The Happy Adventurers - Lydia Miller Middleton (fastest ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Lydia Miller Middleton
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“He was in such a hurry that there was no time to get you, and it was my fault afterwards just as much as Prue’s.”
“I’ll tell you now if you like,” Grizzel went on; “only you must promise not to tell Prudence and Hugh.”
“No,” said Mollie, “I can’t do that. Prudence was awfully frightened; she got quite pale. We were frightened together and looked for you together; it wouldn’t be fair for you to tell me and not to tell her. I hate things that are not fair.”
Grizzel was silent again and then sighed. “Oh well, I suppose I’d better tell. I’d have liked to keep one secret, but I can’t bear not to go to Hugh’s party. It was very easy—I only—”
“Wait,” said Mollie, “I’ll call Prue.”
[Illustration: I WISH I COULD MAKE SOMETHING THAT WOULD REACH FROM HERE TO MY BROTHER]
“I saw Hugh take the ladder,” Grizzel went on, after Prue joined them; “of course I heard it scraping along; Hugh is a silly. So I watched him hide it, and when the milkman came I called him, and he put it up and helped me down and we hid it back again. That’s all.”
The others looked at each other, and then Mollie began to laugh, and went on laughing till Prue and Grizzel laughed at her laughing. “Well, I must say!” she exclaimed at last, “I am a Sherlock Holmes and no mistake! I was so busy being clever that I never even thought of a milkman, which would have been Baden-Powell’s first idea. Of all the silly things! Why on earth didn’t we think of it, Prue?”
Hugh, most reluctantly, went to school next morning, and Mamma kept the girls busy with Italian, music, and needlework till lunch-time. After that Grizzel departed with her paint-box, Bridget took Baby for a walk, and Mollie and Prue settled themselves in the little house, with a cushion apiece at their backs, a basket of freshly pulled oranges between them, and a couple of books in case conversation should flag.
“Now, Prudence, tell me more about Time-travellers,” Mollie said; “somehow I can’t seem to remember that I am one; in fact—” she paused.
“You can’t believe it,” Prudence finished for her. “I know. But it’s meant to be like that. If you didn’t forget you would remember too much, and then you would stop being a Time-traveller, because your mind can’t be in two places at once. So it is better not to talk; or you may have to go.”
“I won’t again, but just tell me two things. Can we travel forwards as well as backwards?”
“A few people can, not everyone; but it is better not, Mollie. It is far better not.”
“But you came into my Time to fetch me.”
“I didn’t exactly come, you brought me; and I can only stay a moment.”
“Well,” Mollie said, after a short silence, “the other thing is: Can I bring Dick? He would love this place and this Time—somehow you seem to have more room than we have, and you are not so frightfully busy. We never have enough time; I think your hours must be longer than ours,” she went on, with a sigh. “I simply cannot get all the things squeezed in that I want to do. I often wish the days were thirty hours long.”
“You weren’t wishing that when I came,” Prudence said, with a little laugh. “I don’t know about Dick; you can’t bring him unless he wants to come—of his own accord, I mean.”
Mollie pondered a little, and then sighed again: “It will be rather hard. He doesn’t want anything frightfully except football, and there isn’t any just now. Perhaps we could make him want to come; couldn’t Hugh invent some way? It was only one chance in a hundred— in a thousand, perhaps, that made me talk to your photograph. Let us ask Hugh.”
“We can ask,” Prudence agreed, “but his head is going to be packed full of telephone now, and he won’t think or speak of anything else for days. That’s the way he is; we get rather tired of it sometimes, especially when we have to help. Grizzel collected four hundred corks for his raft. She grubbed in the ashpit, and among the empty beer-bottles—” Prudence sighed in her turn.
The two girls met Hugh at the white gate on his return from school, and Mollie seized the first opportunity to make her request.
“I don’t know,” Hugh answered thoughtfully; “there ought to be a way. I believe there is a way somewhere to do everything, if you can only find it. It’s mostly a question of looking long enough. And a thing is always in the last place you look for it—naturally. I am going to make a telephone; if I could make one long enough—” he paused.
They were strolling up the wide, cypress-bordered path as they talked, and Mollie’s wandering gaze fell upon a low mound at the foot of one of the cypress trees.
“What’s that?” she asked, coming to a standstill. “It looks like a cat’s grave.”
It was a grave sure enough, and crowned with a bunch of pansies. A small headstone had been made from the lid of an old soapbox, on which was printed the following inscription:
HERE LITH THE LONGEST DANDY LION CHANE IN THE WURLD
“It’s Grizzel,” said Prudence; “why on earth has she gone and buried her beautiful chain?”
Grizzel joined the group and answered for herself:
“Mollie said the poor flowers would be forgotten. I should hate to be forgotten, so I lifted them all up and buried them. I bought a yard of lovely yellow muslin when I was out yesterday and made a beautiful shroud. That cypress tree is rather big for such a little grave, but it’s the littlest in the garden.”
No one smiled. “It was a wonderful chain,” Mollie said, remembering her view from the Look-out, “I wish I could make something that would reach from here to my brother Dick. I wish we had wireless. I wonder if ‘willing’ would be any good. Have you ever played willing? We join hands and will with all our might that Dick would come here.”
“It sounds easy,” said Hugh, always ready for a new experiment, “much easier than making a telephone; we might as well try.”
So they joined hands and wished. As they loosened hands again a shrill cry above their heads made them all look up—it was a parrot flying low across the garden, its brilliant plumage shining in the evening sunlight like jewels. “It’s my parrot!” Mollie exclaimed, “it met me by the gate yesterday.”
Mollie sat up. The rain was still splashing on the window-panes, but Aunt Mary was drawing the curtains, and a cheerful little fire had been lighted. There was a pleasant tinkle of china as tea-cups were settled on the tray.
“Have I been asleep?” she asked incredulously. (It surely was not all a dream!)
“A beautiful sleep,” Aunt Mary answered; “and now tea, and after tea—you shall see what you shall see.”
Mollie was rather silent at tea-time. She could not help thinking of those other children in that long-ago far-away garden. Were they real? Or had it all been a dream? It must have been a dream, she thought—such things do not happen in real life—it was impossible that it should have been true. And yet, never before had she dreamt anything so clearly, so “going-on” as she expressed it to herself. She longed to tell Aunt Mary all about it, but the memory of her vow restrained her. If nothing further happened, in course of time she would feel free to tell of her wonderful experience, but in the meantime she must have patience. She racked her brains to think of some roundabout way of introducing the subject of Australia and the year 1878, but could not get past her vow—it seemed to block the way in every direction.
So she ate her little triangles of toast—made in a particularly fascinating way peculiar to Grannie’s housekeeping—without enjoying the scrunch, scrunch between her teeth so much as usual. Even the early strawberries and cream found her somewhat absent-minded.
But after tea was cleared away and the room tidied up, Aunt Mary disappeared for a short time and returned with her hands behind her back. She stood before Mollie, and in a solemn voice chanted the following words:
“Neevie neevie nick nack, Which hand will ye tak? Tak the right or tak the wrong, I’ll beguile ye if I can.”
This was too interesting to be ignored. Mollie sat up and became her ordinary self again. She looked critically at Aunt Mary’s arms, shoulders, and eyes, but got no information from any of these. Then she laughed:
“I won’t have the wrong, please, I’ll have the right.”
Aunt Mary laughed too. “You are too clever, Miss Mollie. That is not the way I did neevie-neevie when I was young.” She brought her right hand round as she spoke, and in it was a charming box, large, varnished, and clamped at the corners with brass. She laid it on Mollie’s lap, and watched the sliding lid being pulled out by a pair of impatient hands. It was a beautiful jig-saw puzzle.
“Oh, where did you get it?” Mollie cried joyfully. “I adore jig-saw puzzles. You are a lovely, lovely aunt!” and she held out her arms for a hug and a kiss.
“Well,” said Aunt Mary, smiling with pleasure at the success of her surprise, “I remembered how fond you are of jig-saws, so yesterday, as soon as you had fallen asleep, I wired to Hamley’s. I was not sure if it would arrive to-day, so I did not tell you. Now, let us see what it is—a map! Oh, dear me, I hope you won’t find a map dull!”
Grannie, who loved jig-saws almost as much as Mollie did, had drawn up a substantial table to the sofa and seated herself beside it. “Dull!” she said reprovingly, “I hope not indeed. Maps are the most interesting puzzles one can have. What is it a map of?”
“We’ll soon find that out,” said Mollie, laying a very jagged section upon the table and studying it with interest. “What funny names—Weeah! Where’s that? It sounds like China.”
Grannie had also possessed herself of a section, and was scrutinizing it through her spectacles. “I’ll need my reading-glass, Mary, my dear,” she said; “my old eyes cannot see this tiny print.”
A silver-handled reading-glass was brought, and Grannie considered her section again: “The Yarra,” she read out, “I wonder if you can tell me where the Yarra is, Mollie?”
“Never heard of it,” said Mollie, shaking her head. “Yankalilla. Where’s that? Goomooroo, Wanrearah, Koolywurtie. What names! I am glad I am not a railway guard in this place, wherever it may be.”
“Aha, Miss Mollie, I am cleverer than you are with all your Oxford and Cambridge examinations!” Grannie exclaimed triumphantly, “for I can tell you where the Yarra is—it is the river upon which Melbourne is built, and Melbourne is the capital of Victoria, and Victoria is a colony in Australia.”
“Australia!” Mollie exclaimed, a little startled. “How funny—I mean how interesting!” It was certainly rather odd, she thought, that her difficulty should be solved so promptly, for now, of course, she might ask as many questions as she pleased and no one would wonder at her sudden interest in our distant colonies. In the meantime Grannie and Aunt Mary were both too much engrossed
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