"I'm sorry you're not going to call, she's such a nice young lady. Everybody likes her." And then, after a few moments, she looked up with a smile, and said, "Is there anything else I can tell you about the people of the town? There's a man going by in the rain with a lot of planks on his head—would you like to know who he is and all about him?"

"Oh yes, certainly," I replied. "But of course I don't care so much about him as I do about that little brown girl from the farm, and the nice Miss Langton from the White House. But it's really very pleasant to listen to you whatever you talk about. I really think you one of the most charming little girls I have ever met, and I wonder what you will be like in another five years. I think I must come and see for myself."

"Oh, will you come back in five years? Just to see me! My hair will be grown then and I won't have a nightcap on, and I'll try to wash off the freckles before you come."

"No, don't," I said. "I had forgotten all about them—I think they are very nice."

She laughed, then looking up a little archly, said: "You are saying all that just for fun, are you not?"

"Oh no, nothing of the sort. Just look at me, and say if you do not believe what I tell you."

"Yes, I do," she answered frankly enough, looking full in my eyes with a great seriousness in her own.

That sudden seriousness and steady gaze; that simple, frank declaration! Would five years leave her in that stage? I fancy not, for at ten she would be self-conscious, and the loss would be greater than the gain. No, I would not come back in five years to see what she was like.

That was the end of our talk. She looked towards the wet street and her face changed, and with a glad cry she darted out. The rain was over, and a big man in a grey tweed coat was coming across the road to our side. She met him half-way, and bending down he picked her up and set her on his shoulder and marched with her into the house.

There were others, it seemed, who were able to appreciate her bright mind and could forget all about her freckles and her nightcap.



XIX

ON CROMER BEACH

It is true that when little girls become self-conscious they lose their charm, or the best part of it; they are at their best as a rule from five to seven, after which begins a slow, almost imperceptible decline (or evolution, if you like) until the change is complete. The charm in decline was not good enough for Lewis Carroll; the successive little favourites, we learn, were always dropped at about ten. That was the limit. Perhaps he perceived, with a rare kind of spiritual sagacity resembling that of certain animals with regard to approaching weather- changes, that something had come into their heart, or would shortly come, which would make them no longer precious to him. But that which had made them precious was not far to seek: he would find it elsewhere, and could afford to dismiss his Alice for the time being from his heart and life, and even from his memory, without a qualm.

To my seven-years' rule there are, however, many exceptions—little girls who keep the child's charm in spite of the changes which years and a newly developing sense can bring to them. I have met with some rare instances of the child being as much to us at ten as at five.

One instance which I have in my mind just now is of a little girl of nine, or perhaps nearly ten, and it seemed to me in this case that this new sense, the very quality which is the spoiler of the child-charm, may sometimes have the effect of enhancing it or revealing it in a new and more beautiful aspect.

I met her at Cromer, where she was one of a small group of five visitors; three ladies, one old, the others middle-aged, and a middle- aged gentleman. He and one of the two younger ladies were perhaps her parents, and the elderly lady her grandmother. What and who these people were I never heard, nor did I enquire; but the child attracted me, and in a funny way we became acquainted, and though we never exchanged more than a dozen words, I felt that we were quite intimate and very dear friends.

The little group of grown-ups and the child were always together on the front, where I was accustomed to see them sitting or slowly walking up and down, always deep in conversation and very serious, always regarding the more or less gaudily attired females on the parade with an expression of repulsion. They were old-fashioned in dress and appearance, invariably in black—black silk and black broadcloth. I concluded that they were serious people, that they had inherited and faithfully kept a religion, or religious temper, which has long been outlived by the world in general—a puritanism or Evangelicalism dating back to the far days of Wilberforce and Hannah More and the ancient Sacred order of Claphamites.

And the child was serious with them and kept pace with them with slow staid steps. But she was beautiful, and under the mask and mantle which had been imposed on her had a shining child's soul. Her large eyes were blue, the rare blue of a perfect summer's day. There was no need to ask her where she had got that colour; undoubtedly in heaven "as she came through." The features were perfect, and she pale, or so it had seemed to me at first, but when viewing her more closely I saw that colour was an important element in her loveliness—a colour so delicate that I fell to comparing her flower-like face with this or that particular flower. I had thought of her as a snowdrop at first, then a windflower, the March anemone, with its touch of crimson, then various white, ivory, and cream-coloured blossoms with a faintly-seen pink blush to them.

Her dress, except the stocking, was not black; it was grey or dove- colour, and over it a cream or pale-fawn-coloured cloak with hood, which with its lace border seemed just the right setting for the delicate puritan face. She walked in silence while they talked and talked, ever in grave subdued tones. Indeed it would not have been seemly for her to open her lips in such company. I called her Priscilla, but she was also like Milton's pensive nun, devout and pure, only her looks were not commercing with the skies; they were generally cast down, although it is probable that they did occasionally venture to glance at the groups of merry pink-legged children romping with the waves below.

I had seen her three or four or more times on the front before we became acquainted; and she too had noticed me, just raising her blue eyes to mine when we passed one another, with a shy sweet look of recognition in them—a questioning look; so that we were not exactly strangers. Then, one morning, I sat on the front when the black-clothed group came by, deep in serious talk as usual, the silent child with them, and after a turn or two they sat down beside me. The tide was at its full and children were coming down to their old joyous pastime of paddling. They were a merry company. After watching them I glanced at my little neighbour and caught her eyes, and she knew what the question in my mind was—Why are not you with them? And she was pleased and troubled at the same time, and her face was all at once in a glow of beautiful colour; it was the colour of the almond blossom;—her sister flower on this occasion.

A day or two later we were more fortunate. I went before breakfast to the beach and was surprised to find her there watching the tide coming in; in a moment of extreme indulgence her mother, or her people, had allowed her to run down to look at the sea for a minute by herself. She was standing on the shingle, watching the green waves break frothily at her feet, her pale face transfigured with a gladness which seemed almost unearthly. Even then in that emotional moment the face kept its tender flower-like character; I could only compare it to the sweet-pea blossom, ivory white or delicate pink; that Psyche-like flower with wings upraised to fly, and expression of infantile innocence and fairy- like joy in life.

I walked down to her and we then exchanged our few and only words. How beautiful the sea was, and how delightful to watch the waves coming in! I remarked. She smiled and replied that it was very, very beautiful. Then a bigger wave came and compelled us to step hurriedly back to save our feet from a wetting, and we laughed together. Just at that spot there was a small rock on which I stepped and asked her to give me her hand, so that we could stand together and let the next wave rush by without wetting us. "Oh, do you think I may?" she said, almost frightened at such an adventure. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she put her hand in mine, and we stood on the little fragment of rock, and she watched the water rush up and surround us and break on the beach with a fearful joy. And after that wonderful experience she had to leave me; she had only been allowed out by herself for five minutes, she said, and so, after a grateful smile, she hurried back.

Our next encounter was on the parade, where she appeared as usual with her people, and nothing beyond one swift glance of recognition and greeting could pass between us. But it was a quite wonderful glance she gave me, it said so much:—that we had a great secret between us and were friends and comrades for ever. It would take half a page to tell all that was conveyed in that glance. "I'm so glad to see you," it said, "I was beginning to fear you had gone away. And now how unfortunate that you see me with my people and we cannot speak! They wouldn't understand. How could they, since they don't belong to our world and know what we know? If I were to explain that we are different from them, that we want to play together on the beach and watch the waves and paddle and build castles, they would say, 'Oh yes, that's all very well, but—' I shouldn't know what they meant by that, should you? I do hope we'll meet again some day and stand once more hand in hand on the beach—don't you?"

And with that she passed on and was gone, and I saw her no more. Perhaps that glance which said so much had been observed, and she had been hurriedly removed to some place of safety at a great distance. But though I never saw her again, never again stood hand in hand with her on the beach and never shall, I have her picture to keep in all its flowery freshness and beauty, the most delicate and lovely perhaps of all the pictures I possess of the little girls I have met.



XX

DIMPLES

It is not pleasant when you have had your say, made your point to your own satisfaction, and gone cheerfully on to some fresh subject, to be assailed with the suspicion that your interlocutor is saying mentally: All very well—very pretty talk, no doubt, but you haven't convinced me, and I even doubt that you have succeeded in convincing yourself!

For example, a reader of the foregoing notes may say: "If you really find all this beauty and charm and fascination you tell us in some little girls, you must love them. You can't admire and take delight in them as you can in a piece of furniture, or tapestry, or a picture or statue or a stone of great brilliancy and purity of colour, or in any beautiful inanimate object, without that emotion coming in to make itself part of and one with your admiration. You can't, simply because a child is a human being, and we do not want to lose sight of the being we love. So long as the love lasts, the eye would follow its steps because—we are what we are, and a mere image in the mind doesn't satisfy the heart. Love is never satisfied, and asks not for less and less each day but for more—always for more. Then, too, love is credulous; it believes and imagines all things and, like all emotions, it pushes reason and experience aside and sticks to the belief that these beautiful qualities cannot die and leave nothing behind: they are not on the surface only; they have their sweet permanent roots in the very heart and centre of being."

That, I suppose, is the best argument on the other side, and if you look straight at it for six seconds, you will see it dissolve like a lump of sugar in a tumbler of water and disappear under your very eyes. For the fact remains that when I listen to the receding footsteps of my little charmer, the sigh that escapes me expresses something of relief as well as regret. The signs of change have perhaps not yet appeared, and I wish not to see them. Good-bye, little one, we part in good time, and may we never meet again! Undoubtedly one loses something, but it cannot balance the gain. The loss in any case was bound to come, and had I waited for it no gain would have been possible. As it is, I am like that man in The Pilgrim's Progress, by some accounted mad, who the more he cast away the more he had. And the way of it is this; by losing my little charmers before they cease from charming, I make them mine for always, in a sense. They are made mine because my mind (other minds, too) is made that way. That which I see with delight I continue to see when it is no more there, and will go on seeing to the end: at all events I fail to detect any sign of decay or fading in these mind pictures. There are people with money who collect gems— diamonds, rubies and other precious stones—who value their treasures as their best possessions, and take them out from time to time to examine and gloat over them. These things are trash to me compared with the shining, fadeless images in my mind, which are my treasures and best possessions. But the bright and beauteous images of the little girl charmers would not have been mine if instead of letting the originals disappear from my ken I had kept them too long in it. All because our minds, our memories are made like that. If we see a thing once, or several times, we see it ever after as we first saw it; if we go on seeing it every day or every week for years and years, we do not register a countless series of new distinct impressions, recording all its changes: the new impressions fall upon and obliterate the others, and it is like a series of photographs, not arranged side by side for future inspection, but in a pile, the top one alone remaining visible. Looking at this insipid face you would not believe, if told, that once upon a time it was beautiful to you and had a great charm. The early impressions are lost, the charm forgotten.

This reminds me of the incident I set out to narrate when I wrote "Dimples" at the head of this note. I was standing at a busy corner in a Kensington thoroughfare waiting for a bus, when a group of three ladies appeared and came to a stand a yard or two from me and waited, too, for the traffic to pass before attempting to cross to the other side. One was elderly and feeble and was holding the arm of another of the trio, who was young and pretty. Her age was perhaps twenty; she was of medium height, slim, with a nice figure and nicely dressed. She was a blonde, with light blue-grey eyes and fluffy hair of pale gold: there was little colour in her face, but the features were perfect and the mouth with its delicate curves quite beautiful.

But after regarding her attentively for a minute or so, looking out impatiently for my bus at the same time, I said mentally: "Yes, you are certainly very pretty, perhaps beautiful, but I don't like you and I don't want you. There's nothing in you to correspond to that nice outside. You are an exception to the rule that the beautiful is the good. Not that you are bad—actively, deliberately bad—you haven't the strength to be that or anything else; you have only a little shallow mind and a little coldish heart."

Now I can imagine one of my lady readers crying out: "How dared you say such monstrous things of any person after just a glance at her face?"

Listen to me, madam, and you will agree that I was not to blame for saying these monstrous things. All my life I've had the instinct or habit of seeing the things I see; that is to say, seeing them not as cloud or mist-shapes for ever floating past, nor as people in endless procession "seen rather than distinguished," but distinctly, separately, as individuals each with a character and soul of its very own; and while seeing it in that way some little unnamed faculty in some obscure corner of my brain hastily scribbles a label to stick on to the object or person before it passes out of sight. It can't be prevented; it goes on automatically; it isn't me, and I can no more interfere or attempt in any way to restrain or regulate its action than I can take my legs to task for running up a flight of steps without the mind's supervision.

But I haven't finished with the young lady yet. I had no sooner said what I have said and was just about to turn my eyes away and forget all about her, when, in response to some remarks of her aged companion, she laughed, and in laughing so great a change came into her face that it was as if she had been transformed into another being. It was like a sudden breath of wind and a sunbeam falling on the still cold surface of a woodland pool. The eyes, icily cold a moment before, had warm sunlight in them, and the half-parted lips with a flash of white teeth between them had gotten a new beauty; and most remarkable of all was a dimple which appeared and in its swift motions seemed to have a life of its own, flitting about the corner of the mouth, then further away to the middle of the cheek and back again. A dimple that had a story to tell. For dimples, too, like a delicate, mobile mouth, and even like eyes, have a character of their own. And no sooner had I seen that sudden change in the expression, and especially the dimple, than I knew the face; it was a face I was familiar with and was like no other face in the world, yet I could not say who she was nor where and when I had known her! Then, when the smile faded and the dimple vanished, she was a stranger again—the pretty young person with the shallow brain that I did not like!

Naturally my mind worried itself with this puzzle of a being with two distinct expressions, one strange to me, the other familiar, and it went on worrying me all that day until I could stand it no longer, and to get rid of the matter, I set up the theory (which didn't quite convince me) that the momentary expression I had seen was like an expression in some one I had known in the far past. But after dismissing the subject in that way, the subconscious mind was still no doubt working at it, for two days later it all at once flashed into my mind that my mysterious young lady was no other than the little Lillian I had known so well eight years before! She was ten years old when I first knew her, and I was quite intimately acquainted with her for a little over a year, and greatly admired her for her beauty and charm, especially when she smiled and that dimple flew about the corner of her mouth like a twilight moth vaguely fluttering at the rim of a red flower. But alas! her charm was waning: she was surrounded by relations who adored her, and was intensely self-conscious, so that when after a year her people moved to a new district, I was not sorry to break the connection, and to forget all about her.

Now that I had seen and remembered her again, it was a consolation to think that she was already in her decline when I first knew and was attracted by her and on that account had never wholly lost my heart to her. How different my feelings would have been if after pronouncing that irrevocable judgment, I had recognised one of my vanished darlings—one, say, like that child on Cromer Beach, or of dozens of other fairylike little ones I have known and loved, and whose images are enduring and sacred!



XXI

WILD FLOWERS AND LITTLE GIRLS

Thinking of the numerous company of little girls of infinite charm I have met, and of their evanishment, I have a vision of myself on horseback on the illimitable green level pampas, under the wide sunlit cerulean sky in late September or early October, when the wild flowers are at their best before the wilting heats of summer.

Seeing the flowers so abundant, I dismount and lead my horse by the bridle and walk knee-deep in the lush grass, stooping down at every step to look closely at the shy, exquisite blooms in their dewy morning freshness and divine colours. Flowers of an inexpressible unearthly loveliness and unforgettable; for how forget them when their images shine in memory in all their pristine morning brilliance!

That is how I remember and love to remember them, in that first fresh aspect, not as they appear later, the petals wilted or dropped, sun- browned, ripening their seed and fruit.

And so with the little human flowers. I love to remember and think of them as flowers, not as ripening or ripened into young ladies, wives, matrons, mothers of sons and daughters.

As little girls, as human flowers, they shone and passed out of sight. Only of one do I think differently, the most exquisite among them, the most beautiful in body and soul, or so I imagine, perhaps because of the manner of her vanishing even while my eyes were still on her. That was Dolly, aged eight, and because her little life finished then she is the one that never faded, never changed.

Here are some lines I wrote when grief at her going was still fresh. They were in a monthly magazine at that time years ago, and were set to music, although not very successfully, and I wish it could be done again.

Should'st thou come to me again From the sunshine and the rain, With thy laughter sweet and free, O how should I welcome thee!

Like a streamlet dark and cold Kindled into fiery gold By a sunbeam swift that cleaves Downward through the curtained leaves;

So this darkened life of mine Lit with sudden joy would shine, And to greet thee I should start With a great cry in my heart.

Back to drop again, the cry On my trembling lips would die: Thou would'st pass to be again With the sunshine and the rain.



XXII

A LITTLE GIRL LOST

Yet once more, O ye little girls, I come to bid you a last good-bye—a very last one this time. Not to you, living little girls, seeing that I must always keep a fair number of you on my visiting list, but to a fascinating theme I had to write about. For I did really and truly think I had quite finished with it, and now all at once I find myself compelled by a will stronger than my own to make this one further addition. The will of a little girl who is not present and is lost to me—a wordless message from a distance, to tell me that she is not to be left out of this gallery. And no sooner has her message come than I find there are several good reasons why she should be included, the first and obvious one being that she will be a valuable acquisition, an ornament to the said gallery. And here I will give a second reason, a very important one (to the psychological minded at all events), but not the most important of all, for that must be left to the last.

In the foregoing impressions of little girls I have touched on the question of the child's age when that "little agitation in the brain called thought," begins. There were two remarkable cases given; one, the child who climbed upon my knee to amaze and upset me by her pessimistic remarks about life; the second, my little friend Nesta— that was her name and she is still on my visiting list—who revealed her callow mind striving to grasp an abstract idea—the idea of time apart from some visible or tangible object. Now these two were aged five years; but what shall we say of the child, the little girl-child who steps out of the cradle, so to speak, as a being breathing thoughtful breath?

It makes me think of the cradle as the cocoon or chrysalis in which, as by a miracle (for here natural and supernatural seem one and the same), the caterpillar has undergone his transformation and emerging spreads his wings and forthwith takes his flight a full-grown butterfly with all its senses and faculties complete.

Walking on the sea front at Worthing one late afternoon in late November, I sat down at one end of a seat in a shelter, the other end being occupied by a lady in black, and between us, drawn close up to the seat, was a perambulator in which a little girl was seated. She looked at me, as little girls always do, with that question—What are you? in her large grey intelligent eyes. The expression tempted me to address her, and I said I hoped she was quite well.

"O yes," she returned readily. "I am quite well, thank you."

"And may I know how old you are?"

"Yes, I am just three years old."

I should have thought, I said, that as she looked a strong healthy child she would have been able to walk and run about at the age of three.

She replied that she could walk and run as well as any child, and that she had her pram just to sit and rest in when tired of walking.

Then, after apologising for putting so many questions to her, I asked her if she could tell me her name.

"My name," she said, "is Rose Mary Catherine Maude Caversham," or some such name.

"Oh!" exclaimed the lady in black, opening her lips for the first time, and speaking sharply. "You must not say all those names! It is enough to say your name is Rose."

The child turned and looked at her, studying her face, and then with heightened colour and with something like indignation in her tone, she replied: "That is my name! Why should I not tell it when I am asked?"

The lady said nothing, and the child turned her face to me again.

I said it was a very pretty name and I had been pleased to hear it, and glad she told it to me without leaving anything out.

Silence still on the part of the lady.

"I think," I resumed, "that you are a rather wonderful child;—have they taught you the ABC?"

"Oh no, they don't teach me things like that—I pick all that up."

"And one and one make two—do you pick that up as well?"

"Yes, I pick that up as well."

"Then," said I, recollecting Humpty Dumpty's question in arithmetic to Alice, "how much is one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one-an'-one?"— speaking it as it should be spoken, very rapidly.

She looked at me quite earnestly for a moment, then said, "And can you tell me how much is two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two-an'-two-an'- two?"—and several more two's all in a rapid strain.

"No," I said, "you have turned the tables on me very cleverly. But tell me, do they teach you nothing?"

"Oh yes, they teach me something!" Then dropping her head a little on one side and lifting her little hands she began practising scales on the bar of her pram. Then, looking at me with a half-smile on her lips, she said: "That's what they teach me."

After a little further conversation she told me she was from London, and was down with her people for their holiday.

I said it seemed strange to me she should be having a holiday so late in the season. "Look," I said, "at that cold grey sea and the great stretch of sand with only one group of two or three children left on it with their little buckets and spades."

"Yes," she said, in a meditative way; "it is very late." Then, after a pause, she turned towards me with an expression in her face which said plainly enough: I am now going to give you a little confidential information. Her words were: "The fact is we are just waiting for the baby."

"Oh!" screamed the lady in black. "Why have you said such a thing! You must not say such things!"

And again the child turned her head and looked earnestly, inquiringly at the lady, trying, as one could see from her face, to understand why she was not to say such a thing. But now she was not sure of her ground as on the other occasion of being rebuked. There was a mystery here about the expected baby which she could not fathom. Why was it wrong for her to mention that simple fact? That question was on her face when she looked at her attendant, the lady in black, and as no answer was forthcoming, either from the lady, or out of her own head, she turned to me again, the dissatisfied expression still in her eyes; then it passed away and she smiled. It was a beautiful smile, all the more because it came only at rare intervals and quickly vanished, because, as it seemed to me, she was all the time thinking too closely about what was being said to smile easily or often. And the rarity of her smile made her sense of humour all the more apparent. She was not like Marjorie Fleming, that immortal little girl, who was wont to be angry when offensively condescending grown-ups addressed her as a babe in intellect. For Marjorie had no real sense of humour; all the humour of her literary composition, verse and prose, was of the unconscious variety. This child was only amused at being taken for a baby.

Then came the parting. I said I had spent a most delightful hour with her, and she, smiling once more put out her tiny hand, and said in the sweetest voice: "Perhaps we shall meet again." Those last five words! If she had been some great lady, an invalid in a bath-chair, who had conversed for half an hour with a perfect stranger and had wished to express the pleasure and interest she had had in the colloquy, she could not have said more, nor less, nor said it more graciously, more beautifully.

But we did not meet again, for when I looked for her she was not there: she had gone out of my life, like Priscilla, and like so many beautiful things that vanish and return not.

And now I return to what I said at the beginning—that there were several reasons for including this little girl in my series of impressions. The most important one has been left until now. I want to meet her again, but how shall I find her in this immensity of London— these six millions of human souls! Let me beg of any reader who knows Rose Mary Angela Catherine Maude Caversham—a name like that—who has identified her from my description—that he will inform me of her whereabouts.



XXIII

A SPRAY OF SOUTHERNWOOD

To pass from little girls to little boys is to go into quite another, an inferior, coarser world. No doubt there are wonderful little boys, but as a rule their wonderfulness consists in a precocious intellect: this kind doesn't appeal to me, so that if I were to say anything on the matter, it would be a prejudiced judgment. Even the ordinary civilised little boy, the nice little gentleman who is as much at home in the drawing-room as at his desk in the school-room or with a bat in the playing-field—even that harmless little person seems somehow unnatural, or denaturalised to my primitive taste. A result, I will have it, of improper treatment. He has been under the tap, too thoroughly scrubbed, boiled, strained and served up with melted butter and a sprig of parsley for ornament in a gilt-edged dish. I prefer him raw, and would rather have the street-Arab, if in town, and the unkempt, rough and tough cottage boy in the country. But take them civilised or natural, those who love and observe little children no more expect to find that peculiar exquisite charm of the girl-child which I have endeavoured to describe in the boy, than they would expect the music of the wood-lark and the airy fairy grace and beauty of the grey wagtail in Philip Sparrow. And yet, incredible as it seems, that very quality of the miraculous little girl is sometimes found in the boy and, with it, strange to say, the boy's proper mind and spirit. The child lover will meet with one of that kind once in ten years, or not so often—not oftener than a collector of butterflies will meet with a Camberwell Beauty. The miraculous little girl, we know, is not more uncommon than the Painted Lady, or White Admiral. And I will here give a picture of such a boy—the child associated in my mind with a spray of southernwood.

And after this impression, I shall try to give one or two of ordinary little boys. These live in memory like the little girls I have written about, not, it will be seen, because of their boy nature, seeing that the boy has nothing miraculous, nothing to capture the mind and register an enduring impression in it, as in the case of the girl; but owing solely to some unusual circumstance in their lives—something adventitious.

It was hot and fatiguing on the Wiltshire Downs, and when I had toiled to the highest point of a big hill where a row of noble Scotch firs stood at the roadside, I was glad to get off my bicycle and rest in the shade. Fifty or sixty yards from the spot where I sat on the bank on a soft carpet of dry grass and pine-needles, there was a small, old, thatched cottage, the only human habitation in sight except the little village at the foot of the hill, just visible among the trees a mile ahead. An old woman in the cottage had doubtless seen me going by, for she now came out into the road, and, shading her eyes with her hand, peered curiously at me. A bent and lean old woman in a dingy black dress, her face brown and wrinkled, her hair white. With her, watching me too, was a little mite of a boy; and after they had stood there a while he left her and went into the cottage garden, but presently came out into the road again and walked slowly towards me. It was strange to see that child in such a place! He had on a scarlet shirt or blouse, wide lace collar, and black knickerbockers and stockings; but it was his face rather than his clothes that caused me to wonder. Rarely had I seen a more beautiful child, such a delicate rose-coloured skin, and fine features, eyes of such pure intense blue, and such shining golden hair. How came this angelic little being in that poor remote cottage with that bent and wrinkled old woman for a guardian?

He walked past me very slowly, a sprig of southernwood in his hand; then after going by he stopped and turned, and approaching me in a shy manner and without saying a word offered me the little pale green feathery spray. I took it and thanked him, and we entered into conversation, when I discovered that his little mind was as bright and beautiful as his little person. He loved the flowers, both garden and wild, but above everything he loved the birds; he watched them to find their nests; there was nothing he liked better than to look at the little spotted eggs in the nest. He could show me a nest if I wanted to see one, only the little bird was sitting on her eggs. He was six years old, and that cottage was his home—he knew no other; and the old bent woman standing there in the road was his mother. They didn't keep a pig, but they kept a yellow cat, only he was lost now; he had gone away, and they didn't know where to find him. He went to school now—he walked all the way there by himself and all the way back every day. It was very hard at first, because the other boys laughed at and plagued him. Then they hit him, but he hit them back as hard as he could. After that they hurt him, but they couldn't make him cry. He never cried, and always hit them back, and now they were beginning to leave him alone. His father was named Mr. Job, and he worked at the farm, but he couldn't do so much work now because he was such an old man. Sometimes when he came home in the evening he sat in his chair and groaned as if it hurt him. And he had two sisters; one was Susan; she was married and had three big girls; and Jane was married too, but had no children. They lived a great way off. So did his brother. His name was Jim, and he was a great fat man and sometimes came from London, where he lived, to see them. He didn't know much about Jim; he was very silent, but not with mother. Those two would shut themselves up together and talk and talk, but no one knew what they were talking about. He would write to mother too; but she would always hide the letters and say to father: "It's only from Jim; he says he's very well—that's all." But they were very long letters, so he must have said more than that.

Thus he prattled, while I, to pay him for the southernwood, drew figures of the birds he knew best on the leaves I tore from my note- book and gave them to him. He thanked me very prettily and put them in his pocket.

"And what is your name?" I asked.

He drew himself up before me and in a clear voice, pronouncing the words in a slow measured manner, as if repeating a lesson, he answered: "Edmund Jasper Donisthorpe Stanley Overington."

The name so astonished me that I remained silent for quite two minutes during which I repeated it to myself many times to fix it in my memory.

"But why," said I at length, "do you call yourself Overington when your father's name is Job?"

"Oh, that is because I have two fathers—Mr. Job, my very old father, and Mr. Overington, who lives away from here. He comes to see me sometimes, and he is my father too; but I have only one mother—there she is out again looking at us."

I questioned him no further, and no further did I seek those mysteries to disclose, and so we parted; but I never see a plant or sprig of southernwood, nor inhale its cedarwood smell, which one does not know whether to like or dislike, without recalling the memory of that miraculous cottage child with a queer history and numerous names.



XXIV

IN PORTCHESTER CHURCHYARD

To the historically and archaeologically minded the castle and walls at Portchester are of great importance. Romans, Britons, Saxons, Normans— they all made use of this well-defended place for long centuries, and it still stands, much of it well preserved, to be explored and admired by many thousands of visitors every year. What most interested me was the sight of two small boys playing in the churchyard. The village church, as at Silchester, is inside the old Roman walls, in a corner, the village itself being some distance away. After strolling round the churchyard I sat down on a stone under the walls and began watching the two boys—little fellows of the cottage class from the village who had come, each with a pair of scissors, to trim the turf on two adjoining mounds. The bigger of the two, who was about ten years old, was very diligent and did his work neatly, trimming the grass evenly and giving the mound a nice smooth appearance. The other boy was not so much absorbed in his work; he kept looking up and making jeering remarks and faces at the other, and at intervals his busy companion put down his shears and went for him with tremendous spirit. Then a chase among and over the graves would begin; finally, they would close, struggle, tumble over a mound and pommel one another with all their might. The struggle over, they would get up, shake off the dust and straws, and go back to their work. After a few minutes the youngest boy recovered from his punishment, and, getting tired of the monotony, would begin teasing again, and a fresh flight and battle would ensue.

By-and-by, after witnessing several of these fights, I went down and sat on a mound next to theirs and entered into conversation with them.

"Whose grave are you trimming?" I asked the elder boy.

It was his sister's, he said, and when I asked him how long she had been dead, he answered, "Twenty years." She had died more than ten years before he was born. He said there had been eight of them born, and he was the youngest of the lot; his eldest brother was married and had children five or six years old. Only one of the eight had died— this sister, when she was a little girl. Her name was Mary, and one day every week his mother sent him to trim the mound. He did not remember when it began—he must have been very small. He had to trim the grass, and in summer to water it so as to keep it always smooth and fresh and green.

Before he had finished his story the other little fellow, who was not interested in it and was getting tired again, began in a low voice to mock at his companion, repeating his words after him. Then my little fellow, with a very serious, resolute air, put the scissors down, and in a moment they were both up and away, doubling this way and that, bounding over the mounds, like two young dogs at play, until, rolling over together, they fought again in the grass. There I left them and strolled away, thinking of the mother busy and cheerful in her cottage over there in the village, but always with that image of the little girl, dead these twenty years, in her heart.



XXV

HOMELESS

One cold morning at Penzance I got into an omnibus at the station to travel to the small town of St. Just, six or seven miles away. Just before we started, a party of eight or ten queer-looking people came hurriedly up and climbed to the top seats. They were men and women, with two or three children, the women carelessly dressed, the men chalky-faced and long-haired, in ulsters of light colours and large patterns. When we had travelled two or three miles one of the outside passengers climbed down and came in to escape from the cold, and edged into a place opposite mine. He was a little boy of about seven or eight years old, and he had a small, quaint face with a tired expression on it, and wore a soiled scarlet Turkish fez on his head, and a big pepper-and-salt overcoat heavily trimmed with old, ragged imitation astrachan. He was keenly alive to the sensation his entrance created among us when the loud buzz of conversation ceased very suddenly and all eyes were fixed on him; but he bore it very bravely, sitting back in his seat, rubbing his cold hands together, then burying them deep in his pockets and fixing his eyes on the roof. Soon the talk recommenced, and the little fellow, wishing to feel more free, took his hands out and tried to unbutton his coat. The top button—a big horn button— resisted the efforts he made with his stiff little fingers, so I undid it for him and threw the coat open, disclosing a blue jersey striped with red, green velvet knickerbockers, and black stockings, all soiled like the old scarlet flower-pot shaped cap. In his get-up he reminded me of a famous music-master and composer of my acquaintance, whose sense of harmony is very perfect with regard to sounds, but exceedingly crude as to colours. Imagine a big, long-haired man arrayed in a bottle-green coat, scarlet waistcoat, pink necktie, blue trousers, white hat, purple gloves and yellow boots! If it were not for the fact that he wears his clothes a very long time and never has them brushed or the grease spots taken out, the effect would be almost painful. But he selects his colours, whereas the poor little boy probably had no choice in the matter.

By-and-by the humorous gentlemen who sat on either side of him began to play him little tricks, one snatching off his scarlet cap and the other blowing on his neck. He laughed a little, just to show that he didn't object to a bit of fun at his expense, but when the annoyance was continued he put on a serious face, and folding up his cap thrust it into his overcoat pocket. He was not going to be made a butt of!

"Where is your home?" I asked him.

"I haven't got a home," he returned.

"What, no home? Where was your home when you had one?"

"I never had a home," he said. "I've always been travelling; but sometimes we stay a month in a place." Then, after an interval, he added: "I belong to a dramatic company."

"And do you ever go on the stage to act?" I asked.

"Yes," he returned, with a weary little sigh.

Then our journey came to an end, and we saw the doors and windows of the St. Just Working Men's Institute aflame with yellow placards announcing a series of sensational plays to be performed there.

The queer-looking people came down and straggled off to the Institute, paying no attention to the small boy. "Let me advise you," I said, standing over him on the pavement, "to treat yourself to a stiff tumbler of grog after your cold ride," and at the same time I put my hand in my pocket.

He didn't smile, but at once held out his open hand. I put some pence in it, and clutching them he murmured "Thank you," and went after the others.



XXVI

THE STORY OF A SKULL

A quarter of a century ago there were still to be seen in the outer suburbs of London many good old roomy houses, standing in their own ample and occasionally park-like grounds, which have now ceased to exist. They were old manor-houses, mostly of the Georgian period, some earlier, and some, too, were fine large farmhouses which a century or more ago had been turned into private residences of city merchants and other persons of means. Any middle-aged Londoner can recall a house or perhaps several houses of this description, and in one of those that were best known to me I met with the skull, the story of which I wish to tell.

It was a very old-looking, long, low red-brick building, with a verandah in front, and being well within the grounds, sheltered by old oak, elm, ash and beech trees, could hardly be seen from the road. The lawns and gardens were large, and behind them were two good-sized grass fields. Within the domain one had the feeling that he was far away in the country in one of its haunts of ancient peace, and yet all round it, outside of its old hedges and rows of elms, the ground had been built over, mostly with good-sized brick houses standing in their own gardens. It was a favourite suburb with well-to-do persons in the city, rents were high and the builders had long been coveting and trying to get possession of all this land which was "doing no good," in a district where haunts of ancients peace were distinctly out of place and not wanted. But the owner (aged ninety-eight) refused to sell.

Not only the builders, but his own sons and sons' sons had represented to him that the rent he was getting for this property was nothing but an old song compared to what it would bring in, if he would let it on a long building lease. There was room there for thirty or forty good houses with big gardens. And his answer invariably was: "It shan't be touched! I was born in that house, and though I'm too old ever to go and see it again, it must not be pulled down—not a brick of it, not a tree cut, while I'm alive. When I'm gone you can do what you like, because then I shan't know what you are doing."

My friends and relations, who were in occupation of the house, and loved it, hoped that he would go on living many, many years: but alas! the visit of the feared dark angel was to them and not to the old owner, who was perhaps "too old to die"; the dear lady of the house and its head was taken away and the family broken up, and from that day to this I have never ventured to revisit that sweet spot, nor sought to know what has been done to it.

At that time it used to be my week-end home, and on one of my early visits I noticed the skull of an animal nailed to the wall about a yard above the stable door. It was too high to be properly seen without getting a ladder, and when the gardener told me that it was a bulldog's skull, I thought no more about it.

One day, several months later, I took a long look at it and got the idea that it was not a bulldog's skull—that it was more like the skull of a human being of a very low type. I then asked my hostess to let me have it, and she said, "Yes, certainly, take it if you want it." Then she added, "But what in the world do you want that horrid old skull for?" I said I wanted to find out what it was, and then she told me that it was a bulldog's skull—the gardener had told her. I replied that I did not think so, that it looked to me more like the skull of a cave-man who had inhabited those parts half a million years ago, perhaps. This speech troubled her very much, for she was a religious woman, and it pained her to hear unorthodox statements about the age of man on the earth. She said that I could not have the skull, that it was dreadful to her to hear me say it might be a human skull; that she would order the gardener to take it down and bury it somewhere in the grounds at a distance from the house. Until that was done she would not go near the stables—it would be like a nightmare to see that dreadful head on the wall. I said I would remove it immediately; it was mine, as she had given it to me, and it was not a man's skull at all—I was only joking, so that she need not have any qualms about it.

That pacified her, and I took down the old skull, which looked more dreadful than ever when I climbed up to it, for though the dome of it was bleached white, the huge eye cavities and mouth were black and filled with old black mould and dead moss. Doubtless it had been very many years in that place, as the long nails used in fastening it there were eaten up with rust.

When I got back to London the box with the skull in it was put away in my book-room, and rested there forgotten for two or three years. Then one day I was talking on natural history subjects to my publisher, and he told me that his son, just returned from Oxford, had developed a keen interest in osteology and was making a collection of mammalian skulls from the whale and elephant and hippopotamus to the harvest- mouse and lesser shrew. This reminded me of the long-forgotten skull, and I told him I had something to send him for his boy's collection, but before sending it I would find out what it was. Accordingly I sent the skull to Mr. Frank E. Beddard, the prosector of the Zoological Society, asking him to tell me what it was. His reply was that it was the skull of an adult gorilla—a fine large specimen.

It was then sent on to the young collector of skulls—who will, alas! collect no more, having now given his life to his country. It saddened me a little to part with it, certainly not because it was a pretty object to possess, but only because that bleached dome beneath which brains were once housed, and those huge black cavities which were once the windows of a strange soul, and that mouth that once had a fleshy tongue that youled and clicked in an unknown language could not tell me its own life-and-death history from the time of its birth in the African forest to its final translation to a wall over a stable door in an old house near London.

There are now several writers on animals who are not exactly naturalists, nor yet mere fictionists, but who, to a considerable knowledge of animal psychology and extraordinary sympathy with all wildness, unite an imaginative insight which reveals to them much of the inner, the mind life of brutes. No doubt the greatest of these is Charles Roberts, the Canadian, and I only wish it had been he who had discovered the old gorilla skull above the stable door, and that the incident had fired the creative brain which gave us Red Fox and many another wonderful biography.

Now here is an odd coincidence. After writing the skull story it came into my head to relate it to a lady I was dining with, and I also told her of my intention of putting it in this book of Little Things. She said it was funny that she too had a story of a skull which she had thought of telling in her volume of Little Things; but no, she would not venture to do so, although it was a better story than mine.

She was good enough to let me hear it, and as it is not to appear elsewhere I can't resist the temptation of bringing it in here.

On her return to Europe after travelling and residing for some years in the Far East, she established herself in Paris and proceeded to decorate her apartment with some of the wonderful rich and rare objects she had collected in outlandish parts. Gorgeous fabrics, embroideries, pottery, metal and woodwork, and along with these products of an ancient civilisation, others of rude or primitive tribes, quaint headgear and plumes, strings and ropes of beads, worn as garments by people who run wild in woods, with arrows, spears and other weapons. These last were arranged in the form of a wheel over the entrance, with the bleached and polished skull of an orang-utan in the centre. It was a very perfect skull, with all the formidable teeth intact and highly effective.

She lived happily for some months in her apartment and was very popular in Parisian society and visited by many distinguished people, who all greatly admired her Eastern decorations, especially the skull, before which they would stand expressing their delight with fervent exclamations.

One day when on a visit at a friend's house, her host brought up a gentleman who wished to be introduced to her. He made himself extremely agreeable, but was a little too effusive with his complimentary speeches, telling her how delighted he was to meet her, and how much he had been wishing for that honour.

After hearing this two or three times she turned on him and asked him in the directest way why he had wished to see her so very much; then, anticipating that the answer would be that it was because of what he had heard of her charm, her linguistic, musical and various other accomplishments, and so on, she made ready to administer a nice little snub, when he made this very unexpected reply:

"O madame, how can you ask? You must know we all admire you because you are the only person in all Paris who has the courage and originality to decorate her salon with a human skull."



XXVII

A STORY OF A WALNUT

He was a small old man, curious to look at, and every day when I came out of my cottage and passed his garden he was there, his crutches under his arms, leaning on the gate, silently regarding me as I went by. Not boldly; his round dark eyes were like those of some shy animal peering inquisitively but shyly at the passer-by. His was a tumble-down old thatched cottage, leaky and miserable to live in, with about three- quarters of an acre of mixed garden and orchard surrounding it. The trees were of several kinds—cherry, apple, pear, plum, and one big walnut; and there were also shade trees, some shrubs and currant and gooseberry bushes, mixed with vegetables, herbs, and garden flowers. The man himself was in harmony with his disorderly but picturesque surroundings, his clothes dirty and almost in rags; an old jersey in place of a shirt, and over it two and sometimes three waistcoats of different shapes and sizes, all of one indeterminate earthy colour; and over these an ancient coat too big for the wearer. The thin hair, worn on the shoulders, was dust-colour mixed with grey, and to crown all there was a rusty rimless hat, shaped like an inverted flowerpot. From beneath this strange hat the small strange face, with the round, furtive, troubled eyes, watched me as I passed.

The people I lodged with told me his history. He had lived there many years, and everybody knew him, but nobody liked him,—a cunning, foxy, grabbing old rascal; unsocial, suspicious, unutterably mean. Never in all the years of his life in the village had he given a sixpence or a penny to anyone; nor a cabbage, nor an apple, nor had he ever lent a helping hand to a neighbour nor shown any neighbourly feeling.

He had lived for himself alone; and was alone in the world, in his miserable cottage, and no person had any pity for him in his loneliness and suffering now when he was almost disabled by rheumatism.

He was not a native of the village; he had come to it a young man, and some kindly-disposed person had allowed him to build a small hut as a shelter at the side of his hedge. Now the village was at one end of a straggling common, and many irregular strips and patches of common-land existed scattered about among the cottages and orchards. It was at a hedge-side on the border of one of these isolated patches that the young stranger, known as an inoffensive, diligent, and exceedingly quiet young man, set up his hovel. To protect it from the cattle he made a small ditch before it. This ditch he made very deep, and the earth thrown out he built into a kind of rampart, and by its outer edge he put a row of young holly plants, which a good-natured woodman made him a present of. He was advised to plant the holly behind the ditch, but he thought his plan the best, and to protect the young plants he made a little fence of odd sticks and bits of old wire and hoop iron. But the sheep would get in, so he made a new ditch; and then something else, until in the course of years the three-quarters of an acre had been appropriated. That was the whole history, and the pilfering had gone no further only because someone in authority had discovered and put a stop to it. Still, one could see that (in spite of the powers) a strip a few inches in breadth was being added annually to the estate.

I was so much interested in all this that from time to time I began to pause beside his gate to converse with him. By degrees the timid, suspicious expression wore away, and his eyes looked only wistful, and he spoke of his aches and pains as if it did him good to tell them to another.

I then left the village, but visited it from time to time, usually at intervals of some months, always to find him by his gate, on his own property, which he won for himself in the middle of the village, and from which he watched his neighbours moving about their cottages, going and coming, and was not of them. Then a whole year went by, and when I found him at the old gate in the old attitude, with the old wistful look in the eyes, he seemed glad to see me, and we talked of many things. We talked, that is, of the weather, with reference to the crops, and his rheumatism. What else in the world was there to talk of? He read no paper and heard no news and was of no politics; and if it can be said that he had a philosophy of life it was a low-down one, about on a level with that of a solitary old dog-badger who lives in an earth he has excavated for himself with infinite pains in a strong stubborn soil—his home and refuge in a hostile world.

Finally, casting about in my mind for some new subject of conversation— for I was reluctant to leave him soon after so long an absence—it occurred to me that we had not said anything about his one walnut tree. Of all the other trees and the fruit he had gathered from them he had already spoken. "By-the-way," I said, "did your walnut tree yield well this year?"

"Yes, very well," he returned; then he checked himself and said, "Pretty well, but I did not get much for them." And after a little hesitation he added, "That reminds me of something I had forgotten. Something I have been keeping for you—a little present."

He began to feel in the capacious pockets of his big outside waistcoat, but found nothing. "I must give it up," he said; "I must have mislaid it."

He seemed a little relieved, and at the same time a little disappointed; and by-and-by, on my remarking that he had not felt in all his pockets, began searching again, and in the end produced the lost something—a walnut! Holding it up a moment, he presented it to me with a little forward jerk of the hand and a little inclination of the head; and that little gesture, so unexpected in him, served to show that he had thought a good deal about giving the walnut away, and had looked on it as rather an important present. It was, perhaps, the only one he had ever made in his life. While giving it to me he said very nicely, "Pray make use of it."

The use I have made of it is to put it carefully away among other treasured objects, picked up at odd times in out-of-the-way places. It may be that some minute mysterious insect or infinitesimal mite—there is almost certain to be a special walnut mite—has found an entrance into this prized nut and fed on its oily meat, reducing it within to a rust-coloured powder. The grub or mite, or whatever it is, may do so at its pleasure, and flourish and grow fat, and rear a numerous family, and get them out if it can; but all these corroding processes and changes going on inside the shell do not in the least diminish my nut's intrinsic value.



XXVII

A STORY OF A JACKDAW

At one end of the Wiltshire village where I was staying there was a group of half-a-dozen cottages surrounded by gardens and shade trees, and every time I passed this spot on my way to and from the downs on that side, I was hailed by a loud challenging cry—a sort of "Hullo, who goes there!" Unmistakably the voice of a jackdaw, a pet bird no doubt, friendly and impudent as one always expects Jackie to be. And as I always like to learn the history of every pet daw I come across, I went down to the cottage the cry usually came from to make enquiries. The door was opened to me by a tall, colourless, depressed-looking woman, who said in reply to my question that she didn't own no jackdaw. There was such a bird there, but it was her husband's and she didn't know nothing about it. I couldn't see it because it had flown away somewhere and wouldn't be back for a long time. I could ask her husband about it; he was the village sweep, and also had a carpenter's shop.

I did not venture to cross-question her; but the history of the daw came to me soon enough—on the evening of the same day in fact. I was staying at the inn and had already become aware that the bar-parlour was the customary meeting-place of a majority of the men in that small isolated centre of humanity. There was no club nor institute or reading-room, nor squire or other predominant person to regulate things differently. The landlord, wise in his generation, provided newspapers liberally as well as beer, and had his reward. The people who gathered there of an evening included two or three farmers, a couple of professional gentlemen—not the vicar; a man of property, the postman, the carrier, the butcher, the baker and other tradesmen, the farm and other labourers, and last, but not least, the village sweep. A curious democratic assembly to be met with in a rural village in a purely agricultural district, extremely conservative in politics.

I had already made the acquaintance of some of the people, high and low, and on that evening, hearing much hilarious talk in the parlour, I went in to join the company, and found fifteen or twenty persons present. The conversation, when I found a seat, had subsided into a quiet tone, but presently the door opened and a short, robust-looking man with a round, florid, smiling face looked in upon us.

"Hullo, Jimmy, what makes you so late?" said someone in the room. "We're waiting to hear the finish of all that trouble about your bird at home. Stolen any more of your wife's jewellery? Come in, and let's hear all about it."

"Oh, give him time," said another. "Can't you see his brain's busy inventing something new to tell us!"

"Inventing, you say!" exclaimed Jimmy, with affected anger. "There's no need to do that! That there bird does tricks nobody would think of."

Here the person sitting next to me, speaking low, informed me that this was Jimmy Jacob, the sweep, that he owned a pet jackdaw, known to every one in the village, and supposed to be the cleverest bird that ever was. He added that Jimmy could be very amusing about his bird.

"I'd already begun to feel curious about that bird of yours," I said, addressing the sweep. "I'd like very much to hear his history. Did you take him from the nest?"

"Yes, Jim," said the man next to me. "Tell us how you came by the bird; it's sure to be a good story."

Jimmy, having found a seat and had a mug of beer put before him, began by remarking that he knew someone had been interesting himself in that bird of his. "When I went home to tea this afternoon," he continued, "my missus, she says to me: 'There's that bird of yours again,' she says."

"'What bird,' says I. 'If you mean Jac,' says I, 'what's he done now?— out with it.'

"'We'll talk about what he's done bimeby,' says she. 'What I mean is, a gentleman called to ask about that bird.'

"'Oh, did he?' says I. 'Yes,' she says. 'I told him I didn't know nothing about it. He could go and ask you. You'd be sure to tell him a lot.'

"'And what did the gentleman say to that?' says I.

"'He arsked me who you was, an' I said you was the sweep an' you had a carpenter's shop near the pub, and was supposed to do carpentering.'

"Supposed to do carpentering! That's how she said it.

"'And what did the gentleman say to that?' says I.

"'He said he thought he seen you at the inn, and I said that's just where he would see you.'

"'Anything more between you and the gentleman?' says I, and she said: 'No, nothing more except that he said he'd look you up and arst if you was a funny little fat man, sort of round, with a little red face.' And I said, 'Yes, that's him.'"

Here I thought it time to break in. "It's true," I said, "I called at your cottage and saw your wife, but there's no truth in the account you've given of the conversation I had with her."

There was a general laugh. "Oh, very well," said Jimmy. "After that I've nothing more to say about the bird or anything else."

I replied that I was sorry, but we need not begin our acquaintance by quarrelling—that it would be better to have a drink together.

Jimmy smiled consent, and I called for another pint for Jimmy and a soda for myself; then added I was so sorry he had taken it that way as I should have liked to hear how he got his bird.

He answered that if I put it that way he wouldn't mind telling me. And everybody was pleased, and composed ourselves once more to listen.

"How I got that there bird was like this," he began. "It were about half after four in the morning, summer before last, an' I was just having what I may call my beauty sleep, when all of a sudding there came a most thundering rat-a-tat-tat at the door.

"'Good Lord,' says my missus, 'whatever is that?'

"'Sounds like a knock at the door,' says I. 'Just slip on your thingamy an' go see.'

"'No,' she says, 'you must go, it might be a man.'

"'No,' I says, 'it ain't nothing of such consekince as that. It's only an old woman come to borrow some castor oil.'

"So she went and bimeby comes back and says: 'It's a man that's called to see you an' it's very important.'

"'Tell him I'm in bed,' says I, 'and can't get up till six o'clock.'

"Well, after a lot of grumbling, she went again, then came back and says the man won't go away till he seen me, as it's very important. 'Something about a bird,' she says.

"'A bird!' I says, 'what d'you mean by a bird?'

"'A rook!' she says.

"'A rook!' says I. 'Is he a madman, or what?'

"'He's a man at the door,' she says, 'an' he won't go away till he sees you, so you'd better git up and see him.'

"'All right, old woman,' I says, 'I'll git up as you say I must, and I'll smash him. Get me something to put on,' I says.

"'No,' she says, 'don't smash him'; and she give me something to put on, weskit and trousers, so I put on the weskit and got one foot in a slipper, and went out to him with the trousers in my hand. And there he was at the door, sure enough, a tramp!

"'Now, my man,' says I, very severe-like, 'what's this something important you've got me out of bed at four of the morning for? Is it the end of the world, or what?'

"He looked at me quite calm and said it was something important but not that—not the end of the world. 'I'm sorry to disturb you,' he says, 'but women don't understand things properly,' he says, 'an' I always think it best to speak to a man.'

"'That's all very well,' I says, 'but how long do you intend to keep me here with nothing but this on?'

"'I'm just coming to it,' he says, not a bit put out. 'It's like this,' he says. 'I'm from the north—Newcastle way—an' on my way to Dorchester, looking for work,' he says.

"'Yes, I see you are!' says I, looking him up and down, fierce-like.

"'Last evening,' he says, 'I come to a wood about a mile from this 'ere village, and I says to myself, "I'll stay here and go on in the morning." So I began looking about and found some fern and cut an armful and made a bed under a oak-tree. I slep' there till about three this morning. When I opened my eyes, what should I see but a bird sitting on the ground close to me? I no sooner see it than I says to myself, "That bird is as good as a breakfast," I says. So I just put out my hand and copped it. And here it is!' And out he pulled a bird from under his coat.

"'That's a young jackdaw,' I says.

"'You may call it a jackdaw if you like,' says he; 'but what I want you to understand is that it ain't no ornary bird. It's a bird,' he says, 'that'll do you hansom and you'll be proud to have, and I've called here to make you a present of it. All I want is a bit of bread, a pinch of tea, and some sugar to make my breakfast in an hour's time when I git to some cottage by the road where they got a fire lighted,' he says.

"When he said that, I burst out laughing, a foolish thing to do, mark you, for when you laugh, you're done for; but I couldn't help it for the life of me. I'd seen many tramps but never such a cool one as this.

"I no sooner laughed than he put the bird in my hands, and I had to take it. 'Good Lord!' says I. Then I called to the missus to fetch me the loaf and a knife, and when I got it I cut him off half the loaf. 'Don't give him that,' she says: I'll cut him a piece.' But all I says was, 'Go and git me the tea.'

"'There's a very little for breakfast,' she says. But I made her fetch the caddy, and he put out his hand and I half filled it with tea. 'Isn't that enough?' says I; 'well, then, have some more,' I says; and he had some more. Then I made her fetch the bacon and began cutting him rashers. 'One's enough,' says the old woman. 'No,' says I, 'let him have a good breakfast. The bird's worth it,' says I and went on cutting him bacon. 'Anything more?' I arst him.

"'If you've a copper or two to spare,' he says, 'it'll be a help to me on my way to Dorchester.' "'Certainly,' says I, and I began to feel in my trouser pockets and found a florin. 'Here,' I says, 'it's all I have, but you're more than welcome to it.'

"Then my missus she giv' a sort of snort, and walked off.

"'And now,' says I, 'per'aps you won't mind letting me go back to git some clothes on.'

"In one minute,' he says, and went on calmly stowing the things away, and when he finished, he looks at me quite serious, and says, 'I'm obliged to you,' he says, 'and I hope you haven't ketched cold standing with your feet on them bricks and nothing much on you,' he says. 'But I want most particular to arst you not to forget to remember about that bird I giv' you,' he says. 'You call it a jackdaw, and I've no particular objection to that, only don't go and run away with the idea that it's just an or'nary jackdaw. It's a different sort, and you'll come to know its value bime-by, and that it ain't the kind of bird you can buy with a bit of bread and a pinch of tea,' he says. 'And there's something else you've got to think of—that wife of yours. I've been sort of married myself and can feel for you,' he says. 'The time will come when that there bird's pretty little ways will amuse her, and last of all it'll make her smile, and you'll get the benefit of that,' he says. 'And you'll remember the bird was giv' to you by a man named Jones—that's my name, Jones—walking from Newcastle to Dorchester, looking for work. A poor man, you'll say, down on his luck, but not one of the common sort, not a greedy, selfish man, but a man that's always trying to do something to make others happy,' he says.

"And after that, he said, 'Good-bye,' without a smile, and walked off.

"And there at the door I stood, I don't know how long, looking after him going down the road. Then I laughed; I don't know that I ever laughed so much in my life, and at last I had to sit down on the bricks to go on laughing more comfortably, until the missus came and arst me, sarcastic-like, if I'd got the high-strikes, and if she'd better get a bucket of water to throw over me.

"I says, 'No, I don't want no water. Just let me have my laugh out and then it'll be all right.' Well, I don't see nothing to laugh at,' she says. 'And I s'pose you thought you giv' him a penny. Well, it wasn't a penny, it was a florin,' she says.

"'And little enough, too,' I says. 'What that man said to me, to say nothing of the bird, was worth a sovereign. But you are a woman, and can't understand that,' I says. 'No,' she says, 'I can't, and lucky for you, or we'd 'a' been in the workhouse before now,' she says.

"And that's how I got the bird."



XXIX

A WONDERFUL STORY OF A MACKEREL

The angler is a mighty spinner of yarns, but no sooner does he set about the telling than I, knowing him of old, and accounting him not an uncommon but an unconscionable liar, begin (as Bacon hath it) "to droop and languish." Nor does the languishing end with the story if I am compelled to sit it out, for in that state I continue for some hours after. But oh! the difference when someone who is not an angler relates a fishing adventure! A plain truthful man who never dined at an anglers' club, nor knows that he who catches, or tries to catch a fish, must tell you something to astonish and fill you with envy and admiration. To a person of this description I am all attention, and however prosaic and even dull the narrative may be, it fills me with delight, and sends me happy to bed and (still chuckling) to a refreshing sleep.

Accordingly, when one of the "commercials" in the coffee-room of the Plymouth Hotel began to tell a wonderful story of a mackerel he once caught a very long time back, I immediately put down my pen so as to listen with all my ears. For he was about the last person one would have thought of associating with fish-catching—an exceedingly towny- looking person indeed, one who from his conversation appeared to know nothing outside of his business. He was past middle age—oldish-looking for a traveller—his iron-grey hair brushed well up to hide the baldness on top, disclosing a pair of large ears which stood out like handles; a hatchet face with parchment skin, antique side whiskers, and gold-rimmed glasses on his large beaky nose. He wore the whitest linen and blackest, glossiest broadcloth, a big black cravat, diamond stud in his shirt-front in the old fashion, and a heavy gold chain with a spade guinea attached. His get-up and general appearance, though ancient, or at all events mid-Victorian, proclaimed him a person of considerable importance in his vocation.

He had, he told us at starting, a very good customer at Bristol, perhaps the best he ever had, at any rate the one who had stuck longest to him, since what he was telling us happened about the year 1870. He went to Bristol expressly to see this man, expecting to get a good order from him, but when he arrived and saw the wife, and asked for her husband, she replied that he was away on his holiday with the two little boys. It was a great disappointment, for, of course, he couldn't get an order from her. Confound the woman! she was always against him; what she would have liked was to have half a dozen travellers dangling about her, so as to pit one against another and distribute the orders among them just as flirty females distribute their smiles, instead of putting trust in one.

Where had her husband gone for his holiday? he asked; she said Weymouth and then was sorry she had let it out. But she refused to give the address. "No, no," she said; "he's gone to enjoy himself, and mustn't be reminded of business till he gets back."

However, he resolved to follow him to Weymouth on the chance of finding him there, and accordingly took the next train to that place. And, he added, it was lucky for him that he did so, for he very soon found him with his boys on the front, and, in spite of what she said, it was not with this man as it was with so many others who refuse to do business when away from the shop. On the contrary, at Weymouth he secured the best order this man had given him up to that time; and it was because he was away from his wife, who had always contrived to be present at their business meetings, and was very interfering, and made her husband too cautious in buying.

It was early in the day when this business was finished. "And now," said the man from Bristol, who was in a sort of gay holiday mood, "what are you going to do with yourself for the rest of the day?"

He answered that he was going to take the next train back to London. He had finished with Weymouth—there was no other customer there.

Here he digressed to tell us that he was a beginner at that time at the salary of a pound a week and fifteen shillings a day for travelling expenses. He thought this a great thing at first; when he heard what he was to get he walked about on air all day long, repeating to himself, "Fifteen shillings a day for expenses!" It was incredible; he had been poor, earning about five shillings a week, and now he had suddenly come into this splendid fortune. It wouldn't be much for him now! He began by spending recklessly; and in a short time discovered that the fifteen shillings didn't go far; now he had come to his senses and had to practise a rigid economy. Accordingly, he thought he would save the cost of a night's lodging and go back to town. But the Bristol man was anxious to keep him and said he had hired a man and boat to go fishing with the boys,—why couldn't he just engage a bedroom for the night and spend the afternoon with them?

After some demur he consented, and took his bag to a modest Temperance Hotel, where he secured a room, and then, protesting he had never caught a fish or seen one caught in his life, he got into the boat, and was taken into the bay where he was to have his first and only experience of fishing. Perhaps it was no great thing, but it gave him something to remember all his life. After a while his line began to tremble and move about in an extraordinary way with sudden little tugs which were quite startling, and on pulling it in he found he had a mackerel on his hook. He managed to get it into the boat all right and was delighted at his good luck, and still more at the sight of the fish, shining like silver and showing the most beautiful colours. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life! Later, the same thing happened again with the line and a second mackerel was caught, and altogether he caught three. His friend also caught a few, and after a most pleasant and exciting afternoon they returned to the town well pleased with their sport. His friend wanted him to take a share of the catch, and after a little persuasion he consented to take one, and he selected the one he had caught first, just because it was the first fish he had ever caught in his life, and it had looked more beautiful than any other, so would probably taste better.

Going back to the hotel he called the maid and told her he had brought in a mackerel which he had caught for his tea, and ordered her to have it prepared. He had it boiled and enjoyed it very much, but on the following morning when the bill was brought to him he found that he had been charged two shillings for fish.

"Why, what does this item mean?" he exclaimed. "I've had no fish in this hotel except a mackerel which I caught myself and brought back for my tea, and now I'm asked to pay two shillings for it? Just take the bill back to your mistress and tell her the fish was mine—I caught it myself in the Bay yesterday afternoon."

The girl took it up, and by-and-by returned and said her mistress had consented to take threepence off the bill as he had provided the fish himself.

"No," he said, indignantly, "I'll have nothing off the bill, I'll pay the full amount," and pay it he did in his anger, then went off to say goodbye to his friend, to whom he related the case.

His friend, being in the same hilarious humour as on the previous day, burst out laughing and made a good deal of fun over the matter.

That, he said, was the whole story of how he went fishing and caught a mackerel, and what came of it. But it was not quite all, for he went on to tell us that he still visited Bristol regularly to receive big and ever bigger orders from that same old customer of his, whose business had gone on increasing ever since; and invariably after finishing their business his friend remarks in a casual sort of way: "By the way, old man, do you remember that mackerel you caught at Weymouth which you had for tea, and were charged two shillings for?" "Then he laughs just as heartily as if it had only happened yesterday, and I leave him in a good humour, and say to myself: 'Now, I'll hear no more about that blessed mackerel till I go round to Bristol again in three months' time.'"

"How long ago did you say it was since you caught the mackerel?" I inquired.

"About forty years."

"Then," I said, "it was a very lucky fish for you—worth more perhaps than if a big diamond had been found in its belly. The man had got his joke—the one joke of his life perhaps—and was determined to stick to it, and that kept him faithful to you in spite of his wife's wish to distribute their orders among a lot of travellers."

He replied that I was perhaps right and that it had turned out a lucky fish for him. But his old customer, though his business was big, was not so important to him now when he had big customers in most of the large towns in England, and he thought it rather ridiculous to keep up that joke so many years.



XXX

STRANGERS YET

The man who composed that familiar delightful rhyme about blue eyes and black, and how you are to beware of the hidden knife in the one case and of a different sort of danger which may threaten you in the other, must have lived a good long time ago, or else be a very old man. Oh, so old, thousands of years, thousands of years, if all were told. And he, when he exhibited such impartiality, must have had other-coloured eyes himself. Most probably the sheep and goat eye, one which no person in his senses—except an anthropologist—can classify as either dark or light. It is that marmalade yellow, excessively rare in this country, but not very uncommon in persons of Spanish race. For who at this day, this age, after the mixing together of the hostile races has been going on these twenty centuries or longer, can believe that any inherited or instinctive animosity can still survive? If we do find such a feeling here and there, would it not be more reasonable to regard it as an individual antipathy, or as a prejudice, imbibed early in life from parents or others, which endures in spite of reason, long after its origin had been forgotten?

Nevertheless, one does meet with cases from time to time which do throw a slight shadow of doubt on the mind, and of several I have met I will here relate one.

At an hotel on the South Coast I met a Miss Browne, which is not her name, and I rather hope this sketch will not be read by anyone nearly related to her, as they might identify her from the description. A middle-aged lady with a brown skin, black hair and dark eyes, an oval face, fairly good-looking, her manner lively and attractive, her movements quick without being abrupt or jerky. She was highly intelligent and a good talker, with more to say than most women, and better able than most to express herself. We were at the same small table and got on well together, as I am a good listener and she knew— being a woman, how should she not?—that she interested me. One day at our table the conversation happened to be about the races of men and the persistence of racial characteristics, physical and mental, in persons of mixed descent. The subject interested her. "What would you call me?" she asked.