Taking it, then, for granted that nothing but good is likely to follow from a habit of noticing the children whom we meet, it is interesting to remember how greatly our days have been brightened and our own enjoyment increased by this very thing.
The Children Under the Wall.
There is a long grey wall leading towards the centre of the village. It is what is called a “dry” wall, that is to say, it is built without mortar. There is, therefore, no great interest in it nor any special beauty except where the tints of the little lichens catch the eye of the close observer. The monotony is broken here and there by a bulge in the stonework where an elm-tree in the field has gradually pushed its roots against the foundations.
Two Nests of Children.
But the path beside the wall is seldom lacking in attractions. It is the daily playground of the children from the cottages which lie back from the road between where the wall ends and the big barn juts out endways on to the footpath. These cottages are but two in number and have all the picturesqueness of old gables and steep stone-slab roofs. Hoary and bent and lined with the passage of years they seem to speak of old age in every feature. But they echo to-day with the sound of children’s voices, and their old stone flags speak from morning to night with the patter of little footsteps. From these two houses come the troop of children who play beneath the long grey wall. As a matter of fact there are ten of them altogether—six from one cottage, four from the other. Of these the two eldest boys of the six are just getting too old to play, and are generally doing jobs for mother, or even sometimes for the farmer for whom their father works, on the days when they are free from school. Then there is in each house a baby too small to be trusted anywhere except in its cot or in its mother’s arms. This leaves six children for the wayside, when the two little girls who are old enough to go to school have returned to superintend the amusements of the rest, or four who may be found there at any hour of the day when the weather is at all propitious.
Good Marnin’.
What bits of sunshine they make! Let the day be as dull and the road as monotonous as possible it cannot be altogether cheerless when a couple of little chaps with sunny tousled hair and ruddy cheeks stop pulling their soap box full of mud and stones to laugh up in your face and say “Good marnin’, Sir,” though it be four o’clock in the afternoon. Whereby hangs a tale. These two urchins are somewhere between two and four years old, and it had been their habit to greet a friend with a friendly pat and a shout of “Hey!” Thereupon one day, the friend, thinking that their manners might now be taken in hand and it being then shortly after breakfast, said “You must say ‘Good morning, Sir,’” which after one or two tries they very creditably did, and have continued at all hours from that day forward.
Friendly Children.
But further down the wall is a little group of three. One, a still smaller boy, evidently the next in order of the fair-haired family. He cannot yet keep up with his brothers, and so is taken in hand by the two dark-haired little girls who look up shyly and smilingly from beneath long-fringed lashes. The younger, “Nellie,” has been ill and is a queer little figure pinned up in a shawl which reaches to the ground; the elder is a fat roundabout lady of nearly four, with dark beady eyes, and a trick of sliding a grubby little hand into that of her special friends when they stop for a minute’s chat. She is full of character and thoroughly appreciates the importance of being in charge of the other two, looking up with an absurd apologetic smile when the little invalid thrusts forward a few bits of dusty grass and a much-mauled daisy as an offering to the powers that be.
But, meantime, school has come out, and the number of wayside children is rapidly increasing. A girl of ten or so is quietly knitting as she strolls homewards, her busy fingers hardly stopping as she smiles and curtseys, turning as an afterthought to ask whether she may bring some water-cresses to the house.