Short Stories for Children Read online

  At half-past seven in summer, and at nine in winter, the Boy in buttons rang an immense bell, its clapper tied round with a swab of cotton-wool to prevent it from clanging too sonorously. This great quiet bell was not only to waken from their last sweet dreams the slumbering Pigtails in their little beds, but to tell them they had yet another half-hour between the blankets before they had to get up. Then hairbrushes, toothbrushes, nailbrushes, as usual. Then ‘When morning gilds the sky’, and breakfast in the wide white room with the primrose curtains looking out into the garden. And if any Pigtail happened to have been not quite so good as usual on the previous day, she was allowed – if she asked for it – to have a large plateful of porridge with or without salt – for a punishment. No less than ninety-nine such platefuls were served out in the first year – the Pigtails were so high-spirited. Still, it can be imagined what a thirtyfold sigh of relief went up when breakfast on December 31st was over and there hadn’t been a hundredth.

  From 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. the Pigtails were one and all exceedingly busy. Having made their beds, they ran out into the garden and woods – some to bathe in the stream, some to listen to the birds, some to talk, and some to sing; some to paint, some to play, and some to read, and some to dance; some just to sit; and some high up in a beech tree to learn poems, to make up poems, even to read each other’s. It all depended on the weather. The sun shone, the rooks cawed, the green silken leaves whispered; and Miss Rawlings would stand looking up at them in their verdurous perch as fondly as a cat at a canary. There was not at last a flower or a tree or an insect or a star in those parts, or a bird or a little beast or a fish or a toadstool or a moss or a pebble, that the little Pigtails did not know by heart. And the more they knew them, the more closely they looked at them, and the more closely they looked at them, the more they loved them and the more they knew them – round and round and round and round.

  From twelve to one there were ‘Lessons’. Then dinner, and tongues like jackdaws raiding a pantry for silver spoons. In the afternoon those who went for a walk toward the stranger parts went for a walk. Some stayed at home in a little parlour and sang in chorus together like a charm of wild birds. Some did their mending and darning, their hemming and feather-stitching, and some did sums. Some played on the fiddle, and some looked after their bullfinches, and bunnies, and bees, and guinea pigs, and ducks. Then there were the hens and the doves and the calves and the pigs to feed, and the tiny motherless lambs, too (when lambs there were), with bottles of milk. And sometimes of an afternoon Miss Rawlings would come in and sit at a window just watching her Pigtails, or would read them a story. And Dr Sheppard asseverated not once but three times over that if she went on bringing them sweetmeats and candies and lollipops and suckets to such an extent, not a single sound white ivory tooth of their nine hundred or so would be left in the Pigtails’ heads. So Miss Rawlings kept to Sundays.

  At five was tea-time: jam on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; jelly on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and both on Sundays. From six to seven there were ‘Lessons’, and when the little Pigtails were really tired, which was always before nine, they just skipped off to bed. Some of them had munched their supper biscuits and were snug in bed, indeed, even before the rest had sung the evening hymn. And the evening hymn was always ‘Eternal Father’ – for being all of them so extremely happy they could not but be ‘in peril on the deep’ just as sailors are, for happiness may fly away like birds in corn, or butterflies before rain. And on Sundays they sang ‘Lead, Kindly Light’ too, because Miss Rawlings’s mother had once been blessed by the great and blessed Cardinal Newman. And one Pigtail played the accompaniment on the fiddle, and one on the sweet-tongued viola, and one on the harpsichord; for since Miss Rawlings had read ‘Barbara Allan’ she had given up pianofortes. And then, sleepy and merry and chattering, they all trooped up to bed.

  So this was their Day. And all night, unseen, the stars shone in their splendour above the roof of Trafford House, or the white-faced moon looked down upon the sleeping garden and the doves and the pigs and the lambs and the flowers. And at times there was a wind in the sky among the clouds, and sometimes frost in the dark hours settled like pollen wheresoever its cold brightness might find a lodging. And when the little Pigtails awoke there would be marvellous cold fronds and flowerets on their window panes, and even sometimes a thin crankling slat of ice in their water-jugs. On which keen winter mornings you could hear their teeth chattering like monkeys cracking nuts. And so time went on.

  On the very next June 1st, there was a prodigious Garden Party at Trafford House, with punts on the lake and refreshments and lemonade in a tent in the park, and all the guardianesses and aunts and stepmothers and Matrons and Female Friends were invited to come and see Miss Rawlings’s little Pigtails. And some brought their sisters, and some their nieces and nephews. There were Merry-go-Rounds, Aunt Sallies, Frisk-and-Come-Easies, a Punch and Judy Show, a Fat Man, a fortune-teller, and three marvellous acrobats from Hongkong. And there were quantities of things to eat and lots to see, and Kiss-in-the-Ring, and all broke up after fireworks and ‘God Save the Queen’ at half-past nine.

  The house, as I keep on saying, was called Trafford House, but the Home was called ‘The Home of All the Little Barbara Allans and Suchlike, with Brown Eyes, Narrow Cheek-bones, Beaver Hats, and Pigtails, Ltd.’ And it was ‘limited’ because there could be only thirty of them, and time is not Eternity.

  And now there were only three things that prevented Miss Rawlings from being too intensely happy to go on being alive; and these three were as follows: (a) She wanted to live always at the House: but how could the Parish get on without her? (b) What was she going to do when the Pigtailers became twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen; and so forth, and Grown-Up? And (c) How could she ever possibly part with any of them or get any more?

  For, you see, Miss Rawlings’s first-of-all Barbara Allan was aged ten, and had somehow managed to stay ten. But because, I suppose, things often go right in this world when we are not particularly noticing them, and don’t know how, all these difficulties simply melted away like butter in the sun.

  In the first place, Miss Rawlings did at last – in 1888, to be exact, one year after Queen Victoria’s first Jubilee – did, I say, at last go to live at the Home of All the Little Barbara Allans and Suchlike, with Brown Eyes, Beaver Hats, and Pigtails, Ltd. She was called The Matron’s Friend, so as not to undermine the discipline. When her Parish wanted her, which was pretty often, the Parish (Thirty or Forty strong) came to see her in her little parlour overlooking the pond with the punts and the water lilies.

  Next – though how, who can say? – the little Pigtails somehow did not grow up, even though they must have grown older. Something queer happened to their Time. It cannot have been what just the clocks said. If there wasn’t more of it, there was infinitely more in it. It was like air and dew and sunbeams and the south wind to them all. You simply could not tell what next. And, apart from all that wonderful learning, apart even from the jam and jelly and the Roast Beef of Old England, they went on being just the right height and the right heart for ten. Their brown eyes never lost their light and sparkle. No wrinkles ever came in their three-cornered faces with the high cheek-bones, and not a single grey or silver hair into their neat little pigtails – that could at any rate be seen.

  Next, therefore, Miss Rawlings never had to part with any of them or to look or advertise for any more.

  Yet another peculiar thing was that Miss Rawlings grew more and more like a Pigtail herself. She grew younger. She laughed like a schoolgirl. Her face became a little narrower, even the cheek-bones seemed not to be so wide. As for her bonnets, as time ‘went on’ they grew up instead of broadwise. And when she sat in Church with the Thirty, in the third pew down from Mrs Tomlington’s, you might almost have supposed she was a widish pigtail, just a little bit dressed up.

  It is true that in the very secretest corner of her heart of hearts she was still looking for the o
ne and only absolute little Barbara Allan of her lifelong daydream; but that is how things go. And the thought of it brought only a scarcely perceptible grave glance of hope and inquiry into her round brown eyes. And underneath – oh, dear me, yes – she was almost too happy and ordinary and good-natured and homely to be telling this story about at all.

  We all die at last – just journey on – and so did Miss Rawlings. And so did the whole of the Thirty, and the Matron, and the Chief Nurse, and Mr Moffatt, and Dr Sheppard, and the Man with whiskers at the park gates, and the Boy who cleaned the button-boots; parlour-maids, tweeny-maids, Mrs Tomfoolington, and all. And if you would like to see the Old House and the little graves, you take the first turning on the right as you leave the Parish Church on your left, and walk on until you come to a gatepost beyond the milestone.

  A path crossing the fields – sometimes of wheat, sometimes of turnips, sometimes of barley or clover or swedes – leads to a farm in the hollow with a duckpond, guinea fowl roosting in the pines at evening, and a lovely old thatched barn where the fantailed doves croon in the sunshine. You then cross the yard and come to a lane beside a wood of thorn and hazel. This bears a little east, and presently, after ascending the hill beyond the haystack, you will see – if it is still there – the Home of All the Little Barbara Allans and Suchlike, with Brown Eyes, Beaver Hats, and Pigtails, Ltd.

  And not very far away is a little smooth-mown patch of turf with a beautiful thatched wall around it, which Mr Moffat consecrated himself. And there, side by side, sleep the Little Thirty, with their pigtails beside their narrow bones. And there lie the tweeny-maids, the parlour-maids, the Man with whiskers at the park gate, and the Boy who cleaned the button-boots. And there lies Miss Rawlings, too. And when the last trump sounds, up they will get as happy as wood larks, and as sweet and fresh as morning mushrooms. But if you want to hear any more about that, please turn to the Poems of Mr Wm. Blake.

  * First published in Atlantic Monthly, August 1925.

  The Dutch Cheese*

  Once – once upon a time there lived, with his sister Griselda, in a little cottage near the Great Forest, a young farmer whose name was John. Brother and sister, they lived alone, except for their sheepdog, Sly, their flock of sheep, the numberless birds of the forest, and the ‘fairies’. John loved his sister beyond telling; he loved Sly; and he delighted to listen to the birds singing at twilight round the darkening margin of the forest. But he feared and hated the fairies. And, having a very stubborn heart, the more he feared, the more he hated them; and the more he hated them, the more they pestered him.

  Now these were a tribe of fairies, sly, small, gay-hearted and mischievous, and not of the race of fairies noble, silent, beautiful and remote from man. They were a sort of gipsy-fairies, very nimble and of aery and prankish company, and partly for mischief and partly for love of her they were always trying to charm John’s dear sister Griselda away, with their music and fruits and trickery. He more than half believed it was they who years ago had decoyed into the forest not only his poor old father, who had gone out faggot-cutting in his sheepskin hat with his ass; but his mother too, who soon after had gone out to look for him.

  But fairies, even of this small tribe, hate no man. They mocked him and mischiefed him; they spilt his milk, rode astraddle on his rams, garlanded his old ewes with sow-thistle and briony, sprinkled water on his kindling wood, loosed his bucket into the well, and hid his great leather shoes. But all this they did, not for hate – for they came and went like evening moths about Griselda – but because in his fear and fury he shut up his sister from them, and because he was sullen and stupid. Yet he did nothing but fret himself. He set traps for them, and caught starlings; he fired his blunderbuss at them under the moon, and scared his sheep; he set dishes of sour milk in their way, and sticky leaves and brambles where their rings were green in the meadows; but all to no purpose. When at dusk, too, he heard their faint, elfin music, he would sit in the door blowing into his father’s great bassoon till the black forest re-echoed with its sad, solemn, wooden voice. But that was of no help either. At last he grew so surly that he made Griselda utterly miserable. Her cheeks lost their scarlet and her eyes their sparkling. Then the fairies began to plague John in earnest – lest their lovely, loved child of man, Griselda, should die.

  Now one summer’s evening – and most nights are cold in the Great Forest – John, having put away his mournful bassoon and bolted the door, was squatting, moody and gloomy, with Griselda, on his hearth beside the fire. And he leaned back his great hairy head and stared straight up the chimney to where high in the heavens glittered a host of stars. And suddenly, while he lolled there on his stool moodily watching them, there appeared against the dark sky a mischievous elvish head secretly peeping down at him; and busy fingers began sprinkling dew on his wide upturned face. He heard the laughter too of the fairies miching and gambolling on his thatch, and in a rage he started up, seized a round Dutch cheese that lay on a platter, and with all his force threw it clean and straight up the sooty chimney at the faces of mockery clustered above. And after that, though Griselda sighed at her spinning wheel, he heard no more. Even the cricket that had been whistling all through the evening fell silent, and John supped on his black bread and onions alone.

  Next day Griselda woke at dawn and put her head out of the little window beneath the thatch, and the day was white with mist.

  ‘’Twill be another hot day,’ she said to herself, combing her beautiful hair.

  But when John went down, so white and dense with mist were the fields, that even the green borders of the forest were invisible, and the whiteness went to the sky. Swathing and wreathing itself, opal and white as milk, all the morning the mist grew thicker and thicker about the little house. When John went out about nine o’clock to peer about him, nothing was to be seen at all. He could hear his sheep bleating, the kettle singing, Griselda sweeping, but straight up above him hung only, like a small round fruit, a little cheese-red beamless sun – straight up above him, though the hands of the clock were not yet come to ten. He clenched his fists and stamped in sheer rage. But no one answered him, no voice mocked him but his own. For when these idle, mischievous fairies have played a trick on an enemy they soon weary of it.

  All day long that little sullen lantern burned above the mist, sometimes red, so that the white mist was dyed to amber, and sometimes milky pale. The trees dripped water from every leaf. Every flower asleep in the garden was neckleted with beads; and nothing but a drenched old forest crow visited the lonely cottage that afternoon to cry: ‘Kah, Kah, Kah!’ and fly away.

  But Griselda knew her brother’s mood too well to speak of it, or to complain. And she sang on gaily in the house, though she was more sorrowful than ever.

  Next day John went out to tend his flocks. And wherever he went the red sun seemed to follow. When at last he found his sheep they were drenched with the clinging mist and were huddled together in dismay. And when they saw him it seemed that they cried out with one unanimous bleating voice:

  ‘O ma-a-a-ster!’

  And he stood counting them. And a little apart from the rest stood his old ram So1l, with a face as black as soot; and there, perched on his back, impish and sharp and scarlet, rode and tossed and sang just such another fairy as had mocked John from the chimney top. A fire seemed to break out in his body, and, picking up a handful of stones, he rushed at Soll through the flock. They scattered, bleating, out into the mist. And the fairy, all-acockahoop on the old ram’s back, took its small ears between finger and thumb, and as fast as John ran, so fast jogged Soll, till all the young farmer’s stones were thrown, and he found himself alone in a quagmire so sticky and befogged that it took him till afternoon to grope his way out. And only Griselda’s singing over her broth-pot guided him at last home.

  Next day he sought his sheep far and wide, but not one could he find. To and fro he wandered, shouting and calling and whistling to Sly, till, heart-sick and thirsty, they were both wearied out. Yet bl
eatings seemed to fill the air, and a faint, beautiful bell tolled on out of the mist; and John knew the fairies had hidden his sheep, and he hated them more than ever.

  After that he went no more into the fields, brightly green beneath the enchanted mist. He sat and sulked, staring out of the door at the dim forests far away, glimmering faintly red beneath the small red sun. Griselda could not sing any more, she was too tired and hungry. And just before twilight she went out and gathered the last few pods of peas from the garden for their supper.

  And while she was shelling them, John, within doors in the cottage, heard again the tiny timbrels and the distant horns, and the odd, clear, grasshopper voices calling and calling her, and he knew in his heart that, unless he relented and made friends with the fairies, Griselda would surely one day run away to them and leave him forlorn. He scratched his great head, and gnawed his broad thumb. They had taken his father, they had taken his mother, they might take his sister – but he wouldn’t give in.

  So he shouted, and Griselda in fear and trembling came in out of the garden with her basket and basin and sat down in the gloaming to finish shelling her peas.

  And as the shadows thickened and the stars began to shine, the malevolent singing came nearer, and presently there was a groping and stirring in the thatch, a tapping at the window, and John knew the fairies had come – not alone, not one or two or three, but in their company and bands – to plague him, and to entice away Griselda. He shut his mouth and stopped up his ears with his fingers, but when, with great staring eyes, he saw them capering like bubbles in a glass, like flames along straw, on his very doorstep, he could contain himself no longer. He caught up Griselda’s bowl and flung it – peas, water and all – full in the snickering faces of the Little Folk! There came a shrill, faint twitter of laughter, a scampering of feet, and then all again was utterly still.