II
PURPLE "THINKS"
June again. Aged ten. Afternoon of the Day when the first Strawberry was Half-ripe.
It will never be whole-ripe, owing to an accident which happened to it. However, none of the Grown-ups knew except Sandy the gardener, and he only tells us not to. But we don't really mind.
Which makes me wonder sometimes if Grown-ups have a world of their own, same as us Children. I don't think so. If they had, they wouldn't always be writing and reading, or paying calls and sitting on chairs, and looking Nim-Pim-Pimmany! They can't really have good times all by themselves, same as us. What do you think? I suppose it is account-books, and postmen, and having to understand the sermon that makes them look like that.
But at any rate they have not an idea that children really are thinking – nor how much they know. Perhaps that is just as well. For, as they say about the monkeys, if they only knew how we talk among ourselves, they might set us to work. At least they would not be so ready to believe in us when next they saw us with our "behaving faces" on.
Now I will tell you about our house. It is a nice one, and I have a bedroom with greeny paper, and out of the window you can see the Pentland hills and the flagstaff in front of them. The flagstaff is on the drying green, but the hills are a good deal farther away. Maid Margaret and I live there – that is, at nights, and I tell her stories if she will lie on her right side and not kick.
Sometimes we have fights, but not such ones as the boys have up above. Often we can hear them stamping and thumping, and then coming down with a huge "bang" that you would think would shake down the house. That is when they clutch and wrestle. Outside there is just the Low Garden and the High Garden, a road between big old yew-trees, and then you are at the library, which is made of wood. And mostly there is a ticking sound inside, which is the typewriter —tick-a-tack – tick-a-tack! Then a pause, a few growls, and then the noise of a book being pulled out, rustling leaves, more stamps, more growls, and again —tick-a-tack!
It goes on like that most of the time, except when the Animal inside must be fed, or on fine afternoons, when he comes out to play.
Then we have quite lovely times in the woods and hunting for things, or picnicking. And it is nice to see the white tablecloth, which Somebody has arranged on the green grass or under the shade, all covered with nice things for you to eat.
Then all about there are woods – oh! miles and miles of them. There is the Low Park, where there are lots of apples – rather crabby, but not much the worse for that when you are really hungry.
The Low Park is pretty big, and has a stream running through it, quite slowly and steadily. Then down below is the river-bed, all rocks and pools. Because the water is drawn off for the mills below. We can play there in the summer-time, and keep fish as safe as in an aquarium.
Of course there are nice places higher up – where Esk goes along lipping over the pebbles, tugging at the overhanging branches of trees, or opening out to make a mirror for the purple heather on the slopes above. But of all these you shall hear before I have done. Oh, yes, I mean that you shall.
And in the evening all is lovely dark purple except the hills, which are light purple and green in patches, the shape of cloud-shadows.
I wonder if ever you got to love words, colors, and things till they grew to be part of yourself? What do I mean? Well, I will try and explain.
When I was little, the word "purple" somehow nearly made me cry. Oh, no – I did not like dresses that color, nor even ribbons – much. Only just the word. Sometimes funnily, as in the line —
"A pleasant purple Porpoise,
From the Waters of Chili."
Sometimes seriously, as in two lines which have always brought the tears to my eyes – I do not know why. I think I must have put them together myself when I was thinking in sermon-time (which is a very good time to think in). Because the first is the line of a Scottish psalm, and the rest is – I know not what – some jingle that ran in my head, I suppose. But they made me cry – they do still, I confess, and it is the color-word that does it! – that, and the feeling that it is years and years ago since first I began to say them over to myself. It seems as if there would never again be such hues on the mountains, never such richness on the heather, never sunsets so arrogant (yes, I got the word that time) as those when I was little.
But what, you ask, are the lines? Well, you won't think anything of them. I know you will laugh.
They are just – but oh! I am ashamed to put them down to be printed. For they are just altogether mine – all little girls who have been lonely little girls will know what I mean. Boys are pigs and will laugh – except Hugh John.
However, I can't put off any longer, can I? Oh, yes, I could, but – it is better to be over and done with it.
MY POEM
Made up when I was (about) Four.
"I to the hills will lift mine eyes —
The purple hills of Paradise."
That's all! Now laugh! And if you do, I shan't ever love you again. Father smiles and says that very likely I did put them together, but that the last line is in a book of poems by a man named Trowbridge.
Well, what if it is? Can't I think it and Mr. Trowbridge too? I never saw his old book. Why, I could not read then, and he couldn't know what a little girl was thinking, sitting down by Esk-waterside and watching the purple hills – till I was told to come in and haste-me-fast, because the dew was falling.
But of course I don't tell this to everybody. They would call it sentiment. But I pity the little lonely girl who doesn't have "thinks" like that all to herself, which she would die sooner than tell to anybody except to her Dear Diary.
After the boys got bigger and could romp, I didn't have nearly so many thinks – not time enough, I suppose. Boys need a heap of watching. At first they have no soul – only a mouth to be silly with, teeth to eat with, and a Little Imp inside each to make them pesterful and like boys.
Well, little by little, I made a collection of things that were of my color – all in my head, of course.
"League upon rolling league of imperial purple!"
I think it was father who wrote that, and I believe his heart was pretty big and proud within him, seeing his own heathery country spread out before him when he did it. I wonder if something went cluck-cluck (like a hen) at the bottom of his throat? It does in mine sometimes.
Then there is "the Purple Wine of the Balkans," and "the wine-hearted sea" – but that last I only heard of at school.
And I liked a story about an Irish patriot who, when they brought him an address of honor with a green cover, told them to take it away and bind it in purple, the color of the heather.
Also I loved to read about heroines with "eyes like the purple twilight," though just at present these are scarce in our part of the country. One of our forbears (funny word – for we are the Four Bears, the little ones! Somebody I know is the Big Big Growly – only don't tell him!) well, one of our ancestors – immediate ancestors, I mean – left us blue eyes, but as we grew older they all turned gray, which I think unfair.
Later on, I loved to be told about the "purple Codex" – that is, the Gospels written out on purple vellum in letters all gold. That must be lovely. I tried to stain a sheet with Amethystine ink, and print on it in gold paint. But it only looked blotchy and stupid – you never saw such a mess. So I thought it was better just to dream about the Codex.
I wasn't born in the purple myself, but I resolved early never to marry anybody that wasn't. And I should have a purple nursery, and purple bibs, and a purple "prim-pram," and a nurse with purple strings to her caps, and baby should live exclusively on preserved violets (candied) and beautiful purple jelly.
Then wouldn't she be a happy child? Not commonplace like me, and compelled to wear a clean white pinafore. They don't half know how to bring up children now-a-days.
Oh, how I do wish that I had been "born in the purple!"
But I wasn't, and white soils so easily. You see, if the purple were only dark enough, you wouldn't get scolded half so much, and they wouldn't all the time be telling you that milk food is "so wholesome"! Oh, how tired I am of being told that!
Still, after all, chocolate isn't bad, and you can easily make believe that it is purple instead of brown.
At least I can. And it tastes just the same.
Good-by, Dear, my Diary. There's Nurse calling.
III
PRESENTS
Still the Same Age. But no Date.
I wish we could choose our own presents, don't you?
People give you surprises, or think they do. For mostly you can tell pretty well by keeping an eye on the parcels and things as they come in. Or one of the servants tells you, or you hear the Grown-ups whispering when they think you are not attending. Attending! Why, you are always attending. How could you learn else? They did just the same themselves, only they forget.
Of all presents, I hate most "useful" ones – "to teach you how to keep your things tidy," and what "you will be sure to need by and by, you know, dear!"
For when the time comes you've had it so long that you don't care a button about it. I suppose there are some Miss Polly Prinks who like things to put on. But I haven't got to that yet. Nor yet money that you are told you mustn't spend. There ought to be a "Misfit Presents' Emporium," where you could take all the presents you don't care about and get them exchanged for what you do.
"Please, sir, can I have a nice lot of the newest books with the prettiest pictures for four Jack-in-the-boxes, eight dolls (three dressed), a windmill and a Noah's Ark, that only wants Noah and one of his son's wives' legs?"
"Let me see them, miss, please!"
"Can I look at the books on that shelf?"
"Oh, these are the adventure books for Grown-ups," says the man; "children don't read such thing now-a-days – something in the picture-book way, Miss —Little Sambo and the Seven Pious Pigs, or How many Blue Beans make Five?"
But I would know ever so much better, and would have down half-a-dozen Grown-up books that just make your eyes stand out of your head like currants in a ginger-bread bunny. That's what I like. No children's books for me. And I'd have them all chosen as soon as the Presents' Exchange man had made sure that none of the paws were knocked off the green kangaroo, and that the elephant still owned a trunk.
It is a good idea, isn't it? What do you think? About the Exchange, I mean.
Once my Uncle Tom got a birthday present from Aunt Margaret. It was a set of fire-irons for the drawing-room grate! And when her birthday came round Uncle Tom chose for her present —a pipe-rack for the smoking-room!
I think that was fine – and so does Hugh John.
Now I am not complaining. August the tenth is my birthday, and it is a good time for birthdays – being sufficiently long before Christmas. I pity the poor people who were born in early January. Also presents are good at our house, and there are enough of us to change round among ourselves if any mistakes do occur. But what I really want to tell you about is what happened to Little Sarah Brown, who lives just outside our gate.
Sarah's people are very poor and her father makes them poorer by going and drinking – as he says, "To drown Dull Care." My father says if he let Dull Care alone and drowned himself it would be better for every one all round. And that's a good deal for father to say, mind you, because he believes dreadfully in letting people alone.
Well, Little Sarah Brown's mother was ill most of the time. She had a cough and couldn't do washing, so Little Sarah came to our house to run messages and go to the post with big letters when father said so. It was pretty nice for Sarah too, because every second Saturday she got half-a-sovereign from father. He grabbled deep in his pocket until he found a piece of about the size, looked if it was gold, and handed it over to Little Sarah.
Just fancy carrying about real-for-true gold like that! Some people are dreadfully careless. Well, one time Little Sarah went up to the library to get her Saturday's money. Father was mooning about among his books, and shoved something at her, telling her gruffly to be off. He hadn't time to be thanked then, but would see about it on Monday!
And do you know – it was a whole big sovereign he had given her! Now of course he never knew. He wouldn't have found out in twenty centuries, and Little Sarah knew it. She did not notice till she was nearly home, and then she stopped under a lamp-post that was early lighted to look at what was in her hand.
Yes, it was a sovereign. Nothing less!
And, do you know, a bad, bad boy named Pete Bolton came behind Little Sarah and gave her hand a good knock up.
She would have lost it in about two ticks, because Pete Bolton was a perfectly horrid boy, and would have stolen it like nothing at all. Only Little Sarah was upon him with a bound like a tiger, and bit his hand (yes, it was nasty, being very dirty). Only she bit Pete's hand from a sense of duty, and made him let go. She had her face rubbed in the mud, her hair tugged, and all, but she never let go the sovereign – half of which wasn't hers.
There was a girl for you, and yet boys will say that only they are brave! Well, don't you think it was pretty hard for Sarah – harder, I think, after fighting for it than before? You see, she thought of all the nice things she could get for her mother with the extra ten shillings, besides new boots for herself that didn't let in the water, and – oh! a lot of things like that.
Worst of all, she knew that if she did take it back to father he would only shove it in his pocket without noticing. But she said over and over: "Honesty is the best! Honesty is the best!" You see, she could not remember the word "policy," which does not improve the sentiment anyway – to my mind, at least.
So back she went. Father was still mooning about among his books, and just as she expected he took the golden sovereign and shoved it back into his pocket right among pennies and pocket-knives and so on. But he quite forgot to give Sarah her own real half-sovereign. I believe he thought she had picked the coin up off the floor. For he just said, "Thank you," and went on with his work.
And Little Sarah stood there fit to cry.
By and by he noticed the girl and asked what she was waiting for – not unkindly, you know. But, as usual, he was busy and wanted to be left alone.
"Please, sir," said Little Sarah Brown, "my half-sovereign!"
"But I paid you your wages, did I not?"
"Oh, yes, sir; but – "
"Oh, you would like an advance on next week – very well, then." And he pulled out of his pocket the very identical piece of gold that had been Little Sarah's temptation – like mine about the Blue Vase and Mir-row, you remember.
"There!" he said; "now go away! I'm busy!"
"But, please, sir – !"
"WHAT?"
Then Little Sarah burst into tears, and father stared. But after a while he got at the truth – how he had given a whole sovereign in place of a half —
"Very likely – very likely!" said he.
And how Sarah had brought it back – all of her own accord.
"Very unlikely!" he muttered.
And how he had shoved it back into his pocket without noticing —
"Very likely!" he said – to himself this time.
So what did he do, when he had heard all about it, but promise to whack Pete Bolton with his stick the first time he got him. And Sarah began to cry all over again, saying that Pete had no mother and couldn't be expected to know any better.
"Well," said he, "that's as may be! But anyway, I'll be a father to Pete the next time I catch him. I'll teach him to let little girls alone. I've dealt with heaps of Pete Boltons before! Oh, often! Don't you trouble, little girl!"
And he actually got his hat and walked home with Little Sarah, growling all the time. I don't know what he gave her. But, anyway, what he said to her mother made the poor woman so happy that she nearly forgot to be ill. And on Monday I noticed that Little Sarah had new whole shoes and so had her brother Billy. So something must have happened, and though nothing was said, I can pretty well guess what.
So can Hugh John – and you too, my dear Diary. Only we won't tell. But the "Compulsory Man," who makes boys attend school, descended on wicked Pete Bolton, and then the schoolmaster fell on him, so that Pete became a reformed character – this is, so long as he was sore. Then, of course, he forgot, and began playing truant again.
Only after that he let Little Sarah alone. Because, you see, he never knew when, in a narrow lane, he might meet a big man, pulling at a big mustache, and carrying a very big stick. Because the sermons that big man preached with his stick were powerful, and Pete Bolton did not forget them easily.
The End – moral included free of charge, as Hugh John says.
IV
MISS POLLY PRETEND
End of June.
Of course there ought to be a story in all this – the story of my life. I have a Relative who can spin you the story of anybody's life if you only tell him what number of shoe he wears. Only I am just a little girl, and have neither been murdered nor married – as yet. So in my life there are no – what is the word? – ingredients for the pudding. Yes, that is it.
So it must just come anyhow, like things tumbling out of your pocket when you hang head down from a tree or haystack which you are climbing.
All the same I will try always to put one story or one subject into a chapter, though these won't be called "Printed in Gore," or "The House of Crime," or anything like that.
For, you see, the stories the boys read are just stuffed with such things. So it will be rather a change to write about "The Dirty Piece of Embroidery" and "The Colored-Silk Work-basket."
And that reminds me. Often Grown-ups "give it" to their children for the very identical things they used to do themselves when young. There is a friend of father's down at Dumfries whom he calls Mr. Massa. And once we bribed Mr. Massa to tell us all about when father was young – he was his earliest and dearest friend – though, by his telling, father pounded him shamefully and unmercifully for nothing at all, even after they had vowed eternal friendship. And do you know, the things that father did when he was a boy – well, he would thrash Hugh John and Sir Toady for now!
But I expect that all fathers and most mothers were like that. When I am a mother, I shan't be. Because, having kept a Diary, I shall only have to take it out and see how I felt. Don't you think that is a first-rate idea?
Besides, if it is printed, as Mr. Dignus says that it will be, it is bound to be true, and I shall have to believe it. Oh, just won't my children have a good time! Also Hugh John's. But Sir Toady Lion says he isn't going to have any – being married is ever such a swot, and children are all little pigs.
Well, he ought to know.
Oh, about this Mr. Massa? He told us some splendid things about father – how he stood on the top of Thrieve Castle with a stone in one hand and his watch in the other to measure the altitude, having just learned how. Only he forgot, and let go the wrong hand.
Smack– went the watch on the grass about seventy feet below! And there was he left standing with the stone in his hand. But the watch was ticking cheerfully away when they picked it up, and it is that very same old nursery watch that is hung up there now, and tells us when it is time not to get up.
I don't think I ever knew what it was to have a true friend with a good memory till that moment. And as for the boys and me, we never thought we should like any of father's friends so much. But Mr. Massa told us more things that we can cast up to him in time of need than we would ever have wormed out of father himself in a century. Funny how close people get about some things when they get older. Oh, I wish I had been born my own little girl. Then I should have been properly brought up!
However, that is not my fault.
Hugh John says that being naughty is just according as you look at it. Big Folks' job is to make us behave, so that we are as little of a nuisance to them as possible. Our business to get as much fun as we can out of life without getting in the way of the Grown-ups. All their "Don't do this's" and "You mustn't do that's" are just warnings not to give them trouble. Moral (according to Hugh John), "Give as little trouble as possible to Grown-ups. And they will let you do pretty much as you want to."
He says that acts first-rate at school. Toe the line with the masters, and then if you do "whale" your fellow-pupil, no questions are asked. The only way to be a bad little boy in peace and quiet is to be a good little boy so far as work is concerned!
And as Hugh John does it, this is not hypocritical. He couldn't be that if he tried. He has just thought it out, and now makes it work with the greatest coolness in the world. It is his system. And he says every boy is a fool who gives the masters trouble. He means Grown-ups generally. You do certain things as they say, work out your sums, and keep your drawers tidy. Then you can live in your own world and they in theirs. They won't bother about you.
But, of course, Hugh John is pretty safe anyway. He has a reason for everything, and is always ready to give it if asked. If not, he keeps it to himself, wraps it about him like an inky cloak – and is triply armed because he has his quarrel just – and knows it.
But, you see, we are really pretty well off at our house, though we do grumble sometimes. When I was a little girl I rode many hundreds of miles with father on his cycle, and now Hugh John and he spend days over glasses of all descriptions, telescopes and binoculars, while Sir Toady talks about birds' eggs for hours, and has succeeded to father's collection.
In the library there are the loveliest books on flowers – both editions of Curtis, the Botanical Magazine, two Sowerby's English Botanies, and lots more in foreign languages. Maid Margaret thinks she will go in for botany so as to get these. But I like best just reading books – or browsing among them, rather. For of course you can't really read forty thousand volumes, even if you knew all the languages they are written in.
There are sets of all the magazines that ever were: Annual Registers, Scots Magazines, Gentleman's, Blackwood's, Chamber's, Leisure Hour, Cassell's, Magazine of Art– oh, everything! And the library, being about eighty feet long altogether, is the loveliest place for wet Saturdays – so "mousey," and window-seaty, with big logs burning on a brass fireplace, and the storm pattering above and all about. It has a zinc roof, only nicely painted and covered with creepers. There is room enough for everybody to lie about, and read, and draw, all the time keeping out of Big Growly's way if he is working.
Even if he does see us, he only says, "Get out, Imps! I can't be bothered with you just now!"
Only if you are careful and have the kitchen key, you can tell by the growling and the "tick-tack" whereabouts the Ogre of Castle Bookworm is, and slip into another part. Best of all is the Old Observatory, where there is a bed in a little cabin, and windows all about, and a big brass telescope high overhead, with shelves and all sorts of fittings as in a ship.
It is first-rate, I tell you. Only you have to put the books you have been using back again exactly, or you will get Ursa Major after you, and he will fetch you out of your bed to do it, storming at you all the time. Then maybe he will forget, and show you the first edition of some book that there are only three or four of in all the world!
You don't really need to be afraid of Big Growly. It makes rather a noise while It lasts, but once It is finished, there is no more about it. It is like a thunderstorm which you hear sleepily among the hills in the night. All you have to do is just to pull the bed-clothes over your head and put your fingers in your ears. There is not the least danger, not really.
Altogether we are about as well off for Grown-ups as it is possible to be, and though lessons are seen to sharply enough – that is all in the day's work. While for the rest, we live less of the Double Life than other children have to do – that is, we don't have to "pretend good," and that makes all the difference.
And this brings me to the tale of Polly Pretend. That was what we called her. And by and by other people found her out, and did so too. And it is an awful thing to be going through the world with a name like that.
Yet Polly Pretend wasn't half a bad girl either. Indeed, if she had been left alone, she would have been quite nice. It wasn't her fault. Only this tale is a "terrible example" for parents and guardians. They put such things, like nasty medicine, in the books we have to read, and why shouldn't I hit back, when it is only my poor old Dear Diary that sees it? Till Mr. Dignus gets ready to print it, that is.
Polly Pretend had a father and mother, but worse than most. If ever they had been young, they had forgotten all about it. Polly mustn't run or romp, nor speak above her breath, nor climb a tree, nor do anything that makes life happy and really worth living.
And when we went to see her, it was ever so much worse than going to church four times a Sunday. We only go once, except on special occasions, because our folks believe in making Sunday an extra happy day. And, after all, church is church, and there is always the music, which is nice, and the organist's back hair, which isn't – and the sermon is never very long and sometimes interesting. Then for the boys there are the bees booming in the tall windows, and the flies that will persist in crawling stickily over the old gentlemen's bald heads – really quite pious flies they are. For the old gentlemen would be sure to go to sleep if it were not for the excitement of watching out and moving those flies on!
But at Polly Pretend's house it was ever so much worse. You couldn't believe it if you had not been there. And, do my best, I really can't give you an idea.
All the toys locked up, of course, all the drawing things, and every book except two – one of which was that everlasting Josephus, and the other the Pilgrim's Progress. As we knew these by heart, you may guess how cheerful it was. And you had to learn chapters till you hated the sight of an Oxford Bible, and hymns till you wanted to throw the book behind the fire.
Hugh John stuck to it and did pretty well, though he is not a quick study. But Sir Toady boldly asserted that he was a true Mahometan, and made a green turban out of an old green baize school-bag to prove that he was a "haji and a holy man"!
He had the cheek to brazen it out even when Polly's people threatened to inform his parents and have him sent home to-morrow!
Bless you, Toadums wished for nothing better. He missed his fox-terrier, Boss, worse than words can tell, and his eggs and his paint-box and everything.
But of course we soon saw how Polly Pretend managed. She pretended. She did not really read the books. She moved back the marker, and, if asked questions, knew all about the chapter. Even if they ticked it in pencil, there was india-rubber in Polly's pocket to rub it out. She played with beads in church – in her muff or under her cloak. And when one rolled on the floor, she said it was her collection money. She got another given her too, which was always a halfpenny saved.
At least so thought Polly Pretend. And Hugh John could not make her see it was not the square thing – to buy sweets and thus defraud the Church. He is awfully armor-plated on what is "the Square Thing," my brother Hugh John.
But Polly Pretend could not or would not see it. I think could not. For what could be expected of any girl who had such people for parents? Then I saw clearly how well we were off – whacked sometimes, of course, or Big Growly called upon to erupt (which he does very fierce for five minutes). But not expected to do anything except tell the truth and keep on telling it – not behave like reptiles – and if caught, own up prompt. Say your prayers when you feel like it. But don't do it just when you know parents and guardians will be coming into your bedroom, as Polly does – so that father or mother will say, "See how sweet and devotional our little girl is!"
And Polly's father and mother thought how good she was, and told all round the countryside what little heathens we were. Not that we cared for that.
But Sir Toady went up-stairs to the lumber-room and got an image of some Chinese dragon which had been stowed away there ever since Uncle Peter had been home the last time. And when Polly Pretend's father and mother came to complain of us, he was down on his knees worshiping this false image on the front lawn! Awful, wasn't it? But all the same it would have made you laugh till you cried if you had seen him doing kow-tow to this false god – it was only an old cardboard dragon anyway, like what you see on the Shanghai stamps – and smelling the whole neighborhood by burning brown paper joss-sticks before it, with a penny fire-cracker at every finger-length.
He was had up into the study for that, though, because father said he would have no "mockery" about such things. But I don't think he got it very bad, because we all knew by the noise he made that Big Growly wasn't really very mad.
When he is, he goes off and you see no more of him for a long time. He only stops in his den and doesn't growl. That is a good time to keep away and say nothing, till he has done chewing his paws. Only Maid Margaret dare go in then, and even she is wearing out of it – getting too old, I mean.
But about Polly Pretend. Of course she did not pretend to us. First of all, she could not – she knew that it was quite in vain. Children don't try on things with one another. They know they will be seen through. Generally they can see through Grown-ups too, though, bless you, They never know it.