Stories Told to a Child

Front matter

THE SUSPICIOUS JACKDAW.

By JEAN INGELOW

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

Front matter

THE SUSPICIOUS JACKDAW.

By JEAN INGELOW

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

The Grandmother's Shoe

THE GRANDMOTHER'S SHOE.

WHEN I was a child at school (said a friend of mine) my father had an attack of typhus fever; he had quite recovered again, and it was near the time of the holidays, when two servants took the infection; my parents, fearful of conveying it to me, did not write, and my boxes were packed before I knew how I was to be sent home.

My schoolfellows were gone, and in a disconsolate mood I was gazing into the square, when I was told to come into the drawing-room. There, in place of my nurse, who generally came to fetch me, I saw a stout, comely member of the Society of Friends; she was eating cake and wine with imperturbable gravity, and, when she had set down her glass, and smoothed out her gown upon her lap, she held out her hand, and said pleasantly,—

'Does thee remember me, friend?'

I looked at the matronly cloth shawl, the bonnet, with its pure white lining, the smooth gray hair and comfortable face, but could not remember where I had seen them before, till she added, 'What! doesn't thee remember Thomas W——'s housekeeper?'

Then I instantly exclaimed in the affirmative, evidently to the great relief of 'Madame,' who scarcely knew what to make of her grave visitor, and did not know whether she would trust me with her.

She was housekeeper to a rich Quaker gentleman in our neighborhood, with whose children I had once or twice spent the day in haymaking season, and her now remembered face was connected with visions of syllabub, strawberries, and other delicacies which she had served to us among the haycocks.

'Thee remembers; that's well:' she then added, 'thy father knows I am come for thee; friend Thomas offered to take thee home for a while, and he gladly consented.'

Tears came into my eyes at the thought of not seeing my parents, upon which she said, 'There's Lucy, thee knows, and James, and little Martin, to play with. Thy good parents mean to let the young women be nursed in the house, as they gave what help they could when thy father had the fever; so thee sees there is trouble enough without thy trying to add to it.' With a convulsive effort I checked my sobs, and reflected that, though not going home, I was, at least, leaving school, and that was something. The Friend saw my boxes, dressed me, and took formal possession of me and them; then she carried me off in a post-chaise, remarking that she expected I was going to be a good child, and had said so to Lucy, and James, and Martin, when she came to fetch me.

Could I disappoint Lucy, and James, and Martin? No, certainly not; if they were impressed with the notion that my behavior would do me credit, they should find it so.

This was a very good, kind Friend; she let me pay the turnpikes myself, through the window; she bought buns for me; and, by dint of questioning her, I discovered that Lucy, and James, and Martin had got a pony, a donkey, some guinea-pigs, gardens of thenown, a swing, and O, joy of joys, a little mill that would go round and grind corn.

By the time I had been welcomed in this hospitable house, and had helped to grind corn in the marvellous mill, I was only a little sorrowful; and by the time I had laid my head on the pillow, in a tiny bedroom next to Lucy's, I felt very much reconciled to my fate, though I knew that I should probably sleep there several weeks.

I was ten years old, and Lucy, a prim little creature, was about the same age; her brothers were quite little children; the other members of the family consisted of a grandmother—a very stern, severe person, whom I greatly dreaded—the master of the house (her son), concerning whom I only knew that he was extremely kind and benign to us, and that he was a widower; and, lastly, his eldest daughter, the child of his first marriage, a sweet girl, little more than twenty years old, but wearing already the clear, high cap in which a really pretty face looks prettier than in almost anything else, and having about her the peculiar self-possession and composure of manner so often seen among those of her society.

Lucy and I were a source of great interest to one another; we liked to be together, because of the dif manner in which we had been taught to express ourselves. We examined each other's clothes, and when we had a convenient opportunity tried them on. When this amusement failed we unpacked my toys, but none of them pleased Lucy till we came to two good-sized dolls, dressed in the ordinary costume of British babies; these we no sooner found than we thought how delightful it would be to dress them up in complete suits of Friends' clothes. It was a very rainy day; so we went to the eldest daughter—'sister,' as the children called her—and asked her for some pieces of silk, and scraps of cloth. She was very bountiful, and gave us some pieces of ribbon besides. We took our treasures, our little red work-boxes, and the dolls, to a room in the roof—a large, partially empty place, where we were sometimes allowed to play—and there, with infinite care and pains, we made each of them a dove-colored silk gown of the most approved shape, a muslin handkerchief, a three-cornered brown shawl, and a proper silk bonnet. When the clothes were finished, we wetted the hair of the dolls to take out the curl, and then dressed them, and took them down into the hall, where we walked about with them by way of giving them an airing. I never saw Lucy's father laugh heartily but once, and it was on that occasion; the sight of the 'Puppet Friends,' as he called them, quite overcame his habitual gravity; unluckily, we presently met Lucy's grandmother, who was far from regarding them with the same good-humored indulgence, and it was a painful fact to us, at the time, that after we were gone to bed, the 'Puppet Friends' mysteriously disappeared. Where they went to we never could discover, though we shrewdly suspected that the grandmother knew; but the mystery was never cleared up till after I returned to school, when I found them among my clothes, neatly wrapped in silver paper, but divested of their Quaker clothing.

I passed a happy week, and on Sunday was sent to spend the day at the parsonage. About six in the evening I was brought back, and Lucy, and James, and Martin ran out to meet and welcome me in rather a more noisy and riotous fashion than suited the day; We were pursuing one another round the flower-beds when 'sister' made her appearance at the window, and calling to us, reproved us gently for our mirth, saying to me, 'What would thy good mother think, if she could see thee just now?' She then set the youngest child upon a chair, smoothed his soft hair, and said to him, with a quietness of manner which soon communicated itself to him, 'Thee must not forget whose day this is; sit there. I am going to read to thee and James about little Samuel in the temple.' She then took up two Bibles, and gave Lucy and me a parable to learn by heart, sending us up to the room in the roof, and saying, that when she thought we had had time to learn it she should come and hear us say it.

Up stairs Lucy and I accordingly went to the room in the roof, the aspect of which is still as vividly impressed on my mind as if I had seen it only yesterday. It was a very long room, and had a sloping roof, but there was no carpet on it, and no furniture, excepting two square stools, on which Lucy and I sat. The case windows, both open, for it was hot, afforded a fine view over the country; from these we could look down into the tops of some elm trees, and see a mother rook feeding her young in the nest.

At the opposite end to this the floor was raised one step, and across this raised part was drawn a heavy red curtain, so as to enclose it and the oriel window within it, and make them almost into a distinct apartment. We were forbidden to enter this desirable little place, because it was considered to belong specially to the grandmother; but I had peeped into it several times, when the curtain was partly undrawn, and seen a little table with a great Bible upon it, an arm-chair, and a stand of flowering balsams and geraniums.

The circumstance that this little retreat belonged to the grandmother made me, in common with her descendants, regard it with something like awe. I cannot quite understand why we so much feared this old lady; she did not punish us; she did not scold us; I am inclined to think that we were daunted by the general air of disapproval with which she regarded us, more than by any fear that she would manifest it in deeds or words.

However good we might be, still we were only children. We actually felt ashamed of ourselves in her presence to think that we were children! We knew we could not help it, it was an inevitable dispensation, but she did not appear to think so; she sometimes had the appearance of thinking that we could help it if we liked, and were children on purpose!

Children are inferior beings; we felt that, and were humble. We are beings whose nature it is to crumple tucks, make finger-marks on doors, run instead of walking, to be troublesome and want looking after, to play with toys and break them. In fact, if one only considers this subject, children take more nursing, more looking after, than one supposes; one generation is almost entirely occupied in teaching, bringing up, and providing for the next. Children, in some way or other, make the talk, the care, and the work for their elders; and if such a thing as an elder is now and then found who does not like children, what an unlucky thing it is for both parties?

But to leave these speculations. The sun was shining in at the oriel window when Lucy and I entered the long white-washed room on that memorable Sunday evening. The red curtain was half drawn, and it cast a delightful glow over the wall; we could not see the window, but we knew it was open, because a slight waft of air from it now and then swayed the curtain up and down, and floated the fallen leaves of geraniums across the bare floor.

We sat down at a distance from the curtain, each on one of the low stools. Lucy smoothed out her clean frock over her knees, set her little feet together, folded her arms, and counted her verses; there were ten. She produced from her pocket a Tonquin bean, two slate pencils, and seven ivory buttons; these she laid out on the floor beside her, taking up one and returning it to her pocket for each verse that she knew; this, she said, made it much easier to learn them. Not to be behindhand with her, and having some faith in the plan, I gathered up ten geranium leaves for the same purpose, and we both set to work to learn our verses with great diligence and gravity.

For some time we persevered, but it was a very warm evening, which, in addition to our being children, was, perhaps, the reason why, at last, we began to yawn, and to fidget, and then to compare notes as to how much we had each learned.

Lucy's bean and pencils had gone back into her pocket, but her buttons lay still in a shining row. We bent our eyes again upon our books—one button went into Lucy's pocket. Then we took a rest, and watched how far the little wafts of wind were floating in the leaves; a great red leaf was following two delicate white ones; it seemed to pursue them; it was a lion running after two lambs; now they lay still, and the lion was watching his prey; now they were borne a little farther; now the lion was just upon them, in another instant they would be overtaken. Lucy could not bear to see the catastrophe that her own imagination had suggested, and darted across the room to rescue the two white lambs; then I related to her Mrs. Cameron's story of 'The Two Lambs,' and by the time it was finished we had so far forgotten ourselves that we went on talking and chattering as if the Bibles had not been lying open on our knees, and as if it had not been Sunday evening, and as if we had neither of us been taught any better.

Oblivious also that there was such a person as a grandmother in the world, we had been talking about my blue sash, and Lucy wished she had one like it. We talked about Lucy's lessons, and I wished I was a Friend, that I might escape from learning music. We talked about the two dolls, about Lucy's sister, and my mamma, which was the most indulgent, and which was the prettiest. We talked about what we intended to do when we were grown up. Last of all, as I well remember, we talked about the grandmother herself, her best gown, her walking-stick, how upright she sat, what a trouble she thought us, whether there was any chance of her going to Ireland to visit her other son; how she often said to father, 'Thomas, thy children ought to be kept stricter—stricter, Thomas;' how, once when she said it, father had smiled, and then grandmother had said, 'Thomas, I fear thou art a light man.' 'And we saw father smile,' said Lucy, shrewdly; but the words were scarcely uttered when the smile died out from her own face, and a sudden blush mounted to her forehead. 'What is it, Lucy? what's the matter?' I exclaimed. Lucy sat as still as if she scarcely dared to breathe; she seized my arm to check me, and pointed towards the curtain. Alas! shame and fear soon flushed my face as red as her own, for the terrible conviction struck us that the grandmother was behind it; the curtain had been blown a little backwarder than before by the summer wind, and peering beyond it in the sunshine was the toe of a shoe that could belong only to the grandmother!

Never shall I forget the sensations of the next few minutes, nor the sudden silence that succeeded to our childish and profitless talk. We did not expect to sit there long; every moment we looked for a summons from her to come into her presence and receive the lecture which we knew we so richly deserved; but when that imperturbable shoe had kept its position a little longer, we almost wished she would break the silence, that this fearful suspense might be ended. But no, she neither stirred nor spoke; the most perfect quiet reigned; there was only a slight rustle now and then, which might be the turning over of a page, and which we had heard before, supposing it to be only the curtain.

We did not know what to do, we were so miserable; We gazed intently through the red folds of the drapery, and could see, by a dark shadow, that the chair was occupied. O that we had but been wise enough to notice this before! We withdrew our eyes, and, with one tearful look of condolence at one another, dropped them again upon our verses, and began to learn them with extreme diligence and humility. But still the inexorable grandmother never spoke. O, how startling would be her voice when it came!

Not a word either of us said for a long time. At length Lucy observed, in a humble, saddened voice, 'I know my parable; Sophia, dost thou?'

I had learned mine perfectly for some time, but neither of us rose. We had an idea that the first attempt on our part at leaving the room would be met by the dreaded summons; we were already enduring punishment of a very severe nature; our cheeks were dyed with shame, and our hearts beating with apprehension. At length we heard a distant step sedately and steadily mounting the stairs; now it was coming along the uncarpeted passage, then a hand was on the door, and 'sister' entered, asking us, with her usual sweet gravity, whether we knew the parable she had set us.

She paused for a moment, evidently surprised by our troubled, shamefaced expression; but she asked no question, and, to our utter confusion, advanced straight to the curtain, as if to pull it back. 'Sister, sister!' exclaimed Lucy, springing forward, but not in time to prevent what she was doing; she flung aside the curtain, and O, inexpressible relief and astonishment, no grandmother was there!

We had both risen; and now the full sunshine streamed up over the ceiling and rested on sister's quiet forehead; it did not fall low enough to reach us; we were left in shadow, but the shadow had passed away from our hearts. She said to Lucy, 'Why didst thou check me, child?'

Lucy replied with a sigh of relief, 'I thought grandmother was there.'

We entered the little sanctum, saw how the grandmother's garden shawl and bonnet were thrown over the chair, remarked her garden over-shoes, which had frightened us, the scissors with which she had dressed her plants, and the gloves lying beside her Bible; then we looked at one another with feelings of gratitude, and followed sister to the grandmother's chair, where she sat down while we stood before her and repeated our parable. As she sat there, her tall figure slightly bending forward, the open Bible lying upon her knee, her serene eyes fixed on ours, and the sweet sunshine touching her soft hair and tranquil forehead, she presented a picture which is indelibly impressed upon my memory, together with a sense that I had of the con trust between her peace and my own consciousness of misdoing. She returned the Bibles when we had finished, saying to me with serious sweetness, 'I am pleased with thee; thou hast learned thy verses well, and said them reverently.'

She again looked at us as if puzzled by our faces, and then she rose and would have left the room, when we stopped her, for her praise was not to be received when we knew we did not deserve it. We asked her to sit down again, and then half laughing, half crying, related the whole of our adventure; we concealed nothing; we told over all our conversation, how we had been chattering and playing, what we had said about the grandmother, our terror and shame when we thought we were in her presence, and our indescribable relief when we found she was not there.

Much as we respected sister, we so wanted her to sympathize, that, though we knew she would disapprove of our behavior, and perhaps reprove us, we by no means softened our tale in the relation, but described how every rustle of the curtain had disturbed our guilty consciences; how we had sat upright on our seats, not daring to look about us, so conscious were we of the grandmother's presence, even though we knew she could not see us.

Sister looked from one to the other with an expression of regret, but not the least tendency to a smile. 'I thought grandmother would never forgive us, and she would tell father,' said Lucy, 'how we had played and laughed, and talked about her, and all on First-day evening. I was so ashamed I wouldn't have had her know for anything. I thought I should never be happy again.'

'And, after all,' I added, 'there was no harm done.'

'No harm!' said sister, quietly, 'what dost thou mean?'

'Why, you know,' said I, carelessly, 'the grandmother was not there.'

'Thou heedless child,' she answered, with that look of pity and regret, 'art thou really so much afraid of my grandmother, and dost thou wholly forget the ear that did listen to thy talking, and the eye that was upon thee all the time?'

We both looked about us, at the curtain, at the places where we had been sitting, and in sister's face, with a sudden sense of the presence and nearness of God, that I believe we had never felt before. When she added, 'What wouldst thou have done if, when I drew back the curtain, thou hadst seen the Redeemer standing there? Shouldst thou have said then there is no harm done? We neither of us answered a word, so completely were we surprised into awe by the aptness of this word in season.

'Years have passed since then,' said my friend, 'but I believe the effects of that gentle rebuke have not altogether passed away with them; it made a greater impression upon us than even the grandmother's anger could have done, however great that might have been.'

When 'sister' had left us, we went to one of the open casements, and I well remember the sensation of repose with which we congratulated one another on the grandmother's not having been present; and though the consciousness of a far higher presence was strong in our hearts, we experienced also somewhat of that feeling which made King David say, 'Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, and let us not fall into the hand of man.'

In our childish fashion we began to speculate as to how we should behave if we always believed and remembered that the Great God was observing us; and then, as I suppose, most children have done at some time or other, we suddenly formed a resolution, that from that day forward we would behave quite differently; that we would reform all our faults, never be idle over our lessons; nor play at improper tunes, nor conceal any mischief that we might have done; nor tease the little ones, nor hide ourselves in the shrubberies when we knew the nurse was looking for us to call us in to bed.

In short, we passed in review all our childish faults as far as we knew them, and made a set of rules for future good behavior.

We had a fashion at the school where I was for writing sets of rules; one would have thought the rule under which we lived was stringent and inflexible enough; but no, we copied Madame's favorite phrase, 'I shall make a rule, Mes Demoiselles,' and we made more rules than even our rulers.

We often spent part of one half holiday in writing rules for the spending of the next—elaborate rules, as to how long we would play with our dolls, how long've would spend over our home letters, how long in. reading our story-books, how long in feeding our birds; in short, we had scarcely one half hour which we could call our own that we did not hamper with rules containing as many additions and subtractions as a long division sum. I had imparted this fashion to Lucy, and we had already made, and altered, and broken several sets of these rules, but, on that delightful Sunday evening, while the sun was sinking into the distant sea, and reddening the sky, the water, the walls, our white frocks, and the fluttering leaves of our Bibles, we made one set more. The particulars of them I have forgotten, but the intention formed, in all childish simplicity, was to help us to keep the presence of God always in our recollection.

There was a little picture in one of my books which represented Hagar in the parched wilderness sitting apart from the fainting Ishmael; underneath it were the words, 'Thou, God, seest me.' This, we said, we would hang on the wall opposite to our two stools, where every afternoon we sat learning our lessons for the next day, or doing our playwork, as we called it.

How little, for all the sympathy of love, a child is known to his elders! How little during the ensuing week our childish troubles, our wavering endeavors to do right, our surprise at our own failures, were suspected in that orderly household! The days, however, went and came, and our rules it appeared must have had some real influence over us, for I well remember that the nurse and housekeeper commended us to 'sister' as 'excellent good children, as toward, friend, as thee would wish to see.' The restrictions which we had laid upon ourselves were not light ones for children to observe, and, though they only bound us to do our duty, it was not wonderful that we sometimes broke through them, and sometimes lightly forgot them, considering that the red curtain did not always hang in our sight, and considering that childhood and youth are vanity.

Another Sunday evening came; we learned our lessons in the upper room, and were so quiet and diligent that the presence of no grandmother in the world could have frightened us.

The next morning we were awakened early by the rooks in the trees, close by our windows, and we rose and went out for a ramble before breakfast.

Within the grounds, which were laid out partly in grass and flowers, and partly in shrubbery, there was a walled fruit-garden; and this we were only permitted to enter on the express understanding that we were on no pretence to gather, or to pick up, or to touch any of the fruit; 'not so much' (so 'sister' phrased it) 'as a fallen gooseberry.'

Fruit was always given to us once during the day, but the father of the family was extremely particular about his trees, and suffered no fruit to be gathered but by his own hand.

I was told of this regulation at once by the children, and when Lucy said to her sister, 'Did thee know that Sophia had leave to gather fruit at home?' and I exclaimed, that I did not wish to do it here, and was very happy; she answered with her usual sweet composure, 'Thee need not blush so much, I know thou art in general a reasonable child.'

'I don't wish for anything,' I explained, 'that Lucy does not have.'

'That's well,' she replied; 'we desire to see thee happy and satisfied; but thou knowest that my father considers thee under his authority while thou art here, and will not alter his rule for thy sake; but as thou hast been used to gather fruit for thyself, I advise thee not to go into the fruit-garden, if thou art tempted to transgress. There are other walks where thou canst bowl thy hoop.'

'I wonder you should suppose such a thing,' I interrupted, quite vexed at her plain speaking, and the implied supposition that I could be tempted to such a greedy and disobedient act.

She smiled at my speech, but there was nothing sarcastic in the smile; and she answered, 'I do not suppose thee to be any better than thy first mother; yet she was tempted with an apple.'

'And apples are not half so good as plums,' observed one of the little brothers, sagely nodding his head.

'No one asked for thy opinion,' said my champion Lucy, in a low voice; 'does thee wish Sophia to be kept out of the garden?'

Sister cut the conference short, by giving us each a piece of seed-cake, and sending us out with general directions to be good, and not get into mischief; and there was such ample space to play in, and we had so many means of amusing ourselves, that we should have been more culpable than most children, if we had disobeyed them.

The garden, with all its walks, the orchard, where we sometimes sauntered early in the morning, and saw the greengages which had fallen in the night lying among the dewy grass; the rough trunks of the plum, trees all gray with lichen, and blue above with partly ripe fruit, are vividly impressed upon my recollection; as well as the frames on which, in the middle of the day, we sometimes laid our hands to feel how hot the glass was; peeping through at the long cucumbers and plump melons, as they lay basking in the moist heat; or following the gardener when he walked round with his tiles, and laid them carefully under those which he wished to ripen first.

I also remember, as if it had happened but yesterday, how we used to run to meet Lucy's placid father, as he came leisurely down the grass walk, to have his daily colloquy with the gardener; how he gathered and stored the ripe pears from the espaliers, and lifted up the leaves from the wall fruit to see how it was coming on; how he would lament that birds should be such arrant thieves, and turn a deaf ear to the old gardener, when he muttered that there was but one way to cure them of it.

Then I remember the cool fruit-house, into which we sometimes helped him to carry summer apples; and what the gardener called the 'kippen peers;' but above all I remember a certain fine young apricot-tree, a moor-park, in its first year of bearing, and how every day we went to count and admire upon it six beautiful apricots, and no more.