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Title: Dreamikins
Author: Amy Le Feuvre
Release date: January 7, 2025 [eBook #75057]
Language: English
Original publication: London: The R. T. S. Office, 1918
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DREAMIKINS ***
Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: ANNETTE FOUND DREAMIKINS FAST ASLEEP IN A WHEELBARROW]
DREAMIKINS
BY
AMY LE FEUVRE
AUTHOR OF
"A LITTLE LISTENER," "JILL'S RED BAG,"
"ROBIN'S HERITAGE," ETC.
FANCY and Truth go hand in hand.
How can a "Grown-up" understand!
A Giant faith in a tiny soul;
And a love of fun make up the whole.
LONDON: THE R.T.S. OFFICE
4 BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.4
MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN
TO
MY LITTLE NIECE AND GODCHILD
VYVIAN
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE LITTLE DOOR
II. THE TEA-PARTY
III. DREAMIKINS ARRIVES
IV. THE RETURN VISIT
V. FEEDING THE HUNGRY
VI. THE STRANGERS ARRIVE
VII. FREDA AND DAFFY IN TROUBLE
VIII. A DAY OF NAUGHTINESS
IX. A LITTLE INVALID
X. THE GOVERNESS
XI. A VISIT TO A FARM
XII. THE PRISONER
XIII. A NEW PLAYMATE
XIV. THE FIRE
XV. SEPARATION
DREAMIKINS
CHAPTER I
The Little Door
FREDA and Daffy stood on the edge of a Great Discovery.
Have you ever done it? Then you will know how they felt; how their
small hearts were thumping loudly; how to the tips of their toes and
fingers they were trembling with that wonderful joyful excitement of
the unknown in front of them.
They were just two small girls, very slim, with long legs and short
frocks—holland frocks—smocked across their chests, and they wore limp
sunburnt straw hats which kept the sun out of their eyes, for it was a
very hot day in June.
Freda was the elder of the two; she had red-golden hair, which was
plaited in a long pigtail, and a freckled face, blue eyes, and a
delicate little mouth and nose, with a very round determined chin. She
was always intensely earnest in everything that she did; untiring in
schemes that would unite pleasure with usefulness—as, when she locked
Purling, the old butler, into his pantry, and left him there for an
hour, she told Daffy it would be so good for him to be obliged to sit
still and rest, for he had told her how his legs ached going up and
down stairs; and when Nurse had asked her how she could take pleasure
in being so naughty, she retorted:
"If it rests Purling and pleases me, those are two good things, not
naughty, that I've done!"
Daffy was very fair and fragile-looking. She had a way of dancing along
on the tips of her toes, and darting here and there like a bright
dragon-fly, and seemed to grown-up people as if she tried just to keep
out of their reach. She had a little pale face and soft flaxen hair.
Her eyes were brown, with heavy fringed lashes. She was rarely unhappy,
and treated most things that happened to her in a very calm unruffled
way. Freda was hot-tempered, but nothing upset Daffy's sweetness of
outlook. She was always ready to follow Freda's lead.
The children had only just come to live in their father's big country
house, which had been let for some years, and they could not remember
staying in it before, as they were quite tiny children when they
had done so. Their home was in London. Their father had been a busy
politician, but now had volunteered for the War, and had gone out to
Egypt in the Yeomanry. Their mother loved town and was always busy,
either entertaining company in her own house or enjoying it elsewhere.
The children saw very little of her.
They had all had whooping-cough, and though now quite well, the doctor
advised their mother to send them into the country for the summer;
and as the Hall was empty, the tenant having gone to the War, Mrs.
Harrington sent them there in charge of their old nurse.
Freda and Daffy were delighted with their country home, but a lot of
things about it puzzled them.
It was now about three o'clock in the afternoon. They had explored
every corner in the big gardens surrounding the house. A short time
before, they had wandered along a straight path in a belt of fir-wood,
which had led them, after a long walk, up to a brick wall and a closed
door. The door had evidently not been opened for years; ivy had grown
over it. Of course they immediately wanted to know what was on the
other side. The keyhole was filled with rust and dirt. With the help of
a small pocket-knife Freda cleared it out, then she applied one of her
blue eyes to it and uttered a low cry of ecstasy.
"Oh, Daffy, it's a garden—a lovely one! Oh, such roses! Such flowers!"
"Let me look."
But Daffy had to wait for some minutes before she had her turn at the
keyhole.
"I see a white rabbit on the grass," she said. "Oh, Freda, it's an
enchanted garden! Does it belong to us?"
"It ought to," said Freda, looking at the door with sadness. "This is
our door, Daffy. It has no business to be locked away from us."
"But it's a long way from the house."
"That doesn't matter a bit. The lodge gate is miles away, but it
belongs—"
"Shall we climb over the wall?"
Both children looked up at the old wall above them—a wall that was
fully ten feet high.
"No; but we can follow the wall along till we come to another door.
There must be one for people to get in and out. Come on!"
Through the fir plantation they went, keeping as close to the wall
as they could, though there was a mass of briers and undergrowth for
some distance along that prevented them touching it. Eventually they
squeezed through some wire railings and got out into the open park.
Here a grass-grown ditch was the only obstacle between them and the
wall.
"What a big garden it must be inside!" sighed Daffy.
And then it was that Freda came upon the Great Discovery, and she gave
a little scream as she did so. It was a little green-painted wooden
door only about three feet high. It was on the other side of the ditch.
In a moment both children were over the ditch trying to turn the
handle, and, to their joy and delight, it turned. There was no lock or
bolt, and after a little tugging and pushing they got it open.
"It's like the door in 'Alice in Wonderland!'" gasped Freda. "Oh, look,
Daffy, look! There's somebody there!"
They were kneeling down now with beating hearts. Both heads were close
together, and eyes taking in all that there was to be seen. A garden
indeed, with a cool green lawn, and rose-covered arches, and flowers
of every colour crowding each other out of the beds. In the distance,
a low, grey house with striped green-and-white sun-blinds, and under a
shady tree on the lawn a man in a low hammock chair. He was smoking. He
had cushions under his head, and his feet were resting on a long stool;
but he had an easel in front of him, and he was either painting or
drawing.
"Daffy, let's crawl through! We must! We'll go and ask him who he is."
To speak was to act with Freda. She crammed her battered hat down on
her head and crawled through the little door, Daffy following her. Then
they stood up and advanced along the gravel path.
"This is an adventure!" whispered Daffy.
But Freda, with eager shining eyes, sped along without a word. The man
was too engrossed with his occupation to look up, and it was only when
Freda spoke that he turned wondering eyes upon them.
"Did you leave the door open on purpose? Did you expect us to find
it one day? And will you tell us why it is so little? Is it for the
fairies?"
The man had kind eyes; they saw that at once. He was no ogre or gloomy
hermit. But he looked ill, and they saw that crutches were by his side.
"Ah," he said, "that's my secret, But I didn't have it made for you."
"Why is the gate locked, the proper gate belonging to us?" asked Freda.
Daffy had quietly glided round to the back of his chair.
"Oh!" she said, in her soft little voice. "What a darling little fairy
girl! She's swinging from an apple-tree bough, Freda. Come and see!"
Freda stepped up closer.
"So she is! Who is she?"
"She's my Dreamikins."
"Is she a real little girl, or just a paper one?"
"She's as real as they're made. What a pity she wasn't here to see you
crawling through that little door?"
"Did you see us?"
"Yes, but I pretended not to, so that I shouldn't scare you away."
"Oh, we were much too excited to go back, much!"
"Much!" echoed Daffy from behind. "We never do go back when we're
finding out things."
"May we sit down and talk to you?" asked Freda; but she dropped down
on the grass as she spoke. "We're simply dying to talk to somebody
sensible. I s'pose you know we live the other side of your wall."
The man nodded.
"I guess that. Now we'll play the game properly. You must tell me about
yourselves and I'll tell you about ourselves. Who will begin?"
"You," cried both the little girls at once.
So he began:
"My name is Fibo. That is what Dreamikins calls me, and if we're going
to be friends you can call me so too."
"But you weren't christened Fibo?" said Freda.
"I was christened Augustus Arnold. Do you like that better?"
"Why does she call you Fibo?" inquired Daffy.
She had been dancing up and down lightly on her toes; now she stood
still, and regarded the strange man gravely.
"Dreamikins and I have a way of naming our friends as we like; and I
was Mephibosheth to her—'lame on both feet,' but we shortened it to
Fibo."
Daffy's eyes were full of pity.
"Tell us more," demanded Freda.
He waved his hand behind him.
"There's my house, and it's run by Mr. and Mrs. Daw and their daughter
Carrie. And Drab the cat, and Grinder the dog, and Whiskers the white
rabbit are my family; and I came here ten years ago."
"But Dreamikins—isn't she your family?" asked Freda.
He shook his head.
"She has a father and mother, and a home at Brighton and another in
Scotland, and this is her other home, and the one she likes best.
Dreamikins' mother is my sister. Now you know all about me."
"And we'll tell you about ourselves," said Freda eagerly. "We come from
London, but we don't like it very well, because Dad is in Egypt, and
Mums is doing all kinds of things in London that she never used to do
before the War. And we got the whooping-cough, and Mums thinks we are
too pale, so we've come down here to run wild, she says; but of course
Nurse stops us doing that."
"Did you ever have a nurse?" demanded Daffy suddenly.
"Didn't I! What an old dear she was too!"
"Fancy having a nurse you could call an old dear!"
Freda looked quite shocked.
"Our nurse is the most important person in the whole world. If the King
and Queen were to tell her they wanted to see us, she would say:
"'Not to-day, Your Majesty. When I see fit I will let you know.'"
Daffy gave a little chuckle.
"That's Nurse's favourite saying, 'When I see fit!' She's much more
proud than kings and queens are."
"Yes," Freda went on; "so, you see, Nurse has brought us down here, and
Purling, and Cook, and a few of the others have come too. Mr. Fibo,
what is a 'purse-proud rich'?"
"A rich person who is proud of the money in his purse."
Freda nodded.
"Of course! That ridic'lous, disgusting boy who rides the butcher's
horse had an argyment with me yesterday. I was sitting on the park wall
when he came by, and my legs was—were on the road side, you know. He
said we were that. Why, Daffy and me have never been rich in our lives!
Why, I've only sevenpence and a farthing in my purse now; and how much
have you, Daffy?"
"Fourpence halfpenny," said Daffy promptly; "and a penny belongs to the
missionary box—I mean it has to go there."
"Why, Mr. Fibo, he said something about our big house; but it isn't
our house at all! Daffy and me live in just a bit of it. The front
stairs aren't ours even! Purling says we're not to go near them.
We can't slide down the banisters or tobogg on a tea-tray down the
stairs. You see, it's like this. Dad and Mums are to have all the big
rooms downstairs when they come, and till then they're locked up. The
bedrooms along the big passage belong to the housemaids. They say
they won't have us messing up their rooms. Old Purling lives in the
pantry—that's his part of the house; Mrs. Stilton has all the kitchen
part of the house, and her dear little sitting-room, which she keeps
us out of. And Daffy and me—we just have our day-nursery and our
night-nursery, and the back stairs to go up and down. We're quite poor,
you see. Only two rooms to live in, and those really belong to Nurse,
she says. We haven't a single bit of room our very own."
"Except the corner," said Daffy, with twinkling eyes, "and the
punishment chair."
"Have you ever sat in a chair," questioned Freda, turning her eager
little face towards Fibo, "which is so small in the seat and high in
the legs that you can't bend your back a tiny inch or you'll fall off?"
Fibo threw back his head and laughed aloud.
"We had one in our nursery when I was a boy. It was an heirloom then. I
didn't think one was in existence now."
"Nurse found it in the nursery here. She sucked her lips when she saw
it. She always sucks her lips when she's pleased. And we have to sit on
it for half an hour when we're punished."
"I see that you are very unhappy children," said Fibo gravely; but his
eyes were smiling in spite of his grave face.
Daffy pirouetted on her toes.
"We love it here," she said, "because we can be out of doors all day
finding adventures."
"Like you," put in Freda—"you and this garden and the little door."
"Please let us see your pictures," said Daffy, stealing a little nearer
to the invalid's chair.
He put down his hand and took up a portfolio from the grass.
"I'll show you what I have. They're going into a book very soon."
"Do you make books?"
"No, only the pictures in them."
They hung over his chair in rapt enjoyment of all he showed them.
There were fairies dancing and playing hide-and-seek amongst beautiful
flowers, lying asleep under ferns and toadstools, climbing along
a rainbow to get the pot of gold at the other end, and tickling
children's cheeks with their tiny fingers as they lay asleep in their
cots. There were dogs and cats, all going through wonderful adventures;
and in nearly every picture there was a reproduction of Dreamikins.
Daffy eagerly looked out for her, and when he turned over a sheet which
showed her standing bareheaded with hair flying in the wind on the top
of a hill, and hands stretched out upwards, Daffy exclaimed:
"I like that. Oh, I wish I had a picture like that! What is she doing?"
Fibo pointed to words printed underneath:
"I don't like earth, I want heaven!"
"Did she really say that?" asked Freda wonderingly.
"Yes, when her mother had punished her for running away."
Fibo smiled at the recollection as he spoke. Then he put the sketch
into Daffy's hand.
"You can have it if you want it. This is only a copy. I have the
original."
Daffy took the picture with a radiant face, then, with a quick little
dart, she bent her head and kissed, as lightly as a butterfly might,
the back of Fibo's right hand.
"That is my 'thank you' to the hand that did it!" she said.
Freda's gaze had wandered away from the sketches to the flowers.
"What lovely flowers you have! It looks like an enchanted garden. We
have no flowers like these. Does Dreamikins pick them when she comes to
stay with you?
"Yes; she knows all their histories, and which of them the fairies love
best."
"Ah," said Daffy, with her cooing little laugh, "you believe in
fairies! So do Freda and me, since we saw 'Peter Pan' in London, and
I used to before when I was quite a baby. Nurse doesn't. She doesn't
believe in any of the nice things, only in doses of medicines,
and punishment, and bringing us up like 'little ladies' and 'good
Christians.' I hate ladies and Freda hates good Christians, so Nurse
and we argify about them."
"Oh, but I believe—heart and soul—in good Christians," said Fibo,
leaning his head back and looking at Daffy with a kind smile; "what I
don't believe in, are bad ones!"
"But I 'spect your good Christians are nicer than Nurse's. Why, I
shouldn't wonder if you were one yourself!"
"Will Freda hate me if I am? But I can truthfully say I'm not a good
one, only I have a try, and a hard try too, in that direction."
"How did you hurt your legs?" asked Freda quickly, wishing to change
the conversation. "We want to know such a lot of things, and if we
don't go back soon Nurse will be coming after us."
"Oh, how could she?" chuckled Daffy. "Why, I'm sure that Fibo made a
little door like that on purpose to keep out nurses."
"Well now, I'll tell you about it. First about my legs. They were shot
in the Boer War—that was before you were born, so, you see, I've had
plenty of time to get accustomed to do without them. I came down to
live here with my sister after my smash up, and then she got married
and went away, and I liked my garden so much that I stayed on here."
"All alone?" said Daffy, with pity in her eyes.
"I wasn't very long alone. My sister soon brought Dreamikins to me, and
she spends part of every year now with me. My sister promised me that
I should share Dreamikins before she came into this world. She did not
like leaving me to get married, but now she doesn't like leaving her
husband to come and see me, and that's quite proper, you know. Well
now, about the little door. Of course Dreamikins made me make it. She
wanted to go out adventure-seeking in your park, and didn't want her
nurse to come after her. So we made it nice and small."
"How lovely!" cried Freda. "But isn't it funny that Dreamikins should
want to get out of this lovely garden when we want to get into it! When
is she coming to see you again? Soon?"
"Not very soon."
"Then will you have us instead of her, and let us come in and out
whenever we like?"
"Whenever you like," Fibo said at once.
"I'm afraid we shall have to be going," Freda said uneasily. "It will
be tea-time. It always is tea-time when we want to enjoy ourselves."
"Run along, and get Nurse in a good temper, and then tell her where
you've been. Everything must be above-board!"
The children said good-bye. Daffy danced backwards down the path,
kissing her hand to him, then he called out:
"Pick a flower to take away with you, and give it to Nurse from me."
Freda stooped over a pink rose-bush.
"I'll pick the very biggest, and we'll make Nurse keep it on the table
where we can smell it."
Daffy flitted from bed to bed, unable to make a selection. At last she
picked a white Madonna lily.
Then they called out their thanks, and crept through the little green
door. When they were once outside, they ran as fast as they could back
to the house, and as they ran, Freda said:
"We've made a friend, Daffy,—quite a new one,—and we'll have him all
the time we're here. I think it's been splendid!"
"Yes," said Daffy breathlessly; "if Nurse lets us keep him. But we can
tell her that he's a grown-up, and won't lead us into mischief. And
he's a cripple, and I believe Nurse's sister's husband's cousin is a
cripple, so she ought to feel sorry."
A maid was ringing the big tea-bell out of the nursery window. They
panted up the stairs, and Nurse met them at the nursery door.
"Where have you been all this time? Jane, make them tidy for tea at
once. Master Bertie is ready."
She was fat and comfortable looking. In sickness or trouble, Nurse's
lap was a perfect haven; but she had old-fashioned ideas of training
children, and her training was Spartan-like in its severity.
Freda and Daffy were soon back in the nursery. It was a
pleasant-looking room when the sun shone in at the windows. It was
large and square, with dark oak-panelled walls and a low ceiling. Three
windows looked into the park, and they had a view of the little village
beyond clustering round an old square-towered church. Nurse was sitting
in her big chair behind the tea-tray. The table was round. Bertie
was in his high chair next Nurse. Freda and Daffy slipped into their
chairs, then both held out their flowers to Nurse. Their faces were
anxious as they did it. So much depended upon how she received their
news!
CHAPTER II
The Tea-Party
"A VERY nice gentleman gave us these to give you, Nurse," said Freda.
"He's so ill, poor man!" sighed Daffy. "Just like your relation, Nurse.
He made me think of him."
"Have you been worrying Mr. Trimmer?" asked Nurse, taking the rose from
Freda's hand and sniffing it thoughtfully.
Mr. Trimmer was the head gardener. The children shook their heads.
"Oh dear no! Mr. Trimmer isn't without legs, and he chases us away
from the greenhouses whenever he sees us," said Daffy. "Smell my lily,
Nurse. He told us to choose any flower we liked for you."
"Now just speak up straight, and tell me what you've been doing."
Nurse eyed them sternly.
They told their story breathlessly, each interrupting the other in
their anxiety to appease Nurse's gathering wrath.
"You mean to tell me you pushed yourselves into a strange garden, and
spoke to a strange gentleman without any one's permission? Where do
you get your forwardness, I wonder! In my day children would have died
rather than behaved so."
Freda and Daffy were silent. Nurse scolded on, and then Daffy looked at
her very sweetly:
"A poor, sick soldier, all alone, Nurse! And he has a little niece
he loves, and she isn't there to comfort him, and he loves good
Christians, and tries to be one himself. We told him you tried to make
us into them, and he sent you these flowers, and hopes you'll let us go
to see him again. I think you'd like him very much if you saw him, and
I know he'd like you. And this is his little niece!"
Daffy held out her precious sketch.
Nurse took it, put on her spectacles, and read the words underneath:
"I don't like earth, I want heaven!"
"You see how good she is," put in Daffy persuasively.
Nurse gave a kind of grunt. Bertie, who had been silently listening to
the conversation, now spoke.
"Me see, Nurse; me see the 'lickle girl."
"There, my lambkin, look!"
Nurse held it out to him with softened voice.
"I'll say this much, he's a clever painter. He'll be Captain Arnold,
that took the Dower House some years back."
"What's the Dower House? And why has it a gate into our garden?"
"Why, it belongs to your father, of course. His mother lived and died
there—your grandmother that was; but as it won't be wanted for a long
time yet 'twas let. There was a Miss Arnold; your mother visited her."
"She's married. Oh, Nurse, if Mums knows them, I'm sure we may go and
see him."
"Him! Is that the way to speak of a gentleman?"
"Then does the house really belong to father?" questioned Freda. "What
does he want two houses for?"
"When Master Bertie grows up, bless his soul! and brings his wife
here,—your father being no longer here,—then the Dower House would be
ready for your mother to live in!"
"But, Nurse, how interessing!" exclaimed Freda eagerly. "Where would we
live—with Bertie or with Mums?"
"You'd go with your mother, of course. This is your brother's house,
not yours, if anything happened to your father. But there! Dear knows
why I'm talking in such fashion. We'll hope that your father will live
to a ripe old age. There's no call to be talking of his death!"
Nurse relapsed into silence. Freda's busy brain worked away.
"Why should Bertie live here and not us?" she demanded presently. "He's
much littler than us!"
"He's a boy, and the heir," said Nurse importantly; "you're only girls."
Freda pouted, then she made a grimace at Bertie across the table, and
he returned it promptly.
But Daffy's eyes were shining.
"Oh, think of it, Freda! One day we shall live in that lovely garden,
and Bertie will be outside! We must let him come in and see us
sometimes through the little door. And we shall keep dozens of white
rabbits, and pick flowers whenever we like. I'd much rather live there
than here, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, much; only, then, what will Fibo do?"
"We mustn't send him away. Oh, I'm sure we shall all squeeze in
together beautifully. We must tell him about it and see what he says."
"But it won't happen for ever so long," said Freda regretfully; "and
how awful of us wanting it to, for Nurse says Dad will have to die to
let us live there."
Daffy looked horrified. Then with a bound she came back to the subject
in hand.
"So, Nurse, if we're very good, can we go into that garden again? He
wants us to come; he said whenever we like we could come to him."
"You'll go nowhere and see nobody unless you're asked properly and I'm
with you," said Nurse sharply.
Freda and Daffy looked at each other with agonised eyes, but said no
more. When tea was over, Nurse said she was going to take them for
a walk. And in half an hour's time the three children were walking
sedately along the country road which led to the village.
Freda and Daffy, walking a little in advance of Nurse, were able to
talk together without being overheard.
"I shall write him a letter, Daffy, and ask him to write to Nurse and
ask us."
"Or a wire," suggested Daffy joyfully. "Mums always asks people to tea
by wires or the telephone."
"We haven't a telephone here, but there's a post office in the village.
Oh, Daffy, could one of us creep in and send a wire?"
"It's a lot of money, Freda. Wouldn't a letter do?"
"Better still," said Freda excitedly; "we'll send a message—we'll get
somebody to take a message. We'll find some one when we get to the
village. Nurse said she was going to buy some stamps."
So, full of hope, the little girls walked on, and the village was soon
reached. The post office was next to the general shop, and when Nurse
went into the post office, Freda asked if she and Daffy could buy some
sweets next door. Nurse gave the required permission, and they dashed
in. Daffy produced her purse and began choosing her sweets; Freda
eagerly turned to the stout smiling woman behind the counter.
"Do you send any of your loaves or tea or veg'tables to the Dower
House?"
"Yes, dearie, very often. Mrs. Daw has all her soap and soda and
such-like from us. My Willie is going up this evening with a tin of
paraffin."
"Oh, please, will you get him to take a message from us to—to—is he
Captain Arnold?"
"Yes, that's his name, poor gentleman. Such a pleasant-spoken gent he
be, too!"
"Oh, please," went on Freda, with feverish haste, "could you give me a
little piece of paper and pencil, just to write the message on?"
"Surely I will, and my Willie will take it with the greatest pleasure."
Paper and pencil were produced. Freda wrote laboriously:
"Plese ask Nurse perlitely to let us come and see you, but not her,
she wants to come with us. And we wood like to come to morowe.—FREDA and
DAFFY."
They had plenty of time to do what they wanted, for Nurse liked a
little gossip sometimes, and Mrs. Vidler at the post office was an old
friend of hers.
They came out of the shop delighted with their success. Daffy had two
pennyworth of mixed sweets, and Freda, who was always just, gave her a
penny from her own purse as her share of the purchase.
"Now he'll write a proper invitation, and Nurse will have to say 'Yes.'"
They were very happy for the rest of that evening, and when the postman
came to the house the next morning, and Jane brought up a letter for
Nurse, they looked at each other with shining eyes. How quick and
prompt he had been! Nurse read her letter through in silence. They
anxiously waited for her to speak, but when she did, it was to scold
Bertie for spilling his milk, and the little girls were afraid to ask
her any questions.
"If she gets cross she won't let us go," said Freda; "we'll be as good
as gold till dinner-time."
"If we can," said Daffy doubtfully.
In London they had had two hours' lessons every morning with a daily
governess; but to have nothing to do here, and knowing that their
mother expected them to "run wild," was the way, they felt, to lead
them into scrapes.
Nurse turned them all three into the garden after breakfast, but told
them not to go out of sight of the house.
"What shall we play at?" asked Daffy.
Freda was never at a loss for games. Red Indians, pirates, gipsies,
bandits had all served their turn. Now, when war was on, German spies,
escaped prisoners, submarines, and air machines were what interested
them most. The result was that, an hour later, Nurse came out to find
Daffy up an oak-tree near the shrubbery, the oak being her flying
machine. Freda was dragging a big sack down to the pond, but Bertie,
inside the sack, was howling and kicking, and so gave the show away.
When Nurse freed him, she found him covered with red earth, and her
wrath was great.
"He's a spy. I didn't know the sack was dirty. I got it from the
potting shed. He went out of sight of the house when he was hiding.
Daffy went up in her flying machine and told me where to find him."
"I won't be dwowned!" shouted Bertie. "And you was smothercating me!"
Nurse called Daffy down from the tree. She had torn her frock, and had
a large hole in the knee of her stocking.
"You would try the patience of Job," said Nurse, marching them up into
the nursery. "It seems quite impossible for you to play as little
ladies should. You make Master Bertie as naughty as yourselves. I shall
have to give him a bath, and you will both sit for half an hour on your
chairs for punishment."
The punishment chairs were placed in opposite corners of the nursery,
and Freda and Daffy took possession of them with their faces towards
the wall.
Freda was hot and angry, and kicked her legs to and fro. Daffy was
absolutely unruffled.
"Never mind, Freda," she said comfortingly, when Nurse had left the
room, "we had a glorious game. And I've left my handkercher up in my
air machine, so I shall have to go up and get it as soon as ever I get
off this chair. Oh, don't you wish we could live up in trees like the
birds? I do."
"I should like to see Nurse having to climb a tall fir-tree every night
to get to her nest," said Freda, with malice in her tone. "And I should
like her nest to be made of holly. It would serve her right!"
Daffy chuckled with laughter.
"And now, of course," Freda went on gloomily, "she won't let us go and
see Fibo this afternoon. Nothing could have turned out worse. I don't
know why our games always do!"
"It's Satan, I suppose," said Daffy placidly. "Nurse says it's him who
makes us get into scrapes."
Then they were silent. The nursery seemed oppressively warm this
morning. Presently Nurse returned. Jane was with Bertie.
"I don't really think I shall let you go now," said Nurse. "I've had an
invitation for you to go to tea with Captain Arnold this afternoon, and
if you had been good—"
A wail from both chairs interrupted her.
"It isn't as if we really had made up our minds to be wicked," pleaded
Freda. "Dirt and holes aren't wicked, and we didn't mean them to come
on us!"
"And we're being punished now, Nurse. You can't punish us twice the
same day for the same thing!"
"Stop argufying at once," said Nurse sternly. "I punish you for your
good, not because it pleases me. Why can't I turn you out into the
garden without your rampaging about like wild beasts, and tearing and
destroying everything you possess!"
"If you let us go to tea with Captain Arnold, we promise to come home
cleaner than when we went!" Freda rashly asserted.
Nurse gave a sniff.
"That you couldn't do, if you pass through my hands before you go."
The little girls were silent. They fancied Nurse was relenting, and
wisely sat still on their chairs without even kicking their feet till
their half-hour was up.
When dinner-time came, Nurse told them she was going to let them go;
and at four o'clock two daintily dressed little maidens in soft white
silk frocks and shady straw hats walked sedately along by Nurse's side
to the Dower House.
There was no hope of being allowed to crawl in at the entrancing little
door to-day. They went down the avenue, out by the lodge gates, along
the road until they came to some high green wooden gates in the big
wall. Then they walked up a short broad drive with shrubberies on each
side, and reached the front of the house.
A pleasant-looking maid opened the door.
"I have brought the young ladies," said Nurse, in a very superior tone,
"and I hope they will behave nicely as they should. I will send the
nurserymaid for them at seven o'clock. That is the time mentioned."
Then she went away, and the children crossed a wide hall with a black
beam across it, and to this beam was suspended a child's swing.
"Dreamikins!" whispered Daffy as she passed.
Then they went through a glass door to the garden, and found Fibo
expecting them. He was in his chair under the trees, but he was not
drawing; he was smoking his pipe and reading a newspaper. He greeted
them with a smile.
"Very pleased to see you. The letter worked all right, didn't it?"
"Yes," said Freda. "It was very nearly a miss though, for we got our
clothes in a mess this morning. It's so impossibly difficult to keep
clean if you're enjoying yourself."
"We must all try hard this afternoon, or you won't be allowed to come
and see me again."
The little girls' tongues wagged fast, they seemed to have so much to
tell him—all about the Dower House one day becoming their home, and how
Bertie was going to turn them out.
"I can't imagine him daring to do it," said Daffy reflectively. "Why,
he's so small, we can do anything to him now. He quite looks up to us,
and of course we make him do whatever we tell him. I don't see how
he'll ever be so beastly as to tell Mums and us to go out of the house."
"I shouldn't worry about that. Perhaps you'll be queens in castles of
your own by that time."
"Yes," said Freda eagerly, with shining eyes; "that's just it.
Anything—anything might happen. Such crowds of beautiful things are in
front of us!"
"My next beautiful thing is to see Dreamikins," said Daffy softly.
"When do you think she'll come?"
"Ah!" said Fibo. "I've heard. One day next week; then we'll have a
golden time."
"What day?"
"That's her secret. I am never told. We get ready for her, and she just
walks in and surprises me. We always do it like that."
"How lovely! And does she come by herself?"
"Annette brings her."
"Who's Annette?"
"Her nurse. She's French. Dreamikins is very fond of her. Her mother
thought she would learn French from her, but I am afraid Annette is too
fond of English. She speaks it very well."
Freda and Daffy looked a little awed.
"Mums has a French maid, but we don't like her, and Nurse doesn't
either. She says she's a heathen. She goes to Mass!"
"You aren't painting pictures to-day," Daffy said, rather reprovingly.
"No; I'm giving my hands a rest. I'm looking at pictures, and not
painting them."
Daffy gazed into his eyes reflectively.
"I wonder what pictures you're looking at," she said. "You seem looking
at the sky. Don't you often wish we could get nearer to heaven?"
"No; it's best to be a good way off. It would be like a hungry child
gazing through the window into a baker's shop."
"But I should like to do that," said Freda quickly, "because if you
can't get things, the next best thing is to pretend you have them; and
sometimes in London, when Nurse let us, Daffy and me would pretend to
have a feast outside a cake shop. I would ask her to taste some cakes,
and she would offer me some tarts, and we would say how they tasted;
and really, sometimes I fancied they were right inside my mouth."
Fibo nodded in a very understanding way. Daffy was gazing up into the
sky. Then she gave an angelic smile.
"Freda and I used not to like heaven much; God used to frighten us. But
we're much fonder of Him now, aren't we, Freda?"
"Yes, since last Sunday."
Freda's eyes began to twinkle. Then she gave a little chuckle.
"We went to church in the morning, Fibo. May we tell you? It was very
hot and long, and nothing interessing until the Psalms came. And then
I found out one of Nurse's big mistakes. She always hushes us when
we're near a church, or saying our prayers, or anywhere near God. You
know what I mean? She makes out that God likes us to be whispering; and
on Sunday we have to be so quiet that it quite tires us out. It's the
longest day that was ever made. Well, we and the clergyman were saying
the Psalms, one against the other, and he began, 'Sing we merrily unto
God our strength, make a cheerful noise.' Now the Psalms are quite
true, aren't they? They're in the Bible."
Fibo nodded. Freda was speaking with breathless eagerness.
"So I told Daffy about it when we got home, and she wouldn't quite
believe it. So she got her Bible and found the Psalms, to see if I
was right, and somehow she didn't find the same verse, but she found
a better one still. It was, 'Make a joyful noise unto the Lord—make a
loud noise.'"
She paused.
"Well?" said Fibo inquiringly.
"Well, we did it! We shut the nursery door and we did it! We did all
three—the cheerful noise, and the joyful noise, and the loud noise. And
Nurse was downstairs; but, of course, she came up, and she was furious!
We told her God had told us to do it, and He liked it, and we've been
glad ever since that He does; but Nurse made out it was all wrong. Now
she can't go against the Bible."
Daffy's face was twinkling all over.
"We did do it!" she said. "We yelled and stamped and shouted. I'm sure
we must have been heard from one end of heaven to the other!"
"I wish I'd been there," said Fibo.
"You aren't shocked at noise, are you? Does Dreamikins like to make a
noise?"
"Sometimes."
They went on talking, and then tea was brought out under the trees; and
Drab, a soft grey cat, and Grinder, a fox-terrier, and Whiskers, the
white rabbit, joined them. The little girls thought it was the most
delicious tea they had ever eaten, the cakes were so fresh, and there
were strawberries and cream; and after it was over, Grinder and Drab
and Whiskers all had a gambol together upon the lawn. Of course Freda
and Daffy joined them; and when they were all rolling about on the
grass together, Fibo took out his sketch-book, and made a rapid sketch
of them. He wrote underneath it, "My Tea-party," and when Freda and
Daffy saw it they were delighted.
"But promise you'll never show it to Nurse. She would think it awful of
us!"
"I think I shall have to talk to Nurse. Is it her legs, do you think,
that make her want yours to be as stiff as they are? Or is it her head?
What a pity she couldn't have a bit of her altered! Like this!"
Then he drew Nurse's heavy body, with a little, laughing, curly head
on the top of it; and then her head, on a tiny, short-frocked child's
body, and the child was dancing.
"Which nurse of these two would you like best?" he asked.
The children were enchanted. But after a minute or two, Daffy said
gravely:
"I think p'raps Nurse had better be left as she is. I shouldn't like
that laughing, curly head when I had a pain; and if she had those
dancing legs, how quick she would run after us when we didn't want her
to!"
"Yes," said Fibo, smiling; "I think God knew how to make a nurse when
He did it. We can't improve upon her."
When Jane came for them they were very loath to go.
Freda said anxiously:
"You don't think that we asked ourselves to tea, did you? We never
thought of that; only we were despairing that we should never see you
again."
"And we hope," said Daffy softly, "that Nurse will let us come and see
you our own way another day, through that dear little door. It's such
an adventure!"
"And then we won't have our best frocks on, and can romp all over the
place," added Freda.
Fibo assured them they could come through that door any day and every
day they liked; and they walked home with Jane, feeling that a very
good time was in front of them.
CHAPTER III
Dreamikins Arrives
FIBO let his newspaper drop on the grass with a little sigh. It was
hard to read of the big War raging in Flanders, and to know the need
of every man in England to be taking his part in it, and yet to feel
himself out of it all. "Might as well be dead," he muttered, and then
he shook his head at his discontented self.
It was a very hot afternoon, and he had a headache. Grinder lay on his
side panting, with his tongue well out; he was half-asleep. Suddenly
every hair bristled on his back, and he darted off to the house.
"Hears the advent of his enemy, the butcher boy," Fibo said to himself
languidly.
Was it the pattering of leaves from the tree above that he heard behind
him? Suddenly two soft little velvet arms were round his neck. A warm
rose-bud of a mouth was kissing his ear.
"Here I are, Fibo!"
Such a light and gladness came into Fibo's face. In another moment he
had dragged his small niece round where he could see her.
Dreamikins was always a pretty sight. To-day her golden curls, her fair
dainty face with its big blue eyes and long-curled black lashes, her
graceful little figure in its dainty white muslin hat and frock, and
her white socks and shoes, seemed in his eyes to shine with extra glory.
"You're just in time," Fibo said gravely, "to save your Uncle Fibo from
turning into a growling grizzly bear."
"I'm never just too late, are I?" said Dreamikins, dancing up and down
before him in ecstasy.
Dreamikins' grammar was shocking; her uncle never tried to improve it.
"Any news?" asked Fibo carelessly.
That was the question Dreamikins always liked to be asked when she had
been away from him.
Her eyes looked big and solemn. She clasped her two tiny hands,
pressing her finger-tips together, as she did when in terrible earnest
about anything.
"The news this time is good, Fibo. You'll be surprised to hear that
Blacky left me, 'bout two weeks ago. I felt quite alone and mis'able,
and then God gave me a darling little angel Cherubine. She plays with
me all day long, and whispers all night, unless I'm asleep, you know.
And she helps me to be good, you know. I told her how Blacky helped me
to be wicked. I reely got quite tarred of fighting, fighting him all
day long; and Cherubine doesn't put anything wicked into my head at
all."
"Then my naughty scamp is no more, and I have an angel niece," said
Fibo, looking at her reflectively. "I should think Annette doesn't know
herself."
"Well, I aren't exackly an angel yet—not like Cherubine. Would you like
to speak to her, Fibo? She's rather shy, and she gene'lly gets behind
me."
Fibo had made acquaintance with a good many personalities who
accompanied Dreamikins upon her visits to him. The first one was Old
Man Sol. When Dreamikins was three she talked about him. He seemed
rather a harmless old soul, but a great comfort to Dreamikins. She
sometimes called her nurse after she had been put into her cot at
night, because Old Man Sol wanted to be kissed, or tucked up tighter.
She always talked hard to him, and he always helped her in her games.
By and by he faded away, and a shadowy, indescribable Pollybill took
his place. Dreamikins was absolutely happy with this creation of hers.
"Is it a she or a he?" Fibo asked one day.
"It isn't neither," said Dreamikins triumphantly.
"Oh, an 'it,' is it?"
But Dreamikins shook her head. "Pollybill is only Pollybill, and nuffin
else at all. I call Pollybill 'you.'"
"What does 'you' look like?"
"Pollybill has a kitty's eyes, big and round, no cloves, only soft
hair, and can be very little and very big, just what I want. And
Pollybill always says 'Yes' to me, never 'No.'"
Dreamikins could describe this individual no better, and Fibo was
rather glad when Pollybill departed. Then came two or three fairies
and sprites, but none of them ever stayed with her long. Blacky was
a Pixie. He had a long innings, and Dreamikins found him a lovely
scapegoat for all her mischievous propensities.
"I 'sure you it was Blacky made me do it. He pushed me into it, and I
foughted him till I was tarred out."
She had brought Blacky with her to Fibo on her last visit, and he was
glad to think that he had gone for good.
"I'm very glad to welcome you to my house, Cherubine," said Fibo quite
gravely, "and I hope you're going to make a long stay with us."
Dreamikins put her head on one side as if listening to somebody.
"She says she likes me so much, Fibo, that she's going to stay with me
till she takes me to heaven."
"I hope that you and she will grow old together, then," said Fibo.
Dreamikins looked quite shocked.
"Oh, Fibo dear, angels never grow! I'll tell you a little more about
her. Mummy told me I had a guardian angel, so she said I didn't want
any of my 'make ups.' Mummy doesn't unnerstand like you; she always
calls them 'make ups.' So I thought about it a lot, and God told me He
wanted me to be good. It makes Him so uncomfor'ble when I'm naughty. So
I asked Him didn't He think He could send me a darling little angel to
take care of me, instead of the grave grown-up one that always hangs
over children in beds. I asked Him to try to do it, because I must have
somebody to play with. And He said He'd lend me Cherubine. And she
came down, and tucked her wings under my pillow, and kissed me, and we
sleeps together, and when I wake she wakes. And now, please, may I show
her Whiskers? And oh, Fibo dear, are you very glad to see us?"
"Yes, I truly am; and I have a surprise for you. I can keep secrets as
well as you."
Dreamikins danced up and down on her toes.
"Tell us. We're simply dying to hear!"
"I have two real little girls for you to play with."
"Oh, Fibo!"
Dreamikins stopped dancing. She could hardly believe such good news.
"Where? Whose are they?"
"They're not in my pocket," said Fibo, laughing; "but one fine
afternoon your little door opened, and in they crawled from the park."
"Real little girls?"
"Real. They're bigger than you; and they live in the old Hall."
"In the big shut up house? And what's their names?"
"I call them E.E. and B.B.—Elusive Elf and Busy Brain."
Dreamikins nodded approvingly. Then she promptly seated herself on her
uncle's knees.
"Now," she said, with raised finger, "begin at the very first
beginning, and tell me all about them."
Fibo meekly obeyed her. They were talking hard when Annette appeared to
ask if Dreamikins would come in to tea.
"I'm going to have it with Fibo."
"But there's an egg for you," said Annette—"a little brown egg produced
only this morning by Madame Daw from the fat white hen. She has eaten
nothing—not a little morsel, Captain—since her early breakfast. Her
tongue only loves to talk, never to eat."
Dreamikins knitted her brows, then she grandly waved Annette away.
"The egg can come here," she said; "I'm not going to the egg."
Fibo looked at Annette, then at Dreamikins.
"Cherubine," he said slowly, "will you take Dreamikins in to her tea?
I'm not having mine till an hour later, and her body wants some food if
her brain does not."
Dreamikins opened her lips, then shut them tightly. She slipped off her
uncle's knee.
"Just this once," she said, "I'll go; but Cherubine lives without
eating, and she needn't try to make me."
"But you always eat when you come here," said Fibo cheerfully. "And
to-morrow we'll have tea in the garden together, and perhaps we'll have
B.B. and E.E."
"You're a very C.O.," said Dreamikins, laughing, and then she danced
away to the house. Fibo and she had many names they called each other,
and C.O. meant Cunning Ogre.
So the next day Freda and Daffy received an invitation to tea. It came
in a big envelope, and inside was a sketch of Dreamikins dancing up and
down.
"The pleasure of Miss Freda's and Miss Daffy's company is requested
at four o'clock upon the Dower House lawn.
"R.S.V.P.
"N.B.C."
"What does 'N.B.C.' mean?" questioned Nurse, looking at the note
suspiciously through her spectacles.
Freda responded promptly:
"No best clothes! Fibo hates best clothes, and so do we. He's very fond
of 'N.B.C.'"
"Dreamikins has come," said Daffy, with shining eyes. "The postman told
me she came yesterday. Nurse, can we ask Dreamikins to tea one day? We
must ask her back."
"'Tis to be hoped she's not so queer as her name," said Nurse grimly.
"If she be proper behaved I won't go against it."
Freda and Daffy were punctual to the moment. They were obliged to
go round the front way, for Nurse accompanied them to the door; but
Dreamikins had been watching for them and came running to meet them.
She did not seem afraid of Nurse's grimness, but held out her small
hand.
"How do you do? Will you come to tea too? Are you the governess?"
"I'm the young ladies' nurse," said Nurse, in her grand tone. But she
was rather pleased at being taken for a governess.
"No, I'll not come in, thank you; and, Miss Freda and Miss Daffy,
you're to be good children, and I shall expect you back at seven. Jane
will come for you."
She turned away and left them.
Dreamikins stood confronting them for a moment in silence. Then she
smiled seraphically:
"Cherubine and me like you awfully much. Do you think you shall like
us?"
"Fibo said we would," said Daffy cautiously; but Freda caught hold of
Dreamikins' hand.
"If you can play pretence games we'll just love you," she said with
enthusiasm.
Dreamikins led them out into the garden, and for the next hour they
played together. Fibo said he wanted to read, and he would talk to them
later. When tea came out under the shady trees, the three little girls
seemed quite tired and exhausted enough to enjoy the rest.
"We've been through the door into the Wilderness," said Dreamikins,
"we've hunted boars and tigers, and rescued just a few Ogre's
prisoners. And I can run the fastest, but Freda is the strongest, and
Daffy can jump the highest."
They all chattered together as if they had been friends all their lives.
Once Dreamikins got grave.
"We didn't have any soldier fighting, Fibo. Mummy made me promise not
to be playing that. And Cherubine cries when people hurt each other.
She says they never hurt each other in heaven. They don't even scratch
the skin on their knees when they tumble down."
"I suppose they don't have stones," said Daffy thoughtfully.
"The stones are quite soft and velvety," said Dreamikins quickly; "and
sometimes you can eat them; they're sweets, you know."
"That's fairyland," objected Freda. "The Bible doesn't say anything
about sweets."
"No; the streets are paved with gold," said Daffy.
"Nice to slide along on," said Dreamikins contentedly.
Her uncle laughed.
"Oh, you Babes!" he exclaimed.
Dreamikins admonished him with her small finger.
"Don't be a P.D., Fibo. We're not babes—not in the least!"
"What's a P.D.?" asked Daffy curiously.
"Proud Dog!" said Dreamikins. "He's always a P.D. when he calls me a
'Babe.'"
Then she said with a sudden change of tone:
"And now let's talk about the War, Fibo. Cherubine is just having a
nice little nap, so we needn't mind her feelings."
"Anything but that, Dreamikins," said her uncle gravely. "I thank God
daily you little ones are kept in peace and safety."
"We don't talk about it much," said Freda. "Nurse says horrors are
not for nurseries. But Daffy and me want to know what will happen if
everybody kills everybody. Who'll be the soldiers then?"
"God won't let all the peoples be killed," said Dreamikins. "It will
crowd up heaven so all at once, and make it so stuffy!"
Freda and Daffy were not yet accustomed to Dreamikins' speeches. They
stared at her in wonder. Then Daffy ventured to put her right.
"Do you think heaven is a little place? It stretches and stretches like
elastic, and the more people go in the bigger it gets."
Dreamikins' blue eyes looked past Daffy as if she had not heard her.
"And of course if all the men did get killed, the women would go and
finish the War, wouldn't they, Fibo? Mummy would—she wants to be there
now, and I'd get a lovely gun and go with her."
"Oh, you modern child! Leave the War alone," said her uncle. "Let us
talk of Whiskers, or Pixies, or anything but the Bad Bit of Life which
is with us."
"Tell us one of your stories—not a arrygory, because I have to find the
meaning, and it spoils it."
So the little girls settled down, and Fibo told them a wonderful,
nonsensical story about a fat giant with a cough, who was afraid of his
wife and tried to hide his wicked deeds from her, only his cough always
betrayed him. And they listened breathlessly, and when he had finished,
Freda gave a long sigh.
"You are a beautiful story-teller. I could listen all night."
"Yes," said Dreamikins proudly; "Fibo has got a big bump in his head,
he says, which is bigger than other people's, and a little fairy lives
inside it who whispers these stories to him. Sometimes she goes to
sleep, and he can't wake her, and then he says he can't make up stories
by himself, which is a pity."
"Dreamikins is exhausting in her demands," said Fibo. "The more she
hears the more she wants to hear. My poor tongue aches with its
constant wagging."
When seven o'clock came, and Jane appeared, Freda gave a groan.
"I could stay here for ever; couldn't you, Daffy?"
Daffy nodded.
"Yes, even if we had nothing to eat," she said.
And Fibo looked at her with his funny little smile.
"That's a great compliment to Dreamikins and me," he said.
Dreamikins was already arranging in a rapid whisper with Freda a time
of meeting in the park the next day.
"I shall come through the little door," she said, "and we'll all go
wild; shall we?"
Then she added impressively:
"I shall tell Cherubine she mustn't stop us before it's really time."
"What do you mean?" asked Freda.
"Well, before we're really wicked. You see, she has to keep me good.
God sent her to do it."
"Oh!"
Freda looked doubtful. Then her brow cleared.
"She hasn't anything to do with Daffy and me. She can't stop us."
Dreamikins looked at her thoughtfully, but said no more. They kissed
each other, and the sisters walked home feeling they had a new friend.
CHAPTER IV
The Return Visit
"IT'S too bad, she won't come!"
Freda stood at the nursery window with Daffy. Their noses were
flattened against the panes, and they were gazing disconsolately down
the beech avenue.
It was raining fast, softly, persistently, and it did not mean to stop,
even though Dreamikins had been asked to tea, and it was now four
o'clock. Tea was laid on the round table in the nursery. Freda and
Daffy had inspected it very critically when Nurse was out of the room
washing Bertie's face and hands and putting him into a clean holland
suit in honour of the occasion.
There was a big currant cake in the centre of the table, some
strawberry jam, and a large plate of cut bread-and-butter.
"I should like one of Mum's teas," said Daffy, with a sigh, "with
sangwiches, and hot tea-cakes, and sugar-iced cakes, and chocolates. I
would like Dreamikins to think we had very nice teas."
"And tea in the garden is so much nicer than in a room," sighed Freda.
"But she wouldn't have tea in the garden to-day," said Daffy.
Then they went to the window to watch for her coming. It was Nurse who
told them she was sure she would not come, and now they had begun to
believe it.
Bertie came up to them, and stretched up on tiptoes to see too.
"There's a b'llella!" he suddenly announced.
And, sure enough, his quick eyes had discovered the big umbrella first.
It was waving about rather uncertainly, and two tiny legs and feet were
underneath it.
"She's coming, Nurse! And all by herself Dreamikins is allowed to come
out to tea alone."
They rushed out of the room and down the stairs to meet her. They found
her in the front hail, and Purling, the old butler, was taking her wet
umbrella from her.
"She's come in at the front door!" said Daffy, in awed tones.
Dreamikins looked up at them with her radiant smile.
"Did you come all by yourself?" asked Freda.
Dreamikins opened her lips quickly, then shut them tight, and waited
quite a moment before she spoke.
"I was just going to say 'Yes,'" she said. "I wanted to say it, but
Cherubine pinched me, so I knew I mustn't. Annette brought me to the
gate and then I got her to leave me."
"Where did Cherubine pinch you?" asked Daffy curiously.
"Oh, just inside my heart," Dreamikins answered airily. "She gets in
there and does what she likes."
Then she kissed her friends rather solemnly, and followed them upstairs
to the nursery without saying another word.
Nurse welcomed her quite kindly. Dreamikins in a clean white frock, and
her best manners, brought a smile to Nurse's lips.
Bertie hastened up to shake hands. He was very excited over this new
visitor, and was ready to be friends with her at once.
Very soon they were sitting round the tea-table. Shyness had suddenly
descended upon Freda and Daffy. It was Dreamikins who did most of the
talking—Dreamikins and Nurse.
"I think," Dreamikins said, looking at Nurse with one of her sweetest
smiles, "that I shall call you H.D. Do you mind if I do?"
"Why H.D.?" demanded Nurse.
"It means something to me," Dreamikins replied. "I always like
calling people by letters. I call Mummie D.Q. Not when she scolds me,
though—never then!"
She shook her curls with vigour as she spoke. Then she condescended to
explain.
"D.Q. means Darling Queen," she said.
Freda and Daffy began to guess under their breath what H.D. meant, but
Dreamikins would not tell them. She went on calmly:
"You see, I can't call you Nurse, because you aren't my nurse. I gave
up nurses when I was quite little; they changed so often, and Mummie
and me got quite tarred of them."
"I hope you weren't a very troublesome little girl," said Nurse
sternly. "Children who have no nursery are always spoilt and unruly.
I am sorry for their mothers, but all the best families keep their
children in the nursery till they go to school."
"Did you have a nurse?" asked Dreamikins.
But Nurse changed the conversation.
When tea was over, Jane cleared away the tea, and Nurse and she left
the nursery for a short time. Then the children's tongues ran fast.
"Show me your house; it's such a big one. Let us play hide-and-seek in
the passages."
"Nurse won't let us. We can never do anything nice. What is H.D.?"
"Haughty Dragon," said Dreamikins, laughing gaily. "Fibo and I always
call people H.D.'s who look like your nurse does. Oh, we must play
hide-and-seek. I'll go and ask her."
Away darted Dreamikins, peeping into every room and dancing up and down
the passages as if it were all a game. She found Nurse, and actually
coaxed the permission she wanted out of her.
"It's a wet afternoon, and if you promise not to spoil or disarrange
anything, you can do it," said Nurse.
Then followed a lovely hour. Freda and Daffy and even Bertie were as
excited and happy as their little guest. At last the time came when
Dreamikins could not be found. Every corner and cupboard in the few
rooms in which they were allowed to hide were ransacked. The passages
with their queer corners were searched again and again, and the
children came to Nurse in the nursery with troubled faces.
"We're quite tired out," said Freda gloomily, "and we think she's
climbed up one of the chimneys and got on to the roof."
Nurse bestirred herself.
"She's a mischievous child, I fear. There's such daring in her eye; but
it won't do for her to come to harm here."
So Nurse went from room to room, and then at the end of one of the
passages thought of a little door which led into the cistern-room.
There were steps up inside, and on these steps was a white hair ribbon.
Nurse got agitated, and called aloud, and a weak little voice answered
her:
"I'm nearly drownded, but Cherubine is keeping me up."
Sure enough, in the big cistern, drenched to the skin, Dreamikins was
clinging with her hands to the top; her feet were on a tiny ledge that
mercifully was inside, or the big cistern would indeed have drowned
her. She had clambered in, taken off her shoes and stockings, and
imagined that the water was not very deep.
"I was so hot, I wanted to paddle. I thought it was a little pond, and
then I splashed down ever so far, but I got up again and held on tight
and screamed, and I've screamed away all my voice, but Cherubine helped
me."
She was certainly exhausted with her wetting and with fright. Nurse
got her out with a stern set face, and carried her off to the
night-nursery, where she changed all her clothes, gave her a hot drink,
and then took her back to her little friends.
"Now, none of you are to leave this room," she said. "It's a mercy we
haven't had a death in this house, and it isn't this child's fault that
we haven't!"
Dreamikins sat still for five minutes whilst she explained to the
others how she had come to be found in such a situation.
"I thought I was going to be drownded, and I asked God to send me a
better angel, for Cherubine was too small to help me. But she just
managed it, till the H.D. came. And now what shall we play at?"
They settled down to a game of marbles on the nursery floor. But very
soon they tired of their game and began to talk again.
"Why do you live in such a big empty house?" questioned Dreamikins.
"Because Dad and Mums are in London," said Freda, "and there's nobody
to fill their part of the house."
"I could get some people to fill it," said Dreamikins thoughtfully.
"What kind?" asked Daffy. "We shouldn't take anybody into our house,
you know."
"It doesn't really belong to us at all," said Freda hastily. "Bertie
will have it one day, and turn us out."
Bertie stared with his round eyes at his sister.
"I won't turn you out," he said. "I couldn't. You're so strong."
Dreamikins' eyes were gazing away into space. She said slowly:
"Fibo and I read a very interessing story in the Bible last night when
I went to bed. It was about the good people who are turned into sheep,
and the wicked who turn into goats. Goats don't live in heaven—only
sheep. And if you want to be a proper sheep you have to do some
differcult things. They're differcult for children; grown-up people
could do them easily, but I've been thinking we really ought to begin
some of them in case we die quickly. I shouldn't like to find myself a
goat all of a sudden."
Freda and Daffy were not so fond of Bible stories as Dreamikins seemed
to be. They looked bored, and Dreamikins was quick to notice it.
"Now, you just listen to me," she said, with upraised finger, "and I'll
tell you what we've got to do. We've got to do six things, and if we do
them to the proper people, Jesus will count it that we've done it to
Him. Fibo explained it beautifully; he always does. We must give meat
to somebody who's hungry, and drink to somebody who's thirsty, and take
into our houses a stranger. That's what made me begin to think of it.
Fancy how many strangers you could take in this big house! And we must
visit somebody who's sick, and somebody who's in prison, and we must
give a poor, naked, ragged beggar some clothes."
"We couldn't do it possibly," said Freda emphatically.
But Daffy's eyes began to shine.
"Oh yes, we could; it would be beautiful!" she said.
Dreamikins put her arms round her and hugged her.
"You and me will begin it, and then Freda will, too," she said. "We
must. Cherubine will help. She thinks we ought to."
The little heads got close together. Nurse was sewing by the window, so
they talked in whispers.
And then, all too soon, Jane appeared, saying that "Miss Broughton's
maid" had arrived to take her home.
Dreamikins was very reluctant to go, but Nurse produced her clothes all
beautifully dried, and Annette came upstairs to wait upon her.
"Ah, Miss Emmeline, you be always in trouble. What a peety!" exclaimed
Annette, when she was told of Dreamikins' escapade.
Dreamikins smiled up at her.
"I 'sure you it's no trouble to me, none at all!" she said, with the
greatest composure.
She hugged Freda and Daffy warmly, kissed Bertie, shook hands very
politely with Nurse, and trotted off. They watched from the window
her little figure tripping down the drive. Annette was holding a big
umbrella over her.
"I'm not at all sure whether she's a fit playmate for you," said Nurse,
with a shake of her head. "If she leads you into worse mischief than
the two of you are generally up to, the house won't hold you all!"
Freda and Daffy said nothing, but presently they began to discuss
Dreamikins together.
"She seems so ridicklously good," said Freda; "I never heard anybody
speak about God as she does. Of course, Cherubine is a make up, but she
believes it, and now she makes out we must do all this or we shan't
please God. I never think about pleasing God at all. Nurse would say we
never could. He's so awfully holy and far away."
"Yes; she's good," said Daffy slowly, "but she isn't proper and stupid
like some good children are. And I think there'll be a lot of fun about
being these Bible sheep. She gets a lot of fun out of being good."
"Yes; but she doesn't do it because of that. She really loves Jesus
Christ—she told me so. I almost wish I did, but I don't."
Daffy made no answer. She thought a great deal more than Freda did, and
some of her thoughts were serious.
"We'll try and take a stranger in as soon as ever we can," said Daffy.
"It will be most exciting! We'll smuggle him in by one of the windows
downstairs, or else Nurse will make a row."
"It might be a 'her,'" said Freda; "we don't know who it will be yet."
"It must be somebody who wants a night's lodging—some poor beggar. We
see some going along the roads when we are out."
"I wonder if Dreamikins will find somebody before we do. She has no
horrid nurse keeping her from doing things she wants."
"A H.D.," said Daffy, with twinkling eyes. "We'll call her H.D. to
ourselves, Freda; she'll never know."
They began to wonder when they would see Dreamikins again. Their days
seemed dull without her, but Nurse determined that they should not meet
too often. She was distrustful of Dreamikins; there was something in
her joyous face and free easy manner that touched on insubordination.
And then something happened that put Dreamikins out of her head. A
letter came one morning from Mrs. Harrington, and it brought sad news.
The children's father had been killed by a Turkish shell in Mesopotamia.
When Nurse broke the news to the children, her voice shook. Freda and
Daffy would not believe it.
"Dad killed, Nurse! Oh, he can't be! It's a mistake. He can't possibly
be dead!"
"What does Mums say?"
"She's coming down this week. Dear heart alive! What shall we all do?
The master—so young and hearty—but there, this War be takin' all the
best! He had no need to volunteer as he did!"
Freda and Daffy crept into a corner of their nursery and cried a
little. Nurse was crying easily and almost happily; tears hurt and
choked Freda. She was horribly ashamed of them, and struggled to
overcome them. Daffy felt she ought to cry harder than she did. She
loved her father, but could not yet take in what his loss would mean.
They had never seen very much of him; he had always been so busy, but
sometimes he would take them to the Zoo or to Madame Tussaud's or to
the Pantomime, and then the hours were golden.
"Shall we go on living here?" she asked Freda. "Perhaps Mums will take
us back to London."
"Oh, I hope not. Oh, Daffy, do you remember what Nurse said? It has
come to pass, and we never thought it would."
"About this being Bertie's house if Dad died? Yes, I remember."
Daffy spoke soberly, but Freda's eagerness carried her on.
"Of course if it's Bertie's house now he can give us leave to do
anything we like, and it will be quite easy to put strangers up for the
night. Nurse could say nothing at all, nothing. We'll ask Bertie now."
Bertie was pulled into the corner which Freda and Daffy always retired
to when they had important business on hand. It was the corner which
was farthest from Nurse's chair, and from her quick ears, which often
heard more than they were meant to do.
"Bertie, this is your house now. You'll give us leave to have one of
the bedrooms to do what we like with, won't you?"
Bertie stared at his sister with round eyes.
"Is it mine own house? Why is it?" he asked.
"Because dear Dad is dead, and he has left it to you."
"But I don't want Dad to be deaded. It makes Nurse cry."
"It makes me cry too," said Freda, gulping down a lump in her throat;
"but God has done it, so there's nothing to say. And this is very
important. It has to do with God. He wishes us to do it, and we want a
bedroom, Daffy and me."
"What must I do?" asked Bertie meekly.
"Make him write it on paper," said Daffy, "like one of our story-books.
Don't you remember a man left a little girl—Helen her name was—all his
money and a big house, and he wrote it on a bit of paper?"
"I'll write it," said Freda quickly. "We'll do it at once, in case we
might be stopped."
So a piece of paper was found, and a black stump of pencil, and Freda
wrote in her best round copy-book writing:
"I give to Freda and Daffy one of my bedrooms in this house for
somebody that God wants to stay here."
And then they told Bertie he must sign his name. He had great trouble
in doing this, but they stood over him till it was done, and then Freda
folded up the paper and put it into a small box of hers which locked.
"Now," she said to Bertie, "this paper is a secret, and you mustn't
tell Nurse."
"I haven't been a naughty boy?" questioned poor Bertie, who always
connected secrecy with misdoings.
"You've been a 'markably good boy," said Freda approvingly; and Bertie
ran back to his brick-building with great content. "Now we'll have to
get the room ready," said Freda triumphantly, "and then we'll find the
stranger."
"But we mustn't do anything just now," said Daffy, who generally
checked Freda's rapid plans. "It won't be proper. Look at Nurse. She's
still crying! And we're forgetting to cry ourselves."
So they sat quietly in their corner, and began to talk about their
father, and then they felt more and more miserable, and more tears
fell. When Jane came in they felt pleased to hear her say to Nurse:
"The poor children! How they feel it! 'Twill be comfort for us to have
the Mistress down. 'Tis a terrible blow, sure enough!"
CHAPTER V
Feeding the Hungry
MRS. HARRINGTON did not come down to her children for some days. When
she arrived she was in deep black, and she brought the family lawyer
with her. She did not see much of her children, but then she never had.
She cried a little over them the first evening of her arrival, then she
began to discuss their clothes with Nurse.
"I will have no black frocks. Keep them in their holland and white
ones, and give them black sashes and ribbons, and put a black ribbon
round their hats. That is all that is necessary."
"As long as we are in the country, I suppose, ma'am," said Nurse, with
rather a shocked face.
"I am not going to have you back in town for some time. I am going to
let our town house, but I will talk to you about this later on."
Nurse looked rather dismayed, but she said nothing.
This was all that the children heard. They were pleased at the idea
of staying on in the country, and now that Nurse was more occupied
with their mother, and less in the nursery, they enjoyed greater
liberty. Jane was very good-natured, and was not particular about their
behaviour. When she went out walking with them they could do pretty
well as they liked. One afternoon they met Dreamikins with her maid.
She welcomed them with rapture.
"I've been longing to see you. Cherubine and me feel quite dull. Fibo
told me your daddy was dead. Are you very sad?"
"Of course we are," said Daffy. "We've cried gallons, and all the house
is miserable, and everybody wears black dresses but us; it's a shame!"
"Do you like black frocks? Why?"
"Because they don't show the dirt," said Freda promptly. "We hoped Mums
would give us some, but she won't."
"I s'pose you've been too miserable to think of being sheep."
"No-o," said Freda slowly; "we've laid plans for the stranger's
bedroom, but it isn't ready yet."
"Mine is," said Dreamikins, with pride. "I maded the bed myself. I
asked Fibo if I might get a bedroom ready for a visitor, and he said
'Yes.' Fibo nearly always says 'Yes,' he is such an A.M."
"What's that?"
"Angel Man. I always call him that when he is special kind. I've come
out this morning to hunt about for a stranger, but I can't find one;
not even a little one. Everybody we've met lives about here."
"We might do some of the other things first," said Daffy thoughtfully.
"But the stranger is the most exciting," said Freda. "I'm longing to
meet him."
And then as they were walking along the lane talking eagerly somebody
came towards them. It was a man, and he was in dusty clothes, and he
limped. He carried an old sack across his shoulder, and one of his
boots was tied round his foot with a handkerchief.
In a moment the three little girls darted towards him.
Dreamikins reached him first.
"Would you like to sleep at our house to-night?" she asked him
breathlessly.
"No, at ours," shouted Freda and Daffy together.
He looked at them surlily.
"Garn with yer games!" he said; and he pushed past them, but Dreamikins
laid her soft little hand on his arm.
"You must listen—we'll make you. It isn't a game; it's real sober
truth. If you don't want us to take you in, p'raps you're hungry, or
thirsty. Are you?"
Then the old tramp stopped.
"Yes," he said, "I be fair longin' for a drink. Have ye a copper,
little leddies?"
But Dreamikins shook her head. "We must give it to you ourselves, and I
reached you first, so I'll do it."
Freda and Daffy looked rebellious. But Dreamikins turned upon them with
her sweetest smile.
"You won't mind, will you? I'll just go and get him a glass of milk.
I'll take him to our house and give it to him. You see, my house is
nearer than yours."
Before Freda and Daffy could offer any objections she had turned the
corner of the lane with the tramp.
Annette, who had been talking to Jane, now hurried up.
"Ah, Miss Emmeline!" she exclaimed. "Where is it now that cheeld has
gone? Away with a beggar? What a life I lead!"
She ran after her little charge, and Freda and Daffy were following,
when Jane stopped them, and insisted upon going another way.
"'Tisn't time to be turning back to the village yet. Come, Miss Freda,
we're going to the wood where the nuts are. You let them go and fight
their own battles. We'll go on where we meant to go."
Jane gained her point after some disputing; but Daffy whispered:
"We'll go and see Dreamikins this afternoon when we're playing in the
garden, and we'll go through the little door."
[Illustration: FREDA AND DAFFY POUNCED UPON HIM IMMEDIATELY]
"I mean to be first next time," said Freda. "Dreamikins will take every
one away from us if we don't take care."
For the first time they felt rather angry with their little friend; but
they were very curious to know whether she had given the strange man a
drink or not.
"The thing for us to do is to be ready for everything out of doors,"
said Freda, with decision. "We must have food and drink in our pockets,
and give them to the very first beggar we see."
"I wish it wasn't beggars we have to look for; they're so dirty and
rude," said Daffy discontentedly.
But on their way home fortune seemed to favour them. They came across
a little boy with a white face and ragged coat sitting in the hedge.
His feet were bare, and he was clutching a bundle which rested on his
knees. Freda and Daffy pounced upon him immediately.
"Are you thirsty?"
"Hungry, are you?"
"Sick?"
"Do you want a nice bed to-night to go to sleep on?"
The boy looked at them with rather frightened eyes, and didn't speak.
"Who are you, and where do you live?" asked Freda, trying to speak
more quietly. "You must be quick and answer, because Jane will be
interfering, so make haste."
The boy jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.
"My feyther be on his rounds. He've gone over to them there 'ouses to
mend their pots and pans."
"Is he a tinker?"
The boy nodded.
"And are you very poor? Wouldn't you like us to give you something to
eat and drink?"
Another nod, but the boy's face brightened, and he looked up at them
expectantly.
Alas, Jane came up.
"Now, Miss Freda, Nurse don't allow you to speak to tramps, I know."
"He isn't a tramp," said Freda indignantly; "his father is a tinker. We
have a picture in our book 'Tim the Tinker.' They're kind of gipsies,
and he's a very nice little boy."
Daffy bent her head near the stranger child.
"Come up to the Hall this afternoon at three o'clock, and wait behind
the big tree in front of the house," she whispered.
Freda heard the whisper and approved. Very often whilst she hotly
disputed with Nurse, Daffy quietly went and did the thing they wanted
to do.
Jane found no difficulty in getting them to come home. Freda and Daffy
walked on sedately in front of her. They talked eagerly in low tones,
and made plans for the good of the small wayfarer.
They were turned out in the garden as usual, after their nursery
dinner. Both Freda and Daffy had managed to secrete some meat, and
Freda had added a piece of currant pudding, which she put in her
pocket. Daffy had got a medicine bottle filled with clean water. They
made their way to the grand old cedar in the centre of the lawn, and
there sat down to wait for their visitor. Bertie was trundling his
wheelbarrow along the gravel path. He was filling it with small stones
as he went.
"We shall do better than Dreamikins," said Daffy. "And the Bible says a
cup of cold water, not milk, is the thing to be given. I remember Nurse
reading it to us long ago, so I've got a cup in my pocket too."
"But we haven't got his bed ready," said Freda disconsolately. "It
seems so difficult; p'raps he won't want it. We'll ask him."
The time seemed long as they sat there and waited.
At last they thought they saw something moving in the shrubbery at the
bottom of the lawn; and then a little figure came out of it, and crept
up to them very shyly. He was barefooted no longer. He had washed his
face and hands and looked quite tidy and respectable.
Freda looked a little disappointed.
"Are you really hungry and thirsty?" she asked sternly. "Speak the
truth, for this isn't a game, it's a—a religious thing!"
"And," said Daffy, looking at him with dancing eyes, "if it's done
properly it will turn us into sheep."
Well might the small boy stare at the children in dazed wonder.
"There be six of us," he said, "and times be bad, and feyther he won't
go for a soldier, and mother she lams it into him he oughter."
"Of course he ought," said Freda; "our father went out to fight in
Egypt somewhere, and he's been killed."
The small boy did not seem impressed, but he told them he was "fair
famished."
"Now sit down, and we'll give you something to eat and drink. You
first, Daffy."
So Daffy with great pride pulled out of her pocket a small china cup
and her medicine bottle of water.
She filled the cup solemnly and presented it to him.
He looked at it, took a gulp, then pitched the cup on the grass, and
Freda declared afterwards that he used a "wicked swear" word.
"I didn't come up 'ere in the bloomin' heat to be fooled," he said.
Freda and Daffy looked quite frightened.
Freda hastily produced some slices of cold roast mutton in a paper
parcel.
"We're not fooling you; we're giving you what the Bible tells us to
give you—meat and water. And I've a piece of pudding besides. Here it
is!"
He almost snatched the meat from her, and ate it wolfishly in his
fingers.
"Hain't you got no more?" he asked.
"Here's the pudding," said Freda.
She and Daffy watched him with disgusted faces. Then Daffy said very
gently:
"I don't think you know how very differcult it's been to get you
anything at all. We had to get Nurse out of the room, and coax Jane,
and then she would hardly let us take any."
The pudding quickly disappeared, and then the boy's bright impudent
eyes looked up.
"Mother thought as 'ow you might give me something for the little 'uns.
Feyther—he drinks more'n he earns."
"We've nothing more to-day," said Freda hastily; "except p'raps we
could get a bedroom for you. Would you like to sleep with us one night?"
He grinned, but shook his head.
"Where do you sleep?" asked Daffy.
"We lives in Northcott; we was only comin' roun' the village 'ere,
feyther and me. Mother 'll be on the look-out for me now; 'er did hope
for a napple puddin' or such-like."
Even Freda and Daffy received that suggestion suspiciously. Apple
puddings, of course, would be a boy's taste, but a mother with a
starving family might prefer something more nourishing. Then from under
his jacket he produced a dirty white calico bag.
"Mother giv' me this to bring back full," he said.
Freda and Daffy gasped as they saw the size of it.
They consulted together in low tones.
"You see, we shall be feeding a lot of hungry children all at once,"
said Freda. "I'm sure it would be a good thing to do. Let's take the
bag, Daffy, and go round to the yard by the back-kitchen door. The
kitchen-maid might give us some scraps."
"Yes; we'll tell him to wait here."
No sooner said than done. The boy threw himself down on the grass under
the tree, and the little girls ran off with his bag.
They were fortunate in meeting Nellie, the kitchen-maid. She was
filling a can from a tap in the yard. They hastily explained to her
what they wanted.
"A dear little hungry boy, and he will be glad of any scraps."
"Dear Nellie, do give us some, but don't tell Nurse."
She laughed.
"Eh, but you'll be gettin' me into a scrape sure enough if Cook catches
me."
But she took the bag, and in about five minutes' time came back with it
nearly full.
"'Twill only be thrown to the fowls and dogs," she said. "There, get
on, or else we'll all be getting into trouble."
Away marched the little girls with their burden, but, alas! as they
turned round the corner of the house they saw a big motor at the hall
door.
Their mother was saying good-bye to some friends, and, to add to their
dismay, Nurse was crossing the lawn with Bertie.
Mrs. Harrington caught sight of her little girls, and called to them.
"Come and speak to your godmother, Freda; and Daffy too. Come along!"
Daffy ran forward, but, on the impulse of the moment, Freda dropped her
bag and sat upon it. It was the only way she could hide it.
Daffy stopped when she saw her sister was not following her.
"Go on, Daffy; I can't get up," said Freda desperately.
"What is Freda doing?" asked Mrs. Harrington, as she introduced
her little girl to a pleasant-looking motherly woman—a Lady Aline
Cotteswode—and her son, an invalided soldier from the War.
"She can't get up," said Daffy nervously.
"Has she hurt herself? Oh, I must see my goddaughter!"
In another moment, to Freda's horror, her mother and her visitors left
the motor and came along the terrace to where she sat.
Now Freda felt she was in a desperate plight. In another moment the bag
would be exposed, and she would be handed to Nurse in deep disgrace.
"I must tell a lie, I must, I must," she said frantically to herself.
"Get up at once, Freda. What are you doing?" said Mrs. Harrington
sharply.
Freda looked up with agonised eyes.
"I can't, Mums."
"Where are you hurt?"
Then the young soldier laughed out.
"She's sitting on eggs. We mustn't disturb her."
It was only too plain that she was sitting upon something, and her
mother caught hold of her and lifted her up. Then Freda stood with
scarlet cheeks and downcast eyes, and the bag itself was lifted up by
her vexed mother.
"My little girls are always hatching mischief, not eggs," she said,
with a forced laugh. "What in the world does this bag of food mean,
Freda, and why should you try to hide it?"
"Never mind," said Lady Aline cheerfully, kissing the hot soft little
cheeks, and becoming conscious that Freda's blue eyes were filling
with tears. "You were in the middle of a lovely game when we disturbed
you. I want you to come over and spend a day with me soon. I am having
little Emmeline Broughton over. She is a close neighbour of yours. Do
you know her?"
"Dreamikins?" asked Freda, forgetting her trouble at once. "Oh yes, we
love her, and we love her uncle too."
"Ah!" said young Captain Cotteswode. "There you show your good taste!
He's a great friend of mine, and that little elf of a niece leads him a
nice dance sometimes."
Lady Aline laughed, and turned to Mrs. Harrington.
"Keep your chicks away from her, Helen, if you value your peace of
mind! She took a drunken tramp to the village inn this morning and gave
him two glasses of beer. He began to get quarrelsome, and then the
Rector passed by, heard the row, and rescued the young lady. He could
not convince her she had done wrong, for she said the man had told her
he was thirsty, and the Bible told her to give him drink."
Daffy and Freda exchanged glances.
After a little more talk, Lady Aline and her son went back to their
motor, and drove away. Then Mrs. Harrington turned to her little
daughters.
"Now, what is the meaning of this?"
"Oh, Mums, there was a poor little hungry boy, and we were taking some
scraps to him. Please let us do it. He is waiting down near that tree."
"But you mustn't encourage beggars, children. Does Nurse know about it?
And why did you behave like that, Freda? I was ashamed of you. Don't
you know you should never hide up anything? Doesn't Nurse teach you to
be truthful and frank? I must speak to her about it."
"Oh, please, Mums, forgive me," said Freda humbly. "Don't tell Nurse,
she scolds and scolds and scolds, and makes us out the wickedest
children in the world, when we are really trying to be good."
"And, darling Mums, may we just give the bag to this poor boy? For it
belongs to him, and we promised him," said Daffy coaxingly.
"Where is he?"
Freda pointed to the tree on the lawn.
Mrs. Harrington went towards it, the children following her. She spoke
rather sharply when she saw the boy.
"Look here, you must go away at once. I will let my little daughters
give you what they promised you, but I have told them it must never
occur again, and this is the last time you come near the Hall. Do you
quite understand?"
The boy took the bag held out to him by Freda, then he touched his cap
to Mrs. Harrington, and darted down the drive.
"Now then, children, run away to Nurse, and don't act so foolishly
again."
Mrs. Harrington went back to the house. Freda and Daffy drew long
breaths of relief.
"Mums won't tell Nurse. She always forgets to. I'm so glad the boy has
got it. What an awful thing for Dreamikins to do! She said she was
going to give him milk."
"I expect he told her he would rather have beer," said Daffy; "and we
were going to see her, Freda, and we haven't gone."
"It's too late now. We'll go to-morrow. We've done more than she has,
anyway."
"But he didn't like my water," said Daffy sorrowfully.
CHAPTER VI
The Strangers Arrive
THE little girls did not meet for several days. The weather was bad
again, and kept them confined to the house. Dreamikins missed Freda and
Daffy as much as they missed her. She had been very quiet and contrite
after her visit to the public-house. When Fibo asked her how she came
to think of such a thing, she looked at him sweetly and gravely.
"It was Cherubine who ercited me to do it. And you read it to me
yourself, Fibo. I can say the verse: 'I was thirsty, and ye gave me
drink.' He told me he was thirsty, and he said beer was the only thing
that did him good. He doesn't like milk or water. So I gave him drink;
and when he wanted another glass, I paid for it; and I had no more
money, and when he wanted more he got into a bad temper because he
couldn't have it. Mr. Temple seemed to think me wicked. I'm not, am I?
God understands quite well, and if Cherubine told me to do it, it must
be good."
"I'm beginning to be doubtful about Cherubine," said Fibo, looking at
his small niece with perplexity in his eyes. "I think you had better
consult me first, next time she tells you to do risky things."
"Oh, but she wouldn't like that at all, at all," said Dreamikins
hastily. "She would think it very rude of me, if I told you things she
tells me; and you mustn't forget where she comes from, Fibo dear."
Fibo took this rebuke in silence, and Dreamikins moved about with great
dignity for the next half-hour. Then she forgot all about it, and
chased Grinders round and round the lawn till they were both exhausted.
Two days afterwards she was allowed to go to the post office by herself
and post a letter for her uncle. On the way back she saw a young man
leaning against his bicycle, talking to the landlord of the "Blue
Boar." And as she was passing him, she heard him say:
"I'm sorry you can't put me up. I'm a stranger in these parts, and I
wanted to stay the night here."
A stranger! Dreamikins' heart beat fast. She stood still in the road
considering; but she never considered very long. The delightful
possibility before her drove everything else out of her head. She
watched the young man get upon his bicycle with rather a weary air, and
then, as he rode towards her, she stepped into the middle of the road
and held up her small hand authoritatively.
The young man swerved, jumped off his cycle, and said rather sharply:
"Do you want to be run over, little girl? What are you doing?"
"I'm stopping you. The policemen do it like that at Brighton."
"But what are you stopping me for?"
Dreamikins came very close to him, and laid hold of his coat sleeve.
"I've got a bed ready for you," she said, in an eager whisper, "and
I've sticked pins in the cushion, and Fibo let me do it, and Cherubine
and me will be very happy if you comes to-night, and please come along
now."
The young man looked quite bewildered.
Did this child belong to some people who let lodgings? he wondered. If
so, he was in luck's way. He recklessly determined to follow her.
"I want to sleep here to-night," he said. "I've done nearly forty miles
to-day, and am dead beat."
"And you're a stranger," said Dreamikins softly. Then she tucked her
hand into his.
"I've been expecking and expecking till I'm worn out."
"Did you expect me?"
"Well, no, not exackly. You're rather dusty, but you're not in rags. It
doesn't say what the stranger is to be like, but I'm sure you'll do."
When she came to her uncle's house the young man hesitated, and felt
uncomfortable. But she led him into the garden in joyful triumph, and
took him straight up to her uncle's invalid chair.
"Fibo dear, he's comed! The stranger has comed! And his room is quite,
quite ready. And I've bringed him to you, so that it may be all right."
Fibo turned. The young man bowed.
"I'm a parson on a holiday," he said, "and the inn was full, and they
couldn't put me up, and this little girl assured me I should get a
bed here. She wouldn't take a No from me, so I came along. My name is
George Ferrers. I'm a curate in Birmingham."
Fibo held out his hand.
"I believe you've done right to come," he said, "and I don't wonder my
pixie led you here. Her soul is in the adventure."
"What does it mean?" asked George Ferrers.
He looked at Dreamikins as he spoke, and she danced up and down in
ecstasy, her face radiant with smiles.
"Explain it, Dreamikins," said her uncle.
Then Dreamikins stood still, and the sweet reverent look came into her
face.
"It's just instead of having Jesus Christ to sleep with us," she said.
"We can't have Him. I should burst with joy if I could; but He told us
if we got any stranger instead of Him, it would do, and so you've come."
Then George Ferrers' eyes shone with a glad light. He understood.
"I am not worthy," he said.
There was silence for a moment. Then Fibo said heartily:
"You'll be doing us a kindness if you stay. I can't get about, and my
visitors are few and far between. Dreamikins shall take you to our
spare room; and make yourself at home! I dine at eight."
"I'm ever so grateful," George Ferrers answered, and then Dreamikins
led him away.
She was very excited, made Clara bring some hot water, and showed him
the soap she had put in the soap-dish, the pins in the pincushion, the
bunch of flowers in the vase on the dressing-table. She even turned
back the sheet and blankets of the bed to show him his pillows.
"I maded the bed with Clara, and she laughed all the time; and I dust
the room every day with my own duster, so I know it's ready. Do you
like it? Do you think it's nice?"
"I think it's just perfect," said the young man enthusiastically, and
when Dreamikins at last left him, she went back to her uncle with a
shining face.
"I haven't made a mistake this time, have I, Fibo? Cherubine told God
how dreadfully mis'able I was over the beer that man drinked; and so
God planned it all out for me to-day. Wasn't it good and sweet of Him!"
What could Fibo say? He looked very grave.
"You did quite right in bringing him straight to me, Dreamikins. You
won't make mistakes if you always do that."
Whilst Dreamikins was entertaining her guest, Freda and Daffy were busy
preparing for theirs. They had chosen a bedroom leading out upon a
balcony in a disused wing of the house, and they had stolen into this
room at different times, bringing treasures of all sorts—soap, bits of
candles, towels from other rooms—and now their great difficulty was
sheets and pillow-cases.
"It isn't fair," grumbled Freda; "Dreamikins has only to say, and she
gets at once. Everybody is against us in this house. Even Jane won't
give us matches. And he must have matches."
"I'll get some matches from Nellie," said Daffy, "and we'll wait till
the stranger is really coming, and then we will give him our sheets and
pillow-cases and go without ourselves. That will be very good of us,
I'm sure, because I hate blankets, they tickle so!"
Every day they looked out for strangers, but none seemed to come their
way. When the weather grew fine again, they thought out a plan, and
that was to go down to the park wall which bordered the road. There was
a part of it lower than the rest, and a tree grew close to it. Freda
and Daffy were able to climb this tree and then step on to the wall.
They sat here patiently, watching everybody who went along the road.
Once or twice tired-looking men with knapsacks on their shoulders had
passed them, but they had not the courage to speak to them or stop
them. At last, one afternoon when they were sitting there an old man
came along, and sat down to rest in the hedge on the opposite side of
the road.
"He's a tramp and a stranger," said Freda breathlessly; "just the one!"
"Yes," assented Daffy; "we must make haste and ask him."
So Freda called out in her high clear voice:
"Good afternoon, old man; we're very glad to see you. Would you like to
sleep at our house this evening? You look very tired."
The tramp looked across at them in surprise. He was not a nice-looking
man. He had a thin grey beard and little cunning eyes. His hat had once
been a soft black felt, now it was battered and green. He wore a dark
green handkerchief round his throat. His coat was out-at-elbows, his
trousers were patched at the knees, and frayed out and ragged at the
hems.
"Afternoon, Missy!" he said, and his voice was the only pleasant part
about him. It was cheery and brisk.
"I'm for having a nap where I am," he said.
"But where are you going to sleep to-night?" asked Daffy.
"I reckon at Doulton Union if I can walk it; but I've blistered me heel
and have to go slow. And I've a thirst which rages. Mow I wonder if
you've a copper to spare a tired thirsty old man?"
"We haven't any money," said Freda, in a crestfallen voice, "but we've
a beautiful bedroom ready for you, and towels, and soap, and candles,
and matches, and the bed will be ready for you if you say you'll come.
Daffy and me are looking out for a stranger. It's in the Bible that
we're to do it, and so we've got it ready."
"I'll tell you how to find the room," said Daffy, bending over from her
perch in rather a dangerous fashion. "You come in at the park gates,
and go round by the shrubbery to the part of the house that is shut up.
The blinds are all down, and there's a balcony outside one window and
steps up to it. We'll leave the window unlocked, and you can creep in
when dark. Will you come?"
"Do come!" pleaded Freda. "If we can, we'll put some food inside,
because you'll be wanting some supper."
"Well," said the old man slowly, "it wants turnin' over in my mind, so
it do! I may step up to-night and I mayn't!"
"Oh, do promise us you will! It's no good getting your bed ready if you
don't."
"Who be livin' at your house? Is the master at home?"
"Dad used to be the master, but he is dead, and Nurse says Bertie is
the master now, and he's written a paper to say we can do it. Mums and
Nurse and us and all the servants live there."
There was silence, then the old man looked up at them, and his small
eyes twinkled.
"You go 'long with you, and put some drink as well as mate in that
there bedroom, and old John Cubbs will thank 'ee kindly."
"Then you'll be there to-night?" asked Freda breathlessly.
"Ay, I reckon I may."
The children got back to the tree and climbed down.
"It seems too good to be true," said Daffy breathlessly. "Now what must
we do, Freda?"
"We can't take our sheets till after we're in bed to-night; Jane would
miss them; but we can get some food for him. Nellie is our only hope."
So they made their way to the back door and lay in wait for Nellie.
They dared not go in. The old cook would have no children in her
kitchen at any time.
When Nellie came out and heard their request, she shook her head.
"Now who's it for this time? You mustn't bring beggars about the place."
"But he's in the road now," said Freda. "Do, Nellie, just this once.
He's a poor old man; think if he was your grandfather!"
Nellie tossed her head.
"My grandfeyther is a respectable man. He wouldn't be beggin' from
children like you."
"Oh, he didn't beg, at least not before we spoke to him. Just a nice
plate of scraps, Nellie; the best that you can spare."
Nellie went indoors. She came out again very soon with a basin in her
hand.
"There, take it. The basin is cracked, so it won't be missed; but this
is the very last time, Miss Freda."
The children hurried away with their basin. They smuggled it into the
house, and softly crept along the passages till they came to their
empty room. Once inside, they breathed more freely.
"I feel as if we're being rather sly," said Freda, "but it's Nurse who
makes us so. If we hadn't a nurse we wouldn't be sly."
"But do you think Mums would like it?" questioned Daffy.
"I think if she had time to sit still till we explained she would
understand. Jesus Christ wouldn't have told people they ought to do it
if it wasn't right. He says distinctly: 'I was a stranger, and ye took
Me in.' This old man is a stranger and we're going to take him in."
"Yes," said Daffy; "it must be right."
They looked round the room. Everything seemed ready. Freda cautiously
unlocked the big French window, which led out upon the balcony.
"Suppose he doesn't stay in his bedroom," suggested Daffy, "and comes
walking over the house, and Nurse met him, or Mums did, what would they
say?"
"He wouldn't be likely to walk over the house in the middle of the
night. He would want to sleep. But the key is on the passage side of
the door; we would lock him in."
"Yes; he could get out and in by the window. Freda, will he stay more
than one night?"
"I hope not. I never thought of that. Nellie won't give us another
basin of food."
"She hasn't given him anything to drink."
"He must drink water out of the water-bottle. We filled it."
"The most difficult thing is to get our sheets on his bed."
"Oh, we'll do it," said Freda airily. "We'll manage it when Nurse goes
down for her supper. She always has it in the housekeeper's room."
They walked round the room. The bed was a big one; there was a
chintz-covered couch at the foot of it, and a big easy-chair. A
writing-table was in one corner and a bookcase in the other. The carpet
was thick and soft to tread upon. Damask curtains hung over the window.
"I'm sure he'll find it very comfortable," said Daffy, smelling the
soap on the washing-stand.
"I wonder if he's got a hairbrush and toothbrush and all he wants?"
"Oh yes, he had a bundle. We'll put his basin on the writing-table. It
has got a mutton chop in it, and some cold potatoes, and a piece of
bacon, and then there's some rice pudding, and a dry bit of cake, and a
piece of jam roll. But it's all mixed up. It must taste very nasty."
Freda had been carefully examining the contents of the basin. Now she
placed it on the table, and then she and Daffy slipped out of the room.
"I won't lock the door till we've got the sheets in," she said.
They spent the rest of the day in anxiously thinking about the
stranger's coming. When bedtime came, Daffy was almost glad.
"It seems quite a year since we saw the stranger," she said. "I do hope
he'll manage to get in all right."
The little girls slept in two beds side by side in one night-nursery,
Nurse and Bertie slept in the other; and the two rooms opened into each
other, and the door between them was never shut.
When they were in bed Nurse left them, and went back to the
day-nursery, where she and Jane sat and worked or read. It was still
daylight, though the blinds were down, and directly they were left
alone Freda set to work.
"We must leave our top sheets in case anybody sees. You take off your
bottom one quick, Daffy, and I'll take off mine, and we must fold them
up very small, and put the pillow-cases inside. There are two pillows
to be covered, so we must have both of ours."
This was done after some trouble in folding them up. Then they crept
back into bed again, each hugging her sheet, and waited to hear Nurse
go downstairs. The time seemed long. Would she never go?
CHAPTER VII
Freda and Daffy in Trouble
DAFFY was getting sleepy. Suddenly Freda called to her in an excited
whisper:
"She's gone, and Jane went first. Come on, and don't make a noise."
Softly they sped along the passage, down some stairs to another long
passage, through a green baize door, past several rooms, and at last
they came to the right one.
"He may be here already," said Daffy fearfully. "I'm a little afraid."
"He won't come till he wants a bed," said Freda reassuringly; "and
grown-up people never go to bed till it's quite dark."
They found the room empty, but Daffy kept glancing out of the window,
with her heart beating fast. It was dusk in this big room. The creepers
outside the window tapped against the window-panes, as if they were
hands that wanted to come in.
She and Freda were not very clever at making up a bed, and when she
pulled a corner of the sheet towards her, Freda pulled it away again.
It seemed as if they could not get it smooth and straight.
Then an owl hooted outside the window, and Daffy gave a little scream.
Freda was hotly indignant with her.
"You're a coward, that's what you are! And you'll make Nurse come down
upon us, if you don't take care. I wish you weren't so clumsy! Do be
quick! I think I hear him coming!"
That quickened Daffy. She did not want to see that dirty ugly old man
coming into the dusky room. The pillows were thumped into their cases,
the blankets and coverlet drawn tight over the big bed and tucked under
the mattress, then Daffy slipped out of the room, thankful the task was
over. Freda locked the door and took the key to bed with her; even her
bold heart did not wish to have the old man prowling about over the
house in the middle of the night.
They snuggled down into their beds again, rejoicing that they had not
been seen by any one. Daffy dropped off to sleep quickly in spite of
her rough blanket. Freda lay still with wide awake eyes. She trembled
when, later on, Nurse came into the room with candle in hand. She stood
over the children's beds for an instant, and Freda breathed quickly.
Would she see there was no sheet?
But Nurse passed on, muttering to herself as she sometimes did, and
Freda caught the words:
"Poor fatherless children, and their mother bored at having to think
about them!"
Then Freda burrowed her head into her pillow, and sleep soon came to
her.
The next morning was bright and sunny. But there was no sunshine in the
nurseries, for Nurse had quickly discovered the absence of pillow-cases
and sheets, and her wrath was great. Jane was called, and the children
questioned, but Freda and Daffy maintained a stubborn silence.
Nurse took hold of Freda by the shoulders and shook her.
"Not one morsel of breakfast shall you have until you've told me what
you've done with your sheet, you naughty child!"
Then Freda lost her temper. She flung the key down on the floor in
front of Nurse.
"Go and find out for yourself; I shan't tell you! I hate you!"
And even mild-tempered Daffy echoed: "Yes, go and find them, Nurse. You
always call us naughty before you know!"
Nurse seized the key.
"Jane, sit them on those chairs till I come back."
The little culprits were taken to the day-nursery. Jane seated Bertie
at the breakfast-table, then went to fetch the porridge.
"Freda, do you think she'll find him in bed?" whispered Daffy from her
high-backed chair.
"I don't care if she does," said Freda, with hot angry cheeks. "I hope
he'll kick her."
Nurse was a long time coming back. They heard her hasty steps along the
passage, and voices and doors opening and shutting. Then they heard
their mother's voice calling to Purling, and their hearts quaked and
thumped.
"They've found him asleep," said Daffy, "and now they're wondering who
he is. Oh, Freda, I do wish we hadn't done it."
Shortly afterwards the door opened and Jane came in with the porridge.
She looked very excited. Behind her was Nurse, and their mother, with
her hair braided down her back, and clad in her blue silk dressing-gown.
"Here they are, ma'am, and it beats me how they dare to do such things!
There's nothing they won't be up to, but when it comes to harbouring
thieves and vagabonds, then I say nothing but a sound whipping will do
them any good!"
"Freda and Daffy, get down from those chairs. Now what do you know
about this? Somebody has been sleeping in one of our spare rooms; he
has left this behind him, but taken away a good many things that did
not belong to him. The gardener says he met an old tramp coming down
from the house at six o'clock this morning, and he told him he had been
sleeping at the house as a guest!"
Mrs. Harrington held out a piece of notepaper, evidently a sheet that
was on the writing-table, for it bore the Harrington crest upon it, and
the address, "The Hall, Douglas Cross."
In shaky writing across it, were these words:
"My thanks to the yong ladies. A very good nite."
Freda looked at Daffy, and Daffy looked at Freda.
"Speak," said their mother sharply. "What have you been doing?"
"May we tell you alone, Mums?" said Freda. "Nurse doesn't understand.
We did get the bedroom ready for him, and told him how to get to it,
but—"
"There, ma'am," said Nurse angrily. "Now what do you think of that?
They're beyond me altogether! It's a mercy we were not all murdered in
our beds!"
"You had better give them their breakfasts and send them to me. I must
get to the bottom of it. Those Sheffield plate candlesticks and ivory
trinket boxes are a real loss. I shall have to put it into the hands of
the police."
Mrs. Harrington left the room as she spoke, and then ensued a very bad
half-hour for Freda and Daffy. Nurse could scold like nobody else.
They were only allowed dry bread for their breakfast, and were not
allowed to speak to one another. When they were sent to their mother's
room, Freda carried a little box under her arm; she was defiant, Daffy
indifferent. Nurse's scoldings had always that effect on them.
"Mums won't scold like Nurse; we couldn't hear anything worse," Daffy
said, as they walked along the passages to their mother's room.
Mrs. Harrington was sitting by her open window having her breakfast;
she always took it in her bedroom. She never had understood her little
daughters. She disliked finding fault with any one, and the loss of her
husband had affected her so deeply that she felt nothing else mattered.
Now she looked at them with a perplexed frown upon her face.
"Come in, and tell me quietly why you have been behaving in this
extraordinary way."
Freda was only too ready to be spokeswoman.
She opened her box, and produced a slip of paper which she laid upon
her mother's lap.
"You see, Mums dear, Bertie gave us the room. It belongs to him now,
doesn't it? And Daffy and me are trying to be good and to do what the
Bible tells us. And you know when Jesus Christ will stand at the door
of heaven to let everybody in, He'll ask us if we've taken a stranger
in, and given drink and food to the hungry and thirsty, and a lot of
other things. If we haven't done it, we shall have to be goats, and if
we have, we are sheep. And the sheep go inside heaven and the goats are
shut out. And Daffy and me want to be the sheep."
Her mother looked at her gravely.
"I see. You explain very clearly. Go on!"
"Well, then, you see we had to find a stranger to take in, and an old
man passed along the road, and we were sitting on the wall, and we
asked him if he would like to have a bed for the night. We didn't know
he was a wicked thief, and we told him how to get to the bedroom up the
steps to the balcony, and Daffy and me couldn't get any sheets for him,
so we took one of ours, and that's why Nurse found it out and was so
angry."
Mrs. Harrington was looking at the paper upon her lap. She read it out
aloud:
"I give to Freda and Daffy one of my bedrooms in this house for
somebody that God wants to stay here.
"BERTIE HARRINGTON."
"Now who told you that this house belonged to Bertie?"
"Long ago," said Daffy softly, "Nurse told us that Bertie was much more
important than us, because, if Daddy died, this house would belong to
him."
"You haven't waited long to take advantage of your father's death,"
said Mrs. Harrington, rather bitterly.
Freda and Daffy hung their heads in shame.
"Now pay attention to me," their mother continued, in her slow quiet
tones; "this house does not belong to Bertie till he is twenty-five
years old. It belongs to me till then, and I forbid you to ask any
one to stay in it unless you have my permission. Until you understand
the Bible better, you are not to act out its precepts without asking
grown-up people if it is right for you to do so. I believe there is a
verse about heaping coals of fire on your enemy's head. Do you think
you ought to do that?"
"I feel I would like to do it to Nurse," said Freda, with emphasis. In
imagination she saw Nurse's cap and hair in flames, and considered it
would serve her right.
"Exactly. You don't understand that a great deal of the Bible is
figurative language."
"What is that, Mums?"
"Oh, I can't explain," said Mrs. Harrington, yawning. Then she roused
herself to speak sternly. "That old tramp decamped with a good many
valuable articles of ours. You put temptation in his way, and if the
door had not been locked outside, he would have stolen much more. Who
did that?"
"I locked the door, Mums," said Freda.
There was silence.
"Well, for children, I suppose you managed as wisely as you could. Now
go back to Nurse, she will know how to punish you. And never do such a
thing again. I thought I told you not to encourage beggars when I sent
that boy away the other day."
"Nurse will be so fearfully angry," said Daffy.
"You deserve her to be. It was doing it secretly that must be punished.
I will not have you grow up deceitful children."
"But Nurse thinks everything wicked," wailed Freda; "she wants us to
have no fun at all."
"You don't want fun when your father lies dead in a foreign land," said
Mrs. Harrington sharply.
Then she relented as she saw the forlorn look on the little girls'
faces.
"There's right fun and wrong fun, and the Bible ought not to be turned
into fun. Never. Now go back to the nursery."
Freda and Daffy crept out of their mother's room. Nurse was waiting for
them, and did what she very seldom did now, she gave them each a sound
whipping, and put them to bed.
And Freda and Daffy were two very unhappy little girls for all that
day. They felt that from the grown-up people's eyes they had behaved
badly; but they wondered if God looked down from heaven and understood
better than Nurse.
"We'll ask Dreamikins about it," said Daffy; "but she never seems to
get punished for anything."
"That old stranger ought to be punished, not us," said Freda. "We gave
him a nice bed and food, and he stole Mum's candlesticks and other
things."
"Nurse makes out the bed and the food weren't ours to give him," said
Daffy. "She treats us as if we're thieves."
"Perhaps we are," said Freda thoughtfully.
Her busy brain was hard at work. She felt shaken in her self-confidence.
It was two or three days later that Fibo asked them to tea, and though
Nurse was almost against their going, their mother said they might do
so.
Dreamikins greeted them with her usual joyous welcome.
"Cherubine and me have been longing to see you. I've had a beautiful
stranger staying in my bed, and Fibo liked him so much he stayed two
days."
"Oh!" groaned Freda. "Everything is all right with you. We took in a
stranger who was a thief, and Nurse hardly thinks us out of disgrace
yet, though it was days and days ago!"
They began to compare their experiences, and then somehow or other they
found themselves pouring it all out to Fibo, and Daffy asked him when
he had heard all:
"Now do you think we were any wickeder than Dreamikins? What's the
difference between us?"
"Why," said Dreamikins, "I've got an A.M. for my uncle, and you have a
H.D. for your nurse. That's what makes the difference."
"Now look here," said Fibo, rousing himself, as he saw Freda's and
Daffy's anxious faces. "I think I must give you all three a good
talking to, because none of you are quite as wise yet as we grown-up
people. Astonishing, isn't it? Now come and sit down, and we'll be
thoroughly comfortable before I begin."
The little girls sat in a circle upon the grass round Fibo's chair,
then Dreamikins insisted upon having Grinder and Drab.
"It'll do them good to hear you, Fibo dear, and after we've all
listened hard, you must give us one choc each for good behaviour.
Cherubine is going to listen too. I know she'll say 'I told you so!'
when she hears you."
"Now then, here we go. First of all, I must remind you that those words
were addressed to grown-up people, not to children. If you look in your
Bibles, our Lord was speaking to His disciples."
"Oh, Fibo dear," said Dreamikins reproachfully, "can't children be
disciples?"
"Yes, they can, but they are not able to do everything that grown-up
people do. And this taking in of strangers is not for them, because
they don't own a house or a bedroom; nor is food even, if taken from
the kitchen, theirs to give, as B.B. and E.E. know."
"But," said Freda eagerly, "we did think the house and bedroom belonged
to Bertie; Nurse said it did, and we got him to give it to us, only
Mums says it belongs to her."
"Yes; you see, you made a mistake; that's where you showed you were not
quite wise enough to manage such a big undertaking. The fact is, though
none of you like to hear it, you mustn't act on your own. Ask advice of
older people."
"I always ask Cherubine," said Dreamikins, smiling.
"Yes, but you would do better to ask me," said Fibo.
Dreamikins put her head on one side, then she held up one small finger.
"Hush, Fibo, Cherubine is speaking."
Fibo was quiet at once, but he looked straight at his small niece with
rather grave eyes, and she gave a little wriggle.
"Oh well, Fibo, she says she'll tell me to ask you sometimes, and you
know I did ask you about the room, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did, but it was just a chance you didn't bring along a thief
into the house. You wouldn't have known the difference. Now I'll tell
you a beautiful way you can carry out our Lord's wishes. What is it He
wants you to do?"
"To give drink to the thirsty and feed the hungry," said Daffy.
"To take strangers in and visit the sick," said Freda.
"And give clothes to the naked and visit in prison," said Dreamikins.
"Very well. Now I know several good people who take ragged children in;
they feed and clothe them and give them houseroom, and nurse them when
they're sick, but they can't do this without money. Now, if you have a
collecting box, and put some of your loose pennies in, I will send up
the box to them when full, and then you will be feeding these children,
and clothing them, and taking them in as strangers with your money."
"Oh, but that would be so dull, Fibo dear," said Dreamikins.
The children's dismayed faces made Fibo laugh.
"And that wouldn't do it all; it wouldn't be visiting in prison," said
Freda.
"Well, I know people who visit in prison, and that can't be done
without money; you could have a box for that. You see, if you really
feel you can't wait till you're grown-up to do these things, you can
get some people to do it for you; that's what I mean."
"It isn't a bit the same," said Dreamikins. "And lots of children don't
grow up; you know they don't; and then we shall be goats."
Fibo looked at his niece with a funny little smile, then he said
suddenly:
"Perhaps you could do one or two of the things now, without waiting
till you turn into wiseheads."
"Oh, do tell us," cried Freda and Daffy together.
"I think you could go and visit somebody sick. Mrs. Daw was telling me
to-day of a dear old body who is in bed with very bad rheumatism. She
used to be our laundress. She lives quite alone, and would be cheered
up if you went to see her."
Dreamikins clapped her hands; but Freda and Daffy looked unhappy.
"Nurse wouldn't let us. She never will let us do a single nice thing."
"Oh, we'll manage Nurse. I'll tackle her."
"Will you really?"
Hope sprang up in their hearts.
"And what else?" they asked.
"I'm only a clumsy man, but I believe you can all use the needle. If we
could have a little sewing party one day in the week, you could make
clothes for some poor little kids who have none to wear, and I would
see that they got them all right. But we should have to get Annette to
cut the clothes out, and show you how to do them. I'm no good at that
sort of thing."
"We don't like sewing," said Dreamikins, looking at her little friends;
and Freda and Daffy both agreed with her.
"Of course, if you only want to do what you like—" began Fibo.
"We'll do it, Fibo dear, only you must tell us some most erciting
stories all the time we work, and we must have an extry good tea after,
to make up."
"I don't know that you need rewarding for doing good," said Fibo
quietly.
"No, that we'll get inside heaven," said Dreamikins thoughtfully.
"Perhaps we might try those two things."
"Yes," said Freda decidedly; "if Nurse lets Daffy and me do it, we
will."
"And we can ask Mums," suggested Daffy.
Then they all brightened up, and Fibo said he wouldn't talk any more,
not till next time; and then the little girls had a romp in the garden
together till tea came, and they enjoyed themselves as they always did,
and Freda and Daffy went home comforted.
"I always like," said Freda, "to feel there's something in front of us;
and now there is."
CHAPTER VIII
A Day of Naughtiness
IT was only a few days after this that Freda and Daffy were playing in
the garden, when Dreamikins suddenly appeared before them. She had no
hat on; her curls were flying in the wind, her cheeks were hot, and her
blue eyes dancing with mischief and excitement. Generally she was a
dainty little person, and certainly kept her frocks much cleaner than
Freda or Daffy. But now her white frock was splashed and stained with
mud, and her white socks were torn and dirty.
"What's the matter?" asked Daffy.
Dreamikins danced up and down before them.
"I'm tarred out with Cherubine. I slapped her and sent her back to
heaven. I'm tarred of being good, and I'm having a real wicked day.
I felt tied up too tight, and now I'm stretching myself, or I really
think I shall burst!"
Freda's eyes gleamed.
"Do tell us what you've been doing."
Dreamikins proceeded to give an account of her day in rapid breathless
tones.
"It was because I woked too early, and I couldn't stay still in bed,
and Cherubine said I oughted to, and all of a sudden I felt I'd had
enough of her, and I tolded her so; and of course she didn't like it,
and I said she was no fun no longer, I was tarred of her; and then she
wouldn't go, so I slapped her, and of course that sent her flying away
like lightning!"
"But how could you slap her?" questioned Daffy.
"Why, of course, I slapped on my chest just where she snuggles down
next my heart."
Then Dreamikins paused in her dancing, and her eyes grew big.
"It's a awfully wicked thing to slap a angel!"
"I should think it was," said Freda. "I don't believe you did it. Go
on; what did you do next?"
"I runned downstairs, and out into the garden in my nightie. I turned
on all the water-taps everywhere and let them run, and then I kicked
off my shoes and paddled where there was pools. Then Carrie came out
of doors and tried to catch me, and I threwed stones at her, but she
didn't care; and then she catched me, and I kicked her, and she didn't
care; and then he carried me upstairs, and Annette was there to scold
me!"
"What else?"
"Oh, I just went on and on. I threwed the soap out of the window, and
lots of things besides, and when I was dressed I went downstairs and
shut Drab into the larder, and mixed up some jam and butter together
when Mrs. Daw wasn't looking. And when I'd finished breakfus, I just
ran all over the house, and did all the mischief I ever could. I
untidied all the tidy places, and I emptied all the boxes and drawers
out on the floors, and I upset the ink. And then Fibo sent from his
room for me, and I wouldn't go, and then I crawled through the door
into your park, and I've been climbing trees, and catching tadpoles in
the ditches, and I chased the sheeps, and then I comed off here. And
now, what shall we do? Something really wicked it must be. I'm never
going to be good again!"
"Then you'll never go to see that old sick woman," said Daffy.
"No, never, never!"
Dreamikins shook her curls defiantly.
"I'm so joyful not to have Cherubine. She got so tarsome, and I feel
quite light and empty without her. Have you got any chickens? I opened
our gate and let them run all over the flowers before I came away.
Let's go and do something!"
Freda and Daffy looked at each other. They hardly knew this Dreamikins.
She seemed to have turned into a little imp.
"You forget we have Nurse," said Freda soberly.
"Let's put out our tongues at her," suggested Dreamikins.
But neither Freda nor Daffy would allow this, nor would they agree to
go to the poultry yard and work havoc there. Then Dreamikins seized
hold of Bertie, who was playing on the lawn by himself.
"I know what we'll do," she said; "we'll make Bertie into a Red Indian.
Have you any paints?"
"Yes," said Freda delightedly, "in our paint-boxes. I'll go and get
some."
Off she ran to the house; then Daffy and Dreamikins took Bertie off to
a secluded corner of the flower-garden where there was an empty shed
used by the gardener for his tools and flowerpots. Unfortunately, upon
a shelf Dreamikins found some green paint. She seized upon it.
"Oh, we'll make him a green Indian. Let's undress him."
But Freda, coming back, wouldn't allow this.
"You can take off his jacket and knicks, but he would take cold if he
hadn't something on."
She and Daffy eagerly watched Dreamikins as she dabbed Bertie with
spots of green paint all over his body. He was quite willing to be
painted. His hair, his cheeks, his fat chubby arms and legs, were
liberally sprinkled with the paint. His little vest was striped with
it. The children shrieked with laughter when they saw how funny he
looked. And then Bertie grew excited, and danced up and down, and
in the middle of it Nurse swept down upon them. She had heard their
laughter and screams, and Freda and Daffy shrank into a corner of the
shed, thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Not so Dreamikins. She waved
her paint brush in front of Nurse, and besprinkled her white cotton
dress with paint.
"He's a green Indian, and I'll make you one too," she cried, and then,
as Nurse furiously laid hands upon her, Dreamikins fled out of her
reach, and raced across the lawn, singing as she went:
"There was a Haughty Dragon,
Her name was Mrs. Nurse!
She was a horrid woman,
She couldn't well be worse."
By this time Dreamikins was feeling rather tired, so she crept into
her uncle's garden again by the little door, and half an hour after,
Annette found her fast asleep in a wheelbarrow which had some freshly
mown grass in it.
Annette carried her up to bed and let her sleep there till two o'clock,
when she woke her up and gave her some dinner.
Dreamikins ate her dinner silently. Her cheeks were flushed with sleep,
and Annette sat by the window sewing, and wisely said nothing to her.
After she had finished her meal, she washed and dressed her in a fresh
white frock.
"Now we'll go out for a walk," said Annette..
"Oh no, we won't," said Dreamikins. "I'm not going to do anything good
to-day. I'm being wicked."
Annette looked helplessly at her charge.
"Your good uncle be very grieved, and he have a bad head to-day, and he
lying down now. Will you go for to wake him and give him more pain?"
"I aren't going near Fibo, not yet I aren't. I'll take a walk by
myself, Annette, and if you follow me I'll throw stones at you."
Dreamikins put on her hat, but would not look at her gloves; she threw
those into a basin of water, and laughed at Annette's shocked face when
she did so.
Then she sallied forth; but Annette secretly followed her. She said to
Mrs. Daw as she was leaving the house:
"Miss Emmeline have not been like this for long long time. It is sad
how evil she can behave, but her good uncle be the one to cure her,
only she will not go to him."
Dreamikins marched on without looking behind her, till she came to the
village. Then she turned her head, and saw Annette in the distance. She
dashed round the corner of the street, and, seeing a cart and horse
standing outside a house, in an instant sprang up into it, and hid
herself under the seat, pulling an old rug entirely over her. No one
saw her do it, and presently the carter came out and drove off. Annette
was wildly hunting about for her little charge, and, after a fruitless
search, went home, hoping that she would have arrived there before her.
Dreamikins lay still for a long time.
"I'm going a journey," she asserted to herself, "and I'll get away from
everybody; and a good thing too!"
But she soon began to fidget, and at last, in sheer mischief, she put
out her hand and sharply pinched the carter in the leg. He did not feel
it at first; then he put down his great hand and came in contact with
hers. In another minute he had dragged away the rug, and was staring at
his passenger with astonished eyes.
"Well, I'm blest!" was all he could say.
And Dreamikins crept out, and laughed and clapped her hands.
"You didn't know I was there, did you, now? I'm having a nice drive."
"But where do 'ee come from, little Missy?"
The good man had pulled up his horse, and was staring at her in a
puzzled fashion; but Dreamikins seized hold of his whip and whipped the
horse so smartly that he trotted on.
[Illustration: "YOU DIDN'T KNOW I WAS THERE; DID YOU?"]
"Let me have the reins," she said; "now, do let me. I want to drive
hunderds of miles away, and lose myself the other side of the world."
"What be your name, and where do you come from?" asked the carter.
"I've runned away, and I shan't tell you nothing about me."
He rubbed his head, looked back along the road, which seemed empty for
a long way behind them, then seized his reins, which were already in
Dreamikins' hands, and drove rapidly on.
"I'd best take her to the Missus. Her 'll know what to do with her."
Then Dreamikins began to chatter in her gay, inconsequent fashion, and
the man listened to her in great bewilderment, and was very relieved
when at last they arrived at a big farmhouse. He drove into the yard,
and in a moment or two there was quite a little crowd round them—his
wife, two farm-hands, the farmer and his wife, and two maid-servants.
Dreamikins was taken possession of by Mrs. Dufty, the farmer's wife.
"Come along, my pretty! Wherever did you come from? Hid in the cart,
did you? Oh, fie! And what will your daddy and mummy say?"
"They don't know nothing about me," said Dreamikins. "I'm just having a
holiday to-day, with nobody to say 'No' to me."
"But where do you live, my lovie?"
Dreamikins turned up her blue eyes to Mrs. Dufty reflectively.
"Well, I lives at Brighton, but I stays with Fibo, and I wouldn't ask
where he lives if I were you, because I aren't going to tell you."
Then she added with guile:
"I do feel very thirsty; do you think you'd like to give me some milk?"
"Bless your little heart, come along in, and after you've had some tea
you'll tell us pretty where you've come from!"
Dreamikins shook her curls from side to side, but followed the farmer's
wife into a comfortable kitchen. She was soon sitting up at the table
with them, for their tea was already waiting. And Dreamikins thoroughly
enjoyed a slice of bread and cream with jam, and a cup of strong tea
with three lumps of sugar in it.
"Fibo doesn't like me to drink tea," she said, with a satisfied sigh,
as she emptied her first cup and asked for another; "but as I'm being
wicked to-day it doesn't matter."
"Oh, fie!" said good-natured Mrs. Dufty, who had no children herself,
though she loved them. "Little ladies like you aren't wicked, I'm sure."
"But I are," said Dreamikins, whose grammar got very bad when she was
excited. "I've runned away, and if you'll keep me a few days I'll be
very much obliged. Why—"
Here she stopped, gazed gravely at the farmer and his wife, then,
planting her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands and
smiled sweetly upon them.
"Do you know what you'll be doing if you take me and give me a bed
to-night? You'll be doing what Jesus said we must do if we love Him;
you'll be feeding a stranger—that's me—instead of Him, but He counts
it just the same, and He'll make you into His sheep and put you on His
Right Hand in heaven. So you see I'd better stop, hadn't I?"
"Well, of all the darlings, you are the prize one!" said Mrs. Dufty,
beaming upon her. "And dearly should I love to keep you, but think of
your people, what a state o' mind they'll be in."
Dreamikins' eyes twinkled.
"Annette will be running all over the place, and shaking her hands;
she always shakes her hands when she's fussing; and Fibo—well, I won't
think about him, because I'm going to go on being wicked!"
She shut her lips firmly together, and gave a nod at Mrs. Dufty. There
was a little defiance in the nod. And then the door opened and the
carter's wife appeared.
"Please, mum, Annie says the young lady comes from the Dower House.
Captain Arnold be her uncle. Annie's home is in the village, she says."
Dreamikins jumped down from her chair and stamped her foot on the floor.
"I don't care what Annie says, I aren't going back to-day."
"The poleece will put us in prison if we keeps you," said the farmer
gravely, winking at his wife as he spoke.
"That will be lovely!" said Dreamikins, clapping her hands. "Then I'll
come and see you. I want to see people in prison."
"Did you ever see such sperrit, John! Bless her little heart, I'd
dearly like to keep her, but you'd best get the horse and trap round
and drive her back at once. It's six miles; she could never walk it."
It was no good protesting; the farmer bestirred himself, but when the
trap was at the door, and he came in to carry Dreamikins out, she threw
her arms round Mrs. Dufty's neck, and clung to her convulsively with a
bitter cry.
"I don't want to go home. I'll be good instead of wicked if you keep
me just one night. I'm sure God wants you to. He's written it in the
Bible."
"Look here, lovie, you shall come another day and see us, and p'raps
stay the night if your uncle will let you. You go with John like a
little lady now."
It was a tearful Dreamikins that sat perched on the farmer's knee in
the trap. She really dreaded seeing her uncle, for she knew how naughty
she had been. When home was reached, she was lifted down at the front
door; but panic seized her, and the spirit of wickedness too. It was
her last effort at defiance.
"I aren't going indoors! I'll run away again!"
She pushed open the gate that led out upon the lawn behind the house.
Nobody was in the garden, and she raced down the path. She heard
Annette's flying feet behind her, and then she tumbled—a garden roller
was on the path. She fell over, clutched the handle of it, and brought
the handle down with an awful crack on her leg. She screamed in agony,
and poor little Dreamikins' wicked day was over; her leg lay twisted
under her; and when she was picked up and carried into the house it was
found that it was broken.
CHAPTER IX
A Little Invalid
THAT was a very confused and dreadful night to Dreamikins, and the next
day was not much better. She was conscious of such pain as she never
in her small life had experienced before. The doctor appeared almost
directly, and the medicine he gave her seemed to make her so sleepy
that she could hardly take in anything. When she was not asleep she was
in great pain, and was not allowed to move her leg or get out of bed.
Fibo came to see her in his wheeled chair, and talked to her in his
happy comforting way. In a few days she began to feel better, and then
she remembered things. Then one evening Annette came in great distress
to Fibo.
"Oh, Monsieur, will you come to Miss Emmeline! She cry and cry in a
peetiful way. I can no comfort bring her, and I do not understand the
wherefore of her cry. It is not that the little leg hurts, so she says!"
So Fibo came and found the golden curly-haired head buried in the
pillow, and the small shoulders shaking with sobs.
"Why, Dreamikins," he said, "are you washing your pillow with salt
water? That will never do. What's the rub?"
Dreamikins raised her flushed tear-stained face and looked at her uncle.
"I'm miser-rub-bub-bubble!" she sobbed.
"So I see. What has happened?"
"I haven't said my prayers for years, and now when I want to say them
God won't listen to me. He's gone away."
"That, I know, isn't true."
"Yes, it is."
Dreamikins mopped her face with her handkerchief, and spoke in her old
assured tone.
"It's because of Cherubine, and I'm all alone; and there's nobody to
take care of me when I sleeps, and anything might happen. Satan might
come and sit on my pillow, and there would be nobody to frighten him
away. God won't come near me, and I want to speak to Him badly."
"What do you want to say?"
"Oh, just to tell Him I'm sorry for all I did that day, and I'll never
be so wicked again. But God left me; that's why I broked my leg. If
Cherubine had been there she would have caught hold of that nasty old
roller and not let it slip on me. I sent her away, and God hasn't sent
me any angel since."
"If you speak to God now He'll hear you, Dreamikins. He is always ready
to forgive us when we are really sorry."
"But I have speaked, and He won't answer. He's gone away."
Fibo hadn't known Dreamikins for so long without understanding her mind.
"Shut your eyes," he said; "I am going to speak to God about you. He is
quite close to me."
Then Fibo prayed a short little prayer for his penitent little niece,
and light began to dawn in Dreamikins' blue eyes.
"God, of course, listens to you, Fibo, you're so good. Does He say He
will come back?"
"Yes; He is here. Now speak to Him yourself."
And then, with a great sigh, Dreamikins began her prayer. Fibo did not
hear all she said, for she began to sob again, but after a little she
looked up with a smile.
"He's comed back to me, and He's going to look after me to-night all
His own Self."
Fibo left her. Dreamikins was just Dreamikins, and could never be
altered. He understood why her mother said she was too difficult to
manage.
The next day was a brighter one for everybody. Dreamikins had recovered
her spirits with a bound. When Fibo came to see her, she was ready for
a long talk. She went over in detail all the sins she had committed on
that one black day.
"I can't think what made me," she said, with a shake of her curls; "but
Cherubine had been aggerrating me for a long time. And even now, Fibo
dear, I don't think I want her back. How would it be if I had another
little angel for a change?—a boy this time. I wonder if he would be
sent? But I expect Cherubine would tell him all about me, and then he
wouldn't want to come."
"Look here, Dreamikins, we won't talk about angels now. I was rather
ill that day when you ran amuck, but it mustn't happen again. You
are getting too old for it, and if you don't try to keep yourself
controlled now, you'll grow up such a horrible woman that no one will
want to live with you."
"How horrible?" asked Dreamikins, with an eager gleam of interest in
her eyes.
"I'll tell you about a man I knew who did much the same as you did. He
had a dear little wife, and three sweet little children, and for months
they would live happily together, and then suddenly he would, as his
wife said, 'go on the burst.'"
"Oh, how did he do it?"
Fibo did not like the pleased expression in Dreamikins' eyes. His face
got very stern and grave.
"He went to the first public-house he could get to, and then he got
roaringly and disgustingly drunk. He would come home at night, and
throw chairs at his wife, and smash them to pieces, and nearly kill
her. The next day he would go off and drink again, and behave like a
madman. He would generally end by fighting some ones and then would be
taken off to the police station, and be locked up. Then, after a time,
he would come home, and be good again—as good as gold—till he got tired
of being good, and then would have another burst of drinking. And at
last, in one of these wicked drunken fits, he went home and threw his
dear little baby out of the window, and killed it; and then he kicked
his wife downstairs, and she broke her neck. He was tried for murder,
and was hanged."
"Oh, Fibo!" Dreamikins gave a shudder. "And will I get as bad as him?"
"The principle is the same," said Fibo gravely. "You get tired of being
good, and you then have a real wicked day which you thoroughly enjoy.
I've known one or two such days in your life before. It won't do, my
Dreamikins; you must stop yourself before it's too late."
Dreamikins lay back on her cushions with soft dreamy eyes and the most
angelic expression of face.
"You see, Fibo dear," she said at last, "it's best not to try to be too
good, and then you don't get tired so quick!"
"Well, I must say I don't think I've ever found you too good."
"Haven't you really? But then you don't know what goes on inside
me—Cherubine pulling me one way and Satan the other. Why, I'm nearly
teared in two pieces."
Fibo began to laugh, and his lecture ended.
"You'll want all your goodness now," he said. "If I were you, I would
have the little angel Patience to stay with me till you can run about
again."
Dreamikins straightened herself in bed, and spoke with great dignity.
"I chooses my own angels, Fibo dear; and I should think Patience wasn't
any fun at all."
So they left it, but the days were long and wearisome to Dreamikins;
and as soon as she was well enough for visitors, Freda and Daffy were
sent for to spend the afternoon with her.
The little friends met again with delight.
"We've never heard what happened after you ran away from us that day,"
said Freda. "Nurse was the whole afternoon cleaning the paint off
Bertie; she was in an awful temper, and she said you should never come
near us again. If Mums hadn't been at home, she wouldn't have let us
come to-day. But Mums has been very kind; she let Daffy and me go by
ourselves to see that old sick washerwoman. Jane knew her, and said
she'd be glad to see us, and we've taken her some flowers, and a bun,
and a packet of cocoa we bought with our own money. And she's a dear
old woman, and tells us stories about when she was a little girl and
went to a Dame's school. A Dame is a woman. Did you know that?"
Dreamikins listened with the greatest interest. Then she told them
about her adventure at the farm.
"I mean to go and see Mrs. Dufty as soon as ever I'm well. She loves
me, and I love her."
"Don't you hate lying in bed?" asked Daffy pityingly.
"Yes; but, you see, I had no angel, or it wouldn't have happened. I
shall get a new one soon. I shan't have Cherubine back. I didn't quite
like one or two things about her. She got to contradick me so often."
Freda and Daffy often wondered how much Dreamikins believed in her own
inventions, but they dared not question it to her.
They visited her very often after this, and brought her story-books to
read, and puzzles to solve. Very soon she was carried down into the
garden, and placed on a couch close to Fibo's chair.
She was rather proud of this position.
"You and me are just alike now, Fibo. I think we're very interessing,
aren't we?"
"Just two L.D.'s," said Fibo.
"Lame dogs—yes; and it's very sad for us, isn't it? P'raps I shall
never walk again, just like you. Oh, Fibo dear, how did you feel when
they tolded you? Didn't you cry a teeny weeny bit?"
Fibo looked at his small niece with rather a twisted smile.
"It pulled me up," he said; "the fence was too high to take at first,
but I managed it after a bit."
"Yes; but weren't you cross? Did you never want to throw things at
people? I threw a book at Annette this morning!"
"Throwing things doesn't help, little woman! But I do allow it relieves
one's feelings."
"I do love you, Fibo, when you unnerstand so. I wish the fairies would
come and hop up and down me when I lie like this. If we were to sleep
out here one night, you know, they might. We should feel them tickling
us. I think you might make up a story about us!"
Fibo was just going to begin, when there was a scurry of feet behind
them, a swish of a silk dress, and a lady in dark blue, with a
wonderful hat and veil, and a very happy face, swooped down upon them.
She took Fibo's head between her two gloved hands, and bending down
gave him a quick little kiss on his forehead; then she put her arms
right round Dreamikins and smothered her with kisses.
"My Dreamikins, I've come to nurse you. My poor cripples! Isn't one
enough in the family without having another?"
It was Dreamikins' mother. She, like her little daughter, arrived in
haste without any warning.
Dreamikins put up her hand, and stroked her mother's cheek caressingly.
"I thought you'd have arroved sooner," she said. "I've been ill years!"
"I dare say it seems years to you; but Daddy got leave, and we were in
London together; and Daddy always comes first with me, Dreamikins. You
know that."
"I come first with Fibo," said Dreamikins, a little triumphantly.
"Now I want to be told all about it—letters don't count—from the
beginning. And whose fault was it?"
"The nasty roller's," said Dreamikins promptly. Then she began to tell
the story herself, and her mother sat and laughed.
"I can't help it, Gus; don't frown at me. I never could be a proper
mother, and Dreamikins is beyond me. Who is your familiar spirit now,
childie? You seem to have behaved very rudely to Cherubine."
"I'm just empty," said Dreamikins, "and God is so kind as to take care
of me Himself without any angel at all. I'm going to get a fresh angel
soon, and then I'll tell you who it is."
She spoke with great dignity. Then Fibo turned to his sister.
"I hope you've come to stay this time."
"For a week or so, if you can have me."
She looked round the garden as if she loved it.
"I don't forget the old days, Gus. How happy I was, and how torn in two
I was when I had to leave you!"
"I shall always live with Fibo when I'm growed up," said Dreamikins. "I
shan't leave him like you did."
"Oh yes, you will, when a man walks in who means to be your husband.
And if I had stayed with your uncle, there would have been no
Dreamikins in the world, for God only sent you to me after I had left
him."
Dreamikins considered this.
"I don't quite remember," she said quietly; "but I s'pose there were
other fathers and mothers who might have liked me besides you and
Daddy."
"No," said her mother, shaking her head at her; "there was nobody in
the wide world who wanted to have you but Daddy and me. And there would
be nobody who could love you, and put up with your antics, as we do,
so be thankful you are our child and no one else's. Gus, she must be
educated; how is it to be done?"
Mrs. Broughton turned to her brother eagerly as she spoke.
He laughed.
"She's tied by the leg for a good month at least, so we won't load her
with education just now. My dear Minna, have you brought any luggage
with you? Are they getting your room ready? Will you have some tea?"
"Yes, yes, yes," cried Dreamikins' mother. "Carrie is seeing to
everything. I am going to sit here, and do nothing but talk."
She did it in her gay fascinating way, first turning to one of the
invalids and then the other. When tea came she poured it out, and the
afternoon seemed crammed with sunshine to both Dreamikins and her uncle.
Dreamikins told her mother all about her little friends; in fact her
tongue ran on so fast that she quite forgot her leg, until a sudden
twinge of pain reminded her, and then her mother took her in her arms,
bandaged leg and all, and kissed and fondled her, and sang little gay
songs which took away the pain.
When Dreamikins was at last carried off to bed, her mother went into
the house, and later on came to dinner in a lovely white lace gown, and
Fibo assured her that she was younger and prettier than ever.
"And I hope wiser and better," said Mrs. Broughton, laughing. "I feel
I ought to be very clever to have to deal with my small daughter. You
manage her best. We love each other dearly, she and I, but we have
passages of arms, and then we get very angry with one another, and that
isn't good for her or for me. Will you have her, Gus, for a good three
months? I'm tired of doing nothing but amuse myself, now every woman is
working. And a friend of mine wants me to go out to France with her and
help her to work a young women's hostel. Now don't pull a long face,
but wish me all success."
"I shall be quite willing to keep Dreamikins; but, my dear Minna, you
will be back at the end of your first week out there."
"Not I. This War is altering us all. And I shall be nearer Charlie.
It's an awful life when he's out there and I'm here. I was wondering
if I should send Annette away and get a nursery governess, because the
child must begin to learn something. Do you think Mrs. Harrington would
let her little girls learn with Dreamikins? I wonder if I might call,
or is it too soon after her husband's death?"
"Write and ask her," said Fibo. "I rather dread possible combats
between Dreamikins and a governess. You would have to get the right
sort, or there would always be squalls."
"Yes. Is the child extra naughty, do you think, Gus? She has such a
will and personality, and her imagination runs riot. That's partly your
fault. You always soaked me with poetry and romance, and so it appears
in my child. Her father and I gaze at her half paralysed sometimes
when she insists upon repeating to us conversations she has with her
invisible playmates."
"That will right itself as she gets older. She is a lonely child, and
is bound to invent companions if she has none. I did as a boy."
So they talked together, and before she went to bed that night she paid
a last visit to Dreamikins.
She lay a picture of health and innocence; and then, as her mother
stooped and kissed the soft, flushed cheek, Dreamikins smiled and
murmured:
"It's no good to make up to me, Cherubine, I—are quite firm—I won't
have you back."
CHAPTER X
The Governess
TEN days Mrs. Broughton stayed with her brother, and in that time she
had seen Mrs. Harrington, and actually found a daily governess, who was
coming in on her bicycle from the nearest town, three miles off. She
was to come to the Dower House every morning, except Saturday, from
nine o'clock till twelve, and Freda and Daffy were coming over to learn
lessons with Dreamikins.
At first it had been proposed that the lessons should take place at the
Hall, but Mrs. Harrington seemed rather afraid of friction between the
governess and Nurse, and Freda and Daffy were only too delighted to
go to the Dower House. They assured their mother that it was much the
best plan, and she willingly agreed with them. For the present, at all
events, Dreamikins could not be moved, though the doctor said she was
making a marvellously quick recovery, and Mrs. Broughton was anxious
that lessons should start as soon as possible.
One other thing Mrs. Broughton did before she left her brother, and
this was a great surprise and pleasure.
One sunny afternoon a low four-wheeled pony-chaise drew up at the door
of the Dower House, drawn by a stout white Shetland pony with flowing
mane and tail. Fibo was taken out in his wheeled chair to inspect it,
and Dreamikins was carried out by Daw, her eyes almost starting out of
her head with astonishment and delight.
"This is my present to you both," said Mrs. Broughton. "Let me show you
how the cushions can be moved, so as to support your poor legs. It has
been made expressly for you, Gus, by a Brighton coachbuilder, a friend
of mine; and I've spoken to your doctor about it, and he says it's the
best thing for you, so you can raise no objections. The summer is going
fast. You won't be able to sit out in the garden much longer, and Daw
knows of a lad in the village who will come in and look after the pony.
You will be able to drive yourself about the lanes, and Dreamikins can
learn to drive too if she's a good girl."
Dreamikins gave a yell of delight; she almost threw herself out of
Daw's arms; and when she was lifted into the carriage, and a little
sliding shelf covered with a cushion shot out from under the seat and
received her bandaged leg, she clapped her hands in ecstasy. Then Fibo
was lifted in, and they took a trial trip up and down the drive. Mrs.
Broughton watched them with a happy smile. Everything worked smoothly.
The pony was quiet and manageable, and Fibo had not a single objection
to make, except that money ought not to be spent on such things in
war-time. Mrs. Broughton said that money was being showered down on
invalids, and she was going to shower a little on her two invalids. And
after she had given them this present, she said good-bye to them with
smiles, and a few tears, and went away.
She was very much missed; but Dreamikins was so full of the pony and of
the new governess that she could not be sad, and Fibo was only too glad
that his little niece was going to stay on with him. He had been afraid
when he first saw her mother that she had come to take her away.
Two days after Mrs. Broughton's departure Dreamikins knocked at her
uncle's door before breakfast. She found him nearly dressed in his
dressing-gown, lying on his couch by the window enjoying his breakfast.
She came in on two crutches, which the doctor now let her use, with a
mysterious air.
"I thoughted you'd like to know, Fibo dear, that he's just come down.
About half an hour ago he did."
"Who is he?" asked Fibo.
"He's one of God's best angels, and he's very strong, and has been
all over the world, and done the most wunnerful things. He can tell
stories—lovely ones—of where he has been and what he has done, and his
name is Er."
She paused, adding thoughtfully:
"I found that name in my Bible, and God told me it was the right one."
Fibo looked at her.
"Well, it seemed as if God did," said Dreamikins. "I aren't making it
up altogether, Fibo."
Then she went on smilingly:
"He won't let nothing hurt me, because he'll be stronger than
Cherubine, and he'll make me like to be good, Fibo. Cherubine tried to
make me good, but I never liked it, never!"
"Dreamikins," said Fibo gravely, "there's only One Person Who can make
you really good. No angel can."
"Yes, of course," said Dreamikins, shrugging her shoulders. "I quite
unnerstand, Fibo; but Er and me unnerstand each other, and he'll be a
great 'normous help to me. I'm going to show him the garding now, and
tell him a few things. Do say you're pleased he has come! He likes
being with me very much, he says, and he's promised to always take care
of us when we go driving, so that you may be quite comfortable about me
driving you. We couldn't have a naxident with Er."
Fibo laughed out at the artfulness of this, and then Dreamikins hobbled
away, and he heard her out of his window talking volubly to her new
guardian angel.
That same afternoon Freda and Daffy came to tea, and were delighted
to see their little friend off her couch, even though she had to use
crutches. Her nimbleness with these made her uncle rather nervous.
"Not so fast, little woman. If you had another tumble and another break
it might be bed again for six months."
"Oh, I have Er now," said Dreamikins cheerfully; "he'll look after me."
And then, seeing her little friends' surprise, she introduced her new
guardian to them promptly, and for a quarter of an hour had a good deal
to say about him. After that, they began discussing the new governess,
who was to appear in a very few days' time.
"Do you know what she is like, Fibo?" asked Daffy anxiously. "Will she
be another kind of nurse? We had a governess in London, she was young,
but she didn't like lessons, and used to read story-books to herself
while we were doing our sums."
"And where are we going to do our lessons?" asked Freda. "Daffy and me
hope perhaps in the garden."
"Oh no," Dreamikins told them; "Mummy got one of Fibo's rooms ready for
us. It's upstairs, and the table is so big it takes up all the room.
And Mummy says our governess is called Miss Fletcher, but Fibo and I
call her the R.P.—that's the Ruling Power. But I hope she won't rule me
up and down too much."
"She'll save me from doing it," said Fibo. "Now, I prophesy that she'll
be the most charming lady, and we shall all fall in love with her
violently, and long for her to live with us altogether!"
"It's very exciting," said Freda. "And do you know, Fibo, Mums is soon
going back to London to do war work, and we shall be left here all the
winter. She's coming back to us for Christmas, and we mean to have all
kinds of nice things then."
"By Christmas I shall be able to dance on both my legs again," said
Dreamikins.
They chattered on, for they had a good deal to tell each other, then
Freda and Daffy went off to visit Shylock, the pony, in his stable.
They loved him as much as Dreamikins did, and longed to possess a pony
of their own. Dreamikins told them grandly that she and Fibo were going
to drive into the town the next day and do some shopping.
"P'raps you'll see the governess," said Daffy.
"I expect I shall. I hope I shan't drive over her when I see her. I
shall be so ercited I may pull the reins crooked."
"Fibo will be driving, not you."
"I shall be driving, always," said Dreamikins, with extreme dignity.
"You don't know how," said Freda. "You think too much of yourself,
Dreamikins. Daffy and me say so."
"I don't care what Daffy and you say!"
Dreamikins' cheeks got hot. She was not accustomed to be contradicted.
"You'd better go home," she added, turning her back on them, and
beginning to play with Drab's tail.
They were all sitting on the grass together. Freda and Daffy jumped up
at once.
"We'll go. It isn't much fun to play with you when you can only hobble
and crawl!" said Freda angrily.
Dreamikins' blue eyes sparkled dangerously.
"You're two big babies with a nurse. No wonder she whips you and puts
you in the corner. You want smacking now. Go home and tell her to do
it. I hate you! I'll never play with you again as long as I live!"
She burst into a storm of sobs, and ran back to Fibo for comfort.
Freda and Daffy ran away down the garden as fast as they could, and
crept out of the little door. They felt guilty, and were ashamed of
themselves. It was their first quarrel.
"She's too ordering," said Freda; "she always thinks herself better and
cleverer than us!"
"Yes," said Daffy quietly; "but I s'pose she is more clever. We don't
make up stories half so well as she does. And we oughtn't to have found
fault with her broken leg!"
"She's so aggerrating!" said Freda. "Now she'll make Fibo angry with
us, and I love Fibo!"
"We'll tell him we're sorry when we go to lessons," said Daffy.
Nothing put Daffy out. But Freda's ruffled feathers took some time
smoothing down, and it was not till she had slept over it that she was
able to acknowledge herself in the wrong.
The eventful day came at last, and Freda and Daffy were dispatched by
Nurse at a quarter to nine. Jane was to take them as far as the gate,
and they were to be trusted to come home by themselves.
When they arrived at the Dower House, Carrie showed them into a little
cloak-room in the hall where they could hang up their coats and hats.
"Has she come?" Daffy asked eagerly.
"Yes, miss."
"What's she like?"
"A nice-spoken lady," was all that Carrie could tell them.
Then they went upstairs to the room that had been turned into a
schoolroom, and found Dreamikins sitting at the table by the side
of Miss Fletcher, who was looking through some old lesson-books.
Dreamikins, of course, was talking hard. She stopped when Freda and
Daffy came into the room; but she evidently had forgotten their
quarrel, for she put up her face to be kissed as usual when they came
up to her.
"This is Freda and Daffy, Miss Fletcher," she said; "they live next to
us, and are very nice."
Miss Fletcher shook hands with them. She had a bright face, fair hair
coiled round her head, and was dressed in a dark blue gown. Freda and
Daffy liked her at once, for she did not wear spectacles, and they
never liked people who did.
"Come along and sit down," she said brightly. "We will not do much this
morning, for I am going to pick your brains, and find out how much you
know."
She began to question them. The little girls were shy, and answered to
the best of their ability. But suddenly Dreamikins rested her elbows
upon the table and looked at Miss Fletcher in her intense kind of way.
Miss Fletcher did not notice her look, but asked her:
"And now, Emmeline, we are coming to arithmetic. How many of us are in
the room at present?"
Dreamikins slowly answered, "Five."
"Count again."
"Five," she repeated, "but you can see only four; there's you and me
and Freda and Daffy and Er."
Miss Fletcher looked at her in a puzzled sort of way.
"Er is sitting close to me," Dreamikins went on; "he never takes a
chair, but I feel him squeezing me. He won't want to do lessons, but he
must be counted, for he's at the table with us."
Miss Fletcher looked under the table.
"Is it a dog?" she asked.
Freda and Daffy giggled. Dreamikins' face kept quite grave. Then Freda
thought she had better explain.
"It's Dreamikins' guardian angel—at least she says it is."
"Oh, I understand now," said Miss Fletcher quietly. "Well, Emmeline,
we'll say there are five of us at the table; if three of us went out of
the room, how many would remain?"
But Dreamikins did not answer. She was thinking of other things. Then
she smiled sweetly at her governess.
"Fibo says—Fibo is my uncle who lives here—Fibo says you're a most
charming lady, and he'll fall in love with you violently—yes,
violently—and long for you to live here altogether!"
The colour came into Miss Fletcher's cheeks.
"Emmeline," she said quietly, "this is the first day, so I shall make
no rules, but to-morrow there must be no talking in lesson-time except
about the lessons themselves."
Something in Miss Fletcher's tones reduced Dreamikins to silence. Miss
Fletcher turned to Freda and Daffy, and went on questioning them.
Presently a meek little voice said:
"Please, I are waiting to answer."
And there was no more inattention from Dreamikins that morning.
In a few days lessons were firmly established. Miss Fletcher was
fond of teaching, and did it in a happy way. The little girls all
enjoyed the lessons, but the time they liked best was the half-hour
in the middle of the morning, when they had a break and could do
what they liked. It was this half-hour which helped Miss Fletcher to
understand and know her little pupils. She heard all about Cherubine
and her dismissal, and the coming of Er. She was told about the plans
of befriending the hungry and thirsty and sick, and the stranger in
want of a bed. And then she started a little working party for some
poor ragged children. She said if they liked to have it on Saturday
afternoon she would bicycle over and help them; and they were all
delighted at the idea.
Fibo was very pleased when he heard of this, and promised to provide
tea after it. And on Saturday, Miss Fletcher arrived with some pretty
warm material already cut out to be made into frocks. The three little
girls set to work bravely and cheerfully, but Dreamikins was the first
to get tired.
"My fingers is hurting. My thimble has made a mark—it's too tight. My
back aches, and now my leg is hurting. I believe sewing is very bad for
it."
Then Miss Fletcher produced a storybook, and began to read to them.
That made the time pass quicker. They worked for one hour and a half,
and Dreamikins was proud of what she had done in the time.
"I'm glad you didn't let me stop," she said to Miss Fletcher. "And Er
is very glad too; he wanted me to go on. We've really been working
clothes for Jesus Christ, haven't we? He says He'll count it as if it
was His!"
Then they had tea in the dining-room, because the weather had turned
cold; and Fibo joined them and sat in his big chair at the head of the
table, and cracked jokes, and made every one feel happy and comfortable.
Miss Fletcher had to hurry home; she said she had an invalid sister
waiting for her. But the little girls stayed on. Freda and Daffy never
wanted to go; and then Fibo let them come into his study, and he made
funny sketches of an old man called Tumbledown who was never steady on
his feet, and at last one day he climbed into an aeroplane because he
wanted to go across the world without using his feet, and was never
heard of any more.
"I hope you won't go away like that one day," said Dreamikins.
Her uncle looked at her with his funny twinkle.
"One day I shall climb right out of my poor old body, and go up away
from you all without any need of an aeroplane," he said.
"And I'll hang on behind you!" said Dreamikins.
"Fibo means that he'll die and go to heaven," said Daffy gravely. "You
won't be able to go with him."
"I'll go after him then. Er will take me. That's what he does—takes
people to heaven when God calls them. He likes doing it better than
anything else. He says he'll tuck me very comfy between his two wings
and fly up and up, and he'll show me the moon and all the stars on the
way. He tells me just at first I may feel cold, but when you come near
heaven it's ever so nice and warm, and you never feel nothing when you
get inside."
"But I should like to feel something," objected Freda.
"I mean nothing nasty. What a stoopid you are!"
Then Fibo changed the conversation. When Dreamikins once began to talk
about heaven, she could never stop, and invented so fast, and was so
angry when she was contradicted, that he thought it better to bring her
to safer ground.
When Freda and Daffy went home that afternoon, they told Nurse that
even she would have been pleased to see their work.
Nurse sniffed and said:
"I dare say you're proud of it, but in my time children used to be made
to sew in school as a regular thing every afternoon; and if you were
properly behaved young ladies you would like to do it too."
After that, Freda and Daffy judged it best to keep silent about their
good works.
CHAPTER XI
A Visit to a Farm
THE little girls became very fond of their governess. Miss Fletcher
loved them all; but of the three, Dreamikins was the most difficult to
manage.
One morning she was very inattentive. She sat with her slate before
her, apparently working out a sum, but her brain was far away.
"Dreamikins, this is lesson-time," said Miss Fletcher sharply.
She had given up calling her Emmeline. Nobody called her that except
Annette and the servants.
"Yes," said Dreamikins, smiling; "but Er is talking to me, and then I
have to listen."
"Not in lesson-time," said Miss Fletcher firmly.
"Yes; I do 'sure you he does. I was asking him what happened to the
little boy he took care of in a Indian forest when his Daddy was
hunting lions, and got lost, and night came on in the dark,—black dark
it was,—and the snakes crept up softly to the house, and the wolves
sniffed and followed the snakes—"
"That will do. Go on with your sum."
"You interrup' me, and now I can't think at all—not to do sums nor
nothing."
Dreamikins spoke in an injured tone. She put down her slate-pencil.
"Sit still for five minutes to clear your brain of all those exciting
stories, and then begin your sum. If Er is an angel, Dreamikins, he
wouldn't help you to be idle in school-time."
"No; and he doesn't," said Dreamikins quickly. "I were just going to
tell you he said to me, 'You must not ask me to finish my story in
sum-time.'"
She gave a triumphant look at Freda and Daffy as she spoke.
Miss Fletcher laid her watch on the table.
"I will tell you when the five minutes are up."
Dreamikins kicked her legs against her chair. Then she put her head on
one side and smiled coaxingly at her governess.
"Fibo says you're a M.R.P., dear Miss Fletcher. Wouldn't you like to
know what that means?"
"After lessons are over, I should."
So, with a sigh, Dreamikins tried to apply herself to her sum when the
five minutes were up. It was the only lesson she disliked. Freda and
Daffy did their sums in pencil in an exercise-book; Dreamikins made
such a mess of her figures that she had to use a slate.
She tried hard to add up her figures, but when she brought them to Miss
Fletcher they were all wrong, and angry tears rose in Dreamikins' eyes.
"It must be Satan who jumbles them up, and you won't let Er have nuffin
to do with me, and so I've nobody to help me."
Then Miss Fletcher patiently made her stand by her side and count out
loud, and in a very short time the sum was done and Dreamikins was
happy again.
"Why need we do sums?" she asked.
"Because when you grow up you may have a good deal of money to spend,
and if you don't want to waste it you must keep accounts, and put down
what you spend; and when you do that, you have to add and subtract and
do all the sums I am trying to teach you now."
"When I grow up," said Dreamikins, her eyes gleaming, "I shan't do
nuffin that grown-ups gene'lly does. I shall have a airship, and go
right away from the world for days and days, and go and see what the
moon is like inside, and the stars, and p'raps, if God will let me, I
shall climb as near to heaven as I possibly can, just to hear the harps
and the singing. And then—"
"You must do some dictation now," said Miss Fletcher gently.
Poor Dreamikins! She was so quick in soaring away, and so quickly
brought back to earth again!
Another morning she began to tell some adventures of Er, and this time
Miss Fletcher did not interrupt her. She listened for some minutes,
then said:
"Very interesting, Dreamikins. And now, instead of telling us the rest
of it, just write it all down on your slate. Ask me how to spell the
long words, and I will correct it when you've done. It will teach you
how to spell."
Dreamikins very slowly obeyed. Her crestfallen little face made Freda
giggle, but Miss Fletcher stopped that at once.
The sighs and groans that came from the poor little inventor were
pitiable, and after half an hour's hard writing Miss Fletcher let her
stop.
But after that, Dreamikins never attempted to tell stories in
school-time again.
One afternoon she and Fibo went out in the pony-carriage together. It
was a lovely day, bright and sunny, though there was a touch of cold in
the air, and the leaves of the trees were turning a beautiful red and
yellow and brown. Grinder always followed the carriage close behind,
but Fibo would not have Drab or Whiskers taken in the carriage with
them, though Dreamikins begged hard that they might come.
Fibo drove through the village, but when they were in the quiet lanes
he let Dreamikins hold the reins. That was one of the proudest and
happiest moments of her life.
She sat up like a little queen. Occasionally she would steal a glance
at her uncle.
"I have my eye on you," he would say.
"Yes, Fibo dear; but I 'sure you, you can go to sleep and I'll drive
quite steady. I should like you to have a little nap. It would rest
your legs."
"Go to sleep, with the sun shining, and the fairies pelting us with
leaves, and the breeze whispering stories into our ears, and the sheep
and the cows calling out to us as we pass them? What do you take me
for?"
"Oh, Fibo dear, I do love you!"
Dreamikins laughed out in the fulness of her joy.
"Where are we going?" she asked presently. "Always straight on?"
"Where would you like to go?"
"To see Mrs. Dufty, who called me lovie," said Dreamikins, suddenly
having an inspiration. "Oh, do you think we could? I believe she would
give us some tea in that lovely kitchen of hers."
"I think we might," her uncle said. "I know where she lives; we turn to
the right soon."
"I'll turn when we come to it. I know how to turn! I love turning."
But if Fibo's hands had not been quickly over hers, Dreamikins would
have pulled the pony right into a ditch.
"You're a little bit too energetic," her uncle told her.
The pony trotted on so quickly, and it was such a flat road, that they
very soon came to the farm. Mrs. Dufty came down to the gate in great
delight at seeing Dreamikins again. With the help of his crutches, Fibo
managed to leave the carriage and get into the kitchen. One of the farm
lads held the pony, and then Dreamikins chattered away to her heart's
content. Mrs. Dufty listened to her with a beaming face, and produced
out of the oven a delicious little apple dumpling.
"'Twas just as if I were expecting you, lovie. Couldn't have baked
itself in better time. Only wants to be eaten; and I'll just trot off
and get some cream to go with it. And perhaps the gentleman will take
a glass of cider, or a drop of my rhubarb wine. I believe we have some
sloe gin, if he prefers that?"
Fibo thanked her, but declared a glass of milk would suit him best.
Dreamikins was in the farmer's big armchair, and a tortoise-shell cat
sprang up into her lap and purred her approval of her.
"Aren't you happy, Fibo? Isn't it lovely here? Just look at those
lovely china dogs and heads on the dresser! When I grow up I shan't
have a drawn-room, but a kitchen just like this, and I shall have
tea-parties in it. And look at the shining pans! It's perfectly
exkisit!"
"When you grow up, Dreamikins," said Fibo, shaking his head at her, "I
pity your mother from the bottom of my heart."
Dreamikins was too absorbed in stroking the cat to pay attention to
what he said.
When Mrs. Dufty came back, Dreamikins sat up at the table and ate her
baked apple dumpling, with a generous dab of cream on the top of it,
with the greatest relish.
"A darling little lady," said smiling Mrs. Dufty, turning to Fibo.
"She's an anxious charge, Mrs. Dufty," said Fibo, smiling back.
But Mrs. Dufty retorted:
"The precious things in this world always are."
And that reduced Fibo to silence; but he much enjoyed his glass of milk.
"I wish I could run about," said Dreamikins, with a wistful droop to
her mouth. "I should love to see your cows, and baby cows, and pigs and
chickens; and they have little turkeys, Fibo. Mr. Dufty told me so!
I wish I could have a little turkey to play with Whiskers! I'm sure
they'd just love each other."
"And then you would have to kill it and eat it for your Christmas
dinner," said Fibo; "turkeys only live for that."
Dreamikins shuddered at this. Then Mrs. Dufty said she hoped she would
come out and spend a long day at the farm when her leg was quite well.
And Dreamikins promised she would.
It was almost beginning to get dusk when they started to drive home.
Fibo drove this time, and Dreamikins talked hard the whole way.
When they got home there was no lad to take the pony, and Daw came out
with a very grave face.
"I'll see to him myself, sir. That Michael Dunn is a bad lot, I fear."
"Michael!" cried Dreamikins in dismay. "Why, I love him. He cut me a
whistle out of a stick!"
Daw shook his head.
"The police have been after him and took him away. It seems he was
helping in a shop at Cressford before he come to us, and he helped
himself out of the till, and some pound notes have been found in his
home. It's lucky he didn't steal from us; but I had my suspicions that
the oats were disappearing quicker than they ought to!"
Fibo was vexed and troubled to hear this. He sent Dreamikins upstairs
to Annette, and talked for some time with Daw about the boy, who had
only been with him a few weeks, and seemed a bright respectable lad.
To Dreamikins it was a terrible blow. She was full of it the next
morning when Freda and Daffy came to lessons. They listened awed and
dismayed to the story; then Freda's eyes began to sparkle.
"Dreamikins, it's all for the best! Think of it, he'll be put in
prison!"
"Well," said Dreamikins, "that's dreadful! It makes me cry to think of
it. I thought only wicked people went to prison. Michael wasn't a bit
wicked to me, and he liked Shylock and Shylock liked him!"
"But don't you see, if he's in prison we can go and see him; that's
just what we thought was quite impossible; and then we shall have done
everything to make us into proper sheep."
"Dreamikins hasn't visited any one sick yet," said Daffy; "we have."
"Yes, but it's only because of my leg I haven't. I mean to visit
hundreds in the village. Everybody I shall go and see. Oh, what a
joyful thought, Freda!" Her little face was alight with pleasure again.
"How splendid it will be! Is he in prison now? Can we go and see him
to-morrow? Will they let us in?"
They could only wonder and conjecture, and then lessons began, and they
could discuss Michael no longer; but the minute Dreamikins was free she
seized her crutch and almost dashed into her uncle's study.
"Fibo! Fibo! When can I go and see Michael in prison? Freda and Daffy
and me all want to go."
"Not so fast!" said Fibo. "Poor Michael hasn't been brought before the
magistrates yet."
"But the police have got him."
"I don't know where he is at present. I'm going to find out. I assure
you, he won't be hustled into prison so quickly. You seem anxious to
get him there."
Dreamikins sat down on the floor with a perplexed frown on her face.
"I are sorry for him, very truly sorry, but you see, Fibo dear, he'll
be in the very place we want to go to. And you mustn't on no account
whatever stop us from going, because it's so very important. Don't you
remember what the Bible says?"
"Now I see what you're driving at. But you're asking a big thing,
Dreamikins, and perhaps you'll be disappointed. Michael may never be
put in prison after all. I hope not. He'll get off with a fine, I dare
say. Prison hardens lads like that. Wouldn't you rather he stayed away
from prison altogether?"
Dreamikins sighed heavily.
"It's very differcult, Fibo. I don't want to feel unkind about him."
"I'm sure you don't."
Dreamikins slowly got upon her feet again.
"And how soon shall we know about him?"
"I dare say in a few days. I will tell you as soon as I hear. Are
lessons over?"
"Oh, lessons!"
Dreamikins brought down her uninjured leg and foot with a stamp upon
the carpet, and tears filled her blue eyes.
"It's always trying and especking and not getting. I do think it might
happen easy and comfortable for Michael and us. I wish I could grow and
swell up into a grown-up person quick, and then I'd just go and get
everything done in one day."
"But, my poor little impatient Dreamikins, don't you know we can't all
get our good deeds into one day and be finished with them? They must
last our lifetime. And it is not doing a thing once that tells; it's
doing it continually."
Dreamikins shook her curly head sadly.
"I always did hate that word contin'lly. It means go on, and on,
and on, doesn't it? I like to go on, and then stop and do somefing
different."
"So you do. And we've had enough of this sober talk. Get me my
baccy-jar over there; I'm going to smoke a pipe. Will you fill it for
me? And then I'll show you a picture I've been drawing this morning."
Dreamikins was her sunshiny self at once. Not again that day did she
mention Michael, or the prison into which she was wanting to put him.
But the next morning she pushed her way into her uncle's room very
early.
"Fibo, when I was in bed this morning, Er told me of all the people
he had got out of prison. Don't you remember Peter in prison? One of
God's angels got him out. Er thinks if him and me goes together we'll
get Michael out very quick. It wouldn't hurt him to be in prison a
teeny weeny little bit if I comed quick and let him out. So it won't be
wicked to wish him there for about half an hour."
Fibo judged it best not to take his small niece seriously. He refused
to be drawn into any arguments, and would only talk nonsense,
distracting her mind at once from the undesirable subject.
When Dreamikins met her governess a little later, she said:
"Fibo and me have been having such pretence games in his room that
I feel quite tarred. He's the funniest man in the world. He's been
turning his face into all kinds of things—a H.D., and a P.D., and a
A.O., and into you!"
"Into me?" said the astonished Miss Fletcher.
"Yes, into the M.R.P. That's what you are."
"I never shall understand all your letters," said Miss Fletcher
pleasantly.
And then Daffy enlightened her.
"H.D. means Haughty Dragon, and P.D. means Proud Dog, and A.O. means
Angry Ogre, and M.R.P. means the Mighty Ruling Power!"
"Well," said Miss Fletcher decidedly, "the M.R.P. says lessons at once,
and no more talking, and as Dreamikins has been laughing till she
is tired, it will rest her to have a grave face for the rest of the
morning."
Nothing put Miss Fletcher out. She was always pleasant, but always
firm; and Dreamikins as well as Freda and Daffy had already learnt the
meaning of that long word "discipline" in the schoolroom.
CHAPTER XII
The Prisoner
MICHAEL DUNN did get sent to prison for a month. It was by no means his
first offence, and I cannot say that the little girls were really sorry
for it. They all determined to go and see him. Freda was the one who
planned how they should do it. She thought if she went to his mother
she could coax her into taking them with her when she went. Jane, who
knew everybody, told Freda and Daffy all about the lad's mother. She
said her husband had been a bad lot, and the son was taking after him.
Mrs. Dunn had been a widow for some years. One afternoon when out with
Jane they met Mrs. Dunn, and Jane stopped to speak to her. It was
Freda's opportunity; but she was bitterly disappointed when she heard
that Michael would be allowed no visitors, and even his mother could
not go and see him. When next they met Dreamikins they told her this.
She was quite overcome by the bad news.
"But we must see him! It must be allowed. It is what God wishes. We
must do somefing at once."
It was after lesson-time, just before Freda and Daffy went home, that
they were discussing the question. Dreamikins dashed into her uncle's
study, dragging her little friends after her.
"Oh, Fibo, Fibo! It's a shame! It seemed as if everyfing was coming
true, and we were really going to do it! It's the only differcult thing
we can't manage ourselves; and it was getting easy, and now it's all no
good, and they won't let us see him. It's no good, we shall never be
the sheep; we shall end by being goats, all because we couldn't get in."
"What is it all about?" asked Fibo mildly.
Dreamikins' eyes were full of tears; she was clenching her hands, as
she did when she was much distressed. Freda and Daffy's faces were
miserable as they stood each side of her.
"It's Michael," explained Freda. "We thought we could go to see him,
and even his mother can't."
Dreamikins climbed upon her uncle's knees and clasped him firmly round
his neck, then, resting her tear-stained cheek against his, she went on:
"You are the only hope we have, Fibo dear, the only hope! You're
grown-up, and we feel you'll help us, won't you? We really must be
helped. It will all be no good if we can't get into Michael's prison.
And Er, Fibo,—" here she lifted her head and gazed into his eyes
gravely,—"Er has been telling me it's nuffing to get into prison, and
God likes people to be visited, and God will show you how to get us in."
"Oh, Fibo, do," pleaded Freda; and Daffy came up to his chair, and took
hold of one of his hands and kissed it. "Do, do, do something to help
us."
"Upon my word," said Fibo, shaking his head at them, "you take my
breath away. I am not the governor of the prison, or the chaplain, or a
prison visitor."
"Then there is a prison visitor?" said Freda eagerly. "Why can't we be
prison visitors? The Bible says we are to be."
Fibo's kind heart was touched with the children's distress. He told
them to be quite quiet while he put on his thinking cap, and they
watched him eagerly, and anxiously, and silently, with big eyes and
open mouths.
Then at last he said:
"Well, nothing venture, nothing have! The prison chaplain is a friend
of mine, and I'll write to him and ask him if he could smuggle us in
one day. I doubt if he can do it—but still there's a chance; only he
will say there are too many of us."
"No, no," cried Dreamikins; "we'll squeeze in behind, very small.
I couldn't possibly be dis'pointed, and Freda and Daffy couldn't.
You see, we all are working so hard, and we can all go in the
pony-carriage. Oh, Fibo dear, it will be lovally!"
"It will be heavenly!" exclaimed Freda; and Daffy began to dance up and
down upon her toes.
"Now I do pray and beseech you," said Fibo imploringly, "not to be
laying up another disappointment in store for yourselves. It's a
very difficult undertaking, and if you young creatures had not such
wheedling ways of creeping into my heart and upsetting everything
there, I shouldn't attempt improbabilities. You must give me time, and
you mustn't worry and wear me to fiddlestrings because I can't settle
it all up in a minute! Run along, and when the door is tightly shut,
and your voices out of ear reach, I may be able to take up my pen and
write a letter."
The little girls obediently left the room. Freda and Daffy had to go
home, but Dreamikins said hopefully:
"Fibo will do it. He's a wunnerful man."
"Yes," said Freda; "and we feel God is on our side, and we'll ask Him
in our prayers to-night to help that chaplain to say 'Yes.'"
"Oh, I shan't wait till to-night! I'll ask God now," said Dreamikins.
She astonished Freda and Daffy by suddenly falling down on the grass in
the garden, and putting her hands over her face, and her face on the
ground. Freda and Daffy watched her in silence. She jumped up in about
two minutes.
"I've done it."
"We never say our prayers in the daytime," said Daffy.
"And never flat on the ground," said Freda.
"Oh, I do," said Dreamikins, nodding her curls at them. "I always ask
God things d'reckly I think of them; and I saw pictures of people in
India who pray like that, and so I do it too, and Er says it's a good
thing to do, because the Bible always likes you to be low down; and
sometimes I hit my chest like the Publican. That's a good thing to do
too!"
They could only stare. Dreamikins' statements always interested them.
But they both added a fervent petition to God at the end of their
prayers that night:
"Oh, please, God, let us go and see Michael in prison."
Two days afterwards, Fibo was able to tell the children that the
chaplain, a Mr. Horner, had asked them all to come to tea with him in
the prison, and then he would manage that they should see Michael.
This caused great excitement. To have tea in a prison was an
entertainment indeed! Everything seemed to work smoothly. Mrs.
Harrington gave her permission for them to go, and one bright afternoon
Freda and Daffy started off for the Dower House. They found the little
pony-carriage waiting at the door, and it was three very happy little
girls who drove off a few minutes later. Fibo drove. He would not allow
Dreamikins to touch the reins this afternoon; but she was so full of
joy at going to the prison that she could think and talk of nothing
else. They were disappointed, when they got to the chaplain's rooms, to
find them much the same as other people's rooms.
"We thoughted you would be in a stone room with high windows and bars,"
said Dreamikins to the young man.
He laughed.
"But why put me in prison? I don't quite deserve it, do I?"
"But you live in a prison," said Dreamikins.
Neither she nor her little friends could quite understand it. They sat
at a big table and enjoyed their tea; and while they were eating cake
and bread-and-butter, Mr. Horner heard why they were so anxious to see
Michael.
"We're fond of poor Michael," said Dreamikins softly; "but we aren't
coming just to see him because we love him, but because we want to be
able to tell Jesus we've done it when He's counting out His sheep and
goats."
And Mr. Horner nodded, and seemed to quite understand almost as well as
Fibo did.
"I'm sorry for the boy," he said. "His sentence was a bit hard, I
think; but he comes of a bad stock, and I think that told against him.
I've told the warder to expect us after tea."
So, after tea, they followed Mr. Hornet through a baize door and down
a long corridor; and then a warder came forward. He had keys in his
hand, and took them on farther to a little room nearly at the end of
the passage. He unlocked the door, and there was Michael. He had been
having his tea, but the little girls heard that he had been working at
some post office bags before. Now he stood up, with hanging head and
sullen face.
Dreamikins looked at the cell with interested eyes, and then sidled up
to Michael's side.
"Poor Michael!" she said, in a soft whisper, slipping her little hand
into his. "I've got a angel with me, do you know!—very nice he is, and
I did hope him and me togever could get you out of prison; but Fibo
said 'No,' nobody could do it without breaking the law. Are you very
mis'able here, dear Michael?"
The lad turned his face sharply away from her, and drew the cuff of his
sleeve across his eyes.
Dreamikins kept tight hold of one of his hands, and bent her head
forward coaxingly.
"Never mind, dear Michael. You won't never do it again, will you? And
you can be quite happy in prison, you know. Some of the Bible people
sang hymns, and made quite a noise. I forget their names. And God
always comes to people in prisons. And I'm so very glad we've comed
here, for do you know that Jesus says we're visiting Him if we visit
you? Fancy that! You're instead of Him! I can't quite explain it. And
Shylock misses you so much. He looks round every day to see when you're
coming back. And he sent you his love and a kiss, and somefing very
nice. It's here in this embelope. It's a lock of his hair. I cut it off
myself. Won't you like to have it?"
Michael's great fingers closed on the packet, and the sullen boy
choked down a sob. He suddenly realised how much he had lost and
thrown away. Then Fibo called to Dreamikins. The others were standing
in the passage; for Mr. Horner said each of the little girls might go
in alone. Dreamikins stretched up on tiptoe, and put her arms round
Michael's neck as she kissed him for a good-bye.
The Freda and Daffy stole forward softly, hand in hand.
"You don't mind us coming to see you, Michael, do you?" said Freda.
"You see, Daffy and me and Dreamikins are all very sorry for you,
and we wanted to bring you some chocs; but Fibo said it wouldn't be
allowed. Are they very cruel to you in prison?"
He shook his head. Daffy patted him on the arm caressingly.
"We've been talking about you every day, and it's Fibo who's got us in
to see you. Your mother wants to come, and they won't let her. Would
you like to send a message to her, Michael? We'll take it."
"Tell her I'll be honest when I comes out," said Michael gruffly.
Daffy nodded, and Freda said:
"We would have come long ago if we could, for it's the one thing God
likes people to do, only grown-up people don't seem to believe it. I
suppose God is very fond of any one in prison. He tells us we must go
and see prisoners, and so we've come. Good-bye, Michael. And, do you
know, we've come in the pony-carriage."
"And Shylock is outside," said Daffy; "wouldn't you like to have seen
him? Wouldn't it have been funny if he had come after us, and poked his
head inside the door to see you?"
She laughed gleefully, and Michael smiled. Then they were called away,
and Fibo stepped forward.
"Your chaplain has allowed this visit, Michael, otherwise we could not
have come. It is very good of him to have managed it for us. This is a
sad pull-up to you, my boy; but be a good lad, and make a fresh start
when you come out, and I'll see what I can do for you."
A few minutes after they were all getting into the pony-carriage again,
and thanking Mr. Horner for his kindness.
"You have helped these small people to realise one of their ideals,
Horner," said Fibo, as he shook hands with him.
Mr. Horner nodded.
"I wish we were more like them," he said, and as his eyes met Fibo's,
they both smiled, for they understood each other very well.
Dreamikins was very quiet when she got into the carriage. She had a
rapt smile about her face. Presently she looked across at Freda and
Daffy.
"We've done it nearly all now, and very soon we shall be quite, quite
ready to die."
"Oh, I don't know," Freda said doubtfully. "I don't feel like that at
all. I want to live and grow up and do wonderful things, much more
wonderful than what we've done to-day."
"I was very disappointed in the prison," said Daffy. "I thought there
would be chains, and stone pillars, and darkness all underground. It
wasn't very awful after all, and Michael was in quite a nice room."
"You did not expect to find him in a Roman dungeon," said Fibo, "did
you? And our prisons do have worse cells than the one we saw this
afternoon. But Michael is not a desperate criminal, and I think the
confinement quite enough punishment for him. I hope it will be the
making of him."
"Well," said Freda, "Daffy and me have done everything the Bible tells
us, and now we're free to be as naughty as we like!"
"Oh dear!" sighed Dreamikins. "I must go and see somebody sick
to-morrow, and then I'll be free too. But we haven't really clothed the
naked, have we?"
"We shall, when Miss Fletcher gives our frocks away to the ragged
children; and we've nearly finished them."
"I should rather like to fasten the frocks on them myself," said
Dreamikins. "I'll ask Miss Fletcher to-morrow morning."
Fibo let the children talk freely without interrupting them. He did not
want them to feel that he was always correcting them. But when Freda
and Daffy said good-bye that afternoon and thanked him prettily for
having taken them, he said with a smile:
"Don't think that our visit to Michael has made us all quite perfect,
will you? We have a lot to learn, and a good deal of fighting against
our three enemies."
"Which are they?" asked Daffy.
"The world, the flesh, and the devil."
"Oh, that's the catechism," said Freda indifferently. "Nurse is very
fond of that. Daffy and me don't like it. We really don't, Fibo. It has
such long names."
But Dreamikins bent forward, eager interest in her eyes.
"I like enemies. Er will help me to fight them. He's made the devil run
away from him lots of times. Tell us more, Fibo."
"Not now. Some other time."
The children separated. Freda and Daffy had a good deal to tell Nurse
when they got back to their nursery.
She shook her head.
"Folks say that Captain Arnold is very soft-hearted. 'Tis encouraging
that wicked young thief to go and see him; but I do believe you
children can twist the Captain round your fingers."
"Dreamikins can," said Daffy. "Fibo adores her, and she adores him."
"And I adore them both," said Freda quickly. "They're simply perfect!"
When they met Miss Fletcher the next morning they told her of their
visit, and she listened with more sympathy and interest than Nurse had
done.
Then Dreamikins said:
"And now we must make haste and clothe the naked children, but I'm
wanting to put the frocks on them myself, Miss Fletcher. I think God
would like us to."
Miss Fletcher shook her head.
"I'm going to send these to my sister in London. She's a nurse, and
works in the East End; but I'll ask her to write and tell us all about
it when she has given the frocks away. The next thing we must make are
some flannel petticoats, for winter is coming on. You will be busy for
a long time."
"We needn't be," said Freda; "if we've done it once, it's enough."
Miss Fletcher knew the Bible story well that they were trying to act
out. She shook her head.
"You haven't any of you understood that rightly," she said. "The people
whom our Lord commended were those who made all those things a part of
their lives. They were always thinking of others and doing things for
others, not just when they felt inclined. And if you keep your eyes
open to help when help is needed, that will be doing what God wishes.
But none of us can ever sit down and say our work is done."
"How very tiring!" said Freda.
"Er says we shan't work in heaven," Dreamikins asserted.
"I don't know about that," said Miss Fletcher.
The little girls said no more.
Daffy said afterwards, when Miss Fletcher had gone away:
"She's rather like Nurse. Grown-up people always make everything so
dull and stupid. But Freda and I mean to go on seeing Mrs. Bone. She
loves us, and it's real fun going to visit her."
"And I'm going to see an old man," said Dreamikins—"our milkman's
father. He's bedridden; that's what they call it; and our milkman says
he's very lonely, and Fibo says I can, so I'll go this afternoon, and
then we'll all be equal!"
Dreamikins was able to make her visit. Annette accompanied her to the
door, and then was asked inside by the milkman's wife, a cheerful young
woman whose name was Mrs. Ford. She took Dreamikins up a narrow little
staircase into a very clean, bright bedroom, where an old man lay in
bed close to the window.
"Here's a little lady to see you, feyther. I'll sit her on this chair,
and then she can talk pretty to you. Jim, he goes to their house with
milk. 'Tis the Captain's little niece."
Dreamikins sat upon the chair pulled forward for her with great
dignity, and Mrs. Ford clattered downstairs. She wanted a little gossip
with Annette.
"Do you like me coming to see you?" Dreamikins began.
Old John Ford nodded his head. "Ay, little missy; talk a bit to me.
'Tis cruel lonesome lyin' here."
If there was one thing that Dreamikins could do well, it was talking.
She began at once. She told him about herself and her parents and her
pets and Fibo and all her guardian angels; she told him about her
broken leg and how she broke it, and about Freda and Daffy and Miss
Fletcher; about her pony, Shylock, and about Michael in prison, and
about everybody else that she had ever seen or heard of. And at last
she stopped quite breathless, and then began to question him.
How many children had he? Did he like rice pudding? Did he wear curls
when he was a boy? When did he come to bed? Could he tell a story? Had
he ever seen a fairy? Did he think goats very wicked animals? Had he
been a milkman? Had his son any little baby cows? Would he like to eat
a bun?
And after this last question Dreamikins produced a bun in a crushed
paper bag, which she had been holding tight in her hand, and which bag
was very hot and sticky in consequence.
Old John declared he would like nothing better, and whilst he was
eating it Dreamikins made a tour round the room, looking at and
admiring everything. A picture of the battle of Waterloo attracted her
attention.
"Did you fight in it?" she asked, and was disappointed when John said
"No."
"I thought when there was fighting everybody who isn't old has to go."
"'Tis a terrible time to live when there be a war waging," said John.
"I wish I'd been taken afore it come."
"Taken where to?" asked Dreamikins.
"To my Home above," said the old man with reverence.
"Do you want to go there soon? I don't, not just yet, unless, of
course, I'm wanted. And Er will carry me up all right. He won't let me
tumble, so I shan't be frightened. I'll lend him to you if you like
when you have to go up. When do you think it will be? Would you like Er
to carry you? He will if I ask him. He has carried such lots of people
there. He sometimes tells me about them. You'd better let me know when
you're going, and I'll send him."
"Ay, I shall be in no want of angels then! The Almighty didn't forget
to send 'em for the beggar that sat at the rich man's gate, and He'll
send 'em for me," said the old man.
There was pleased satisfaction in his tone. Then he looked at
Dreamikins and smiled.
"Can you read the Book, missy? Parson, he sometimes do read to me, and
there's that chapter—the comforting one about the place prepared for
us. I'd like to hear it again."
Dreamikins eagerly seized the big Bible on the table near his bed.
"I can read anything," she said proudly.
But she was some time in finding the place. Old John told her it was
the fourteenth chapter in the New Testament, and Dreamikins tried to
find it in St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke before she came to St.
John. She read the chapter nearly through in her soft childish voice,
and then Annette called her.
She jumped up to go.
"I'll come and read to you again, and I'll read you the chapter we like
best. It's the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew—the last part of it.
It tells about me coming to see you. Good-bye."
She stretched over the bed and kissed his withered cheek, then stumbled
down the steep stairs, and trotted off home very pleased with her visit.
When she met Freda and Daffy the next morning she told them about it,
but they did not seem very interested. Their mother was going away that
afternoon, and they were full of her departure.
"Nurse doesn't like being here in the winter. She told Mums she thought
it would be too cold for Bertie, and we're afraid Nurse will get us
back to London. Mums always ends by doing what she wishes."
Dreamikins' face fell.
"You mustn't go, now you do lessons with me. Couldn't Nurse and Bertie
go and leave you behind?"
"Nurse will never leave us," said Daffy hopelessly. "I believe she'll
stay with us till we quite grow up."
She and Freda were very downhearted that morning, and when Mrs.
Harrington came into the nursery to wish them good-bye, Freda put her
arms round her neck and whispered in her ear, so that Nurse should not
hear:
"Do let us stay the winter here, Mums. Don't listen to Nurse."
Mrs. Harrington shook her head at her.
"What should I do without Nurse?" she said. "She takes care of all of
us. Of course this house is a great expense. Mr. Denton wants me to let
it, and I am trying to do so; but till that time comes, I don't see why
you should not stay on. Don't bother your heads about it, children. Why
do you want to stay here so much? It's much livelier in town."
"But Dreamikins isn't there," said Daffy.
"Oh, that child! Nurse thinks she leads you into mischief. Perhaps you
would be best apart."
But both Daffy and Freda cried out at this.
"She helps us to be good, Mums. She's much gooder than we are. She's
always talking about angels and heaven! It was only one day that she
was really naughty!"
Mrs. Harrington shook her head again.
"It isn't talking that I believe in, it is doing. Remember that. You
can talk like an angel and yet be the most troublesome child in the
world. And I fancy that Dreamikins is rather that sort."
Freda and Daffy looked horrified. After their mother had said good-bye
to them all, and they had stood at the nursery windows and waved their
handkerchiefs to her as she drove away from the house, Freda said:
"It is Nurse who doesn't like Dreamikins, and she tells Mums tales of
her. She can't forget the rhyme Dreamikins sang in front of her face
the day she was so naughty!"
"I think she's more good than wicked," said Daffy thoughtfully. "She
means to be good, and she's made me think much more about God since I
knew her."
"She's a darling, and Nurse is a—"
But Nurse came up then, and Freda's sentence was never finished.
CHAPTER XIII
A New Playmate
IT was a dull cold afternoon in November. Freda and Daffy were in the
nursery, which looked the picture of cosy comfort. There was a blazing
fire in the grate and a bright picture screen to keep out the draughts
of the door. Bertie was playing with a box of tin soldiers on the
hearth-rug; Nurse was mending a pair of his socks in her rocking-chair.
Freda and Daffy had been tidying their dolls' house, and now were
standing at the window watching the wind sweeping the dry leaves along
the avenue, and wondering what they had better do next.
"There's quantities of things we could do," said Freda, "but Nurse
will say 'No' to most of them. We could go into the bathroom and have
a wash. All the dolls want washing, and so do their clothes. But Nurse
says we aren't to leave the room."
"Let's get our scrap books. Miss Fletcher says her sister would like to
have them when they're finished to give to her poor children."
For want of something better to do, they got their books out and
commenced to paste pictures in them, talking all the time. Nurse
presently put down her work and left the room. Soon Freda ran to the
window.
"Come quick, Daffy! I thought I heard something. There's a motor coming
up the avenue. Who can it be?"
Daffy darted to the window.
"I expect it's visitors who don't know Mummy is away."
They cautiously opened the window and hung their heads out.
"Why, it's Aunt Frances," cried Freda.
Aunt Frances was their mother's sister, and lived in the north of
England. They did not often see her; only when she came up to town.
"She doesn't know Mummy is away! Oh, I do hope she'll stay the night!"
Daffy danced round the room in excitement; Bertie at once joined in.
Then the dance turned into a chase round the table, in which Freda
joined; and then, when they were all screaming at the top of their
voices, the nursery door opened, and their aunt appeared, followed by a
chubby-cheeked boy in knickerbockers, and Nurse brought up the rear.
"You seem very cheerful up here," their aunt said.
"They turn it into Bedlam when I'm not here," said Nurse crossly.
"It was only because we saw you on the steps, Aunt Frances," said Freda
breathlessly.
"We're so glad to see anybody," said Daffy, with emphasis; "we were
feeling very dull."
Their aunt laughed.
"Well, I have brought you Edmund as a companion. He has been sent home
from school because of an outbreak of scarlatina, and I'm shutting up
my house, and going to join your mother in town. She told me to bring
him along here. The country air will do him good."
"It's to be hoped that he is safe from infection," said Nurse grimly;
"we don't want scarlatina brought here."
"Now, Nurse, do you think I should have brought him if the doctors had
not assured me it would be safe? You'll take care of him, won't you,
like a good soul, and I'll be everlastingly grateful to you. I know
we've sprung upon you very suddenly, but we only decided to do it early
this morning. Here is a note for you from Mrs. Harrington."
She took a seat in Nurse's rocking-chair, and pulled Bertie towards her
as she spoke.
"Now, Baby Bertie, give me a kiss. How you've grown! Freda and Daffy,
you haven't seen Edmund for three years. He comes just between the
two of you, so you will be companions together. You mustn't get into
scrapes, or I shall hear about it from Nurse."
Freda looked shyly at Edmund. He stood, legs well apart and hands in
his pockets, and returned her gaze rather defiantly.
"Are you going to do lessons with us?" asked Daffy.
"Not if I know it!"
There was no doubt or hesitation in Edmund's tone.
"He'll amuse himself; and he has been given a holiday task to do," said
his mother. "It's a pity Bertie is not a little older. Poor little man!
He will never know his father."
Here she gave a sigh.
"I hope my boy won't lose his father in this awful War!"
"It will be nice to have Edmund to play with," said Freda, looking at
Edmund with great interest. Then she followed him, for he walked off to
the toy cupboard to inspect their games and books. He did not approve
of many of them.
"Do you play hockey?" he asked.
They shook their heads.
"Football or cricket?"
"No."
"Then you're two rotters!"
"Hush, Edmund; you can teach them! Now I shall have to go. No,
children, I can't stay to tea. I must get back to town as soon as I
can."
In a few minutes Aunt Frances had gone. Nurse went out of the nursery
with her, and they had some talk together downstairs. When she came
back to the nursery, Edmund had made himself thoroughly at home. He
was talking in the most eager way, and Freda and Daffy were deeply
interested in what he was saying.
"Fireworks and a bonfire! How lovely! Have you the fireworks in your
box?"
He nodded.
"Mums gave them to me; and I have an air-gun. Are there any things to
shoot in the park?"
"Now look here, Master Edmund," interrupted Nurse, "I'm quite willing
to have the charge of you if you behave like a little gentleman, but
I'm not going to have you play any antics here. And as to fireworks and
guns and bonfires, they are all dangerous things, and we can do without
them."
"Mums gave me the fireworks. She said the gardener would help me send
them off!"
"Oh well," said Nurse more mildly, "that's a different thing. We'll see
what Mr. Trimmer will say to that. Now you follow me, and I'll show you
the bedroom you're going to have."
Edmund marched away with her. He was not at present at all in awe of
Nurse. When he came back to the nursery, tea was ready. The children
had plenty to talk about during the meal. Edmund's ideas were bold in
the extreme. He hoped to ride one of the horses, and go out fishing,
and shoot with the gamekeeper; he liked climbing trees, and intended to
have "good sport."
Nurse laughed at him. He was so soft and chubby to look at, so very
manly in his talk. Then he was told of Dreamikins.
"A pity she isn't a boy," he said; "but she can come and see my
fireworks!"
After tea he got out a mechanical engine of his, and when he had set it
going on the nursery floor, and tied Bertie's cart on to it with a load
of bricks, the children were delighted. They played contentedly till
bedtime, and Freda and Daffy began to think that it was very nice to
have a boy to play with.
The next morning Edmund was down in the stables long before
breakfast-time, and he persuaded the old coachman to put him on the
back of one of the carriage horses, and trotted up and down the avenue
on it, to the great admiration of his cousins, who watched him from the
nursery windows. Then he liberated a small terrier who was generally
tied up in the stables, and actually brought him up to the nursery. But
Nurse quickly sent him down again.
"How I wish we needn't go to lessons to-day!" sighed Freda.
"I shall go out fishing," said Edmund. "Old Bates says he'll come with
me."
Bates was the coachman, and Nurse was quite willing to trust him with
the charge of Edmund.
"Nurse, Dreamikins hasn't been to tea for ages and ages. May she come
this afternoon? Do say 'Yes,'" begged Daffy.
For some reason or other Nurse was in a very good temper to-day.
"If her uncle likes her to come, she can; but remember, I don't trust
her, and if she gets up to any pranks, home I'll send her as soon as
look at her!"
The little girls departed to their lessons, delighted with this
permission. Dreamikins was enchanted to come, and very anxious and
excited to see the fresh arrival.
"I like boys," she said. "I knew Harry and Frank at Brighton; they used
to play with me, and I fished, oh, lots of times with them!"
She arrived at three o'clock that afternoon, and found all the children
on the lawn. They were assisting Trimmer and the under-gardener to
sweep up the leaves.
"We're going to have a bonfire just in the beginning of the park," said
Freda excitedly.
Dreamikins' eyes gleamed with delight. Then she was introduced to
Edmund. They looked at each other for a moment in silence, then
Dreamikins said:
"I shall call you R.R."
"What's that?" he demanded.
"Fibo has a story of a R.R., and he drew him on paper just like you. He
rode, and he roved, and he was a robber, and the lines about him were:
"'The round rogue rode a red reptile,
And ruined rainbows, rats, and rooks.'"
Edmund chuckled, and retorted quickly:
"And round the rugged rock the ragged robber ran."
Then he dropped his brush, darted round a tree, and raced after
Dreamikins, who fled away screaming.
She was soon caught.
"Now call me a rogue again!"
He had her by the wrists. Dreamikins looked up at him with one of her
angelic smiles.
"Darling rogue, I do 'dore you!"
And Edmund was so taken aback that he let her go.
Half an hour after, a great bonfire of rubbish, sticks, and leaves was
burning up. The children danced round it in great delight.
"I wish we could burn something nice. They used to burn witches, didn't
they?" said Daffy.
"Let us make a witch—a kind of Guy!"
So they ran off to the house to see if they could find anything out of
which to make it.
Jane good-naturedly gave them an old hat and veil of hers, and Nellie
an old petticoat. Then they went to a barn in the yard and got a sack,
and Edmund, who was the leader, ordered them to stuff it with straw.
The little girls laughed with delight when this sack was dressed in
the petticoat and hat and veil. They tied a rope round her middle, and
dragged her along to the bonfire.
"We've got a witch," they shouted, "and we've brought her to be burnt!"
Trimmer stuck his pitchfork into her, and hoisted her upon the burning
pile.
Dreamikins watched her with clasped hands and eager eyes. It really
almost looked like a woman burning; the hat hung down and the petticoat
waved about in the wind. Then the flames licked round it and blazed up,
the sack burst, and with a loud cry Dreamikins flung herself down on
the ground, covering her face with her hands.
"Take me away!" she cried. "I've sawed enough. It's a horrible sight.
It's a real witch burning. I know it is!"
Freda pulled her up from the ground, but tears were streaming down her
cheeks.
"Let's get away," she sobbed. "I hate the old bonfire!"
Edmund looked at her with a superior smile.
"Isn't she a baby?" he said.
But Dreamikins only flung him an angry glance as she hurried over the
grass. She recovered herself in a few minutes, but would not go back to
the bonfire.
"It's so cruel," she said.
"But it was only a sack of straw," argued Daffy.
"Oh, it was cruel to burn the hat," said Dreamikins. "I can't explain
myself, but I felt it was cruel!"
Presently Edmund and Freda also had had enough of the bonfire. They
joined Dreamikins and Daffy.
"I wish it was dark," said Edmund, "and then I could let off my
fireworks."
"When it's dark, Nurse will call us in," said Freda.
"Now what shall we play at?" asked Daffy.
Dreamikins pointed her finger at Edmund.
"He's the round rogue; I'm going to be the Princess walking through the
wood, and he'll rob me, and then you, Freda, will come and ride away
with me, and Daffy will be the old woman who takes us in."
The game started. Edmund proved a very dashing rogue and robber—so much
so that Dreamikins spoilt the game by suddenly turning against her
knight and defender, and fleeing after the robber.
"I likes you best; I'll turn into a rogue and robber, and we'll drag
the others by their hair into our cave!"
The game prolonged itself till tea-time, and then they were called
indoors. Dreamikins sat up at the tea-table as good as gold. Nurse
looked approvingly at her.
"Your governess is improving you," she said.
Dreamikins shook her head.
"Oh dear no! It's Er. Er is making me so good that I forget how to be
naughty."
"Who's Er?" demanded Edmund. "Do you mean her? Can't you sound your
h's?"
"I mean Er," said Dreamikins; "and he isn't her, he couldn't be. He's a
very nice angel with black curls and black eyes, and he's sitting on my
chair with me now!"
"Angels don't sit on chairs. Why should they?"
"Because they chooses to, and Er likes to be close to me, so he does
it."
"You're talking nonsense."
Dreamikins raised herself in her chair eagerly.
"It isn't nonsense. You're only a round rogue. Fibo's round rogue was
rolled round and round till he got into a ball, and then an ogre came
by and threwed him up into the moon, and he peeps out, showing one fat
cheek when the moon is full. That's what will be done to you one day."
Edmund stared at her.
"What a rum kid she is!" he said.
Freda and Daffy were not sure whether Dreamikins was going to get on
with Edmund; but after tea, when they played together again, they
noticed that Edmund always did what Dreamikins wanted. There was no
doubt she had a way with her; and suddenly, in the midst of a hot
argument, she would smile her radiant smile and call him a nice boy,
and then he would stop arguing and agree with her instantly.
But they had a last argument together when Annette called for her, and
she stood in her hat and coat wishing them good-bye.
"Say good-night to Er," she demanded, turning to Edmund.
"There's no Er here. Show him to me."
"I shan't. You're to believe me."
"You might as well say an elephant is in the nursery."
"If I said it, he would be."
"You're just a pretence-maker, that's what you are, and a story-teller."
"Fibo is a lovely story-teller. I'd like to be like him. I shall ask Er
to flap his wings in your face when you're asleep to-night, and then
you'll be frightened."
"Oh, Dreamikins," objected Daffy, "angels would never frighten people."
"Er would do it for me. Boys who won't believe must be punished."
Dreamikins tried to look severe.
Edmund frowned at her.
"Er told me he once took care of a boy who wouldn't believe in him, and
he tooked him to a high cliff above the sea and let him tumble over,
and then he just caught him in time, and then he asked him if he felt
him do it, and the boy said 'Yes,' and he cried and begged his angel's
pardon."
"Boys don't cry."
"When nobody sees them they does."
Edmund considered.
"I take care of myself," he said. "It's only babies who believe in
angels taking care of them."
"You don't read your Bible," said Dreamikins. "Peter had a angel to get
him out of prison, and heaps of grown-up people had them. If you don't
say good-night to Er, I shan't ask you to tea and to come and see Fibo
and me."
Edmund squared his shoulders.
"All right; I don't care," he said.
"Come along, Miss Emmeline," called Annette.
Then Dreamikins sidled up to him.
"Dear Robber Rogue, just whisper it very low. Er is close to your
shoulder now. He does want you and me to be frens."
And Edmund shrugged his shoulders.
"Good-night, Er; you're a proper humbug, and you know it!"
Dreamikins danced away.
"If you're rude to him, God will send you a horrid dream to-night, and
you'll wake up and long for a angel to be close to you, and he won't
be!"
When she was gone, Freda said:
"If you don't believe Dreamikins, and all she says, it will be no
fun at all, Edmund. Even Miss Fletcher never contradicts her. She's
different to anybody we've ever seen. And it seems all true to her, so
perhaps it is."
"It's rubbish," said Edmund firmly.
"But grown-up people believe in guardian angels," said Daffy. "Let us
ask Nurse."
"Nurse," said Freda, "do people have guardian angels?"
"Yes," said Nurse gravely, "so we're told; and I remember a story about
a child that was run over and taken out unhurt from a horse's feet, and
she said that a 'beautiful angel had covered her under his wings!'"
"There!" said Daffy, turning triumphantly to Edmund. "Now what do you
say? It isn't only Dreamikins, you see!"
But Edmund shook his head scoffingly.
"She's a little humbug," he said. "She's so fond of letters, I shall
call her the R.H."
"What's that?" asked Freda.
"Rotten Humbug!" said Edmund.
"That isn't a pretty enough name for her. Daffy and me love Dreamikins.
She's always saying things you don't expect."
"You'd better call her Dreamikins," said Daffy; "that's the name that
suits her."
"Well, I'll call her B.H.—Baby Humbug. She wears socks; I've never
played with a girl in socks before."
And Freda and Daffy thought it wisest to say no more.
CHAPTER XIV
The Fire
IN a few days' time, Edmund had settled down very happily with his
cousins. He was out of doors a great deal. Bates took him fishing, and
Raikes, the gamekeeper, let him go with him through the woods. Freda
and Daffy were almost envious, he was allowed to do so many things
that were refused to them. And then they were all invited to spend the
afternoon with Dreamikins, and they went through the park, and crawled
through the little door, for Nurse let the three of them go alone.
There was no doubt about it that Nurse had a soft spot in her heart for
boys. She seemed to think that Edmund was steady and good; but when
Nurse was away from him he behaved rather differently. Dreamikins and
he were soon the greatest friends, though they disagreed upon nearly
every point that was discussed; but Dreamikins always got her way in
the end.
Edmund started playing hockey upon the lawn at the Dower House. Fibo
lent them some walking-sticks and a tennis ball, and cheered them on
from the window of his study, where he lay on his couch watching them.
And after tea they roasted chestnuts on the bars of the study fire, and
Fibo told them funny stories. When Edmund walked home he said:
"Captain Arnold is just ripping! I wish I lived with him instead of
you!"
"You must call him Fibo like we do," said Freda; "and that's rather a
rude thing to say to us."
"But I agree with him," said Daffy quickly; "I would much rather live
with Fibo than with Nurse. Fibo wants us to be happy and have fun—we
can see it in his eyes."
"I mean to have my fireworks soon," said Edmund, very firmly. "Nurse
keeps putting off the day, but I shall have them without asking her.
Look here! When we go to bed to-night, and Nurse goes down to supper,
you come out in the long passage between my room and yours, and I'll
let off a cracker. It will be such fun!"
Daffy danced with excitement, and Freda said:
"All right, we will! I wish Dreamikins was with us!"
"We'll go out one night, and let some off outside her window."
"Oh, we couldn't!"
"I could," said Edmund, "and I will. I don't believe Nurse will ever
settle the time to have them, so I shall do it without asking."
Freda and Daffy felt very uncomfortable when they were undressing and
saying their prayers that night. When Nurse had left them in bed, Freda
said:
"I left out 'make me a good girl' in my prayers to-night, because I
mean to be wicked—just for once. It's always Nurse makes us wicked,
because she tries to keep us from having fun."
"Fibo would say that was a mean excuse," said Daffy, wriggling in her
bed.
They both were conscious that they were behaving badly when they crept
out of their beds in dressing-gowns and slippers, and went along the
passage towards Edmund's room. Nurse and Jane were downstairs. The long
passage was only dimly lighted at one end. Edmund was ready. He came
out of his room with mischief written all over his face.
"Isn't this ripping?" he said, producing a box of matches in one hand
and the cracker in the other.
"What does it do?" asked Freda a little nervously. "Is it like the
rockets at the Crystal Palace?"
"No; it leaps and bounds along the ground. I run with it a little
way. Now then!" He applied his match, raced along the passage, and
then flung it from him. There was an explosion, and then another, and
another, as the cracker bounded up and down in the passage, then it
leapt over the staircase and fell with a hiss and a bang in the hall.
The noise and flames almost frightened the little girls, and then a
door burst open below, and the frightened servants, headed by Nurse,
came upon the scene. Freda and Daffy fled back to bed and buried their
heads under the clothes. Edmund did the same, but Nurse knew he must
be the culprit and went straight to his room. She was so angry that
she boxed his ears soundly, then pounced upon the small square box of
fireworks in his room and carried it off.
"I shall lock these up. Not one of them shall you have again while you
stay with us. I'm right down ashamed of you. There was I, thinking you
were such a good young gentleman, and you get up to this! Don't you
know you might have burned us in our beds?"
Edmund was white with fury. Nurse's quick chastisement had taken him
so by surprise that he had not had time to protest or excuse himself.
He had never been whipped or struck before, and if Nurse had not gone
out of the room so quickly he would have hit her back. The loss of his
fireworks made him more furious still. He sprang out of bed, opened his
door, and watched where she went.
She walked down the passage to a door rather near the nurseries; she
put the box inside, then came out, locked the door, and slipped the key
of it in her pocket. It was really a store cupboard where she kept a
lot of rubbish that she did not want—brown paper, cardboard boxes, and
old rags and her mending-bags.
Then she went into the nurseries and banged the door behind her.
Down the passage crept Edmund, matchbox still in hand.
"Now I will give you something to frighten you, you old brute!" he
muttered. "I'll set those fireworks going where they are!"
Without a thought of the possible danger of such a deed, Edmund lighted
a screw of paper and stuffed it under the door. He thought it would
soon reach the box and explode. He pushed several lighted matches under
as well, and then ran back to bed, and waited for the explosion that he
felt would follow.
It did not come as soon as he expected. If he had only been inside that
cupboard he would have known why. His piece of lighted paper had been
more mischievous than he had imagined. It had ignited a roll of soft
paper on the floor. The flames had spread from that to other pieces of
paper, then the cardboard boxes had caught fire, and soon the store
cupboard was a raging furnace.
Then the fireworks exploded, and it was a merciful providence they did.
Nurse was preparing to get into bed. She bounced out of her nursery,
and saw with horror flames and smoke pouring out of the door close
to her. In an instant she had rung all the bells she could lay her
hands on, seized hold of Bertie and the little girls, wrapped them
in blankets, and dragged them down the passage, calling to Edmund to
follow them.
Then ensued an hour of intense horror and confusion. From the big hall
below the children watched the flames leaping and bounding round the
big gallery. The men were pouring water to extinguish the flames; the
stable-boy had ridden off to Cressford for the fire-engine. Nurse was
like a distracted person. She had run back to the nurseries when she
had got the children safely downstairs, and she had managed to get
some of their clothes; but the nursery wing was now blazing fiercely.
Purling came up to Nurse very soon.
"You had best take the children to the Dower House. This is no fit
place for them. This old house will burn like tinder. It will be as
much as we can do, to save the pictures and the plate. I doubt if the
firemen will come in time."
So Nurse dressed the children with trembling fingers. Jane was almost
in hysterics, and little use at all. Then Nurse hurried them down the
avenue. She carried Bertie, and Freda and Daffy and Edmund followed her
close behind. Bertie was crying a little, Freda almost enjoying it, and
Daffy and Edmund absolutely pale with fright and very silent.
Nurse stopped at the lodge.
"If you weren't so crowded, Mrs. Lane," she said to the lodge-woman, "I
would get you to take us in; but you've four children of your own, I
know."
Mrs. Lane was wringing her hands in fright and excitement.
"My John is up at the Hall now. Oh, mercy on us, what an awful sight
the flames are! I said to 'im when I saw the glare, 'That's the
nurseries, and the children will be burnt in their beds.' However did
it happen?"
But Nurse pushed on without a word.
As they came near the Dower House Freda spoke in a whisper to Edmund:
"Isn't this fun? What will Fibo and Dreamikins say when they see us
come in the middle of the night?"
Edmund looked at her with scared eyes, then he said, "It's all Nurse's
fault."
"What is? You don't mean the fire?"
He did not answer, and walked the rest of the way in silence.
It was barely eleven o'clock when they reached the Dower House. Fibo
had not gone to bed. He had sent Daw to the Hall with a message to
Nurse, so he was not a bit surprised to see her. Mrs. Daw and Carrie
were bustling about, making up beds in the spare rooms. They soon had
all four children in bed. Mrs. Daw brought them some hot milk to drink.
But Dreamikins slept through it all.
Freda and Daffy soon fell asleep. Not so Edmund. He lay awake with
wide-open, frightened eyes, listening to the fire-engine when it
thundered past, and to the running steps and voices of the villagers,
who were all roused from their sleep and eager to help up at the Hall.
When daylight came, he was at last asleep, worn out by his fears and
remorse.
Directly Dreamikins was awake, and was told by Annette the events of
the evening before, she ran into the room where Freda and Daffy were
sleeping. They were in a big bed together.
"Oh," she cried, springing upon the bed in the greatest excitement,
"why wasn't I woked? Did you really come in the middle of the night?
Er might have woked me. I do hope he doesn't go back to heaven when I
aren't looking at him! Do tell me all about it!"
Freda and Daffy were only half awake, but Dreamikins thumped their
pillows, and almost dragged them out of bed.
"Do tell me! Were you nearly burnt to ashes? Did you jump out of the
windows? Is your house all burnt up?"
Then she was told as much as her little friends knew. In the morning
light, with Dreamikins' happy rosy face close to them, their misfortune
did not seem so terrible as it did the night before.
They all went to the window to see if there was anything left of the
Hall. All they could see was some smoke coming up through the trees; no
part of the house was visible.
"Fancy!" said Freda. "If it's burnt up, all our toys and clothes and
story-books will be gone. What shall we do?"
"We might live in a caravan in the park till it's built up again!" said
Daffy joyously.
"Oh, Nurse will simply tear us back to London! I know she will," said
Freda.
"No; you'll stay here. We'll squeeze in beautifully, and if there's no
room for the H.D. she can go to London and leave you here."
Annette and Nurse both appeared now at the door. Nurse looked quite old
and shaken. Poor Nurse! All night she had lain awake wondering if it
had been her fault—whether there had been any matches half-lighted that
she put in with the fireworks so hurriedly.
Annette took Dreamikins off to be dressed. Freda and Daffy eagerly
asked Nurse for news.
"It's the nursery wing that is burnt. They stopped the fire before it
got to the rest of the house, but the library below the nursery is very
much damaged. They saved the pictures and some of the books, but a
great many of them are destroyed."
"Oh, if it's only those old books!" said Freda. "Mums will never read
them, nor shall we, so it doesn't matter. Nurse, what shall we do now?
And is our toy cupboard burnt?"
"Be quiet now, and don't worry me with questions. I've a splitting
headache, and what your mother will say I don't know. It's a mercy we
weren't burnt in our beds!"
When Miss Fletcher arrived that morning, she found her little pupils
almost too excited to do lessons. They wanted to go and look at the
burnt house; but this was not allowed, and Nurse begged Miss Fletcher
to keep them in the schoolroom. She asked if Bertie might be kept there
too, as she was going up to the Hall at once. Miss Fletcher willingly
agreed.
Edmund made himself scarce. He had been very quiet all breakfast-time,
and had gone out to the stables to see Shylock directly afterwards.
There he made friends with the lad who had succeeded Michael, by
name Hal Brown. Hal expressed his opinion that "somebody like those
good-for-nothing suffragettes had set the Hall on fire."
"And if they get cotched they'll be taken to prison," he said.
"Will they really?" asked Edmund, trembling.
Hal nodded.
"Our policeman and a lot from Cressford are going round now trying to
get the rights of it, and find out the one who did it."
Edmund left the stable silently. He wandered out into the garden and
round and round the paths. Even Grinder, following him patiently in
hopes of a game, could not gain his attention. Fibo lay by his study
window and saw him there. He tapped sharply on the window-pane and
beckoned to him.
Edmund appeared at the study door a few minutes afterwards, quite
expecting to find the room full of policemen.
Fibo called to him cheerfully.
"Come and amuse me," he said; "we're the two men in the house who have
nothing to do. Neither of us are doing lessons just now, are we?"
Edmund tried to smile. He sat down on the edge of a chair by the fire
and looked across at Fibo in an uncomfortable fashion.
And then Fibo suddenly held out his hand.
"Come close to me, old chap, and tell me all about it. Don't be afraid.
Honour bright, I'll try to help you!"
There was magic in Fibo's look and smile.
With a deep-drawn sob Edmund scuttled over to the couch. Fibo put
his arm round him, and then he laid his brown head against the kind
shoulder, and began to sob as if his heart would break.
"I—I—shall have to go to prison," he sobbed, "because I—I did it."
"I guessed you did. Nurse's story seems rather confused. We won't think
about prison. Just tell me exactly what you did. Be a man and own up."
Edmund told him, and Fibo listened silently.
"Didn't you know that lighted paper and matches would be likely to
burn?" he asked, when Edmund had come to a stop.
"I only meant to burn the fireworks."
"But fireworks in a cupboard mean great danger."
"I didn't stop to think. I only wanted to frighten her. She boxed my
ears! Will you have to give me up to the police?"
"I think you will have to tell your story to a policeman," said Fibo
slowly. He rang his bell, and asked Daw to find Sergeant Ross who had
come over from Cressford to make inquiries about the fire.
Edmund stood, white and trembling, by Fibo's side. Fibo patted him on
the back in a comforting way.
"You've told the truth, little man; and you did not mean to burn the
house down, did you? It will be a lesson for life. Now buck up and tell
Sergeant Ross what you have told me."
In a very short time a constable was ushered into the room, and Fibo
said:
"I want you to hear this young gentleman's account of the origin of the
fire last night. He is very frightened and sorry, but I've told him
that he must tell you himself about it."
Edmund clenched his fists, threw up his head, and fought bravely with
his tears. Then he told the constable what he had done; and that good
man shook his head.
"What a lot of mischief some of you young gentlemen do with your
fireworks! Well, I'm glad to hear the rights of it. I'm thankful to
say the greater part of the house is saved. I conclude, sir,—" here
he turned to Fibo,—"I conclude, sir, that Mrs. Harrington has been
communicated with?"
"We have sent a wire."
After a few more words, the constable left the room.
"Is he going to do anything to me?" asked poor Edmund.
"No, my boy. He sees you have been punished quite enough by the
consequences of your mischief. But you'll have to tell Nurse. Better go
over to the Hall now and find her, and get it over; and then come back
to me. I shan't forsake you, you may be sure!"
Edmund gasped out:
"Must I go to Nurse? Won't you tell her for me?"
"No, I won't. For you must show your pluck, and be willing to own
yourself the culprit. Cut along!"
Edmund left the room without a word. He seized his cap from the hall
peg, and raced along the road, arriving at the Hall hot and breathless.
It was some time before he could find Nurse. She and Purling were
together in his pantry; she had found that there was literally nothing
saved from the nurseries, and now she and Purling were talking
together, discussing all that had passed. When she saw Edmund, she
turned upon him angrily:
"And you're responsible for it all, Master Edmund. What are you doing
here?"
"I've come to tell you that I did it," said Edmund, in quavering tones.
"You made me angry, and I stuffed some lighted paper under the door to
make the fireworks go off!"
Nurse gave an exclamation of horror.
"You wicked child! And here have I been blaming myself for what I never
did! Now you'll just come to Captain Arnold, and tell him that it's you
who've burnt us to the ground! And we'll tell the police, and it's to
be hoped you'll get a thorough good thrashing!"
"I've told Captain Arnold and the police," said Edmund; "and I've said
I'm sorry, and I can't say more!"
Then he ran away down the avenue as fast as he could, and hardly drew
his breath till he was in Fibo's study again. He felt that Nurse was
more formidable than any one else.
CHAPTER XV
Separation
IF it had not been for Fibo, Edmund would not have known how to get
through the next few days. Fibo and Dreamikins, in turns, heartened
and comforted him. Even Freda and Daffy were struck with horror when
they heard what he had done. The servants and the villagers soon knew
who the culprit was; and no words could be strong enough for their
opinion of Edmund. Mr. Denton, the family lawyer, arrived on the scene
the next day with the agent of the estate; and in the afternoon both
Mrs. Harrington and her sister, Mrs. Walton, came down from town. They
were able to sleep at the Hall, but the children still stayed on at the
Dower House. Fibo said he would not let them go, and Dreamikins was
delighted to have them.
Edmund dreaded meeting his mother. An hour before she was expected to
arrive, Dreamikins found him sitting on a wheelbarrow, behind a shed in
the garden, biting his nails, and looking as miserable as any little
boy could look.
Dreamikins sat down by his side.
"What a nice seat you have! Shall we wheel each other about in the
wheelbarrow?"
Edmund shook his head.
"I wish I was dead!" he said.
"So do I, often," said Dreamikins cheerfully; "but Er says God doesn't
want us just yet. I s'pose we have a good deal to do for Him when we
get old. But Freda and Daffy and me are getting on. We've done an awful
lot of things lately."
Then she cuddled against him, and put up one of her soft little hands
and stroked his cheek.
"Poor boy! I really are sorry for you. It was a big mistake, wasn't
it? And what I'm so sorry for is, we shall never see those beautiful
fireworks! But never mind, dear, you tolded the truth, didn't you? Fibo
said he could forgive anyfing in a boy who tolded the truth. Do you
know, I've been thinking that Er left me, and went along to help you.
God's angels are always busy in danger time, and a fire is danger time,
isn't it? He helped you all to get downstairs quick before the fire
caught you. I was scolding him a little, because he didn't wake me when
it all happened. But that's where he was, so he couldn't wake me."
[Illustration: DREAMIKINS FOUND EDMUND SITTING LOOKING AS MISERABLE AS
ANY LITTLE BOY COULD LOOK.]
"I don't care anything about angels," said Edmund; "but Mums will think
it awful to burn Aunt Helen's house. I don't want to see her."
"I'll stand by you," said Dreamikins sturdily. "When she comes, I'll
keep close to you. I won't let her scold you."
Edmund felt sure that a boy ought not to look to a girl to shield him
in such a crisis. But his good opinion of himself had vanished; he
felt very small, and very frightened. And when he heard the carriage
arrive, and the bustle in the house, and when Freda came running out
into the garden calling, "Edmund, Edmund, where are you? Aunt Frances
and Mums are here, and they want you," he rose to his feet and walked
into the house, holding Dreamikins by the hand, and feeling as if he
would like the earth to swallow him up. They were all in Fibo's study.
Mrs. Harrington looked very sternly at her small nephew; his mother did
not hold out her hands to him as she usually did. It was Dreamikins who
spoke first.
"We've comed in as quick as we could. Edmund wishes he was dead. But
I'm sure God doesn't want him just yet, and we all feel very sorry
about the house, and very, very sorry that the fireworks is wasted, and
you won't be angry with Edmund; he didn't mean to do it. That old Nurse
wanted a frightening, she had been so unkind to him. He only meant just
to frighten her!"
She stood in front of Edmund with hot cheeks and anxious eyes. Then she
suddenly stepped up to Mrs. Walton, and gave her one of her angelic
smiles.
"Will you kiss your poor little boy? I are so sorry for him, he is so
mis'able to-day."
Mrs. Walton began to smile.
"You are a first-rate little pleader," she said; "but I assure you I'm
the most miserable person of you all to-day! Come here, Edmund! We've
heard all about it; but you must ask your Aunt Helen to forgive you,
not me."
And then Mrs. Harrington drew Edmund towards her and kissed him.
"You didn't mean it. I know that. I'm sure this will be a lesson to you
never to play with fire again."
Edmund began to sob.
And then Dreamikins ran out of the room, and finding Daffy in the
passage, seized hold of her, and danced down the length of the hall.
"I always cry myself when other peoples cry, and I aren't going to cry
this afternoon. Oh, Daffy, do beg and pray your mother not to take you
back to town. What shall I do if you go?"
It was not much good begging and praying. The very next day Mrs.
Walton took Edmund away with her; and Mrs. Harrington said that Nurse
must bring the children back to London in three days' time. They were
going to stay in a private hotel till their mother could get her town
house again. Freda and Daffy were very unhappy at going. It would be
a long time before the Hall could be repaired and rebuilt, and Nurse
said she would be glad to get away from it. The little girls went to
say good-bye to their friend Mrs. Bone, and several other people in
the village. The last day came; they gathered round Fibo's fire in his
study for a good talk.
Dreamikins was very grave. She sat in a little cushioned chair of her
own by Fibo's side.
"If it wasn't for you, Fibo dear," she said, "I should be rolling and
kicking on the floor in a—an—agony!"
"Yes," said Freda mournfully, "that's just it; you've got Fibo, and we
haven't. We're much worse off than you are."
"But you have each other," said Dreamikins. "I'm only a one, not a two."
"You've got your angels to talk to," said Daffy.
Dreamikins put her head on one side and considered.
"I think," she said slowly, "that I'm getting rather tarred of Er. He's
too heavy and grave."
"Oh," cried Freda protestingly, "you haven't had him any time; you get
tired so quickly!"
"Well, I'll see. I won't send him away to-day. I'll write a letter and
tell you when I do."
"That's the only thing we can do—write letters," said Daffy; "and
they are so difficult to write. I expect you'll forget all about us,
Dreamikins, when we're away."
"No; I promise truefully I won't. Fibo will remind me."
"Fibo won't forget us, will you?" said Freda. "And do you think you
could send us a letter, Fibo, once now and then—one of your funny ones,
you know, with little pictures in the middle?"
"Yes, I dare say I shall be able to manage that," said Fibo, with his
kind smile; "and you'll soon be coming down to the Hall again. It isn't
good-bye for ever; so cheer up."
"It's all Edmund's fault," said Freda; "but he was so sorry I suppose
we must forgive him. And, Fibo, when you write to us, you might just
put in a word to help us to be good. We seemed to be getting on nicely,
Daffy and me; and now we shan't have anybody to help us."
"Nurse tries to make us good," said Daffy thoughtfully, "but her
goodness is quite different to yours, Fibo. You and Dreamikins are
always so happy. Nurse's goodness is horrid stuff."
"Now what is it to be good, I wonder?" said Fibo.
"Oh," said Dreamikins quickly, "to feed the hungry and thirsty, and
visit Michael in prison, and take in strangers, and clothe ragged
children, and visit poor sick people."
"Is that all? You can do all that, and yet be thoroughly naughty. To be
good is to please God."
"Oh, Fibo dear," said Dreamikins, shaking her head at him, "nobody
could be good like God, except Jesus, could they?"
"Jesus Christ was God; He came into our world to show us how to be
good. If we try to be like Him, we shall be good."
"But, Fibo, isn't all that we have been doing any use?" asked Freda.
"Of course it is. But to be obedient to Nurse, and unselfish and kind
to each other, is quite as important."
"Daffy and me feel we'd like to please God, but we don't care about
pleasing Nurse—not always," said Freda.
"And that is just where you are wrong. If you are learning to love
the Lord Who loves you, you will only please Him by keeping His
commandments. And one of His commandments is, 'Obey them that have the
rule over you.' I should like you to practise this verse: 'If ye love
Me, keep My commandments.' You have been ready enough to try to follow
out some of the commands in the Bible. Visiting the sick and helping
the poor is all right. But if you never left your nursery, and could do
neither of those, there are other commands you could keep."
"But then we don't know them all, and we forget so."
"Ask God to remind you, and to tell you."
"You'd better have an angel," suggested Dreamikins.
Fibo shook his head at her.
"I don't know that I approve of your angels," he said. "You seem to do
pretty well what you like with them. And they get between you and God."
The children were silent. It was not often they had such a grave talk
as this.
Then Dreamikins jumped up, and put her little arms round Fibo's neck.
"You are the darlingest, goodest man in the world," she said, "but I
don't care so much for you when you're so solemn. And we'll all cheer
up, and you must tell us a story that will make us scream and scream
with laughter. Now begin!"
So Fibo began one, and before long the little girls were laughing
almost as much as Dreamikins wished. When they went to bed that night,
Dreamikins was allowed to sit for ten minutes by the bedside, before
Annette came for her. There was a fire in the room, and the three
little girls were alone. Dreamikins, in her pale blue dressing-gown and
golden curls, looked a perfect picture.
"I shall never leave Fibo till Mummy comes for me," said Dreamikins
thoughtfully; "but when she does, I'll get her to take me to London,
and we'll look in upon you. We shall come up in a cab, and you'll be
having tea in the nursery—that's when I like you best; and Nurse will
say, 'Here comes that dreadful child. I do wish you'd never known her.'"
"And we shall scream with delight when we see you; but it will be ages
and ages before that happens. And perhaps you will have altered then.
Your hair will have gone out of curl, and you'll be walking instead
of dancing, and you'll shake hands very stiffly, and say, 'I'm very
pleased to see you, my dears,' in a prim and proper way!"
Dreamikins shook her head vehemently.
"I never will be stiff, never; my bones couldn't be; I can't keep them
still enough. It's been lovely knowing you, and I don't know which I
like best."
"Like us both the same," said Freda; "Daffy and me are just alike,
Dreamikins. We'll look-out for people who want clothes and food in
London; there are sure to be some. And you'll go and see Mrs. Bone as
well as your old man, won't you?"
"Yes, I will; I like seeing people. When I grow up I shall try to get
to know everybody I ever see. It's so interressing. Here's Annette;
hide me, quick!"
In an instant she had scrambled into their big bed, and wriggled down
in the middle of it out of sight.
"Has Miss Emmeline gone?" asked Annette.
Freda and Daffy giggled. Annette, knowing Dreamikins' ways, looked
under the bed, then Dreamikins jumped out of the bed on her back.
Annette screamed, and Nurse came in. She had been busy packing, and was
looking tired and cross.
"Come," she said, "this won't do; my young ladies must go to sleep—we
can't have games here."
"It's the last night, H.D.," said Dreamikins. Then she took hold of
Nurse's hand.
"You won't forget me, will you?" she said. "I don't like being
forgotted. And I'll bring you a present when I come and see you in
London. What would you like?"
Nurse looked down upon the child gravely.
"If you behave prettily, that is all I want, Miss Emmeline. Your uncle
spoils you, and Annette is no disciplinarian."
"Oh, what's that?"
But Nurse would not answer, and Dreamikins was led off to bed.
Early the next morning, Nurse and her little charges departed. There
were tears at the end. Dreamikins stood on the doorstep, and waved her
tiny handkerchief till the carriage was out of sight; then she went
mournfully into her uncle's study.
"They're gone, Fibo dear, and you and me are all alone."
"Miss Fletcher will be here directly."
"Oh, but she doesn't belong to us, and Freda and Daffy seemed as if
they did."
"Well, we did manage to get along before they came," said Fibo; "but I
quite agree that it's a sad business when friends leave us."
"So it is. And we'll have to take a lot of drives to Cressford, Fibo,
and have buns in the tea-shop, or my heart will ache."
"We mustn't let it do that. But my poor bones don't like the cold, and
a very bright thought has come into my head. What do you think of a
nice new saddle being put on Shylock, and Dreamikins perched on the top
of it?"
Dreamikins burrowed her head in his shoulder with a little squeal of
ecstasy.
"I believe Er poked that thought in your head! He's been very sorry for
me, and he's so fond of me that he said he'd think of something nice
for me if only I didn't send him away just yet. Why, Fibo, it will be
lovely! Do you really and truefully mean it?"
"Yes, I do, if you'll promise me not to try to ride alone. Daw knows
all about ponies, and he says he will be able to take you out. Shylock
is so quiet that you will be quite safe with him."
"Oh, Fibo dear, what a darling you are!"
Dreamikins went off to her lessons in great excitement. Miss Fletcher
did not expect too much from her that morning; she knew how she would
miss her little companions, and was extra kind and cheerful.
In a very few days a letter arrived addressed to, "Miss Emmeline
Broughton." Dreamikins opened it with trembling fingers, and got her
uncle to read it to her.
"OUR DARLING DREAMIKINS,—We are going to write between us, and you need
not guess who does it, because Freda writes best, and Daffy spells
best, and we've got our spelling-book and dictionary on the table, and
Nurse tells us some. We are not doing lessons yet. Our governess is
away. We are in a big hotel, and there are two boys who play with us
and Bertie. We are going to give a penny to an old flowerwoman to get
a cup of tea. She says she suffers from thirst, but tea does not agree
with her; but she will get a glass of something else instead, and we
are wondering if she is like your man, and means beer. Dear Dreamikins,
we miss you so. Tell Fibo we are trying to keep the Commandments,
but Nurse makes us knit mittens for soldiers, and we would rather do
frocks for Miss Fletcher's sister's children; but we have to do Nurse's
way. Nurse says a goat is not wickeder than a sheep except that it is
mischievous. She says we are more like goats than sheep. We asked her
which she was, and she said she wasn't either of them. Ask Fibo where
she'll stand when they are sorted out. But she lets us put our pennies
in a box for orphan children, to get them into a Home. Daffy and me
are going to the Zoo with a man who is our Cousin John. He is in the
War. He says they sent him home because the shells are too fond of him.
He has a hole in his arm; he showed it to us. Edmund has gone back to
school. Mums says he must not come to stay with us again. Kiss Shylock
for us, and give Fibo a good big hug—one for Daffy and one for me.
When we grow up we mean to build a house to take in strangers. Daffy
and me saw a poor old man who was blue-coloured, he was so cold. He
was selling papers. Nurse would not let us speak to him, but we kissed
our hands to him. There is a waiter here who has sixteen children.
Would you not like so many brothers and sisters to play with? We would.
Good-bye, darling Dreamikins. Have you still got Er? And please tell
Fibo we are looking out for a letter with pictures from him. We love
him next to you. We think he has an angel's heart, he is so kind.—Your
loving friends,
"FREDA and DAFFY.
"P.S.—We told Cousin John about the little door, and the day we first
found it. He said it was a wonderful find, and we think it was too."
Of course Dreamikins never rested till she had written a letter too.
"MY SWEET FREDA AND DAFFY,—Fibo is writing this for me in my very own
words, for I can't do it as quick as I ought, and the pen won't go
so fast as my tongue. I have heaps and heaps and heaps to tell you.
Kontities has happened. I must tell you, I nearly went to heaven the
other day. Fancy, I might have been there to-day instead of writing
this letter—having fun with all the angels and harps! But Er and a
strange man stopped me going. I was walking home from the post office,
and in the lane a dear, tiny little mouse was lying in the middle of
the road. I was just esgamining him very carefully, when all in a
minute a great big motorcar came rushing at me, and it made such a
noise that my head felt silly, and I didn't know what to do. And then
I was snatched out of the way by a man. Er gave me a pull too, and my
hat flew off, and, do you know, when the car stopped, there it was in
a mash in the road! Fancy, if I had been mashed like my hat! But it
wouldn't have hurt my soul a tiny little bit. Fibo says I must never
stop in the middle of the road again, even if I see a dead camel or
effelunt. I like Mrs. Bone. I wented to see her, and she made me laugh.
Fibo and I are going to be dreffully busy. We have some darling little
robins who hop and skip on the window-ledge. We are making a little
house for them, and we mean to put their breakfes in it. It is made
of wood, and is called Redbreast Inn. It has a big, open door, and a
red roof with a chimley, and Mrs. Robin will want to live in it. We
had some snow yesterday. I think it is the little angels tearing the
clouds into bits and throwing them down for fun, but Er shakes his
head and says they never tear things in heaven. I am making a coat for
Grinder, he is so cold, and then I am going to make one for Drab and
for Whiskers; they do look so funny! I tied a pocky-hanker round Drab,
and she arched her back and sweared. Fibo lets me make hot toast for
tea all myself. And we think a Pixie lives in the chimley; there is
a coorious noise when we listen, and Mrs. Daw says it may be a bird,
but Fibo and me knows better. He is called Shicketty Shock, and he is
hiding his bags of gold there. One day he'll tumble down, and then I'll
catch him quick. Miss Fletcher and me miss you very much, and she lets
me put your two chairs up, and then I pretend you're there and I say
things to you. Last night I had a dream. Fibo says it was a dream, but
I think Er pulled a bit of me out of my body and we flew to London.
I thought you was both with me talking in a shop full of Christmas
things. Do you remember doing it? How many kisses shall I make on the
paper for you? Freda is first, then Daffy. Fibo is going to write to
you all hisself soon. Good-bye. Good-bye. And don't you think this is a
nice long letter from your—
"DREAMIKINS.
"P.S.—This is a sekret I am riting it myself. Er is two grav for me and
he says God wants him to cary up por solders in batle so he is going to
moro. I am so glad. I am going to have a little old mery angel wuman,
she will mak me laff like Mrs. Bone only much beter. I will tell you
how we get on togever in my nex leter."
Dreamikins got her new angel; so she informed her uncle, and she named
her Meribah. Fibo told her that the name did not suit an angel, that it
meant "quarrelling" or "strife." Dreamikins was undaunted.
"She does quarrel with Satan when he tries to come near me. She pushes
him away. And I like the name, Fibo, because she is so merry."
Meribah lived with Dreamikins quite a long time, and then one day, when
Fibo and his little niece were talking together, Dreamikins looked up
at him with soft, pitying eyes:
"What a pity it is, Fibo, that you have no nice angels to talk to you,
and 'muse you when I aren't here," she said.
"Well," said Fibo, leaning back in his chair, "I think we may have
our guardian angels in the same way that you have; but when you get
older, my Dreamikins, I hope your heart and thoughts will be occupied
with Somebody better than angels. I think angels may guard and keep
our bodies from dangers, but I have Somebody Who guards and keeps my
soul—yes—and Who takes possession of it, if I am willing."
"Who?" Dreamikins asked in a breathless whisper.
"Do you remember the picture in your nursery, where our Lord is
standing outside a door knocking at it?"
Dreamikins nodded.
"Yes. He has a lamp in His hand."
"That's a picture of a person's heart. I haven't said much to you about
your angels, because you're only a little girl. But when you grow
bigger, you'll feel that nobody will satisfy you but the Lord Jesus
Himself. Angels can't get the victory over our evil tempers; they can't
conquer the Devil when he fights with us, but Jesus can. And His Holy
Spirit lives in people's hearts, and comforts them and helps them. And
if I have the very best Friend on earth to live with me, I don't think
so much about angels. I am content, more than content, to have Him!"
Dreamikins put her head on one side, and began blinking her eyes very
fast, a sure sign that she was thinking deeply. Then she clasped her
small hands eagerly and leant towards her uncle:
"But, Fibo dear, I 'sure you I want to have the bestest I can have,
without waiting to grow bigger. It does take so long to grow. I think
if I was watered like the flowers it would be quicker, but Annette
won't do it for me, and she even won't let me water my head in the
bath! But I'm afraid Jesus would be so shocked to live inside me, and
I couldn't talk to Him like I do to my angels, could I? It would be so
very dirrispeckful."
Fibo did not answer. He liked Dreamikins to do some thinking sometimes.
She said presently:
"Of course Jesus is the Best, the very bestest Best. And I always
mean to have the best of everyfing if I can get it. And my angels do
dis'point me dreffully. I get so tarred of them. Would He really come
right inside of me, Fibo dear, where I could feel Him when I went to
bed and it was dark?"
"Listen, Dreamikins. This is what the Lord Jesus says. You can find it
in your Bible, if you like: 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if
any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him.' And
another time He said to His disciples: 'If a man love Me, he will keep
My word, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.'"
"But I'm not a man, Fibo dear. I'm 'fraid, after all, it doesn't fit."
"It means everybody—men and women, boys and girls."
Dreamikins' eyes grew bigger and bigger, with the big thoughts behind
them.
Then like a flash of light she vanished from the room, and Fibo was
left alone.
In about ten minutes' time she reappeared. This time she walked very
softly, with her finger on her mouth. She came up to her uncle, then
put her hands behind her and said in an awed whisper:
"I've been talking to Jesus upstairs. I got into a cupboard, like He
tells us to. I thought I must be most partic'lar, for I reely think
it's too grand to be true! But, Fibo, you telled me the truth. He says
He'll be very happy to do it." She paused, then took hold of her uncle
by the lappet of his coat, and went on gravely:
"Of course I just tolded God I was much 'bliged for all the angels He
sent me. But I'd had enough of them. And He said, 'Very well.' And
then I just sat down on the floor and waited for Jesus to come into my
heart. But He didn't come, and so I comed down to you; but God seemed
to tell me Jesus would come before I go to bed to-night."
Again Fibo felt speechless, as he so often did when Dreamikins talked.
Then Annette came in to take her for a walk, and Fibo did not see her
till after her tea. He happened to look-out into the garden, and saw
Dreamikins standing in the middle of the path shaking herself most
violently. The whole of her little body was in a quiver; her hair was
whirling round her head, and both hands were shaking her pinafore and
frock and petticoats, as if she were shaking her handkerchief out of
the window.
He tapped on the window-pane and called out:
"Come indoors, Dreamikins. What are you doing? You make me giddy to
look at you."
But Dreamikins stopped for a minute, then she called out cheerfully:
"I'm just shaking old angel Meribah out of me; she doesn't want to go,
and so she sticks!"
Then she went on shaking herself again.
Her uncle checked his laughter. He looked on at Dreamikins' antics, and
watched for the next step. Suddenly she stopped, then threw up her arms
towards the sky, and looked upwards with the most ecstatic smile upon
her face. And then very gravely and seriously she walked back into the
house. Fibo waited patiently. It was not long before she appeared at
his door, and then she came in on tiptoe, with shining eyes. Walking
straight up to him, she climbed upon his knees and put her arms round
his neck. She held him tight for a minute without speaking a word, then
she put her little mouth to his ear and whispered:
"Jesus Christ has done it. He really has comed into me, and He's going
to lock the Devil out, so I shall never be naughty again—never!"
Fibo shook his head in a perplexed fashion.
"I don't think you will always be good, Dreamikins. I am afraid
sometimes you will shut the Lord out of His rightful place, and then
you will be naughtier than ever. But I hope that will happen less and
less frequently."
"I shall have to walk on tiptoe always," said Dreamikins, taking her
arms away from his neck and settling herself comfortably on his knee.
"But it's a very wunnerful thing to happen to me, Fibo. It's a—don't
you call it a mirricle?"
"Yes, I think it is always a miracle," said Fibo gravely.
"And of course," Dreamikins went on, dropping her awestruck tone and
speaking in her natural eager little voice,—"of course I had to empty
myself, before Jesus could come to me. That's why I went into the
garding to do it, so that Meribah could get up easily to heaven. She
was quite differcult to get rid of, do you know? And I told her to make
haste. She was actooly keeping God waiting! And then she flew up quite
frightened. And I watched her till she was out of sight. And then I was
ready, so I went upstairs and knelt down in the cupboard, and then you
know—then it happened!" After a minute's silence she said:
"I'd like to write to Freda and Daffy and tell them about it. They
never did believe in my angels—not properly, but they'll have to
believe in Jesus going about with me everywhere, because it says so in
the Bible! Can I do it now?"
Fibo was quite willing to help her, and the next morning Freda and
Daffy got another letter from their little friend; but it was a short
one.
"MY DARLING FRIENDS,—I've just done a most wunnerful thing. I've talked
with Fibo, and angels are mostly for babies, and they aren't the Best,
so I've sent Meribah back, and Jesus Christ is actooly coming His Own
Self to live in my heart. And He has come, and I'm so happy I don't
know what to do. It's almost as good as heaven. I can't quite see Him,
but when I shut my eyes I do. And He's going to be with me for ever and
ever. Good-bye.—Your loving DREAMIKINS.
"P.S.—I've said to God that if His angels are dis'pointed they can look
after me when I'm asleep. But when I'm wide awake, I'd rather, oh, much
rather have Jesus Christ. Now I feel the grandest, greatest person in
the world."
When Freda and Daffy read this letter Freda said:
"It is like Dreamikins, and yet it isn't as funny as she really is. I
like to see her when she talks, her eyes laugh so!"
"There will never be anybody again like her wherever we go," said
Daffy. "If we sorted out the whole world there couldn't be!"
"I suppose," said Freda slowly, "God took extra trouble when He made
her."
"And what a very good thing it was when we went through that little
door."
"Yes," said Freda, with a smile at the memory of it. "That door led us
to Fibo and Dreamikins."
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