"Daddy!" said a little voice.
The owner of it, a child of four, had pushed open a gla.s.s door, and was craning his curly head through it towards a garden that lay beyond.
"Yes, you rascal, what do you want now?"
"Daddy, come here!"
The voice had a certain quick stealthiness, through which, however, a little tremor of apprehension might be detected.
David Grieve, who was smoking and reading in the garden, came up to where his small son stood, and surveyed him.
"Sandy, you"ve been getting into mischief."
The child laid hold of his father, dragged him into the little hall, and towards the dining-room door. Arrived there, he stopped, put a finger to his lip, and laid his head plaintively on one side.
"Zere"s an _aw_ ful sight in zere, Daddy."
"You monkey, what have you been up to?"
David opened the door. Sandy first hung back, then, in a sudden enthusiasm, ran in, and pointed a thumb pink with much sucking at the still uncleared dinner-table, which David and the child"s mother had left half an hour before.
"Zere"s a pie!" he said, exultantly.
And a pie there was. First, all the salt-cellars had been upset into the middle of the table, then the bits of bread left beside the plates had been crumbled in, then--the joys of wickedness growing--the mustard-pot had been emptied over the heap, some bananas had been stuck unsteadily here and there to give it feature, and finally, in a last orgie of crime, a cruet of vinegar had been discharged on the whole, and the brown streams were now meandering across the clean tablecloth.
"Sandy, you little wretch!" cried his father, "don"t you know that you have been told again and again not to touch the things on the table? Hold out your hand!"
Sandy held out a small paw, whimpered beforehand, but never ceased all the time to watch his father with eyes which seemed to be quietly on the watch for experiences.
David administered two smart pats, then rang the bell for the housemaid. Sandy stationed himself on the rug opposite his father, and looked at his reddened hand, considering.
"I don"t seem to mind much, Daddy!" he said at last, looking up.
"No, sir. Daddy"ll have to try and find something that you _will_ mind."
The tone was severe, and David did his best to frown. In reality his eyes, under the frown, devoured his small son, and he had some difficulty in restraining himself from kissing the hand he had just slapped.
When the housemaid entered, however, she showed a temper which would clearly have slapped Master Sandy without the smallest compunction.
The little fellow stood and listened to her laments and denunciations with the same grave considering eyes, slipped his hand inside his father"s for protection, watched, like one enchained, the gradual demolition of the pie, and when it was all gone, and the tablecloth removed, he gave a long sigh of relief.
"Say you"re sorry, sir, to Jane, for giving her so much extra trouble," commanded his father.
"I"m soddy, Jane," said the child, nodding to her; "but it was a p--_wecious_ pie, wasn"t it?"
The mixture of humour and candour in his baby eye was irresistible.
Even Jane laughed, and David took him up and swung him on to his shoulder.
"Come out, young man, into the garden, where I can keep an eye on you. Oh! by the way, are you all right again?"
This inquiry was uttered as they reached the garden seat, and David perched the child on his knee.
"Yes, I"m _bet_--ter," said the child slowly, evidently unwilling to relinquish the dignity of illness all in a moment.
"Well, what was the matter with you that you gave poor mammy such a bad night?"
The child was silent a moment, pondering how to express himself.
"I was--I was a little sick outside, and a little _feelish_ inside"--he wavered on the difficult word. "Mammy said I had the wrong dinner yesterday at Aunt Dora"s. Zere was plums--_lots_ o" plums!" said the child, clasping his hands on his knee, and hunching himself up in a sudden ecstasy.
"Well, don"t go and have the wrong dinner again at Aunt Dora"s. I must tell her to give you nothing but rice pudding."
"Zen I shan"t go zere any more," said the child with determination.
"What, you love plums more than Aunt Dora?"
"No--o," said Sandy dubiously, "but plums is good!"
And, with a sigh of reminiscence, he threw himself back in his father"s arm, being, in fact, tired after his bad night and the further excitement of the "pie." The thumb slipped into the pink mouth, and with the other hand the child began dreamily to pull at one of his fair curls. The att.i.tude meant going to sleep, and David had, in fact, hardly settled him, and drawn a light overcoat which lay near over his small legs, before the fringed eyelids sank.
David held him tenderly, delighting in the weight, the warmth, the soft even breath of his sleeping son. He managed somehow to relight his pipe, and then sat on, dreamily content, enjoying the warm September sunshine, and letting the book he had brought out lie unopened.
The garden in which he sat was an oblong piece of ground, with a central gra.s.s plat and some starved and meagre borders on either hand. The gravel in the paths had blackened, so had the leaves of the privets and the lilacs, so also had the red-brick walls of the low homely house closing up the other end of the garden. Seventy years ago this house had stood pleasantly amid fields on the northern side of Manchester; its shrubs had been luxuriant, its roses unstained. Now on every side new houses in oblong gardens had sprung up, and the hideous smoke plague of Manchester had descended on the whole district, withering and destroying.
Yet David had a great affection for his house, and it deserved it.
It had been built in the days when there was more elbow-room in the world than now. The three sitting-rooms on the ground floor opened sociably into each other, and were pleasantly s.p.a.cious, and the one story of bedrooms above contained, at any rate in the eyes of the tenants of the house, a surprising amount of accommodation. When all was said, however, it remained, no doubt, a very modest dwelling, at a rent of somewhere about ninety pounds a year; but as David sat contemplating it this afternoon, there rose in him again the astonishment with which he had first entered upon it, astonishment that he, David Grieve, should ever have been able to attain to it.
"Sandy! come here directly! Where are you, sir?"
David heard the voice calling in the hall, and raised his own.
"Lucy! all right!--he"s here."
The gla.s.s door opened, and Lucy came out. She was very smartly arrayed in a new blue dress which she had donned since dinner; yet her looks were cross and tired.
"Oh, David, how stupid! Why isn"t the child dressed? Just look what an object! I sent Lizzie for him ten minutes ago, and she couldn"t find him."
"Then Lizzie has even less brains than I supposed," said David composedly, "seeing that she had only to look out of a back window.
What are you going to do with him?"
"Take him out with me, of course. There are the Watsons of Fallowfield, they pestered me to bring him, and they"re at home Sat.u.r.days. And aren"t you coming too?"
"Madam, you are unreasonable!" said David, smiling, and putting down his pipe he laid an affectionate hand on his wife"s arm. "I went careering about the world with you last Sat.u.r.day and the Sat.u.r.day before, and this week end I must take for reading. There is an Oxford man who has been writing me infuriated letters this week because I won"t let him know whether we will take up his pamphlet or no. I must get that read, and a good many other things, before to-morrow night."
"Oh, I know!" said Lucy, pettishly. "There"s always something in the way of what I want. Soon I shan"t see anything of you at all; it will be all business, and yet not a penny more to spend! Well, then, give me Sandy."
David hesitated.