Looking on honest Marjory as mistress of all she surveyed, it never struck him, that in the points in which her dietary differed from his she was practising a compulsory economy. The article of meat was not often found in her bill of fare. But conscientiously she placed the little fellow’s bit of broiled meat before him every day, and told him when he inquired why she had none for herself that she did not like it, and that it did not agree with her, which he accepted as undoubted truths, and wondered and regretted secretly.
On winter evenings their tea was very cosy. A wheaten cake baked on the griddle, a new-laid egg each, and a cup of tea from the many-coloured delf teapot—a good deal burnt on the side next the fire. With the door barred and the window carefully closed, the fire burning cheerfully, and their candle lighting the party—who so happy? And was there not the old Robinson Crusoe, with binding black with age, and a frontispiece showing the hero with his grave countenance and beard, his tall cap and goat-skin dress, his musket over one shoulder and his umbrella over the other, and recounting his marvellous life in the quaint old type of Queen Anne? And was there not that other literary treasure, the old folio volume of Captain Cook’s, Commodore Anson’s, and other seafaring worthies’ voyages round or up and down the world, with no end of careful old copperplates, showing Pacific islands, curious volcanoes, flotillas of armed canoes, thick-lipped miscreants with rings in their noses and birds’ tails enlivening their foreheads, and long processions of official people, priests, &c., with a small white pocket-handkerchief each by way of dress? But better far than these, which together with her Bible and Prayer-Book, constituted Marjory’s library, was that good creature’s inexhaustible collection of fairy tales, received traditionally and recounted vivâ voce, and prefaced with the rhyme which even at this distance recalls me to the nursery fireside with the far-off tones of a kindly voice that I shall hear no more.
“Once upon a time there was a king and a queen,
As many have been,
But few I have seen,
Except in pictures!”
And starting with this little trumpeting and summons to attention—the “oyes-oyes-oyes” and immutable prelude of an ever-varying sequel, good Marjory, the herald of ever new wonders, would tell her tale of dwarfs and castles, of godmother fairies, and malignant enchantresses, broken-hearted princes and persecuted princesses, and enchanted palaces and awful forests, till the hour came for the little fellow to get to his bed and enter the no less wonderful land of dreams.
Another person who contributed to the regular entertainment of the boy was Tom Orange.
Tom Orange called at the cottage sometimes at intervals of three months, sometimes, for perhaps half a year, on the first of every month, and was always made welcome by Marjory Trevellian, and feasted with rashers and whatever else her humble larder afforded, and on going had established a mysterious right to a shilling “tip,” which he always made it a point should be an honourable secret among them.
What might be the nature of his business the little boy neither knew nor cared, but Tom Orange was in the boy’s eyes the ideal and epitome of all that was enchanting, brilliant, and exhilarating.