But again I am wandering from the morning of Ferdy's birthday, when he lay in bed wide awake and gazed at as much as he could see of the outside world, that lovely May morning.
It was lovely, and everything alive seemed to be thinking so, as well as the little hero of the day—birds, trees, blossoms—even the insects that were beginning to find out that the warm days were coming, for a great fat blue-bottle was humming away with the loud summery hum which is the only nice thing about blue-bottles, I think. And not always nice either perhaps, to tell the truth. If one is busy learning some difficult lesson, or adding up long columns of figures, a blue-bottle's buzz is rather distracting. But this morning it was all right, seeming to give just the touch of summer sound which was wanting to the perfection of Ferdy's happiness as he lay there, rather lazily, I am afraid we must confess—a little sleepy still perhaps.
What a nice beautiful place the world is, he thought to himself! How can people grumble at anything when the sun shines and everything seems so happy! In winter perhaps—well, yes, in winter, when it is very cold and grey, there might be something to be said on the other side, even though winter to such as Ferdy brings its own delights too. But in summer even the poor people should be happy; their cottages do look so pretty, almost prettier than big houses, with the nice little gardens in front, and roses and honeysuckle and traveller's joy climbing all over the walls and peeping in at the windows. Ferdy did not think he would at all mind living in a cottage, for Evercombe was a remarkably pretty village, and to all outside appearance the cottages were very neat and often picturesque, and the children had never been inside any, except a few of the clean and nicely kept ones where their mother knew that the people were good and respectable. So they had little idea as yet of the discomfort and misery that may be found in some cottage homes even in the prettiest villages, though their father and mother knew this well, and meant that Ferdy and Christine should take their part before long in trying to help those in need of comfort or advice.
"I suppose," Ferdy went on thinking to himself—for once he got an idea in his head he had rather a trick of working it out—"I suppose there are some people who are really unhappy—poor people, who live in ugly dirty towns perhaps," and then his memory strayed to a day last year when he had driven with his father through the grim-looking streets of a mining village some distance from Evercombe. "That must be horrid. I wonder any one lives there! Or very old people who can't run about or scarcely walk, and who are quite deaf and nearly blind. Yes, they can't feel very happy. And yet they do sometimes. There's papa's old, old aunt; she seems as happy as anything, and yet I should think she's nearly a hundred, for she's grandpapa's aunt. She's not blind though; her eyes are quite bright and smily, and she's not so very deaf. And then she's not poor. Perhaps if she was very poor—" but no, another aged friend came into his mind—old Barley, who lived with his already old daughter in the smallest and poorest cottage Ferdy had ever been in.
"And he's quite happy too," thought the little boy, "and so's poor Betsey, though she can't scarcely walk, 'cos of her rheumatism. It is rather funny that they are happy. The worst of all would be to be lame, I think—'cept p'r'aps being blind. Oh dear! I am glad I'm not old, or lame, or blind, or things like that. But I say, I do believe the clock's striking seven, and—oh, there's Flowers! I might have run in to see Chrissie just for a minute or two first if I hadn't got thinking. I—" but then came an interruption.
An eager tap at the door,—not Flowers's tap he knew at once,—and in reply to his as eager "Come in" a rush of little bare feet across the floor, and Chrissie's arms round his neck in a real birthday hug.
"Flowers is just coming. I meant to wake so early. I've brought your present—mine's always the first, isn't it, darling?"
And Chrissie settled herself at the foot of the bed, curling up her cold toes, and drawing her pink flannel dressing-gown more closely round her that she might sit there in comfort and regale her eyes on her brother's delight as he carefully undid the many papers in which her present to him was enfolded.
It was a very pretty present, and Ferdy's natural good taste knew how to admire it, as his affectionate heart knew how to feel grateful to Chrissie for the real labour she had bestowed upon it. "It" was a writing-case, embroidered in silks of many lovely shades, and with a twisted monogram of Ferdy's initials—"F. . R."—"Ferdinand Walter Ross"—worked in gold threads in the centre of the cover. It was a very good piece of work indeed for a little girl of Chrissie's age, and promised well for her skill and perseverance in days to come. Ferdy's eyes sparkled with pleasure. "Oh, Chrissie," he said, "you've never made me anything quite as pretty as this! How clever you are getting, and how did you manage to work it all without my seeing?"