on a bit here and there once in a hundred years, until finally we have this charmingly irregular and dilapidated whole. You go up three steps into Mrs. Heaven's room, down two into mine, while Phoebe's is up in a sort of turret with long, narrow lattices opening into the creepers. There are crooked little stair-cases, passages that branch off into other passages and lead nowhere in particular; I can't think of a better house in which to play hide and seek on a wet day. In front, what was once, doubtless, a green, is cut up into greens; to wit, a vegetable garden, where the onions, turnips, and potatoes grow cosily up to the very door-sill; the utilitarian aspect of it all being varied by some scarlet-runners and a scattering of poppies on either side of the path.
The Belgian hares have their habitation in a corner fifty feet distant; one large enclosure for poultry lies just outside the sweetbrier hedge; the others, with all the houses and coops, are in the meadow at the back, where also our tumbler pi
tack-yard, behind the lengthy range of stables, two men were thatching. One lay sprawling on the crest of the rick, the other stood perched on a ladder at a lower level.
The latter, small, old, with shrewd nut-brown countenance, was Tammas Thornton,, who had served the Moores of Kenmuir for more than half a century. The other, on top of the stack, wrapped apparently in gloomy meditation, was Sam'l Todd. A solid Dales-- man, he, with huge hands and hairy arms; about his face an uncomely aureole of stiff, red hair; and on his features, deep-seated, an expression of resolute melancholy.
"Ay, the Gray Dogs, bless 'em!" the old man was saying. "Yo' canna beat 'em not nohow. Known 'em ony time this sixty year, I have, and niver knew a bad un yet. Not as I say, mind ye, as any on 'em cooms up to Rex son o' Rally. Ah, he was a one, was Rex! We's never won Cup since his day."
"Nor niver shall agin, yo' may depend," said the other gloomily.
Tammas clucked irritably.
"G'long, Sam'! Tod
road and that was the last that was heard of him. His surmises were right. The Biggses never even looked for him.
[Illustration]
Billy at the Soda Fountain
After Billy Whiskers had left Mr. Biggs, he trotted slowly down the road wondering where he would get his next meal for he well knew he would never dare go back to Mr. Biggses after upsetting him in the geranium bed and causing all the mischief he had there that day. But being a goat of a cheerful frame of mind and used to looking out for himself, he did not worry much, and decided he would enter the first garden he came to, and make a free lunch off the vegetables, or go into a turnip patch and feast on them for if there was anything he doted on it was nice, sweet turnips, fresh from the fields.
He had gone some distance, and no patch or garden appearing that was not enclosed by a high, barbed-wire fence, he commenced to get discouraged. Feeling hungry and thirsty he was about wishing he had behaved himself at Mr.
atting with her cousins, or other friends, now strolling through the great parlours with their wonderful decorations of banked roses and garland-draped ceilings.
Dinner was early that night, as the ceremony was to be performed at eight o'clock, and after dinner Patty flew to her room to don her own beautiful new gown.
This dress delighted Patty's beauty-loving heart. It was a white tulle sprinkled with silver, and its soft, dainty glitter seemed to Patty like moonlight on the snow. Her hair was done low on her neck, in a most becoming fashion, and her only ornament was a necklace of pearls which had belonged to her mother, and which her father had given her that very day. The first Mrs. Fairfield had died when Patty was a mere baby, so of course she had no recollection of her, but she had always idealised the personality of her mother, and she took the beautiful pearls from her father with almost a feeling of reverence as she touched them.
"I'm so glad it's Nan you're going to marry, Papa
n our house, when I was living with my sister in Hingham, before the war. Hingham used to be famous for its ghost stories; an old house without its ghost was thought to lack historic tone and finish."
Gentleman Jo took a story-telling attitude, and a number of the pupils gathered around him.
GENTLEMAN JO'S GHOST STORY.
I shall never forget the scene of excitement, when one morning Biddy, our domestic, entered the sitting-room, her head bobbing, her hair flying, and her cap perched upon the top of her head, and exclaimed: "Wurrah! I have seen a ghoust, and it's lave the hoose I must. Sich a night! I'd niver pass anither the like of it for the gift o' the hoose. Bad kick to ye, an' the hoose is haunted for sure."
"Why, Biddy, what have you seen?" asked my sister, in alarm.
"Seen? An' sure I didn't see nothin'. I jist shet me eyes and hid mesilf under the piller. But it was awful. An' the way it clanked its chain! O murther!"
This last remark was rather startling. Spirit
d with a voice of wondrous sweetness: "Pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."
Cristobal repeated the words, a soft light stealing over his face. "I will remember," he said, looking up to meet the pleading eyes of the Child: but, lo! the whole face had melted into the aureola; nothing was left but light. Yet Cristobal was filled with a new joy; and, as he opened his eyes, his dream--if dream it were--changed, becoming as sweet and solemn as a prayer. It seemed to him that the roof of the cottage glittered with stars, and was no longer a roof, but the boundless sky; and, afar off, like remembered music, a voice fell on his ear, "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your trespasses."
Cristobal arose, and, although still blind, walked in light. "It is the aureola which has stolen into my heart," thought Cristobal. "The pain and hate are all gone. Now I am ready for Christmas. I wish I could help poor Jasper, who has such a weight of
's head from its hard pillow of rock.
With swift nervous motions she unfastened his coat and bent her ear to his breast.
"'Tis only a faint, maybe shock. In all the world was only Margot, and Margot was lost. Ugh! the hail. See, it is still here--look! water, and--yes, the tea! It was for you---- Ah!"
Her words ended with a sigh of satisfaction as a slight motion stirred the features into which she peered so earnestly, and she raised her master's head a bit higher. Then his eyes slowly opened and the dazed look gradually gave place to a normal expression.
"Why, Margot! Angelique? What's happened?"
"Oh! Uncle Hugh! are you hurt? are you ill? I found you here behind the rocks and Angelique says--but I wasn't hurt at all. I wasn't out in any storm, didn't know there had been one, that is, worth minding, till I came home----"
"Like a ghost out of the lake. She was not even dead, not she. And she was singin' fit to burst her throat while you were--well, maybe, not dead, yo
urn taught it to other harpers, and these, by the orders of Arthur and Lancelot, went into Wales and Cornwall to sing it everywhere.
Meanwhile King Mark's crown had been in great danger. For his country had been invaded by an army from Session, led by a noted warrior named Elias, who drove the forces of Cornwall from the field and besieged the king in his castle of Tintagil. And now Tristram came nobly to the rescue. At the head of the Cornish forces he drove back the besiegers with heavy loss, and challenged Elias to a single combat to end the war. The challenge was accepted, and a long and furious combat followed, but in the end Elias was slain, and the remnant of his army forced to surrender.
This great service added to the seeming accord between Tristram and the king, but in his heart Mark nursed all his old bitterness, and hated him the more that he had helped him. His secret fury soon found occasion to flame to the surface. For at the feast which was given in honor of the victory, Eliot, t
on a bit here and there once in a hundred years, until finally we have this charmingly irregular and dilapidated whole. You go up three steps into Mrs. Heaven's room, down two into mine, while Phoebe's is up in a sort of turret with long, narrow lattices opening into the creepers. There are crooked little stair-cases, passages that branch off into other passages and lead nowhere in particular; I can't think of a better house in which to play hide and seek on a wet day. In front, what was once, doubtless, a green, is cut up into greens; to wit, a vegetable garden, where the onions, turnips, and potatoes grow cosily up to the very door-sill; the utilitarian aspect of it all being varied by some scarlet-runners and a scattering of poppies on either side of the path.
The Belgian hares have their habitation in a corner fifty feet distant; one large enclosure for poultry lies just outside the sweetbrier hedge; the others, with all the houses and coops, are in the meadow at the back, where also our tumbler pi
tack-yard, behind the lengthy range of stables, two men were thatching. One lay sprawling on the crest of the rick, the other stood perched on a ladder at a lower level.
The latter, small, old, with shrewd nut-brown countenance, was Tammas Thornton,, who had served the Moores of Kenmuir for more than half a century. The other, on top of the stack, wrapped apparently in gloomy meditation, was Sam'l Todd. A solid Dales-- man, he, with huge hands and hairy arms; about his face an uncomely aureole of stiff, red hair; and on his features, deep-seated, an expression of resolute melancholy.
"Ay, the Gray Dogs, bless 'em!" the old man was saying. "Yo' canna beat 'em not nohow. Known 'em ony time this sixty year, I have, and niver knew a bad un yet. Not as I say, mind ye, as any on 'em cooms up to Rex son o' Rally. Ah, he was a one, was Rex! We's never won Cup since his day."
"Nor niver shall agin, yo' may depend," said the other gloomily.
Tammas clucked irritably.
"G'long, Sam'! Tod
road and that was the last that was heard of him. His surmises were right. The Biggses never even looked for him.
[Illustration]
Billy at the Soda Fountain
After Billy Whiskers had left Mr. Biggs, he trotted slowly down the road wondering where he would get his next meal for he well knew he would never dare go back to Mr. Biggses after upsetting him in the geranium bed and causing all the mischief he had there that day. But being a goat of a cheerful frame of mind and used to looking out for himself, he did not worry much, and decided he would enter the first garden he came to, and make a free lunch off the vegetables, or go into a turnip patch and feast on them for if there was anything he doted on it was nice, sweet turnips, fresh from the fields.
He had gone some distance, and no patch or garden appearing that was not enclosed by a high, barbed-wire fence, he commenced to get discouraged. Feeling hungry and thirsty he was about wishing he had behaved himself at Mr.
atting with her cousins, or other friends, now strolling through the great parlours with their wonderful decorations of banked roses and garland-draped ceilings.
Dinner was early that night, as the ceremony was to be performed at eight o'clock, and after dinner Patty flew to her room to don her own beautiful new gown.
This dress delighted Patty's beauty-loving heart. It was a white tulle sprinkled with silver, and its soft, dainty glitter seemed to Patty like moonlight on the snow. Her hair was done low on her neck, in a most becoming fashion, and her only ornament was a necklace of pearls which had belonged to her mother, and which her father had given her that very day. The first Mrs. Fairfield had died when Patty was a mere baby, so of course she had no recollection of her, but she had always idealised the personality of her mother, and she took the beautiful pearls from her father with almost a feeling of reverence as she touched them.
"I'm so glad it's Nan you're going to marry, Papa
n our house, when I was living with my sister in Hingham, before the war. Hingham used to be famous for its ghost stories; an old house without its ghost was thought to lack historic tone and finish."
Gentleman Jo took a story-telling attitude, and a number of the pupils gathered around him.
GENTLEMAN JO'S GHOST STORY.
I shall never forget the scene of excitement, when one morning Biddy, our domestic, entered the sitting-room, her head bobbing, her hair flying, and her cap perched upon the top of her head, and exclaimed: "Wurrah! I have seen a ghoust, and it's lave the hoose I must. Sich a night! I'd niver pass anither the like of it for the gift o' the hoose. Bad kick to ye, an' the hoose is haunted for sure."
"Why, Biddy, what have you seen?" asked my sister, in alarm.
"Seen? An' sure I didn't see nothin'. I jist shet me eyes and hid mesilf under the piller. But it was awful. An' the way it clanked its chain! O murther!"
This last remark was rather startling. Spirit
d with a voice of wondrous sweetness: "Pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."
Cristobal repeated the words, a soft light stealing over his face. "I will remember," he said, looking up to meet the pleading eyes of the Child: but, lo! the whole face had melted into the aureola; nothing was left but light. Yet Cristobal was filled with a new joy; and, as he opened his eyes, his dream--if dream it were--changed, becoming as sweet and solemn as a prayer. It seemed to him that the roof of the cottage glittered with stars, and was no longer a roof, but the boundless sky; and, afar off, like remembered music, a voice fell on his ear, "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your trespasses."
Cristobal arose, and, although still blind, walked in light. "It is the aureola which has stolen into my heart," thought Cristobal. "The pain and hate are all gone. Now I am ready for Christmas. I wish I could help poor Jasper, who has such a weight of
's head from its hard pillow of rock.
With swift nervous motions she unfastened his coat and bent her ear to his breast.
"'Tis only a faint, maybe shock. In all the world was only Margot, and Margot was lost. Ugh! the hail. See, it is still here--look! water, and--yes, the tea! It was for you---- Ah!"
Her words ended with a sigh of satisfaction as a slight motion stirred the features into which she peered so earnestly, and she raised her master's head a bit higher. Then his eyes slowly opened and the dazed look gradually gave place to a normal expression.
"Why, Margot! Angelique? What's happened?"
"Oh! Uncle Hugh! are you hurt? are you ill? I found you here behind the rocks and Angelique says--but I wasn't hurt at all. I wasn't out in any storm, didn't know there had been one, that is, worth minding, till I came home----"
"Like a ghost out of the lake. She was not even dead, not she. And she was singin' fit to burst her throat while you were--well, maybe, not dead, yo
urn taught it to other harpers, and these, by the orders of Arthur and Lancelot, went into Wales and Cornwall to sing it everywhere.
Meanwhile King Mark's crown had been in great danger. For his country had been invaded by an army from Session, led by a noted warrior named Elias, who drove the forces of Cornwall from the field and besieged the king in his castle of Tintagil. And now Tristram came nobly to the rescue. At the head of the Cornish forces he drove back the besiegers with heavy loss, and challenged Elias to a single combat to end the war. The challenge was accepted, and a long and furious combat followed, but in the end Elias was slain, and the remnant of his army forced to surrender.
This great service added to the seeming accord between Tristram and the king, but in his heart Mark nursed all his old bitterness, and hated him the more that he had helped him. His secret fury soon found occasion to flame to the surface. For at the feast which was given in honor of the victory, Eliot, t