A Big Temptation Part 3

"Don't you _wish_ that the other Carews could come to our birthday party?" wistfully said Clary, the only girl among Doctor John Carew's "seven little pickles," as he called them.

"They would come like a shot if Uncle George would allow them, I know,"

observed Mark, the second Carew boy, with the red hair that was always so handy to fire off a joke about.

"Hum! perhaps so. The weather's getting coldish, and they'd be glad to come, if it was only to warm themselves a bit!" Oliver's eyes rolled significantly at Mark's head, the owner of which, with an angry whoop, made a dive at the speaker. There was an uproar in the play-room on the spot. Five Carew boys, pursued by the furious Mark, leaped, laughing and shouting, over chairs and stools, and even across the table.

"Wait till I catch one of you, that's all!" panted Mark, stumbling over a stool which Chris mischievously pushed in his way.

"Wait, sir! Oh, certainly, sir!" teasingly said Chris, bowing almost in two while Mark ruefully rubbed his shins.

"Oh, boys, don't quarrel! Let us sit quiet and talk about the other Carews!" Clary plaintively pleaded. "Don't you think we could somehow get them to my birthday party?"

The little sister was tucked away in the old rocking-chair in a corner, safely out of the way of the line of march of her wild brothers. She was a frail, small mortal, with long, smooth, yellow hair and anxious blue eyes, just the apple of everybody's eye in the Tile House.

"Father and Uncle George have never spoken to one another for three whole years. Everybody in Allonby Edge knows that, and so do you, Clary!

Is it likely that the other Carews would be allowed to come to your birthday party--is it now, I ask?" Oliver, the eldest, put his hands in his pockets, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace, secretly flattering himself that even Father could not strike a more manly att.i.tude.

It was Sat.u.r.day--a pouring wet Sat.u.r.day--and the boys were house-prisoners. They had struggled through every indoor game they knew, starting with a pillow-fight before the beds were made, to the tearful wrath of old Euphemia, who kept Dr. John Carew's house because the sweet-faced Mother, whom the children adored so, was ill and frail most of her days.

When in the pillow-fray a bolster burst and the feathers thickly snowed the staircase and hall, Euphemia's wrath boiled over, and the boys, with Clary also, were sternly hustled upstairs to the play-room, there to be locked in until the dinner-bell should release them. Peace at any price Euphemia was determined to have.

"You don't think they can get into mischief locked in--there's the window, you know, Euphemia," nervously said Mother. It was one of the poor lady's particularly bad days, and she was shut up in her own room.

"No, mem, there's no fear. Not even such wild little reskels as ours would climb out o' that high window, an' there ain't no other outlet save it be the chimney. Not that I'd be surprised to see 'em one after another creep out o' the chimney-pot black as black!" Euphemia, with her head in the air, walked off muttering.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

However, as the morning wore on and a wondrous quiet reigned at the top of the house, where the boys were engaged in painting fearsome animals and golliwogs on the jambs of the mantelpiece, Euphemia relented.

"Mary Jane," said she to the good-tempered, red-elbowed help in the kitchen, "you take up this plate o' gingerbread to the children. Pretty dears, they must be nigh starving!" And a goodly heap of gingerbread chunks travelled upstairs to the play-room, the door of which was unlocked.

It was over this welcome interruption that a wonderful new game was hatched.

"Clary, tell us about the mountain railway," said Oliver, seating himself on the edge of the table to munch contentedly.

His little sister had spent the previous winter with her ailing Mother in the Alps, at an hotel built on purpose for sick folk as high up in the air as was possible. And the boys were never tired of listening to her descriptions of the life so far up in the clouds and snows that the sun was nearly always shining hotly.

"I shouldn't mind being sick myself if it was only just to wear those funny snow-boots and walk over the hard snow up and down the mountain-sides," said Mark, reaching out for another piece of gingerbread.

"Oh, I'd like the tobogganing--the 'luging,' Clary calls it. Fancy spinning down in the moonlight!" cried one of the smaller boys, Johnny.

"No! Give me the riskiest of all--that queer railway up and down the great mountain. Tell us about it again, Clary," urged Oliver.

"That's called the funicular!" Very proud of being able to say the long word, Clary propped up her every-day doll beside her in the rocking-chair and, folding her mites of hands, proceeded to explain.

"It's quite a little young railway, y' know. It's only to take people up to the hotel on top of the Mont, where Mother and I lived last winter."

Then she told the boys how the little train toiled up the sheer face of a great mountain to the clouds. And it had to descend, also, which was worse far. Clary shuddered and hid her blue eyes as she described that coming down, while the eyes of the boys fairly bolted over the mere thought of a journey so full of risks and perils.

"It must have been prime!" calmly observed Chris, always to the front if danger were in the air. "What did you think about, Clary, when the funicular came jolting down the steps hewn out for it in the steep mountain? What did it feel like? Come now, tell us," persisted Chris curiously.

"I fink it was like stepping out of a high window into the dark night,"

explained the little maid. "I didn't like it, an' I pulled the wire to shut my dolly's eyes, case she saw and it f'itened her, y' know!" The first thought of mother Clary had been for her waxen baby.

"Well, let's play at the funicular," suggested Oliver, when the gingerbread plate was cleared.

"Hooray! Down the banisters?" Mark was on fire in a moment. So were the other boys, and there was a stampede for the staircase.

"You can come, too, Clary!" shouted her brothers, and, bustling out of the rocking-chair, the little mother carefully carried her baby treasure, wrapped in a tiny shawl, for the perilous journey down the mountain-side.

The Tile House was of considerable size: it and the White House where Doctor George Carew lived were the only two large dwellings in the village of Allonby Edge. But of the two the Tile House was the higher, having an extra storey. The staircase was, consequently, a pretty long one, with only one landing at the upper floor, which led up to the play attic and servants' rooms.

"Couldn't have a better railway than this!" said Oliver, his head on one side as he regarded the length of banister.

Presently, the boys were tasting the fearful joy of precipitating themselves down the slippery route, which they grandly called the funicular.

The journeys were accompanied by a good deal of uproar, but the green baize swing-door shut off the sound from the ears of Euphemia and Mary Jane in the kitchen.

So the noisy crew had it all their own way.

Oliver was the driver of the train, and Mark the guard, the rest being pa.s.sengers, and the traffic up and down to the hotel on the high Alps was something extraordinary.

"It's the going up that's the horrid difficulty!" panted Johnny, whose legs were rather short to interlace in the banister rails and thus heave himself upwards as the other boys did.

"Difficulties were made on purpose to be overcome," loftily said Mark, "and mountain railways are full of them. Now then, Clary," he shouted upstairs, "why don't you be a pa.s.senger? Aren't you getting tired of living up in the mountain hotel? Don't you want to come home and see your family?"

"Yeth, I do want to come home," piped a small voice from far away up under the roof. "So does my Hilda Rose," and Clary's little fair head peered over the top banister.

"Come along then!" recklessly shouted the boys. "Can't you get aboard the funicular yourself and start your journey?"

"What sillies girls are; just like women, always expecting somebody to hand them in and hand them out!" grumbled Mark, who, being the guard, felt bound to go up and start the lady pa.s.senger.

"Now then, ma'am," he said briskly, "you and your little girl had better get in. Train's going to start when I wave this green flag!"

"Oh, please hold my Hilda Rose until I get my seat," nervously said the pa.s.senger. "Oh! Mark--I mean Mr. Guard, do you think that Hilda Rose and me can go down wifout falling?"

"Why, of course!" scornfully answered the guard. "Haven't you been on a funicular before--the real thing? What's the use of bragging about the dangers you've been through if you can't face them a second time? Now, then, are you ready, ma'am?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Oliver was stooping over the senseless little figure._]

"Oh, no; not yet! Oh, but we sitted the other way in the real railway!"

tearfully remonstrated the pa.s.senger, who had been settled by the guard on the banister face downwards.

"Can't help that, ma'am. It's the way we run trains. We gen'lly do things different from the foreigners. Now then, I'll tie your little girl on your back with her sash-ends, and, if you hold on tight, you will both get to the bottom all right!"

And she might have got to her destination in safety had the pa.s.senger been a boy accustomed to banister sliding instead of a weak, fragile little girl.

"Ready below there?" shouted down the guard. "There, ma'am, I've telegraphed down that you're coming!"

Mark's hand let go the wildly clinging pa.s.senger. A green flag was waved. A shrill whistling rang through the house.