“Father,” said Olly, “did Beowulf die—ever?”
“Yes. When he was quite an old man he had another great fight with a dragon, who was guarding a cave full of golden treasure on the sea-shore; and though he killed the dragon, the dragon gave him a terrible wound, so that when his friends came to look for him they found him lying all but dead in the cave. He was just able to tell them to make a great mound of earth over him when he was dead, on a high rock close by, that sailors might see it from their ships and think of him when they saw it, and then he died. And when he was dead they carried him up to the rock, and there they burned his body, and then they built up a great high mound of earth, and they put Beowulf’s bones inside, and all the treasure from the dragon’s cave. They were ten days building up the mound. Then when it was all done they rode around it weeping and chanting sorrowful songs, and at last they left him there, saying as they went away that never should they see so good a king or so true a master any more. And for hundreds of years afterwards, when the sailors out at sea saw the high mound rising on its point of rock, they said one to another, ‘There is Beowulf’s Mount,’ and they began to tell each other of Beowulf’s brave deeds—how he lived and how he died, and how he fought with Grendel and the wild sea dragons. There, now, I have told you all I know about Beowulf,” said Mr. Norton, getting up and turning the children off his knee, “and if it isn’t somebody else’s turn now it ought to be.”
“Aunt Emma! Aunt Emma!” shouted Olly, who was so greedy for stories that he could almost listen all day long without being tired.
But Aunt Emma only smiled through her spectacles and pointed to the window. The children ran to look out, and they could hardly believe their eyes when they saw that it had actually stopped raining, and that over the tree-tops was a narrow strip of blue sky, the first they had seen for three whole days.
“Oh you nice blue sky!” exclaimed Milly, dancing up and down before the window with a beaming face. “Mind you stay there and get bigger. We’ll get on our hats presently and come out to look at you. Oh! there’s John Backhouse coming down the hill with the dogs. Mother, may we go up ourselves and ask Becky and Tiza to come to tea?”
“But Aunt Emma must tell us her story first,” persisted Olly, who hated being cheated out of a story by anything or anybody. “She promised.”
“You silly boy!” said Aunt Emma, “as if I was going to keep you indoors listening to stories just now, when the sun’s shining for the first time for three whole days. I promised you my story on a wet day, and you shall have it—never fear. There’ll be plenty more wet days before you go away from Ravensnest, I’m afraid. There goes my knitting, and mother’s putting away her work, and father’s stretching himself—which means we’re all going for a walk.”
“To fetch Becky and Tiza, mother?” asked Milly; and when mother said “Yes, if you like,” the two children raced off down the long passage to the nursery in the highest possible spirits.
Soon they were all walking along the dripping drive past high banks of wet fern, and under trees which threw down showers of rain-drops at every puff of wind. And when they got into the road beside the river the children shouted with glee to see their brown shallow little river turned into a raging flood of water, which went sweeping and hurrying through the fields, and every now and then spreading itself over them and making great pools among the poor drowned hay. They ran on to look for the stepping-stones, but to their amazement there was not a stone to be seen. The water was rushing over them with a great roar and swirl, and Milly shivered a little bit when she remembered their bathe there a week before.
“Well, old woman,” said Mr. Norton, coming up to them, “I don’t suppose you’d like, a bathe to-day—quite.”