Chapter Seven.
The Perry Family and Papa’s Story.
Besides the three big boys, the children had counted six more young Perrys in the middle one of the Lavender Cottages, and by degrees they had found out most of their names. The eldest girl was about twelve, and her name was a very funny one—it was Comfort.
“How tired she must be of people saying to her that they hope she’s a comfort to her father and mother,” said Leigh, when he first heard her name. I think nurse told it him, for she knew something of the Perrys, and the odd name had taken her fancy.
Comfort was rather a tall girl for her age, and she was clever at school, where she often got prizes. But the next to her, a short, rosy-faced child called Janie, who was generally seen carrying about the baby, a very motherly little girl, seemed as if her elder sister’s name would have suited her better. After Janie came Ned, and after Ned three little creatures so near each other that they all looked like babies together, and it was difficult to tell whether they were boys or girls. The quite youngest—the one that all the rest of them called “baby”—spent most of its life seemingly in Janie’s arms. I suppose Janie went to school sometimes, but, anyway, the Bertram children never passed the cottages or met the little Perrys in the lanes without seeing the baby in its usual resting-place. The other two babies seemed to spend their lives in a queer old-fashioned kind of double perambulator. It was made of wicker; and in fine weather, and indeed sometimes in weather that was not so very fine, was almost always to be seen standing at the cottage-door or just outside the gate leading into the little garden, with the two small people tied into it, one at each side.
To-day they were there as usual. There, too, was Janie with number three baby in her arms, while Comfort was strolling about with a book in her hand, out of which she seemed to be learning something.
“Good-morning,” said Leigh, by way of opening the conversation. “Where’s Ned? He can’t be at school; it’s a half-holiday, isn’t it?”
“Please, sir—no, sir, if Ned was at school, Comfort and me would be at school too,” said Janie.
And Comfort, hearing the talking, came up to where they were standing. They were all in the lane just outside the little garden.
“Ned’s run in just to get a bit of cord,” said the elder girl. “We’re goin’ a walk in the woods. We must take the little ones, ’cos mother’s washing’s got late this week, and she wants them out of the way.”
It was rather curious that Mrs Perry’s washing often did get late. She was a kind, good-natured woman, but “folks said,” according to nurse, not the best of good managers.
“What’s Ned going to do with the cord?” asked Leigh, Artie and Mary standing by, listening with the greatest interest, and holding each other’s hands tightly, as they felt just a little shy.
“Oh, it’s a notion of Ned’s,” said Janie, rather scornfully. “It’s just his nonsense: he don’t like pushing p’ram, ’cos he says it’s girls’ work, and Comfort don’t hold with pushing it neither, ’cos she wants to be reading her book.”
Here Comfort broke in.
“’Tisn’t that I’m so taken up with my book,” she said,—“leastways not to please myself; but I want to get moved up after next holidays. When I’m big enough I’m to be a pupil teacher.”
“That would be very nice,” said Leigh. “And then, when you’re quite big, you’ll get to be a schoolmistress, I suppose.”
Comfort murmured something and got very red. To be a schoolmistress was the greatest wish she had.
“But I don’t see,” Leigh went on, “what Ned and the cord’s got to do with it.”
“Bless you, sir,” said Janie, “he’s going to make hisself into a pony to draw the p’ram, so as Comfort need do nothing but walk behind pushing with one hand and a-holding of the book with the other, and no need to look out where they’re going.”
“Oh, I see,” said Leigh slowly. He could not help admiring the idea. Then, as Ned at that moment ran out of the cottage, the three little visitors stood in a row watching with the greatest interest while Ned harnessed himself to the front of the wicker carriage. It was a little difficult to manage, but luckily the Perry family were very good-natured, and the two babies in the perambulator only laughed when they got jogged about. And at last, with Leigh’s help, the two-legged pony was ready for the start.
Off they set, Comfort holding on behind. She was so interested in it all, by this time that her book was given to one of the babies to hold.
This was lucky, as the first start was rather a queer one. Ned was not tied in quite evenly, so when he set off at a trot the perambulator ran to one side, as if a crab instead of a boy were drawing it. And but for Comfort behind, no doubt, in another minute it would have turned over.
“Stop, Ned, stop!” shouted his sisters, Leigh and Artie and Mary joining in, and the babies too.
Then they all burst out laughing; it did seem so funny, and it took a minute or two before they could set to work to put things right. When Ned’s harness was made quite even, he set off again more slowly. This time it was a great success, or it seemed so anyway, though perhaps it was as much thanks to Comfort’s pushing behind as to Ned’s pulling in front.
Mary and her brothers stood watching the little party as they made their way along the smooth path leading to the wood.
“It’s a good thing,” said Leigh, “they’re not going the smithy way, for if they went down hill, I believe the carriage would tumble over; it’s such a shaky old thing.”
“When our baby gets a perambulator it’ll not be like that ugly old thing, will it?” said Artie. “It will be a reg’lar nice one.”
“Of course it will,” said Mary. “I’d like it to be the same as the one in my animal book. ‘G’ for goats, with little goats drawing it.”
“We can’t have a goat,” said Leigh; “but we might have something. Of course it’s rubbish to harness a boy into a carriage, but—I’ve got something in my head.”
There was no time for Artie and Mary to ask him what he meant, for just then they saw their father coming out of the gate.
“I’ve kept you waiting a long time, I’m afraid,” he said. “Poor old Sweeting was so glad to see me, and when she begins talking, it goes on for a good while.”
“We didn’t mind, papa dear,” said Mary, slipping her hand into her father’s. “We’ve been speaking to the children in the next cottage. There’s such lotses of them. When you was a little boy, papa, did you have lotses of brothers and sisters—did you?”
“No, my pet, I hadn’t any at all,” papa answered. “That was rather sad, wasn’t it? But I had a very kind father and mother. Your grandfather died many years ago, but you know for yourselves how kind grandmother is.”
“Grandmother,” said Artie and Mary together, looking rather puzzled.
“I don’t understand,” said Mary, and Artie did not understand either, though he would not say so.
“How silly you are!” said Leigh; “of course grandmother is papa’s mother.”
“Oh,” said Mary, with a little laugh, “I never thought of that! I understand now. Then grandmother used to be a mamma!”
“Yes, indeed, and a very sweet one,” said papa. “I’m afraid, perhaps, she spoilt me a very little. When I was a child the rules for small people were much stricter than they are now. But I was never at all afraid of my mother.”
“Were you afraid of your father?” asked Leigh with great interest.
“Well, just a little perhaps. I had to be a very obedient boy, I can tell you. That reminds me of a story—”
“Oh, papa, do tell it us!” said all three at once, while Mary, who was holding his hand, began giving little jumps up and down in her eagerness.
“It was ever so long ago, almost thirty years! I was only six at the time. My father had to go up to London for a few days, and as my mother was away from home—nursing her mother who was ill—”
“What was she to us?” interrupted Leigh, who liked to get things straight in his head.
“Great-grandmother,” answered his father; “one of your great-grandmothers, not the one that we have a picture of, though.”
“I thought we had pictures of all our grand—I don’t know what you call them—for hundreds of years,” said Leigh.
“Ancestors, you mean,” said his father, “but mostly the Bertram ones of course. But if I begin explaining about that now, we’ll never get on with my story. Where was I? Oh, yes! I was telling you that my father took me up to London with him, rather than leave me alone at home. I was very pleased to go, for I’d never been in a town before, and I thought myself quite a great man, going off travelling alone with my father. We stayed at an hotel—I’m not sure where it was, but that doesn’t matter; I only know it was in a quiet street running out of another large wide street, where there were lots of shops of all kinds, and carriages and omnibuses and carts always passing by. My father took me out with him as much as he could; sometimes he would leave me waiting for him in a cab at the door of the houses where he had to see people on business, and once or twice he found me fast asleep when he came out. He didn’t think that good for me; so after that, he sometimes left me in the hotel in the care of the landlady who had a nice little girl just about my age, with whom I used to play very happily.
“One day—the day before we were to leave—my father took me out shopping with him. He had to buy some presents, for it was near Christmas-time, to take home for the little cousins who were coming to stay with us. We went off to a large toy-shop in the big street I told you of. It was a very large shop, with a door at each end—one out of the big street, and the other opening on to a smaller back street nearer our hotel. And besides the toy-shop there was another part where they sold dressing-cases and travelling-bags and things of that kind.
“We were a good while choosing the toys; among them, I remember, was a fine rocking-horse which my father was very anxious to hear what I thought of, for though I didn’t know it at the time, he meant it for me myself.”
“Like our old rocking-horse in the nursery?” asked Leigh.
Papa smiled.
“More than like it,” he said; “it is that very horse. I’ve kept it ever since, and I had it done up with a new mane and tail when you got big enough to ride it, Leigh.”
“Oh, how nice,” said Mary, “to think it’s papa’s own horse! But, please, go on with the story, papa.”
“Well, when we had chosen the horse and all the other things, my father had something else to buy that he thought I wouldn’t care about in the other part of the shop. And I think he wanted to tell them where to send the horse to without my hearing. He looked at his watch and seemed vexed to find it so late. He asked me if I should be afraid to run back to the hotel alone, and turned towards the door opening on to the back street, from which we could see the hotel as it faced the end of that small street. But I think he must have fancied that I looked a little frightened, for then he changed and pointed to the front door of the shop, telling me to stay there till he came back. He said it would amuse me to stand just outside in the entrance where I could both see the shop window and watch the carriages passing.
”‘But whatever you do, Charlie,’ he said, ‘don’t move from there till I come back for you!’”