“You know that in Cornwall and in Sicily all the elderly men are uncles, and all the old women aunts; everybody’s uncles and aunts,” concluded Mr. Danby.
Moppet still occupied Sir John’s knee. She felt somehow that it was a post of honour, and she had no inclination to surrender it. Her tiny fingers had possessed themselves of his watch-chain.
“Please show me your watch,” she said.
Sir John drew out a big hunter.
Moppet approached her little rosy mouth to the hinge and blew violently.
“Why don’t it open like Uncle Tom’s watch does when I blow?” she asked. “Is it broken?”
“Blow again, and we’ll see about that,” said Sir John, understanding the manoeuvre.
The big bright case flew open as Moppet blew.
“Take care it doesn’t bite your nose off.”
“How big and bright it is — much bigger and brighter than Uncle Tom’s.”
“Uncle Tom’s is a lady’s watch, and Uncle Tom is a lady’s man,” said Sir John, and the triple peal of childish laughter which greeted this remark made him fancy himself a wit.
Small as they were these children were easily amused, and that was a point in their favour, he thought.
“Tea is ready in the breakfast-room,” said Adela.
“Tea in the breakfast-room! Oh, how funny!” And again they all laughed.
At any rate they were not doleful children — no long faces, no homesick airs, no bilious headaches — so far.
“I dare say they will all start measles or whooping-cough before we have done with them,” thought Sir John, determined not to be hopeful.
“Oh, we are to come to tea, are we?” he said cheerily, and he actually carried Moppet all the way to the breakfast-room, almost at the other end of the rambling old house, and planted her in a chair by his side at the tea-table. She nestled up close beside him.
“You like us now, don’t you?” she asked.
“I like you.”
“And you’ll like her,” pointing to her sister with a small distinct finger; “‘and him,” pointing to her brother, “to-morrow morning. You’ll know us all tomorrow morning.”
“To-morrow will be Christmas,” said Laddie, as it giving a piece of useful information to the company in general.
“Christmas!” cried Danby; “ so it will. I mustn’t forget to hang up my stocking.”
This provoked a burst of mirth. Uncle Toni’s stocking! Uncle Tom hoping to get anything from Santa Claus!
“You needn’t laugh,” said Mr. Danby, seriously. “I mean to hang up one of my big Inverness stockings. It will hold a lot.”
“What do you expect to get?” asked Laddie, intensely amused. “Toys?”
“No; chocolates, butterscotch, hardbake, alecompane.”
“Oh, what’s alecompane?”
The name of this old-fashioned sweetmeat was received with derision.
“Why, what an old sweet-tooth you must be!” exclaimed Moppet; “but I don’t believe you a bit. I shall come in the middle of the night to see if your stocking is there.”
“You won’t find my room. You’ll go into the wrong room most likely, and find one of the three bears.”
Moppet laughed at the notion of those familiar beasts. “There never were three bears that lived in a house, and had beds and chairs and knives and forks and things,” she said. “I used to believe it once when I was very little” — she said veway little; “but now I know it isn’t true.”
“She looked round the table with a solemn air, with her
lips pursed up, challenging contradiction. Her quaint little face, in which the forehead somewhat overbalanced the tiny features below it, was all aglow with mind. One could not imagine more mind in any living creature than was compressed within this quaint scrap of humanity.
Sir John watched her curiously. He had no experience of children of that early age. His own daughters had been some years older before he began to notice them. He could but wonder at this quick and eager brain animating so infinitesimal a body.
Moppet looked round the table; and what a table it was! She had never seen anything like it. Cornwall, like Scotland, has a prodigious reputation for breakfasts; but Cornwall, on occasion, can almost rival Yorkshire in the matter of tea. Laddie and Lassie had set to work already, one on each side of Miss Hawberk, who was engaged with urn and teapot, Moppet was less intent upon food, and had more time to wonder and scrutinize. Her big mind was hungrier than her little body.
“Oh, what a lot of candles!” she cried. “You must be very rich, Mr. Old Gentleman.”
Eight tall candles in two heavy old silver candelabra lighted the large round table, and on the dazzling white cloth was spread such a feast as little children love — cakes of many kinds, jams, and marmalade, buns, muffins, and crisp biscuits fresh from the oven, scones both white and brown, and the pale yellow clotted cream in the preparation of which Cornwall pretends to surpass her sister Devon, as in her cider and pery and smoked pig. It is only natural that Cornwall in her stately seclusion at the end of Western England should look down upon Devonshire as sophisticated and almost cockney. Cornwall is to Devon as the real (Scottish Highlands are to the Trossachs. Besides the cakes and jams and cream-bowl, there were flowers, Christmas roses, and real roses, yellow and red, such flowers as only grow in rich men’s greenhouses, and there was a big silver urn in which Laddie and Lassie could see their faces, red and broad and shining, as they squeezed themselves each against one of Adela’s elbows.
“Oh, Uncle Tom,” exclaimed Lassie, in a rapturous tone, “we shall never die here.”
“Not for want of food certainly, Lassie.”
The children had eaten nothing since a very early dinner in Plymouth, and on being pressed to eat by Miss Hawberk and Mr. Danby, showed themselves frankly greedy. Sir John did nothing but look on and wonder at them. They showed him a new phase of humanity. Did life begin so soon? Was the mind so fully awakened while the body was still so tiny?
“How old are you, Mistress Moppet?” he asked, when Moppet had finished her first slice of saffron cake.
“Four and a quarter.”
Not five years old. She had lived in the world less than five years. She talked of what she had thought and believed when she was little; and she seemed to know as much about life as he did, at sixty-five.
“You are a wonderful little woman, not to be afraid of going out visiting without your nurse?”
“Nurse?” echoed Moppet, staring at him with her big grey eyes; “what’s a nurse?”
“She doesn’t know,” explained Laddie. “We never had a nurse. It’s a woman like Julie has to take care of her, Moppet,” be explained condescendingly—” a bonne we call her. But we’ve never had a bonne,” he added with a superior air.
“Indeed,” exclaimed Sir John; “then pray who has taken care of you, put you to bed at night, and washed and dressed you of a morning, taken you out for walks, or wheeled you in a perambulator?”
“Mother,” cried the boy. “Mother does all that — except for me. I dress myself. I take my own bath. Mother says I’m growing quite inde-in-de—”
“Pendent,” screamed Moppet across the table. “What a silly boy you are! You always forget the names of things.”
Moppet was getting excited. The small cheeks were flushed and the big eyes were getting bigger, and Moppet was inclined to gesticulate a good deal when she talked, and to pat the tablecloth with two little hands to give point to her speech.
“Moppet,” said Mr. Danby, “the hot cakes are getting into your head. I propose an adjournment to Bedfordshire.”
“No! no! no! Uncle Tom. We ain’t to go yet, is we?” pleaded the child, snuggling close up to Sir John’s waistcoat, with the settled conviction that he was the higher authority. The lapse in grammar was the momentary result of excitement. In a general way Moppet’s tenses and persons were as correct as if she had been twenty.
“I think you ought to be tired after your lo
ng journey,” said the baronet.
“But it wasn’t a long journey. We had dinner first, and in the morning we walked on the Hoe. Isn’t that a funny name for a place? And we saw the sea, and Uncle Tom told us of the—”
“Spanish Arcadia,” interrupted Laddie, who felt it was his turn now, “and how Drake and the other captains were playing bowls on the Hoe, just where’ we were standing that very minute, when the news of the Spanish ships came and they went off to meet them; and there was a storm, and there was no fighting wanted, for the storm smashed all the ships, and they went back to King Philip without any masts, and Queen Elizabeth went on horseback to Tilbury, and that was the end of the Arcadia.”
“For a historical synopsis I don’t call that bad,” said Mr. Danby; “nevertheless I recommend Bedfordshire if our little friends have finished their tea.”
“I have,” said Lassie, with a contented yawn.
Moppet did not want to go to bed. She had eaten less than the other two, but she had talked more, and had slapped the table, and had made faces, while Lassie and Laddie had been models of good manners.
“I wish you wouldn’t call it Bedfordshire,” she said, shaking her head vindictively at Mr. Danby. “It makes it worse to go to bed when people make jokes about it!”
Mr. Danby came round to where she sat, and took her up in his arms as if she had been a big doll instead of a small child.
“Say good night to Sir John,” he said.
Moppet stooped her face down to the baronet’s, and pursed up her red lips in the prettiest little kiss, which was returned quite heartily.
“Take her away, Danby, she is much too excited, and she is the funniest little thing I ever saw. Good night, my dears,” he said to the others, as he rose and walked towards the door. “I hope you will spend a happy Christmas at Place. Adela, be sure the little things are comfortable, and that Nurse Danby’s instructions are obeyed.”
The children laughed at this rude mention of Mr. Danby, and went off to bed repeating the phrase “Nurse Danby” with much chuckling and giggling.
CHAPTER IV.
“WELL, Jack,” said Danby, when Miss Hawberk had left the diningroom, and he and Sir John were alone, with their chairs drawn up to the hearth, their cigarettes lighted, and a bottle of Château Lafitte on the table between them. “Have you forgiven the children for being so much smaller than you expected?”
“I could forgive that youngest mite anything — smashing the Portland vase, if I owned it. She is what your friends over yonder” (with a nod westward) “would call an amusing; little cuss.”
“She is a little lump of love,” answered Danby. “ One has to know that child well to know how much there is in her.”
“You are very weak about her evidently — very fond of all three, no doubt?”
“Yes, I am fond of them all. Lassie is going to grow up a beauty. I shall be very proud of her twelve years hence, if I live so long.”
“You say they are not actually your nephew and nieces?”
“Not actually!”
“But they are pretty nearly related to you, I take it?”
“They are as near to my heart as they can be!”
“You are not very explicit.”
“Why, no, Jack; that isn’t in the bond. It was agreed that the children were to come and go, and you were to know nothing about them, except that they were decently brought up, and not likely to make themselves obnoxious. They were to have no claim upon you. This visit was not to be the thin end of the wedge.”
“You needn’t echo me, Danby. I dare say I was rather cantankerous the other day.”
“No, no, Jack, you were open-handed and liberal, as you always are; but naturally you didn’t want, by a casual kindness, to establish a claim, or to give anybody’s poor relations the right to bother you. We’ll stick to the original notion, my dear friend. These children are hired to amuse you, and to give just the touch of homely mirthfulness that suits the season. They will enjoy all the good things your hospitality provides, and their frank happiness will enliven this solitary old house, and on the morning after Twelfth Night they will wish you good-bye, and will be seen no more at Penlyon Place.”
“Manage it your own way,” said Sir John, with a faint sigh.
He was thinking of his daughter Lilian, his elder daughter, who had never disobeyed him — whose marriage had gratified his pride as a father. If she had lived to be a mother how happy he would have been to see the third generation growing up about him, to have welcomed sturdy grandsons and blooming granddaughters to the house of his forefathers, to have seen the line of the Penlyons carried on towards the dim future, with the promise of new honours and increasing wealth.
The bell rang at half-past eight for morning prayers, a big bell in a cupola over the hall door. Sir John was in his armchair near the hearth, with the large crimson-bound prayer-book open on the table in front of him, waiting for the assembling of the household. The bell was still ringing when a scampering of little feet was heard in the hall, the door was opened rather violently, and Laddie and the two little girls came rushing in, their eyes sparkling, their cheeks fresh and cold from the morning air.
Moppet ran straight to Sir John, and lifted up her rosebud mouth for a kiss, and was immediately taken upon his knee. It seemed the only possible thing to do with such a small creature, so round, so caressing, so bright and fresh with sweet morning breezes and morning sunshine.
“What a veway nice garden yours is,” said Moppet, approvingly.
“You have seen the garden already. What an early bird you are!”
“Yes, but I didn’t catch any worms. I don’t like worms. They’re veway ugly,” said Moppet, shaking her head. “I’m not afraid of them now, not even when they’re ever so big; but I — do — not — like — them.”
She slapped her open palm upon Sir John’s coat-sleeve to give emphasis to this final statement: such a tiny, tiny hand, but with so much character in all its movements. Laddie and Lassie meanwhile were walking slowly round the breakfast-table, looking at the good things upon it. The big Cornish ham and savoury pie, and cold pheasants were on the sideboard; but the large round table was amply furnished with covered silver dishes, in which the children admired themselves, and crystal jars of jam, and bowls of clotted cream, just the same as at last night’s tea.
Laddie came to a full stop, gazing with wide open eyes, and gave a long sigh of content.
“Poor mother!” he said, almost in tears.
“What’s the matter with mother?” asked Moppet from her perch on Sir John’s knee.
“She never has breakfast like this.”
“She has what she likes. Mother isn’t greedy like you. Cake doesn’t make her happy, nor even jam,” said Moppet, with a philosophical air. “She has an egg every morning. My fowl lays it for her, sometimes.”
“So you keep fowls, Moppet?” asked Sir John, curiously interested in every detail of these small lives.
“I keep a fowl — a hen; cocks are ever so much prettier, but they are fierce, and they won’t lay eggs. I have got a hen, and she has got one, and he has got one,” said Moppet, pointing to the brother and sister, “and they all lay eggs for mother’s breakfast, except when they won’t.”
“Hush, my pet, I am going to read prayers.”
“Are you?” said Moppet, looking at him with wondering eyes. “Why don’t you say your prayers dreckly you’re dressed, like we do?”
“These are family prayers, for everybody.”
“Oh,” said Moppet, resignedly, with a very long face, “like church, I s’pose.”
Adela Hawberk and Mr. Danby came in one by one during this conversation, and Adela now took Moppet, as it were, into custody, while Danby looked after the other two. The three children were seated solemnly, with their little hands quietly folded, but their eyes roaming about the room, when the servants came filing in, and took their places near the door — the butler, portly and pompous; the valet, tall and slim, languidly el
egant; the cook colossal; the maids fresh-coloured and prim, in cotton frocks and smart white caps; and Miss Hawberk’s woman, bringing up the rear, in a neat black gown and a something of lace and ribbon, which was as little like a cap as she could make it.
Moppet, with her mouth ‘wide open, counted these good people in a loud whisper, and then, just as Sir John opened his book, and began the preliminary scriptures, turned to Miss Hawberk in irrepressible surprise, and exclaimed aloud —
“Twelve servants! Mother has only one!”
She looked very sorry the next instant, when she heard her little clear voice clash against Sir John’s deep tones, and till the very end of the family prayers she knelt or sat as mute as a statue.
The prayers were not too long for any one’s patience. The servants filed out of the room as quietly as they had entered, Miss Hawberk’s Abigail departing with an indolent grace, and with the door held open for her by an admiring footman. Then came a delicious odour of coffee; and then the business of breakfast began in earnest, and the children, who had been up at the first glimpse of day, eager to find the toys in their stockings, mother’s” little gifts among them, and who had been dressed and running about since half-past seven, were quite ready for the meal. Mr. Danby looked after them, and took care that they had only the things that were good for them, and those composed a somewhat Spartan bill of fare.
The butler, who was on duty at the sideboard, carving, approached Laddie as solemnly as if he were a grown-up person, and offered him a plate of pheasant and ham. Laddie looked appealingly at Uncle Tom.
“Not to be thought of, Laddie! You are going to have a dinner fit for a Lord Mayor of London, and you must save yourself for that. Bread and butter and an egg for breakfast, and nothing more.”
Moppet, who was breakfasting on a basin of bread and milk, shook her head at her brother across the wide, round table.
“You know, Laddie, we never have meat for breakfast,” she said, “and we don’t always have it for dinner. Sometimes we have rice pudding, and sometimes we have batter pudding,” she explained to the company in general: “and then we don’t want meat, you know. It’s better for us, and it’s cheaper for mother.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1039
