Princess Sarah, and Other Stories

by John Strange Winter

They were lively people who lived round about Gardener's Lane. The fathers worked hard all the week, and mostly got frightfully drunk on Saturday nights, when they went home and knocked their dirty, slipshod wives about, just by way of letting them know their duty to their lords and masters. And after this sort of thing had subsided, the wives generally gave the children a good cuffing all round, just by way of letting them know that they need not hope to take any liberties with their mothers because of their fathers' little ways; and then they all got quieted down for the night, and got up late on Sunday morning with headaches. If the day was fine, the men sat dull and sodden in the sunshine on the pavement in the wide street out of which Gardener's Lane ran, propping their backs against the wall and stretching their legs out, greatly to the danger and annoyance of passers-by; and while the men thus smoked the pipe of peace, the women stood in groups at their doorways, scratching their elbows and comparing their bruises; and the children, who had gone to sleep the previous night in tears and tribulation, found keen enjoyment in watching for the parson and the few people who went to the church round the corner, and called names and uncomplimentary terms after them as they turned in at the gates which led thereto.

Now, as Mr. Dicki'son was a person of a reserved and taciturn disposition, who was distinctly respectable in all his doings, who never got drunk, and openly despised any one else who did, it will readily be believed that he was not popular in the neighbourhood of Gardener's Lane. He was not anxious to be popular, and had it not been that the house in which he lived was his own, and that it suited his family as a home, Gardener's Lane would not have counted him among its inhabitants.

Mrs. Dicki'son was a good deal younger than her husband--a pretty, weak, sentimental woman, rather gushing in disposition, and very injudicious. She was always overwhelmed with troubles and babies; although, as a matter of fact, she had but six children altogether, and one of them died while still an infant. Gerty was twelve years old, and Ada Elizabeth just a year younger; then came a gap of two years ere a boy, William Thomas, was born. William Thomas, if he had lived, would, I fancy, have inherited his father's reserved disposition, for, I must say, a more taciturn babe it has never at any time been my lot to encounter. He was a dreadful trouble to his dissatisfied mother, who felt, and said, that there was something uncanny about a child who objected to nothing--who seemed to know no difference between his own thumb and the bottle which fed him, and would go on sucking as patiently at the one as at the other; who would lie with as much apparent comfort on his face as on his back, and seemed to find no distinction between his mother's arms and a corner of the wide old sofa, which earlier and later babies resented as a personal insult, and made remarks accordingly. However, after six months of this monotonous existence, William Thomas was removed from this lower sphere, passing away with the same dignity as he had lived, after which he served a good purpose still, which was to act as a model to all the other babies who resented the corner of the sofa and declined to accept the substitution of their thumbs, or any other makeshift, for the bottle of their desires.

Two years later was a girl, called Polly, and two years later again was Georgie; and then, for a time, Mrs. Dicki'son being free from the cares of a baby, fretted and worried that "'ome isn't like 'ome without a baby in it." But when Georgie was just turned three little Miriam arrived, and Mrs. Dicki'son was able to change her complaint, and tell all her acquaintance that she did think Georgie was going to be the last, and she was sure she was "just wore out."

Most of the children took after their mother. True, as I have already said, William Thomas had given signs of not doing so; but William Thomas had not really lived long enough for any one to speak definitely on the subject. All the rest thrived and grew apace, and they all took after their mother, both in looks and character, with the exception of the second girl, "our Ada Elizabeth."

"The very moral of her father," Mrs. Dicki'son was accustomed to sigh, as she tried in vain to trim Ada Elizabeth's hat so that the plain little face underneath it should look as bright and fresh as the rosy faces of her sisters. But it was a hopeless task, and Mrs. Dicki'son had to give it up in despair and with many a long speech full of pity for herself that she, of all people in the world, should have such a hard trial put upon her as a child who was undeniably plain.

For the child was plain. She had been a plain, featureless baby, of uncertain colour, inclining to drab--very much, indeed, what William Thomas was after her. A baby who, even when newly washed, never looked quite clean; a little girl whose pinafore never hung right, and with tow-coloured hair which no amount of hair-oil or curl-papers could make anything but lank and unornamental! A child with a heavy, dull face, and a mouth that seldom relaxed into a smile though there were people (not Mrs. Dicki'son among them, though) who did not fail to notice that the rare smile was a very sweet one, infinitely sweeter than ever was seen on the four pretty rosy faces of the other children.

A child with a heavy, dull face.

Mrs. Dicki'son was eloquent about Ada Elizabeth's looks and temper. "I'm sure," she cried one day to Gerty, who was pretty, and quick of wit, and knew to a hair's-breadth how far she could go with her mother, "it's 'ard upon me I should have such a plain-looking child as our Ada Elizabeth. It's no use me trying to trim her hat so as to make her look a credit to us. I'm sure it's aggravating, it is. I've trimmed your two hats just alike, and she looks no better in hers than she does in her old school hat, and I got two nice curly tips just alike. 'Pon my word, it's quite thrown away on her."