Six to Sixteen Part 22

As Clement came into the hall he met Madame hanging on Jack's arm, and absolutely radiant.

"You're not going into that beastly place again?" said he.

"For the choke, Monsieur Clement. _Ah, oui!_ And with Monsieur Jack."

"You may as well come, Clem," said Eleanor, and we followed, laughing.

Madame had now no time for discontent. Jack held her fast. He gave her gingerbread at one stall, and gingerbeer at another, and cracked nuts for her all along. He vowed that the oyster-sh.e.l.ls were flowers, and the empty bottles bouquet-holders, and offered to buy her a pair of spectacles to see matters more clearly with.

"Couleur de rose?" laughed Madame.

We went in a body to the marionettes, and Madame screamed as we climbed the inclined plane to enter, and scrambled down the frail scaffolding to the "reserved seats." These cost twopence a head, and were "reserved"

for us alone. The dolls were really cleverly managed. They performed the closing scenes of a pantomime. The policeman came to pieces when clown and harlequin pulled at him. People threw their heads at each other, and shook their arms off. The transformation scene was really pretty, and it only added to the joke that the dirty old proprietor burned the red light under our very noses, amid a storm of chaff from Jack.

From the marionettes we went to the fat woman. A loathsome sight, which turned me sick; but, for some inexplicable reason, seemed highly to gratify Madame. She and Jack came out in fits of laughter, and he said, "Now for the two-headed monstrosity. It'll just suit you, Madame!"

At the door, Madame paused. "Mais, ce n'est pas pour des pet.i.tes filles," she said, glancing at Eleanor and me.

"_Feel?_" said Jack, who was struggling through the crowd, which was dense here. "It feels nothing. It's in a bottle. Come along!"

"All right, Madame," said Eleanor, smiling. "We'll wait for you outside."

We next proceeded to the photographer's, where Jack and Madame were photographed together with Pincher.

By Madame's desire she was now led to the "bazaar," where she bought a collar for Pincher, two charming china boxes, in the shape of dogs'

heads, for Eleanor and her mother, a fan for me, a walking-stick for Monsieur le Pasteur, and some fishing-floats for Clement. By this time some children had gathered round us. The children of the district were especially handsome, and Madame was much smitten by their rosy cheeks and many-shaded flaxen hair.

"Ah!" she sighed, "I must make some little presents to the children;"

and she looked anxiously over the stalls.

"Violin, one and six," said the saleswoman. "Nice work-box for a little girl, half-a-crown."

"Half a fiddlestick," said Jack promptly. "What have you got for a halfpenny?"

"Them's halfpenny b.a.l.l.s, whips, and dolls. Them churns and mugs is a halfpenny; and so's the little tin plates. Them's the halfpenny monkeys on sticks."

"Now, Madame," said Jack, "put that half-crown back, and give me a shilling. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four. There are your presents; and now for the children!"

Madame showed a decided disposition to reward personal beauty, which Jack overruled at once.

"The prettiest? I see myself letting you! Church Sunday scholars is my tip; and I shall put them through the Catechism test. Look here, young un, what's your name? Who gave you this name?"

"Ma G.o.dfeythers and G.o.dmoothers," the young urchin began.

"That'll do," said Jack. "Take your whip, and be thankful. Now, my little la.s.s, who gave you this name?"

"Me G.o.dfeythers----"

"All right. Take your doll, and drop a curtsy; and mind you don't take the curtsy, and drop your doll. Now, my boy, tell me how many there be?"

"Ten."

"Which be they? I mean, take your monkey, and make your bow. Next child, come up."

Clem, Eleanor, and I kept back the crowd as well as we could; but children pressed in on all sides. Clem brought a shilling out of his pocket, and handed it over to Jack.

"You've won your bet, old man," he said.

"You're a good fellow, Clem. I say, lay it out among the halfpenny lot--will you?--and then give them to Madame. Keep your eye open for Dissenters, and send the Church children first."

The forty-eight halfpennyworths proved to be sufficient for all, however, though the orthodoxy of one or two seemed doubtful.

Madame was tired; but the position had pleased her, and she gave away the toys with a charming grace. We were leaving the fair when some small urchins, who had either got or hoped to get presents, and were (I suspected) partly impelled also by a sense of the striking nature of Madame's appearance, set up a l.u.s.ty cheer.

Madame paused. Her eyes brightened; her thin lips parted with a smile.

In a voice of intense satisfaction, she murmured:

"It is the Briteesh hooray!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

WE AND THE BOYS--WE AND THE BOYS AND OUR FADS--THE LAMP OF ZEAL--CLEMENT ON UNREALITY--JACK'S OINTMENT.

Our life on the moors was, I suppose, monotonous. I do not think we ever found it dull; but it was not broken, as a rule, by striking incidents.

The coming and going of the boys were our chief events. We packed for them when they went away. We wrote long letters to them, and received brief but pithy replies. We spoke on their behalf when they wanted clothes or pocket-money. We knew exactly how to bring the news of good marks in school and increased subscriptions to cricket to bear in effective combination upon the parental mind, and were amply rewarded by half a sheet, acknowledging the receipt of a ten-shilling piece in a match-box (the Arkwrights had a strange habit of sending coin of the realm by post, done up like botanical specimens), with brief directions as to the care of garden or collection, and perhaps a rude outline of the head-master's nose--"In a great hurry, from your loving and grateful Bro."

We kept their gardens tidy, preserved their collections from dust, damp, and Keziah, and knitted socks for them. I learned to knit, of course.

Every woman knits in that village of stone. And "between lights"

Eleanor and I plied our needles on the boys' behalf, and counted the days to the holidays.

We had fresh "fads" every holidays. Many of our plans were ambitious enough, and the results would, no doubt, have been great had they been fully carried out. But Midsummer holidays, though long, are limited in length.

Once we made ourselves into a Field Naturalists' Club. We girls gave up our "spare dress wardrobe" for a museum. We subdivided the shelves, and proposed to make a perfect collection of the flora and entomology of the neighbourhood. Eleanor and I really did continue to add specimens whilst the boys were at school; but they came home at Christmas devoted, body and soul, to the drama. We were soon converted to the new fad. The wardrobe became a side-scene in our theatre, and Eleanor and Clement laboured day and night with papers of powdered paint, and kettles of hot size, in converting canvas into scenery. "Theatricals" promised to be a lasting fancy; but the next holidays were in fine weather, and we made the drop-curtain into a tent.

When the boys were at school, Eleanor and I were fully occupied. We took a good deal of pains with our room: half of it was mine now. I had my knick-knack table as well as Eleanor, my own books and pictures, my own photographs of the boys and of the dear boys, my own pot plants, and my own dog--a pug, given to me by Jack, and named "Saucebox." In Jack's absence, Pincher also looked on me as his mistress.

Like most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations of our own devising: private codes, generally kept in cipher, for our own personal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for the employment of our time in joint duties--lessons, parish work, and so forth. I think we made rather too many rules, and that we re-made them too often. I make fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more alone. I wonder if I really keep them better? But if not, may G.o.d, I pray Him, send me back the restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which He gives in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those good works, those great triumphs over evil, which single hands effect sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we may have said of the doing. But we speak of saints and enthusiasts for good, as if some special gifts were made to them in middle age which are withheld from other men. Is it not rather that some few souls keep alive the lamp of zeal and high desire which G.o.d lights for most of us while life is young?

Eleanor and I worked at our lessons by ourselves. We always had her mother to "fall back upon," as we said. When we took up the study of Italian in order to be able to read Dante--moved thereto by the attractions of the long volume of Flaxman's ill.u.s.trations of the 'Divina Commedia'--we had to "fall back" a good deal on Mrs. Arkwright's scholarship. And this in spite of all the helps the library afforded us, the best of dictionaries, English "cribs," and about six of those elaborate commentaries upon the poem, of which Italians have been so prolific.

During the winter the study of languages was commonly uppermost; in summer sketching was more favoured.

I do think sketching brings one a larger amount of pleasure than almost any other occupation. And like "collecting," it is a very sociable pursuit when one has fellow-sketchers as well as fellow-naturalists. And this, I must confess, is a merit in my eyes, I being of a sociable disposition! Eleanor could live alone, I think, and be happy; but I depend largely on my fellow-creatures.