The children were very quiet through breakfast time. Every now and then the little boys leant over across their bowls of bread and milk to whisper to each other.
"Wouldn"t that be lovely?" or
"That"d be a vezy pitty story," till called to order by Martin, who told them that spilling their breakfast over the table would not be at all a good beginning to the stories.
""Twouldn"t matter," remarked Hoodie, philosophically. "The cloth isn"t clean; it"s Sat.u.r.day, you know, Martin."
"Sat.u.r.day or no Sat.u.r.day," replied Martin, "it isn"t pretty for little ladies and gentlemen to spill their food on the table. And it gets them in the habit of it for when they get big and have their breakfasts and dinners down-stairs."
"Doesn"t big people _never_ spill things on the cloth?" inquired Hec, solemnly.
"Mr. Fielding does," said Hoodie. "One day when he was here at luncheon, he was helping Mamma to wine, and he poured all down the outside of her gla.s.s. I think he"s dedfully ugly. I wouldn"t like ever to be a big people if I was to be like him."
"Miss Hoodie," remonstrated Martin, hardly approving of the turn the conversation was taking, "do get on with your breakfast, and you"d better be thinking about your stories than talking about things you don"t understand."
Hoodie glanced at Martin with considerable contempt.
"I"d like to make a story about Beauty and the Beast," she said. "I know who"d be the beast, but _you_ shouldn"t be Beauty, Martin."
"Shouldn"t I, Miss Hoodie?" said Martin, good-naturedly. "Miss King would make a nice Beauty, to my mind."
Almost as she spoke the door opened, and Cousin Magdalen re-appeared.
"Children," she said, "your mother says we may have the fire lighted in the billiard-room because it is such a chilly day, so I am going to take my work there and you may all come. Martin will be glad to get rid of you, because I know Sat.u.r.day"s a busy morning for her always."
The news was received with great satisfaction, and before the end of another half-hour the four children were all under their cousin"s charge in the billiard-room, for an hour or two, greatly to Martin"s relief.
"What pretty work you are doing, Cousin Magdalen," said Maudie, stroking admiringly the large canvas stretched on a frame at which Miss King was working.
"I am glad you think it"s pretty," said her G.o.dmother. "I think it is very pretty; but the colours are not very bright, and children generally like very bright colours. The pattern is copied from a very old piece of tapestry."
"What"s tapestry?" said Hoodie.
"Old-fashioned work that used to be made long ago," said Miss King. "It was more like great pictures than anything else, and such quant.i.ties of it were made that whole walls were covered with it. Once when I was a very little girl I slept in a room all covered with tapestry, and in the middle of the night----"
She stopped suddenly.
"_What?_" said Hoodie eagerly, peering up into her face. "What came in the middle of night?"
"I didn"t say anything came," said Cousin Magdalen, laughing. "I stopped because I thought I could make it into a little story and tell it to you afterwards. But we are forgetting all about your stories. Who is going to begin? Eldest first--you, Maudie, I suppose."
Maudie looked rather melancholy.
"I can"t tell nice stories," she said. "I"ve been thinking such a time, and I can"t think of anything except something very stupid."
"Well, let us hear it, any way," said her cousin, "and then we can say if it is stupid or not."
"It was a story I read," said Maudie, "or else some one told it me. I can"t remember which it was. It was about a very poor little girl--she was dreadfully poor, just as poor as you could fancy."
"No clothes--hadn"t she no clothes?" asked Duke.
"And nucken to eat?" added Hec.
"Very little," said Maudie. "Of course she had some, or else she would have died. She hadn"t any father or mother, only an old grandmother, who wasn"t very kind to her. At least she was very old and deaf and all that, and perhaps that made her cross. And the little girl used to go messages for a shop--that was how she got a little money. It was a baker"s shop near where they lived, and it was rather a grand shop--only they kept this little girl to go messages, not to the _grand_ people that came there, you know, but to the people that bought the bread when it wasn"t so new--and currant cakes that were rather stale--like that, you know. And on Sunday mornings she had the most to do, because they used to send a great lot of bread very early to a room where a kind lady had breakfast for a great many poor people--for a treat because it was Sunday. They used to have lots of bread and b.u.t.ter and hot coffee--very nice. And Lizzie, that was the little girl"s name, liked Sunday mornings and going with the bread to that place, because it all looked so cheerful and comfortable, and the smell of the hot coffee was so good."
"Didn"t they never give her none?" asked Duke.
"No, I don"t think so. At least not before what I"m going to tell you.
You should wait till I tell you. Well, one Sunday in winter, it was a dreadfully cold day; snowing and raining, and all mixed together, and wind too, I think--dreadful cold wind. And Lizzie nearly cried as she was going along to that place. She had such dreadfully sore chilblains on her feet and on her hands too. She got to the place and emptied the basket, and she was just coming away at the door, when a carriage came up and she stopped a minute to see the people get out. The first was the lady who gave the breakfast, Lizzie had seen her before, for she came sometimes--not every Sunday, but just sometimes--to see that the breakfast was all nice for her poor people. But this day, after she got out, she turned back to lift a little boy out of the carriage. And Lizzie had never seen this little boy before, because this was the first time he had ever come. His mother had brought him with her for a great treat. He was a very pretty little boy and his name was Arthur, and he was about six, I think it said in the story. The lady went into the room quick without noticing Lizzie, as she was in a hurry not to be late for the poor people, but Arthur stayed behind a minute and stared at Lizzie.
She was so very cold, you know, she did look miserable, and then she had cried a little on the way, so her eyes were red.
"Arthur went close up to her, staring all the time. Lizzie didn"t mind.
She stared at him too. He was so pretty and he had such pretty clothes on. When he got close to her, he looked sharp up into her face and said--
""What is you crying for?"
"Lizzie had forgotten she had been crying, so she said, "I"m not crying.
I"m only very cold."
""Poor little girl," said Arthur, "I"ll ask Mamma to give you a penny."
"He ran after his mother, who was wondering what he was staying for, and in a minute he came back again and put a little paper packet into Lizzie"s hand.
""That"s all mother"s got in her penny purse," he said, and he ran off again before Lizzie had time to thank him.
"She was going to open the packet and see how much there was, but just then one of the men who helped to put out the breakfast came past and told her not to loiter about. So she took up her basket and ran away, for people often spoke crossly to her, and she was easily frightened.
All the way home she kept thinking about her pennies and what she would buy with them, but she didn"t open the packet, because the way she had to go there were so many rude boys about that she was afraid they might s.n.a.t.c.h it from her. And when she got to the shop where she had to take the basket to, the baker sent her another message, so it wasn"t till much later than usual that she got home. And all this time she had never opened the packet, at least it said so in the story, though I think _I_ would have peeped at it before--wouldn"t you, Cousin Magdalen?"
"I"m not sure," said Magdalen. "I think if one has something nice it is sometimes rather tempting to keep it for a while without looking it all over. It is something to look forward to."
"Yes," said Hoodie. "_I"d_ have keepened it for alvays wrapped up, and then I could have alvays thought perhaps it was a fairy thing like."
"You silly girl," said Maudie, "you"re always fancying about fairies."
"Maudie, _dear_" said Magdalen, "do try not to say things like that. You are telling the story so nicely and we"re all so happy. Please don"t spoil it by saying unkind little things."
"I didn"t mean to be unkind," said Maudie penitently.
"P"ease do on with the story," said the little boys.
"Well, when at last she got home, she opened the little packet,"
continued Maudie, "and what _do_ you think she saw? Instead of two pennies and a halfpenny perhaps, or something like that, there were--let me see--yes, that was it--there were a gold pound, a half-a-crown, and a shilling. Just fancy! Lizzie was so surprised that she didn"t know what she felt--she looked at them and looked at them, and turned them in her hand, and then all at once it came into her mind that of course the lady had given her them by mistake, and that she should take them back to her. And she jumped up very quick and said to her grandmother there was another message she had to go, and without thinking anything about whether the lady would still be there or not, off she ran back again to the place where the poor people had their breakfast. She ran as hard as she could, but of course when she got there it was too late--the breakfast was done long ago, and all the people away and the doors locked, and there was no one about at all to tell her where she could find the lady. And Lizzie was so unhappy that she sat down on a step and cried. You see it was such a disappointment, for she couldn"t tell how much the lady _had_ meant to give her, and so she didn"t like to take any. Besides, she felt that it would be better to give the packet back just as it was, only she had so wanted the pennies, for she never had any. The baker"s wife always paid her grandmother, not Lizzie herself, for Lizzie"s going messages.
"And after she had cried a good while she got up and went home. But just as she got near the baker"s shop she thought she might ask there if they knew the lady"s name, so she went in to ask. There was no one in the shop but the young woman who helped--the others had gone to church."
"How was it the shop was open, then, as it was Sunday?" asked Magdalen.
"It wasn"t open, only there was a sort of door in the shutters that Lizzie always went in and out by on Sunday mornings. I know that, because there was a picture of it--I remember now where I read the story--it was in a big picture magazine when I was quite a little girl,"
said Maudie. "And this young woman was tidying the shop a little, and just going to shut it altogether when Lizzie went in. She was a good-natured young woman and she looked in the money books for the lady"s name, but it wasn"t in--only the name of the man the room belonged to where the breakfast was--and then she asked Lizzie what she wanted to know for, and Lizzie told her. The young woman told her she was very silly to think of giving it back. She said to her that certainly the lady had _given_ it her, it wasn"t even as if she had found it. And Lizzie could not say that was not true, and she felt so puzzled at first that she didn"t know what to say. The young woman offered to change it for her so that n.o.body could wonder how she had got a gold piece, but Lizzie said she would think about it first. And then she went home, and thought, and thought, till at last it came quite plain into her mind that though it was true that the lady had given it her, still it was _more_ true that she hadn"t meant to give it her. And then she didn"t feel so unhappy."