Better than Play Part 9

The lady looked in her basket. "If only I had my purse with me I should be glad to have those from you. Do you mind coming back to my house with me? It is not very far."

"No, ma'am, we'll come, but,"--Bella hesitated, wanting to say something, yet hardly knowing how to--"but if you don't want to go back, and--and if you like to take them, we'll trust--I mean, next week will do." It was out at last, amid a great deal of blushing.

The lady smiled. "Well, that is very thoughtful of you, and if you are sure you don't mind trusting me I shall be much obliged to you, for I have to be at my mother's house at one o'clock, and I think it must be that now. Stella, darling, you would like to carry the flowers, wouldn't you?

That's it. Then I owe you fourpence for two twopenny bunches. I will not forget. Perhaps I shall see you here at this same place at the same time next week?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good-morning, and thank you."

"Good-morning, ma'am," they both answered; and the little invalid called back gratefully, "Good-bye, and thank you ever so much for my lovely flowers."

"Now," said Tom excitedly, "all we've got to do is to walk home."

"When we've got the children's walking-sticks," corrected Bella, and they both hurried down to the market-house to get them.

"We'll take home some cinnamon rock to Aunt Emma," said Bella; "she likes that better than anything."

At last, with their baskets empty save for their purchases, they proudly and joyfully turned their faces homewards, delighted in every way with their day's experiences.

The walk home certainly did seem rather long, far longer than the walk out, but they were very tired, of course, for they had been on their feet, with scarcely any rest, since four in the morning. The sun was hot too, and the road dusty, and such a number of carriages and carts pa.s.sed them that the air all the time seemed full of a haze of dust--at least it did until they had got a couple of miles or so away from Norton. After that it grew less bustling and much pleasanter. And then by the last milestone, which was a good mile from May Lane, they found their father and Margery and Charlie waiting for them.

All their tiredness vanished then in a trice, and the last mile was covered and home reached almost before they had begun to tell all they had to say.

It was not much past four o'clock by the time they reached the cottage, but Aunt Emma had finished all her scrubbing and cleaning, and had tidied herself, and got tea all spread ready for them, and she actually came out to meet them, seeming really glad to see them, and when they gave her the cinnamon rock it was plain to see that she was really pleased that they had thought of her.

"Now come in and take off your boots, and put on your old slippers to rest your feet; you must be tired out," she said kindly. They certainly looked very tired, though they were too excited just then to feel so.

"There's apple-tart for tea," whispered Margery, as she followed Bella upstairs. "I saw Aunt Emma making it. It's for you and Tom!"

Bella could hardly believe her ears, but when they sat down to table there was the tart, sure enough; and as they sat there eating and talking over their adventures and drinking their tea and laughing, Bella thought she had never known such a perfectly happy, lovely day in all her life before.

And how splendid it was to hear them all exclaim when Bella took out her purse and counted out on the table the money she had earned that day!

"And there's sixpence owing, and four-pence we spent on buns, that would make ten-pence more!" she said proudly.

"You must put it in the Savings Bank towards buying your cold frame," said her father; "and it won't be so very long either before you'll have enough to get it with, if you do as well every week as you have to-day.

You can't always expect, though, to have such a lot of flowers as you've got just now."

"I think I shall take some bunches of herbs in with me next time," said Bella. "Don't you think they'd sell, father?"

"I should think most people grow their own," said her father; "still, you can but try. The weight of them won't hurt you, even if you have to bring them back again."

"Bella, if I've got some flowers next Sat.u.r.day, will you take in a bunch and sell them for me?" asked Margery excitedly. "Then I'll have a penny to put in the bank too."

"Oh, yours are fairy flowers," teased Charlie; "they would die on the way, or turn into something else."

Margery was not going to be teased. "P'raps they'd turn into fairies,"

she said, nodding her head wisely at her brother; "then they'd turn all Bella's pennies into golden sov'rins, and make a little horse and carriage to drive her home in."

"I'll find you some sandwiches or cake or something to take with you next week," said Aunt Emma; "it's a pity you should spend your money on buns and things. It'll be better for you, and cheaper, to take your own with you."

Tom and Bella could scarcely believe their ears, but they felt very pleased, and thanked her very gratefully.

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT LAY BEYOND THE MILESTONE.

The next week the children went off far more heavily laden than they had been when they made their first venture. Bella had added a few bunches of herbs to her large supply of flowers, and a bunch or two from Margery's garden, and she had to carry both her baskets herself, for Tom's vegetables proved load enough for him. He had wanted to take some currants for Charlie, but his father would not allow that.

"They ain't good enough," he said; "it won't do for to begin offering poor stuff to your customers, or you'll lose those you've got and never get any more, and you'll have all your load to carry for nothing. You learn to grow better ones, Charlie, my boy, and then another year you'll be able to make something by them."

Charlie's face fell, but he had not given the time or care to his garden that the others had, and he knew it, and that only made him more vexed.

Life was disappointing to Charlie just then. It seemed to him, and to Margery too, hard that they also could not go to Norton every Sat.u.r.day.

The ten-mile walk they forgot all about, they only thought of the pleasure of being in the midst of all the people and the bustle, and the shops and market-stalls, with their loads of fruit and sweets and buns. The great aim of Margery's life then was to grow big enough to carry in a basketful of flowers too, and sell them, and to possess a purse to put the money in, and a Savings Bank book, just as Bella had.

As the summer wore on and the days grew hotter and hotter, the eagerness of both died down a good deal. It was far more pleasant, they found, to stay at home and play in the cool lane or orchard, than to get up at four in the morning and tramp about all day long under the weight of heavy baskets. Some days they even found it too hot to walk with their father as far as the milestone.

Those were trying, tiring days for Tom and Bella, days that put their courage to the test, and made their perseverance waver more than once.

The walk in the morning was lovely still, but the standing about in the close, narrow streets, crowded with people and animals, without even a rest at the end of their five-mile walk, was so wearying that Bella often longed to sit down on the edge of the pavement to rest her aching feet.

Her cheeks would grow scarlet, and her head throb, and her eyes ache with the glare, and the heat and the weight of the baskets, but she could not do anything to get relief. She had to stand or walk about, trying to sell her flowers as quickly as possible. There was nothing else to be done.

The poor flowers suffered too, and hard work it was to keep them looking fresh.

Sometimes a farmer or carter would offer the two tired little market-gardeners a 'lift' on their homeward way, but this did not happen often, for, as a rule, they were all going in the opposite direction.

There were few besides Bella and Tom who left the town so early; and it would have been cooler and pleasanter for them if they had waited until the evening and the heat of the day was over, but they were always anxious to get home, and they really did not know where to go or what to do with themselves all the weary day until five or six o'clock.

That was a very long, hot summer. The flowers opened and faded quickly, in spite of the hours the whole family spent every evening watering them; and more than once, if it had not been for the fruit from the orchard and the vegetables, Bella and Tom would have had but a scanty supply to take to their customers. As it was, they could not carry enough to make very much profit, for fruit and vegetables are heavy, and to carry a load of them for miles is no joke.

Several times that summer, when she awoke after a hot, restless night to another stifling, scorching day, Bella felt inclined to shirk her business and remain at home. It would have been so jolly to have spent the day lazily in the shady orchard, instead of tramping those long, dusty miles.

Tom felt the heat less, and his energy helped to keep her up.

"We'll have a donkey before so very long," he said cheerfully. "If we can have a good sowing and planting this autumn, and good crops next spring, father and all of us, we'll have enough to carry in to make it worth while to hire Mrs. Wintle's donkey."

So with the thought of all they were going to do in the future to buoy them up, off they would start again, hoping that before another Sat.u.r.day came the heat would have lessened, and some rain have fallen to refresh the land and lay the dust.

Yet, with all its weariness and hard work, that summer ever after stood out in Bella's memory as a very happy one; and the evenings after their return, and the Sundays, remained in her memory all her life through.

Even if Charlie and Margery did not come to meet them, their father was always there to carry their baskets home for them. And then there was the change into cool, comfortable old garments, and the nice tea, and the long rest in the orchard, or sitting about in the porch outside the door, while they talked over all that had happened during the day.

They all went to bed by daylight on those light nights, and Bella, as she stretched out her weary body restfully on her little white bed, could see through the open window the stars come up one by one in the deep blue-black sky.

She was always quite rested by the time Sunday came, and was up and out early for a look at her garden before getting ready for Sunday-School.

She loved the Sunday-School, and she loved her teacher, and the service after in the dear old creeper-covered church, where the leaves peeped in at the open windows, and the birds came in and flew about overhead, and all the people knew and greeted one another in a friendly spirit.

On Sundays, too, it was an understood thing that Bella should go to tea with Aunt Maggie, and this was to her, perhaps, one of the happiest hours of the whole week, for Aunt Maggie had a little harmonium, to the music of which they sang hymns. Sometimes, too, she told stories of the days when she was young, and of people and places she had seen--told them so interestingly, that to Bella the people and places seemed as real as though she had known them herself. They had long talks, too, about all that Bella was doing, and the things that puzzled her, and her plans for the present and the future.