| TO FACE PAGE | |
| TO THE OLD WOMAN’S INTENSE ASTONISHMENT, SHE GAVE HER ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR OF HER THREEPENNY BITS [frontispiece] | |
| “PLEASE DON’T TROUBLE TO GO BACK. I’LL LEND YOU THE CUPS AND SAUCERS” | [ 19] |
| THESE TOMMY CATHCART AND SHE SLIPPED INTO THE HANDS OF THE SANDWICH-MEN | [ 44] |
| THE PRESENCE OF SO SMALL A CRICKETER MADE A GREAT SENSATION AMONG THE PORTERS | [ 64] |
| “DO LOOK AT THAT QUEER LITTLE MAN!” | [ 80] |
| “WE HAD IT MADE ON PURPOSE” | [ 103] |
| THERE WAS CHRISTINA | [ 114] |
| WHILE MARY HELD THE LANTERN, HE WORKED AWAY AT THE FASTENINGS | [ 162] |
| A LITTLE PROCESSION PASSED THE DOORWAY | [ 181] |
| “YES, NURSE, BUT DO TELL ME WHAT SPEKE DID?” | [ 206] |
| “A BLUE RIBBON WAS THREADED THROUGH ME, AND I WAS HUNG ROUND A LITTLE GIRL’SNECK” | [ 229] |
| “WILL YOU TELL ME WHAT MR. DEAR IS LIKE?” | [ 255] |
ANNE’S TERRIBLE GOOD
NATURE
ANNE’S TERRIBLE GOOD
NATURE
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Anne Wilbraham Bayes, Wilbraham being after her grandfather on the mother’s side, a very clever gentleman living at Great Malvern, and writing books on Roman history, who has, however, nothing whatever to do with this story. This story is about Anne and her perfectly appalling good nature.
Where Anne’s good nature came from no one ever could guess, for her father had little enough, always insisting on silence at breakfast while he read the paper and ate the biggest egg; and her mother had little enough, too, never seeing her children without being reminded of something which she wanted from the top left-hand drawer in her bedroom; while Anne’s brothers and sisters had so little that they always forced Anne to be the one who should go on these boring errands. And so far as I have been able to discover, none of Anne’s grandparents were particularly good-natured either, for old Mr. Bayes had a barbed-wire fence all round his estate in west Surrey, near Farnborough, and old Mrs. Bayes would not allow any fruit to be picked except by the gardeners; while old Mr. Wilbraham, in consequence of writing his Roman history all day long, insisted on perfect quietness, so that whenever the children were at Great Malvern they had to play only at those games with no noise in them, which are hardly worth calling games at all; and as for old Mrs. Wilbraham, she was dead. It looks, therefore, very much as if Anne either inherited her wonderful and embarrassing good nature from a distant ancestor too far back to be inquired into, or that it was a totally new kind, beginning with herself. For she would do the most dreadful things—things to make the hair of ordinarily good-natured people stand on end.
For instance, this is what she did once. She heard her mother complain to a visitor one January afternoon that there were no flowers in the garden at that time of year, and it made the view from the sitting-room window very depressing. After lying awake most of the night thinking how she might improve this view and make it more cheerful for her mother’s eyes, Anne got up very early, while it was still dark, and went to the conservatory, and chose from it by candlelight a number of gay flowers, and these she carefully planted in the bed just in front of her mother’s window. It was raining a little, and bitterly cold, and Anne’s fingers became numb, and her feet like stones, and her nose pink, but she went right through with it without faltering until the bed was as gay as summer.
That was good nature, if you like, but no one seemed to think so. Mrs. Bayes, when she looked out of the window, instead of being cheered, screamed out “Oh!” and sent for her smelling salts, and then became quite tearful over the ruin of her pet geraniums, freesias, carnations, cyclamens, and genistas. Mr. Bayes was perfectly furious, and said so several times in different ways, each more cutting than the last; while Anne’s brothers and sisters thought it the greatest joke against Anne possible.
“You didn’t really think they’d live, did you?” they asked her. “How absolutely dotty!”
Directly after breakfast the gardener dug them all up again and put them back in their hot-house pots. Anne was not punished for her folly in any other way than by want of appreciation; but if anyone had seen her crying by herself in her bedroom they might have thought that she had been.
However, when Valentine’s Day came round, which was about three weeks later, and all the little Bayeses found a parcel on their plates at breakfast—their Aunt Margaret being one of those few eccentric persons left who remember St. Valentine’s Day—Anne’s package was found to be twice as good as any of the others, containing as it did not only the ordinary present, but a gold bangle as well, with a little piece of blue turquoise hanging from it (from Liberty’s probably), and this inscription on a tiny label: “From St. Valentine to the little girl who tried to make her mother’s garden bright in winter and was only laughed at and chidden for her pains.”