Chapter Five.
Mary Ann Jolly.
“But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day;
And I cried for her more than a week, dears—”
They say that the world—and of course that means the people in it—has changed very much in the last half century or so. I daresay in some ways this is true, but it is not in all. There are some ways in which I hope and think people will never change much. Hearts will never change, I hope—good, kind hearts who love and trust each other I mean; and little children, they surely will always be found the same,—simple and faithful, happy and honest; why, the very word childlike would cease to have any meaning were the natures it describes to alter.
Looking back over more than fifty years to a child life then, far away from here, flowing peacefully on, I recognise the same nature, the same innocent, unsuspicious enjoyment, the same quaint, so-called “old-fashioned” ways that now-a-days I find in the children growing up about me. The little ones of to-day enjoy a shorter childhood, there is more haste to hurry them forward in the race—we would almost seem to begrudge them their playtime—but that I think is the only real difference. My darlings are children after all; they love the sunshine and the flowers, mud-pies and mischief, dolls and story-books, as fervently as ever. And long may they do so!
My child of fifty years ago was in all essentials a real child. Yet again, in some particulars, she was exceptional, and exceptionally placed. She had never travelled fifty miles from her home, and that home was far away in the country, in Scotland. And a Scottish country home in those days was far removed from the bustle and turmoil and excitement of the great haunts of men. Am I getting beyond you, children, dear? Am I using words and thinking thoughts you can scarcely follow? Well, I won’t forget again. I will tell you my simple story in simple words.
This long-ago little girl was named Janet. She was the youngest of several brothers and sisters, some of whom, when she was born even, were already out in the world. They were, on the whole, a happy, united family; they had their troubles, and disagreements perhaps too, sometimes, but in one thing they all joined, and that was in loving and petting little Janet. How well she remembers even now, all across the long half century, how the big brothers would dispute as to which of them should carry her in her flowered chintz dressing-gown, perched like a tiny queen on their shoulders, to father’s and mother’s room to say good-morning; how on Hallowe’en the rosiest apples and finest nuts were for “wee Janet;” how the big sisters would work for hours at her dolls’ clothes; how, dearest memory of all, the kind, often careworn, studious father would read aloud to her, hour after hour, as she lay on the hearth-rug, coiled up at his feet.
For little Janet could not read much to herself. She was not blind, but her sight was imperfect, and unless the greatest care had been taken she might, by the time she grew up, have lost it altogether. To look at her you would not have known there was anything wrong with her blue eyes; the injury was the result of an accident in her infancy, by which one of the delicate sight nerves had been hurt, though not so as to prevent the hope of cure. But for several years she was hardly allowed to use her eyes at all. She used to wear a shade whenever she was in a bright light, and she was forbidden to read, or to sew, or to do anything which called for much seeing. How she learnt to read I do not know—I do not think she could have told you herself—but still it is certain that she did learn; perhaps her kind father taught her this, and many more things than either he or she suspected in the long hours she used to lie by his study fire, sometimes talking to him in the intervals of his writing, sometimes listening with intense eagerness to the legends and ballads his heart delighted in, sometimes only making stories to herself as she sat on the hearth-rug playing with her dolls.