Johnny Ludlow Third Series Part 101

Would you believe it, Mr. Johnny, that I could hardly get her here?

Afraid, she said, to come without mother!"

"Oh, Nettie! Why, you are going to have lots of fun! Is mother better this evening?"

"Yes," whispered Nettie, venturing to take a peep at me through her wet eyelashes.

The order of the day was this. Tea at once, consisting of as much bread-and-b.u.t.ter and plum-cake as they could eat; games afterwards. The savoury pies and tartlets later on; more cake to wind up with, which, if they had no room for, they might carry home.

After all signs of tea had disappeared, and our neighbours, the Coneys, had come in, and several round rings were seated on the floor at "Hunt-the-Slipper," I, chancing to draw within earshot, found Miss Timmens had opened out her grievance to the Squire--the parson's interference with the school.

"It would be reversing the proper and natural order of things, as _I_ look upon it," she was saying, "to give an exalted education to those who must get their living by the sweat of their brow; as servants, and what not. Do you think so, sir?"

"Think so! of course I think so," spluttered the Squire, taking up the subject hotly as usual. "It's good for them to read and write well, to add up figures, and know how to sew and clean, and wash and iron. That's the learning they want, whether they are to pa.s.s their lives serving in families, or as the wives of working men."

"Yes, sir," acquiesced Miss Timmens, in a glow of satisfaction; "but you may as well try to beat common sense into a broomstick as into Mr.

Bruce. The other day--what, is it you again, Nettie!" she broke off, as the little white-robed child sidled up and hid her head in what appeared to be her haven of refuge--the folds of the purple gown. "Never was such a child as this, for shyness. When put to play with the rest, she'll not stay with them. What do you think you are good for?"--rather wrathfully.

"Do you suppose the gentlefolk are going to eat you, Nettie?"

"There's nothing to be afraid of, little la.s.sie. What child is it?"

added the Squire, struck with her appearance.

"Tell your name to the Squire," said Miss Timmens, with authority. And the little one lifted her pretty blue eyes appealingly to his face, as if beseeching him not to bite her.

"It's Nettie Trewin, sir," she said in a whisper.

"Dear me! Is that poor Trewin's child! She has a look of her father too.

A delicate little maid."

"And silly also," added Miss Timmens. "You came here to play, you know, Nettie; not hide your face. What are they all stirring at, now? Oh, going to have 'Puss-in-the-corner.' You can play at that, Nettie. Here, Jane Bright! Take Nettie with you and attend to her. Find her a corner: she has not had any play at all."

A tall, awkward girl stepped up: slouching shoulders, narrow forehead, stolid features, coa.r.s.e hair all ruffled; thick legs, thick boots--Miss Jane Bright. She seized Nettie's hand.

"Yes, sir, you are right: the child is a delicate, dainty little thing, quite a contrast to most of these other girls," resumed Miss Timmens, in answer to the Squire. "Look at that one who has just fetched Nettie away: she is only a type of the rest. They come, most of them, of coa.r.s.e, stupid parents, and will be no better to the end of the chapter, whatever education you may try to hammer into them. As I said to Mr.

Bruce the other day when---- Well, I never! There he is!"

The young parson caught her eye, as he was looming in. Long coat, clerical waistcoat, no white tie to speak of round his bare neck; quite a la mode. The new fashions and the new notions that Mr. Bruce went in for, were not at all understood at North Crabb.

The Squire had gone on at first against the party; but no face was more sunshiny than his, now that he was in the thick of it. A select few of the children, with ours and the little Lawsons, had appropriated the dining-room for "Hunt-the-Whistle." The pater chanced to look in just before it began, and we got him to be the hunter. I shall never forget it as long as I live. I don't believe I had ever laughed as much before.

He did not know the play, or the trick of it: and to see him whirling himself about in search of the whistle as it was blown behind his back, now seizing on this bold whistler, believing he or she must be in possession of the whistle, and now on that one, all unconscious that the whistle was fastened to the back b.u.t.ton of his own coat; and to look at the puzzled wonder of his face as to where the whistle could possibly be, and how it contrived to elude his grasp, was something to be remembered. The shrieks of laughter might have been heard down at the Ravine. Tod had to sit on the floor and hold his sides; Tom Coney was in convulsions.

"Ah--I--ah--what do you think, Mr. Todhetley?" began Bruce, with his courteous drawl, catching the Squire, as he emerged later, red and steaming, from the whistle-hunt. "Suppose I collect these young ones around me and give them a quarter-of-an-hour's lecture on pneumatics?

I've been getting up the subject a little."

"Pneumatics be hanged!" burst forth the pater, more emphatically than politely, when he had taken a puzzled stare at the parson. "The young ones have come here to _play_, not to have their brains addled. Be shot if I quite know myself what 'pneumatics' means. I beg your pardon, Bruce. You mean well, I know."

"Pneumatics!" repeated old Coney, taking time to digest the word. "Don't you think, parson, that's more in the department of the Astronomer Royal?"

One required a respite after the whistle-hunt. I put my back against the wall in the large room, and watched the different sets of long tails, then pulling fiercely at "Oranges and Lemons." Mrs. Hill and Maria Lease sat side by side on one of the benches, both looking as sad as might be, their memories, no doubt, buried in the past. Maria Lease had never, so to say, worn a smiling countenance since the dreadful end of Daniel Ferrar.

A commotion! Half-a-dozen of the "lemons," pulling too fiercely, had come to grief on the ground. Maria went to the rescue.

"I was just thinking of poor David, sir," Mrs. Hill said to me, with a sigh. "How he would have enjoyed this scene: so merry and bright!"

"But he is in a brighter scene than this, you know."

"Yes, Master Johnny, I do know it," she said, tears trickling slowly down her cheeks. "Where he is, all things are beautiful."

In her palmy days Mrs. Todhetley used to sing a song, of which this was the first verse:--

"All that's bright must fade, The brightest still the fleetest; All that's sweet was made But to be lost when sweetest."

Mrs. Hill's words brought this song to my memory, and with it the damping reminder that nothing lasts in this world, whether of pleasure or brightness. All things must fade, or die: but in that better life to come they will last for ever. And David had entered upon it.

"Now, where's that senseless little Nettie?"

The words, spoken sharply, came from Miss Timmens. But if she did possess a sharp-toned tongue, she was good and kind at heart. The young crew were sitting down at the long table to the savoury pies and tartlets; Miss Timmens, taking stock of them, missed Nettie.

"Jane Bright, go and find Nettie Trewin."

Not daring to disobey the curt command, but looking as though she feared her portion of the good things would be eaten up during her absence, Jane Bright disappeared. Back she came in a brace of shakes, saying Nettie "was not there."

"Maria Lease, where's Nettie Trewin?" asked Miss Timmens.

Maria turned from the table. "Nettie Trewin?" she repeated, looking about her. "I don't know. She must be somewhere or other."

"I wish to goodness you'd find her then."

Maria Lease could not see anything of the child. "Nettie Trewin" was called out high and low; but it brought forth no response. The servants were sent to look over the house, with no better result.

"She is hiding somewhere in her shyness," said Miss Timmens. "I have a great mind to punish her for this."

"She can't have got into the rain-water b.u.t.t?" suggested the Squire.

"Molly, go and look."

It was not very likely: as the barrel was quite six feet high. But, as the Squire once got into the water-b.u.t.t to hid himself when he was a climbing youngster, and had reasons for antic.i.p.ating a whipping, his thoughts naturally flew to it.

"Well, she must be somewhere," cried he when we laughed at him. "She could not sink through the floor."

"Who saw her last?" repeated Miss Timmens. "Do you hear, children? Just stop eating for a minute, and answer."

Much discussion--doubt--cross-questioning. The whole lot seemed to be nearly as stupid as owls. At last, so far as could be gathered, none of them had noticed Nettie since they began "Puss-in-the-corner."

"Jane Bright, I told you to take Nettie to play with the rest, and to find her a corner. What did you do with her?"

Jane Bright commenced her answer by essaying to take a sly bite at her pie. Miss Timmens stopped her midway, and turned her from the table to face the company.

"Do you hear me? Now don't stand staring like a gaby! Just answer."