WHAT KATIE HEARD.
"How very annoying!"
"It is really too bad to have this noisy creature foisted on us just now."
Katie stood on the doorstep of her aunt"s house in a very stiff, pink frock. Her cheeks were red and rosy, for it was a warm summer day, and her feelings were just those of any little girl who is paying her first real visit to an aunt in the country.
The speakers were Katie"s two cousins, Janet and Clare, and the words came very clearly through the curtains and open windows, as Katie stood there, wondering whether the bell had really rung, or whether she had better give it another tug. She saw her own reflection in the shining bell-handle, and it had gone crimson all at once.
Poor Katie! Mother had told her she would be expected, and this was what her cousins thought about her!
Was it not a dreadful state of affairs for a small girl at the beginning of her first visit? Katie shut her mouth tight, and clenched her small, hot hands, in a desperate effort to look just ordinary. It was very hard to be brave. She would have liked to run away, but she knew that would be cowardly. Her cheeks kept growing hotter and hotter. It was mean, she had always heard, to listen to things that were not intended for one.
Plainly, there was only one course: to go right on, and not let anybody know that she had overheard those dreadful, unkind words.
The waiting and the silence was almost too much. The girls" voices died away in the room; a bee was buzzing in a foxglove bell at her elbow, and some cows went quietly up the lane past the green garden-gate. Then, all at once, the door flew open, and tall Janet and fair-haired Clare stood before her.
"You dear child, have you come all alone? How tired she looks, Clare!"
"Katie, Katie, haven"t you got a kiss for your own Clare?"
There was quite a chorus of greetings as they ushered puzzled Katie into a bright room where her invalid aunt, wrapped in a shawl, and rather pale, lay on a couch, holding out both hands to welcome the visitor.
"Oh, dear," thought Katie, "I don"t know how they can _pretend_ to be so kind!"
She stood there in the midst of them all, awkward and silent, an honest-hearted little girl, obliged to act a most untruthful part. Try as she might, her kisses were but cold ones. She would have liked to push them away, and to cry out: "You don"t love me, really; you said I was a noisy creature! Let me go home."
It was worse when her kind, suffering aunt took her in her arms, and said she was "Oh! so glad to have her to stay!" Katie felt such a mean, horrid little girl. She did not know which way to look or where to hide her hot cheeks.
In the middle of the window, a large green parrot was clawing at her perch.
"This is Polly," said Janet, pa.s.sing a hand under the great creature"s wing. "The people next door are going away, and they have sent her to us till they come back."
Here Polly interrupted with a long, loud screech, so that everybody had to put their hands to their ears.
"We rather like her," said Clare, when she had finished, "but oh! she is so noisy! Come and stroke her, Katie!"
So that was the "noisy creature!" Katie"s troubles all vanished at a stroke; and before Clare and Janet could ask what was the matter, she was sobbing out all about the silly mistake to her kind aunt.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Katie stood on the doorstep."]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""I am afraid I have no berth here for you, my lad.""]
ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER.
Tim Sullivan started from the town with a heavy heart, but as he left the smoke and noise behind him, the pleasant sunshine and fresh autumn breeze soon began to work a change in his spirits. It was good to see green fields again, and he wished he could walk on and on, and never return to the town life he disliked so much.
After all, what was to prevent him? His uncle had been reproaching him that very morning for his idleness at school, and had told him he would never be worth anything in the office.
"It is high time you were beginning to be of some use," he had said. "I did not bargain to keep you for nothing when I took you in on your father"s death."
And poor Tim knew it was hard on his uncle to have this addition to his large family. He really did try to get on at school, but it was no good.
He could not learn, and the harder he tried the more stupid he seemed to grow.
Before the death of his parents, when he lived such a happy life on the little farm in Ireland, it was not so noticeable that he was not quite like other boys. Lessons were not held of much account there, and no boy of his age could have been more useful than Tim in all farm, field, or garden work; so that it was a new experience for the poor boy to be taunted with his uselessness and stupidity, and it caused him great unhappiness.
As he trudged along, a familiar grunt suddenly made him feel he must be in old Ireland again. He looked round and saw a pig rooting in the ditch by the side of the road.
"Has he got astray?" he asked a man who was breaking stones close by.
"Likely enough," was the answer. "Farmer Smale"s man was driving home pigs from market yesterday, and I thought as he pa.s.sed he was getting a bit old for work--and pigs are uncommon difficult to drive too."
"Not if you know the right way to set about it," said Tim. "Instead of holloing and shouting and beating it with a stick, you should just stoop down and catch the eye of the cratur, and sure he will go the way you want."
The man grinned. "You"re from the Ould Counthry--no need to tell me that, my broth of a boy!"
Tim nodded, with an answering twinkle in his eye.
"If you tell me where Farmer Smale lives, I will drive this pig there,"
he said.
The directions were given. Tim soon had the pig before him, and all his troubles were forgotten in an occupation which reminded him of old times.
"Perhaps doing the farmer and the pig a good turn will bring me something good," he thought.
There was a tremendous grunting in the farmyard when the wanderer rejoined his companions. Farmer Smale came out, followed by his wife, to see what was causing such a commotion.
"Well, you are a smart boy," the farmer said. "You must come in and rest and have some tea, for pig-driving is a tiring business."
"It"s not tired I am, sir. I only wish I had a chance to drive pigs every day. You will not be wanting a boy to help on your farm, will you, sir?"
"Why, my lad, you don"t look cut out for hard work," the farmer said, for Tim"s stunted growth, and the large head, out of proportion to his small body, made him look less strong than other boys.
"I can work hard with my hands," he said. "It is only lessons and figures which bother me."
"Well, I am afraid I have no berth here for you, my lad. Besides, I could not take a boy I knew nothing about, even if he was kind enough to bring home my pig."
Tim"s face fell. He looked bitterly disappointed.
"Have you no people of your own, my dear?" asked Mrs. Smale, and Tim thought she had the kindest face he had ever seen.