The Vagaries of Tod and Peter

by L. Allen Harker

The cottage where Pussy had taken rooms was ever so pretty, and had a garden full of currant-bushes and celery.

For three days they had a lovely time. They sought giants in the woods, finding squirrels instead—which were prettier and only less exciting; they paddled their feet in the stream and caught minnows in a bottle; they pretended that the geese on the green were “Trolls,” and routed them with great slaughter; and they had found mushrooms before breakfast in a neighboring field.

Then Pussy had to go away, and for Bunchy the face of Nature was changed and clouded. Only Nana was left, and, although very kind, she was not an exciting companion. She knew nothing of giants, and seemed to care very little about Trolls. Moreover, on this particular morning she sat indoors making a cotton dress, and told Bunchy to “run and play in the garden like a good little boy, and not worry.” How can people, he thought, sit in a room and sew when all the beautiful out-of-doors seems clamoring for them to come and admire it?

However, he played in the garden for a while; but it was rather a small garden, and he grew tired of being a “third son” all by himself, with no one to admire him, so he came in again and climbed the steep little staircase. Finding the door of his mother’s room open, he went in. The dressing-table faced the door, and the first thing he saw was a pair of Pussy’s slippers standing in front of it. They had tall curly heels and buckles, such as she loved, and he remembered how, even with the tall heels, she did not reach to daddy’s shoulder. Somehow the sight of those slippers made him want her so dreadfully that he couldn’t stay in the room or in the garden. He went out into the road to walk and walk until he should come to Yorkshire, where daddy was laid up in the house of a bachelor friend with whom he had gone to shoot.

It was a very straight road, with a trim path by the side. By and by he came to some big gates. There was a little house inside them, all covered with purple clematis. The gate stood open, and as Bunchy was rather tired of the neat, straight road, he turned in, and went down a very broad gravel path. A little way inside the gate stood two little churches, one on each side of the path; beyond them, as far as Bunchy could see, it was all garden. There were flowering shrubs, and trees, and lots of grass, but it was unlike any garden he had ever seen before, for it was full of little mounds, and there were crosses, and slabs of stone, and marble angels dotted about among the mounds.

He turned down a side-path to investigate further in this strange garden. Nobody was in sight, and he wandered on by himself till, turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a man.

The man was dressed in black, and was sitting on a big stone slab—a very grew old slab; but close at his feet there was one of those curious mounds that puzzled Bunchy, and although this one had no grass upon it, you could hardly see the brown earth, for it was almost covered with scattered flowers—all of one kind.

Bunchy knew the flower by sight, for Pussy always wore a bit in her tam-o’-shanter when she came back from Scotland. The man did not move as Bunchy came up to him. The little boy regarded him with grave brown eyes, and something in his expression made Bunchy sure that the man was sorry.

Now, in Bunchy’s house, when people are sorry, Pussy talks about something else, and she does it so beautifully that they straightway forget their sorrow in the interest of her remarks. Bunchy felt that he ought to talk about something else to this man who looked so sorry; but how can you change a subject when no subject has been broached?

So the child went up to the sorry man and lifted his tam-o’-shanter, saying politely: