Sweethearts at Home

by S. R. Crockett

"Mac owes me more than that!" he said, when I asked him about it. "I brought him up by hand!"

I presume he meant the way Hugh John, my brother, brings up Sir Toady—though that is with both hands, sometimes feet too.

There was one Sunday that I remember very well; at Newton Stewart it was. There had been (or was going to be) a kind of circus in the town. Or maybe they were only resting, as even circus folk must do sometimes.

Anyway I looked out at the window in the early morning, and if I had seen a ghost I could not have been more surprised. And so would you—for there, calmly grazing on the field just under my window, as quietly as if it had been a cow, was a huge elephant! I did not see any circus vans, nor the tents, nor anything—save and except this great Indian elephant in the middle of the green field! You may imagine I thought that I was still dreaming. I watched it pad-padding softly about, taking the greatest pleasure in rolling like a donkey when the harness is taken off. It also rubbed the big soft spreads of its feet on the softer grass. I suppose its poor soles were sore with traveling over our hard cycling roads, and now it was keeping Sunday after its kind, doing its best to obey the commandment. And, as father says, what more can any of us do than be fully persuaded in our own minds? One thing I noticed which astonished me, and I think it will most people. The big beast must have weighed a ton, I should think, at the least. And yet, as it went here and there over the field of nice Galloway grass, it walked so softly that the grass "rose elastic from its airy tread." Yes, it actually did. Even Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly have found a footmark in a quarter of an hour. Why, even the Maid, not to speak of myself, could not get so lightly over the ground as that. We watched the elephant all that day, whenever we could, that is—and thought of him in church, though the minister was a nice man, nice-looking too, and did not preach too long. It was, of course, frightfully wicked of us. Because it was in one of the old "Kirks of the Martyrs" that the service was held. But when the minister came to see us in the evening, we showed him the elephant still grazing away, wig-wagging its long trunk like a supple pendulum, and switching away quite imaginary flies with its tiny tail! The minister was such a very good sort that we thought we ought to own up why we had been restless in church. (He might have seen us, you know.) So I said we were ashamed that we had not attended better to his sermon. And do you know what he answered back, after seeing the elephant take a double donkey roll, with its great sausagey legs in the air? "I'm glad," he said, "that I did not see the elephant do that before sermon. For if I had, I don't believe that I could have preached!"

"A pretty nice sort of a minister, that!" said Hugh John afterwards.

"I should go to his church myself," cried Toady Lion, and then, checking himself suddenly under the gaze of Hugh John, he added, "I mean, when I had to!"

There—that is quite enough to put in my Diary about a circus elephant, though I will admit that it was about the very queerest thing that ever happened to me in all my life—I mean the most unexpected, of course, for when explained it was all perfectly simple.

But I must get on with my Diary of this Galloway journey, and the "Sweethearty" things we saw there. Dear me, I had meant to tell about Gatehouse too (which happened before Newton Stewart, only I forgot). There was a nice minister there too, who went about without his hat, and smoked, and called out nice things across the street to Tom and Dick and Harry. Altogether we were fortunate in the ministers we met all through the trip. And I think the children of Gatehouse must have benefited too, owing to the nice bareheaded minister. For certainly they are not nearly so rude and pesterful as I remember them when father and I stopped there—oh, how many years ago? Ten, at least, or maybe more. Then they rang the bell of the tricycle and said horrid things when father was in the baker's shop. They made me so angry—I can remember it yet—I said I would tell father. I nearly cried. But this time there was no one who was not quite nice to us—except, Oh, yes, one person who wouldn't let us any rooms. But that did not matter. Indeed, it was a blessing. For we went farther down the street till we came to a delightful hotel or inn or something, where Miss Blackett, who kept it, was just as good to us as she could be, and gave us nice things to eat on the sly. Also the "Little Brown Bear" came again, and told us more stories in the evenings. Then, at ten or eleven at night, he got on his cycle and wheeled away into the dark. It was so nice and romantic that I wished I could have gone too. It is splendid in the summer to wheel on and on through the archway of the green and sleeping woods. It is best when you are sure of the policemen, and can ride without a light, which does no good, but makes everything dark as pitch, and as uninteresting as the Queensferry Road.

Then I saw the two boys at Creetown who once on a time were brought in from playing on the street, and tidied up so that they might be ready to kiss me. They both howled at the thought. For which I don't in the least blame them. But all the same they had high collars on, and I don't think that they would have minded nearly as much now.

This, of course, came before the elephant, but then, you see, if things don't go into my Dear Diary just when I think of them, the probability is that they won't go at all.