some time after that we found out she meant that bad kind of cold on your chest that cows have so often, as well as people.

I tried to smooth nurse down, and I frowned at Serry, who was just in a humour to go on setting her up.

It was a pity to start so grumpily on our first walk, but things never do go quite right for long in this world, do they?

'I'll tell you what we can do,' I said; 'we can see the church. It's just a nice little walk by the road from here – you'd like that, wouldn't you, Anne?'

'Yes,' said Anne, 'I like old churches.'

'So do I,' said Maud.

'Are there places you could hide in, in this church,' said Serry, 'like in the old church at Furzely? Whenever I go there I can't help thinking what lovely hide-and-seek we might have there.'

'Miss Serry,' said nurse, quite shocked, 'I think you should have different ideas from that in your mind when you go to church.'

And of course we all thought so too. But it isn't much use taking up anything Serry says, seriously. She is so scatter-brained.

We had a nice enough walk after all. The road was beginning to dry up, except at the side next the wood where the trees dripped on to it, for the trees were really soaking. And we soon got nurse into a good humour again; she's never cross for long. We made plans about all the nice things we'd do, if only the weather would be really fine – tea in the woods and things like that, you know.

'But it's early in the season still, my dears, you must remember,' said nurse. 'It's not often you can plan for much out-of-doors before June is near its end.'

'And then July is always a rainy month, people say,' said Anne. 'I do think England's horrid for the weather being so uncertain.'

'Well, indeed,' said nurse, 'take it all in all, I think I'd rather have our climate up in the north. It's cold, to be sure, a great part of the year, but the summer is summer while it lasts. And then you know where you are; in winter you can hap yourselves up and make the best of it, while here in the south it seems to me that every day you have to think if it's warm or cold, or what it is, all the year round, summer and winter alike.'

I forget if I told you that nurse is Scotch. She hasn't really been in Scotland since she was quite little, but she's very proud of it, and she's very fond of using funny words, like 'stravaging.'

'They say the air here is like Scotland,' I said, 'so fresh and moor-y. So you should like it, nurse. And you know there's a place here that they send little ill children to from London; I can show you the house, we can see it up above when we get to the church.'

And, funnily enough, just as we got close to the village we came upon a little party of the convalescent children going a walk. They were all dressed alike – the girls in brown frocks and red cloaks and brown hats, and the boys in some sort of corduroy. And there was a sort of servanty looking person with them, and also a lady; just for half a moment I wondered if it was Miss Cross-at-first, but it wasn't. This one was quite different; she was short and round-faced, and extremely good-natured looking. She smiled at us as she passed us. And the children all looked very happy.

'You see they've come a walk along the wood like us,' said Maud, 'because I daresay it's wet in their garden too.'

'I'd like to go to see them very much,' said Anne. 'What a pity it isn't Miss Cross-at-first with them! And mums never remembered to write to Cousin Dorothea to ask if it could have been her you saw in the church that day.'

'I'm certain it was,' I said. 'I don't need Cousin Dorothea or anybody to say so. But I'd like to know if she's gone away or if she's coming back again. They say girls – ladies, I mean – take it in turns to come and look after the children.'

'Perhaps Mrs. Parsley could find out for us,' said Anne. 'You know, nurse, we want to have some of the children at tea at the farm before we go. Mother said she daresayed we might.'

'It's time enough, Miss Anne, to talk about what you'll do before you go, seeing as you're scarcely come,' said nurse, rather grumpily. She's not very fond of things to do with poor children; she's always afraid of our catching illnesses. 'And it would be no kindness to ask any other children to come to see you at present. As likely as not they'd be getting the whooping-cough.'

We hadn't thought of that; it was rather a disappointment.

We had got to the church by now, and we all went in. It didn't look quite so pretty as the day I had seen it first, for there was no sunshine coming in through the coloured windows and lighting up the queer old tablets and figures here and there. Still it looked very nice, and Anne and Maud admired it very much. So did Serry, only she said she'd have liked it better with high pews and curtains to draw round the big square ones. Just fancy that!

'You couldn't think it was nicer like that,' I said.

'Not prettier, but there must have been such jolly corners and hiding-places,' said Serena. Her head was full of hiding. 'There'd be nowhere to hide in this church. You'd be seen in a minute.'

'Nobody wants to hide in church,' I said; 'that's not what people come for.'

'They might though,' said Serena; 'that's to say, supposing any one got locked up in a church all night, they'd like to have some comfortable corner to creep into where nobody could get at them.'

'But there'd be nobody to get at them,' said Anne. 'I don't say I'd like at all to be shut up in a church all night; still, the best of it would be you'd know you were safe from anybody.'

Serry didn't seem convinced.

'I don't know,' she said. 'There might be – well, bats and owls and things like that, and then there'd be feelings. You'd be sure to fancy there were people or things there, and it wouldn't be half so frightening if you could get into a pew with a carpet, and make a bed of the cushions and hassocks.'

'Eh,' said nurse all of a sudden, 'you put me in mind, Miss Serry, of an old story my mother told me when I was a child.'

'Oh, do tell it us,' cried Maud.

But nurse said we must wait, of course, till we were out of the church. Nurse has quite proper feelings about churches, though, when she was little, she belonged to the Scotch kirk, you know, which is different. She said she'd tell us the story either on the way home or after tea when we were all sitting together in our kitchen-parlour, for it was too damp an evening for us to go out again.

And at first we thought we'd have the story on the way home, but then we settled we'd wait till the evening. For there were plenty of things to amuse us going home; I had to show them the post office and the shops – we went farther down the village on purpose, – and I don't think stories are ever quite so nice when people are walking as when they're sitting still.

We all felt quite hungry when we got back to the farm, and we were very glad that it was nearly tea time. Nurse was very pleased, for Anne and Maud had never got back their good appetites since they'd been ill, though Serry had never lost hers all through – I don't much think anything would make Serry lose her good appetite, – and of course I'd kept all right.

After tea we helped nurse to clear away. We always did that at Mossmoor, for you see mums had promised Mrs. Parsley that we should give as little trouble as possible, – it wasn't as if she had been a lodging-house keeper, and she had only one servant who was rather rough and clumsy. We liked doing it too, and dear Mrs. Parsley was even better than her word about making us as comfortable as she possibly could. There was scarcely a day that she didn't do something 'extra' to please us. This very evening she had made us some lovely kind of scones for tea. She said they were a kind she had learnt to make up in the north, and she 'wanted to make us feel at home; it must be a bit lonely just at first, and such a wet day to begin.'

Wasn't it sweet of her?

Well, as I said, we did justice to the scones, and when tea was over and all nicely tidied up, we brought our chairs near the fire. For it was chilly after the rain, and we were glad of a fire. And nurse got out her knitting – nurse has always got socks for me or stockings for the girls on hand, – and we began to feel very jolly. We had felt a very little lonely, perhaps almost an atom homesick, I think, with the dull morning and the strangeness and the not having father and mother and Hebe, even though everything was so nice.

'Now for your story, nurse,' said I. 'I hope it's been growing into a very big one all this time we've been waiting for it.'

'No, indeed, Master Jack,' said nurse, 'it's nothing of the kind. It's scarce to be called a story at all, and but little worth listening to.'

But we made her tell it all the same. I'm not going to try to write it in Scotch words, for I don't know Scotch a bit, and I'm not sure that nurse knows much either, as she's been in England ever since she was very young. So I'll just tell it straight off; anyway it'll be the sense of what she said, though she did put in some extra Scotch words. I think she's rather proud when we have to ask her to explain them.

Nurse's Story

'It was my mother that told it me,' said nurse, 'for it happened to herself when she was a little girl. She lived at home with her father and mother and brothers in a good-sized cottage on the Muirness estate, for my grandfather was one of the head men on the place, which belonged to old Sir Patrick Muir. They were a good way – five miles or so – from even a village, and I daresay double as far from the nearest town, which was only a small one. But in those days people were content with stay-at-home lives, and they didn't feel dull or lonely even in very out-of-the-way places. It is a good while ago since my mother was a child. She was not young when she married, and she was nearly forty when I was born, and I'm getting on for that myself now. My grandmother had been rather above my grandfather, for she was the daughter of a well-to-do man who farmed his own land. When my mother was a child these old folk were still living, and their little place was very near Muirness; indeed, I believe it was bought several years ago by Sir Herbert, old Sir Patrick's grandson, and now belongs to the big estate.

'My mother was a great favourite with her grandfather and grandmother, for she was the only granddaughter, all the others being boys. She used often to go over to Oldbiggins Farm to stay for a day or two; and her grandmother was very fond of having her from a Saturday to a Monday to take her to church with them on Sunday, and send her back early on Monday morning in time to go to school. My mother didn't care for these visits as much as for week-day ones, for her grandmother used to take her to church on Sunday morning and keep her there straight on through the afternoon service too, which was really too much for a child. Her mother was not so strict, and understood better about children's feelings; and she used always to let mother and her brothers go home after the morning service, even if she stayed on for the afternoon herself. It was five miles away, so it was a long walk, but the old people used to drive in a cart there and back; for if they hadn't done so, they wouldn't have been able to go to church at all.

'One Saturday afternoon – it was late in the autumn – mother's grandmother sent over to say that she wanted Maggie, that was mother's name, to come to stay till Monday, and she should drive to church and back with her on the Sunday – the 'Sabbath-day' was what they called it always. Maggie didn't want much to go, but her mother didn't like to refuse; the old people were kind, and it wouldn't do to vex them. So the child was sent off. She was about eight years old.

'"Mayn't I come home with my brothers after the morning church is done?" she said. But her mother shook her head. For some reason they were not going till the afternoon. I think somebody was ill.

'"If I can get in the afternoon, I'll look out for you, and you can come home with me then, dearie," she said. "Tell your grandmother I'd like to have you back to-morrow evening if she doesn't mind."

'The Sunday evenings at Oldbiggins were rather hard upon a child too, for, on the top of the two long services, the old grandfather always read out a very long sermon, difficult for any one to understand, as he read very feebly, and the words were often puzzling.

'So, with the hope of getting home again before the Sunday evening, little Maggie started. She was a gentle, quiet child, and the old people had no idea but that she was quite happy and liked the long hours in the church as much as they did. She went to church alone with her grandmother and the farm-man who drove the cart, and they took with them a packet of bread-and-butter, or bread-and-jam maybe – what was called "a piece" – to eat outside the church between the two services. There was only an hour between them. Maggie looked out for her own people before she and her grandmother went back into the church again, but they must have been a little late, and the old lady liked to be in her place in good time, so the child did not see them. But she thought to herself she'd be sure to meet them after church, and this thought kept her quiet, though she couldn't possibly get a glimpse of them from her corner of the high pew, even if she had dared to look about. She must have been very tired, and she had cried in bed the night before, and I daresay the cold air outside made it feel warm in the church, anyway this was what happened. The poor little thing fell fast asleep. And her grandmother, who was very blind except with her glasses on – and she always took them off and put them away when the last psalm had been sung – went quietly out of the pew without a notion but that the child was beside her.

'When Maggie woke it was quite dark, the church had been shut up ever so long; there was no evening service. At first she thought she was in bed, and that the clothes had tumbled off her, then feeling about, she found she had her frock and cape and bonnet on, and everything near her was hard and cold, not like bed at all. And by bits it all came back to her mind – her last waking thoughts in church, and how she was hoping to see her mother, – and she began to take in where she was. I've always thought it was really dreadful for her, and she must have been a brave, sensible child – I know she grew up a brave, sensible woman. For, though she couldn't help crying at first with loneliness and cold and the queer sort of fear, she soon settled to do the best she could. There was some moonlight coming in at one window, though not much, but enough to make her see where the pulpit was, and up into the pulpit Maggie climbed, because she had an idea she'd be safer there; and it certainly was warmer, for it was a sort of little box with a door to it, and there were one or two stools and cushions and some red cloth hanging round the top, which Miss Maggie ventured to pull down and wrap round her. And there she composed herself to sleep, and sleep she did, in spite of her loneliness and hunger – oh, I forgot to say she found a wee bit of her "piece" still in her pocket, – till the sunshine woke her up the next morning, for luckily it was a bright mild day. Then down she came, and walked up and down the aisles as fast as she dared, considering it was a church, to get her cramped legs warm again, and just as she was thinking what she was to do to get out, the door opened, to her delight, and in came the man who had care of the church – what we call a verger – followed by the old body who cleaned and swept it.

'They were astonished, as you can fancy; such a thing had never happened before within the memory of man.

'Old Peter took her off with him to his cottage, and his wife gave her some hot breakfast, and then he borrowed a cart and drove Maggie home – straight home to Muirness, not to Oldbiggins. It was home Maggie wanted to go, you may be sure, and when Peter heard the story, he declared her granny deserved a good fright for not looking after her better.

"P'raps she thought I'd run off to mother and the boys," said Maggie.

'And that was just what it turned out to be.

'The old lady, instead of being frightened, was very angry. She had stayed talking to some friend at the church door, and somehow her daughter and the boys had fancied she and Maggie had driven off, not seeing them about. Maggie's mother was in a hurry to get home to the one that was ill, and just thought the little girl had gone back quietly with her grandmother till the next morning. And when the granny had missed the child, she thought Maggie had run off to her mother – for some one called out that Mistress Gray and her children had driven off, – and was too offended to send to Muirness to ask!

'And at home they hadn't missed her of course. So, after all, Maggie wasn't made much of a heroine of, for all she'd been so brave and sensible.

'But I'm sure she never minded that, so glad was she to be in her own dear home again, safe and sound. And you may be sure her mother petted her enough to make up all she could for the poor little thing's disagreeable adventure. It was talked of through the country-side for many a day after that. Maybe it is still.'

'And I hope they never let her go back to that horrid old grandmother again,' said Anne.

'Nay, my dear, she wasn't so bad as that. But old people have their ways.'

'I think our gran is much nicer than that,' said Maud in her clear little voice.

And I'm sure we all agreed with her.

But we all thanked nurse very nicely for telling us the story, which was really very interesting.

And it gave us a good deal to talk about.