The Mean-Wells
Date: 2021-01-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Sisters -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction; Cornwall (England : County) -- Juvenile fiction

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Title: The Mean-Wells

Author: Mabel Quiller-Couch

Illustrator: George Edward Robertson

Release date: January 11, 2021 [eBook #64258]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: David E. Brown and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEAN-WELLS ***

THE MEAN-WELLS

“Geoffrey examined the box.”

Page 5.

THE MEAN-WELLS

BY
MABEL QUILLER-COUCH
AUTHOR OF “THE CARROL GIRLS,” “TROUBLESOME URSULA,”
“A PAIR OF REDPOLLS,” “KITTY TRENIRE,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY
G. E. ROBERTSON

LONDON
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO. Ltd.
3 & 4, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.
AND 44, VICTORIA STREET, S.W.

TO

LILY

IN REMEMBRANCE

CONTENTS

CHAP. | | PAGE
I. | THE WORTH OF A TOOTH | 1
II. | A DRIVE AND A PINK PARASOL | 9
III. | ON THE ROAD TO LANTIG | 19
IV. | A ROOMFUL OF BABIES, AND A GIANT’S CHAIR | 26
V. | SWEEPING THE DRAWING-ROOM | 39
VI. | MRS. TICKELL, MRS. WALL, AND AN ACCIDENT | 48
VII. | LOVEDAY GOES VISITING | 60
VIII. | PISKIES STILL LIVE AT PORTHCALLIS | 70
IX. | MISS POTTS COMES TO TEA | 81
X. | THE FAIRY RING | 92
XI. | LOVEDAY AND AARON PLAY AT BEING PISKIES | 105
XII. | THE PISKIES CAUGHT | 115
XIII. | PRISCILLA PAYS A CALL AND TAKES A JOURNEY | 126
XIV. | PRISCILLA PAYS ANOTHER CALL | 137
XV. | MR. WINTER | 145
XVI. | IN WHICH A GREAT MANY THINGS HAPPEN | 154

ILLUSTRATIONS

“GEOFFREY EXAMINED THE BOX” | Frontispiece
“THE GIANT’S FOOTSTOOL” | To face p. 34
“‘I’LL TAKE THOMAS,’ SHE SAID” | ” 64
“A BIG CATCH OF CRABS AND LOBSTERS” | ” 72
“DON’T LET US LOOK ANY MORE” | ” 96
“THEY SHOOK OUT THEIR PINAFORES OVER THE DIZZY HEIGHTS” | ” 114
“PRISCILLA SLIPPED OUT EASILY” | ” 144
“THEY WOULD LIGHT A FIRE AND BOIL THE KETTLE” | ” 154

THE MEAN-WELLS

CHAPTER I
THE WORTH OF A TOOTH

IT did seem very unjust, and the more they thought of it the more unjust it seemed, especially to Priscilla.

“When I had a tooth pulled out no one gave me anything,” she grumbled; “but Loveday has a shilling given her for hers, and some sweets, and such a fuss made.”

“I only had sixpence, and mine was a double tooth,” said Geoffrey thoughtfully, “and I am a boy.”

“I don’t see that being a boy ought to make any difference,” retorted Priscilla; “boys’ teeth don’t hurt more than girls’, and boys ought to be able to bear it better.”

“Oh, but boys always have more in—in comparison, just as men do.”

“Do they?” asked Priscilla thoughtfully. “I wonder why? I think it ought to be just the other way, ’cause boys and men are stronger.”

“Oh, you’ll understand some day,” said Geoffrey loftily; “you are too young now.”

There had been great excitement in the house that afternoon. Loveday had been having toothache frequently for some time. Whenever she drank anything hot or cold, or ate anything sweet, or put a lollipop in her mouth, her tooth had begun to jump and ache; and as she was generally doing one or the other, or wanting to, Loveday’s life lately had not been a bed of roses, any more than had the lives of those who had to relieve her pain and stop her sobs. So at last her father had decided that the tooth must go. It was slightly loose already and decayed, and Loveday was assured that she would know no comfort while it remained in her mouth; but if it was taken away another would soon grow, they told her, and she was promised some sweets and a shilling when the operation was over, if she bore it bravely.

Loveday had to think the matter over a little before she gave her consent, for though she hated having pain and not being allowed to eat sweets, she did like to have a wobbly tooth, one that she could move with her tongue, and she had hoped that if she waited a little while it would not hurt her when it wobbled.

But her father told her that that was very unlikely, and that if she did not have it taken out now it would fall out some day soon, perhaps while she was asleep, and then there would be danger of its choking her.

“If it felled out should I have a shilling and sweets, father?” she asked.

But father, without any hesitation, said:

“Oh dear, no—certainly not.”

So Loveday consented to the operation. She wanted the shilling to buy a paint-box with, and she wanted to see the tooth.

Then began a great bustle. One servant ran for a tumbler of warm water, and another for a towel and different things, and they looked at Loveday so pityingly that she began to wonder if it would be very dreadful after all, and grew quite frightened. Then her father came in, and perched her on the table, and told her to open her mouth and let him see which tooth it was; and before she knew he had even seen which was the right one, she felt a little tweak, and it was out! She did not cry, for as soon as the pain began it was over, before she could even make a sound, or screw out a tear; and then, when she realised what had happened, every one was petting and praising her, and calling her a brave little heroine, and Nurse gave her a box of chocolates, and her father gave her a shilling, and her mother an extra penny because she had not made any noise. Priscilla thought it the easiest and quickest way of earning pocket-money that she had ever dreamed of—much easier than catching snails or pulling weeds.

The extraction itself was far too quickly over to please Geoffrey and Priscilla, who had been standing by the table, looking on. Priscilla had covered her ears that she might not hear Loveday’s screams, and, after all, Loveday had not screamed; and having closed her eyes too—for when it came to the most exciting moment she felt she could not look—Priscilla had missed everything, and when she unstopped one ear a little to hear if the screams had begun, she heard Loveday saying quite calmly:

“Thank you. Now I want my paint-box. Geoffrey, go and buy it for me at once, please.”

And when Priscilla looked, Loveday was proudly handing to Geoffrey the new shilling she had just earned.

It had been arranged beforehand that if she won it, Geoffrey should run at once and buy her a box of paints with it.

So, finding that all the excitement was over, Priscilla decided to go with Geoffrey to buy the paints, and it was while they were on their way to the shop that the sense of injustice began to grow in her small breast, and it grew and grew until, as she stood in Miss Potts’ toy-shop and gazed about her, she felt that at least two of the toys she saw there were hers by right, for she had had out two teeth, and one had hurt her very much. Geoffrey had not, of course, such deep cause of complaint, for he had accepted the sixpence gladly, and if he did not stick out for more at the time he could not very well say anything now.

“And what kind of paints is it you want, Master Geoffrey?” asked Miss Potts pleasantly when he had told her what he had come for.

Most of her customers—and they were not numerous—were penny-toy customers, so she was very anxious to oblige her larger purchasers when she did get any. Not but what she was polite and kind to every one who entered her little shop; she did not know how to be anything else.

“It’s a shilling box I want, please,” said Geoffrey, as though such a purchase was quite a small matter to him, and jingling in his pocket all the while the shilling and a French halfpenny of his own. “I want Sans Poison, please,” he added—he pronounced it in the English way, so that it sounded like “Sands Poison”—“because then Loveday can’t harm herself if she swallows some. She always will lick her brush, and it’s no use trying to stop her.”

Miss Potts, in common with the children, felt the greatest respect and faith in that mysterious person “Sans,” who, according to their belief, had discovered how to make paints that any child might swallow and not die.

“I’d never buy anybody else’s for Miss Loveday, if I were you, sir,” said Miss Potts solemnly. “You see, he guarantees them harmless, and we have proved them to be so, and ’tisn’t likely that now he’s made his reputation he’d risk it by selling others. But there’s no knowing what other folks will put in theirs; I wouldn’t trust them.”

Geoffrey agreed gravely, while he examined the box to see that the brushes and saucers were in perfect order. He was five years older than Loveday, and felt at least twenty.

Priscilla, who had been wandering about the shop, eagerly examining its treasures, came up to the counter.

“Miss Potts,” she asked very gravely, “don’t you think that if a double tooth is worth a shilling, a single one is worth sixpence?”

“I dare say you’re right, dearie,” said Miss Potts kindly, “but I never found mine worth anything, not even for chewing.”

“Did you have some once?” asked Priscilla, in genuine astonishment. The question was excusable, for she had never seen Miss Potts with even one.

Miss Potts, quite unembarrassed, laughed good-temperedly.

“Why, yes, dearie, of course I had; but I was glad enough to get rid of them, I can assure you.”

“So should I be if I could get a shilling for each;” and Priscilla began to count her teeth, to find out what wealth might be hers. “Do you think I shall have none some day?” she asked eagerly.

“Oh dear no, missie; I don’t suppose so. You’ll be looked after too well for that.”

Priscilla grew thoughtful.

“I do think, though, that two teeth ought to be worth a—a——”

She looked around the shop to see what she could choose out of all that was there. It was very difficult, and Geoffrey, having finished examining a top that had caught his fancy, began to grow impatient.

“Come along, Prissy,” he said impatiently; “you know Loveday will be waiting for us,” and he strolled to the door.

“I shall ask father if I may have a hoop,” said Priscilla to Miss Potts. “I don’t think that’s too much. There were two teeth, and both hurt a lot, and oh, how they bled! You never saw such a thing! Much more than Loveday’s! But every one pets Loveday so,” she added, in a confidential tone, “because she is the youngest. They always say, ‘Ah, but she is the baby!’ But she isn’t; she is nearly seven years old, and babies aren’t babies when they are as old as that, are they?”

“Well, dear, you see folks always think a lot of the youngest,” said Miss Potts gently.

Priscilla nodded her head very soberly.

“They do!” she said gravely, “and of the eldest, too, I think. Yesterday when granny gave Geoffrey a book and didn’t give me one, she said it was given to Geoffrey because he was the eldest. I don’t think it is very nice to be an in-between, do you, Miss Potts?”

“I don’t know, dear,” said Miss Potts, with a deep sigh. “I’d be glad to be anything if only I’d got some brothers and sisters.”

“Miss Potts, didn’t you ever have any?” Priscilla was standing at the end of the counter, gazing up at the tall, thin woman behind it. Miss Potts was certainly a very interesting person, she thought—so much seemed to have happened in her life. Miss Potts shook her head, and passed her hand across her eyes.

“I had them, Miss Priscilla,” she said softly, “but I’m the only one left.”

“I am very sorry,” said Priscilla, in a tone of sympathy. “It must be dreadfully sad for you; I hope you didn’t mind my asking.” Then, after a moment’s pause, “I’ll be your sister, if you would like me to, Miss Potts. Of course, I couldn’t live with you always, but——”

“I wonder what your pa and ma would say to that, dear,” said Miss Potts, half laughing, half crying. “It is very kind of you to think of it, I’m sure, but I reckon you’ve got brothers and sisters enough already.”

“Well, anyhow I can come in very often to see you. That will make it seem a little less lonely, won’t it? And— Oh, there’s Geoffrey running away. I must go, because I want to see Loveday unwrap her paint-box. I wonder if she will let me use it too. I think she might, considering. There are two brushes, aren’t there? and she can’t use both at once. Good-bye, Miss Potts. I will come again soon. O Geoffrey, you are mean! You might as well wait, when you know I am hurrying as fast as ever I can.”

CHAPTER II
A DRIVE AND A PINK PARASOL

WHEN Geoffrey and Priscilla got back, they found Loveday seated at the dining-room table, with a newspaper spread before her, to protect the table-cloth, a glass of water and a piece of white rag beside her, and before her an old bound volume of Little Folks, already open at the picture she had selected to paint. Close at her hand lay a little screw of white paper containing her tooth. She was all in readiness to begin, and very impatient at what she considered their long delay.

“I do think you might have hurried,” she said, in an injured tone, “when you knew that I was not at all well.”

“What is the matter? You are all right now the tooth is out,” said Geoffrey teasingly.

“No, I am not. Look at the great hole between my teefs; it’s ’normous! I can put all my tongue in, nearly.”

“Well, don’t put any paint in, or you might die,” said Priscilla. “Loveday, dear, don’t you think I had better paint for you, while you look on?”

“No, I don’t,” said Loveday, who usually said exactly what she thought. “Geoffrey has got ‘sans poison’ paints, and I’ve got a piece of rag to wipe my brushes on, and I am waiting to begin.”

“Well, I think you are very greedy,” said Priscilla rather unjustly.

“No, I am not, I’ve been ill,” explained Loveday, looking up with a grave face and wide blue eyes full of reproach; “and when peoples are ill they are ’lowed to do what they like.”

“I don’t think you are ill. I think you are only greedy. I don’t call having just one tooth out being ill; but you make so much fuss about everything.”

“You don’t know how much it hurt me,” said Loveday, returning quite calmly to the mixing of her paints, her short golden curls falling all about her little flushed face. “It was—oh, it was somefin’ dreadful!”

“It couldn’t have been so very bad, or you would have screamed, I know;” and with this parting shot Priscilla walked away.

“Aren’t you going to watch me paint?” called Loveday anxiously.

“No, I am not,” said Priscilla shortly. She was feeling cross and dissatisfied, and she knew she was behaving unkindly, which did not help her to feel happier. Geoffrey had disappeared since he brought back the paint-box, and Priscilla felt dull and miserable; she could not think of anything she wanted to do. First of all she wandered up to the nursery, but it looked lonely, so she quickly came out again, and, strolling downstairs, went out into the yard.

The afternoon sun was shining hotly, right down into the yard, bringing out the beautiful scents of the mignonette and lemon-verbena in the box on the kitchen window-sill, and the aromatic smell of the scenty-leaved geranium. On the ground underneath the window stood several very large fuchsias in pots; their branches hung thickly with pendent graceful blossoms like little dancers, some in pink frocks with white petticoats, others in white frocks with pink petticoats, while others, again, had scarlet frocks with purple petticoats.

All the plants belonged to Ellen, the cook, who had a perfect passion for flowers and growing plants. One of the greatest offences the children could commit was to break or injure any of her treasures in any way.

Ellen was leaning out of the window now, admiring her beloved plants, smoothing over the earth with her fingers, and tidying away any dead leaves, and all the time she was doing it she talked to the plants just as though they could hear her and understand. She picked a leaf of the scenty geranium and offered it to Priscilla, who took it gratefully, for she loved the scent, and Ellen was not often so generous.

It was too hot in the yard to remain there long, and too dull, so Priscilla presently wandered away to the orchard beyond. The orchard was on the slope of the hill at the back of the house, and was full of very old apple-trees. Each of the children had a favourite tree, and a favourite seat in it. Priscilla clambered up to hers, and sat there for a few moments, sniffing at her geranium leaf and looking about her rather disconsolately; it was so stupid and uninteresting to be there alone, yet nothing else seemed worth doing by herself, and what had become of Geoffrey she did not know.

“I don’t wonder Miss Potts is sorry she has no brothers or sisters; it must be dreadful to be always without any. I wonder how little ‘only’ girls and boys play? They can’t ever have such nice games as we have.”

She sat up amongst the branches, gazing down through the shady trees, pondering over this matter and sniffing at her leaf; and all her life after, the scent of those geraniums brought back to her mind the sunny day, Loveday’s tooth-pulling, Miss Potts, the old orchard, and the serious mood she was in there.

Presently the sound of horses’ hoofs on rough cobble-stones reached her. “That must be Betsy being harnessed,” she murmured, beginning at once to climb down; “I wonder if father is going out?”

Priscilla’s love of horses was, then and always, one of the passions of her life, and of all horses Betsy was the queen. She hurried through the orchard now to speak to Betsy, and to see what was happening. In the yard she found Hocking, their man, wheeling the carriage out of the coach-house, and Betsy standing, partly harnessed, looking on. At the sound of Priscilla’s step she looked around, and Priscilla, running to her, embraced one of her legs and kissed her soft warm shoulder.

“You dear!” she said, laying her cheek against the old horse, patting her with little loving pats, and Betsy lowered her head and looked at her little mistress in a motherly way.

While Priscilla stood there her father came out to place a medicine-case in the carriage.

“Hullo, little woman,” he said. “What are you doing? Nothing! That’s a dull way of passing your time. Would you like to come with me?”

“Oh!” cried Priscilla, unclasping Betsy and clasping her own small hands in rapture, “may I?”

“Yes, if you like. I am going to Lantig, but I shall be back by tea-time. Hurry in, then, and get ready, and don’t spend an age over your toilet.”

Priscilla laughed delightedly, and flew up to her room. As she passed in and up the stairs, she heard Loveday’s shrill little voice calling to her:

“Prissy, Prissy, do come here! Oh, I do want some one to watch me paint! Just look what I’ve done!”

“Can’t stay,” shouted back Priscilla. “I am going to Lantig with father, and he told me to hurry.”

“Well, somebody ought to stay with me when I’m an—an invalid,” declared Loveday, in an aggrieved tone.

“Where is mother?”

“Out.”

“Oh, well, she’ll be in soon. Go out to the kitchen and show your pictures to Ellen;” and on she ran.

The children had not a real nurse now; Dr. and Mrs. Carlyon were not wealthy people, and when the children were no longer babies Mrs. Carlyon had felt that she must, if possible, manage with only two maid-servants. But Nurse was so fond of her “babies,” as she called them, that she asked to stay on as nurse-housemaid, in the place of Prudence, the housemaid, who was just leaving to be married, and she did so, to the delight and comfort of every one.

Priscilla did not call Nurse now to help her to get ready; she was learning to do a great many things for herself, and her toilet was a very simple one. She passed a brush vigorously over her curls, replaced her sun-hat, plunged her hands into the jug—it was too heavy for her to lift—rubbed the dirt off on the towel, slipped on a clean holland coat, which she found in the drawer, and ran down again.

Loveday was standing at the dining-room door, with a paint-brush in one hand and a cake of paint in the other; her face was streaked with paints of different colours.

“I want to go for a drive too. Shall I?” she asked eagerly, when she saw Priscilla.

“No,” said Priscilla, “you can’t.” Then she suddenly remembered Miss Potts, who was an “only,” and how she longed for a little sister like Loveday, and how dreadful it would be to be without her, and quite suddenly her mood changed, and all her ill-temper vanished.

“We will ask father,” she said; “I expect he will say ‘Yes.’”

But father did not say “Yes” at once; he thought it would be better for her not to go.

“It would be very bad for you, dear, if you got a cold in that tooth——”

“But I will leave it at home,” pleaded Loveday eagerly, “on the mantelpiece, and wrapped up.”

“I did not mean the tooth itself, you monkey; I meant the place where it came out from.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut as tight as tight can be, and put my handkerchief up to hold it all the time.”

“I should think if she had a shawl round her face she would not take cold,” said Priscilla, with the old-fashioned motherly air she wore sometimes.

“Very well, let Miss Persistency come,” said Dr. Carlyon, laughing, “only Nurse had better take some of that paint off her face first, or the people in Lantig will think I am bringing a wild Indian to the village.”

Loveday shrieked with delight.

“Oh, I wish they would!” she cried, jumping about with excitement. “Then I’d scream and growl and frighten them so, they would all run away from me, and—and——”

“If you scream you will get the cold air in that sore gum of yours,” said the doctor warningly, “and then we shall have you screaming on the other side of your mouth.”

Loveday stood for a moment thinking very seriously, and moving her mouth from side to side.

“I can’t do it on only one side,” she announced, with an air of disappointment. “I scream with all my mouth at once. Daddy, tell me how to.”

“Oh dear, no; we don’t want to have you practising screaming all day long. Besides, I couldn’t now; why, I haven’t done such a thing since I was a boy! Now fly! If you are not ready in five minutes I shall have to start without you.”

Loveday vanished in a flash, shouting for “Nurse! Nurse!” all the way she ran.

“Quick, quick, Nurse! Do hurry!” they heard her calling frantically. “Dress me quickly; I am going with daddy, and he won’t wait more than a minute;” and then they heard Nurse running, as most people did run when Loveday called.

In a very short time she appeared again, with a dainty pink shawl pinned about her neck and mouth, and in her hand a little pink parasol with white may-blossom all over it.

“It matches my shawl, Nurse said,” she explained gravely, “and the shawl is rather hot, so I thought I’d bring this to keep me cool. I do think it is so lovely,” she went on, gazing admiringly at the parasol—which was just a size larger than her hat—and particularly at the handle, which had a little bunch of red egglets at the top.

It certainly was a pretty little thing; it had been a birthday present, and when it came had filled Loveday with joy and Priscilla with longing that her birthday could be changed from December to May, which was Loveday’s month.

“Now jump up,” said Dr. Carlyon. “Hocking is waiting to fasten you in.”

Hocking lifted up Loveday, but Priscilla climbed up by herself, and seated herself outside Loveday, and then Hocking passed the strap around them, and fastened them in safely.

“I don’t think I need be strapped in,” said Priscilla. “I am old enough now not to have it.”

“Better to be fastened in than to be falling out,” said Hocking, who never spoke unless he was obliged to, and then never a word more than he could help. It did not matter much, for he never said anything but the most foolish things, though he always spoke with an air of the greatest wisdom. Before Priscilla could say any more Dr. Carlyon came out and got up beside the children, for he was going to drive himself, and Hocking was to be left behind. Priscilla was very glad of that. She did not dislike Hocking, but she liked best to drive without him. She found it very hard sometimes to think of things to say to him.

Then at last they started, and drove away up through the street, where nearly every one had a nod or a smile for them, or a touch of the hat or a word to say. The sun was shining brightly, and the air was so clear that when they reached the top of the hill some distance out in the country they could see for miles. In one direction, but very far away, were what looked like pure white hills; these were china-clay mines, their father told them, where the clay was being dug out to make cups and saucers and plates, and all sorts of things.

“I think my mug must have come from there,” said Loveday gravely; “it looks all white like that. Yes, I’m sure it’s the same; it has got ‘A Present for a Good Child’ on it. Don’t you think it did, daddy?”

“It is quite likely,” said Dr. Carlyon; and Loveday was greatly pleased.

“It’s nice to see where things come from,” she said, with a gravely satisfied air.

In another direction they could see the sea; at least their father told them it was the sea, but to the children it looked more like the sky.

“That is the English Channel,” said Dr. Carlyon.

“I think it is heaven—I mean the sky,” said Priscilla. “Father, don’t you think that is where the earth and the sky join? They must meet somewhere, mustn’t they? Do you think if I were to walk on and on and on—oh, ever so far—I should walk right through into the sky, and not know that I’d done it until I found myself with nothing but clouds about me? I should be lost then, shouldn’t I? And I could never get back again, could I? Oh, wouldn’t it be dreadful to turn round and find nothing but clouds all around, and over one’s head, and under one’s feet, and nothing to tell one the way! Just think of it, Loveday; wouldn’t it be frightful?”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Loveday impatiently, “and I don’t want to think any more.”

“Father,” went on Priscilla, “would it be like a sea-fog, only worse?”

Dr. Carlyon groaned and shook his head despairingly.

“If I am not driven crazy first with trying to answer your questions,” he said, “I will take you one day soon to that very place, and then you will see for yourself that it is sea, and not sky.”

“But supposing it isn’t all sea, but some of it is sky, and we didn’t know it, and all got lost!” Priscilla looked up at her father with big, awed eyes. “I shall hold on to you all the time, father.”

“Very well. I’ll promise you we won’t walk through the clouds by mistake, and if they do catch us and wrap us round, we will all be wrapped round together.”

CHAPTER III
ON THE ROAD TO LANTIG

BY the time Dr. Carlyon and the children had finished discussing the sea and the sky, they had reached the end of the level high ground and come to a steep descent, at the bottom of which was another little stretch of level road, and then a long, long, rather steep hill up—Lareggan Hill it was called. The country around Trelint was very hilly indeed; as a rule, if you weren’t going up a hill you were going down one. Betsy trotted down now in fine style, and along the bit of level ground, and the pace at which she went carried her a little way up the hill before her, but not far. She considered she had done her duty when she had trotted up a little way, and was at perfect liberty to crawl up the rest of it at her own pace.

As soon as they slackened speed Priscilla looked up expectantly; it was always her duty to drive up the hills when she was out with her father, while he read aloud. As a rule, Dr. Carlyon handed the reins over to her at once, and took out his book. He was a great reader, and a very busy man, and unless he read while on his rounds he would have been scarcely ever able to do so at all. When Hocking was driving him he read “to himself,” but when Priscilla was his companion he almost always read aloud to her. Priscilla loved these readings and these drives more than anything, for though there was often much that she could not understand, there was also a great deal that she could, and some that she put her own meaning to, and some that her father explained.

But to-day Dr. Carlyon forgot to hand over the reins. Perhaps he was still busy thinking of the answers to Priscilla’s questions, or perhaps Loveday and her pink parasol made things seem different. At last, after looking at him questioningly for a few moments—as well as she could, that is to say, with Loveday between them—she reached out her hand and touched the reins.

“Father, wouldn’t you like me to drive now, while you have a nice little read?”

“Dear, dear,” said Dr. Carlyon, “I had quite forgotten. But can you drive, squeezed up as you are?”

“It is rather a squash,” sighed Priscilla. “Don’t you think we might have the strap undone, father?”

Her father looked down at them as well as he could for the pink sunshade.

“I think you might,” he said. “I don’t want to take four halves of daughters home to mother. I tell you what we will do: Loveday and her parasol shall sit on the box-seat behind me, with her feet on your seat; then she will be safe, unless she deliberately throws herself out over the back, and I should think that a young woman with a new paint-box and that pretty sunshade would try hard not to.”

Dr. Carlyon made Betsy stand still for a moment across the road, with her nose in the hedge, where she contentedly munched the grass while they re-arranged themselves. Loveday was quite pleased with the change, for she had not been able to hold up her sunshade with any comfort to herself or any one else, so far. If she were not poking it into Priscilla’s eye, she was digging her father in the ear, while if she held it over her shoulder and out behind her, she could not see it, and that, of course, was what she particularly wanted to do. So she gladly took the seat given her, and was not only rid of the strap, but was able to hold her parasol out over the back and stare at it all the time. She thought it threw quite a pretty pink glow over her face; at least, when she shut one eye, and screwed the other round until she could see her own nose, her nose looked quite pink, and if her nose did, of course her face did. She asked Priscilla about it, but Priscilla was busy attending to the arrangement of the rugs and the reins, and then to her driving.

Dr. Carlyon coaxed Betsy out of the hedge, produced a book, and on they went again. It was really very lovely; the sun was shining, but the breeze was cool and soft, and the larks were singing and soaring up, up, up, till nothing was left of them but their voices; then down, down, down, with a swoop and a flutter, until they were so low that the children could see them hovering and darting like big brown musical butterflies. The scent of clover wafted out from the fields, and of honeysuckle from the hedges.

“Oh, I am so glad I was born,” exclaimed Priscilla, with a deep-drawn sigh of satisfaction.

Dr. Carlyon smiled.

“I hope you will always say the same, and in that same voice, Prissy,” he said. “Now, what shall we read? I have the ‘Ingoldsby Legends’ here; shall I read to you about the Babes in the Wood?”

“Please,” said Priscilla.

She wondered a little that her father should have chosen anything so babyish. He brought out all kinds of books and papers to read to her, but they were always grown-up books and papers, and, as I said before, Priscilla very often did not understand them. But to-day it was quite thrilling and fascinating, and Priscilla listened with a face of deepest sympathy and not a smile, as she heard of the poor dying parents, and the woes of the hapless children.

“Oh, how dreadful!” she cried, as, later on, her father read slowly through all the dreadful things that happened to the wicked old man. “And his children let him die in the workhouse? They must have been very bad children. I don’t believe the poor Babes would have done so, if they had been alive. Loveday and I would have taken care——”

“No, I wouldn’t!” broke in Loveday. “It served him right for wanting them to be killed. I wouldn’t have given him anything if he had asked me—oh, ever so many times—not even a hot-water bottle, or an ‘extra-strong’ peppermint like Ellen takes. I’d—I’d have pulled all his teefs out.”

“He wouldn’t have minded, I expect, if he had had a shilling for each,” said Priscilla, forgetting the wrongs of the Babes, and remembering her own. “Father, I had two teeth out a little while ago, and I didn’t have even a penny given me, but Loveday had a shilling for one!”

“You poor little injured mortal,” cried her father, laughing down at her. “I expect, though, you have two nice teeth in place of them by this time; that is something to be grateful for. Many people would be glad of two nice, strong, new teeth.”

“Yes,” said Priscilla, nodding her head gravely. “Miss Potts would. Do you know, father, she had out all hers, and nobody ever gave her anything. Doesn’t it seem unkind? And she hasn’t got any brothers, or sisters either—she has lost them all.”

“Dear, dear, how sad! Have you and Miss Potts been telling your woes to each other, and mingling your tears? ”

“I didn’t cry,” said Priscilla, “but my throat felt funny. It must be dreadful to be an ‘only’!”

“I wish I was,” said a little voice over their shoulders with a deep, deep sigh; “then p’r’aps I should be able to drive sometimes.”

Priscilla turned round, shocked and indignant.

“Well, Loveday, you can’t have everything!” she cried. “You’ve got a paint-box, and I haven’t; and you’ve got a parasol, and I——”

“But I can’t paint here,” protested Loveday. “I want to go home now to see if my paint-box is all safe,” she added suddenly.

Priscilla’s eyes twinkled wickedly.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if Geoffrey is home using all your paints.”

Loveday’s face fell, and her eyes filled with anxiety.

“Do you really think so? Do you really, Prissy?” she asked. Then her face brightened. “Oh no; he can’t be, ’cause I hid them where I know he wouldn’t think of looking!”

“Would you like to come and sit between us again?” asked her father.

“No, fank you; but I’d like Priscilla to sit here, and I’d have her place and drive. She may hold my parasol if she likes—if she doesn’t open it,” she added.

“Priscilla is too big to sit where you are. Would you like to sit down on the mat at our feet?”

“No, fank you; but I’d like to sit where Priscilla is.”

“But where can Priscilla sit?”

“Can’t she walk just a little way?”

“I am afraid not.”

“Well, I’d like to sit in her seat,” persisted Loveday; “and put my head on yours, and go to sleep.”

“Oh, so you want my place as well as Prissy’s! You aren’t at all a greedy little person, are you? Where are we to sit? On the shafts, or the steps, or must we run behind? I will tell you what we will do. I will sit in Priscilla’s place and hold you on my knee, and Priscilla shall have the box-seat and drive us. Will that please your High Mightiness?”

“Yes, that will be lovely,” agreed Loveday, quite delighted; “and I’ll hold my parasol over us both.”

“That will be charming; only try not to take out both my eyes. What would mother say if you took back my two eyes on two tips of your sunshade?”

“Mine isn’t a sunshade,” said Loveday.

“Parasol, then. What is the difference between a parasol and a sunshade? Do tell me, for I don’t know.”

“I don’t know what a sunshade is, I’m sure,” said Loveday, with a lofty air, “but this is a parasol. I know it said so in the letter that came with it, and the person who bought it ought to know.”

“Which has Priscilla? A sunshade or a parasol?”

“Priscilla hasn’t got either. You see, her birthday is in the winter; it would be silly to give her a parasol.”

“I understand. If your birthday is in the winter, you don’t feel the sun. I expect that is why no one ever gave me one.”

At which idea Loveday shrieked with laughter. “Fancy daddy with a parasol!” she cried. “What a silly daddy you would look!”

And in her excitement she lowered her own, and caught it in Priscilla’s hair.

“Poor Priscilla won’t have a wig or a parasol either, if you aren’t more careful of her,” said Dr. Carlyon, trying to rescue his eldest daughter’s curls from his younger daughter’s parasol.

CHAPTER IV
A ROOMFUL OF BABIES, AND A GIANT’S CHAIR

“NOW then, let’s change places,” said Loveday impatiently, as Priscilla’s last curl was freed.

“Oh no; you must wait until we have quite reached the top of the hill! You don’t want to make poor Betsy stand here with the carriage dragging her back all the time, do you?”

“I fink Betsy would like to stop and rest for a little while, and I am sure she wouldn’t mind. She is very strong, and I am not a bit heavy. I don’t suppose she feels whether I am in the carriage or not. Do you think she does?”

“She hears you, if she doesn’t feel you,” said Dr. Carlyon.

“Do you think that Priscilla and I and your medicine-case, all put together, weigh as much as you do, father?”

“I think that if we had waited a year or two before we chose a name for you, we should have called you ‘Chatterpie’ instead of Loveday.”

“Oh, I wish you had!” cried Loveday. “Wouldn’t it have been funny: Chatterpie Jane Carlyon? Now, Prissy, do make Betsy stop; we have come to the very top. It is quite flat here.”

“I am going to draw up near that gate,” said Priscilla firmly, “so that I can smell the charlock in that field.”

“That horrid weed!” said Dr. Carlyon. “You surely don’t like that? Whoa, Betsy!” And without much coaxing Betsy came to a standstill by the gate of the field where the charlock grew.

“I love it,” said Priscilla, drawing in deep breaths of the charlock-scented air; “it always reminds me of—of—oh, something—drives, and nice things, and sunny days, and the day you gave me ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales,’ father.”

“I will get down now,” said her father, “then you must slip up on to the box-seat, and I will get up on the other side and take Loveday on my lap.”

Priscilla was delighted. She did not say much, but she was in a perfect rapture of joy at being given the box-seat, and allowed to drive on the level, and even downhill. She had never done so much before, and she thought she should never, never forget this happy day. She longed to get down and hug Betsy, and pat her as her father was doing. Instead, she looked up at the darting, thrilling larks, and sniffed in the smell of the charlock. It could not really have been the scent that she loved, but the associations it had, and the thoughts it brought to her; and she felt that she should love it more than ever after this day.

Then Dr. Carlyon got up and took Loveday on his knee, and on they went again. Presently they saw a cart coming towards them, and Priscilla’s heart beat a little faster as she realised that she would have to pass it. She did not say anything, but her cheeks grew very red, and she felt a great desire to take one rein in each hand; it seemed to her that she could pull Betsy in better if she did; but she did not do it; she knew it was not the right way to hold the reins, and she was rather proud of her skill as a driver.

“You know which side of the road to keep, don’t you?” asked her father. “You haven’t forgotten the verse I taught you, have you?”

“No,” said Priscilla. “At least, I remember most of it.

“‘The rules of the road are a paradox quite.’”

Then she paused. “Um-um, I never can remember that second line; but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t tell you anything. I know the others—

“‘If you keep to the left you are sure to be right,

If you keep to the right you are wrong.’”

Priscilla did not know what “paradox” meant, but she thought the last two lines were wonderfully clever, and she always said them to herself when she was driving. The worst of it was, she could not always decide in a moment which was her left hand and which her right. She had to think of the nursery at home, where, if she faced the window, the gas-bracket was on her left hand, and she had to picture herself there, facing the window, and then she knew. But she had not always time to think of those things, particularly when she was driving.

Now if the boy, who was coming nearer and nearer, had only drawn in to one side or the other, she would have known what to do, and would have pulled in to the opposite side, but he came right along the middle of the road, and the only thing he seemed inclined to do was to drive into them, until at last poor Priscilla was struck with a sudden panic of alarm.

“Father,” she cried, “please, will you drive—I—I don’t know where to go!”

Her father, looking up and seeing what was happening, took the reins, and as he drew Betsy in to the hedge, he called out very sharply to the stupid boy:

“Keep to your own side, boy; do you hear? Pull to the left. Don’t take the whole road. Ah, I see it is Mr. Bennet’s horse and cart you are in charge of? Well, I shall tell Mr. Bennet that you must have a few lessons in driving before you can be trusted with a horse again. You are a danger to every one you meet. You were quite right, Prissy,” he said, giving her back the reins; “the drivers should be next each other when passing, but that boy required the whole road and the ditches too. Would you rather I drove now?”

“Oh no, thank you, I want to drive again.”

She felt ashamed of herself for having been so frightened, and made up her mind to drive past the next vehicle she met, no matter what it was. A great hay-waggon with a load of hay on it soon loomed in sight, and for a moment it seemed as though there was no room in the road for anything else, but Priscilla tried very hard not to be foolish. “The drivers must pass next each other,” she repeated to herself; but this driver was walking at the horse’s head, and he was on the far side of the horse. She would have to go right across the road to pass close by him. “He must be on the wrong side,” she thought. “Oh dear, what a lot of men don’t know the rules of the road.”

When they were safely past she drew a big deep breath of relief, but she felt very glad that she had managed by herself.

“Father, don’t you think all the boys should be made to learn at school that verse you taught me; then they would know better how to drive?”

“I do indeed,” said Dr. Carlyon; “perhaps they would remember a simple little thing like that. It isn’t much they do remember six months after they have left school.”

“Hocking’s son Ned can draw a pear beautifully,” said Priscilla very impressively, “but Hocking didn’t seem a bit glad. He said, ‘Better fit they took and taught ’em how to grow ’em;’ he didn’t see what time Ned was going to have for drawing pears on a bit of paper when he was ‘prenticed.’ Neither do I,” added Priscilla gravely.

Dr. Carlyon burst into hearty laughter.

“Quite true,” he said, “quite true. I am glad Hocking has so much common sense, and I foresee that some day we shall have you sitting on School Boards, and such-like.”

Priscilla supposed a School Board was some sort of hard seat or form, but she did not like to ask, though she wondered very much why her father should laugh so about it.

“I think, though, Prissy, you had better not talk as Hocking does. It is not quite the way that little girls should speak.”

Priscilla sighed.

“I wish I was a boy,” she said earnestly. “I don’t want to sit on School Boards and things, but I want to talk like Hocking, and to be a miller’s man, and drive a waggon with four horses, and shout ‘Gee wug.’ Or else I’d like to be a Coachman or a bus-driver. I would rather be a miller’s man, though, ’cause I like the little short whip the best; it is so much easier to crack.”

“I am sorry,” said her father, smiling at her. “I suppose that driving poor old Betsy only, and with a long-handled whip, which is never required, is very poor fun to you, you ambitious young person!”

“Oh no; I love Betsy, and I love driving her, but, of course, I can’t drive Betsy always; I am going to earn my own living when I grow up.”

“Would you have bells on the horse’s harness if you were a miller’s man?” asked Loveday.

“Oh yes—a whole lot of dear little brass ones, and I’d keep them always shining like new.”

“Well, here we are at Lantig School-house,” said Dr. Carlyon. “Draw up here, Prissy. Would you two like to come inside, or wait in the carriage?”

“Is it vaccinations?” asked Priscilla.

“Yes, it is vaccinations. I think there will be about a dozen or more babies to-day.”

“Then I’ll come. Come along, Loveday, in, and see all the dear little babies.”

Priscilla scrambled down, and Dr. Carlyon lifted out Loveday.

“You look very warm in that shawl,” he said. “I think you might take it off while you are inside.”

Loveday, though, preferred to keep it.

“I’ll unpin it,” she said, “but I think I will wear it, ’cause it goes with my parasol, and I am going to take in my parasol for the babies to see. I think they will think it very pretty, don’t you, Priscilla?”

But Priscilla was already inside the building, gazing with fascinated eyes at the rows of mothers and babies. The building, which was the school-house, and stood a little way outside the village, had been cleared of its usual occupants, and on the forms, which had been moved back in two lines along the sides, sat a lot of country women, each one holding a baby. Such jolly babies they were, most of them, great, plump, smiling, healthy, country babies. Some were too young to notice anything, and just lay asleep, or staring contentedly about them, but others sat up and looked at Priscilla and each other and their mothers, and laughed and crowed, and waggled their bald heads about. They were all specklessly, spotlessly clean and kissable in their cotton frocks and big pinafores, and the mothers looked as clean and tidy as the babies, and most of them were just as smiling. When they saw the doctor come in the mothers all stood up and curtseyed, and Dr. Carlyon had a word and a smile for each one.

“Iss, they’m good enough now, doctor!” said one woman, in answer to his remark on the babies’ good temper; “but I reckon you’ll soon set ’em laughing the other side of their faces, poor dears.”

Loveday, who had become rather shy when she found herself entering a room so full, stood and looked with interest at the woman who spoke, and presently drew nearer to her:

“Does your baby scream on the other side of his face sometimes?” she asked eagerly.

For a moment Mrs. Rouse looked at her, not quite understanding her.

“Iss, that ’e do, missie,” she said at last, “and pretty often too, when he gets contrairy.”

“I wish you would tell me how he does it,” said Loveday anxiously; “I do want to know.”

But, to her surprise and annoyance, Mrs. Rouse only burst into a peal of laughter. Loveday could not bear to be laughed at at any time, but there, before a whole roomful of strangers, it was really dreadful, she thought. With very red cheeks she turned away and walked straight out of the school-house, and glad she was that she did, for as she left she heard Mrs. Rouse telling the others what she had said; after which they all laughed.

Loveday was very mortified and angry.

“I wish I hadn’t gone in,” she thought; “I won’t look at their babies again, if they want me to ever so much. I think they are very ugly babies, and—and I’ll say so if they laugh at me any more.”

She climbed up into the carriage, and perched herself on the seat, but very soon she remembered that by-and-by the women and their babies would all come out by that same door, and she would have to face them all. When she remembered this she felt she could not possibly stay there, so she climbed down again and wondered what she should do with herself. She walked along the road a little way while she pondered, and at last, around a bend in it, she saw to her great astonishment the “giant’s arm-chair.”

The “giant’s arm-chair” stood high up in the hedge-bank beside the road; it was made of white granite, and the seat of it was as large as the floor of a small room; it had also an enormously wide, rounded back, and two large arms; down in front of it, at one corner, was a smaller block of granite, which was always known as the “giant’s footstool.”

Loveday had driven past the great chair very often, and longed to stop and climb up into it, but until to-day she had never had a chance. In her delight she forgot all about the women and their laughter. But, alas! when she reached the chair she found that the seat was far too high for her to climb up into by herself; it would have taken a very tall man to lift her high enough to reach it.

“Never mind, I can sit on the footstool,” she thought; but even that proved a climb, and it was a difficult matter to get up and hold on to her parasol all the time. She did manage it, though, after a struggle, and when she sat up on it, holding her parasol open over her, she felt quite repaid for her trouble, and very pleased and proud, only she did wish Priscilla was there too.

“I wonder if the giant had any little children, and if they used to sit on this footstool. I expect so. Oh, I do wish Prissy would come and see me now. She can’t really want to stay and look at those babies any longer.”

“The ‘Giant’s Footstool.’”

Only a very low hedge bordered the road on the other side, and beyond that stretched a large piece of wild moorland, covered with large blocks of granite. “That was one of the giant’s play-grounds,” her father had once told her, “when Cornwall was full of giants, and very probably the great rocks scattered about were the stones they had thrown at each other in play, or when quarrelling.”

“I am very glad I didn’t live then,” thought Loveday; “I wonder what happened to little girls like me. I wonder if they ate them all up! I expect they did if they caught them sitting in their armchairs,” and a little thrill of fear ran through her at the thought. It was very wild and lonely there, with not a living thing in sight, except a few big crows cawing noisily as they flew overhead, and a few goats clambering about over the moorland opposite her. If one had not known that there was the school-house and a little shop and a house round the bend of the road, one might have felt oneself miles and miles from anywhere, and anybody. Loveday felt as though she were, and it really seemed to her that at any minute a big giant might come striding along the wide white road to have a rest in his chair, and would catch her!

Of course, she did not really expect him, and she knew there were no giants nowadays, but she felt she would rather like to see Betsy again, and be safely in the dear old carriage, where there were rugs and things to hide under, and she at once scrambled down from the footstool and ran, not because she was nervous, of course! but because she wanted a change, and to see Betsy.

“O Betsy, I am so glad to see you!” she cried, as she ran up to the dear old horse and hugged her; and Betsy, who had been having “forty winks,” opened her eyes and looked down at her little mistress with what was certainly a smile, and she put down her soft nose and snuzzled her affectionately. Once more Loveday mounted the carriage, but as she did so she remembered the mothers and babies in the schoolroom. “Oh dear,” she cried impatiently, “it seems to me I can’t get any rest; if it isn’t giants it’s mothers! But I know what I’ll do: I will lie down here, and when I hear them coming I will pull the rug up over me so that they can’t see me.”

So she curled herself up on the lower of the two seats, with the rug all over her except her head. She was only to pull it right up when she heard any of them coming. But at one moment she thought she heard the handle of the door being turned, and then she thought she heard voices and footsteps coming out; and she had so many false alarms and grew so nervous that at last she snuggled right down under the rug and stayed there, and then she forgot to listen, and somehow, instead of being in the carriage she was in the giant’s oven, and oh, it was so hot there she felt she was being suffocated, when suddenly the oven door was opened, and such beautiful cool air rushed in, and—

“Why, what has the child wrapped herself up like this for?” exclaimed a voice; “she must be trying to cook herself, I think.”

“Perhaps she is afraid of getting a cold where her tooth came out,” said another voice, which was Prissy’s. Loveday roused herself, and sat up and stretched; she was very hot and tumbled, and rosy and she could not remember for a moment what had happened. Then out came a woman with a crying baby in her arms. Loveday recognised Mrs. Rouse, and wanted to be under the rug again.

“There, missie! He’s laughing the other side of his face now,” she said, smiling good-temperedly up at Loveday, and holding out the sobbing baby for her to see.

“I don’t think he is at all pretty, whichever side he smiles,” said Loveday very crossly, and without a ghost of a smile on her own face. She knew she was rude and unkind, but she felt at that moment that she wanted to say something nasty, and she said it. Priscilla was shocked, and her father was vexed with her, but Mrs. Rouse only laughed good-temperedly.

“It was your pa that made him to. You must ask him to learn you how to laugh the other side of your face.”

“I don’t want to know, thank you,” said Loveday shortly. “Prissy, will you pin up my shawl, please? If I talk any more I shall catch a cold in my mouth.”

Priscilla got up, and, kneeling on the seat beside her little sister, arranged the shawl very carefully about her.

“I wouldn’t speak like that if I were you, dear,” she said gently; “Mrs. Rouse is such a nice, kind woman, and she doesn’t understand that you don’t like her—her joking.” Loveday jerked away her head quite crossly, but Priscilla went on. “If you laugh and don’t take any notice, they won’t think anything about it; but if you look so cross and say nasty rude things, they will talk ever so much about it.”

Loveday saw the sense of this, and it seemed so dreadful that she forced herself to be less disagreeable, and to look at some of the other babies, and even to smile at some of the mothers, but she could not forgive Mrs. Rouse quite yet.

CHAPTER V
SWEEPING THE DRAWING-ROOM

THE day after the drive to Lantig, Mrs. Carlyon was having a large “At Home” in the afternoon—large, that is, for Trelint—and all the household was very busy. There were cakes to make, and biscuits, and tea-cakes, and sandwiches, and ices, and all kinds of good things, for there were not many shops in the town; besides which, it was considered a point of honour to make most of the things at home.

Ellen always grew very cross at these times, but she cooked her best, for every one in Trelint knew who Dr. Carlyon’s cook was; just as every one knew how many servants every one else had, and who they were. Nurse, too, was not as patient as usual, she had so many things on her mind, for where there are only two maids to help, a big party makes every one very busy, and the children had to amuse themselves as best they could—at least, Priscilla and Loveday had to; Geoffrey had gone to spend the day in the country with some friends, glad enough to escape “such silly things as At Homes,” he said. Priscilla and Loveday almost wished that they had been invited too, for the day seemed very long and dull without mother, or Geoffrey, or Nurse. They were told, too, to keep in the nursery and play, for they would be in the way anywhere else, but to be told to amuse oneself makes it a very difficult thing to do; everything seems, at once, to be not the very least bit amusing.

The dining-room was to be arranged for the guests to go to, to partake of tea and coffee when they arrived; and the drawing-room was, of course, to be decorated with flowers, and arranged a little differently. Priscilla and Loveday were not wanted anywhere, and they could not play in the garden, for there had been heavy rain during the night.

“Oh dear!” sighed Priscilla, “there is nothing, nothing that I feel I want to do, and there is more than an hour before we can see the guests coming.”

Loveday glanced at the clock, too. “So there is,” she sighed; “it isn’t free yet.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Priscilla crossly; “you know you can’t tell the time, so why pretend?”

“You said so, too,” protested Loveday; “and I know the people are going to begin to come at four, ’cause mother said so, and if it is more than an hour before they come, that shows that it isn’t free yet by the clock.”

In her heart Priscilla thought that it was very clever of her little sister to have found out all that, but she did not tell her so; she thought Loveday was a vain enough little person already. She dropped down with a weary sigh beside her doll’s house, but they had already given that a thorough cleaning from top to bottom, and there was nothing more to do to it. They had dressed and undressed all their dolls and put them to bed, so that they were settled for the night, and wanted no more attention. Every animal had gone out of the ark for a walk, and marched back to it again, and there really seemed nothing left to do that was worth doing.

“I wish I could help mother,” sighed Priscilla, who always loved real work much more than play work—she would far rather help to dust a room than dust or tidy her doll’s house; “and if they are so busy,” she added, “I am sure there must be lots that I can do.”

After another moment or two had passed, she shut the doll’s house door with a bang, and got up from the floor. “I am going downstairs just a teeny-tiny way,” she said softly. “Don’t you come too, Loveday; you needn’t do everything that I do.”

But it was really too much to expect Loveday to stay in that dull nursery by herself, and very soon she was creeping out after Priscilla.

Priscilla had reached the foot of the nursery stairs, and was standing on the landing looking over the banisters, and listening for any sounds of life below, and Loveday joined her. No one was about, that they could see, but from the dining-room came the rattle of china. Presently, however, they heard their mother’s voice; she was speaking to Nurse.

“I will leave you to finish arranging the cups and saucers,” she said, “and I will go to the kitchen and place the cakes out on the plates; then it will be time for me to dress. I ought to rest for a few minutes, for I am so tired already I can scarcely stand.”

Priscilla and Loveday drew back while their mother passed along the hall below, for they did not want to be seen; they were doing no harm, they thought, and it was very much more interesting to be there than in the nursery. They must run away, though, before mother came upstairs to dress, but by that time it would be nearly time for them to watch from the nursery windows to see the first guests arrive.

“I do wish I could help mother,” sighed Priscilla again. “She is so tired, and has such lots to do. Can’t we do something to help? Oh!” with sudden delight, “I know what I’ll do! I’ll dust the drawing-room! Now, don’t you come too, Loveday. I thought of it first, and I can do it by myself, and you are sure to break something and get us both a scolding.”

But Loveday was not to be put off in that way, and, to save a howl, Priscilla said, “Well, come along; you may come if you will promise to be good.”

The drawing-room was on the very landing on which they stood. Priscilla crept over to the door and looked in. Of course it was empty, and to her it looked as though the furniture had all been pushed back, just as when the room was going to be swept, only there were no dust-sheets over the things.

“I believe it hasn’t even been swept yet!” she whispered, in a shocked voice. “We’ll sweep it first, shall we?”

It was a grand idea, and Loveday agreed delightedly. Nurse still kept her nursery brushes in a cupboard on the top landing; they would get those, then no one would know what they were doing, and when Nurse came up presently, all hot and tired, to sweep and dust the room she would find it all done, and have a most beautiful surprise; and she would not scold them at all; she would be so glad, and perhaps she would let them have some of the “At Home” cakes for their tea!

They hurried up the stairs very gently, and Loveday carried down a long-handled brush, while Priscilla carried the dustpan in one hand and the brush in the other, so that they should not clatter.

“Now close the door,” whispered Priscilla; and Loveday turned to do it, bringing her broom-handle with a sharp tap against a picture which hung by it. Priscilla was too busy to hear the blow, or to see what had happened.

“It was such a little tap,” said Loveday to herself, as she gazed ruefully up at the crack which ran quite across the glass of the picture.

Priscilla was on her knees by that time, brushing the carpet as hard as she could with the short-handled brush.

“What shall I do?” asked Loveday. “I can’t use this brush; it is so tall it knocks my head.”

“You shall dust,” panted Priscilla, looking up with a very red face.

“But I haven’t a duster!”

“You have a handkerchief, haven’t you? Use that.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Loveday.

“Oh, how you do worry! Here, take mine!”

Loveday pounced on it gladly, and began to rub the legs of a chair.

“I think mother will be surprised to see the carpet so well swept. Won’t she?” said Priscilla contentedly.

“Yes; and to see everything so well dusted. P’r’aps the guests will notice it, too, and will say, ‘Here, Mrs. Carlyon, is sixpence for the person who dusts your room so well.’”

But Priscilla scouted the idea with the utmost scorn.

“As if they would!” she cried. “Why, you silly child, people don’t say things about other people’s rooms, not even if they aren’t dusted at all. Of course, you can dust easy things like chairs, but I’ll have to do the vases, and all the—take care, Loveday, the door is opening; oh, do mind your head!” and Loveday stepped back just in time to allow the door to be opened a little way. “Who is there? You can’t come in yet,” cried Priscilla.

But the door opened wider, and Nurse’s agonised face appeared, and behind her, gazing amazedly at Priscilla through a haze of dust, stood Lady Carey.

“Miss Priscilla! Oh, what are you doing? Oh, you naughty, naughty, mischievous children!” cried Nurse, horrified, and not knowing what to do, or which to attend to first. “Excuse me, ma’am,” she said, turning to the visitor, “but—but—oh, what can I do? The guests will all be coming in a few minutes, and the room is like this!”

Lady Carey smiled.

“Are the little people too zealously industrious?” she asked. She saw at once that something was amiss, and wanted to make as light of it as possible. “How do you do, children? Are you Mrs. Carlyon’s two little daughters?”

Priscilla dropped her brush, sprang to her feet, and went forward to shake hands. Her checks were crimson with hard work and shame.

“How do you do?” she said breathlessly. “Yes, I am the eldest; I am Priscilla, and this is Loveday. Loveday” (in an angry aside), “stop dusting, do! I am very sorry the dust is flying,” she went on, turning to Lady Carey again. “We wanted to help mother and Nurse because they were so busy getting ready for the ‘At Home,’ and I was sweeping the carpet and Loveday was dusting the easy things, like chairs and table-legs, but we didn’t know it was time for the guests to be coming. Nurse,” turning to her with a distressed air, “what can we do?”

“Aren’t you very early?” asked Loveday of Lady Carey, as soon as she had shaken hands with her, and said “How d’ye do?”

“Well, you see, dear, I am not come to the ‘At Home’; I did not know your mother was having one. I came to return your mother’s call, and I have unfortunately chosen an inconvenient day.” Then, turning to the servant: “The dust has gone, I think, and I can sit here—unless, of course, you want to be going round with a duster.” But before Nurse could reply she went on: “No, I tell you what I would much rather do, and what would be by far the best plan,” she added kindly; “I have some other calls to pay, and Mrs. Carlyon is very busy, and as I wanted to have a nice long talk with her, I will go away now and come one day soon when she has more time. Don’t tell her about this call, at least until after all her guests have gone, and then be sure to tell her I quite understood, and would rather come when I can have her all to myself.”

“I—I—but I am sure my mistress would wish to see you, ma’am,” said Nurse, who was perplexed to know what she ought to do.

“Yes, I know,” said Lady Carey; “but it would be much more pleasant for us both if I called another day. Now let me out, and hurry back to set this room to rights. It is striking the quarter to four. Good-bye, children. I hope I shall see you again soon.”

“Good-bye,” said Priscilla, but very, very shamefacedly; and as soon as Lady Carey had gone she flew up the stairs to her own room, and, flinging herself on her bed, burst into tears of shame and pain.

“And I meant to help! I meant to make such a nice surprise for mother, and oh! I’ve done such a dreadful thing!” and poor Priscilla sobbed and sobbed until her head ached.

Presently soft footsteps came lightly up the stairs and to her room, but Priscilla, with her hot face buried in the bed-clothes, did not hear them.

“Prissy, dear,” said her mother, as gently and kindly as though nothing had happened, “will you do something for me? Will you run down very quickly and help Nurse to dust the drawing-room? If you will help her, there will be just time to set it all straight again before our guests arrive.”

“Oh yes, mother.”

Priscilla scrambled off the bed in a moment, and pushed her hair back from her face.

“Here is a nice soft duster,” said mother; “run quickly, dear.”

But Priscilla, using the soft duster to mop her eyes with, stayed for just a moment to throw her arms about her mother’s neck.

“Oh!” she cried, “I do think you are the very nicest mother in all the world. I am so glad I haven’t got any other,” and she hugged and kissed her again.

“Now, don’t wipe your eyes on the duster any more, dear,” said Mrs. Carlyon laughingly, and returning the kiss, “or it will make the things quite dull instead of polishing them.”

Priscilla did not answer; she was gazing at her mother, lost in admiration. Mrs. Carlyon had on a pretty brown silk gown, trimmed with bands of little pink roses and green leaves, and the gown suited her fair hair and delicate complexion to a nicety.

“I don’t wonder father married you, mother. You do look nice in that gown.”

“Run away and dust my drawing-room,” cried Mrs. Carlyon, laughing again, “and don’t waste time thinking of flattering things to say to your mother. Hurry; it is close on four, and people will be coming soon.”

“I wonder,” thought Priscilla, as she ran off, “if I shall ever have a gown like that. But”—with a sigh—“if I had I shouldn’t look as pretty in it as mother does.”

CHAPTER VI
MRS. TICKELL, MRS. WALL, AND AN ACCIDENT

“INFANTS!” said Geoffrey, popping his head round the nursery door, “come up in the orchard; I’ve rigged up such a jolly swing there!”

Priscilla and Loveday looked up from their play quite excited by the news. They were keeping a shop at the moment—a book-shop—and had all their nursery books and all the bits of paper and string they could collect arranged before them on the window-seat, which made a splendid counter. Books made such nice parcels, and were so easy to wrap up. On the counter, too, they had an old Japanese jewel-case that their mother had given them some time ago; it had two drawers, with handles, so made a beautiful till for their money, and they were doing such good business that already the till was heavy with the weight of the cowries it held.

Priscilla had just wrapped up her “Playing Trades,” and handed it across the counter to a customer, saying, “That will be half-a-crown—thank you,” and was searching the till for a sixpenny-piece, when Geoffrey opened the nursery door and popped his head in. Business came to a standstill at once, and the two little shopwomen hurried away, leaving books, and till, and everything. Half-way down the stairs Priscilla stopped.

“Loveday,” she said, “don’t you think it would be rather nice if you bought some sweets with your penny, and we ate them while we were swinging?”

Loveday nodded.

“You will both wait for me while I am gone to buy them, won’t you? You won’t be mean, and go on and begin to swing till I come?”

“All right,” said Geoffrey; “we’ll wait if you don’t take too long.” Loveday, being the only one possessed of any wealth, had to be treated with consideration. “Cut along, infant!”

Loveday had actually taken two steps, but Geoffrey’s words brought her back again.

“I don’t think you ought to call us infants,” she said severely. “It doesn’t sound at all nice, and if you do it again I don’t think I shall give you a single sweet. We aren’t infants; father said so. Infants are—are—well, we aren’t infants.”

“I think we will go on and begin to swing,” said Geoffrey, to tease her—“don’t you, Prissy? If we wait for the end of this conversation I am afraid the tree will die of old age.”

“I don’t know how you can like to be such a rude boy,” said Loveday cuttingly. “Nobody thinks rude boys funny or nice.”

There were two sweet-shops quite near to Dr. Carlyon’s house, and the children were allowed to go alone to both of them. Mrs. Tickell’s was on one side of the street, and Mrs. Wall’s was almost opposite. Mrs. Tickell was the favourite with the children; she was always more pleasant and smiling and patient than Mrs. Wall, and gave more generous measure. On the other hand, the children found Mr. Tickell rather a drawback. True, he was not often in the shop, as he was generally busy in the bakehouse, for the Tickells, in addition to having sweets and apples, and prize-packets and little china figures, made cakes and pasties and jam-tarts to sell. But when Mr. Tickell was in the shop he always stood by the half-door, and asked the most trying questions, such as: “Now, can you say to me your six times right through without a mistake?” or, “Can you tell me when Henry the Eighth began to reign?” Once he even asked Geoffrey to say his dates right through, before the Conquest and all. It was really dreadful, and as he always stood by the door, there was no escaping him.

But Mrs. Tickell was so kind, and Emily, their daughter, was so beloved by the children, that they bore with Mr. Tickell for their sakes, and the shop remained their favourite.

Mr. Wall was of no account at all; the children had a notion that he would be kind if he were left to himself, but that he was afraid of Mrs. Wall. He very seldom spoke, and when he did it was only to say something that they all thought very silly, such as “Fine weather this for little ducks,” or something equally aggravating. So they put him down in their minds as a weak creature, and took very little interest in him. Mrs. Wall was a very solemn and unsmiling person. She never grew friendly as Mrs. Tickell did. Priscilla heard some one once telling a story of the Walls’ only son, who had died, she gathered, in some tragic, mysterious way a long time ago, before she was born or was old enough to remember anything. But what struck her even more than the story was the remark, “And Mrs. Wall has never smiled since.”

After that, whenever she was within sight of Mrs. Wall, Priscilla was always watching her to see if this was true or not. She would hardly believe that she did not forget sometimes, and smile before she remembered; but Priscilla had never yet seen her do so.

“It must be dreadful for Mr. Wall to have her always looking so—so cross,” she confided to her father one day. “As for him, I don’t think he could smile if he wanted to; his mouth is so very wide it couldn’t possibly go any wider.”

To-day Loveday ran off with her penny in her hand to buy some bull’s-eyes at Mrs. Tickell’s, but, as usual, she examined both the shop windows thoroughly first, that she might get some idea as to how best to lay out her money, and she was very glad she did, for in Mrs. Wall’s window there was quite a large assortment of new things; there were pink and white sugar mice, black liquorice babies with red lips and blue eyes, sugar bird-cages, and little cocoa-nut fish-cakes. They were all two a penny but the mice, and those were a farthing each.

Loveday felt, after gazing for some time, that she must have one of the dolls, and that she wanted two of the mice. So she pushed open the shop door and went in. A bell behind the door jangled loudly, so Loveday knew that Mrs. Wall was upstairs “cleaning,” and that Mr. Wall was absent, for the bell was always unhung and placed on the counter if they were at hand.

Loveday liked to find the shop empty—it gave her time to look about; but to-day, when she had looked about her for a few minutes, she remembered that Geoffrey and Priscilla were waiting for her, and would begin without her if she did not make haste, so she hammered sharply on the counter with her penny, to make Mrs. Wall hurry. Silence followed. She waited again what seemed to her a very long time, then knocked once more, this time even more loudly. Still silence.

During the next few minutes Loveday quite changed her mind as to what she would spend her money on. She suddenly remembered that Emily Tickell had told her she had some beautiful rose-drops coming in, and some honey-drops; and Loveday loved both. Besides which, the thought crossed her mind that it might not be easy to divide the two mice and the one doll. The mice were very hard to break, and she could not give the whole doll to one; it would not be fair. She wished then that she had not come to Mrs. Wall’s, and was just wondering if she could creep out of the shop again without being seen, when she heard a sound, and Mrs. Wall opened the little glass-topped door, and came up the two steps leading from the parlour to the shop. She looked rather crosser and sterner than usual.

“I had only just gone up to change,” she said sharply, “and as sure as ever I go, that bell is certain to ring. What can I do for you, miss?”

Loveday felt uncomfortable; her heart was quite set now on getting the rose-drops and the honey-drops, and not the doll or the mice, but what could she say or do! Then a way out of her difficulty suddenly opened out before her.

“Please, can you change a penny for me?” she asked very politely.

Mrs. Wall did not say anything, but her lips set a little more tightly than usual as she went to the till and took out two halfpennies.

“Thank you,” said Loveday, with a sigh of relief, and, hurrying out, she flew across the road to the Tickells’ shop, almost opposite. As she reached the door she glanced back for one more look at Mrs. Wall’s fascinating store, but all she saw was Mrs. Wall’s cold stern eye looking after her with anything but an amiable expression in it, and she turned with relief to Emily Tickell’s welcoming smile.

When at last she reached the orchard with her two precious packets in her hands, Geoffrey and Priscilla were busy arranging a bit of wood for a seat for the swing. They had not been swinging, they assured her, at least only just trying it to see if it was all right, and Loveday was satisfied and distributed her sweets.

But as soon as the sweets were in their mouths they began, and what a glorious time they did have for a while!

They swung so high, and it seemed so dangerous and exciting, and sometimes they took it in turns to swing, sometimes two got on together, and once even the three of them.

“Perhaps we hadn’t better all get on together again,” said Priscilla after that, looking at the slim skipping-rope they had all been depending on. “It isn’t a very strong one, is it?”

“Strong enough,” said Geoffrey.

“Let’s play something else now,” said Loveday, flinging herself down on the grass. “I am tired of swinging, and it makes me feel rather sick.”

Priscilla was sitting in the swing, just lazily moving it. “What shall we do, then?” she asked reluctantly. “I don’t think we will stop quite yet; let’s go on for a little while longer, just one or two more swings, and you watch us, Loveday, like a darling.”

“I can’t watch you,” said Loveday; “it makes my head swing too.”

“I tell you what,” said Geoffrey, “we’ll just have one more good turn, then I’ll get out the sticks and hoops, and we’ll have a game of ‘La Grace.’ You sit where you are, Prissy, and when I’ve given you a good start I’ll spring up at the back of you. Loveday, you can look away if it makes you giddy;” and with the same he sent the swing with Prissy in it flying up through the air, then back she came, and up she went again and back; but this time Geoffrey held on the ropes, and as the swing swung forward the third time, he sprang up on his feet on to the seat. The ropes quivered and strained, and for a moment their flight was checked; then on they went again, up and down and up; then, with a scream and a heavy thud, they both came down to the ground, Priscilla underneath, Geoffrey on top of her.

Loveday was too bewildered to cry or to scream. At first, in fact, she did not realise what had happened. She thought they were playing some game, and that in a moment they would both jump up with a laugh and a shout; and yet—Priscilla was so very white and still, and lay so long, and though Geoffrey often groaned in fun and pretended to be hurt, it was somehow not quite like this; and when at last Geoffrey tried to get up, but only screamed and fell back again, Priscilla still never made a sound or a movement. Geoffrey made one more effort, and dragged himself off Priscilla; but he could not get up, for every time he tried to raise himself on his arm, the pain was greater than he could bear.

“I believe I’ve broken my shoulder—or something!” he gasped. “Loveday, run quick, and tell some one to come! Get father, and—Prissy, Prissy”—he broke off to call his sister. “Oh, why doesn’t she open her eyes? Prissy, speak; do speak.”

He tried to move her, but he could not manage that.

“Run, Loveday, as fast as ever you can—do!”

He looked so ill and scared, and Priscilla looked so dreadful, lying so still with her arms all crumpled up under her, that Loveday nearly fainted with fear; but she ran and ran as she had never run before, and all the way her clear shrill voice rang out: “Daddy, mother, Nurse, come quick! Where are you? Oh, do come!” She called so loudly, and there was such real distress in her voice, that by the time she reached the house her father was hurrying out to meet her; and before she had gasped out half her tale of woe, he had gathered her up in his arms, and, followed by, it seemed, the whole household, was rushing to the orchard, where Priscilla lay as Loveday had left her, and Geoffrey, as pale now as Priscilla, was still struggling to get up and at the same time to choke back the tears of pain that would force their way up.

Then there followed a busy, sad, painful time, when, between them all, they got the two injured ones to bed, and attended to their hurts. Geoffrey’s shoulder was not fractured, but it was dislocated, and he had strained and bruised both arms.

“If you had fallen backwards,” said Dr. Carlyon gravely, “instead of forwards, you would probably have dislocated your neck. How could you run yourself and your sisters into such a danger? It was most culpable of you.”

“It seemed all right,” groaned poor Geoffrey, “and I don’t know now why we fell. The branch was a strong one——”

“Yes, but the rope was not, and you put it up loosely, so that it rubbed every time you swung, and, of course, rubbed through in a very little while. You shall see the frayed ends when you are well enough; perhaps it will help to teach you how a swing should not be hung.”

Poor Priscilla had a fractured arm and a cut head, and was badly bruised all over; and when, poor child, she awoke from her unconsciousness, she found herself one big block of pain from head to heels, or so it seemed to her. But worst of all, perhaps, was the dreadful pain in her head from the blow, and the jerk, and the shock. She could not endure a ray of light, nor a sound, nor to speak or be spoken to.

Poor Loveday crept into the bedroom time after time to be near her. She brought her best books and her favourite toys, her paint-box, and even her pink parasol to lend, or to give to Priscilla, if by doing so Priscilla could only be got to look better and to take some interest in things. But Priscilla lay very still and white, moaning occasionally, and did not look at Loveday or her treasures, or seem able to take any interest in anything, and poor little Loveday crept away again, feeling perfectly miserable, and at her wits’ end, for if those things failed, she really did not know what could be done. And if she went to Geoffrey she only felt more miserable, for he was so remorseful and unhappy, and kept on saying such dreadful things about himself for having caused it all, that one could not dare ask him to play, or even to read aloud, or to do anything.

At last Loveday grew to look so ill and moped, that her father and mother decided it would be better for her to go away for a little while to more cheerful surroundings, or she would be ill too. But then came the question: “Where could she go?”

“Granny would have her, and be delighted to,” said Mrs. Carlyon, “but I don’t know how to get her up there. I couldn’t possibly travel up and back all in one day, and I should not like to be longer away from home just now. Nor can you be spared either.”

“And I would like her to have sea air,” said Dr. Carlyon. “I think it would be much better for her.”

“And I would like her to be where she could have a child or so to play with,” added Mrs. Carlyon.

So it seemed they had to find a place for Loveday with children, not very far from home, but by the sea. It was Nurse who settled the difficulty at last.

“I suppose you wouldn’t like to send her to Bessie, down at Porthcallis, sir, would you? She’s got a nice little cottage, and close to as nice a bit of safe, sandy beach as you could find anywhere, made on purpose for children, I should think, and her own little boy must be nearly as old as Miss Loveday. Bessie does understand children too, and she is very fond of Miss Loveday.”

This was one of Nurse’s great anxieties. She could not bear the idea of her “baby” being sent away; but if it was better for her that she should—and Nurse saw that it was—she was anxious that she should go to some one who loved her and would make her happy.

Bessie Lobb had been a housemaid for a few years with Dr. and Mrs. Carlyon when Geoffrey and Priscilla were babies. She had left to get married before Loveday was born, but she had been back several times to Trelint to visit her relations, and had always come several times to see her former master and mistress, and children, and Nurse.

Every one hailed Nurse’s suggestion with joy, for Porthcallis was only about fifteen miles from Trelint. The beach was, as Nurse said, very safe, the air was beautiful; and Bessie was a good, kind, trustworthy body, and her husband was a nice respectable man, and devoted to children.

Mrs. Carlyon wrote to Bessie at once, and very quickly a reply came to say that Bessie would be proud and pleased to have Miss Loveday. She had a spare bedroom that Miss Loveday could have, and she would do her best to make her comfortable and happy.

“That is capital,” said Mrs. Carylon, greatly relieved that matters were settling themselves so well. “I will write to Bessie at once, and say I will bring Loveday on Thursday.”

“Then I had better set to work at once to sort out my toys and begin to pack, I suppose,” said Loveday, in a tone of great importance, “or I am sure I shall never be ready in time.”

CHAPTER VII
LOVEDAY GOES VISITING

BUT though she began her packing at once, and went on with it most industriously for the two following days, yet, when Thursday morning came, she was not, according to her own accounts, nearly ready.

There really was a great deal to be done. First of all she had to find a basket in which to pack her cat, “Mrs. Peters,” and her three kittens, for until that was done she could not make any other plans or attend to anything else.

Fortunately, however, she found at once a nice shiny hat-box, with a leather handle and a lock and key, which would just hold the Peters family, for the kittens were quite tiny. “I will pack all my white flannel petticoats in the bottom of it,” she said to herself, “for they will be nice for Mrs. Peters and the kittens to lie on, and it will be a good thing to get the petticoats in out of the way.”

So in went the petticoats, and then the kittens, but Mrs. Peters was out, and had to be waited for. She came in, though, in such good time that she and her family and the petticoats were packed and locked and strapped up long before Loveday’s dinner-time came; and what would have been the end of the poor kittens and their mother if their own dinner-time had not come very soon, and Nurse had not come in search of them to feed them, no one can imagine, for the box had no ventilation holes, and the lid shut down quite close.

If Mrs. Peters and the kittens suffered, though, Loveday suffered too; for Nurse was so angry when she saw the petticoats in the box with the cats, that she ordered Loveday to sit down and pick off from them every single hair that the cats had left behind, and they had left so many that to Loveday it seemed a marvel that they were not all quite bald. She did not get rid of quite all the hairs, though, for by tea-time her eyes were so swelled and smarting with crying, she was excused the rest, after promising never, never to do such a thing again.

“Don’t you think, dear, that you had better leave Mrs. Peters and her family behind?” suggested her mother, when Loveday, after ransacking the whole house, had found a basket to take the place of the hat-box.

“Oh no!” cried Loveday; “Mrs. Peters would fret dreadfully for me.”

“Do you think she would, dear, now she has her little ones to interest her?”

“Oh yes, I am sure she would. You see she would have no one to talk to her.”

“I would talk to her,” said mother, “and make much of her,” and looking rather grave, “you see there is a great deal of water at Porthcallis, and the kittens are so very young. If they escaped from you or their mother, and got down on the sands and a wave came in, and——”

“Can kittens swim?” asked Loveday, looking very anxious.

“No, dear; such baby things, too, would be too frightened to do anything. I really think it would be kinder to leave them at home with Nurse and me, and Priscilla would be glad, too, to have them to watch and play with when she gets better. She will be rather lonely and dull without you, you know.”

“So she will,” sighed Loveday, “but of course I shall come home at once if Prissy wants me.”

“You must breathe in all the sea air you can, and grow strong and rosy, and you must collect all the pretty shells you can find, for Priscilla, and then, perhaps—but remember it is only perhaps—when Priscilla and Geoffrey are well enough we may all come down to Porthcallis for a holiday with you.”

“Oh, how lovely!” cried Loveday, dancing and clapping her hands with joy. “I shall like going ever so much better now than I did.” She went over and leaned on her mother, and looked up into her face. “I—I didn’t want to go before you said that,” she confided to her in a half whisper, “at least not very much; but I do now, and I will get all the shells I can for Prissy, and I will get to know my way everywhere so as to be able to lead you all about when you come. And now,” bustling away, “I am going to take out all my toys to see which of them I shall pack;” and off she ran. In a moment or two, though, she was back again.

“Mother, don’t you think I ought to take one of my toys, or one of Prissy’s, to Aaron Lobb? I don’t expect he has very many, and little boys and girls always like to have something brought to them when people come on a visit.”

“Yes, certainly, dear. Take one of your own—something you think a boy would like.”

Loveday thought for a moment. “I fink I’ll take him the big monkey. It is very ugly, but boys like ugly things;” and off she ran again, and this time really reached the nursery, where Mrs. Peters and her family were frantically clawing at the basket in their longing to get outside it.

Loveday untied the lid and let them all out. “You are not to go after all,” she said. “I hope you won’t be dis’pointed, but mother finks Prissy may want you, and, after all, the fish at Porthcallis isn’t better than any other, and there’s a dreadful lot of water.”

Whether Mrs. Peters understood the change of plan or not, who can say? But it is a fact that she lay down purring with happiness, and, drawing all her children about her, talked to them for a long time.

Three days later, about noon, Loveday and Mrs. Carlyon started. It was not a very long journey by train—an engine soon covers fifteen miles; and the afternoon sun was still shining bright and hot when they stepped out on the platform of the little bare country station, which was not very far from Mrs. Lobb’s cottage. Though one could not actually see the sea from the platform, one felt that it was close by, for one could smell it in the air, and on stormy days one could hear it; and, though I don’t know how it came there, there certainly was sea-sand all about the platform, which made it look and feel as though the sea certainly must reach that far sometimes.

It was all very open and breezy, and there seemed to be an endless amount of air and space, and sea and sand, and sky and everything. Loveday almost wished there was not quite so much; it made her feel so small, and rather forlorn. But she had not much time to think about it, for things kept on happening. There were no omnibuses or cabs or anything to take them anywhere.

“How are we going to get my box to Bessie’s house?” she asked anxiously.

A man with a wheelbarrow had come up, and was standing by them.

“I’ll take the box, little lady,” he said, touching his hat and smiling at her. “For the rest, hereabouts, we mostly goes on Shanks’s mare.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Loveday.

Mrs. Carlyon explained to the man where she wanted him to take the box, and paid him; and when he had gone, and she had gathered up the little things she wished to carry herself, she and Loveday started to follow. Outside the station, Loveday stopped and looked about her.

“Come along, darling,” said mother rather impatiently. “What are you looking for? This is the way. I want to go to one or two shops first.”

“I was looking for Shanks and his mare,” she explained, “to take us to Bessie’s.”

“‘I’ll take Thomas,’ she said.”

“I don’t think the station-master need have laughed like that,” she said indignantly, as, a moment later, they walked quickly away. “Everybody makes mistakes, and we don’t call legs by such silly names at home, and—and one can’t know everything. Even grown-ups don’t know everything, but they do laugh at such silly things. I don’t see anything funny in it.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do, dear. But look! here is a fine shop,” said Mrs. Carlyon, drawing up before a window full of toys, and china, and a few books, and some boxes of chocolates, and a long string of tin buckets all painted different colours. “We will go in, shall we? I want to get you a spade and bucket.”

“Oh, thank you!” gasped Loveday. “How lovely!” and she forgot in a moment all her troubles and the trying habit grown-ups have of laughing at nothing.

Some of the buckets had names painted on their sides.

“Have you one with ‘Loveday’ on it?” she asked eagerly of the woman who came out to serve them.

“Oh no, miss,” said the woman, shaking her head. “I never heard of no such name as that before. I’ve got one with ‘Thomas’ on it, and ‘Ada,’ and ‘Susan.’”

Loveday hesitated a moment; then, “I’ll take ‘Thomas,’” she said. “You see,” she explained to her mother when they got outside, “if I had chosen ‘Ada’ or ‘Susan,’ people would have thought it was my own real name, but they can’t think I am called ‘Thomas.’”

“I don’t suppose people have much time for thinking about little girls and the names on their buckets,” said Mrs. Carlyon quietly.

“No, not people, mummy, but boys and girls have. They have lots of time, and they notice everything.”

Armed with her spade and her scarlet bucket, Loveday walked on quite cheerfully to Bessie’s house. From the station it had looked quite close, only just across a green, and along a strip of level road and a little bit of beach, and there you were. But the country just there was flat and deceptive; the road wound and curved, and they found it quite a longish walk by the time they had passed the green and followed the windings of the road, and crossed the stretch of sands. But there they were at last, and there was Bessie out to welcome them, and Aaron, too, though he disappeared behind his mother’s skirts as soon as the strangers came really close.

Loveday thought him a very funny little boy, and not at all pretty. He had very round red cheeks, and a snub nose, and big dark eyes; his hair was dark, too, and quite straight, and cut very close to his head. Loveday looked at him with the greatest interest and curiosity. He was very different from what she had expected; for one thing, he was older and more manly.

“He is like a boy, not a baby,” she said to herself, and felt a little disappointed.

She had thought she was to have had a play-fellow whom she could have “mothered” and managed a little. But she soon found out her mistake. Aaron Lobb was not at all a baby, nor did he think himself one or allow others to do so. He was a sturdy little fellow, and full of a knowledge of the sea and the tides, and boats, and shells, and fishing, which to Loveday seemed simply amazing, and clever beyond words.

When they had all talked a little, Bessie led the way into the house, and Loveday thought it was the most interesting, funny, and charming house she had ever seen in her life. It stood back from the beach, close under the towering cliff, and was a long low house, only one storey high, with big windows, and a porch over the door, and a verandah on each side of the door, and it was painted white, all but the window-frames and the doors, and they were green.

Bessie explained that it had been built by a gentleman who lived in a big house on the top of the cliff. He had had it built years ago for his boatman to live in, “and there is the path he had made for the man to go up and down by to the big house.”

Loveday looked, and saw a dear little winding path going up and up, with here and there a flight of little steps where the cliff was particularly steep, and all the way there was a strong hand-rail to prevent one’s falling over.

“Does your husband take charge of the boats for the gentleman now?” asked Mrs. Carlyon.

“Oh no, ma’am,” said Bessie, shaking her head and looking very grave. “He doesn’t keep one now, poor gentleman! His only son was drowned one day out there, right in front of his windows, and Mr. Winter—he—he saw it, and—and it pretty nearly drove him out of his mind. The next day he sent down to Button—Button was his man—and ordered every boat to be broke up, and he got rid of Button—not ’cause ’twas his fault, but ’cause he couldn’t abide the sight of anything that had to do with that dreadful day. He was going to have this little place pulled down too, but my husband begged and prayed him not to, houses here being so scarce there’s no getting one. And Mr. Winter, he gave in. You see, ma’am, he’d had the little place built low like this, and right back under the cliff, so’s it shouldn’t be seen from the house, so he was never worried by the sight of it, and after the accident he wouldn’t be likely to, for he had the blinds on that side of the house that faced the sea drawn down, and he dared anybody ever to raise them again in his lifetime.”

Loveday was very much impressed by this sad story. She seemed to see the poor father sitting lonely and sad in his dark house, while his only son lay for ever at the bottom of the cruel sea, which stretched before his very eyes. There were tears in Mrs. Carlyon’s eyes as she listened, and quite a sadness lay for the moment over the whole scene as they followed Bessie into the bungalow. It was quite a large bungalow, and so well built and nicely finished inside. On one side of the little entrance was a cosy, spotlessly clean kitchen-parlour, with scullery behind it, and beyond that was Bessie’s bedroom; both had windows looking out to sea, and Bessie’s room had a little door at the end, by which she could get in and out without having to go through the kitchen. On the other side of the entrance was a nice little room, which had been built, said Bessie, for the young gentleman and his friends to have a meal in, or sit in, and behind it were two little rooms which had been built for dressing-rooms or bedrooms, for him to change in if he came home wet, or to sleep in if he was going to start very early on a fishing expedition, or come home late.

The front room, which looked out to sea, Bessie had made her parlour, while the others were two dear little bedrooms, one of which was now Aaron’s, while the other was to be Loveday’s.

Loveday’s eyes sparkled when she saw hers. It had a wooden bed in it—such a curious-looking one, for it had been a four-poster, but, as it wouldn’t go into any room in the bungalow, they had had to cut the top off, so that now it seemed to have two sets of legs, the four it stood on and four that stood up in the air. The window was hung with curtains of blossom-white muslin, and the looking-glass and dressing-table and bed were all hung with the same. So snowy and soft and billowy it looked, the little room might almost have been filled with white clouds or foam. The woodwork was painted white, and the walls were white too, but for a frieze around the top, whereon white-sailed ships scudded along over a glorious blue-green sea, while gulls hovered and swooped, or stood stiffly on the bright green grass on the cliff-top.

Loveday was enchanted. “Oh, I wish Prissy could see it too!” she cried, and that was the only flaw in her great delight.

CHAPTER VIII
PISKIES STILL LIVE AT PORTHCALLIS

PRESENTLY though, just for a time another shadow fell, for it seemed only a very, very little while before it was time for her mother to leave.

“I wish you could stay all the time, mother,” she whispered eagerly. “Couldn’t you, mother? It would do you good too.”

“But, darling, think of poor Priscilla. She will be wanting me, and I know you wouldn’t like to keep me away from her.”

Loveday was not quite sure of that at the moment, but she would not have said so; and when she thought of pale, suffering Prissy, she tried hard to choke down any selfish feeling, and to be very brave. “But—you will come again soon, won’t you, mother?”

“Yes, darling, very soon; and I expect father will run down to see you in a very little while, and we will always let you know if any of us are coming, so that you can come to meet us. Now, are you going to see me off at the station, or will you stay here and wave your handkerchief to me?”

“Oh, please, I’ll go to the station.”

They all had tea on the beach outside the cottage, and when that was done it was almost time for Mrs. Carlyon to start on her homeward journey. Bessie was to go to the station too, and take Aaron with her; and Mrs. Carlyon felt pretty sure that by the time Loveday had had the double walk, she would be too tired to fret much, or feel lonely, or to do anything but go to bed and sleep.

She was a very brave little woman, on the whole, considering that she was alone in a strange place, and with people who were almost strangers to her. A few tears did force themselves through her lids, but she did not say anything.

“When you get back, darling, you must help Bessie to unpack your box, and you will be able to give Aaron his monkey, then you will be ready for bed, and when you wake up again it will be morning, and you will feel so happy, and there will be so much to see and do, that you will scarcely know what to see and do first. But don’t forget to collect a nice lot of shells for Priscilla.”

Then the engine gave two or three snorts and puffs, and a loud whistle—away moved the train, and Loveday found herself left alone.

She might have shed a few tears more when the train puffed away—in fact, it is pretty certain that she would have if she had not, at that moment, caught sight of the station-master, and remembered his rude laughter about Shanks’s mare. He had not caught sight of her yet, and Loveday was anxious to hurry away before he did, and in her eagerness and hurry she quite forgot about her tears and her loneliness; and then it was such fun to watch the ducks and geese on the green, and to make them run at one, and stretch their necks and scream, that she was soon laughing instead of crying; and when they got back there was a boat drawn up on the beach, and that was very exciting, for Mr. Lobb had come back with a big catch of crabs and lobsters, and Loveday, after being introduced to him, was for quite a long while perfectly fascinated, watching the creatures trying to get out of the great lumbering crab-pots which he had brought them home in.

“I wish now, missie, as yer ma hadn’t a-been gone, for she could have took home two or three of these, and welcome to ’em.”

“Oh, I wish she hadn’t,” said Loveday earnestly. “Father loves lobsters and crabs; he would have been so glad—so would Geoffrey.”

“Well, look here now,” said John Lobb good-naturedly. “Bessie’ll bile these presently, and then if she’ll pop one or two into a basket, I’ll take them up and post ’em, and your pa’ll have ’em in time for his breakfast in the morning.”

At which Loveday was full of gratitude, and thanked her new host very heartily and prettily.

So Bessie hurried in to attend to her fire, and as a cold wind was blowing in from the sea, she bade the children follow her.

“A big catch of crabs and lobsters.”

“Now I’ll unpack my box,” thought Loveday, and, Bessie having unstrapped and unlocked it for her, she began. There was a little white chest of drawers in the room, and a big cupboard built into the wall, so that she had plenty of room for her belongings. Her little frocks, though she had quite a lot of them, took up a very small space indeed, but two of her sun-hats covered one shelf of the cupboard, and she had to take another shelf for her best one and her red and blue bérets. Her boots and shoes she arranged very neatly at the bottom of the cupboard—at least Aaron did for her, for by this time he had followed her in, and had grown quite friendly, and he worked really busily until Loveday took out a big monkey and presented it to him, after which he did nothing but gaze at it and hug it with delight, and Loveday, who had been a little shy of offering it to him when she saw how big a boy he was, felt greatly relieved on seeing his pleasure.

“After all,” she said to herself, “he isn’t such a very big boy—he is rather a baby, and I am very glad.”

Then Bessie came to call them to supper, and soon after that Loveday, holding tight to her elephant, was sound asleep in her snow-white room; and Aaron, still hugging his monkey, was snoring contentedly under his gay patchwork quilt.

“A rare lot of wild beasts we’ve a-got in our little bit of a place to-night,” said John Lobb, with a hearty laugh. “’Tis lucky they b’ain’t given to bellowing, or we should be given notice to quit, I reckon!”

When Loveday awoke the next morning, the first thing she noticed was the curious dull roar of the sea. Then she opened her eyes and looked about her. The next moment she was out of bed, drawing back her white curtains to look out at the new, wonderful world without. There was little to see, though, from her window, for the cliff rose sheer up, and between the house and the cliff there was only a little bit of fenced-in ground. It was too close under the shadow of the cold rock for anything to grow in it, and the house, though it kept off the wind and the salt spray, also kept off the sun. To make up for this, John Lobb had a piece of garden ground at the top of the cliff, where he worked when he wasn’t out fishing.

But when Loveday looked out he was in the yard at the back, examining the nets that were spread on the palings to dry. A moment later, Aaron, still clasping his monkey, ran out and joined his father.

“Oh, Aaron is dressed!” thought Loveday. “I ought to be. Why didn’t Bessie call me?”

She put her head out of her bedroom door, and called:

“Bessie! Bessie! Please can I have my bath! I am sorry I am so late,” she added, as Bessie appeared with the bath and the water.

“It isn’t late, Miss Loveday,” said Bessie smilingly. “It has only this minute gone seven by my old clock, and that’s always galloping.”

“Only seven!” cried Loveday. “What are you all up so early for? Is anybody going away?”

“’Tisn’t early for us, miss. My husband is going out all day fishing, and he’s got to catch the tide.”

“There is always something that has got to be caught,” sighed Loveday—“the train, or the tide, or the fish, or the post. But I’m very glad I am up so early, now I am up. I want to go out and see what things are like in the morning. They generally look different then, don’t they?”

“Oh dear,” she said quite apologetically, when presently she came to the breakfast-table, “I am afraid I am very hungry. I hope you won’t be frightened when you see what a lot I eat.”

She really felt quite ashamed of her big appetite, but John and Bessie only laughed, and John said:

“That’s good hearing, missie. Nothing you can do in that way’ll frighten us, seeing as we’m ’customed to Aaron and me.”

John sat at the head of the table, nearest the fireplace, while Bessie sat outside, where she could easily reach the kettle or the teapot on the stove. Loveday’s chair was placed at the end, facing John, while the table was pulled out a little way for Aaron to sit in the window amongst the geraniums and cinerarias. In her heart Loveday wished that she could sit in there, but at the same time she was rather pleased with her own position; it seemed older and more dignified.

After breakfast there came the excitement of seeing off the boat, and then, when that was done, Loveday felt that she really could settle down for a moment and have time to look about her. Aaron was very anxious to see her toys and all the other treasures she had brought with her, for this was a much greater novelty to him than picking up shells or hunting for crabs, besides which Bessie would not let them go alone clambering over the rocks, or paddling in the pools, and she could not go with them for a little while, as she had her house to set straight and the dinner to get.

So they sat on the sands within sight of Bessie, and played with a grocer’s shop that Loveday had brought, and a box of cubes, and a popgun, and a monkey and an elephant, and sundry other things, but to her surprise none of the things pleased Aaron so much as did the books. He turned the pages of her fairy-tales over and over, and gazed at the pictures, and asked questions about them, until at last Loveday grew quite tired of answering him.

“Haven’t you got any books?” she asked at last rather impatiently, for she would have been much better pleased to have had his help in building sand-castles.

“No, I have never had a book in all my life,” he said wistfully. “I didn’t know there was any with picshers in them like these here.”

“Didn’t you?” cried Loveday, scarcely able to believe him. “I wish I’d known it; I’d have brought you one of mine.”

“But I knows some stories,” he said proudly—“lots! All ’bout piskies, and fairies, and giants, and buccas, and——”

“What are buccas?” interrupted Loveday eagerly.

“Why—why, little people, of course,” said Aaron.

Loveday looked at him to see if he was “telling true” or laughing at her, but Aaron was quite serious.

“Are you telling truth or making up?” she asked.

It was a question she was often obliged to put to Geoffrey and Priscilla when they told her things.

“True, honour bright,” said Aaron earnestly, just a little indignant. “Don’t you ever read about buccas in your books?”

Loveday shook her head.

“Are they fairies?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Good ones or bad?”

“Good, I b’lieve,” said Aaron. “I never heard of their doing anybody any harm.”

“Have you ever seen one?” asked Loveday, in a lowered voice.

“No,” said Aaron; “they lives in caves and wells, mostly—so father says—and they’m always digging. You ask father to tell ’ee about them.”

“No, you tell me. I want to hear about them now. Go on.”

“Well, if I tell you one story, you must tell me one.”

“All right,” said Loveday; “go on. It must be about buccas, ’cause I never heard about them before, and—and I don’t think there are any.”

“Aw, hush! Don’t ’ee say such things!” cried Aaron, quite scared. “You’d be sorry if you was to get Barker’s knee, and you will most likely, if you say things like that. They do all sorts of things to folks that ’fend them.”

Loveday felt rather frightened, but she would not let Aaron know it if she could help it.

“I thought you said they were good fairies,” she said half irritably.

“So they are, but fairies never likes folks to say they don’t believe in ’em. That was how Barker got his bad knee.”

“Go on—tell,” said Loveday.

“Well, ’twas like this: Barker, he was a great lazy fellow what wouldn’t work nor nothing, and he laughed at those that did; and when his father said to him that the buccas put him to shame, he said there wasn’t any, and he said he’d prove it: he’d go to the well where folks said they lived, and where they could hear them working, and he’d listen, and he’d listen, and if he heard them he’d believe in them, but not else. So he went to the well every day, and lay down in the grass close by all day long. And he heard the little buccas as plain as plain; they was digging and shovelling and laughing and talking all the time. But Barker, he wouldn’t tell anybody that he’d heard them, and he went every day and lay down by the well to listen to them, and soon he got to understand their talk, and how long they worked; and when they stopped working they hid away their tools, but they always told where they was going to hide them.”

“That was silly!” said Loveday. “There’s no sense in doing that.”

“Hoosh!” said Aaron nervously; “you’d best be careful what you’m saying. One night Barker heard one little bucca say, ‘I’m going to hide my pick under the ferns.’ ‘I shan’t,’ says another; ‘I shall leave mine on Barker’s knee.’”

“Oh!” gasped Loveday, “then they knew his name. Did they know all the time that he was there listening to them?”

“I reckon so,” said Aaron gravely. “Little people knows everything mostly; that’s why you’ve got to be so careful.”

“Go on,” said Loveday eagerly.

“Well, Barker, he was prettily frightened when he heard that, and he was just going to jump up and run away, when whump! something hit him right on the knee like anything, and oh!” groaned Aaron, his eyes big and round with the excitement of his story, “it ’urt him so he bellowed like a great bull, and he kept on saying, ‘Take ’em away; take them there tools away; take your old pick and shovel off my knee, I tell ’e!’ But the little buccas only laughed, and the more he bellowed, the more they laughed. He tried to get up, but ’twas ever so long before he could, and he had a stiff knee all the rest of his life.”

“Did people know why?” asked Loveday.

“Yes, that they did, and everybody was fine and careful after not to laugh at the buccas, for fear they’d get Barker’s knee too.”

“I think,” said Loveday, “I like the piskies best—I mean, of course, I like the buccas too, but I love the piskies ’cause they come and do nice things to help people, and I love the fairies ’cause they are so pretty.”

“There’s a fairy ring up top cliff,” said Aaron, “where they comes and dances night-times. I’ll show it to you some day.”

“Oh, do!” cried Loveday. “We’ve got one near home, too, but I’ve never seen any fairies near it—have you?”

“No, but I haven’t been out at night, and that’s when they come.”

“Come along, dears; I am ready now,” said Bessie, appearing at the door. “Come in and have a glass of milk and some cake, and then we’ll go and look for crabs and things, shall we?”

Loveday and Aaron were on their feet in a moment.

“I must get my bucket and spade if we are going to get crabs and shells,” said Loveday, and dashed into the house, leaving all her toys scattered on the sand.

CHAPTER IX
MISS POTTS COMES TO TEA

LOVEDAY had been gone more than a week, Geoffrey was nearly well again, and Priscilla was on the mend—the dreadful pain in her head had almost left her, so had her other aches and bruises, but the broken arm bothered her a good deal, and she was very weak and languid, so that it was still necessary that she should be kept very quiet and not be allowed to exert herself.

She had reached the stage, though, when it becomes tiresome to keep still; when one wants to do things, yet feels one can’t; or others want one to do things, and one feels one cannot possibly do them, and altogether one is cross and teasy without knowing why.

To read made her head ache, and it was tiresome to hold up a book with only one hand, and to have none to turn the pages with; neither could she very well play with her dolls, or her bricks, or anything with but one hand. Her mother read to her sometimes, and talked to her; but, of course, she could not do so all the time, and Priscilla would have grown tired even if she could.

“Mother,” she said one day, after every one had tried to think of something to amuse her, “I know what I would like very, very much indeed!”

“Well, dear, tell me what it is?”

“I would like to ask Miss Potts to come and see me. I like her so much, and I think she must miss me, because I often went in to talk to her to cheer her up after I knew she was an ‘only’!”

“Very well, darling; I am going out presently, and I will ask her. I don’t quite know, though, how she could manage to leave her shop.”

“I don’t think it would matter much if she did—not if she came while the children are in school, ’cause there isn’t any one else to go and buy much—except on Saturdays.”

“I see. Well, I will go and talk to her about it, and see what she has to say.”

Priscilla had always felt drawn to Miss Potts, the quiet, lonely woman who lived in a world of toys now, yet looked as though she had never been a child or played with any; and ever since Miss Potts had told her she was alone in the world, Priscilla had had quite a motherly feeling for her. She felt quite excited and pleased at the prospect of her visitor.

She was so pleased, that she did not know how to wait until her mother came back with the answer to her message; and then she wished, oh so much, that she had asked if Miss Potts should be invited to tea with her. Never mind, she decided, she would ask mother that when she came back with her news. This thought comforted and soothed her so much that she was able to lie still more contentedly, and wait, and while she was waiting, her thoughts flew to Loveday. She tried to picture what she would be doing at that moment. Loveday was not, of course, able to write much, for she was very young, and she had only just begun to write real letters; but Bessie had written a good deal about her and Aaron, and the fun they had; and mother had told her all she possibly could about the place, and the house, and the sea, and shops, and the station and everything else she could think of, and now Priscilla was looking forward to the time when she and Geoffrey would go down to Porthcallis and join Loveday.

She was just picturing to herself the journey down, and Loveday waiting for them on the platform, when she heard the front door opened and closed again.

“Mother must have got back already!” she cried joyfully. “I hope Miss Potts can come.”

Then she heard footsteps, and a moment later the door opened, and in came mother, followed by Miss Potts herself! Priscilla could scarcely believe her eyes.

“Here she is!” cried Mrs. Carlyon. “Here is your longed-for visitor. I would not let her stay even to put on her best bonnet, or her mantle, or anything.”

“No; oh dear, no! I don’t know what a sight I am looking, I am sure!” said Miss Potts nervously. “But your dear ma whisked me off, so I’d no time to change my frock or do anything but pop on my old second-best bonnet and shawl. I hope you’ll excuse me——”

Poor Miss Potts chattered on volubly, not because she really minded much, but because she was shy and nervous, and sometimes shy and nervous people feel that they must keep on saying something.

Priscilla put out her hand to clasp Miss Potts’s hand, and then put up her face to be kissed. The tears came into Miss Potts’s faded, tired eyes as she stooped and kissed her.

“I think you are looking—oh, ever so nice!” said Priscilla warmly. “I like you in that bonnet better than any. I think it suits you better.”

“Do you really now, missie?” said Miss Potts, evidently relieved and pleased. “And how are you, dearie? Are you better?”

“Oh yes, thank you,” said Priscilla—“ever so much! I think I shall be quite well soon, and then we are going to Porthcallis.”

“Dear, dear,” cried Miss Potts, “that will be nice. Nobody could help getting well down there in the sunshine and sea-breezes.”

“Do you like the sea?” asked Priscilla. “Did you ever stay by it when you were a little girl?”

“Indeed, I did,” said Miss Potts. “I was born by it, and grew up by it till I was turned twenty.”

“You were born by the sea!” cried Priscilla. “Oh, how lovely—and I never knew it!”

Miss Potts at once became more interesting than ever. Priscilla tried to picture her digging in the sands and wading through the pools.

“But how could you bear to come away?” she cried. “I am sure I should never leave the sea if I could help it!”

“Ah, my dear, it all depends!” said Miss Potts, with a sad shake of the head. “I haven’t set eyes on the sea since I left it, and I—I hope I never do again. I couldn’t bear it, even now.”

“Oh, how sad!” said Priscilla, looking at her with wide eyes full of sympathetic interest. “Did your little brothers and sisters live there too?” she asked gently.

“Yes, missie, and died there,” said Miss Potts sadly. “Every one of us but mother and me; that’s why I’ve never looked on it since. To me it is like a great, sly, deceitful monster, always sighing and moaning for somebody, or foaming and storming in rage. We came away, mother and me, after the last was drowned; we couldn’t bear it any longer.”

“Poor Miss Potts!” said little Priscilla, laying her hand on Miss Potts’s worn ones, moving so restlessly in her lap.

Mrs. Carlyon had gone away and left them together, and Miss Potts had dropped into a chair close to Priscilla’s sofa.

“You don’t think the sea will roar for Loveday, and swallow her up, do you?” asked Priscilla, in a very anxious voice.

“Oh no, my dear; Porthcallis is a very safe place!” said Miss Potts emphatically. “P’r’aps I shouldn’t have told you anything about—about my experience. But where we lived it was very wild and rocky, and my folk were all seafaring; ’twas their work to go to sea. Out of all my family that lies in the burying-ground, only two of them are men; all the rest of our men-folk lies at the bottom of the sea.”

“But you had sisters, hadn’t you, Miss Potts?”

“Yes, dear, two; but the sea had them as well. One of them, Annie—she was the youngest—was out shrimping by herself one day, when the tide caught her and carried her out. Hettie saw her, and ran into the sea to save her, but——”

“Yes?” whispered Priscilla softly, her eyes full of tears. “Couldn’t she reach her?”

“Yes, she reached her. Father, coming home that night from the fishing, found them clasped together, and brought them home,” said poor Miss Potts. “I never saw a smile on his face from that day till just a year later, when the sea claimed him too.”

“Oh, how dreadful! I shall never like the sea again,” said Priscilla, wiping away her tears. “I don’t wonder you came away. Did you come straight to Trelint?”

“Yes,” said Miss Potts more cheerfully; “and I felt at home here at once. I shouldn’t care to live anywhere else now.”

“Neither should I,” said Priscilla. “I love home, and Trelint, and—oh, everything; and I would rather live here than by the sea, after all.”

Mrs. Carlyon opened the door, and put her head in.

“Alma is going to bring you some tea presently,” she said brightly. “Miss Potts said she could stay and have some with you. I am sorry to say I have to go out, but I know you will take care of each other. Good-bye, darling, for the time.”

Priscilla beamed with pleasure.

“That is just what I was wanting. I am so glad you can stay, Miss Potts. I don’t s’pose any one will go to the shop, do you?”

She did not for a moment mean to be rude or unkind.

“No, I expect not,” said Miss Potts a little sadly.

But in a moment or two the door opened again, and in walked Geoffrey. At sight of Miss Potts he drew up, and stepped back towards the door as though thunderstruck.

“Ah!” he cried, in a hollow, melodramatic voice, “here she is! False woman, I have found you. For ten minutes and more have I been kicking your door with my noble toes——”

Miss Potts groaned.

“And the paint but just dry!” she murmured.

“But no answer could I get,” went on Geoffrey, “and at last”—lowering his voice and continuing in a tragic whisper—“at last I dropped my ha’penny back into my pocket and came away. ‘I must lay it out elsewhere,’ I moaned. But when I reached Ma Tickell’s shop, Pa Tickell was behind the door, and in his eye I read that he was going to request me to say my ‘twelve times’ backwards, and I knew he would not believe that my illness alone had made me forget it, so I crossed over and gazed in sadly at Ma Wall’s, but Ma Wall looked at me so scornfully that I came home; and here I find you gossip, gossip, gossip, and my ha’penny burning a hole in my pocket all the time. You know, Miss Potts, it is not the way to do business.”

“I know,” said Miss Potts, laughing; “but if you can tell me what you wanted particularly I’ll send it up as soon as I get home.”

“I couldn’t,” said Geoffrey solemnly; “I must see things before I can lay out my money to the best advantage.”

“Well, I promise not to be very long, Master Geoffrey, and then you shall go back with me, if you will, and choose what you like.”

“What is this nice little parcel?” asked Geoffrey, touching one that had been lying on the table ever since Miss Potts came in.

“Oh,” cried Miss Potts, jumping up with a little scream—“oh, how foolish of me! Why, that’s something I brought for Miss Priscilla, if she’ll accept it; and with talking so much, and being so glad to see her, it had clean gone out of my head;” and she placed the nice-looking little parcel in Priscilla’s hands.

“Well,” exclaimed Geoffrey, pretending to be deeply hurt, “I think you might have thought of my feelings, and waited till I had gone away. I felt certain it was for me, and now——”

Poor Miss Potts looked quite troubled, but Priscilla’s joyful cry rang out before she could speak.

“Oh, how lovely! Oh, you dear, kind Miss Potts! Look, Geoffrey; we can both use it. Isn’t it lovely?” and Priscilla held out a box of paints, just such another as they had bought for Loveday. “And they are sans poison, too.”

“Good!” cried Geoffrey. “Now I’ll be able to paint for you while you look on. Miss Potts, you are a dear; you understand a fellow’s feelings before he understands them himself.”

Priscilla leaned up to kiss her thanks.

“I wonder how you always know exactly what people want?” she said gravely.

“P’r’aps it’s through my having a pretty good memory,” said Miss Potts, flushing and smiling with pleasure. “I seem able to remember what I used to think I’d like when I was little myself.”

“And then, were you very glad—as glad as I am—when you got what you’d been thinking about?” asked Priscilla.

“I never got it, my dear,” said Miss Potts; “’twas all in my thoughts, and never got beyond. But I had a fine lot of pleasure that way; ’twas almost as good as having the things themselves, I think.”

“Oh no, not quite,” said Priscilla, turning to her paint-box again.

Then Nurse came in with the tea, and laid it on a table close to Priscilla’s sofa. Miss Potts seemed rather nervous and fluttery at having tea there with the children, but very pleased; and Nurse smiled on her, and admired the paint-box, and brought in some especial cakes, because she remembered Miss Potts liked them, and everything and everybody was as nice as nice could be.

It was a beautiful tea that they had—at least, to them it seemed so, and Miss Potts often afterwards spoke of it, and sat and thought about it in the long, quiet evenings she spent alone in the dark little parlour behind her shop. They did not hurry over the meal—in fact, they lingered so long that Mrs. Carlyon returned before they had done, and presently the carriage drove up, bringing back Dr. Carlyon from his afternoon rounds.

When Mrs. Carlyon stooped over her little daughter to kiss her, Prissy put her one arm round her mother’s neck and drew her face down close. She knew it was not polite to whisper in company, but she wanted very much to ask a very, very important question, and she would have no other opportunity; and as Miss Potts was talking to Geoffrey, and Nurse was rattling the tea-things, she thought no one would notice that she was doing more than return her mother’s kiss.

Mrs. Carlyon quickly heard the whispered request, and, going out of the room under the pretence of removing her hat, soon returned with a thin, large envelope, which she slipped under Priscilla’s sofa-pillow. Then Miss Potts got up to go.

“I hope you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Carlyon, for staying so long. I didn’t mean to be more than a minute, and I’ve been the best part of two hours.”

She went over to Priscilla to say “Good-bye.” It was quite an ordeal to her to make her farewells and leave the room under the eyes of so many. She wanted to express her gratitude, but she was afraid of saying too much; she was also afraid of saying too little and seeming ungrateful.

“Good-bye, Miss Priscilla,” she said. “I—I hope you will soon be well and able to run about again.”

“Thank you,” said Priscilla politely. She was rather nervous and excited too, and her eyes were bright and eager. “I shall come to see you before I go to Porthcallis, and—and here is something I’ve got for you, but you mustn’t look at it until you get home. It is something to keep you from feeling quite so lonely when you are in your little parlour by yourself after the shop is shut.”

“Thank you, missie, I am sure,” said Miss Potts gratefully.

And whether she guessed what was in the packet no one ever knew, but she seemed very pleased and overcome. And when the poor lonely woman got back, as Priscilla said, to her lonely parlour behind the closed shop, and, opening the envelope, looked on the three bright faces in the photograph, her tears really did overflow—tears of pleasure and gratitude for the beautiful photograph, but most of all for the kind thought and affection which had prompted the gift.

“Dear little lady,” she said, gazing affectionately at Priscilla’s eager, serious face and wondering eyes; “she’s got a heart of gold; while as for that dear boy, why, I love every hair of his head and every tone of his voice, and the more he tries to tease me the more I love him, I think; and as for little Miss Loveday, why, no one could help loving her if one tried to.”

CHAPTER X
THE FAIRY RING

LOVEDAY, meanwhile, was having a most interesting and beautiful time, and she and Aaron had become great friends. They had some little tiffs and quarrels too, of course, but not very serious ones.

The most serious perhaps was that when they disagreed about their names, when Loveday was certainly rather unkind, and Aaron grew angry and was rude. They were both tired, and very hungry; so hungry that it seemed as though the dinner hour was delaying on purpose.

“I don’t know why people think they mustn’t eat till the clock strikes so many times,” said Loveday crossly; “I think it would be much more sensible to eat when you are hungry.”

“You’ve got to know what time dinner is to be, or you wouldn’t know when to put things on to cook. I should have thought you’d have known that,” said Aaron; and he spoke in a tone that annoyed Loveday more than anything—a kind of superior, older tone, as though he were talking to a baby.

Loveday did not reply, but sat and looked at Aaron as if in deep thought; her eyes sparkled wickedly, though. “I do think,” she said at last, speaking very slowly and distinctly, “that yours is the ugliest name I ever heard. I can’t think how any one could choose such a name!”

She was sitting on the sand, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand. Aaron was lying near her, flat on his back. When he heard her he sat up very straight, his face quite red with anger. Loveday was cool and calm, and spoke with a deliberate scorn that hurt him more than anything else she could have done.

His name was that of his father and grandfather, and he had been rather proud of it hitherto.

“I—I think it’s a fine name,” he stammered; “so does everybody but you; and you can’t say anything, yours is ugly enough—it’s a silly name too.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Loveday calmly. “I think it is a very pretty name, so does everybody; but of course you don’t know, you are so young.”

“Yes, I do,” blustered Aaron; “I know as well as anybody, and I call it ugly, a silly girl’s name,” with great scorn.

“Well, of course, I shouldn’t be called by a boy’s name,” she retorted scornfully; “but if I had been a boy, and they’d christened me Aaron, why, I—I wouldn’t answer to it!”

“Wouldn’t you!” scoffed Aaron; “you’d have been only too glad to.”

“There are so many pretty names too,” went on Loveday, ignoring his last remark, and gazing at him in a musing way. “Douglas, and Gerald, and Ronald, and——”

“I’d be ’shamed to be called by any of them, silly things! Just like a girl’s!”

“Yes, but they aren’t—they’re for boys; you might just as well say my name was like a boy’s—it is rather like some.” Then, after looking at him thoughtfully for a moment, she added slowly, “I think I shall call you ‘Adolphus,’ Aaron is so ugly.”

“If you do, I won’t answer,” cried Aaron, springing to his feet, really angry now; “you ain’t going to call me out of my name. If you do, I’ll—I’ll call you Jane!”

Loveday giggled. “I don’t mind a bit!” she said gaily; “I am christened that already, and my sister is called Priscilla Mary, and you are going to be called Aaron Adolphus.”

“I’m not! I shan’t speak to you, and I won’t answer to it,” began Aaron, when suddenly his mother’s voice called to them across the sands.

“Come along, children—dinner is ready at last!”

Loveday sprang at once to her feet. “Come along, Adolphus,” she said naughtily. If Aaron had but laughed, and taken no notice of her teasing, Loveday would probably have found no fun in it, and have stopped very soon, but he was very cross indeed, and sulked over his dinner, and the afternoon might have been spoilt if Bessie had not been so good-tempered and kind.

“We are going to change our names,” said Loveday, beginning her teasing again as soon as they had begun to eat.

“Oh!” said Bessie, “and what are you to be called now?”

“Well, Aaron is to be called Adolphus, only he doesn’t seem to like it, and I am called Jane, and you—let me see, I’ll call you—” Loveday thought and thought, but could not think of anything that quite pleased her.

“Well, I don’t mind what it is,” said Bessie, “as long as you don’t call me ‘Bread and Cheese,’ and eat me.” It was an old saying, but a new one to the children, and they both laughed so much that Aaron forgot his sulks, and Loveday her teasing.

“I will call you Mother Dutch Cheese,” laughed Aaron.

“Then there won’t be much of me left by to-morrow,” said Bessie, pretending to look frightened.

“I will call you—” began Loveday, speaking very slowly, for she was trying all the time to think of something very funny to say.

“I wonder,” said Bessie, “if, instead of thinking what you shall call me, you would like to pay a call for me this afternoon?”

The children looked at her, not quite understanding. Bessie explained:

“I want Aaron to go up to Mr. Winter’s with a message, and I thought you would like to go too, Miss Loveday.”

“I’d love to!” cried Loveday, who had been longing ever since she came to Porthcallis to go up the cliff-path to the very top, mounting the little steps, and holding on by the little rail. “When shall we go? Now?”

“Finish your dinner first, and sit still for a bit; then I will tidy you both, for Mr. Winter’s housekeeper, Mrs. Tucker, is a very noticing body.”

After the meal was over, and Aaron had said grace, and they had with great difficulty kept quiet for a little while, Bessie began to tidy them. Aaron, beyond having a good wash and his hair brushed, had only a clean holland tunic put on, but Loveday was anxious to make more of a toilette.

“Don’t you think,” she said, “that I had better put on this?” dragging out from the drawer a pretty little frock of white silk muslin with blue harebells all over it.

“Oh no,” said Bessie; “one of your little cotton over-alls will be much the best.”

Loveday looked disappointed and doubtful; in her heart she felt sure that Bessie did not know what was correct.

“But if Mr. Winter was to see me——”

“Oh dear, you needn’t trouble about Mr. Winter; he keeps well out of the way if there is anybody about; but if he did happen to see you, he wouldn’t know whether you’d got on silk or cotton, or blue or yellow.”

“I think he’d notice my white silk sash with the roses on it.”

“Well, I don’t, missie. But if he did, he’d only think it was very unsuitable for going up and down cliff-paths; and so it is, too. If you were to slip, why, you’d most likely ruin it for ever. Now be a good little girl, and if you want to please Mr. Winter or Mrs. Tucker with your looks, you’ll go in your nice clean print over-all and sun-hat. You shall wear a white belt about your waist, for fear you might trip on your loose frock going up that steep path.”

“‘Don’t let us look any more.’”

Loveday was not satisfied, but she was so pleased and excited at the thought of going to the big, mysterious house where the blinds were always drawn, and the master was never seen, that she had no room for any other feeling, and they started off in great good humour.

Aaron was so afraid that Loveday would remember and call him Adolphus again, that he did all he could to keep her mind off it, and talked incessantly, telling her such wonderful tales.

“If Mrs. Tucker doesn’t keep us too long,” said Aaron, “I’ll show you the Fairy Ring, where they come and dance every night at twelve o’clock. It is right on top of the cliff, and not far from Mr. Winter’s.”

“That will be lovely!” cried Loveday delightedly. “Let’s sit down for a minute; I’m tired.”

So they sat down on one of the little steps, and looked down and around and all about them. Already the cottage seemed ever so far off, and so tiny.

“It looks as if there could be only one little room in it, doesn’t it?” said Loveday. “And oh, how far away the sea looks, and that little boat! Why, it is quite a little teeny-tiny thing. Oh, don’t let’s look any more; it makes my head go round so.”

“I’ll sit outside,” said Aaron; “it won’t seem so bad then.”

They changed places, but even then Loveday did not like it.

“Let’s go on,” she said, “up where we can’t see any of it.”

So on they went, and at last reached the green grassy top, and a bit of road which led to the gate of Mr. Winter’s house.

Though Loveday had heard about the closed house and the drawn blinds, it still gave her quite a shock when she saw it. There was such a look of desolation, and sadness, and neglect about the whole place. On the side facing the sea, the flower-beds were overgrown with weeds and flowers which straggled about in a wild tangle, clinging together and choking each other; the drawn blinds were faded, the frames of the fast-shut windows were cracked, and badly in want of some coats of paint. A rose-bush, that at one time must have almost covered the front of the house, had fallen, perhaps during the storms of the past winter, and as it fell so it lay, twisted and broken, and choking the wretched plants which were beneath it.

Loveday felt quite saddened by the sight of it all, and the story of the poor drowned boy and his heart-broken father became terribly real to her—so real that she longed to be able to do something to comfort the poor man. “If only he would open his blinds and windows, and have his garden tidied up, I’m sure he wouldn’t feel so miserable. I think I should cry all day long if I lived here,” she whispered.

The situation of the house itself seemed almost too lonely to be borne. There was no other dwelling-place, or sign of human being, within sight, only a wide, wide space of bare brown fields on two sides; the grassy cliff-tops with the sea in the distance on the third; and on the fourth nothing but the heaving, calling sea; while the wind, always blowing there, swept along unchecked, winter or summer, storm or calm, keeping up an incessant wailing around the house; and the wail of the wind and the call of the gulls alone broke the silence.

It was not to be wondered at that a feeling of awe fell on whomsoever entered that gate. It fell on both the children now, and they walked up softly, almost stealthily, for the sound of their footsteps on the white pebbles seemed to jar in that sad silence. Aaron led the way, and Loveday followed, holding fast to his tunic. She was glad now that she had not worn her smart frock or sash; for even she, young as she was, felt that they would have been out of place there and then.

Aaron led the way to what was presumably the front door, but a door so bare of paint, so neglected looking, that Loveday thought it could never be used. The stones of the steps were green, and the weeds grew up between them. But in answer to Aaron’s knock the door was quickly opened by Mrs. Tucker, the housekeeper. She looked keenly at Loveday, but she did not say anything, and when she had taken the note Aaron had brought, and heard his message, she went in and closed the door again quite sharply. But in the moment or so it had been open Loveday had had time to catch a glimpse of a big stone hall, and a grandfather’s clock, which ticked with the hollow note clocks in empty houses usually have.

Mrs. Tucker looked so glum and unsmiling that the children were quite glad to get away from her, and they hurried out of the garden much more quickly than they entered it.

Once outside, Aaron seemed to lose his awe, and his spirits returned, but Loveday did not so soon recover. She felt she wanted to do something for Mr. Winter to make him feel less sad and uncomfortable, yet she felt quite helpless, especially since she had seen Mrs. Tucker. If one had to get past her before one could see him, it really seemed as though it never could be done.

“Now then for the Fairy Ring,” said Aaron, as soon as they got outside.

In their relief at getting away from that grim place, they both took to their heels and ran over a great stretch of short grass, burnt brown and slippery by the hot sun, until they came to a large level space on almost the edge of the cliff, and there on the brown coarse turf stood out a large ring of grass, so lush and rich and green that there must surely have been some hidden spring which fed it, or the fairies must indeed have been at work.

“It keeps green like that ’cause the fairies dance there,” said Aaron, with pride and awe.

Loveday jumped carefully over the green ring and stood in the centre.

“I expect they’d be angry if I stepped on it—wouldn’t they?” she asked.

They both spoke softly, as though half afraid of disturbing or offending the “little people.” Aaron jumped over too and joined her, and both sat down in the middle of the ring and tried to picture the wonderful scenes that took place there at night.

“I wonder where they live by day, and which way they come here,” she asked, looking about her eagerly.

“I reckon they come every way,” said Aaron. “Some live in the flowers and things, and some in caves and shells, I believe.”

“Do you think the piskies come too, and the buccas, and all?”

Aaron shook his head.

“I reckon those that have got to work don’t get no time for dancing.”

“I think I like the piskies the best,” said Loveday thoughtfully; “but, of course, I love them all!” she added hastily, in a louder voice, for she did not want to hurt any one’s feelings, and fairies were very easily offended, she had heard. “Of course, I love them all; but I do love the piskies very much, ’cause they work and play too; they come and do people’s work for them and look after them, and then they dance, and are such jolly little things.”

“They take care of my daddy,” said Aaron gravely. “Sometimes he’s got to be out to sea all night, fishing, and it is dark, and the wind blowing, and the rain coming down like anything.”

“My daddy has got to be out all night too, very often,” chimed in Loveday, not to be outdone in importance by Aaron, “and he’s got to drive all through the thunder and lightning and snow, and sometimes it is so slippery Betty can’t hardly walk, but daddy’s got to go ’cause somebody is ill.”

“But he doesn’t have to go on the sea,” said Aaron, “and p’r’aps be drowned.”

“He has to drive, and horses tumble down, and run away, and wheels come off and all sorts of things,” said Loveday, not to be outdone.

“But there are sharks and whales and—and torpedoes at sea,” went on Aaron; but Loveday pretended not to hear him; and suddenly it occurred to him that, if he aggravated her too much, she might begin to call him “Adolphus” again; so he hurriedly changed the conversation.

“I wish I could see some piskies at work—don’t you?” said Aaron.

“Oh yes!” sighed Loveday. “Do you think we could if we stayed up till twelve o’clock one night?”

“I don’t know; I never heard of anybody hereabouts seeing them. Perhaps they don’t come to these parts now.”

“I don’t think they do, or they would tidy Mr. Winter’s garden for him and weed his path. It is very untidy, isn’t it? It looks just like a place no one lives in.”

Aaron nodded; he had never seen it in any other condition, so was not so much impressed as was Loveday.

“I wish I could make it nice for him. I’d like to make it look so nice—all in one night—that when he came out he’d be—oh! ever so s’prised, and he’d wonder and wonder who had done it, and he’d say: ‘Why, a fairy must have been here at work.’ That’s what father and mother say sometimes.”

Aaron looked at her with interest. He liked to hear her stories of her home, and what she did there. Some of them were very wonderful. But Loveday had no stories to tell that afternoon; she was very thoughtful and quiet, and sat for quite a long time without speaking. Aaron began at last to grow tired of staying still, and was just about to get up, when she suddenly turned to him, all excitement:

“I’ve been thinking, and I’ve thought of—oh, ever such a nice plan. Let’s play that we are piskies, and come up in the night and tidy Mr. Winter’s garden for him, and make him think it is a fairy that has done it, and—and then we’d come again, and he’d think the fairies had been again. Shall we, Aaron? Oh, do say yes; and it will be a secret, and nobody must ever know, and everybody will wonder—and oh, it will be simply, simply splendid.”

Aaron listened eagerly, quite carried away by her enthusiasm. Loveday, with her ideas, her wild plans, and strange thoughts, was a constant wonder to him, and where she led he followed—if he could.

“Won’t all the folks be wondering and talking when it gets about?” he cried excitedly, “and won’t it be funny to be listening to them, and we knowing all the time all ’bout it! Oh, it’ll be grand!”

For quite a long while they sat and discussed their plans delightedly, and of course there were a great many plans to be made. Aaron it was who first saw difficulties in the way of carrying them out.

“But how’re we going to get out in the night?” he cried. “Mother and father would hear us. ’Twould be dark, too, and if we was to slip and fall climbing up the cliff, we’d be killed as dead as—as dead as pilchards.”

“Pilchards don’t fall down cliffs,” said Loveday scornfully.

But she was obliged to admit that there were difficulties which would not be very easy to get over, and they walked about with very anxious, serious faces and dampened spirits—it did seem bitter to be balked now.

“I think I know what we can do,” said Loveday at last; “isn’t it light very early in the morning now?”

“Yes, it’s full day by four o’clock, and earlier,” said Aaron.

“Well, we’ll get up then, and we can get out of my window quite easily, and then we can run up the cliff and be piskies till it’s time to come home; then we’ll run down and jump into bed, and then, when Bessie calls us, we’ll be asleep; and we’ll get up, and nobody won’t know anything. We can do that, can’t we?”

“Yes,” agreed Aaron, “I reckon we might; but I think we’d best be going home now—it feels like tea-time, and mother will be wondering where we’ve got to.”

CHAPTER XI
LOVEDAY AND AARON PLAY AT BEING PISKIES

LOVEDAY could scarcely sleep at all that night, she was so afraid that they would not wake up early enough to start. In fact, she was so afraid of oversleeping that after Bessie had seen her to bed and said “Good-night,” she slipped out again and put on some of her clothes, partly that she might be so far dressed when morning came, and partly that the discomfort of them might prevent her sleeping too soundly.

Her plan answered well. All night she was constantly turning and waking, and she was glad enough when daylight came at last. She did not know what the time was, but she got up, and, tiptoeing out, called Aaron. It was not very easy to wake him; he had not troubled to sleep in his clothes, or to do anything else to make him wake early. Loveday, afraid to shout at him, or to make any noise at all, took the water-bottle, thinking that a drop or two of water on his face might answer better than anything, but the water, unfortunately, did not drop—it poured all down his face and neck in a cold stream, and Aaron started up with a howl which filled Loveday with dismay and vexation.

“Oh, you silly, you!” she cried crossly; “do be quiet, and don’t be so stupid. Don’t you remember what we are going to do?”

“Yes,” said Aaron, cross enough himself now, “but I want to go to sleep.” He did not feel at all in the mood for playing at being a pisky. Loveday, though, was determined, and after a moment the sleepiness and crossness passed, and he began to feel the excitement of their plan.

“Make haste and dress,” said Loveday firmly. “I shan’t be long.”

And in a remarkably short space of time they had dressed and crept out of her window, and were scrambling hurriedly up the steep cliff-path.

“Oh, how lovely!”

Young as she was, Loveday had to keep on stopping to admire the beauty of the scene; the sea, and sky, and land, all radiant in the glorious glow of sunrise, the sparkling heavy sea, the towering cliffs, and over all the singing of happy birds. More than once they had to pause on their way and gaze about them.

“I wish we could always get up as early as this,” sighed Loveday. “I think I shall, and I’ll try and make Priscilla and Geoffrey get up too; the other parts of the day are never so pretty. I wish Prissy could see it now.”

“I’ve seen it like this scores of times,” said Aaron, in a tone that implied: “This is nothing to me; I am used to it.”

“And yet you wanted to stay on in bed and sleep,” flashed Loveday scornfully.

But with so much before them to be done, they could not linger long to gaze, and presently making up their minds not to stop again, they hurried on as fast as they could, and by the time they reached Mr. Winter’s gate they were too full of their own daring to have any thoughts to spare for anything else.

“I can’t think why people have such horrid noisy stuff put on their paths,” said Loveday, after they had made several vain attempts to creep over the loose pebbles without making a sound. She was glancing up at the windows all the time, for it really seemed to her that their attempts must have roused every one in the house.

“What shall we do first?” she whispered to Aaron. “I think the flower-beds look the worst of all, but if they never draw up the blinds they won’t see how nice we’ve made them.”

And if this was not quite the real reason, and if Loveday’s courage did fail at the thought of setting things right there, who could wonder when one looked at the state of the place? It was a task which would have taken two or three men many days of hard work.

“Shall we begin by weeding the steps and the path before the door?” she suggested, and, Aaron agreeing, they fell to work busily.

“Does Mr. Winter ever come out of this door and walk here?” she asked.

She was very full of curiosity as to Mr. Winter and his doings.

“Yes,” said Aaron; “he comes out this way to go to that garden over there, where they grow fruit and vegetables. He takes a brave bit of interest in that garden.”

Loveday sat back on her heels, and looked in the direction Aaron was pointing.

“He built a high wall all round it, so’s he shouldn’t see the sea and nobody shouldn’t see him.”

“I think we’ve done enough here for one day, don’t you?” sighed Loveday, who detested weeding.

“That I do,” declared Aaron emphatically.

“Can’t we do something in that garden now, where Mr. Winter would see it, and be glad, and wonder who did it?”

Aaron nodded, and rose stiffly to his feet. “I wish ’twas breakfast-time,” he sighed.

Loveday thought the kitchen-garden by far the nicest bit that she had seen yet of Mr. Winter’s grounds. She felt safer there, too, for she could not be seen from the house, nor heard, and the place itself did not seem so hopeless of improvement. There was plenty to be done, or so they thought, but what they did, did make some show.

“I think we will tidy away all that straw first of all,” she said; “it makes that bed look so untidy, and I expect all the slugs and snails go to sleep in it. We can’t burn it to-day, so we’ll put it in a heap here for the time, and perhaps to-morrow we’ll bring some matches. If we’re very early nobody will see the smoke.”

But Aaron was doubtful of that.

“Porthcallis folks gets up early,” he said, “and father might see it as he brought the boat in. The smoke would show for miles round.”

They found a supply of tools in a shed in the garden, but they were rather big and heavy, so they gathered up the straw in their arms, and carried it away, which caused a good deal of running over the bed, and left many footprints.

“I think we ought to rake it over before we go,” said Loveday, looking at it rather anxiously; “nobody would think piskies’ feet had left marks like that.”

Aaron agreed, and between them they used the long rake, until the bed looked really quite nice and tidy.

“Oh dear,” sighed Loveday, as they put away the tools at last, “I think piskies must get very tired.”

“And hungry, too!” sighed Aaron, who felt famished.

“I am starving,” said Loveday, “but I think it must be nearly breakfast-time.”

“It isn’t five yet, I believe,” said Aaron dolefully; “and breakfast won’t be ready till past seven.”

“More than two hours to wait!” gasped Loveday; “I can’t, I simply can’t. Don’t you think we’ve done enough for one day?” she asked, after a moment’s pause.

“Don’t I!” said Aaron, in a tone which said plainly that on this matter he had no doubt.

Very, very carefully the pair crept out of the kitchen-garden, past the house, and over the pebbled path.

“I wish we had made that part look a little nicer,” said Loveday, glancing with tired, wistful eyes over the desolate bit of ground around the house, “but I s’pose even piskies couldn’t do it all at once, could they?”

“No, not unless there are hundreds of ’em,” said Aaron, “and we’m only two.”

The glorious hues were fading fast from the sky now, and the sun shone with the pale clear light of early morning. The sea still sparkled, and the birds sang, but the children paid little heed to either; they were too hungry and tired. The walk home was rather a silent one, and they got into the house so easily that there was no excitement there to arouse them. With scarcely a word they quietly separated, slipped off their things and crept into their beds again, and, fortunately for them, soon fell asleep and forgot their hunger.

“Well, I never! What a sleepy-head!” cried Bessie some time later. “What’s the matter with you both, I wonder? I had to strip the bed-clothes off Aaron and pull away his pillows before I could rouse him, and here are you, Miss Loveday, pretty nearly as bad. Come along, jump up! Here’s your bath, and breakfast will be ready in half-an-hour. You won’t go to sleep again, will you, dear?”

“No-o,” said Loveday, in a very, very drowsy voice, “but I—I think you’d better lift me out, Bessie, or—p’r’aps—I may——”

And Bessie took her at her word, and lifted her right out of her snug little bed and stood her on the floor.

But more than once that day Bessie looked at them both with a puzzled face. “I don’t know when I’ve seen them look so tired,” she said to herself. “I s’pose it’s the weather.” And later in the day, when she went to call them in to tea, and found Loveday curled up on the sand, sound asleep, her spade and bucket lying beside her—and Aaron fast asleep too, his book fallen out of his hand—she looked puzzled again, and rather troubled. “It can’t be anything but the weather, I should think,” she murmured; “I don’t think they can be sickening for anything, they ain’t a bit feverish, and their appetites are good.” And after their nap and their tea they were so bright and lively again, that Bessie’s fears all vanished, and the weather was, as usual, blamed unjustly.

“I wonder,” Loveday whispered many times during the day—“I wonder what Mr. Winter thought when he saw what we’d done? I wonder if he saw it, and if he was very, very glad? Do you think he would think about piskies, and guess that they did it?”

“I dunno,” said Aaron stolidly. “I reckon he don’t put down nothing for fairies and such-like; but there isn’t nobody else that could do it.”

That night they took care to hide some of their supper in their pockets for the morning. Aaron was not quite so excited about the pisky plan as he had been, but Loveday was full of it; the thought of what they had done and of Mr. Winter’s pleasure gave her fresh zeal and energy. She longed for the next morning to come, that she might look again on what they had done, and work more wonders. This time she determined that they really would try to make the garden near the house look neater; they would not shirk it a second time, but would really begin to work at it at once, and give all their time and attention to it. Again she slept in her clothes, and again she called Aaron very early. This morning, though, there was no glorious sunrise to cheer or delay them; the dawn was grey and chilly; a wet sea-fog hung over everything, making it damp and dull. No birds sang to-day. As the children mounted the cliff, the world below seemed cut off from them, and they themselves might have been in cloudland.

“Now it really does seem as though we had walked into the sky,” said Loveday. “I am glad Priscilla isn’t here; she would be frightened, I expect, but of course I know all about it.”

Though they had no sunshine or beauty to gaze at, they had bread to eat, and that helped to keep up their spirits and their energies.

“I wonder if real piskies come out in weather like this,” said Loveday, laughing at the white fringe of mist which outlined Aaron’s stubby head and blue cap, and her own curls and scarlet béret. “We look like Father Christmas.”

The damp made the pebbles on the garden path less noisy to walk over, so that they got up to the house more easily, but before they began their attack on the most neglected part, they decided that they must have one peep at their work of yesterday; so they crept into the kitchen-garden and down to the cleared bed. But, to their amazement and disgust, there was no cleared bed! They looked and looked, and stared at each other and back again, but there was no mistake. Some one or something had spread straw all over it again, and it was just as untidy as ever!

“That must be the wicked fairies!” cried Loveday indignantly. “The nasty, naughty, wicked things! They got here first, and this is what they have done, just to annoy us and Mr. Winter! It is too bad. I only hope he saw it yesterday as we left it for him. I think it’s dreadful of them to annoy a poor man like that, when he’s so sad. I don’t know how they can behave so!”

“Aw, it’s just like ’em,” said Aaron gravely. “They don’t care, they’m that bad.”

He was looking very solemn and rather nervous; he really did not like having to do with any place or thing that the wicked fairies had been near; for if they were vexed they did not care, as he said, what they did to the person who vexed them. He was for hurrying away to another part of the garden, and was actually starting, when, to his horror, he saw Loveday collecting the straw from the bed again.

“Don’t; you’d better not touch it!” he cried. “If the bad ones put it there, they’ll pay you out fine for meddling.”

“I don’t care,” said Loveday. “It’s poor Mr. Winter I’m thinking about, and I don’t care what they do. I am going to make his garden nice for him, poor man!”

And she went to work again in a way that showed that she meant it.

“Come along, Aaron,” she cried. “You needn’t leave me to do it all. Do help.”

Aaron was divided. He did not much like the idea of working by himself in another part of the garden, and he did not relish the task before him, but in the end he stood by Loveday very pluckily, and soon they had once more collected all the straw and raked up the bed as before.

“I wish I had brought a box of matches,” said Loveday hotly; “then I’d burn the straw, and they wouldn’t be able to play such a trick again.”

“You needn’t burn it,” said Aaron; “we’ll carry it away and heave it to cliff. If they gets it and brings it back from there—well, they’m welcome to.”

Loveday agreed with delight, and both of them chuckled many times over their cleverness in out-witting the “little people” as they struggled to pack the straw into two bundles bound round by Loveday’s over-all and Aaron’s tunic. It was not a very easy task, and the garden and the path over which they dragged their loads were not quite as neat and speckless as fairy fingers would have left them. But the pair did not see that; all their thoughts were bent on “heaving” the straw over the cliff into the sea. And perhaps it was well for their parents and those who loved them, that they did not see those two as they leaned over the edge of the steep cliff-top and shook out their pinafores over the dizzy heights, then watched the straw as it whirled down and down to those awful depths below, where the sea dashed and foamed like a caldron, lashed to anger by the sharp rocks on which it flung itself. An inch or so farther, the least slip, the merest over-balancing as they shook out their loads, and they too would have gone whirling down through the mist, to the jagged rocks, and the hungry waves all those feet below, and no earthly power could have saved them from a fearful death.

“They shook out their pinafores over the dizzy heights.”

CHAPTER XII
THE PISKIES CAUGHT

BOTH Aaron and Loveday were very tired when, for the third time, they rose at dawn, crept out of the house, and up the cliff; and if it had not been for the excitement of seeing what their enemies had done to the vegetable bed during the night, they would probably have left their pisky work, for one morning at least. But Loveday was very anxious to see if the bad piskies had done anything further when they found all the straw had been taken away from them. Aaron was excited, too, but he was more sleepy, and they were both just the least bit cross as they clambered up the slippery path.

“I’m jolly glad I am not a real pisky,” he said, “to have to do this every night. I reckon folks would have to do their work theirselves if ’twas left to me.”

Loveday did not answer. She felt very much the same, but she was not going to say so.

They did not sit down this time to enjoy the view, but munched their crusts as they walked. There was neither a lovely sunrise, nor a dense sea-fog—it was just an ordinary dull, grey morning; and Loveday no longer felt that for the future she should always rise with the sun, and try to make every one else do the same. Every now and then her thoughts would turn to her snug, comfortable little bed, though she tried hard to fix them on something else, for she felt that if she thought of it too much she should turn and run back to it, and creep in and lay her weary body out at full length between the cosy blankets, and her sleepy head on the pillow, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep—all the day through, if she could.

Everything was quiet as usual when they reached the gate. By this time they had found out how to walk over the pebbled path without making much noise.

“We will try to make that place look very nice to-day,” said Loveday; “I’ve brought a knife and a pair of scissors with me, and we’ll cut off all the great big straggly things, and the dead things, and ‘heave ’em to cliff’ as we did the straw.”

“That’s one of mother’s best knives,” said Aaron anxiously; “you’d best not use that. You should have brought the ’taty knife, the little dumpy one she uses for peeling ’taties.”

“Well, I can’t go back now to change it,” said Loveday decidedly. “I must use this one. One knife isn’t very much, and they are meant to cut things with; we shan’t hurt it—besides, Bessie has got more like it.”

“Oh, well, do as you please,” said Aaron crossly; “only there’ll be a fine row if it’s spoilt. Knives”—with that superior, knowing air of his which always nettled Loveday—“costs a brave bit of money.”

“Of course I know that,” she snapped irritably. “I didn’t think they grew. Well, I’ll use the scissors, and you can use your hands; unless you brought something yourself to cut with.”

But by this time they had reached the walled-in garden, and in their excitement to see if anything had happened they forgot their crossness. Along the path they ran till they reached the bed, then stood still and looked at each other with wide eyes. The bed was covered again with straw—fresh, new straw—and over it and across it in all directions was fine cord, stretched to pegs which had been stuck firmly in the ground.

The two felt quite frightened! Whoever had done it had spared no trouble in making all secure this time, but had carried out their work deliberately and beautifully. The children felt perfectly helpless.

“It is just to spite us,” whispered Loveday furiously.

But Aaron did not speak; he was really puzzled and alarmed. Thoughts were working so fast in his brain, too, that he could not catch one and put it into words. Loveday grew annoyed and half frightened by his silence.

“What do you think it is? Who do you think did it? Aaron, speak! Are you frightened? Do you think it is something that will hurt us?”

But in answer to all her eager questions, Aaron only said at last:

“I dunno; I don’t like the looks on it.”

Loveday was really rather alarmed, but to find Aaron even more so, and without a word to encourage her, made her very cross again.

“I don’t like the looks of all that cord,” she said, “and I’m going to cut it all, just to let them see that I am not afraid of them. I am not a coward.”

Poor Aaron! It was a little hard on him, for he really had begun to feel a horrible dread that it might not, after all, have been piskies’ mischief that they were undoing, but some real person’s careful work, and he was just beginning to say so when they heard quick footsteps coming along the path towards them, and, looking up, saw an elderly, grey-haired man with a very white and angry face and a pair of eyes with a look in them which filled Loveday’s little heart with alarm.

“It’s Mr. Winter!” gasped Aaron.

That news did not increase Loveday’s alarm; it rather lessened it, in fact, for, in the first place, she wanted very much to see this mysterious person, and, in the second place, she had always a feeling that sad people were never very angry about anything: they were too gentle, and had so much else to think about. But Mr. Winter soon undeceived her.

“Who are you?” he cried hotly, “and what are you doing in my garden, you young ragamuffins? What are you doing, I say? Is it you who have been tampering with my beds day after day, and ruining all my seeds?”

“Please, sir,” began Aaron, stammering and stuttering, and frightened nearly out of his wits—“please, sir, we didn’t mean no ’arm; we didn’t know——”

“What didn’t you know? You knew you had no right in here. You will know it now, at any rate, for you will just wait here until I get a policeman; then perhaps you will remember another time.”

“A policeman!”

Loveday was filled with horror, and could scarcely believe her ears. A policeman to be sent for, for her, Miss Loveday Carlyon! Oh, it couldn’t be true! He couldn’t mean it! It was a mistake. But oh, if only father were here, or mother, to explain!

They were far away, though, and Mr. Winter was here, talking more and more angrily, and saying, “Come with me, come with me, and I’ll see that you are safe till the police come!”

“I must explain to him myself,” thought Loveday. “Aaron isn’t any good”—which was quite true, for all Aaron’s thoughts were taken up in trying not to cry. He was much too scared to speak. Loveday went a little nearer the angry old man.

“Please, Mr. Winter,” she said, but very tremblingly, “we only wanted to do something kind for you. We weren’t stealing, or doing any harm. We never touched a flower—we didn’t see one to touch, but we wouldn’t have if we had.”

Mr. Winter stopped in his angry words as soon as she began to speak. Expecting, as he had, to hear the speech of one of the village children, Loveday’s pretty, refined voice gave him a shock of surprise. He looked at her more keenly, and with some curiosity.

“Kind!” he cried; “what do you mean? You wanted to be kind? Why should you? And why should you come into my garden to play pranks, and then call them kindnesses? Why are you up and out wandering about the country at this hour of the morning? Whose children are you?”

“This is Aaron Lobb; his father and mother live in your cottage under the cliff; and I am Loveday Carlyon, Dr. Carlyon’s daughter. I’ve come from Trelint to stay with Bessie for—for my health, and one day Aaron and I came up here with a message, and your garden looked so untidy, I wished the piskies would come and make it nice for you. And then we thought we would pretend to be piskies and get up very, very early, and make it all nice and tidy——”

“Excuse me,” snapped the old gentleman, “my garden was not untidy.”

“Oh, but please it was, dreadfully—I mean it looked so to me,” urged Loveday, struggling with her sense of truth and her desire to be polite. “I mean that outside part in front of the windows where the blinds are all drawn down. That was what we meant to tidy. I thought if you saw it looking tidy, and flowers growing, you wouldn’t feel so sad. It was that untidy part that made us think of it.”

“Yes, sir,” chimed in Aaron nervously; “please, sir, we didn’t never mean to come in here, but—but the other was so hard, and then we looked in here, and saw all the straw littered about—it reg’lar’y covered that bed.”

“I know it did,” said Mr. Winter. “I had had that bed sown with seeds of a rare and delicate kind, and covered them most carefully with straw to protect them, and—and you have destroyed them all by uncovering them.”

“Oh, I am sorry!” cried Loveday, drawing nearer to him. “But why didn’t you put something there to say so? If we had only known, we would have put on more stuff to keep them warm.”

“But when you invaded my garden the second time, and saw that the bed had been covered again with straw, couldn’t you understand that it was done for a purpose?”

“We thought the piskies had done it,” said Loveday, as though that excused everything.

“You thought what!” cried the gentleman. “You thought the piskies—! Oh dear, dear! To think that such ignorance should exist in this twentieth century! It is disgraceful!” Then, turning to the children: “Come with me while I decide what can be done.”

Loveday followed with less fear than she would have felt a few moments earlier. For one reason, Mr. Winter did not seem quite so angry as he had at first; for another, he had not spoken again of policemen; and, for a third reason, she was rather anxious to see what the house looked like inside.

But here she was disappointed, for Mr. Winter led them so quickly through the bare stone hall that they saw very little of the house, and then he showed them into a small, bare room, with a window high up out of their reach, and there left them. And as he went they heard him turn the key on them, at which they looked at each other in horror, while he walked slowly away to his own sitting-room to think; for what to do with the pair now he had them was more than he could tell. He wanted to frighten them, yet he had no thought now of sending for a policeman. In fact, he would have liked to have sent them both away with a warning, only he thought it was better that they should be kept a little longer as a punishment.

Meanwhile, Bessie, having got up very early to be ready for her husband on his return from his fishing, went to call Aaron rather earlier than usual, and was shocked to find his bed empty and himself flown. Astonished and troubled, she went to Loveday’s room, and, opening the door gently, peeped in. When she found Loveday’s room empty too, and the windows wide open, she grew really alarmed. She listened, but there was no sound but the voice of the sea and the gulls. The silence frightened her. Where could they be? She ran to the front door, and looked out over the sands. No; no sign of them there. She searched the house and called and called, but no answer came. What could she do next? Find them she must, but where? Her eye fell on the sparkling sea.

“Oh, not out there!” she cried, turning sick with fear.

Far out she saw the boats coming in, but they could not help her or tell her anything. She turned away, unable to bear the sight; and as she did so her eye fell on the path up the cliff. A ray of comfort crept into her heart. Something seemed to tell her that that path would lead her to them. Of course, there was risk there, too, but not such risk.

Without waiting to put on hat or shawl, poor Bessie hurried up the steep path. She forced herself to look over the rugged sides every now and then, though it made her feel ill to do so, until she came at last to that spot where the children had thrown the straw over the day before. But when she came to that she turned away, faint and full of horror.

“I can’t look,” she groaned. “I can’t! I can’t! I’ll get a fence put round there if I have to do it myself. The least little slip, and nothing could save one, whether man, woman, child, or poor dumb animal.”

When she reached the top of the hill she met a new perplexity. Where could she look now? Which way could she go?—to Mr. Winter’s, or right on over the downs which stretched away to the very edge of the cliff?

“Well,” she thought, “they wouldn’t go to Mr. Winter’s if they could help it;” and she turned and walked in the other direction, on and on, past the Fairy Ring, and all the time she gazed about her, but never a speck of anything living or moving could she see, and she turned away in despair. Coming slowly back, she once more reached Mr. Winter’s gate.

“I’ve a good mind to go in and ask Mrs. Tucker if she has caught sight or sound of them,” she sighed. “It isn’t likely, but when one’s in despair— Oh, my Aaron! my Aaron and Miss Loveday! What will the master and missus say?”

And poor Bessie had begun to cry with fright and misery, when, just as she had turned in at Mr. Winter’s gate, who should she see coming down the pebbly path towards her but two dejected little figures, walking hand in hand.

At the first sight of her they paused, hardly recognising her, and half afraid—then, with a cry, they rushed into her arms, and for a few minutes all three wept together.

“What ’ave ’ee been doing—where ’ave ’ee been?” cried Bessie, the first to check her tears. “Oh, my dear life, the fright you’ve gived me, Aaron! I ought to lace your jacket for you; it’s what you deserves. But I haven’t the heart to. Oh, my dear life! the fright I’ve had, and how glad I am to see ’ee both. I don’t know what I haven’t thought might have happened to ’ee. But what have you been doing, you naughty, naughty children, to leave your beds and get out of window like that? I’ll never be able to trust ’ee any more, and I’ll have bars put to them windows before I sleep to-night!”

By this time some of their alarm had passed off, but the children sobbed on, partly from hunger, partly from weariness and shock, but a great deal from the sense of their naughtiness to poor Bessie, who had been so good and kind to them; and it was not until they had sobbed out all their story that they could control themselves and feel at all comforted.

Bessie did not scold them any more, but she looked very grave.

“Well,” she said, “there is no knowing what Mr. Winter will do, for he is a funny kind of gentleman, and you were very naughty children; and what you have to do now is to make up your minds to bear what he does do. A pretty fine tale I’ve got to write to your ma and pa, Miss Loveday,” she added, “and a nice bit of news you’ve got for father when he comes home”—turning to Aaron—“and he been out all night too, working hard to get you food and clothes!”

Aaron began to weep again, touched to the heart by remorse.

“I’ll write to daddy myself and tell him,” sighed Loveday penitently. “Perhaps it won’t frighten him so much if he hears it from me first. I’ll write directly after breakfast, and then I’ll go and post it. May I, Bessie?”

“Yes, miss, if you’ll promise not to run away again,” said Bessie severely. “You see, I don’t feel sure now about trusting either of you. I think I shall have to hobble you both, like they do the goats, or tether you.”

At which Loveday felt more humbled than ever she had in her life before.

CHAPTER XIII
PRISCILLA PAYS A CALL AND TAKES A JOURNEY

BY this time Priscilla was so much better she was able to go for short walks and, best of all, for drives with her father. She loved these better than anything, for she had her father all to herself, and it was delightful to sit propped up with cushions, and with no strap around her to keep her from falling out, and so to drive Betsy up the hills, for she could manage that with her one hand, while her father read to her.

One day they drove to Lady Carey’s house. Priscilla did not like that very well, for she had not seen Lady Carey since that dreadful day when she had caught her sweeping the drawing-room. But Lady Carey was not very well, and Dr. Carlyon had been sent for, and as she had been very kind to Geoffrey and Priscilla while they were ill, and had sent them fruit and flowers and picture-papers, he thought Priscilla should go herself and thank her for her kindness, if Lady Carey was well enough to see her.

Lady Carey was well enough, and after the doctor had paid his visit, he came out to the carriage for Priscilla, who had been sitting there feeling very nervous all the time, and half hoping, though she would not have liked any one to know it, that Lady Carey would decide that she felt too unwell and too tired to see visitors.

She looked as grave and nervous as she felt when her father lifted her down from the dog-cart, and straightened her hat and her frock, and led her through the big, cool, flower-scented hall to the pretty, shady room where Lady Carey sat in her big chair by the open window looking out on the flower-garden.

“Priscilla has come to thank you for all your kindness to her, and to say good-bye before going to Porthcallis,” said the doctor; and Priscilla walked sedately up to the pretty invalid, shook hands, and, after only a second’s nervous hesitation, put up her face to kiss her.

Lady Carey returned the kiss very heartily, and pulling a little low chair close to her, told Priscilla to sit on it.

Priscilla did so gladly; it was such a charming little chair, with gilt legs and back and a cushioned seat of a delicate grey silk with roses worked all over it.

“Oh, how pretty—” she began, then stopped abruptly as she remembered Nurse’s directions that it is not polite to remark on what one sees, and at the same moment she noticed that her father had gone away and left her alone with her hostess.

But before she could feel alarmed by this, Lady Carey had begun to talk to her, and to ask her questions about her arm, and her illness, and her coming visit to the seaside, and then about Loveday; and very soon Priscilla was telling her all about Loveday and her bucket, and Aaron, and Miss Potts, and all sorts of things; and Lady Carey told Priscilla of how she used to stay by the sea when she was a little girl, and all kinds of other interesting tales; and Priscilla felt that she could stay there and listen to her and talk to her for ever so long. But presently Dr. Carlyon put his head in again.

“Lady Carey, I think your visitor has stayed long enough for one day. Will you tell her to go, please?”

Lady Carey laughed. “I shall tell you to go for just five minutes longer,” she said brightly. “I have something I especially want to say to Priscilla before we part.”

“I suppose I must, then,” said the doctor, laughing, as he turned away.

“Will you ring that bell for me, Priscilla, please?” said Lady Carey, as soon as he had gone.

Priscilla went over and pulled very, very carefully at a pretty silk bell-pull which hung beside the fireplace. It was a very gentle pull, but it answered all right, for in a moment a very neat and smiling maid appeared.

“Sanders, will you go to my room and bring me down that parcel you placed on the table at the foot of my bed this morning.”

“Yes, ’m,” said Sanders; and away she went, and in a moment or so was back again with a big paper parcel in her hand, which she handed to Lady Carey.

Priscilla looked on with interest, wondering what it all meant.

“I have something here,” said Lady Carey, untying the string, “that I have been making for you and your little sister; and I want to give you yours now, and I will ask you to take Loveday’s to her, for I think you may both find them useful by the sea;” and, unwrapping the paper, Lady Carey took out and shook out a pretty warm cloak, big enough to cover Priscilla to the hem of her skirts. It was made of a soft blue cloth, bound with ribbon, and it had a hood lined with silk of the same shade.

Priscilla was so delighted and surprised when she saw it, and heard that it was for her, that she could hardly speak.

“Now try it on,” said Lady Carey; and Priscilla was soon enveloped in the cloak, with the hood drawn over her curls, and her grey eyes and pretty pale face looked up at her kind friend so gratefully that Lady Carey drew her to her, and held her very close as she kissed her affectionately.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” cried Priscilla, finding her voice at last. “I love my cloak; I think it is perfectly beautiful!”

Then Lady Carey undid the other parcel, and took out a red one made in the same way.

“This is for Loveday. Do you think she will like it?”

Priscilla was again almost speechless with delight.

“She will love hers too,” she cried at last rapturously. “And she looks so pretty in red. Thank you, Lady Carey, very much indeed. Oh, I want Loveday to see them both, now, at once, and I want mother to see, and father. O father,” she cried, running to him as he came into the room again, “do look at what Lady Carey has made for Loveday and me!”

Of how she got out of the house, of her good-byes, and her drive home Priscilla remembered nothing. Of course, she wore her blue cloak—it would have been too much to expect her not to—and when she got home she flew into the house to tell her mother her news. But the next thing that clearly stood out in Priscilla’s mind when she thought it all over afterwards was her father’s coming into the room with a letter in his hand. Mrs. Carlyon was sitting with Loveday’s red cloak in her hands (Priscilla always remembered that); her own she was still wearing, and was feeling it rather warm, when her father drove all other thoughts out of her head by saying: “Just listen, dear, to this extraordinary letter that I have had from Loveday,” and he read it aloud.

“My dear Daddy,—Plese will you come at once, I am in great truble I wassent nawty reely but mr. winter sais we are and he was going to get a polisman, but he diden, he let us go home whil he thot what he shud do to punnish us I hop he won’t send us to prissen, Bessie lost us and cride and took us home. Do come quik, I am very sory, we were piskies. How is prissy.—Your loving

“Loveday. Do come quik.”

As she listened to this letter Priscilla thought she should have fainted with fright. Policemen! and prison! and Loveday perhaps with handcuffs on, and oh, so frightened! She looked with a white face and terrified eyes at her mother, who was still holding the red cloak, and, somehow, the sight of that made it all seem more dreadful.

“O father, what can we do?” she cried piteously. “Loveday shan’t go to prison; she mustn’t! She can’t have been naughty enough for that.”

But to her surprise her father, instead of being frightened and angry, looked almost as though he were amused about something—at least, until he glanced at Priscilla; but when he saw her white face, he grew grave at once.

“Don’t be foolish, darling,” he said, drawing her to him. “You surely aren’t really frightened. It cannot be anything very serious, or Bessie would have written too, or telegraphed; she wouldn’t have left it to Loveday to have told us all about a serious matter. I expect the truth of it is that Miss Loveday and Master Aaron have been up to some mischief, and some one—a Mr. Winter I think she calls him—has frightened them, or tried to, by talking about prison and police.”

Mrs. Carlyon, who had been lost in thought for some minutes, suddenly looked up.

“Mr. Winter!” she exclaimed. “Why, that is the name of that poor gentleman whose only son was drowned there, before his father’s eyes, some few years ago. He has shut himself up there ever since. Don’t you remember, dear?”

“Of course; yes, I remember now,” said the doctor, nodding his head thoughtfully. “A curious, morose old man. I met him once. I think it is his cottage that the Lobbs live in.”

All this time he was sitting with one arm round Priscilla, who stood very silent, with her head laid against her father’s shoulder, her face very white and troubled still. “It is all right, dear, I am sure,” he said, suddenly noticing how ill she looked; “don’t you worry about it.”

“But, father, do you think it is all right?” asked Priscilla, in a trembling voice.

“Oh yes,” said Dr. Carlyon cheerfully. “I haven’t a doubt. I think I will go and send a telegram to Bessie to say I will just run down to-morrow for the day,” he added; “then I shall know for certain what is amiss. And, what do you say? Shall I take Prissy with me, instead of waiting till next week? The change will be good for her, I think, and, at any rate, she will have Loveday under her eye, and know that the policeman has not got her locked up in a cell. While I am there I can look about for rooms, too, for the rest of us. Don’t you think those are very nice plans, little woman?”—turning to Priscilla. “You would like to go down with me to-morrow, wouldn’t you, and help look for rooms for mother and Geoffrey?”

“Oh yes,” cried Priscilla, throwing one arm about her father’s neck and kissing him, “please, father;” and her face, though still very pale, grew brighter and less alarmed-looking.

“But—do you think it will be all right to wait till then? They won’t take away Loveday, or——”

“My dear, they couldn’t, and wouldn’t. Of course not; I expect we shall have a letter by the next post from Bessie. Now I will go to the office and send this telegram, and tell Bessie to be sure and let me know if I must come before to-morrow.” And away he went.

After all this Priscilla felt too tired and languid to do anything, even to sort out the toys she wanted to take with her, but when presently a telegram came back from Bessie to say, “All well, nothing serious,” she felt very much happier, and grew quite excited at the thought that she was going to see Loveday to-morrow, and to take her her red cloak, and she lay back very contentedly in her chair and watched her mother and Nurse looking over her clothes to see what they should pack, and then arranging them in her box.

By the post next morning came Bessie’s letter telling them all about Loveday’s and Aaron’s escapade. When Priscilla heard it she felt very frightened again, for it seemed such a dreadful thing that they had done. But still her father did not seem very much concerned, and, seeing him so cheerful, Priscilla tried to be so too, though in her secret heart she had a great dread of the morose, mysterious Mr. Winter, and did not feel at all sure that, after all, he would not fulfil his threat, and send for a policeman.

However, on a bright sunny morning, with a lot to do, with farewell visits to pay to Miss Potts, Mrs. Tickell, and many others, a journey to the sea before one, two new cloaks, hidden away where they could easily be got at, a little sister, and the sea, and a holiday at the end of the journey, no one could feel quite, quite miserable. And with the sun shining and the breeze blowing, and Betsy trotting quickly along between the flower-decked hedges, and Geoffrey beside one making fun, it did not seem possible that anything very, very dreadful could happen, and Priscilla’s spirits rose enormously.

She felt quite sorry for Hocking, who was to be left behind.

“O Hocking,” she sighed, “don’t you wish you were going to the seaside too?”

But Hocking did not seem at all perturbed at being left behind. “What’s the use of wishing, miss?” he said slowly; “if wishes were ’orses beggars would ride.”

Priscilla looked at him for a moment, puzzled, then looked away to try and think out his meaning. “I don’t see any sense in that,” she said at last, having thought the matter over for some time. “If they were on horseback they couldn’t beg, and they wouldn’t be beggars.”

“Ezzackly, miss,” said Hocking stolidly, as though that was what he had been arguing, and did not open his lips again.

At the station Priscilla kissed Betsy, shook hands with Hocking, and then went with Geoffrey on to the platform, while her father took the tickets. She wished now that Geoffrey was coming too, and she told him so.

“I wish I was,” said Geoffrey; “but, you see, I’ve got to wait and bring mother and Nurse. If I hadn’t, I’d have gone to old Winter and jolly well told him what I thought of him for frightening a child as small as Loveday. I call it cowardly, and—and he ought to be told of it too.”

Priscilla gasped at the mere thought of Geoffrey’s daring. But after she had said good-bye to him, and he had driven off homewards with Hocking, and she and her father had settled down comfortably in a carriage to themselves, her thoughts flew again to what he had said about Mr. Winter, and by-and-by a thought came into her mind, which grew and grew, until before long it had become a very firm resolution.

If Geoffrey thought it right to go to Mr. Winter and speak for Loveday, it was right for her to do so. She could not speak as severely as Geoffrey said he should, and perhaps it might be better not to; but she could say something, and she made up her mind to go on the very first opportunity—that is, if her father did not do so—and ask to see Mr. Winter, and then apologise for what Loveday had done, and ask him to forgive her.

So occupied was she with this plan that she never once spoke all the way to Porthcallis, and her father at last looked quite anxiously over his paper at her, so serious and grave was her face, and her eyes so very troubled.

“You aren’t feeling homesick, are you?” he asked gently.

Priscilla looked up with a start and then a smile.

“No, father,” she said brightly, “’cause mother and Geoffrey will come soon, and you too.”

And after that she tried to laugh and talk a good deal, for she did not want any one to guess her secret.

“Have you Loveday’s red cloak with you?”

“Yes; it is in this basket, so that I can get at it quite easily. I think she will be able to wear it back from the station, don’t you, father? It seems rather cold, I think.”

“Very cold!” laughed Dr. Carlyon, pretending to shiver as the sea-breeze swept into the compartment. “Now, then, look out for the first glimpse of the sea, and now for the station, and——”

“And Loveday!” almost shrieked Priscilla. “She is here. O father, father, she is here! She isn’t a prisoner yet!” and, by Priscilla’s rapturous relief, Dr. Carlyon realised how great, in spite of all, had been her secret fears.

CHAPTER XIV
PRISCILLA PAYS ANOTHER CALL

LOVEDAY was not a prisoner, but she was somewhat subdued and ashamed of herself, and Priscilla, who felt very, very sorry for her, and forgot all about her naughtiness and the injury she had done, was quite troubled to see how grave her father looked, and how sternly he spoke to her.

“Well,” he said, “this is a nice thing! Here am I, called away from my patients and everything, to come and help a little girl who cannot be trusted to go a-visiting by herself but she must go and behave disgracefully, and bring shame on us all! What have you to say for yourself?”

“Nothing, daddy,” cried the disgraced one, flinging herself into his arms and burying her face on his shoulder, while the spade and the bucket with “Thomas” on it went clattering to the ground.

Fortunately, Dr. Carlyon had not put his harrowing questions until they had passed the green and the houses, and were in the little hotel where they were to have dinner before going to interview Bessie. But his stern silence all the way had impressed Loveday more than any words could have done, and when at last he spoke, her poor little troubled heart could bear no more.

“O daddy,” she sobbed, “I only meaned to be very kind, and to make him happy ’cause he’d lost his son and was very unhappy, and we got up in the morning when we were so sleepy and tired we didn’t want to get up a bit, but it was to help him, and we wanted to make it all look nice, and we thought ’twas the piskies put the old straw there, but it was Mr. Winter did it—and how could we know? Of course we shouldn’t have done it if we had! And then Mr. Winter came out and caught us. Oh, ’twas ever so early, and he was so angry, he looked—oh, he looked as if he would eat us! and he said such dreadful things, and I told him all about it. I ’splained everything, but he doesn’t believe there are any fairies, and then he took us indoors and locked us in a room while he thought what he’d do with us, and I was ’fraid he’d heave us to cliff like we heaved the straw, but Aaron said he’d know better than do that ’cause he’d be hanged for it. Aaron talked a lot when we were locked in, and Mr. Winter wasn’t there, but he was nearly crying before. I don’t think much of Aaron, and I’ll—I’ll never like him any more! He said he reckoned Mr. Winter would turn them out of their cottage for what we had done, and ’twould be all my fault, and I told him he was a very bad, mean boy to say such things, and if he didn’t take care all that he ate would turn acid like it did to the wicked uncle in the Babes of the Wood, but all he said was that he wouldn’t mind that, if he could only get something to eat.”

“Well,” said her father, with a patient sigh, but holding his erring little daughter very close, “you seem to have had a pleasant ten minutes in your prison—but get on with your story.”

“Ten minutes!” cried Loveday, drawing back in her surprise to look up at his face; “ten hours more likely, daddy!”

“Oh! was it nearly night then when you came out?”

“Well, no—but it was quite breakfast-time when we got home.”

“I see—it seemed like ten hours.”

“Oh yes!” sighed Loveday, with a very sober shake of her curly head; “and it was such a dirty, horrid little room. I don’t think Mrs. Tucker can be a very clean person,” she added, in a grave confidential tone.

“Never mind Mrs. Tucker—get on with your story. I don’t suppose you were very clean either at that time in the morning!”

“Well—you see we always washed when we got up the second time. We were in too great a hurry the first time.”

“What did Mr. Winter say when he came back and let you out?” asked Dr. Carlyon.

“He said he hadn’t been able to think of a punishment yet, so we might go home then, and he would send for us later. Aaron said that was because it was going to be something dreadful, and I wanted to run away to some place where I could never be caught; but Aaron said it would be mean to go and leave him to face it all. Would it, father?”

“Very. I am extremely glad you did not do that.”

“But, daddy, s’posing he sends me away from you! What shall I do?” and the blue eyes filled with tears again.

And at the sight of them, and the thought of such a dreadful possibility, Priscilla, who had been standing near with a very, very serious face, listening to all the harrowing story, almost wept too, and told her precious secret in her desire to comfort her little sister.

“Oh, dear little Loveday, don’t cry any more! You won’t be sent away—I am sure you won’t. And just look here at the lovely present I’ve got for you! Father, put her down, that she may try it on.”

For the moment, at any rate, all Loveday’s woes vanished, and Priscilla forgot her cares, too, in the excitement and happiness at the pleasure in store for Loveday. And then the basket was opened, and out came the parcel, and the red cloak was unfolded, and displayed before Loveday’s dazzled eyes; and her delight was as great as even Priscilla had hoped it would be.

“For me!” she cried—“me! For my very own! O Prissy, how lovely! What a dear! Let me put it on quick. Do you think it will suit me?” And in another moment the pretty red cloak was round her, and the hood drawn over her tumbled curls, while Prissy, like a little mother, knelt to button it round her, managing as best she could with her one hand.

“Do I look very pretty in it?” asked Loveday, appealing, quite unembarrassed, to her father.

“Well, not so very plain,” said her father, pretending to study her very critically. “I have seen you look worse,” though in his heart he thought he had seldom seen anything so charming as the little flushed face, the eyes still bright with unshed tears, surrounded by its tangle of curls and the red hood.

“Has Prissie got one?” she asked, quite undisturbed by her father’s remark.

“Yes—mine is blue,” cried Priscilla, dragging hers out of the basket too. “I like mine best for me, but I like the red best for you. Look, isn’t mine lovely!” and she put the cloak on over her little print frock.

Then came a long comparison and examination of both. “I think I like my buttons best,” said Loveday, at the end of the inspection, “but you have a clasp on yours. Never mind—perhaps I shall get a clasp too some day.”

Then followed the long story of Priscilla’s call on Lady Carey, and of Lady Carey’s sending for the parcel, and every detail of Priscilla’s visit, even to the chair and the bell-pull; and it took so long to tell that the servant came in and laid the cloth and placed the dinner on the table before it was all done.

Loveday was so delighted with her cloak she could not be persuaded to take it off even for dinner, so she wore it throughout the meal, and all the way to Bessie’s too, “because,” as she said, “it matched her bucket so beautifully, and would give Bessie such a surprise.”

And Bessie really was surprised to see her little lady come back enveloped in a long, warm red cloak, with the hood drawn snugly over her head, especially as that same little lady had in the morning protested that it was too hot to bear even a cotton coat over her cotton frock.

Then Priscilla having been welcomed and kissed and crooned over by Bessie, and the cloaks having been admired, and Aaron introduced and allowed to run away and hide, Priscilla and Loveday were sent out to amuse themselves on the beach, while Dr. Carlyon talked over all the dreadful doings of his younger daughter and Bessie’s son.

It was then that Priscilla breathed to Loveday her great plan of going up to call on Mr. Winter. At first she had not intended to let Loveday into the secret, but she soon saw how impossible it would be to get away from her, that there would be a hue and cry if she were missed, and that matters then would be worse than ever. So Loveday was told, and her help proved to be of the greatest use.

“Of course,” said Prissy, “if father is going up there this afternoon, I needn’t go.”

But they soon learnt, to their surprise, that Dr. Carlyon had no intention of going, for, after his talk with Bessie, he came out to them on the beach to say that Bessie had given him the addresses of some lodgings, and he was now going to see if either of them would suit.

“I think you had better not come with me, dear,” he said to Prissy. “You look tired.”

Priscilla agreed, not because she did not want to go, but because she wanted to do something else.

“But—but,” she began nervously, “father, aren’t you going to see Mr. Winter?”

“No, dear,” he said quite cheerfully, and not at all as though he were alarmed. “I think, from what Bessie tells me, that I had better wait until I hear something more from Mr. Winter himself before I take any steps in the matter. Loveday, would you like to come with me or to stay with Priscilla? I expect you would rather stay.”

“No, I’d rather go with you, I think,” said Loveday, her mind full of Priscilla’s plan.

“Well, Priscilla will have plenty of you, and I haven’t seen you for a long time,” said Dr. Carlyon, “so come along. Prissy, you had better rest till we come back. Now, then, Loveday, are you ready?”

And off they went. Priscilla felt rather deceitful as they left her, and she felt even more so when Bessie showed her to the little room that she and Loveday were now to share.

“Now, missie,” she said, “you shall have a nice sleep; the house will be very quiet. Aaron is going to Melland with his father, and I shall be sitting outside the front door with my sewing. If you want me, you have only to call.”

Priscilla thanked her, and thought, with thankfulness, that things seemed to be arranging themselves on purpose for her. She felt rather troubled about it, but she really had taken fresh alarm at her father’s remark that he should wait until he heard more. “Why will they put it off?” she thought anxiously; “they will leave it until too late, and the policeman will come before they have done anything, and then it will be no good!” It seemed to her very, very foolish and rash, and she felt quite glad that Loveday was in her father’s care, for there she would be safer than anywhere.

She went into the bedroom and shut the door, and lay down for a little while, until, at last, she heard Aaron and his father start, and Bessie settle down under the verandah to her sewing. When Priscilla had heard her singing softly to herself for some time, she felt that at last it would be safe to start. To cover her light cotton frock, which would have made her very conspicuous as she mounted the cliff, she put on her blue cloak, hood and all; but she carried her hat beneath it, for she thought it would be more fitting to be wearing a hat when making a first call, and one of such importance too.

Loveday had told her exactly how to go, and Bessie having been unable to get the bars put up at the window yet, Priscilla slipped out easily enough, and was soon hurrying up the cliff. At first all her fear was of being seen, and stopped, but later, when she neared the top, other fears seized her. Mr. Winter seemed suddenly to grow almost too formidable to face, and when she reached the gate she hesitated a moment, really too nervous to go a step farther.

But she thought of Loveday, who would be all the time thinking of her, and counting on her interference; and she thought of all the dreadful things that might happen, making herself picture the very worst, to help to get her courage up. And then she quickly opened the gate, walked gravely up to the door, and knocked before she had time to give way to her fears again.

“Priscilla slipped out easily.”

CHAPTER XV
MR. WINTER

THE housekeeper, grim and silent as usual, opened the door. Her look and manner alone were sufficient to alarm Priscilla, and send her home with errand undone.

“Is—is Mr. Winter at home?” she asked.

“Yes, he is,” answered the woman. She was so absorbed in staring at Priscilla, and studying every detail of her face and figure and clothing, one could have been excused for thinking she had not really taken in what was said to her. Under her rude stare and forbidding manner, a faint pink flush came into Priscilla’s pale cheeks.

“Is Mr. Winter at home, please?” repeated Priscilla; adding, as firmly as she could, “I want to see him.”

“Then you can’t,” answered the housekeeper rudely; “he don’t see visitors. What’s your name?”

“I think Mr. Winter would see me,” said Priscilla eagerly. The fear that after all she might not be able to reach him with her appeal made her desperate. She had never contemplated failure of that kind. “My name is Carlyon, but I don’t suppose Mr. Winter would know it. I want very much indeed to see him, though. It is most important.”

“What for? What can a little girl like you want to be troubling a gentleman like Mr. Winter for?” she asked roughly. “If you’re come begging for clubs or charities or things, I can tell you at once, it isn’t any good, and you can run away as quick as you come.”

“But I am not begging,” said Priscilla emphatically—“not for money.”

“Well, we haven’t got any flowers or fruit to give away. I can tell ’ee that too. So you may as well run ’long home to where you come from.”

“You shouldn’t speak like that,” said Priscilla indignantly; “you shouldn’t be rude.” She was hurt and insulted, and she felt that this woman would prevent her seeing her master if she possibly could. “I spoke quite civilly to you, and I’ve come on important business, and I am sure Mr. Winter would see me if he knew I wanted him. But it doesn’t matter; I will write to him,” and she turned away with great dignity, but only just in time to prevent the woman from seeing the tears that would well up in her eyes.

Very angry indeed, Mrs. Tucker shut the door with a bang, while Priscilla walked down the gravel path with great dignity, her head held high, but with, oh! such an aching heart, such despair and disappointment; and then, suddenly, a gentleman appeared at her side and was speaking to her quite kindly.

“What is the matter?” he asked, not ungently; “you are in trouble? Can I do anything for you?”

Just for a second he had thought this must be his little culprit of a day or two since, but when he looked again he saw that the strange visitor was taller and older, and her face, though like that other one, was paler, and thinner, and graver.

For a moment Priscilla could not control the quivering of her lips, or choke back the tears which had forced their way up.

“I wanted to see Mr. Winter,” she gasped. “I want very much to see him, and the woman was so rude, she wouldn’t even ask him if he would see me.”

“I know; I heard her,” said the stranger sternly. “But it is all right. I am Mr. Winter. What do you want with me?”

And then when she was face to face with him, with the morose recluse, the mysterious tyrant who was going to do all sorts of unkind things to Loveday and Aaron, Priscilla could not for a moment think of anything she wanted to say.

“Please,” she stammered, wondering where she could begin, “I have come to—to—to ask you to forgive my little sister, Loveday Carlyon. I know she was mischievous, but she didn’t mean to be—she didn’t, really; she wanted to be kind to you, because they said—because—oh, because she thought you were sad and lonely, and she—and she—oh! you won’t have her punished very severely, will you, or sent to gaol? Oh, please, don’t! She will never, never do such a thing again, I know!”

“Um! She won’t, won’t she?”

“Oh no!” said Priscilla eagerly; “never! She really did think it was the piskies that put the straw there to annoy you——”

“Nonsense!” said Mr. Winter sharply. Then he added, more gently: “The idea of any one believing such rubbish in these days!”

“Loveday does,” said Priscilla earnestly—“she does, really—and—and I want her to go on believing. I did once, and it was, oh! ever so much nicer than now when I know it isn’t any use to. I wish I’d never been told there aren’t any fairies, really. When you think there are, it seems as if such lots of beautiful things may happen, you never know what, and—and it always seems as if they were going to.”

“Ay, ay, little girl,” said Mr. Winter, looking down at her thoughtfully, “it is very sad when folk don’t leave us fairies, or—or anything else to believe in. But they won’t.”

Priscilla did not know what reply to make to this, so she made none. After a pause Mr. Winter looked at her again.

“You look pale and tired,” he said, trying still to speak coldly, but not succeeding very well. “You don’t look as strong as that mischievous sister of yours.”

“I have been ill,” said Priscilla, and she told him of the accident with the swing, and throwing back her cloak to show him her arm still in its sling, she saw, and for the first time remembered, her hat. For a moment a hot blush dyed her face, and then she burst into a hearty peal of laughter. At the sound of it Mr. Winter started, then grew even paler than he had been. No sound of childish laughter had been heard in that place since the day his boy left him to start on his fatal expedition.

“I meant to have put it on,” she explained, “before I reached your gate; I thought it was more—more right to have on a hat when one paid a call. I only put on my cloak because I was afraid my dress would show as I came up the cliff, and I was afraid some one would see me and stop me.”

Mr. Winter had recovered himself by this time, and seeing that she could but badly manage with one hand to slip back the hood and put on her hat, he actually helped her. At the touch of the soft curls, at the frank, grateful glance of the childish eyes, a new sense of life and happiness ran through his chilled veins, a new peace came to the heart that had for so long waged a bitter, resentful war against God, himself, and his fellow-creatures.

When the hat was satisfactorily adjusted, a sudden silence fell upon them; his mind and heart were teeming with thoughts and sensations that to Priscilla would have been incomprehensible. Priscilla was wondering what she could say and do next. He had not said he would forgive Loveday, and she did not like to leave without his promise, and oh! she was feeling so tired she did not know how to begin her pleading again. She must, though. She felt that; and then she would go away, and when she got out of sight she would rest a little before she went all down that steep path again.

“Mr. Winter—you haven’t said yet, but will you forgive Loveday, please?” she asked, suddenly growing shy and nervous again. But it was the weariness, the weakness of her voice that struck her hearer most. He looked sharply at her, and her pale, wan little face sent a pang to his heart, a pang he could not understand.

“Yes, of course, child, of course,” he said hastily. “I am not an ogre. I was only pretending to be, to frighten the two young scamps a little. I did not intend to punish them any further. You may run home and tell your sister what I say. But,” he added abruptly, “you are not fit to walk all the way back; you have walked too far already, and I have kept you standing all this time. Come in and rest for a few minutes, and have a glass of milk. You will get home in half the time after it.”

But Priscilla hesitated. She was shy of penetrating that gloomy house, with only this stranger, of whom she still felt some awe, and that dreadful woman, whom she frankly disliked.

“You would rather not,” he said, quick to notice her hesitation; “don’t be afraid to speak out, child. I quite understand.”

But Priscilla noticed the hurt tone in his voice, and was touched. “I would like to very much, thank you,” she said weakly. “I am dreadfully tired,” she added, almost as though the words escaped her against her will. The next moment she was crossing the bare stone hall into which Loveday had peered so enviously, and was admitted to Mr. Winter’s own private sitting-room, which no one but himself had entered for years.

Of all the women in this wide world, Mr. Winter’s housekeeper was at that moment the most astounded, and what to make of things, and of the change in her master, she did not know. But in her heart she very much wished that she had treated this little visitor more civilly when she had first come knocking at the door.

Priscilla sat in a big arm-chair, and drank milk and ate biscuits, and Mr. Winter sat in another and stared out of window, his mind absorbed in thoughts. They wandered far and wide, yet when, presently, Priscilla’s voice broke the silence, both his and hers must have been hovering near the same subject.

“Miss Potts,” she broke out suddenly—“she is a friend of mine at home,” she explained—“Miss Potts couldn’t bear the sight of the sea either; it had swallowed up all her family, all but her and her mother.” Mr. Winter’s eyelids quivered, and his face contracted sharply, but Priscilla could not see his face, or she might have paused in what she was saying. As it was, though, she continued: “But she left it. She didn’t draw her blinds because she couldn’t bear to look at it, but she went right away, and—and she told me she had been ever so much happier ever since.”

A deep silence followed her remarks, a silence which presently frightened Priscilla, and as it continued, she slipped off her chair and crept to the door. She felt that she had offended past forgiveness. “I ought not to have mentioned the sea, or the blinds, or let him know I knew anything about the story,” she thought with a sudden, overwhelming sense of her own want of tact. But when she reached the door she paused; she could not, after all his kindness, go and leave him without a word. So she crept back again very gently and very slowly, until she reached his side.

“I—I am dreadfully sorry,” she gasped. “I did not mean to hurt you.” Then, as still he did not speak, in real distress she laid her hand on his thin hand as it rested on his knee, while the other supported his head. “Mr. Winter,” she said, in a frightened voice, her lip quivering, “I am so sorry; I did not mean to hurt you, only I—I felt so sorry for you, and—”

“You haven’t hurt me, child,” he said at last, speaking very slowly, in a curious still voice; “it is I who have hurt myself all these years. I was very glad to hear about your friend. I am grateful to you for telling me about her. She was a wise and brave woman. Now,” rousing himself and rising, “if you are rested you would like to go home, I expect. I will see you to the gate.”

At the gate he took the little hand she held out. “You will come and see me again, I hope?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” said Priscilla warmly; “I will come quite soon, if you would like me to.”

As she walked away she turned every now and then to wave her hand to the solitary-looking old man who stood at his gate, and watched her until she had disappeared from his sight.

“Did you see him? What did he say? Was he very cross?” whispered Loveday anxiously, rushing to find her the moment they returned.

“He—oh, he asked me to come again,” said Priscilla absently.

“But didn’t he say anything about me and Aaron?”—with a surprised and disappointed look.

“Oh yes. He told me to say he forgave you, and he wouldn’t think anything more about it.”

“Well,” cried Loveday, in a voice full of reproach, “you might have told me at once, when you knew how anxious I was. I have been thinking about it all the time I’ve been out. You don’t look a bit as though you had good news for me; I thought you would have been—oh, ever so glad that I wasn’t to be sent to prison;” and Loveday’s lip actually quivered with disappointment at Priscilla’s seeming indifference.

“I am!” cried Priscilla, rousing herself; “I am so glad; and, oh dear, there are such lots of things to be glad about. I don’t know which to think about first.”

CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH A GREAT MANY THINGS HAPPEN

FOUR such happy, beautiful weeks followed. Mrs. Carlyon and Geoffrey came down to Porthcallis within a few days, and they all settled into the comfortable rooms Dr. Carlyon had taken for them. Loveday was very sorry to leave Bessie and Aaron and the dear little bedroom; but they went every day to “Bessie’s beach,” as they called it, for it was their favourite play-place. Each day they thought they knew all the rocks and pools by heart, yet every time they came again they found fresh ones.

Very often, too, Mrs. Carlyon engaged John Lobb to row them along the coast in his best boat, and they would land at some of the nice little bays and coves and have their dinner or tea, and light a fire and boil the kettle.

“They would light a fire and boil the kettle.”

The red bucket “Thomas” grew to look quite shabby with the hard usage it had, and so many of its letters got knocked off that it was difficult at last to know what the name was meant to be. Priscilla had chosen a green bucket with “Mary” on it, as she could not get one with her first name. The colour did not go very well with her blue cloak, but she did not want to use them together very often, and when she did she solved the difficulty by carrying the bucket underneath the cloak. Sometimes they went for picnics on the Downs on the top of the cliff, and one day when they were up there Priscilla saw Mr. Winter, and, running up to him, brought him over and introduced him to her mother. He seemed rather shy at first and not very happy, but the next time they met him he came up to them of his own accord and talked to them for a while, and as the days went on they even induced him to join them at their picnic teas, and when he had done so once or twice he seemed really to enjoy himself, and would ramble about with them for quite a long time, saying little, but evidently interested in all they said and did.

Priscilla was his most constant companion. Geoffrey, at first particularly, reminded him too painfully of his own dead boy, and he himself reminded Loveday of the mortifying occasion when he had locked her up, a prisoner. As time went on they often talked of the escapade, and laughed about it, but Loveday could not at first see any joke in it, or quite throw off her awe of her captor, and preferred to race and tear about with Geoffrey, sharing his dangers and adventures.

Often when Priscilla was tired she would find her new old friend by her side, and with his arm to lean on they would saunter on slowly together and talk and talk. Such long conversations they had, though it was generally Priscilla who was the talker, but that was because he asked her so many questions about their home, and their games, and their lessons, and their doings, and he seemed so interested in every little thing that Priscilla told him that she thought perhaps it helped him to feel more cheerful and forget his own troubles. So she chattered on to him very willingly.

She did not have all the talk to herself, though, for sometimes he would tell her stories of the time when he was a boy, and all sorts of other interesting tales; but her mother had told her so seriously never to ask him questions, or speak of anything that would be likely to arouse sad memories, that poor Priscilla was not quite certain what she might say, and what she must not, and really felt easier when she was telling him of their own little doings.

One day she told him all about Lady Carey and the cloaks, and he seemed very interested. “Is that the pretty cloak I first saw you in?” he asked; and when Priscilla said, “Yes, it was,” he said, “A very sensible clever woman she must be to make such a charming garment. I have never seen any I like so much.”

Another day she told him about Miss Potts, and what an interesting person she was, and how she was an “only”; so she, Priscilla, tried to be a sort of sister to her, and went quite often to see her.

“I should like to know Miss Potts,” he said, and Priscilla knew that he was thinking of the story she had blurted out to him so thoughtlessly that first day.

“I wish you could,” she said eagerly. “Oh, I wish you would come to Trelint and see her, and see our house, and Betsy and—everything. I am sure you would like it. Miss Potts loves Trelint. She told me she felt at home there at once, and ever so happy, and she has never wanted to go anywhere else since. I am sure you would love Trelint if you came.”

“I feel sure I should,” said Mr. Winter. “Perhaps I will come some day. I dare say I shall; in fact, I have been thinking about it a good deal.”

“Oh, have you? How lovely!” cried Priscilla, really pleased. “It won’t seem so hard to leave Porthcallis now.”

For the last days had come, and the end of the visit was very near. Already there had been talk of trains, and some farewell visits had been paid, and they all felt very sad, for they loved the little place.

“Of course it isn’t as fine in some ways as Porthcallis,” she remarked, after a short pause, beginning to wonder if she had painted home too glowingly, and so prepared a disappointment for a new-comer to the place. “There is no”—she had nearly added “sea there,” but checked herself just in time—“nothing, I mean, very famous, like ruins, and tombs, and castles, and things, but it is very—very homey.”

“I am not particularly fond of sight-seeing,” said Mr. Winter, “and I would prefer a home to a ruin. It seems to me I have been living in the latter too long already,” he added, half to himself. “Now let us go and find your mother. I want to ask her to bring you all to tea with me at my house to-morrow. I hope you will not mind giving up a part of your last whole day. Would you like to come, little one?”

For a moment Priscilla was speechless. Even she, child as she was, understood a little what this invitation must have cost him. But she quickly recovered herself and remembered her manners.

“Oh, I would love to!” she cried warmly; “we all would, I know.” But she added in her own sedate little way: “Won’t we be a great trouble to you?”

Mr. Winter smiled.

“Not a trouble, child.”

They soon overtook Mrs. Carlyon, who gladly agreed to the plan, and thanked Mr. Winter warmly, and soon after that they parted.

It was with very varied feelings that they all climbed the cliff the next day to Mr. Winter’s home, and walked slowly up the pebbled path. Geoffrey was full of curiosity and interest; Loveday was a little shy of again entering her prison, but interested too; Mrs. Carlyon was very thankful, and in her heart very glad, for it seemed to her that it might be the beginning of brighter, happier days for the poor, lonely, sad old man; Priscilla, too, dimly felt the same thing, and she wanted, oh, so much! that he should be less sad.

Mrs. Tucker let them in, glum as usual, but more civil in manner.

“Will you please to walk inside and sit down,” she said, showing them into a little bare room where there was no sign of any preparations for tea, no flowers, nor even chairs enough for them all. “The master will be here in a moment.”

And in less than a moment he came in.

As soon as their eyes fell on him standing in the doorway, two at least of them—Priscilla and her mother—noticed a change in him; they could not have said whether they saw or felt it, or in what the change lay, and when he came forward to shake hands he seemed only a little quieter, a little more sad than usual, and somewhat more absent-minded. He welcomed them very cordially, but after the first greetings a silence fell, then:

“Will you come this way?” he said, rising and moving towards the door. He spoke in a nervous, strained manner. “I have had tea laid in the—the drawing-room. It is a room I do not often use.” As they rose to follow him he laid his hand on Priscilla’s shoulder. “May Miss Priscilla and I lead the way?” he asked.

It was a curiously silent little procession that straggled from the one room to the other—Mrs. Carlyon full of surmise as to what was to follow, Geoffrey and Loveday too absorbed in interest at being in the house of mystery, as they had always considered it, to notice anything unusual.

But as soon as the drawing-room door was opened, Mrs. Carlyon began to understand. “This is one of the closed rooms, and for us he has at last opened it,” she thought; and once more a deep pang of tender pity filled her heart.

Mr. Winter walked in without looking or speaking; Priscilla walked beside him, her hand held fast in his, and even through all her wonderment she noticed how his hand trembled. Straight across the room they went, and right up to the windows where the blinds were still fast drawn. “I want you to be the first to draw these up,” he said gently, and Priscilla, a little nervously, but very gladly, pulled the cords, and let in the beautiful air and sunlight.

For a moment they stood there, Priscilla gazing with wide eyes at the glorious view which spread before her, glorious, yet almost awe-inspiring; Mr. Winter looking down at her, as though he could not yet force himself to let his eyes rest on what he had so long shut out. He turned away at last, and leaving her standing there alone, went over to Mrs. Carlyon, who was lingering in the doorway trying to keep back her tears.

“Forgive an old man’s sentiment,” he said to her, with his gentle sad smile; “as she was the first to let sunshine into my life again, I wanted her to be the first to let it into my house too.”

“I know, I understand,” said Mrs. Carlyon softly; “you are very brave.”

Then Loveday, with a cry of joy, relieved the tension of the moment, and every one felt grateful to the unconscious little maiden.

“O mummy!” she cried excitedly, “mummy! do look! Here is a dear dinky little cup with ‘Loveday’ on it. Then they do paint ‘Loveday’ on things sometimes, and that woman told a story when she said they didn’t.”

Mr. Winter turned to her with a pleased smile.

“That was my Grannie’s cup,” he said, “made on purpose for her, and that was her name; and as you are the only other Loveday I have ever known, I am going to ask you to use it, and after that to accept it from me as a little keepsake from the ogre to the pisky.”

At which Loveday gasped and squealed again more delightedly than ever, and from that moment forgave him for her humiliation, even going so far as to admit him as one of her very best friends.

It was a very pleasant tea that, and one none of them ever forgot, though it was not entirely joyous, owing to the many memories called up, and the thought of the parting on the morrow, which was hanging over them all.

But when the next morning came and the actual parting, the spirits of most of them were not as low as they had thought they would be, for they were going home, and that is always pleasant, and there was the journey and the drive. And what an exciting, bustling time it was, packing up the last things and getting off. The children had so many more treasures too—buckets and spades, shells and pebbles and seaweeds; and Loveday had her tea-cup too, which had to be packed with special care in Mrs. Carlyon’s best hat-box. And then, when at last they reached the wind-swept station, and Priscilla in her blue cloak, and Loveday in her red one, were standing on the platform, who should appear but Mr. Winter himself to see them off!

“I thought I might be of some use in helping you,” he said kindly. “Is there anything I can do? Tell me, please, if there is.”

“Oh, will you please hold this?” gasped Loveday eagerly, pointing to the hat-box which she and Priscilla were guarding. “My cup is in it, and I am so afraid some one will run into us and joggle it.”

Mr. Winter took the box at once into his care, and then turned to help their mother, and when the train came in he found them a nice comfortable compartment all to themselves, and having first placed the precious hat-box in safety, and arranged a dozen other things in the rack, he then helped in Priscilla and Loveday and Mrs. Carlyon.

“Good-bye,” he said, when at last the whistle blew to warn them they were about to start. “Good-bye, good-bye, children, and I hope you will write to me sometimes, and tell me what you are doing, and how Miss Potts gets on, for I shall be very lonely without you,” and he stepped quietly out of the carriage as though half ashamed of having said so much; and the last thing they saw as they rolled away was Mr. Winter standing alone on the little bare platform, the wind blowing his white hair about as he waved his hat to them.

“I don’t know how we should ever have got off without Mr. Winter,” said Nurse, who had taken a great liking to him.

“Nor I; nor how we shall get on at home without him,” said Mrs. Carlyon gravely; “I think he will have to come to Trelint.”

“So do I,” sighed Priscilla. “I am sure he will be very lonely without us. I must write to him very often, to cheer him up.”

And Priscilla did. Sometimes it was difficult. She felt disinclined, or she thought there was nothing to say, or she could not spell the words she wanted to use, but she very seldom failed altogether, and she would not have done so at all, had she known how her funny little badly written letters were prized by her old friend.

One day there came a letter from Mr. Winter which sent Priscilla dancing joyously through the house.

“My dear Scylla,” it said—Mr. Winter had called her “Scylla,” because he said that as the little blue flower was the first to push its way through the hard frosty ground, so she had been the first to push her way through his frosty nature:—

“My dear Scylla,—Your last letter interested me much, and what you told me of the old house next to Miss Potts made me so anxious to see it that I have determined to come over to Trelint for a few days to have a look at it; so be sure that no one else takes it first. The front of it so close to the street that I can see your house from it, sounds very enticing, and the old-fashioned garden at the back sounds as if it was made on purpose for me; and if I like it as much as I think I shall from what you say, I should not be surprised if, like Miss Potts herself, I felt so at home in Trelint I should never want to leave it again, and then you would be relieved of the task of writing to your dull old friend,

Matthew Winter.”

A very few days later, Mr. Winter did come to Trelint, and Mrs. Carlyon and the children went with him to inspect the comfortable, roomy old house which stood beside Miss Potts’ little old-fashioned house and shop, without humbling hers or losing its own dignity. And everything in the house seemed right; and the garden was beautiful, large, and old, and well-filled with every kind of flower that one loves best, and many kinds of fruits too.

“I must have this,” said Mr. Winter, and he spoke so eagerly and gaily it was a treat to hear him. “I can just imagine you children racing about here and playing all sorts of games. You will let them come, won’t you, Mrs. Carlyon?”

“Oh, indeed, yes,” she cried laughingly; “they will come—the question is, will they go? You must see to it that they do, Mr. Winter. I am sure they will always be wanting to be here.”

“It really is a dear old house, and the garden is lovely,” she said afterwards to her husband; “but I believe he would have taken it if it had been the most wretched and inconvenient place imaginable, he seemed so determined to come here.”

“And it all came,” said Loveday solemnly, when they were talking over the wonderful event amongst themselves—“it all came about through my being a pisky in his garden.”

“Or a prisoner in his house,” jeered Geoffrey, to tease her.

“It really began further back than either,” said Priscilla, “for if it hadn’t been for our accident Loveday wouldn’t have been sent to Porthcallis, and so——”

“So really you have me to thank for it all,” cried Geoffrey, “for I put up the swing.”

“And if you had put it up properly it wouldn’t have broken, and there might not have been any accident,” agreed Priscilla. “But——”

“No,” said Loveday, who had been cogitating quietly for some time, “it was through me, after all; for if Mrs. Wall hadn’t been so long changing her frock, and kept me waiting so, I should have been in the swing too” (excitedly); “and then I should have fallen out, and p’r’aps been killed, and then I wouldn’t have gone to Porthcallis, and you” (growing more and more eager) “wouldn’t any of you have known Mr. Winter, so you see ’twas through me, after all.” And to her immense surprise she was for once allowed to have the last word.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. Edinburgh & London

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

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Table of Contents

- THE MEAN-WELLS
- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- CHAPTER I THE WORTH OF A TOOTH
- CHAPTER II A DRIVE AND A PINK PARASOL
- CHAPTER III ON THE ROAD TO LANTIG

- CHAPTER IV A ROOMFUL OF BABIES, AND A GIANT’S CHAIR

- CHAPTER V SWEEPING THE DRAWING-ROOM

- CHAPTER VI MRS. TICKELL, MRS. WALL, AND AN ACCIDENT

- CHAPTER VII LOVEDAY GOES VISITING

- CHAPTER VIII PISKIES STILL LIVE AT PORTHCALLIS

- CHAPTER IX MISS POTTS COMES TO TEA

- CHAPTER X THE FAIRY RING

- CHAPTER XI LOVEDAY AND AARON PLAY AT BEING PISKIES

- CHAPTER XII THE PISKIES CAUGHT

- CHAPTER XIII PRISCILLA PAYS A CALL AND TAKES A JOURNEY

- CHAPTER XIV PRISCILLA PAYS ANOTHER CALL

- CHAPTER XV MR. WINTER

- CHAPTER XVI IN WHICH A GREAT MANY THINGS HAPPEN

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE