Chapter Eight.
Papa’s Story Continued.
“For some time, a quarter of an hour or so, I dare say, I stood at the shop door very contentedly. It was very amusing, as my father had said, to watch the bustle in the street. I don’t think I looked much at the things in the shop window; I’d seen so many of the toys inside. But after awhile I began to wish that my father would be quick. He did seem to be a very long time. I peeped in through the glass door, but I couldn’t see him anywhere near. I even opened it a tiny bit to listen if I could hear his voice, but I couldn’t. People often passed me to go into the shop and to come out, but nobody specially noticed me; they were all too busy about their own affairs; besides, there’s nothing uncommon in a little boy standing at a toy-shop window.
“It seemed to grow colder too. I should have liked to run up and down on the pavement in front to warm myself a little; but I dared not move from where I was. At last some one belonging to the shop happened to come to the door to reach down some large toys hanging in the entrance, and this shopman noticed me. By this time, though I scarcely knew it, the tears were running down my face; I was growing so very tired with waiting. He said to me—
”‘Is there anything the matter? Have you hurt yourself?’
“I answered No, I was only waiting for my father who was in the shop. ‘But I don’t know why he’s such a long time,’ I said; ‘I am so tired of waiting,’ and somehow the saying it out made me begin to cry much more.
“The young man was very kind and seemed sorry for me. He wanted me to come inside where it would be warmer, while he went to look for my father; but I shook my head and told him that papa had said I must stay just there where I was. I wouldn’t even come the least bit inside the door. I remembered papa’s words so well—
”‘Whatever you do, Charlie, don’t move from there till I come back for you!’
“In a few minutes the shopman came back again. He was shaking his head now; there was no one in the shop with a little boy belonging to them. There were one or two ladies whom he had asked, which I thought very ridiculous, as if I could have mistaken papa for a lady, but there was no gentleman at all, and he tried again to persuade me to come inside. He said there must be some mistake; my father had most likely gone on somewhere else; perhaps he’d be back in a little while; he’d never want me to stay out there in the cold. But there was no getting me to move. I can remember, even now, the sort of fixed feeling in my mind that I wouldn’t do the least differently from what he had told me.
“Then the young man went off to fetch some one else—the owner of the shop most likely. I remember two or three people coming up and all talking to me and trying to get me to come inside. But I wouldn’t—even though by this time I couldn’t leave off crying—I just went on shaking my head and saying—
“He said I was to stay here.”
“I dare say they thought me a very tiresome little boy, but they were very kind. The young man, my first friend, brought me out a chair, and then I heard them talking about what was to be done. They had asked me my name, which I told them, but I couldn’t tell them the name of the hotel where we were staying, for I didn’t know it, and I wouldn’t tell them that it was in a street close by, because I was afraid they would carry me off there. I think I was getting rather confused by this time; I could only remember that I must stay where I was if ever I was to see papa again. I heard them saying that the gentleman had only given his country address, as the toys were to be sent straight home.
“After awhile, in spite of the cold and my unhappiness, I think I must have fallen asleep a little. I was almost too young to be anxious about my father and to fear that some accident must have happened to him, but yet I can quite remember that I had really very dreadful feelings. As the evening went on and the street grew darker and darker, and there began to be fewer passers-by, it seemed worse and worse. Once I remember bursting out into fresh crying at seeing, by the light of the gas-lamp, a little boy passing along chattering merrily to the gentleman whose hand he was holding. I felt like a poor shipwrecked mariner on a desert island—all the lonelier that I was in the middle of a great town.
“No doubt the shop people must have been getting uncomfortable and wondering what was to come of it. It must have seemed very strange to them; and, at last, the head man came out again and spoke to me—this time rather sharply, perhaps he thought it the best thing to do—
”‘Young gentleman,’ he said, ‘this really can’t go on! You must see you can’t sit there the whole night. Try and think again of the name of the place you’re staying at.’
”‘I don’t know it,’ I said, and I dare say I seemed rather sulky, for he grew crosser.
”‘Well, if you can’t or won’t tell us, something’ll have to be done,’ he answered. ‘It’s the police’s business, not ours, to look after strayed children, or children that won’t say where they come from. Here, Smith,’ he called out to the young shopman, ‘just look up and down the street if there’s a policeman to be seen.’
“He didn’t really mean to do anything unkind, but he thought it the best way to frighten me into coming inside the shop, or into telling where I lived, for I don’t think they quite believed that I didn’t know. But the word ‘policeman’ terrified me out of my wits; I suppose I was already half-stupefied with tiredness and crying. If I had dared, I would have rushed out into the street and run off anywhere as fast as I could. But, through all, the feeling never left me that I must stay where I was, and I burst into loud screams.
”‘Oh, papa, papa!’ I cried, ‘why won’t you come back? The police are coming to take me; oh, papa, papa!’
“I was crying so that for a moment or two I didn’t hear a bustle at the other end of the shop. Then, all at once, I saw some one hurrying to me from the door leading into the other street, and as soon as I saw who it was, I rushed to meet him and threw myself into his arms, for of course it was my father. I don’t think, in all my life, I have ever felt greater happiness than I did then.
”‘Oh, Charlie,’ he said, ‘my poor little boy! Have you been waiting here all these hours—my good, obedient, little son?’
“Then he turned to the shopman who was now a little ashamed of himself—I dare say the poor man had been getting really afraid that I was to be left on his hands altogether—and explained the whole mistake. He had gone straight on to the city after finishing his orders in the other part of the shop, forgetting that the last thing he had said to me was to wait for him at the front door of the shop; for his thoughts were very much taken up that morning with some very serious business, and it was actually not till he got back to the hotel, late in the afternoon, and found I wasn’t there, that he remembered that the plan of my running back alone had been given up.
“Then he was terribly frightened and rushed off to the shop, hardly daring to hope he would find me still there. He kept saying he could scarcely forgive himself, and even years after, I often heard him say that he couldn’t understand what had come over his memory that day.
“When the shop people saw how troubled he was about it, they began telling him how they had tried to make me come inside, but that it had been no use, and all the way home papa kept saying to me—
”‘My faithful little Charlie’—which pleased me very much.
“He carried me to the hotel, and I felt so weak and tired that I didn’t mind, even though I was a big boy of six years old. And I remember, even now, how delightful it was to get well warmed at the fire, and what a nice tea papa ordered for me.
“And the next day I was none the worse; luckily I hadn’t caught cold, which papa was very glad of, as my mother came up to London that day to meet us, and we all three travelled home together.”
The children had been listening with all their ears to papa’s story. When he stopped Mary gave a deep sigh.
“That’s a bee-yu-tiful story, papa,” she said. “But it nearly made me cry for the poor little boy.”
“You shouldn’t say that, Mary,” said Leigh. “The poor little boy was papa himself! Don’t you understand?”
“Yes, in course I do,” said Mary. “But papa were a little boy then, so I might call him the poor little boy.”
“That’s right, Mary,” said her father. “Stick up for yourself when you know what you mean to say. Yes, indeed, I did feel a very poor little boy that day: the thought of it has always made me so sorry for children who are lost, or think they’re lost. It’s a dreadful feeling.”
“Papa,” said Mary—she was trotting beside her father, holding his hand very tight,—“I think, please, I don’t want never to go to London, for fear I should get losted; and, please, never take Leigh or Artie either—not to London—’cos, you see, it was when you was a little boy your papa nearly losted you, and Leigh and Artie are little boys.”
“Rubbish, Mary,” said Leigh. “I’m eight, and papa was only six, not much bigger than you are now. If I was with papa in London at a shop I could find my way home ever so far; there’s always people in the street you can ask. It’s not like getting lost when there’s nobody to tell you the way.”
“The worst kind of getting lost,” said Artie, “is in the snow. Up on those mountains, you know, where the snow comes down so thick that you can’t see, and then it gets so deep that you are buried in it.”
“Oh, how dedful!” said Mary; “you won’t ever take us to that place, will you, papa? I’d be more f’ightened than in London! Where is that country, papa?”
“I suppose Artie means Switzerland,” said their father.
“I mean the picture in my book,” said Artie; “where there’s dogs, you know, snuffing to find the poor people under the snow.”
“Oh, the great Saint Bernard mountain you mean!” said papa; “it’s sure to be that. You often see pictures of it in children’s books; there are such pretty stories about the good dogs and the kind monks who live there.”
“Can you teach any dogs to do things like that?” asked Leigh.
“No; they have to be a particular kind,” answered papa; “but a dog like your puppy can be taught to fetch anything out of the water, from a bit of stick to a baby. He’s what you call a retriever: that means fetching or finding something. You can teach a good retriever almost anything.”
“I thought so,” said Leigh, nodding his head wisely. “I’ll see what I can’t teach Fuzzy.”
They were back in the park by this time. It was a beautiful May day, almost as warm as summer. The children’s father stood still and looked round with pleasure.
“It is nice to have a holiday sometimes,” he said. “What a lovely colour the grass is in the sunshine!”
“And how happy the little lambs are; aren’t they, papa?” said Mary. “I wish I had one of my very own—like Mary and the lamb in my nursery book.”
“You couldn’t have a lamb and a dog,” said Artie. “Fuzzy would soon knock the lamb over.”
“I never thought of that,” said Mary. “Oh, papa dear,” she went on, “I do so want baby Dolly to get big quick! There’s such lotses of pretty things to show her in the world. The grass and the trees and the lambs”—and while she spoke her blue eyes wandered all round her,—“and the birds and the sky and—and—oh! the daisies, and”—as at that moment she caught sight of the old woman at the lodge crossing the drive with her red cloak on—“and old Mrs Crutch and her pussy-cat, and—”
“You’re getting to talk nonsense, Mary,” said Leigh. “Old Mrs Crutch isn’t a pretty thing!”
“Her cloak’s very pretty,” said Mary, “and she does make such nice ginger-b’ead cake.”