The odd one

CHAPTER XV Comforted 134

It was just four o’clock on a dull-gray winter afternoon. The little Stuarts’ nursery looked the picture of coziness and comfort, with the blazing fire that threw flickering lights over the bright-colored pictures on the walls, the warm carpet under foot, and the fair, fresh faces of the children gathered there.

Five of them there were, and they were alone, for the old nurse, who had brought them all up from their infancy, was at present absent from the room.

By one of the large square windows stood one of the little girls ; she was gazing steadily out into the fast darkening street below, her chin resting on one of the bars that were fastened across the lower part of the window. How the children disliked those bars! Marks of little teeth were plainly discernible along them, and no prisoners could have tried more perseveringly to shake them from their sockets than they did. Betty, who stood there now, had received great applause one afternoon when, after sundry twists and turns, she had successfully thrust her little dark curly head through and was able to have a delightfully clear view of all the passers-by.

But the sequel was not so pleasant, for somehow or other 7

Betty’s head would not come in so easily as it went out, and when nurse came to the rescue with an angry hand, the poor little head was very much bruised in consequence, and Betty’s reward for such dexterity was an aching head and dry bread for tea. She was a slight, slim little figure with big blue eyes and long, black, curved lashes and eyebrows which made her eyes the most beautiful feature in her face. Very soft, fine, curly hair surrounded a rather pathetic-looking little face ; but her movements were like quicksilver, and though all the little Stuarts were noted for their mischievous ways and daring escapades, Betty eclipsed them all.

She turned from the window soon with a sigh of relief.

“ He’s coming,” she said ; “ old Bags is coming, and it’s my turn to-day.”

There was no response. Bobby and Billy, the twins, little lads only just promoted from petticoats to knickerbockers, were deeply engrossed in one corner of the room over their bricks. Perched on the top of a low chest of drawers were Douglas and Molly, and their heads were in that close proximity that told that secret business was going on.

Betty’s heart sank a little.

“ Old Bags is coming,” she repeated ; “ don’t you hear his bell?”

“ We’re busy,” said Douglas, looking up ; “ we won’t have Bags’s story to-day.”

“You promised yesterday when you put it off that you would hear it to-day. It isn’t fair. I always listen to you.”

“ Tell it to the babies ; they’ll like to hear.”

This was adding insult to injury; and when the twins trotted up to the window, Betty turned a defiant back upon them, tears of disappointment dimming the blue eyes.

“She’s cwying,” announced Bobby, twisting his head round to look up into her face.

8 '

Betty turned round furiously ; a sharp push sent Bobby to the ground, and in falling he struck his head against one of the feet of the nursery table. There was a howl, general confusion, and nurse appeared to discover and chastise the offender. Betty was led off in disgrace to a little room on the nursery landing, known by the children as “ Cells.” Their uncle, a young captain in the Guards, had given it that name, but in reality it was nurse’s store-room, and was heated with hot pipes to air the linen kept there. It was a small, square room containing a table and one chair ; the window was high above the children’s reach, and locked cupboards were on every side. Nurse invariably used it for punishing small offenses, and, being a woman of stern principles, she generally set the little culprit a text to learn while there. A Bible was on the table, and Betty was led up to it.

"You will stay here till tea-time, and will not come out until you have learned a text and said you are sorry for knocking down your little brother in a fit of wicked temper. This is the fourth time I have had to bring you here this week, and it is now only Tuesday. I have more trouble with you than all the others put together, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Betty was sobbing bitterly, and when nurse left the room and turned the key behind her, the child flung herself down on the floor.

“ It’s a shame! It’s all Douglas and Molly; they make promises and don’t keep them. And it was ever so much nicer a story than Molly’s ; I know they’d have liked it if they’d heard it. They never think I can do anything! ”

To explain the cause of Betty’s grievance, I must tell you that it was a custom of the little Stuarts to await the muffinman’s approach on his rounds, and as his bell would sound they would take turns each day to relate to the others an account of the different houses he had gone to, and who had been the fortunate individuals to receive the muffins that had already disappeared from his tray. It was an idle hour in the nursery from four to five, and if the gathering dusk kept the active eyes still the fertile brains were brought into requisition. Telling stories was a constant delight, and the wonderful adventures that befell the muffins on their daily rounds kept the little gathering quiet and happy till tea appeared.

Betty’s stories were not inferior to her elders’, and it was her childish sense of justice and consideration that was outraged. But tears will come to an end, and soon the little maiden was perched up at the table to learn the task before her. She turned over the pages till she reached Revelation, that mysterious and mystical book that so fascinates and contents a child’s soul, though the wisest on earth read it with perplexity and awe. And after a moment or two Betty had found a text to learn ; and when nurse appeared later on she repeated unfalteringly, with shining eyes and with a note of triumph in her tone, “ ‘ And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, these are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb ’ ” (Rev. vii. 14).

“ That’s a good child ; are you sorry? ”

“Yes,” was the reply, rather absently given; for Betty’s mind was on the white-robed throng, and how could she let nurse know all the workings of her busy brain over the verse she had been taking into her heart and soul?

“ And remember,” said nurse, gravely, “ that no naughty children who quarrel and fight will ever be in heaven.”

“Not even if they’ve been through great tribulation?” quickly demanded Betty.

But nurse did not hear, and Betty was received into the well-lighted nursery with acclamation from the others, already seated at the round table for tea.

“We’ve made a new game, Molly and I,” announced Douglas.

He was a fair, curly-headed boy with an innocent baby face, and a talent for inventing the most mischievous plans that could ever be concocted, with a will that made all the others bow before him. Molly was also fair, with long golden hair that reached to her waist; extreme self-possession and absence of all shyness were perhaps her chief characteristics. “ I am the eldest of the family,” she was fond of asserting, and she certainly claimed the eldest’s privileges. Yet her temper was sweet and obliging, and she could easily be swayed and led by those around her.

“Is it one for outdoors or indoors?” asked Betty, with interest.

“ Indoors, of course ; we’ll tell you after tea.”

“Your mother wants you in the parlor after tea,” put in nurse ; “ you and Miss Molly are to go down.”

Molly looked pleased, not so Douglas. At last, putting down his piece of bread and butter, he looked up into nurse’s face with one of his sweetest looks.

“Why are grown-up people so very dull, nurse? They all are just the same, except Uncle Harry. They are dreadfully heavy and dull.”

“ They have so little to amuse them,” Molly said reflectively; “no games or toys. They never make believe, or pretend the lovely things we do.”

“ And their legs get stiff, and their dresses trip them up if they try to run.”

“ But they never get punished, and they’re never scolded, and they’re never wicked.”

This from Betty.

“ It’s their talk that is so stupid,” went on Douglas ; “ they look nice until they begin to talk ; they make me dreadfully sleepy to listen to them.”

“Shall I go down instead of you to-night? ” asked Betty, eagerly.

“ Don’t chatter such nonsense. It’s strange times when children begin to pick their elders to pieces. You weren’t asked for, Miss Betty; and Master Douglas is to go down and behave himself.”

“ The three B’s aren’t big enough yet to leave the nursery.”

Douglas said this with a sparkle of mischief in his eye. It was a sore point with Betty to be ranked with the twins, for she was only a year behind Douglas. Long ago he had seized hold of a laughing joke of his father’s alluding to the names by which the three youngest children were called, and had twitted her with it ever since.

“B for baby — Baby Betty, Baby Bobby, and Baby Billy; babies must go to bed,” he explained.

Betty gave an angry kick under the table, but did not speak.

She was very silent for the rest of that evening ; but when she and Molly were safely in bed, and the room was very quiet, she asked :

“ Molly, do you know what ‘ tribulation ’ means? ”

“I’m not sure that I do,” was the hesitating reply. “ I think it’s something dreadful. Why do you want to know?”

“ Is it like the dark valley Christian went through in 'The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ or the goblin’s cave we make up about? ”

“ I expect it is something like. Why? ”

“ It’s on the way to heaven,” whispered Betty, in an awe-struck tone; “the Bible says so.”

There was silence, then Molly said :

“ There’s a book in father’s library will tell you about it. It tells the meaning of every word ; father said so. A dicksomething it is.”

' ‘ I’ll ask Mr. Roper to get it for me.”

And Betty turned over on her pillow, comforted by this thought, and fell fast asleep.

Mr. Stuart was a member of Parliament, and, being a man who threw his whole soul into everything he did, was too much engrossed with business when in town to have much to do with his children. He spent a great part of his day in the library with his secretary, a quiet young fellow who was looked upon by the children as an embodiment of wisdom and learning. Mrs. Stuart saw as little of her children as her husband ; her time was fully occupied in attending committee meetings, opening bazaars, and superintending numerous pet projects for ennobling and raising the standard of social morality among the masses. She was not an indifferent mother; she was only an active, busy woman, who, after carefully selecting a thoroughly good and trustworthy woman as her nurse, left the children’s training with perfect confidence to her. And between her social and charitable claims there was not much time for having her little ones about her. A young governess came every day for two hours to teach the three eldest ones, but their life was essentially a nursery one. And when the House was closed, and the husband and wife would go off to the Continent or to the Highlands, the children would be sent to a quiet seaside town with their nurse and the nursery-maid.

The following afternoon a little figure stole quietly down to the library door. Betty knew her father was out, and Mr. Roper never repulsed any of the children. After a timid knock she passed in, and made a little picture as she stood in the firelight in her brown velveteen frock and large, white-frilled pinafore.

“ Well,” said Mr. Roper, wheeling round from his writing-desk, “ what do you want, Betty? ”

“ I want one of father’s books,” the child said earnestly ; “one that Dick Somebody wrote — a book that tells the meaning of everything.”

“ I wish there were such a one in existence,” said the young man, smiling a little sadly. “ Now what is in your little head, I wonder? ”

“ It’s a word I want to find, please.”

“ Oh, a word! Bless the child, she means a dictionary! ” And Mr. Roper laughed as he drew a fat volume out of a shelf and placed it on a table by the little girl.

“ May I help you to find it? ”

“ It’s * tribulation.’ I don’t know how it’s spelled.”

He did not ask questions; that was one thing that attracted Betty toward him. She was a curious mixture of frankness and reserve ; she would confide freely of her own free will, but if pressed by questions would relapse at once into silence. He found the word for her, and she read with difficulty, “ ' Trouble, distress, great affliction.’ ”

“Do they all mean tribulation? ” she asked.

“ Tribulation means all of them,” was the answer.

“And can children have tribulation, Mr. Roper?”

“What do you think? ”

“ I must have it if I’m to get to heaven,” she said emphatically. And then she left him, and the young man repeated her words to himself with a sigh and a smile as he replaced the book in its resting-place.

II 44 Mother Nature ”

A few evenings after this, as nurse was undressing the little girls for bed, Mrs. Stuart came into the nursery. She was going out to dinner, and looked very beautiful in her soft satin dress and pearls. She was tall and stately, with the same golden hair as Molly, but her face was somewhat cold in expression.

Sitting down in an easy-chair by the fire, she asked :

“What is the matter with Betty? Is she in disgrace again? ”

Betty was standing in her long night-dress at the foot of her small bed; her hands were clenched, and there was a resolute, determined look upon her flushed face.

“One of her obstinate fits,” said nurse, angrily; “she generally goes to bed before Miss Molly, and because I have let her stay up a little later to-night she is as contrary as she can be. I can do nothing with her; a good whipping is what she wants! ”

Betty’s blue eyes wandered from nurse’s face to her mother’s, as if seeking consolation there ; her hands relaxed, and a slight quiver came to the little lips.

“Are you going to a party, mother? May I come and kiss you? ”

It was Molly who spoke. She was in the act of scrambling into bed, but upon receiving permission she made her way a little shyly across to where her mother was seated.

“Now keep your hands off my dress,” Mrs. Stuart said with a smile ; but she put her arm round the little figure and kissed her, and sent her back to bed perfectly happy. All the children adored their mother, though it was adoration at a distance.

“ Now come here, Betty. What have you been doing? How is it that I never visit the nursery without hearing complaints of your naughtiness? ”

“ I'm going to be good now,” said Betty, hanging her head and coming slowly forward into the firelight.

“ She has refused to say her prayers,” said nurse, sternly.

“ I will say them now.” And Betty raised her eyes to her mother somewhat wistfully.

“ Why did you refuse to say them when nurse told you to? ”

“ Because Molly was saying her prayers.”

“ Well, what had that to do with it? ”

Betty did not answer.

“Answer me.”

The child looked round. Nurse had left the room. She worked her little foot backward and forward in the longhaired rug rather nervously, and then, almost in a whisper, said :

“ God couldn’t listen to both of us, and I wanted Him to listen to me.”

Mrs. Stuart gazed perplexedly at her little daughter, then laughed.

“You are a little goose! Go and say your prayers at once, and get into bed. I have come here to talk to nurse.”

Betty crept away. Her mother’s amused laugh had hurt her more than nurse’s scoldings. It was hard to have one’s 16

“Mother Nature”

secret feelings brought to light and scoffed at, and her sensitive little soul felt this, though in a dim, uncertain way.

“ I want to have God all to myself,” was her thought as, a few minutes later, she laid her little head down on the pillow. “ I wonder if I’m very wicked? I won’t say my prayers if He is not listening.”

“ Now, nurse,” said Mrs. Stuart, as that worthy reappeared, “ I want to talk to you. Mr. Stuart and I are going abroad after Easter; he is not well, and the doctors have ordered him away. I want to send you and the children into the country for the summer. I don’t fancy their being at the seaside all that time. You were telling me some time ago of your old home. Isn’t it a brother of yours who has the farm? Yes? Well, do you think they have room to take you all in?”

Nurse’s face glowed with pleasure.

“ He has no chick or child, ma’am, and the house is large and roomy ; his wife was saying in a letter to me they should like lodgers in the summer. I’m sure it would please them to take us in, and the country round there is wonderfully healthy.”

“ I think that would answer very well,” Mrs. Stuart went on thoughtfully. “We may be away six months ; and the children are looking pale — a country life will do them all the good in the world. Let them run wild, nurse ; they will come back to their lessons all the better for it. Miss Grant told me this morning she would have to give up teaching — her mother is very ill ; so, all things combined, I think this plan will work well. Will you write to your brother and find out if he can take you in the last week in April? Let me know when you have heard from him.”

Mrs. Stuart rose as she spoke,— her visits were never long, — and nurse left the room with her.

“Betty,” said Molly, in an eager tone, “did you hear? We’re going into the country.”

“ I heard ; and no lessons, and we’re to run wild ; how lovely! ” Betty’s curly head bobbed up and down in excitement, then she said persuasively, “ Molly, let you and me keep it a secret together; we won’t tell Douglas or the twins.”

This required consideration. Molly sat up in bed and looked thoughtful.

“ I never do have a secret with you,” pleaded Betty. “You and Douglas have lots. I never have any one to have secrets with.”

“Well, I’ll see,” and there was a little of the elder sister in Molly’s tone. “ I’ll tell you to-morrow morning. Oh, it will be jolly in the country, won’t it? And nurse’s home, that she tells us about, is like our story-books: it’s full of calves, and lambs, and horses, and ducks, and chickens, and haymaking, and pigs! ”

“ And ponds and apple-orchards ; and we shall have cream and honey and strawberries every day! ” continued Betty.

The little girls’ voices were raised in their excitement, and they did not notice a door at the end of the room slowly open.

“ What a row! Are you telling stories? ”

It was Douglas, who slept in a little room off the nursery, and who had been roused by the sound of talking.

“ Hush! nurse will hear. Come and sit on my bed,” said Molly, “ and then you will hear all about it.”

“ O Molly, it was to be our secret! ”

“Douglas won’t tell. Besides, nurse is sure to tell us; she knew we were awake and listening.”

Betty gave a little sigh, then joined eagerly in giving her brother the delightful information.

“Mother Nature"

He listened, rumpling up his fair curls and blinking his blue eyes, which were already heavy with sleep.

“ Easter is years off,” he said at last. “ Why, we are still in winter. I dare say we sha’n’t go, after all.”

“We are in February now,” said Molly, looking a little disappointed at the calm way he received such rapturous news.

“ If I go,” Douglas went on meditatively, “ I shall ask father to let me have a gun, and I shall shoot rabbits and birds every day.”

“ Then you’d be a wicked, cruel boy,” pronounced Betty, indignantly. “ I shall catch all the rabbits I can see and tame them.”

“Then I shall let them loose again,” retorted Douglas; and taking up Molly’s pillow, he flung it with all his strength at Betty, who instantly returned it, and a pillow fight commenced. Molly joined delightedly in the fray; but alas! in the height of the excitement, Betty backed into a can of water put ready for their morning bath. Over she went, head first, on the floor, and the whole contents of the can flooded her and the carpet together. Douglas precipitately fled into his little room, and Molly into her bed, so that when nurse came hastily in Betty again was discovered as chief offender. While she was being hustled into a dry night-dress nurse relieved her vexed feelings by giving her a good scolding, and Betty eventually crept into bed, wondering if she was really the “ wickedest, mischievousest child on earth,” or if grown-up people sometimes made mistakes.

For the next few days nothing was talked of but the proposed country visit ; but as weeks went on, and spring seemed still as far away, the children’s excitement subsided, and the ordinary routine of lessons, walks, and play engrossed their whole attention.

But Easter came at last, and then packing up began. Miss Grant took her departure, and poor Sophy, the nursery-maid, had her hands full enough, for nurse’s command was to keep the children quiet and not let them come near her when packing.

Mr. Roper was leaving the library one afternoon about four o’clock, when he saw the disconsolate little figure of Betty seated on the stairs.

“Anything the matter? ” he asked good-naturedly.

“ We’re going away to-morrow,” was the reply, “ and it is all topsy-turvy upstairs. Douglas and Molly have been lions for hours, and Bobby and Billy two monkeys, and I’ve been the man. I’m tired of being him, and they won’t let me change. I’ve broken a jug and basin, and nearly pulled a cupboard over, and spilled a bottle of cod-liver oil all over Billy’s hair, and upset nurse’s work-basket, and then I ran away and hid and came down here. You don’t know how tiring it is to be hunted by four animals all at once.”

Mr. Roper sat down on the stairs by her and laughed heartily. “Poor little hunter! ” he said; “and how does nurse bear all this raging storm around her? ”

“ Oh, nurse is with mother in the night-nursery. Sophy is running after all of us ; I don’t know who she pretends to be, but when I left her she was sitting on the floor wiping Billy’s hair and crying.”

Betty’s tone and face were grave, and Mr. Roper stopped laughing. “ Have you been thinking over tribulation any more? ” he asked.

Betty nodded.

“ A lot,” she said emphatically, then shut up her little lips tightly, and Mr. Roper knew he was to be told no more.

“Are you going into the country, Mr. Roper?” he was asked presently.

“Mother Nature"

“ No, indeed. I am not rich enough to have such a holiday as is in prospect for you. I wonder what you will do with yourselves all the time? You must come back much the better and wiser, Betty, for it.”

“Why?”

“You will be six months older, and old Mother Nature is the best governess for little ones like you. She will teach you many a lesson if you keep your eyes and ears open.”

Betty’s eyes were very wide open now.

“ Does she live at the farm? I never heard nurse speak of her. We don’t want another governess there. How do you know her? ”

“ I knew her when I was a little boy, and loved her. I love her now, but my work is in London, and I never get much chance of seeing her.”

“ She must be very old,” Betty said meditatively.

“Very old; and yet every year she seems younger and more beautiful. You will see her at her best, Betty. I shall expect you to come home and tell me all about her.”

“ Shall I give her your love and a kiss when I see her? ”

“ Yes,” said the young man, smiling down upon the earnest child beside him.

A rush of feet behind them, and Molly and Douglas came tearing downstairs.

“Here she is! Where have you been? Bobby has cut his head open, and Sophy has rushed to nurse, and nurse is scolding away, so we came off. Mr. Roper, do you know we’re going away to-morrow? ”

“And will you come and see us one day, Mr. Roper? ”

“ Mr. Roper, does every farmer in the country go about in his night-shirt ? Douglas says they do, and we have pictures of them.”

“ And are there stags and wild boar to hunt? Do tell us.”

Mr. Roper made short work of these questions and departed. He was a reserved, reticent man, and did not understand the boisterous spirits of the little Stuarts. Betty was his favorite ; he was always ready for a chat with her, but the others worried him.

Nurse was very thankful when she got herself and her little charges all comfortably settled in the railway train for Brook Farm the next day. Sophy was not going with them, but the longing to be in the old home again quite compensated nurse for the additional labor and responsibility she would have.

The children had parted from their parents with great composure. Mrs. Stuart had reiterated parting injunctions to nurse, and their father had presented all five with a bright coin each, which gift greatly added to their delight at going.

“Not much affection in children’s hearts,” said Mr. Stuart to his wife, as he watched the beaming faces gathered round the cab window to wave “ good-by.”

“ They will get through life the better for absence of sentiment and demonstrativeness,” replied Mrs. Stuart ; and perhaps those words were an index to her character.

WAS IT AN ANGEL?

It was a lovely afternoon in May, a week after the children’s arrival at Brook Farm. They were together in the orchard, which was a mass of pink and white bloom. Bobby and Billy were having a see-saw on a low apple-branch, Douglas was perched on a higher bough of a cherry-tree, and the little girls were lying on the ground. Tongues were busy, as usual.

“ We’ve seen everything round the house,” Douglas was asserting in rather a dictatorial tone ; “ and now we must be busy having adventures— people always do in the country.”

“What kind? ” asked Molly, meekly.

“ They get tossed by bulls, or lost in the woods, or drowned in ponds,” Douglas went on thoughtfully.

“ I’m not going to do any of those.” And Betty’s tone was very determined.

“ What are you going to do, then? ”

“ I shall be busy all by myself. I’m going out to look for some one.”

“Who?” asked Molly, curiously.

“ Some one Mr. Roper told me about. He sent his love to her and a kiss. It’s a secret between me and Mr. Roper ; I sha’n’t tell you any more.”

And Betty rolled over in the grass with a delighted chuckle at the puzzled faces round her.

“ It’s only one of her make-ups,” Douglas said, recovering his composure ; “ let me tell you of my plans. Do you see those thick trees at the top of that hill? That’s a real wood. Now, if nurse sends us out to-morrow afternoon while she takes a nap, I’m going there, and you girls must come after me.”

“ And us too,” put in Bobby, listening attentively.

“ If you can walk so far, and don’t go telling nurse about it.”

“ How far is it? Six miles? ” asked Molly, who would have been willing to walk ten had her brother so ordained.

“It is only through three fields, Sam told me.”

Sam was one of the carters, who had already become one of Douglas’s greatest friends.