Part 2

“And do you recollect your delight when first you saw that the old birds had found them out?”

_Emily._--“Yes, yes, mama; at first they perched on the top of the plane-tree opposite; then by degrees they fluttered down from branch to branch, lower and lower, calling their young ones all the time. Then they took little short flights towards the window, and back again to the plane-tree. Then they first rested a moment on the branches of sweet briar which waved before the window, then on the cage; and at last--O how nice that was! they grew quite, quite bold, and ventured backwards and forwards into the room even when we were sitting in it, and fed their little ones with flies and seeds, chirping all the time they fed them, amusing them with a pretty song when they had done.”

“Now, my children, it is bed-time.--Why, I declare poor Charlie is fast asleep in my lap, and I quite forgot my own sweet nestling while we were talking about the little birds. To-morrow you are to spend with the Stanleys, but the next evening, if you are in the humour for it, I will remind you of our prettiest pets of all--the golden-crested wrens.”

THE BLACK FROCK.

“Now, my dear Emily, let me hear all about your visit at Mrs. Stanley’s.--Who was there besides the little Stanleys? What did you do? Did you enjoy your evening?”

_Emily._--“Oh! there were the little Vincents, nice merry little girls, and I played a great deal with them at first; but, mama, there was one little girl whose name I did not know, with a face so pretty, but so pale, and with a black frock on, who did not play at all, and I could not help watching her; and I began to pity her, so that I left off playing, and sat down close by her on the grass; but I did not speak to her, because she looked so very sad, and I did not know what to say to comfort her; but I think she saw I pitied her, for she took hold of my hand, and said, ‘I could love _you_, but you would not love _me_ long.’ I was going to say, ‘Indeed I would,’ but just then Lucy Stanley came running up to us, and said, ‘Your servant is come, Emily, and Edwin is in such a hurry to go, he is looking for his little hat, and begs me to call you.--Do you think he is tired of us, that he is in such haste to leave us?’--‘O no,’ I said, ‘Edwin does not want to leave you, but he is such a good little boy, that he is always in a hurry to do what he knows mama wishes, and she told us not to keep nurse waiting.’--And then, mama,--what could it be for?--the little pale girl burst into such a fit of crying, let go my hand, and jumped up, and ran into the house, and Lucy looked after her, and said, ‘Poor unhappy Clara!’ Do you know why she is in black, mama; and why she is so unhappy, and why what I said about Eddie could make her cry?”

“Poor Clara! my heart indeed aches for the unhappy little girl. I will tell you her story--it is a sad one, but might be useful to many a little girl who may have the same fault which has rendered her so very wretched.”

THE PERVERSE LITTLE GIRL.

“Clara Glanville had a mama who loved her tenderly--as tenderly as a fond mama was likely to love an only little girl, and Clara, I believe, loved her mama also; but though she had a warm heart, she had a perverse temper, and while she really wished to please her mama, this strange fault constantly tempted her to grieve and contradict her. It was not any positive act of disobedience that she was guilty of, but a perpetual vexatious disputing of her mama’s wishes, more wearing even than disobedience itself would have been. For instance: if her mama desired her to walk out, she would weary her with reasons for staying in the house. If she asked her to do one particular lesson, she would, from mere perverseness, torment her to allow her to do a different one instead. Sometimes she would ask a long string of useless questions; and when her mama, who had been ill, and was still far from strong, was obliged to say that she was too tired to answer any more, Clara would go on repeating, ‘But _do_ answer me, mama--but do answer me, mama,’ crying all the time, till her mama was so worn out, that she was ready to cry herself from mere exhaustion. Then she would mildly say, ‘My Clara, go, you make me ill, _very_ ill;’ and Clara would look at her mama, and see by her pale cheeks and heavy eyes, that she was indeed ill, and she would burst into tears of penitence, and say, ‘O mama, mama, I will never, never vex you again!’ Alas! she had so often repeated these words, that Mrs. Glanville could now only shake her head distrustfully, and say, ‘God grant it, my poor child! you are laying up misery for yourself, which will, I fear, last longer than that you are causing me. O Clara! you will often think of these things!’ Clara did not know _all_ that her mama meant, but she felt that she had been cruel and perverse, and no doubt determined sincerely at the moment, that she would never vex her mama again; but she had given way too long to her perverse temper to allow of its being conquered all at once, and the next, perhaps the very same day, witnessed a fit of the same obstinacy, followed by the same repentance and the same vain resolution of amendment. One day, after having borne with Clara’s perverseness as long as her spirits would permit, Mrs. Glanville was forced to send her out of the room with an injunction not to return till she was really good. After the struggle between her pride and her better feelings had lasted some time, Clara stole back to her mama’s dressing-room. She paused behind the open door, for she had not quite brought down her stubborn spirit to own her fault, and to beg her mama’s pardon. At this moment, her papa came into her mama’s room, and she could not help hearing the conversation which passed between them.

“‘What has happened to distress you, my love?’ said her papa; ‘I know Clara has been wearing you out by her perverseness. You will never regain your strength while that child gives you such perpetual vexation. Do pray consent to her going from home; your sister would, I know, take great care of her, and I am sure it would be better for Clara as well as for yourself. You have not strength to struggle against her strange temper, and it grows upon her every day.’ Her mama was silent for a few moments, and when she did speak, Clara knew from her voice that she had been crying. ‘Well, I believe that you are right,’ she said; ‘I care not for myself, but perhaps my poor Clara might be benefited by being parted from me for a time. Perhaps, when we were once separated, she might remember all the pain she has given me; and as she would not have an opportunity of breaking her resolutions when they were only just formed, they might acquire strength, and she might return to be once more a comfort to me. I think she loves me, though her strange perverseness makes her often give me such bitter pain. But do not tell her why she goes; I could not bear that she should think herself banished, it would break her heart, and make the parting so painful, that I could not support her grief and my own.’ ‘Well, my love, I will only say that she is to go; I do not wish to tell her why: she would only beg to stay, and repeat her promises of amendment till she persuaded you to try her again, and again she would break them, and hurt you more than ever.’”

_Emily._--“O mama, what must poor Clara have felt when she heard all this! And did she not run into the room and kneel to her papa and mama, and entreat them not to send her away from them, and promise to be the very best little girl in all the world if they would but let her stay; and did she not keep her promise, and were not she and her mama happy ever afterwards? But O the black frock!”

“You shall hear, my Emmie. Clara did nothing of all that you suppose. She saw that her papa would not believe her promises, and her conscience told her that he was right. She stole then back with a bursting heart to her own room, shut the door, and threw herself on the bed. After a few minutes, ‘O my dear, dear mama!’ she sobbed to herself, ‘I will not trust myself; I will not ask to stay; I will not kill you by my sad, sad temper. You shall get strong and well, and when I do come back, perhaps God will have made me good. I will pray to him so earnestly, and I shall not make you ill again, but happy!--I shall make my own mama happy! O why, why have I not always done so? But perhaps it is not now too late.’--Ah, poor Clara!

“O what did she not suffer during the rest of that day? Her mama breathed not a word about her going, but her fond caresses, and tender tone of voice seemed to say, ‘My poor child, you little know the banishment your conduct has brought upon you.’ Before she went to bed her papa kissed her, and said kindly, but gravely, ‘Clara, you are to go to-morrow morning to stay some time with your aunt. Be a good girl whilst you are absent, and try to be good when you return home. Wish your mama good-bye--she is not allowed to be disturbed as early as you must set off.’

“Clara said not one word--she received her papa’s kiss with downcast eyes, stood still for a moment, and then sprung to her mama, buried her head in her bosom, raised her little face with her eyes shut to restrain her bursting tears, received her mama’s fond kiss on her quivering lips, and then ran out of the room. She thought she heard her mama call her back, but her papa’s voice reached her ear more distinctly, saying, ‘No, no, my love; believe me, it is better as it is--let her go; I must consider your health first.’

“Clara spoke not one word while her maid undressed her; then she said her prayers fervently, and sobbed herself to sleep. The next morning she was called early, her breakfast was brought to her in her own room, but her poor little throat ached so sadly from sobbing, that she could not swallow, nor had she much wish to eat.

“The carriage came to the door; Clara stole softly along the passage not to disturb her mama.--Was she asleep? Clara paused for a moment at her door--she thought she heard her sigh, but she was not sure; so she passed on, saying to herself, ‘When I come back I _may_ kiss her, and be certain that I hear her voice, and I will ask her forgiveness, and will show her that I can keep my promise, and I will make her happy!’ Comforted by this thought, Clara tripped on with a lighter heart and step. She found her papa waiting to lift her into the carriage. ‘God bless you, my child! you were a good girl not to wake your mama, she has had a sadly disturbed night.--O Clara! try to please her when you come home; you know not what a blessing you have in such a mother, or what it would be to lose her.’ Her papa’s voice trembled, and he turned away; the carriage door was closed, and Clara fell back with a swelling heart and streaming eyes.

“‘And I might have been good, and I might have stayed with my own mama, and she might have been now blessing me, and wishing me good night!’ said Clara to herself that evening, as she laid her head on her strange pillow, and compared her aunt’s grave, frigid manner, to her mama’s, so tender and caressing. A few weeks passed heavily away; her aunt set Clara her appointed tasks in the morning, sent her to walk a stated time in a precise garden, with an old servant as stiff and unbending as herself, made her spend her evenings in working silently by her side, and then dismissed her to bed with a cold kiss, and a formal ‘Good night.’

“At last, after one of her tedious walks, on coming into the drawing-room, Clara found her aunt, not sitting up stiffly at her work as usual, but leaning with her face buried in her hands, which were clasped upon an open letter on the table before her. Clara stood quietly till a deep sigh from her aunt made her draw still closer, and whisper, ‘My aunt, O tell me what has happened!--my dear mama!’ Her aunt, so cold, so unmoved in general, now caught Clara in her arms, strained her to her breast, and said, ‘My poor Clara, your mama is very, very ill. Be ready to set off. God grant we may be in time!’

“They were _not_ in time. Clara did indeed steal to her mama’s door, did indeed kiss those pale lips; but O! she could not then even fancy that she heard that voice. Her mama had died, and she had _not_ begged her forgiveness--had _not_ shown that she would keep her promise--had _not_ made her happy!

“My Emily, do you now wonder that the little pale girl in the black frock did not play, and that when you innocently said, ‘Eddie is a good little boy, and always in a hurry to do what his mama wishes,’ she burst into tears, and ran into the house, or that Lucy Stanley looked so sorrowfully after her, and exclaimed, ‘Poor unhappy Clara!’”

THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WRENS.

_Emily._--“Now, mama, pray keep your promise; the fire is burning brightly, and here are our little stools, and a chair for you, and we are quite in the humour for being reminded of the golden-crested wrens; besides, I want something to make me forget poor Clara--her story has made me quite sad.”

“Well then, one day soon after your squirrel had escaped from his cage, we were standing under a fir-tree, watching the little fellow as he was scraping the fir-apples with his teeth, and sending down showers of the outside shell upon our heads. All at once we heard the quick soft chirp, scarcely louder than a grasshopper’s, which you had learned to know so well, and looking up, we saw a pair of golden-crested wrens pop into a snug little nest, which hung from the twig of a cedar close by. O how you and Edwin jumped about for joy at the discovery, while you cried out, ‘Do, mama, let us bring the pruning steps--see, they are close by; do let us get up them, and have one peep at the eggs, not bigger than peas, or the little tiny birds, if they are hatched.’ The steps were soon placed at the foot of the cedar; but O! what happened;--they slipped, and a branch which they had kept back, escaped and flew against the nest. The little birds were startled, and one after the other came half tumbling, half fluttering down to the ground. Out sprung naughty pussy from the shrubbery where she had been watching, and we could scarcely pick them up quick enough to save them from her claws. Poor little things! we did not mean to hurry you out of your nice soft nest; we only wished to have one peep at your pretty bead-like eyes, your funny chuffy faces, and your little green bodies, not an inch long.”

“But now, mama,” said Edwin, “we were obliged to save them from that savage pussy,”--“we were; so we took them into the house and put them in the canary’s cage--but ah! they flew through the wires as easily as if they had been tiny bees instead of birds; so we contrived a wire front to a box till we could have a cage made on purpose for them. Then we got their own soft nest and put it in the box, and set them on the porch beneath my window. And do you remember what pleasure it was to see the old birds come, and cling to the wires with the food sticking to their little sharp black bills, which the young ones so cleverly picked off.”

_Emily._--“Yes, mama; and when we got their pretty new cage with its swinging perches, how nice it was to see the little funny things sitting all in a row with their soft sides pressed so close to each other, and all their little cunning faces turned the same way, watching for the food we gave them. Sometimes we used to treat them by sticking a branch of honeysuckle in the cage, and then they would run up and turn the flowers inside out, hanging by their tiny claws, and helping themselves to the blight. O how tame and pretty they grew, and their little crests came peeping on their heads and looked like crocus-buds. But now, mama, are we not coming to the melancholy part?”

“Yes, indeed we are; so we will not spoil this evening’s pleasure, but leave the recollection of what happened to your pretty pets at last, till another evening.”

THE STRANGE CAT.

_Emily._--“Now the fire burns dimly, mama, and so it ought for such a melancholy story; and I feel quite sad enough to listen to the rest of what happened to our pretty little wrens; so pray, mama, begin.”

“One day we were sitting at the window sorting seeds to sow in your little gardens, when we heard a scrambling noise in the jessamine which runs up from the porch to my window, where we had just before left the pretty wrens, chirping and stretching their tiny wings to catch the warm sun-beams. The next moment a strange half-starved cat sprung from the jessamine, and crept along the turf till she reached the shrubbery, and then forcing herself through the bushes, hid herself from our sight.

“There was a cry of distress from all the little birds which had before been singing so merrily among the branches, and we saw the poor parent golden-crested wrens wheeling round and round in the air, and following the direction which the strange cat had taken. We remembered the poor goldfinches, so we guessed but too well what had happened. We ran up stairs, and there we heard a fluttering, and we dared scarcely look into the cage; but when we did look, there lay one poor pretty thing quite dead, with its breast all bleeding from a stab by the strange cat’s cruel claw, and the others were all beating the wires with their little gasping bills: in a few minutes two of them dropped down dead by the side of their little brother, and before night the last had pined itself to death.”

THE THUNDER STORM.

“O mama, how I do love to watch a thunder storm,” said Emily to me one evening in April, whilst she leant at the open window gazing at the clouds, and listening to the awful peals which from time to time burst from them. “It reminds me of that beautiful story of Samuel, I could always say, ‘Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth.’--Don’t you think, mama, it seems as if God really spoke to us? But you do not seem to enjoy it;” added she, turning round; “you hide your eyes, and seem quite sad.--Are you _frightened_, mama?”

“Not for myself, Emily; but I cannot forget that your papa is now crossing the heath, and exposed to these awful flashes of lightning.”

“And _I_ did forget it!--How could I?” said Emily, changing colour, and quitting her post at the window to place herself close by me with her little hands on my lap, clasping one of mine closely between them. Another flash!--She watched my countenance, but said nothing.--Another, still more vivid! She raised herself on tiptoe, and whispered in my ear, “But we have been anxious about papa often before, and yet he has come home safe.--Does that comfort you, mama?”

“It ought, dear Emily; but O what a flash was that!” Emily let go my hand, and darted into my dressing-room, where she remained a few minutes; then returning with a bright cherubic smile, she took her station by me again.

At that moment the whole room was illumined, but Emily did not this time flinch or change colour, but she threw her little arms round my neck, and said, “Mama, I am not frightened now, and perhaps you will be bolder when I tell you what I have done. You do not know why I went into your dressing-room: it was to kneel down and pray God and Jesus Christ to let dear papa come home safe to us again; and if Jesus Christ does suffer little children to come to him, (which you tell me may mean by prayer,) surely it will be when they pray him to take care of their own dear papas--the papas God gave them!--But hark! I hear a horse! It is, it is papa, and he is come home safe!”

THE GIPSIES.

“Do tell us, mama, whether gipsies really steal children?” said Edwin, on his return from his morning’s walk with his nurse and sister. “There is a camp to-day in the green lane, and nurse would not let us stir a step from her side. I thought that the stories about them were only silly fables like those of witches and fairies.”

“Most of those you meet with are no doubt inventions, but I believe there have been some actual instances of these wandering tribes carrying off children, either for the purpose of swelling their numbers, or of exciting compassion when they beg. I remember one story which professes to be true, and which at any rate may interest you and Emily. Shall I tell it to you?”

“O pray, pray let us hear it!” cried Emily and Edwin at once. So here it is.

THE STOLEN CHILD.

“I think you had best not bring Miss Julia in, for I fear my children are sickening with the measles, and I should be sorry the pretty soul ran the risk of taking them,” said a fisherman’s wife to Julia Aubrey’s nurse, who had been desired in the course of their stroll on the beach to call and give directions concerning some fruit-nets on which the poor woman was employed. The nurse looked perplexed; she had many directions to give, and this was an office of which she was particularly fond.

“‘O do trust me, nurse, while you go in,’ said Julia eagerly; ‘the beach is very wide here, and I promise I will not go near the edge; I will only keep close to the rocks to look for the little shells which are always left by the tide sticking in the clefts. You will find me just round that corner.’ The nurse still hesitated. ‘Do, dear nurse,’ said Julia coaxingly, ‘do trust me; you know that the birds are eating all the fruit, and that the gardener has told you all about the sizes the nets should be. He can’t come here with his broken leg himself, and every one else but you would blunder about it.’

“This last argument, though not intentional artifice on Julia’s part, was certain to carry her point. Julia’s nurse contented herself with reminding her of her promise to keep away from the waves, and to be sure not to go beyond the ‘black rock just round the corner.’ Away tripped Julia, and proud of being trusted out of sight, never stopped till she had attained the utmost limit of her furlough. The corner of the cliff once turned, she placed her little basket on the shingle, and stooping down, began busily to pick up the shells and sea weeds, which, still wet and shining, glittered most temptingly in the sun. Her own intentness on her employment, and the deafening murmur of the waves, chafed as they were at that point by the broken rocks that fretted their course, prevented Julia from hearing an approaching step, and the terrified child all at once found her bonnet roughly snatched off, and her whole head tightly muffled in a woollen cloak. To scream was impossible, for besides the folds of the cloak, the unhappy child felt a hard bony hand clapped over them on her mouth. In this way she was carried rapidly along some distance, when the person who bore her suddenly stopped. ‘What have you got there?’ asked a harsh voice.

“‘Why, I hardly know, and I hardly know why I took her,’ was the reply, and the old gipsy (for such she was) shook Julia roughly off her shoulders. ‘I had been prowling about,’ continued she, ‘since cock-crow, and had knapped nothing; so, as I found this chick without a hen to watch it, I took it, rather not to come back without booty, than for any good it is like to do us.’

“‘Good!’ exclaimed the first voice; ‘I think it’s like to do us a great deal of ill! They’ll rid the country of us if they catch us, and I think the sooner we rid it of ourselves the better. We had best take to the boat again directly. Our old comrade, Dick the smuggler, is now below just ready to push off, and as his boat brought us at sunrise, so it had better take us back at sunset, for aught I can see.’

“‘Do you grumble at what I have done?’ said the old woman in a voice of rage and authority: ‘A’n’t I the mother and the ruler of your tribe, eh? However, the counsel itself,’ added she less harshly, ‘is good, and the sooner we are off, I believe, the better.’