CHAPTER V

THE WINSTANLEYS

"Thus fortune's pleasant fruits by friends increased be; The bitter, sharp, and sour by friends allay'd to thee, That when thou dost rejoice, then doubled is thy joy; And eke in cause of care, the less is thy annoy."

I spent my first holidays at Marshlands, and my joy knew no bounds. To have Cathy all to myself for seven long glorious weeks seemed the absolute summit of earthly bliss. Mrs. Winstanley received me like a second daughter, and the bluff jolly squire patted me on the head with kindly welcome.

"We must show her something of English country life," he declared. "Can she sit a pony? We don't grow oranges and bananas here, but the gooseberries are ripe in the kitchen-garden, and they take a good deal of beating, in my opinion."

I thought Marshlands was the most delightful spot I had ever seen. The long, low gray stone house, with its mullioned windows and flagged passages, stood just above the little village of Everton, on the verge of the moors, where one could catch a glint of the distant sea and the peaks of the Cumberland mountains. Behind lay the home-farm, with the granaries and stables and orchards, and in front was a sweet old-fashioned garden, with archways of climbing roses and borders of closely-clipped box.

"I see the roof of the arbour has fallen in," said Cathy, as we wandered round on a tour of exploration after breakfast the first morning. "Edward will be dreadfully disappointed about it. He made it himself last holidays, and I thought at the time it wasn't strong enough, for we have such high winds here. Dick's badger has escaped. Caxton stupidly left the stable-door open, and, of course, it took the opportunity to run away, and is probably back in the woods by now. I don't know how we shall break the news to him."

It seemed that the boys were expected home that afternoon, so at Cathy's suggestion we set to work to make a few preparations for their arrival.

"We had better clean out all the animals, and brush their coats," she said. "I'm afraid the ferret has got terribly savage again. George begged Caxton to be sure and handle it every day, so that it should keep tame, but he says he is afraid to touch it. Don't you try, Philippa dear. Look at it now!"

I certainly did not feel inclined to put in my hand and fondle the creature, its sharp red eyes gleamed so viciously at me from among the straw; and I much preferred the black Angola rabbit, with fur as soft as silk, which submitted to caresses with the utmost stolidity and impassiveness.

"I expect George will bring his white mice home with him," continued Cathy. "He has eight of them at school. He kept them in a box behind the window-curtains in his bedroom, and the other boys had twelve brown ones and a dormouse. It was a dead secret for weeks, but at last the second master discovered it. He said they smelled, and he hunted all round the bedroom until he found them. At first he threatened to drown them, but afterwards he repented and said the boys might keep them in a shed outside until the end of the term, and then they must take them home and never bring them back to school again. George kept a newt once, too. He had it in his water-jug for several days, till it escaped and he couldn't find it anywhere. It turned up in one of the other boys' beds, when the housemaid was doing the rooms, and frightened her nearly into a fit, for she thought it was a serpent."

"Does Dick have pets?" I asked.

"Not of that kind. He generally has heaps of caterpillars and chrysalides, which are turning into moths and butterflies for his collection. He likes birds' eggs, too, but such a dreadful accident happened last holidays that he'll have to begin all over again."

"How was that?"

"Well, you see, they were all in a splendid big box with little divisions, which he had made on purpose. He put the box inside the lid, and laid it on the top of the school-room book-case. Then he forgot he had left it in that way, and thought the box was lying shut, only upside down. So he reached up and turned it over, and all the eggs came tumbling out, and more than half of them were smashed. It will take him a long time to get so many together again."

"Does Edward collect?"

"Oh, stamps and post-cards and that kind of thing. He's fond of reading, and it's dreadfully hard to get him away from a book. We have to pinch him sometimes before he will listen. Shall we wash the dogs, and take them down to the station to meet the boys?"

I was willing to assist in any project, so we spent the rest of the morning in a moist and exciting struggle with a Pomeranian, a fox-terrier, and two poodle pups. They looked beautiful as the result of our efforts, and as we stood that afternoon on the station platform, holding them by their leashes, we felt they made a most impressive array.

"There goes the signal, and here comes the train!" said Cathy. "Keep Max tight, Phil. We'll stay by the ticket-office, where they can see us first thing."

But we had not calculated upon the joy of the dogs at seeing their masters again. The moment they appeared there was a wild rush, all the strings seemed to get mixed together, and we greeted the boys in the midst of a medley of barking, whining, and yelping which resembled Bedlam.

"Oh, I say! Keep those beasts off!" drawled Edward. "They wear a fellow out."

We dragged the dogs away, and I saw a tall boy of sixteen, much too smart for a school-boy, who brushed the marks of the Pomeranian's paws from his coat-sleeve with tender consideration. At that stage of his existence Edward was a dandy. He "fiddled" over his neck-tie, his collars were never altogether to his satisfaction, he was particular about the cut of his coat and the fit of his boots, and affected an air of general boredom and "used-up-ness" which he fondly imagined to be the height of manly dignity.

"We've lost our luggage," announced Dick cheerfully (he was a jolly, merry-looking boy of fourteen). "But I've got a glorious specimen of the Poplar Hawk-moth. It was actually blown in through the carriage window, and I caught it on the back of the Babe's neck. Would you like to see it?"

George, otherwise "the Babe", as he was nicknamed by his brothers, appeared to be the youngest of the family. He had the eight white mice loose in one pocket, and a box containing two hermit crabs in the other, which seemed to cause him some anxiety.

"They're such beggars for fighting," he explained. "And I don't want them to kill each other before I get them home to the aquarium."

He enquired tenderly about the ferret.

"Beastly shame they've let it get savage," he said. "But one of our fellows is going to send me a fox cub, if the governor will only let me keep it. Where's the mater? Hasn't she come down to the station?"

I had never lived before among a family of school-boys, and their rollicking ways, their slang, their endless chaff, their jokes, and the thrilling stories they told of their numerous adventures, were altogether a new experience for me. Being a visitor, they treated me at first with a certain amount of ceremony, but finding that I was ready to climb fences, play hare-and-hounds, ride, fish, or tramp miles over the heathery moors, they voted me "a jolly sort of girl", and included me in the bosom of the family circle.

"We thought, as you'd lived abroad, you'd perhaps go about shaking out your skirts, and holding up a parasol, and shriek if you saw a cow," said George, who had tested my courage by springing at me from behind corners, letting a bat loose in my bedroom, and locking me into the dark jam-cupboard, all of which ordeals I had borne with heroism.

"She can't be troubled with nerves if she can stand the Babe's little diversions. It makes a fellow quite limp to look at him this hot weather. Why don't you give her a book and a deck-chair in the garden, and leave her in peace?" said Edward, his suggestions for my entertainment being based on his own ideals of enjoyment.

With Dick I soon won golden opinions, as I took an interest in the birds' eggs, and would consent to carry the wriggling caterpillars and slimy snails which he collected on our walks, or to fill my pockets with stones and other specimens for the museum. This museum was a large cabinet with glass doors, which filled one entire end of the school-room at Marshlands. It held a very miscellaneous assortment of treasures, to which both Cathy and the boys were constantly adding, sometimes with rather more zeal than discretion. I shall never forget how Dick put the hornet's nest there.

"I've smoked it thoroughly with brown paper," he said, "and the grubs are as dead as door-nails, so you needn't be at all afraid of it."

But I fear the brown paper could not have been strong enough after all. A few days afterwards we were sitting at tea in the school-room, when a peculiarly irritated buzzing noise began to resound from the region of the cabinet, and Edward, who was giving us an imitation of his classical master's stately style on speech-day, suddenly ducked his head in a most undignified fashion, and, seizing the bread-knife, made a frantic cut into the air.

"It's a hornet!" he exclaimed. "Just see the size of it! Take care, Cathy, the brute's going into your hair! Look out! If there isn't another of them!"

We jumped up in a hurry; there was not only another, but more and more and more, and, like the oysters in the ballad of the walrus and the carpenter, they came up so thick and fast that for the moment it seemed to us as if the whole room were full of yellow stripes and buzzing wings. I am not brave where wasps are concerned, and I am afraid my strong-mindedness went to the winds, and I shrieked like any bread-and-butter miss, at least George assured me so afterwards. Cathy had the presence of mind to fling her dress over her head, while the boys made a valiant though fruitless effort to slay those within immediate reach.

"Oh, I say!" cried Edward. "This is no joke! They're all pouring out of the museum. We'd better cut, or there'll be damage done!"

And we beat an ignominious retreat, leaving our tea cooling upon the table, and the hornets in clear possession of the school-room. The question of how to get rid of them presented some difficulty, it being an unequal match to war with wasps; but in the end a tray full of burning sulphur was thrust through the door, and allowed to smoulder for some hours, after which we were at length able to enter in safety, and sweep up the bodies of our victims in triumph from the floor.

Somehow poor Dick's experiments did not always turn out very happily, in spite of the best intentions on his part. Fired by an article in a boys' magazine, he once volunteered to stuff a dead bullfinch which Cathy had found in the garden, and after a long operation of skinning and drying, he produced it in the school-room with great pride.

"Doesn't it look a little fatter on one side than on the other?" suggested Cathy, doubtfully surveying the bullfinch, which was wired upon a twig as no bird in real life had ever perched.

"Nonsense!" said Dick, pinching his specimen to send the stuffing straight. "It's just exactly as if it were pecking at a bud. Look at its eyes! I made them out of two black-headed pins I took from the mater's bonnet."

"I don't think its tail looks quite natural," said Cathy. "It seems somehow to stick up like a wren's."

"Well, if you're going to find fault," answered Dick indignantly, "just try and do one yourself, that's all. It's jolly difficult, I can tell you, and I've taken no end of trouble over it."

"Oh, I'm not finding fault!" said Cathy hastily. "I think it's ever so nice, and you're a dear boy to do it for me. We might bend the tail down a little--so! That's better. Now it looks splendid, and we'll give it a front place in the collection."

"All right!" said Dick, somewhat mollified. "But you girls seem to think these things are as easy as eating cakes. It takes practice even to skin a sparrow, as you'd soon find out if you'd ever tried your hand at it."

The bullfinch was duly placed in the museum, where it really looked very well. Not long after, however, we began to notice a most peculiar odour in the school-room.

"It's the flowers!" said Cathy, sniffing at a vase, and throwing the water out of the window. "They always get nasty if you leave them too long."

"It smells to me more like a dead mouse," I declared. "Perhaps one may have had a funeral inside the wall;" and, dropping on my knees, I crept round the room, scenting the skirting-boards like a pointer. In spite of my efforts I was not able to fix the spot, and as Cathy turned out a potful of sour paste which we had forgotten in the cupboard, and found a pile of stale mushrooms in the pocket of George's coat, which was hanging behind the door, we came to the conclusion that it might be either of these.

But the odour did not improve, and by the next day it had become almost unbearable. Even the boys perceived it, and that is saying something. We all went round the room, sniffing in every corner, and trying to find the cause of offence, till at length Edward flung open the door of the cabinet.

"It's your beastly bullfinch!" he declared. "Take the wretched thing away! It's only half-cured, and smells like a tan-yard! Whew!"

Poor Dick was rather crest-fallen, especially as Edward made it a subject of chaff for many days; and he grew so huffy about it, that for some time we did not dare to mention either birds or the collection in his presence. He came home one day, however, bubbling over with laughter.

"I've a ripping museum joke for you!" he said. "Beats your old bullfinch into fits!"

"What's that?" we enquired.

"Why, I was down the village with the governor this morning, and we dropped into old Mrs. Grainger's. I was telling her a yarn or two about the Babe's crocodile's egg, and so on, and she turned round to a drawer, and fished out a piece of pink coral. 'If you like things from furrin' parts,' says she, 'I'll give you this. My sailor son brought it home from Singapore on his last voyage. I've heard as coral is all full of insects, but I've boiled this piece well in a saucepan, so I reckon it'll be clean enough now!'"

"_Boiled!_" we exclaimed.

"Yes, boiled! To kill the insects, don't you see?"

"Your imaginative faculties, my dear fellow, are considerable," said Edward. "But you won't get me to swallow that!"

"Fact, all the same!" said Dick. "You ask the governor. You're jealous, old chap, because you can't glean up humour yourself in the village. The yokels are so taken up with staring at your last new tie, or your immaculate collar, that you don't get a word out of them. There was old Jacob Linkfield, now, who----"

But at this point of the story Edward went for Dick, and chased him out of the house and down to the stack-yard. He could occasionally stir his long legs when he considered the "cheek" of the younger ones grew beyond bounds, and, once he was moved, they deemed it prudent to flee before him.

You must not think, however, that we spent the whole of our time at Marshlands with the boys. They were frequently out with their father upon some shooting or fishing expedition, and Cathy and I would potter about the garden or in the fields with "the mater", only too delighted to have the chance of getting her quite to ourselves. A sweeter or truer gentlewoman than dear Mrs. Winstanley it has never been my good fortune to meet. She took me to her kind heart at once, and gave me for the first time in my life that "mothering" which I had so sadly lacked. I have hinted that my aunt did not make too much of me; even her own children did not run to her with their joys and sorrows, and I had never been accustomed to think of her as in any sense a possible companion. Mrs. Winstanley, on the other hand, was the most delightful of comrades. She had not forgotten in the very least what it felt like to be young; she could sympathize in all our amusements, indeed I think she enjoyed a picnic tea in the woods, or a scramble for blackberries, fully as much as we did ourselves; but she contrived at the same time to make us interested in those intellectual pleasures which were the great resource of her life. Under her guiding hand I made my first efforts at sketching; she taught me the names of the trees and the flowers, of which before I was lamentably ignorant; and a walk to see a cromlech or a stone circle upon the moors was an opportunity for such delightful stories about the early dwellers in our lands, that I became a lover of "antiquities" on the spot. I feel I can never be grateful enough to her for giving me in my childhood that taste for natural history which has been such a joy to me in my after-life. She taught us to use our eyes, and to see the beauty in each leaf and flower and every common thing around us. At her suggestion Cathy and I each began a "Nature Note-Book", in which we recorded all the plants, birds, animals, or insects we met with during our rambles, drawing and painting as many of them as we could.

"It will form a kind of naturalists' calendar," she said. "You must put the dates to all your finds, and in years to come the books will prove very interesting. Never mind whether the sketches are good or bad. Persevere, and you will soon begin to improve, and the very effort to copy a flower or a butterfly will impress its shape and colour upon your minds in a way which nothing else could do."

We waxed very enthusiastic over these note-books, and there was quite a keen competition between us as to which should contain the most records. As we kept them for several years, we naturally had different entries during the holidays we spent apart; and while I was able to sketch gorgeous sea-anemones and madrepores which I found upon the shores of south-country watering-places, Cathy would exult over the coral cups or birds'-nest fungi for which she searched the woods in winter.

Somehow, after my friendship with the Winstanleys I realized that in some subtle way the bond between my father and myself grew and strengthened. In the years which I had spent at my aunt's, though I had never ceased to love him, we had seemed in a very slight degree to have drifted apart, but since my visit to Marshlands all the old spirit of comradeship returned, and I felt he was even more to me than he had ever been before. I think I must have unconsciously expressed this feeling in my letters, for in his, too, I began to notice a change. He wrote back to me more fully and freely, not as to a child, but as to a friend, telling me his hopes and his difficulties, and the little details of his lonely days, and asking almost wistfully for a full record of all my doings. His gratitude to my kind friends knew no limit, yet I think all the same he felt it hard that he should miss those years of my life when I was receiving my most vivid impressions, and that he must leave to others the care he would so gladly have bestowed upon me himself.