THE MEAN-WELLS

“Geoffrey examined the box.”

Page [5].

THE MEAN-WELLS

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

ILLUSTRATED BY
G. E. ROBERTSON

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

TO
LILY
IN REMEMBRANCE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE MEAN-WELLS

CHAPTER I
THE WORTH OF A TOOTH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But father, without any hesitation, said:

“Oh dear, no—certainly not.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Potts, quite unembarrassed, laughed good-temperedly.

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

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

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

Priscilla grew thoughtful.

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

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

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

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

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

Priscilla nodded her head very soberly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II
A DRIVE AND A PINK PARASOL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where is mother?”

“Out.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loveday shrieked with delight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Carlyon groaned and shook his head despairingly.

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

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

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

CHAPTER III
ON THE ROAD TO LANTIG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Carlyon smiled.

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

“Please,” said Priscilla.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priscilla turned round, shocked and indignant.

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

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

Priscilla’s eyes twinkled wickedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But where can Priscilla sit?”

“Can’t she walk just a little way?”

“I am afraid not.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Carlyon burst into hearty laughter.

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

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

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

Priscilla sighed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is it vaccinations?” asked Priscilla.

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

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

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

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

Loveday, though, preferred to keep it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loveday was very mortified and angry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The ‘Giant’s Footstool.’”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V
SWEEPING THE DRAWING-ROOM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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