Happy Days for Boys and Girls Part 1

Happy Days for Boys and Girls.

by Various.

HAPPY DAYS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Settlers run from the native inhabitants}]

THE ORCHARD'S GRANDMOTHER.

I must ask you to go back more than two hundred years, and watch two people in a quiet old English garden.

One is an old lady reading. In her young days she was a famous beauty.

That was very long ago, to be sure; but I think she is a beauty still--do not you?

She has such a lovely face, and her eyes are so sweet and bright! and better than that, they are the kind which see pleasant things in everybody, and something to like and be interested in. I hope with all my heart yours are that kind, too.

The other person is a little child. She was christened Mary Brenton, like her grandmother; but she was called Polly all her days, for short; and we will call her so.

She is sitting on the gra.s.s with a little cat in her arms, which she is trying to put to sleep. But the kitten is not so accommodating as a doll would be, and just as Polly does not dare to move for fear of waking her, she makes up her mind that a run after a leaf and a play with any chance caterpillar which may be so unlucky as to cross her path, will be very preferable, and tries to get away.

It is one of the most delightful days that ever was. September, and almost too warm, if it were not for the breeze that brings cooler air from the sea. Once in a while some fruit falls from the heavily-laden trees, and the first dead leaves rustle a little on the ground. The bees are busy, making the most of the bright day; for they know of the stormy weather coming. The sky is very blue, and the flowers very bright. Two swallows are playing hide-and-seek through the orchard, and chasing each other in great races, now so close to the ground that it seems as if their feet might catch in the green gra.s.s, and now away up in the air over the high walls out towards the hills; and just as one loses sight of them, and turns away, here they are again. And in the kitchen the girls are clattering the dishes and laughing; and do you hear some one singing a doleful tune in a cheery, happy voice?

That is Dorothy, Polly's dear Dorothy, who waits upon grandmother, with whom she has been to France, and Holland, and Scotland, and who can tell almost as charming stories as grandmother herself.

The house is large and old, with queer-shaped windows, all sizes and all heights from the ground, and a great many of them hidden by the ivy. That is the outside; and if you were to go in, you would find large, low rooms, filled with furniture that you would think queer and uncomfortable. And there are portraits in some of them, one of Polly, probably painted not very long before, in which she is attired after the fashion of those days, and looks nearly as old as she would now if she were living!

Now let us go back to the garden. The kitten has escaped, and Polly is wishing for something to do.

"Where's Dolly?" says grandmother. "Find her, and then gather some apples and plums, and have a tea drinking."

The doll had been very ill all day; it was strange in grandmother to forget it. She had fallen asleep just before dinner, and been put carefully in her bed; it would never do to wake her so soon. And besides, a tea party was not amusing when there was no one to sit at the other end of the table. This referred to Tom, Polly's dearest cousin, who had just left her after a long visit; and she missed him sadly.

"And," says Polly, "I do not think I should care for it if he were here, if I could have nothing but apples. I'm tired of them. I have eaten one of every kind in the garden to-day, even the great yellow ones by the lower gate. I think they're disagreeable; but I left them till the very last, and then I was afraid they would feel sorry to be left out. I think I will eat another, though; and I will not have a party--it's a trouble. Which kind would you take, grandmother?"

"One of the very smallest," says the old lady, laughing; "but stop a moment. I have one I'll give you;" and she took a beauty from her pocket, and threw it on the gra.s.s by Polly.

"That's the very prettiest apple I ever saw," says the child. "Where did you get it? Not off our trees. 'Father gave it to you?' and where did he find it?"

Grandmother did not know.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE POLLY.]

After admiring her apple a little more, Polly eats it in a most deliberate manner, enjoying every bite as if it were the first she had eaten that day, and when she has finished it, gives a contented little sigh, and sits looking at the fine brown seeds which she holds in her hand. Presently she says, earnestly,--

"Grandmother!"

"What now, Polly?"

"I wish I had that dear little apple's two brothers and two sisters, and I would put them in the doll's chest until to-morrow; I wouldn't eat them to-day, you know."

"I will tell you what you can do," says grandmother. "Are those seeds in your hand? Go find Dorothy, and ask her to give you the empty flower-pot from the high shelf at my window; and then you can fill it with dark earth from one of the flower-beds, and plant them; then by and by you will have a tree, and can have plenty of your apple's children."

That was a happy thought. And Polly puts the seeds carefully on a leaf, and runs to find Dorothy. Now she comes back with a queer little Dutch china flower-pot, and sits down on the gra.s.s again, and makes a hole in the soft brown earth with her finger, and drops the fine seeds in.

For days she watered them, and carried them to sunny places; but at last she grew very impatient, and one morning, when she was all alone in the garden, very much provoked that they had not made their appearance, took a twig and explored; and the first poke brought to light the little seeds, as shiny and brown as when they left the apple. It was a great disappointment, and Polly caught them up, and threw them as far away as she could, and with tears in her eyes ran in to tell grandmother.

"Ah," said the dear old lady, "it was not time! Thou hast not learned thy lesson of waiting; and no wonder, when there are few so hard, and thou art still so young."

Then she sent Polly back to the garden, and the pot was put in its place, again. And a week or two after, as grandmother was just going to make room in the earth for a new plant, she saw growing there a little green sprig, which was not a weed. She listened a moment, and heard the child's voice outside.

"Polly, my dear, are you sure you scattered all the seeds of your pretty apple the day you were so provoked at their not having begun to grow for you?"

The child reddened a little, and turned away.

"I don't know, grandmother. I think so; I wished to then."

How delighted she was when the old lady showed her the treasure, and how carefully it was watched and tended! For one little seed had been buried deeper than the rest, and now in the sunshine of grandmother's wide window it had come up. Every pleasant day it was placed somewhere in the sun, and at night it was always carried to Polly's own room.

Her dolls and other old play-house friends, formerly much honored, and of great consequence, were quite neglected for "the apple tree," as she always called the tiny thing with its few bits of leaves.

And now we must leave the Brentons' old stone house and the garden.

All this happened in the days of King Charles I., when there was a great war, and the country in a highly discordant state. Polly's father was on the king's side, and one day he did something which was considered particularly unpardonable by his enemies, and at night he came riding from Oxford in the greatest hurry he had ever been in; and riding after him were some of Cromwell's men. It was bright moonlight, and as he rode in the paved yard the great dogs in their kennels began to bark, and that waked Polly's mother, in a terrible fright at hearing her husband's voice, and sure something undesirable had happened.

Squire Brenton hurried in to tell her, in as few words as possible, what he had done, and that he was followed, and had just time to say good by, and take another horse, and rush on to the sea, where he hoped to find a fishing-boat, by means of which he could escape.

"And you," said he, "had better take Polly and one of the men, and ride to your cousin Matthew's; for in their rage at my escape, they may mean to burn my house. I little thought a month ago,--when he offered you 'a safe home,' and I laughed in his face, and said, 'Give your good wife the same message; for she may not find your house so safe as mine by and by,'--that you would need to accept so soon."

"But I cannot go there now," said Mistress Brenton; "for cousin Matthew is away with the Roundhead army, and his wife and sister have gone to the north. I'll go with you. Listen: I heard one of the maids say to-day that a ship sails to-morrow at daybreak from the bay by Dunner's with a company of Puritans for Holland, on their way to one of the American colonies. We will go for a time to our friends in Amsterdam, and be quite safe."

Anything was better than staying where he was; and Squire Brenton, bidding her hurry, went to the stables with his tired horse, and waking one of his men whom he could trust, told him why he was there, and to say, when the men came, that he was in Oxford yesterday, when they had a letter, and that Mistress Brenton had gone north to some friends. He gave him some messages for his brother, and then, sending him out to a field with the horse he had been riding, which would certainly have betrayed him, he went back to the yard, trying to keep the two fresh horses still, while he listened, fearing every moment to hear his pursuers coming down the road.

Presently out came Mistress Brenton, carrying some bundles of clothing, and a few little things besides, and wrapped in a great riding cloak; and at her side walked Polly, very sleepy, and looking wonderingly in the faces of the others, and asking all manner of childish questions.

Suddenly she ran back to the house, just as her father was going to lift her on his horse; and when she came back, what do you think she had? Together in a little bag were her doll and kitten, and one arm held tightly her little apple tree, wrapped in some garment of her own which she had found lying near it.

And then they rode away. The poor child, after begging them to go to her uncle's, so she might say good by to grandmother, fell asleep, holding fast her treasures all the while.

There was a faint glimmer of light over the sea as they neared the sh.o.r.e, and they saw anch.o.r.ed at a little distance a small ship, and could see the men moving about her deck; for the wind had risen. Mr.

Brenton found a man whom he knew, in whose charge he left the horses, and then a fisherman rowed them to the vessel.

The captain was nowhere to be seen, and the sailors paid no attention to them as they came on deck in the chilly morning twilight; and they went immediately below, and hid themselves in a dark corner, thinking they might have to go ash.o.r.e if discovered, and that it was best to keep out of sight until it was too late to turn back. In the darkness they fell asleep. This may seem very strange; but remembering the long ride, and the fright they had been in, and that now they felt safe, we can hardly wonder. At any rate, it was the middle of the afternoon before Colonel Brenton--I think I have never given him his t.i.tle before--made his appearance on deck, to the great astonishment of the captain and all the other people, who knew him more or less. He told the captain what had happened, saying at the end he would pay him double the usual pa.s.sage money to Holland, where he meant to stay for a while; and at this the rough man really turned pale.

"Holland, _Holland_!" said he; "do you not see we're going down the Channel? We are bound direct for America."

The story says that Colonel Brenton was almost beside himself, and offered large sums of money to be taken back, or to France; but the captain would not consent, saying that they had made good progress, and it was late in the year. The ship would come back in the spring, and he must content himself.