Chapter 5

"The little white star has fallen down the cobbler's chimney!

"It has fallen down, and the cobbler is sewing it into a shoe!

"A milkman is wunning down the stweet!

"Tell you what," whispered Angel, "I'll show you what Lucy was like--just a little. I'll make a picture of her."

The space between two tall chests of drawers formed a sort of alcove in which stood a pier glass, whose tarnished frame was draped in white net. Before it Angel drew (without much caution) a high-backed chair, and on it he began his picture.

Over the seat and almost touching the floor, he draped a frilled petticoat, and against the back of the chair (with a foundation of formidable stays for support) he hung a garment, which, even then, he seemed to know for a camisole. Over all he laid a charming lilac silk gown, and under the hem in the most natural attitude peeped the little party slippers. A small lace and velvet bonnet with streamers was hung at the apex of the creation, and in her lap (for the time has come to use the feminine pronoun) he spread the gauzy fan. He hung over her tenderly, as an artist over his subject--each fold must be in place--the empty sleeves curved just so--one fancied a rounded chin beneath the velvet streamers, so artfully was it adjusted. Her reflection in the pier glass was superb!

"It is here!" chanted The Seraph. "Evwy bit of evwy fing is shinin'! Oh, Angel an' John, _please_ look!"

We flew to the window and leaned across the sill.

It was a happy world that morning, glowing in the sweetest dawn that ever broke over roofs and chimney pots. The earth sang as she danced her dewy way among the paling stars. The little grey clouds blushed pink against the azure sky. Blossoming boughs of peach and apricot hung over the gates of heaven, and rosy spirals curled upward from two chimneys. Pink-footed pigeons strutted, rooketty-cooing along the roofs. They nodded their heads as though to affirm the consummation of a miracle. "It is so--" they seemed to say--"It is indeed so--" One of them hopped upon the cobbler's chimney, peering earnestly into its depths. "It sees the star!" shouted The Seraph. "It sees the star and nods to it. 'I am higher now than you'--it says!"

Something--was it a breath? a sigh?--made me look back into the attic where Lucy's clothes clung to the high-backed chair, like flower petals blown against a wall. The pier-glass had caught all the glory of the morning and was releasing it in quivering spears of light that dazzled me for a moment; I rubbed my eyes, and stared, and shook a little, for in the midst of all this splendour I saw Lucy! No pallid, rigid ghost, but something warm, eager with life, spreading the folds of the lilac gown like a butterfly warming its new wings in the strength of the sun.

Her bosom rose and fell quickly, her eyes were fixed on me with a beseeching look, it seemed. I drew nearer--near enough to smell the faint perfume of her, and I saw then that she was not looking at me, but at the fat little book of "The Mysteries of Udolpho" which I still held in my hands. The book that Charles had given her! "Bide the time!" he had written, but she could bide the time no longer.

Proud as any knight before his lady, I strode forward, and pressed the book into her hands--saw her slender fingers curl around it--heard her little gasp of joy. I should not have been at all surprised had the door opened and Charles walked in.

As a matter of fact, the door _did_ open and--Mrs. Handsomebody walked in.

IV

She gave a sort of gurgling cry, as though she were being strangled. Angel and The Seraph faced about to look at her in consternation, their hair wild in the wind, and the rising sun making an aureole about them. The four of us stared at each other in silence for a space, while the attic-room, with its cobwebs reeled--the sun rose, and sank, like a floundering ship, and Mrs. Handsomebody resembling, in my fancy, a hungry spider, in curl papers, considered which victim was ripest for slaughter.

"You--and you--and you--" she gobbled. "Oh, to think of it! No place safe! What you need is a _strong_ man. _We_ shall see! The very windows--burst from their bolts!" She slammed the casement and secured it, Angel and The Seraph darting from her path.

"Even a dead woman's clothes--to make a scarecrow of!" She pounced--I hid my face while she did it, but I heard a sinister rustling and the snap of a trunk lid. It was over. "Bide the time."

Ignominiously she herded us down the stairs; The Seraph making only one step at a time, led the way. Far down the drab vista of the back stairs that ended in the scullery, Mary Ellen's red, round face was seen for a moment, like a second rising sun, but vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, at a shout from Mrs. Handsomebody.

We were in the schoolroom now, placed before her in a row, as was her wont in times of retribution. Seated behind her desk she wore her purple dressing gown with magisterial dignity; the wart upon her chin quivered as she prepared to speak.

"Now, David," she said, rapping Angel smartly on the head, "can you say anything in explanation of this outrage upon my property? Hold your head up and toe out, please."

Angel looked at his hands. "Nuffin' to explain," he said sulkily. "Just went an' did it."

"Oh I thought so," said our governess. "It was just one of these seemingly irresistible impulses that have so often proved disastrous for all concerned. If your father knew--" she bit off the words as though they had a pleasant, if acrid taste--"if your poor father knew of your criminal proclivities, he would be a _crushed_ man. A _crushed man_."

The Seraph was staring at her chin.

Then--"I have one too," he said gently.

"One _what_?" Her tone should have warned him. "One wart," he went on, with easy modesty. "It's just a little one. It can't wiggle--like yours--but it's gwowing nicely. Would you care to see it?"

Mrs. Handsomebody affected not to hear him. She stared sombrely at Angel and me, but I believe The Seraph sealed our fate, for, after a moment's deliberation, she said curtly; "I shall have to beat you for this."

She gave us six apiece, and I could not help noticing that, though The Seraph was the youngest and tenderest, his six were the most stinging.

When we had been sent to our bedroom to say our prayers, and change our pitifully inadequate night clothes for day things, I put the question that was burning in my mind.

"Did either of you see _her_?"

"Who?"

"Lucy, sitting there in the chair."

Angel's brown eyes were blank.

"I saw her _clothes_. What sickens me is that the dragon took that spy-glass. You see if I don't get it yet." (Mrs. Handsomebody was "the dragon" in our vernacular.)

"Did _you_ see her, Seraph?"

The Seraph was sitting on the floor, his head on his knees. He raised a tear-flushed face.

"I'm 'most too cwushed to wemember," he said, huskily. "But I _fink_ Lucy was fat. It's a vewy bad fing to be fat, 'cos the cane hurts worser."

I turned from such infantile imbecility to the exhilarating reflection that I was the only one to whom Lucy had shown herself--her chosen knight!

I was burning to do her service, yet the passage that led to the attic stronghold was well guarded. Two days had passed before I made the attempt. I had been sent upstairs from the tea-table to wash my hands--though they were only comfortably soiled--and after I had dipped them in a basin of water that had done service for both Angel and The Seraph, I gave them a good rub on my trouser legs, as I tip-toed to the foot of the attic stairs. Cautiously, with fast-beating heart, I mounted, and tried the door. It was locked fast. I pressed my eye against the keyhole, and made out in the gloom the dark shape of the trunk, sinister, forbidding, inaccessible. No rustle of lilac silk, no faintest perfume, no appealing sigh from the gentle Lucy greeted me. All was dark and quiet. "Bide the time!" Who knew but that some day I might set her free?

Yet my throat ached as I slowly made my way back to the table, presented my hands for a rather sceptical inspection by Mrs. Handsomebody, and dropped languidly into my seat.

The Seraph gave me a look of sympathy--even understanding--perhaps he had heard me mount the distant attic stairs; his hearing was wonderfully acute. He chewed in silence for a moment and then he made one of those seemingly irrelevant remarks of his that, somehow, always set our little world a-rocking.

"One fing about Lucy," he said, "she was always sweet-tempud."

"Who?" snapped Mrs. Handsomebody.

"Lucy--" repeated The Seraph. "Such a sweet-tempud gell."

Mrs. Handsomebody leaned over him, and gobbled and threatened. The Seraph preserved a remarkable calm, considering that he was the storm centre. He even raised his small forefinger before his face and looked at it thoughtfully. His speculative gaze travelled from it to Mrs. Handsomebody's chin. I perceived then that he was comparing warts!

_Chapter IV: A Merry Interlude_

I

My brothers and I were hanging over the gate that barred our way to the outer world, and singing, as loudly as we could, considering the pressure of the top bar on our young stomachs. We sang to keep warm, for Mrs. Handsomebody had decreed that no reefers were to be worn till the first of December. So, though November was raw, she maintained her discipline and refused to mollycoddle us.

It was the fifth, and Angel chanted in that flute-like treble of his, that made passersby turn and smile at him:

"Remember, remember the fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot--"

Then The Seraph added his little pipe:

"I see no weason why gunpowder tweason Should ever be forgot."

Then we shouted it all together.

Our neighbour, Mr. Mortimer Pegg, who had never forgiven us for our share in the treasure hunt, came out of his house at that moment, and drew up before us.

"This noise, you know," he said, in his precise way, "is affecting my wife's health deleteriously. She has gone to bed with a migraine."

"Why don't you put him out," suggested The Seraph.

Mr. Pegg eyed him severely, yet I thought I perceived a twinkle in his eye.

"It's Guy Fawkes day," I explained. "You see, it must never be forgot."

"It is a mistake in these enlightened days to keep up such old animosities," replied our neighbour. "For all you know I might be his direct descendant. If you must celebrate his undoing, better take these three sixpences and make yourselves ill on lemon fizz, or pink marshmallows, or vile licorice cigars."

He placed a coin in each outstretched hand, and, without waiting for thanks, strode briskly down the street. We gazed after him, knocked speechless by this great beaker of bounty that had rolled in upon the flat expanse of our afternoon. Mr. Pegg, in his shiny top hat and neat Prince Albert moved away in the ruddy November sunlight as in a halo of opulence. Never before had we appreciated the princely turn of his toes beneath their drab spats, the flash of his twirled walking-stick. We resolved to keep him in mind. He was a neighbour worth having. Angel even suggested certain time-honoured ditties of boyhood, which, shouted in chorus, would be almost certain to have a disastrous effect on a female addicted to migraine.

A deputation, consisting of The Seraph, then waited on Mrs. Handsomebody, to explain that our neighbour, Mr. Pegg, having been charmed by our singing, had presented us each with a sixpence, with the earnest injunction that the coin be expended on currant buns at the grocer's. The Seraph came back triumphant with the necessary consent.

"We can go," he said, "but we're not to take a bite till we're back home. It's suppwising she'd let us do it."

"Not a bit," said Angel cynically, "she knows they'll spoil our appetite for tea."

The grocer was a fierce, red-bearded man who kept his wife in a little wooden stall, where she took in the constant flow of wealth extorted from his customers.

We had told The Seraph that she was thus confined by her gloomy spouse, in order that she might be fattened for slaughter, and his eyes were large with pity as he stood on tiptoe to hand our three sixpences through the little wicket. The grocer's wife leaned forward to look at him, her plump underlip, after two futile attempts to form a chin, subsiding into a large white neck.

The Seraph's look of pity deepened to horror. "You must be almost weady," he gasped.

"Ready? Ready for what, my little love?"

"Stickin'--oo, will it hurt vewy much?"

"Bless the child. What _does_ he mean?"

"He's not very well," I explained. "I think he's delirious."

"That's why we brought him here to get a cool drink," added Angel, hurriedly, and between us we led the recreant to the little table in the rear of the shop where the grocer had set out three glasses of ginger beer and a plate of mixed cakes. Five minutes of unalloyed bliss followed and we were just draining off the last dregs and cleaning up the crumbs, when a bullet-headed boy stuck his head in at the door.

"Dorg's 'ere again," he said, laconically. "Nosin' abaht in the gabbage 'eap."

"Tie a can on 'is tile," said the grocer.

The boy disappeared, and the three of us pushed back our chairs and followed in his wake, scenting adventure in the littered yard behind the shop with its strange odours of bygone fruit and greens.

The dog, a small, black, Scottish terrier, was dragging an end of Boulogna sausage from the garbage heap. The bullet-headed boy winked at us, selected an empty can from the heap, produced a piece of string from his pocket, and grasped the terrier by the collar. But only for a moment. With a rush of concentrated fury it flew at his legs, gave him a sharp snap, and darted back to its sausage, with a warning glean of its eyes in our direction.

"Ow," yelled the boy, doubling up, "'e's bit me sumpfin' cruel! You see if I daon't brain 'im for that!"

He snatched up an axe and brandished it. The terrier dropped its sausage and showed its little pointed teeth.

We three, with one impulse, flung ourselves between it and the boy.

"You dare touch that dog," shouted Angel.

"Oo's goin' to stop me, Mister Nosey Parker?" sneered the boy, with a flourish of his axe.

"I am," said Angel, "'cos it's _my_ dog, see?" He coolly turned his back on the boy and bent over the terrier, who came to him cautiously, sniffing his legs.

"Your dorg!" scoffed the boy, "w'y daon't yer feed 'im then? 'E's arf starved, 'e is. Yer ought to be 'ad up fer perwention of cruelty to hanimals. It's a disgrice."

"We've only owned him a little while," explained Angel, "and he strayed away. He'll be jolly glad to get home again--won't you, Rover? Give us that bit of string and I'll lead him."

The boy, suddenly friendly, in one of those swiftly changing moods of boyhood, assisted in the tying of the string to the little dog's collar, though he cast a longing look at its stout fringed tail that was so admirably built to further the riotous bouncings of an empty tin can.

We led him triumphantly through the shop into the street, and we trotted in silence for a space, staring in rapt admiration of the little black paws that padded along in such a business-like fashion beside us, the knowingly-pointed ears, and valiant tail carried at a jaunty angle above the sturdy hind-quarters.

When we reached our own quiet street we stopped. The Seraph looked in the bag of buns.

"May I give him mine?" he asked.

"Good boy," said Angel, and The Seraph presented the little dog with the large currant bun. We were charmed indeed when he sat up for it in the most approved trained-animal posture, with short fore-legs crossed on his plump hairy breast. How often had we longed for the joyous companionship of our old four-footed friends, the comfort of a soft warm tongue on one's cheek, the sensitive muzzle pressed into one's palm, the look of loving confidence in the deep brown eyes.

But our governess hated dogs, and we were expressly forbidden to so much as pat the head of any stray canine that thrust an inquiring nose between the bars of her gate. Therefore, it was with sad foreboding that we watched the bun disappear. The Scotty held it between his forepaws and bit off decent mouthfuls, without sign of greed or haste. By his bearing and by his shining silver collar we knew that he was, or had been some one's cherished pet.

The bun had cheered him wonderfully, for, as we moved homeward, he leaped playfully at his leash, and catching it in his teeth, worried it in an abandon of glee.

We made no plans. We had no hopes. We merely were drawn by habit and necessity to the place where, we knew, desperate trouble awaited us. At the gate we halted.

"We might take him into the yard to play for a little while," I said. "P'raps we could carry him upstairs wrapped in my coat, and hide him under the bed. Maybe he'd get so awful good he'd live under the bed, and we could save our food for him, and get up nights to play with him."

As if to show his appreciation of the plan, the Scotty raised himself on his hind quarters, paddling the air with his forepaws in excited appeal, and giving vent to sharp, staccato barks.

The next instant the front door was thrown open, and Mary Ellen, her cap askew, dashed down the steps to meet us.

"Wheriver have ye been so long?" she ejaculated. "An' have ye been tould the news? 'Tis hersilf has taken a tumble, an' put her knee out so the doctor says. I'd jist been clanin' up the panthry shelves, an' _she_ got up on a chair to see whether I'd maybe missed the top one, an' I must have left a knob of soap on the chair, for the next thing I knew she was stretched on the flure, an' I had to fetch the doctor, an' he says she'll have to kape to her room for a fortnight or more, an' the lord only knows how I'm to wait on her an' manage the three av ye, wid yer pranks an' all!"

The Seraph turned a somersault; then I turned a somersault; then Angel turned two; then the Scotty sat up, paddled the air with his forepaws, and sneezed twice.

Mary Ellen was genuinely shocked.

"I do belave," she said, solemnly, "that you've stones in your breasts instid av hearts--but you're jist like all men folk--if they think there's a good time in sthore for them, the women can suffer all they like, more shame to them." She was so worked up that she did not notice that the little dog had followed us into the house, until he was sitting up in the kitchen, his forepaws paddling the air, his tail thudding on the floor. Then she said, brimming over with admiration, though she tried to look severe;

"And if you think I'll have sthray dawgs in my kitchen you're very much mistook.... Aw, it's a darlin' wee thing, isn't it?" For the Scotty, seeing that she had seated herself, had jumped to her lap and now sat there, nose in air, looking superbly at home.

We closed about her, telling, in chorus, the story of the bullet-headed boy, and the garbage heap, and enlarging dramatically on the episode of the tin can.

"And may we please keep him?" we entreated, "just for a few days till we find the owner of it! Mrs. Handsomebody will never know, for he can live in the coal cellar 'cept when we take him little walks on a string!"

"If you don't let me do this I'll never marry you, so there!" This from Angel.

"Have it your own way, thin," moaned Mary Ellen, capitulating, as usual, under the fire of Angel's pleading, "but moind, if she iver finds us out, it's mesilf will be walkin' the streets widout a character."

II

So began a merry interlude in the drabness of the Handsomebody regime. Mrs. Handsomebody kept to her room for nearly three weeks, unable to put her foot to the floor. On the first evening, she called us to her bedside; and, while we stood in a row, bewildered before the phenomenon of seeing her prostrate, she lectured us solemnly on the duties and responsibilities of our position, and implored us not to make the period of her enforced retirement a nightmare, because of our pranks. We promised, marvelling that bed-clothes could be kept so tidy, and fervently wishing she would display the knee that had been so severely "put out." It was a commonplace for Mrs. Handsomebody's temper to be thus afflicted, but her knee, never.

When we returned to the kitchen, we found Mary Ellen sitting in a pensive attitude. Her forefinger pressed against her knit brow, her stout ankles crossed.

"The little dawg has been tellin' me a secret," she volunteered in explanation, "a deep, dark secret. She's been tellin' me in a way of spakin' that she's a lady-dawg, God help her."

"But how did she tell you, Mary Ellen? Did she speak out loud?" We were breathless with excitement.

"She did not. I ast her, for I had me suspicion, if she was a lady-dawg an' I sez--'If yez are wag yer tail three times,' an' the words was scarce off me tongue, whin she wagged her tail three times."

It was a marvel. Oh, these were going to be great days!

"If you're a lady-dog, wag your tail three times," I ordered, squatting to peer into the sagacious brown eyes.

Three times the stocky tail thumped the floor.

Then Angel put the question, and was answered with equal promptitude.

It was The Seraph's turn. With an insinuating smile he said: "If you are a gennelman dog wag your tail fwee times."

But before there was time for so much as one wag, Mary Ellen caught the too-eager tail in a restraining grasp.

"Now have done wid your nonsinse," she commanded. "Ye'll have the pore crature that worried it'll set up barkin', an' if the misthress did know, there be's a dawg in the house, she'd likely just throw a fit an' die."

"Is it a vewy barkable dog?" queried The Seraph.

"All dogs is barkable," said Mary Ellen, "and what we'll have to do is to kape her as quate as possible and pray that her owner'll come along this way, for turn her out I will not. It's easy seein' she's a pet be the ways of her."

"It says 'Giftie' on her collar," Angel announced, separating the short, shaggy coat to read. "That must be her name. Hello, Giftie! Sit up, Giftie!"

So Giftie she was, and, for a long three weeks, our joy and our delight.

Was ever little body so full of spirit and the pride of life? The kitchen became her own domain where the three of us fought for the position of her most abject slave. Even Mary Ellen could scarcely work for watching her antics with an old stocking, which she pretended was a rat. Once she caught a live mouse and set us all shouting. Mary Ellen, in her excitement, upset a gravy-boat of hot gravy, and The Seraph slipped and sat down in it, and Giftie gambolling, mouse in mouth, ran through it and tracked it over the freshly scrubbed boards. If she had been a tigress with her prey she could not have been more ferocious with the mouse. She snarled at it: she worried it: she threw it up in the air and caught it: she laid it on the scullery floor and rolled on it: and when, finally, it ceased to squirm beneath her, she lay quite still, gazing pensively up at us with liquid eyes, and only now and then twitching her hind-quarters to remind her victim that she was still on the job.

One never-to-be-forgotten day she rollicked into the kitchen proudly carrying Mrs. Handsomebody's solemn black shoe, which had been standing with its mate beneath Mrs. Handsomebody's bed. Before our horrified eyes, she worried it till the shoe-laces cracked about her head; threw it up and caught it, as she had the mouse; then taking it to her own bed in the scullery, she laid it there and rolled on it.

When Mary Ellen had wrested the shoe from Giftie, she crept upstairs, her heart in her mouth, and restored it to its place beneath the bed.