Sweethearts at Home Part 4

"Very unlikely!" he muttered.

And how he had shoved it back into his pocket without noticing----

"_Very_ likely!" he said--to himself this time.

So what did he do, when he had heard all about it, but promise to whack Pete Bolton with his stick the first time he got him. And Sarah began to cry all over again, saying that Pete had no mother and couldn't be expected to know any better.

"Well," said he, "that's as may be! But anyway, I'll be a father to Pete the next time I catch him. I'll teach him to let little girls alone.

I've dealt with heaps of Pete Boltons before! Oh, often! Don't you trouble, little girl!"

And he actually got his hat and walked home with Little Sarah, growling all the time. I don't know what he gave her. But, anyway, what he said to her mother made the poor woman so happy that she nearly forgot to be ill. And on Monday I noticed that Little Sarah had new whole shoes and so had her brother Billy. So something must have happened, and though nothing was said, I can pretty well guess what.

So can Hugh John--and you too, my dear Diary. Only we won't tell. But the "Compulsory Man," who makes boys attend school, descended on wicked Pete Bolton, and then the schoolmaster fell on him, so that Pete became a reformed character--this is, so long as he was sore. Then, of course, he forgot, and began playing truant again.

Only after that he let Little Sarah alone. Because, you see, he never knew when, in a narrow lane, he might meet a big man, pulling at a big mustache, and carrying a very big stick. Because the sermons that big man preached with his stick were powerful, and Pete Bolton did not forget them easily.

The End--moral included free of charge, as Hugh John says.

IV

MISS POLLY PRETEND

_End of June._

Of course there ought to be a story in all this--the story of my life. I have a Relative who can spin you the story of anybody's life if you only tell him what number of shoe he wears. Only I am just a little girl, and have neither been murdered nor married--as yet. So in my life there are no--what is the word?--ingredients for the pudding. Yes, that is it.

So it must just come anyhow, like things tumbling out of your pocket when you hang head down from a tree or haystack which you are climbing.

All the same I will try always to put one story or one subject into a chapter, though these won't be called "Printed in Gore," or "The House of Crime," or anything like that.

For, you see, the stories the boys read are just stuffed with such things. So it will be rather a change to write about "The Dirty Piece of Embroidery" and "The Colored-Silk Work-basket."

And that reminds me. Often Grown-ups "give it" to their children for the very identical things they used to do themselves when young. There is a friend of father's down at Dumfries whom he calls Mr. Ma.s.sa. And once we bribed Mr. Ma.s.sa to tell us all about when father was young--he was his earliest and dearest friend--though, by his telling, father pounded him shamefully and unmercifully for nothing at all, even after they had vowed eternal friendship. And do you know, the things that father did when he was a boy--well, he would thrash Hugh John and Sir Toady for _now_!

But I expect that all fathers and most mothers were like that. When _I_ am a mother, I shan't be. Because, having kept a Diary, I shall only have to take it out and see how I felt. Don't you think that is a first-rate idea?

Besides, if it is printed, as Mr. Dignus says that it will be, it is bound to be true, and I shall have to believe it. Oh, just won't my children have a good time! Also Hugh John's. But Sir Toady Lion says he isn't going to have any--being married is ever such a swot, and children are all little pigs.

Well, _he_ ought to know.

Oh, about this Mr. Ma.s.sa? He told us some splendid things about father--how he stood on the top of Thrieve Castle with a stone in one hand and his watch in the other to measure the alt.i.tude, having just learned how. Only he forgot, and let go the wrong hand.

_Smack_--went the watch on the gra.s.s about seventy feet below! And there was he left standing with the stone in his hand. But the watch was ticking cheerfully away when they picked it up, and it is that very same old nursery watch that is hung up there now, and tells us when it is time _not_ to get up.

I don't think I ever knew what it was to have a true friend with a good memory till that moment. And as for the boys and me, we never thought we should like any of father's friends so much. But Mr. Ma.s.sa told us more things that we can cast up to him in time of need than we would ever have wormed out of father himself in a century. Funny how close people get about some things when they get older. Oh, I wish I had been born my own little girl. Then I _should_ have been properly brought up!

However, that is not my fault.

Hugh John says that being naughty is just according as you look at it.

Big Folks' job is to make us behave, so that we are as little of a nuisance to them as possible. _Our_ business to get as much fun as we can out of life without getting in the way of the Grown-ups. All their "Don't do this's" and "You mustn't do that's" are just warnings not to give them trouble. Moral (according to Hugh John), "Give as little trouble as possible to Grown-ups. And they will let you do pretty much as you want to."

He says that acts first-rate at school. Toe the line with the masters, and then if you _do_ "whale" your fellow-pupil, no questions are asked.

The only way to be a bad little boy in peace and quiet is to be a good little boy so far as work is concerned!

And as Hugh John does it, this is not hypocritical. He couldn't be that if he tried. He has just thought it out, and now makes it work with the greatest coolness in the world. It is his system. And he says every boy is a fool who gives the masters trouble. He means Grown-ups generally.

You do certain things _as_ they say, work out your sums, and keep your drawers tidy. Then you can live in your own world and they in theirs.

They won't bother about you.

But, of course, Hugh John is pretty safe anyway. He has a reason for everything, and is always ready to give it if asked. If not, he keeps it to himself, wraps it about him like an inky cloak--and is triply armed because he has his quarrel just--and knows it.

But, you see, we are really pretty well off at our house, though we do grumble sometimes. When I was a little girl I rode many hundreds of miles with father on his cycle, and now Hugh John and he spend days over gla.s.ses of all descriptions, telescopes and binoculars, while Sir Toady talks about birds' eggs for hours, and has succeeded to father's collection.

In the library there are the loveliest books on flowers--both editions of _Curtis_, the _Botanical Magazine_, two _Sowerby's English Botanies_, and lots more in foreign languages. Maid Margaret thinks she will go in for botany so as to get these. But I like best just reading books--or browsing among them, rather. For of course you can't really _read_ forty thousand volumes, even if you knew all the languages they are written in.

There are sets of all the magazines that ever were: _Annual Registers_, _Scots Magazines_, _Gentleman's_, _Blackwood's_, _Chamber's_, _Leisure Hour_, _Ca.s.sell's_, _Magazine of Art_--oh, everything! And the library, being about eighty feet long altogether, is the loveliest place for wet Sat.u.r.days--so "mousey," and window-seaty, with big logs burning on a bra.s.s fireplace, and the storm pattering above and all about. It has a zinc roof, only nicely painted and covered with creepers. There is room enough for everybody to lie about, and read, and draw, all the time keeping out of Big Growly's way if he is working.

Even if he does see us, he only says, "Get out, Imps! I can't be bothered with you just now!"

Only if you are careful and have the kitchen key, you can tell by the growling and the "tick-tack" whereabouts the Ogre of Castle Bookworm is, and slip into another part. Best of all is the Old Observatory, where there is a bed in a little cabin, and windows all about, and a big bra.s.s telescope high overhead, with shelves and all sorts of fittings as in a ship.

It is first-rate, I tell you. Only you have to put the books you have been using back again exactly, or you will get Ursa Major after you, and he will fetch you out of your bed to do it, storming at you all the time. Then maybe he will forget, and show you the first edition of some book that there are only three or four of in all the world!

You don't really need to be afraid of Big Growly. It makes rather a noise while It lasts, but once It is finished, there is no more about it. It is like a thunderstorm which you hear sleepily among the hills in the night. All you have to do is just to pull the bed-clothes over your head and put your fingers in your ears. There is not the least danger, not really.

Altogether we are about as well off for Grown-ups as it is possible to be, and though lessons are seen to sharply enough--that is all in the day's work. While for the rest, we live less of the Double Life than other children have to do--that is, we don't have to "_pretend_ good,"

and that makes all the difference.

And this brings me to the tale of Polly Pretend. That was what we called her. And by and by other people found her out, and did so too. And it is an awful thing to be going through the world with a name like that.

Yet Polly Pretend wasn't half a bad girl either. Indeed, if she had been left alone, she would have been quite nice. It wasn't her fault. Only this tale is a "terrible example" for parents and guardians. _They_ put such things, like nasty medicine, in the books we have to read, and why shouldn't I hit back, when it is only my poor old Dear Diary that sees it? Till Mr. Dignus gets ready to print it, that is.

Polly Pretend had a father and mother, but worse than most. If ever they had been young, they had forgotten all about it. Polly mustn't run or romp, nor speak above her breath, nor climb a tree, nor do anything that makes life happy and really worth living.

And when we went to see her, it was ever so much worse than going to church four times a Sunday. _We_ only go once, except on special occasions, because our folks believe in making Sunday an extra happy day. And, after all, church is church, and there is always the music, which is nice, and the organist's back hair, which isn't--and the sermon is never very long and sometimes interesting. Then for the boys there are the bees booming in the tall windows, and the flies that will persist in crawling stickily over the old gentlemen's bald heads--really quite pious flies they are. For the old gentlemen would be sure to go to sleep if it were not for the excitement of watching out and moving those flies on!

But at Polly Pretend's house it was ever so much worse. You couldn't believe it if you had not been there. And, do my best, I really can't give you an idea.

All the toys locked up, of course, all the drawing things, and every book except two--one of which was that everlasting _Josephus_, and the other the _Pilgrim's Progress_. As we knew these by heart, you may guess how cheerful it was. And you had to learn chapters till you hated the sight of an Oxford Bible, and hymns till you wanted to throw the book behind the fire.

Hugh John stuck to it and did pretty well, though he is not a quick study. But Sir Toady boldly a.s.serted that he was a true Mahometan, and made a green turban out of an old green baize school-bag to prove that he was a "haji and a holy man"!

He had the cheek to brazen it out even when Polly's people threatened to inform his parents and have him sent home to-morrow!

Bless you, Toadums wished for nothing better. He missed his fox-terrier, Boss, worse than words can tell, and his eggs and his paint-box and everything.