Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

As for me, I took to wandering about a good deal there. Maybe I was love-sick—though I hope not, for my good name's sake. At least, it was about this time father said that we were far too young for any thought of marriage, but that Elsie could stay on in our house. Then Elsie was not happy, and was all the time wanting to go back to Nance Edgar's and her teaching at Mr. Mustard's—because my mother had got accustomed to the Caw girls, Harriet and Constantia, by this time, and could not bear the thought of parting with them. So Elsie, of course, would not stay, and go she did, as you shall hear.

We could have had some pretty good times, she and I, but for this worry. Father was about as fond of Elsie as I was (owing to the time behind the Monks' Oven). But, of course, he would not go openly against mother—that is, not in the house. It was not to be expected. If it had been anything to do with the shop or business, he would simply have told mother to mind her own affairs. And mother would have done it, too. But with the house it was different.

Well, all this made me pretty melancholy—with no more stand-up in me than a piece of chewed string. I read poetry, too, on the sly—such rot, as I now see—never anything written plain out, but all the words twisted, the grammar all tail foremost, and no sense at all mostly. I don't wonder nowadays people only use it in church to sing—and even then never think of bringing away their hymn books with them.

So what with the poetry, and the melancholy brought on by the thought of Elsie going back to have that old bristly weasel-faced Mustard breathe down her neck when she was doing sums, I brought myself to a pretty low ebb. Elsie was sorry for me, I think, but said nothing. She had aches of her own under the old blue serge blouse (left side front) when Harriet Caw went past her on our stairs rustling in silk underthings and an impudent little nose in the air as if she smelt a drain.

At any rate I spent a good deal of time in the woods that summer. Woods are most sympathetic places when you are young and just desperately sad, but can't for the life of you tell why. Doctors, I believe, know. But when mother asked old Doc McPhail, he only grinned and said she had better "let the kail-pot simmer a while longer. The broth would be none the worse!"

But my mother could make nothing out of that, nor I either for that matter. Yet through the glass of the office door I actually saw the doctor grin at my father, and my father—yes, he actually winked back! Old brutes, both of them—fifth commandment or no fifth commandment!

"No books—no office!" said old McPhail, "not for a while. Let the colt run till he tires!"

So the colt was, as it were, turned out to grass. The official explanation was that between nineteen and twenty there occurred a dangerous period—twenty-one was a yet more dangerous age. And I had overgrown my strength!

I liked that—I who could vault the counter twenty-five times back and forth, leaning only on the fingers of one hand!

Something during the long summer days drew me persistently to the Deep Moat Woods. Some magnet of danger past and gone for ever—something, too, of nearness to the little schoolhouse, to which, spite of my father and myself, Elsie had carried her point and returned. I was sulky and jealous about this—much to Elsie's indignation.