A Christmas Child: A Sketch of a Boy-Life

by Mrs. Molesworth

I could tell you, dear little friends, many pretty stories of Ted and his tiny sister during the first sunny year of little Narcissa's life, but I daresay it may be more interesting to you to hear more of these children as they grow older. The day-by-day life of simple happy little people is, I trust, familiar to you all, and as I want you to know my boy Ted, to think of him through your own childhood as a friend and companion, I must not take up too much of the little book, so quickly filled, with the first years only of his life. And these had now come to an end—a change, to Ted a great and wonderful change, happened about this time. Before little Cissy had learnt to run alone, before Ted had mastered the longest words in his precious "hymn-book," these little people had to leave their beautiful mountain home. One day when the world was looking pensive and sad in its autumn dress, the good-byes had to be said—good-bye to the garden and Ted's shaky bridge; good-bye to old David; and alas! good-bye to Cheviott's grave, all that was left of the faithful old collie to say good-bye to; good-bye to the far-off murmur of the sea and the silent mountain that little Ted had once been so afraid of; good-bye to all of the dear old home, where Ted's blue cart was left forgotten under a tree, where the birds went on singing and chirping as if there were no such things as good-byes in the world—and Ted and Cissy were driven away to a new home, and the oft-told stories of their first one were all that was left of it to their childish minds.

A good many hours' journey from the mountains and the sea near which these children had spent their first happy years, in quite another corner of England, there is to be found a beautiful, quiet old town. It is beautiful from its position, for it stands on rising ground; a fine old river flows round the feet of its castle rock, and on the other side are to be seen high cliffs with pleasant winding paths, sometimes descending close to the water's edge, and it is beautiful in itself. For the castle is such a castle as is not to be met with many times in one's life. It has taken centuries of repose after the stormy scenes it lived through in the long-ago days to make it what it now is—a venerable old giant among its fellows, grim and solemn yet with a dreamy peacefulness about it, that has a wonderful charm. As you cross the unused drawbridge and your footsteps sink in the mossy grass of the great courtyard, it would not be difficult to fancy you were about to enter the castle of the sleeping-beauty of the dear old fairy-tale—so still and dream-like it seems, so strange it is to picture to one's fancy the now grass-grown keep with the din and clang of horsemen and men-at-arms that it must once have known. And near by is a grand old church, solemn and silent too, but differently so from its twin-brother the castle. The one is like a warrior resting after his battles, thinking sadly of the wild scenes he has seen and taken part in; the other like a holy man of old, silent and solemn too, but with the weight of human sorrows and anxieties that have been confided to him, yet ever ready to sympathise and to point upwards with a hope that never fails.

These at least were the feelings that the sight of the old church and the old castle gave me, children dear. I don't suppose Ted thought of them in this way when he first made their acquaintance, and yet I don't know. He might not have been able to say much of what he felt, he was such a little fellow. But he did feel, and in a way that was strange and new, and nearly took his breath away the first time he entered the beautiful old church, walking quietly up the aisle behind his father, his little hat in his hand, gazing up with his earnest eyes at the mysterious stretch of the lofty roof. "O mother," he said, when he went home, "when I am big I will always like the high church best." And when the clear ringing chimes burst forth, as they did with ever-fresh beauty four times a day, sounding to the baby fancy as if they came straight down from heaven, it was all Ted could do not to burst into tears, as he had done that summer day when Mabel had sung "Home, sweet home" in the mountain-gorge.

For it was in this old town, with its church and castle and quaint streets, where some of the houses are still painted black and white, and others lean forward in the top stories as if they wanted to kiss each other; where the front doors mostly open right on to the street, and you come upon the dear old gardens as a sort of delicious surprise at the back; where each turn as you walk about these same old streets gives you a new peep, more delightful than the last, of the river or the cliffs or the far distant hills with their tender lights and shadows; where, on market days the country people come trooping in with their poultry and butter and eggs, with here and there a scarlet cloak among them, the coming and going giving the old High Street the look almost of a foreign town;—here in this dear old place little Ted took root again, and learned to love his new home so much that he forgot to pine for the mountains and the sea. And, here, some years after we said good-bye to them as they drove away from the pretty house in the garden, we find them again—Ted, a big boy of nine or ten, Cissy looking perhaps older than she really was, so bright and hearty and capable a little maiden had she become.

They are in the garden, the dear garden that was as delightful a playing place as children could have, though quite, quite different from the first one you saw Ted in. There it was all ups and downs, lying as it did on the side of a hill; here the paths are on flat ground, though some are zigzaggy of course, as the little paths in an interesting garden always should be; while besides these, some fine broad ones run straight from one end to another, making splendid highroads for drives in wheelbarrows or toy-carts. And in this garden too the trees are high and well grown, and plenty of them. It was just the place for hide and seek or "I spy."

Ted and Cissy have been working at their gardens.

"Oh dear," said the little girl, throwing down her tiny rake and hoe, "Cissy is so tired. And the f'owers won't grow if they isn't planted kick. Cissy is so fond of f'owers."

"So am I," said Ted, "but girls are so quickly tired. It's no good their trying to garden."

Cissy looked rather disconsolate.

"Boys shouldn't have all the f'owers," she said. "Zoo's not a summer child, Ted, zoo's a Kismas child. Zoo should have snow, and Cissy should have f'owers."