Father Hedgehog And His Neighbours

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Title:     Father Hedgehog And His Neighbours
Author: Juliana Horatia Ewing [More Titles by Ewing]

CHAPTER I.

The care of a large family is no light matter, as everybody knows. And that year I had an unusually large family. No less than seven young urchins for Mrs. Hedgehog and myself to take care of and start in life; and there was not a prickly parent on this side of the brook, or within three fields beyond, who had more than four.

My father's brother had six one year, I know. It was the summer that I myself was born. I can remember hearing my father and mother talk about it before I could see. As these six cousins were discussed in a tone of interest and respect which seemed to bear somewhat disparagingly on me and my brother and sisters (there were only four of _us_), I was rather glad to learn that they also had been born blind. My father used to go and see them, and report their progress to my mother on his return.

"They can see to-day."

"They have curled themselves up. Every one of them. Six beautiful little balls; as round as crab-apples and as safe as burrs!"

I tried to curl myself up, but I could only get my coat a little way over my nose. I cried with vexation. But one should not lose heart too easily. With patience and perseverance most things can be brought about, and I could soon both see and curl myself into a ball. It was about this time that my father hurried home one day, tossing the leaves at least three inches over his head as he bustled along.

"What in the hedge do you think has happened to the six?" said he.

"Oh, don't tell me!" cried my mother; "I am so nervous." (Which she was, and rather foolish as well, which used to irritate my father, who was hasty tempered, as I am myself.)

"They've been taken by gipsies and flitted," said he.

"What do you mean by _flitted_?" inquired my mother.

"A string is tied round a hind-leg of each, and they are tethered in the grass behind the tent, just as the donkey is tethered. So they will remain till they grow fat, and then they will be cooked."

"Will the donkey be cooked when he is fat?" asked my mother.

"I smell valerian," said my father; on which she put out her nose, and he ran at it with his prickles. He always did this when he was annoyed with any member of his family; and though we knew what was coming, we are all so fond of valerian, we could never resist the temptation to sniff, just on the chance of there being some about.

I had long wanted to see my cousins, and I now begged my father to let me go with him the next time he went to visit them. But he was rather cross that morning, and he ran at me with his back up.

"So you want to gad about and be kidnapped and flitted too, do you? Just let me--"

But when I saw him coming, I rolled myself up as tight as a wood-louse, and as my ears were inside I really did not hear what else he said. But I was not a whit the less resolved to see my cousins.

One day my father bustled home.

"Upon my whine," said he, "they live on the fat of the land. Scraps of all kinds, apples, and a dish of bread and milk under their very noses. I sat inside a gorse bush on the bank, and watched them till my mouth watered."

The next day he reported--

"They've cooked one--in clay. There are only five now."

And the next day--

"They've cooked another. Now there are only four."

"There won't be a cousin left if I wait much longer," thought I.

On the morrow there were only three.

My mother began to cry. "My poor dear nephews and nieces!" said she (though she had never seen them). "What a world this is!"

"We must take it as we eat eggs," said my father, with that air of wisdom which naturally belongs to the sayings of the head of the family, "the shell with the yolk. And they have certainly had excellent victuals."

Next morning he went off as usual, and I crept stealthily after him. With his spines laid flat to his sides, and his legs well under him, he ran at a good round pace, and as he did not look back I followed him with impunity. By and by he climbed a bank and then crept into a furze bush, whose prickles were no match for his own. I dared not go right into the bush for fear he should see me, but I settled myself as well as I could under shelter of a furze branch, and looked down on to the other side of the bank, where my father's nose was also directed. And there I saw my three cousins, tethered as he had said, and apparently very busy over-eating themselves on food which they had not had the trouble of procuring.

If I had heard less about the cooking, I might have envied them; as it was, that somewhat voracious appetite characteristic of my family disturbed my judgment sufficiently to make me almost long to be flitted myself. I fancy it must have been when I pushed out my nose and sniffed involuntarily towards the victuals, that the gipsy man heard me.

He had been lying on the grass, looking much lazier than my cousins--which is saying a good deal--and only turning his swarthy face when the gipsy girl, as she moved about and tended the fire, got out of the sight of his eyes. Then he moved so that he could see her again; not, as it seemed, to see what she was doing or to help her to do it, but as leaves move with the wind, or as we unpacked our noses against our wills when my father said he smelt valerian.

She was very beautiful. Her skin was like a trout pool--clear and yet brown. I never saw any eyes like her eyes, though our neighbour's--the Water Rat--at times recalls them. Her hair was the colour of ripe blackberries in a hot hedge--very ripe ones, with the bloom on. She moved like a snake. I have seen my father chase a snake more than once, and I have seen a good many men and women in my time. Some of them walk like my father, they bustle along and kick up the leaves as he does; and some of them move quickly and yet softly, as snakes go. The gipsy girl moved so, and wherever she went the gipsy man's eyes went after her.

Suddenly he turned them on me. For an instant I was paralyzed and stood still. I could hear my father bustling down the bank; in a few minutes he would be at home, where my brother and sisters were safe and sound, whilst I was alone and about to reap the reward of my disobedience, in the fate of which he had warned me--to be taken by gipsies and flitted.

Nothing, my dear children--my seven dear children--is more fatal in an emergency than indecision. I was half disposed to hurry after my father, and half resolved to curl myself into a ball. I had one foot out and half my back rounded, when the gipsy man pinned me to the ground with a stick, and the gipsy girl strode up. I could not writhe myself away from the stick, but I gazed beseechingly at the gipsy girl and squealed for my life.

"Let the poor little brute go, Basil," she said, laughing. "We've three flitted still."

"Let it go?" cried the young man scornfully, and with another poke, which I thought had crushed me to bits, though I was still able to cry aloud.

The gipsy girl turned her back and went away with one movement and without speaking.

"Sybil!" cried the man; but she did not look round.

"Sybil, I say!"

She was breaking sticks for the fire slowly across her knee, but she made no answer. He took his stick out of my back, and went after her.

"I've let it go," he said, throwing himself down again, "and a good dinner has gone with it. But you can do what you like with me--and small thanks I get for it."

"I can do anything with you but keep you out of mischief," she answered, fixing her eyes steadily on him. He sat up and began to throw stones, aiming them at my three cousins.

"Take me for good and all, instead of tormenting me, and you will," he said.

"Will you give up Jemmy and his gang?" she asked; but as he hesitated for an instant, she tossed the curls back from her face and moved away, saying, "Not you; for all your talk! And yet for your sake, _I_ would give up--"

He bounded to his feet, but she had put the bonfire between them, and before he could get round it, she was on the other side of a tilted cart, where another woman, in a crimson cloak, sat doing something to a dirty pack of cards.

I did not like to see the gipsy man on his feet again, and having somewhat recovered breath, I scrambled down the bank and got home as quickly as the stiffness and soreness of my skin would allow.

I never saw my cousins again, and it was long before I saw any more gipsies; for that day's adventure gave me a shock to which my children owe the exceeding care and prudence that I display in the choice of our summer homes and winter retreats, and in repressing every tendency to a wandering disposition among the members of my family.

 

CHAPTER II.

That summer--I mean the summer when I had seven--we had the most charming home imaginable. It was in a wood, and on that side of the wood which is farthest from houses and highroads. Here it was bounded by a brook, and beyond this lay a fine pasture field.

There are fields and fields. I never wish to know a better field than this one. I seldom go out much till the evening, but if business should take one along the hedge in the heat of the sun, there are as juicy and refreshing crabs to be picked up under a tree about half-way down the south side, as the thirstiest creature could desire.

And when the glare and drought of midday have given place to the mild twilight of evening, and the grass is refreshingly damped with dew, and scents are strong, and the earth yields kindly to the nose, what beetles and lob-worms reward one's routing!

I am convinced that the fattest and stupidest slugs that live, live near the brook. I never knew one who found out I was eating him, till he was half-way down my throat. And just opposite to the place where I furnished your dear mother's nest, is a small plantation of burdocks, on the underside of which stick the best flavoured snails I am acquainted with, in such inexhaustible quantities, that a hedgehog might have fourteen children in a season, and not fear their coming short of provisions.

And in the early summer, in the long grass on the edge of the wood--but no! I will not speak of it.

My dear children, my seven dear children, may you never know what it is to taste a pheasant's egg--to taste several pheasant's eggs, and to eat them, shells and all.

There are certain pleasures of which a parent may himself have partaken, but which, if he cannot reconcile them with his ideas of safety and propriety, he will do well not to allow his children even to hear of. I do not say that I wish I had never tasted a pheasant's egg myself, but, when I think of traps baited with valerian, of my great-uncle's great-coat nailed to the keeper's door, of the keeper's heavy-heeled boots, and of the impropriety of poaching, I feel, as a father, that it is desirable that you should never know that there are such things as eggs, and then you will be quite happy without them.

But it was not the abundant and varied supply of food which had determined my choice of our home: it was not even because no woodland bower could be more beautiful,--because the coppice foliage was fresh and tender overhead, and the old leaves soft and elastic to the prickles below,--because the young oaks sheltered us behind, and we had a charming outlook over the brook in front, between a gnarled alder and a young sycamore, whose embracing branches were the lintel of our doorway.

No. I chose this particular spot in this particular wood, because I had reason to believe it to be a somewhat neglected bit of what men call "property,"--because the bramble bushes were unbroken, the fallen leaves untrodden, the hyacinths and ragged-robins ungathered by human feet and hands,--because the old fern-fronds faded below the fresh green plumes,--because the violets ripened seed,--because the trees were unmarked by woodmen and overpopulated with birds, and the water-rat sat up in the sun with crossed paws and without a thought of danger,--because, in short, no birds'-nesting, fern-digging, flower-picking, leaf-mould-wanting, vermin-hunting creatures ever came hither to replenish their ferneries, gardens, cages, markets, and museums.

My feelings can therefore be imagined when I was roused from an afternoon nap one warm summer's day by the voices of men and women. Several possibilities came into my mind, and I imparted them to my wife.

"They may be keepers."

"They may be poachers."

"They may be boys birds'-nesting."

"They may be street-sellers of ferns, moss, and so forth."

"They may be collectors of specimens."

"They may be pic-nic-ers--people who bring salt twisted up in a bit of paper with them, and leave it behind when they go away. Don't let the children touch it!"

"They may be--and this is the worst that could happen--men collecting frogs, toads, newts, snails, _and hedgehogs_ for the London markets. We must keep very quiet. They will go away at sunset."

I was quite wrong, and when I heard the slow wheels of a cart I knew it. They were none of these things, and they did not go away. They were travelling tinkers, and they settled down and made themselves at home within fifty yards of mine.

My nerves have never been strong since that day under the furze bush. My first impulse was to roll myself up so tightly that I got the cramp, whilst every spine on my back stood stiff with fright. But after a time I recovered myself, and took counsel with Mrs. Hedgehog.

"Two things," said she, "are most important. We must keep the children from gadding, and we must make them hold their tongues."

"They never can be so foolish as to wish to quit your side, my dear, in the circumstances," said I. But I was mistaken.

I know nothing more annoying to a father who has learned the danger of indiscreet curiosity in his youth, than to find his sons apparently quite uninfluenced by his valuable experience.

"What are tinkers like?" was the first thing said by each one of the seven on the subject.

"They are a set of people," I replied, in a voice as sour as a green crab, "who if they hear us talking, or catch us walking abroad, will kill your mother and me, and temper up two bits of clay and roll us up in them. Then they will put us into a fire to bake, and when the clay turns red they will take us out. The clay will fall off and our coats with it. What remains they will eat--as we eat snails. You seven will be flitted. That is, you will be pegged to the ground till you grow big." (I thought it well not to mention the bread and milk.) "Then they will kill and bake and eat you in the same fashion."

I think this frightened the children; but they would talk about the tinkers, though they dared not go near them.

"The best thing you can do," said Mrs. Hedgehog, "is to tell them a story to keep them quiet. You can modulate your own voice, and stop if you hear the tinkers."

Hereupon I told them a story (a very old one) of the hedgehog who ran a race with a hare, on opposite sides of a hedge, for the wager of a louis d'or and a bottle of brandy. It was a great favourite with them.

"The moral of the tale, my dear children," I was wont to say, "is, that our respected ancestor's head saved his heels, which is never the case with giddy-pated creatures like the hare."

"Perhaps it was a very young hare," said Mrs. Hedgehog, who is amiable, and does not like to blame any one if it can be avoided.

"I don't think it can have been a _very_ young hare," said I, "or the hedgehog would have eaten him instead of outwitting him. As it was, he placed himself and Mrs. Hedgehog at opposite ends of the course. The hare started on one side of the hedge and the hedgehog on the other. Away went the hare like the wind, but Mr. Hedgehog took three steps and went back to his place. When the hare reached his end of the hedge, Mrs. Hedgehog, from the other side, called out, 'I'm here already.' Her voice and her coat were very like her husband's, and the hare was not observant enough to remark a slight difference of size and colour. The moral of which is, my dear children, that one must use his eyes as well as his legs in this world. The hare tried several runs, but there was always a hedgehog at the goal when he got there. So he gave in at last, and our ancestors walked comfortably home, taking the louis d'or and the bottle of brandy with them."

"What is a louis d'or?" cried three of my children; and "What is brandy?" asked the other four.

"I smell valerian," said I; on which they poked out their seven noses, and I ran at them with my spines, for a father who is not an Encyclopaedia on all fours must adopt _some_ method of checking the inquisitiveness of the young.

When grown-up people desire information or take an interest in their neighbours, this, of course, is another matter. Mrs. Hedgehog and I had never seen tinkers, and we resolved to take an early opportunity some evening of sending the seven urchins down to the burdock plantations to pick snails, whilst we paid a cautious visit to the tinker camp.

But mothers are sad fidgets, and anxious as Mrs. Hedgehog was to gratify her curiosity, she kept putting off our expedition till the children's spines should be harder; so I made one or two careful ones by myself, and told her all the news on my return.

 

CHAPTER III.

"The animal Man," so I have heard my uncle, who was a learned hedgehog, say,--"the animal man is a diurnal animal; he comes out and feeds in the daytime." But a second cousin, who had travelled as far as Covent Garden, and who lived for many years in a London kitchen, told me that he thought my uncle was wrong, and that man comes out and feeds at night. He said he knew of at least one house in which the crickets and black-beetles never got a quiet kitchen to themselves till it was nearly morning.

But I think my uncle was right about men in the country. I am sure the tinker and his family slept at night. He and his wife were out a great deal during the day. They went away from the wood and left the children with an old woman, who was the tinker's mother. At one time they were away for several days, and about my usual time for going out the children were asleep, and the old woman used to sit over the camp fire with her head on her hands.

"The language of men, my dear," I observed to Mrs. Hedgehog, "is quite different to ours, even in general tone; but I assure you that when I first heard the tinker's mother, I could have wagered a louis d'or and a bottle of brandy that I heard hedgehogs whining to each other. In fact, I was about to remonstrate with them for their imprudence, when I found out that it was the old woman who was moaning and muttering to herself."

"What is the matter with her?" asked Mrs. Hedgehog.

"I was curious to know myself," said I, "and from what I have overheard, I think I can inform you. She is the tinker's mother, and judging from what he said the other night, was not by any means indulgent to him when he was a child. She is harsh enough to his young brats now; but it appears that she was devoted to an older son, one of the children of his first wife; and that it is for the loss of this grandchild that she vexes herself."

"Is he dead?"

"No, my dear, but--"

"Has he been flitted?"

"Something of the kind, I fear. He has been taken to prison."

"Dear, dear!" said Mrs. Hedgehog; "what a trial to a mother's feelings! Will they bake him?"

"I think not," said I. "I fancy that he is tethered up as a punishment for taking what did not belong to him; and the grandmother's grievance seems to be that she believes he was unjustly convicted. She thinks the real robber was a gipsy. Just as if I were taken, and my skin nailed to the keeper's door for pheasant's eggs which I had never had the pleasure of eating."

Mrs. Hedgehog was now dying of curiosity. She said she thought the children's spines were strong enough for anything that was likely to happen to them; and so the next fresh damp evening we sent the seven urchins down to the burdocks to pick snails, and crept cautiously towards the tinker's encampment to see what we could see. And there, by the smouldering embers of a bonfire, sat the old woman moaning, as I had described her, with her elbows on her knees, rocking and nursing her head, from which her long hair was looped and fell, like grey rags, about her withered fingers.

"I don't like her looks," snorted Mrs. Hedgehog. "And how disgustingly they have trampled the grass."

"It is quite true," said I; "it will not recover itself this summer. I wish they had left us our wood to ourselves."

At this moment Mrs. Hedgehog laid her five toes on mine, to attract my attention, and whispered--"Is it a gipsy?" and lifting my nose in the direction of the rustling brushwood, I saw Sybil. There was no mistaking her, though her cheeks looked hollower and her eyes larger than when I saw her last.

"Good-evening, mother," she said.

The old woman raised her gaunt face with a start, and cried fiercely, "Begone with you! Begone!" and then bent it again upon her hands, muttering, "There are plenty of hedges and ditches too good for your lot, without their coming to worrit us in our wood."

The gipsy girl knelt quietly by the fire, and stirred up the embers.

"What is the matter, mother?" she said. "We've only just come, and when I heard that Tinker George and his mother were in the wood, I started to find you. 'You makes too free with the tinkers,' says my brother's wife. 'I goes to see my mother,' says I, 'who nursed me through a sickness, my real mother being dead, and my own people wanting to bury me through my not being able to speak or move, and their wanting to get to the Bartelmy Fair.' I never forget, mother; have you forgotten me, that you drives me away for bidding you good-day?"

"Good days are over for me," moaned the old woman. "Begone, I say! Don't let me see or hear any that belongs to Black Basil, or it may be the worse for them."

("The tinker-mother whines very nastily," said Mrs. Hedgehog. "If I were the young woman, I should bite her."

"Hush!" I answered, "she is speaking.")

"Basil is in prison," said the gipsy girl hoarsely.

The old woman's eyes shone in their sockets, as she looked up at Sybil for a minute, as if to read the gipsy's sentence on her face; and then she chuckled,

"So they've taken the Terror of the Roads?"

Sybil's eyes had not moved from the fire, before which she was now standing with clasped hands.

"The Terror of the Roads?" she said. "Yes, they call him that,--but I could turn him round my finger, mother." Her voice had dropped, and she smoothed one of her black curls absently round her finger as she spoke.

"You couldn't keep him out of prison," taunted the old woman.

"I couldn't keep him out of mischief," said the girl, sadly; and then, with a sudden flash of anger, she clasped her hands above her head and cried, "A black curse on Jemmy and his gang!"

"A black curse on them as lets the innocent go to prison in their stead. They comes there themselves in the end, and long may it hold them!" was the reply.

Sybil moved swiftly to the old woman's side.

"I heard you was in trouble, mother, about Christian; but you don't think--"

"_Think!_" screamed the old woman, shaking her fists, whilst the girl interrupted her--

"Hush, mother, hush! tell me now, tell me all, but not so loud," and kneeling with her back to us, she said something more in a low voice, to which the old woman replied in a whine so much moderated, that though Mrs. Hedgehog and I strained our ears, and crept as near the group as we dared, we could not catch a word.

Only, after a while Sybil rose up and walked back slowly to the fire, twisting the long lock of her hair as before, and saying--"I turns him round my finger, mother, as far as _that_ goes--"

"So you thinks," said the old crone. "But he never will--even if you would, Sybil Stanley! Oh Christian, my child, my child!"

The gipsy girl stood still, like a young poplar-tree in the dead calm before thunder; and there fell a silence, in which I dared not have moved myself, or allowed Mrs. Hedgehog to move, three steps through the softest grass, for fear of being heard.

Then Sybil said abruptly, "I've never rightly heard about Christian, mother. What was it made you think so much more of him than you thinks about the others?"

 

CHAPTER IV.

"My son's first wife died after Christian was born," said the old woman. "I've a sharp tongue, as you know, Sybil Stanley, and I'm doubtful if she was too happy while she lived; but when she was gone I knew she'd been a good 'un, and I've always spoken of her accordingly.

"You're too young to remember that year; it was a year of slack trade and hard times all over. Farmer-folk grudged you fourpence to mend the kettle, and as to broken victuals, there wasn't as much went in at the front door to feed the family, as the servants would have thrown out at the back door another year to feed the pigs.

"When one gets old, my daughter, and sits over the fire at night and thinks, instead of tramping all day and sleeping heavy after it, as one does when one is young--things comes back; things comes back, I say, as they says ghosts does.

"And when we camps near trees with long branches, like them over there, that waves in the wind and confuses your eyes among the smoke, I sometimes think I sees her face, as it was before she died, with a pinched look across the nose. That is Christian's mother, my son's first wife; and it comes back to me that I believes she starved herself to let him have more; for he's a man with a surly temper, like my own, is my son George. He grumbled worse than the children when he was hungry, and because she was so slow in getting strong enough to stand on her legs and carry the basket. You see he didn't hold his tongue when things were bad to bear, as she could. Men doesn't, my daughter."

"I know, I know," said the girl.

"I thinks I was jealous of her," muttered the old woman; "it comes back to me that I begrudged her making so much of my son, but I knows now that she was a good 'un, and I speaks of her accordingly. She fretted herself about getting strong enough to carry the child to be christened, while we had the convenience of a parson near at hand, and I wasn't going to oblige her; but the day after she died, the child was ailing, and thinking it might require the benefit of a burial-service as well as herself, I wrapped it up, and made myself decent, and took my way to the village. I was half-way up the street, when I met a young gentlewoman in a grey dress coming out of a cottage.

"'Good-day, my pretty lady,' says I. 'Could you show an old woman the residence of the clergyman that would do the poor tinkers the kindness of christening a sick child whose mother lies dead in a tilted cart at the meeting of the four roads?'

"'I'm the clergyman's wife,' says she, with the colour in her face, 'and I'm sure my husband will christen the poor baby. Do let me see it.'

"'It's only a tinker's child,' says I, 'a poor brown-faced morsel for a pretty lady's blue eyes to rest upon, that's accustomed to the delicate sight of her own golden-haired children; long may they live, and many may you and the gentle clergyman have of them!'

"'I have no children,' says she, shortly, with the colour in her face breaking up into red and white patches over her cheeks. 'Let me carry the baby for you,' says she, a taking it from me. 'You must be tired.'

"All the way she kept looking at it, and saying how pretty it was, and what beautiful long eyelashes it had, which went against me at the time, my daughter, for I knowed it was like its mother.

"The clergyman was a pleasing young gentleman of a genteel appearance, with a great deal to say for himself in the way of religion, as was right, it being his business. 'Name this child,' says he, and she gives a start that nobody sees but myself. So, thinking that the child being likely to die, there was no loss in obliging the gentlefolk, says I, looking down into the book as if I could read, 'Any name the lady thinks suitable for the poor tinker's child;' and says she, the colour coming up into her face, 'Call him Christian, for he shall be one.' So he was named Christian, a name to give no manner of displeasure to myself or to my family; it having been that of my husband's father, who was unfortunate in a matter of horse-stealing, and died across the water."

"What did _she_ want with naming the baby, mother?" asked Sybil.

"I comes to that, my daughter, I comes to that, though it's hard to speak of. I hate myself worse than I hates the police when I thinks of it. But ten pounds--pieces of gold, my daughter, when half-pence were hard to come by--and small expectation that he would outlive his mother by many days--and a feeling against him then, for her sake, though I thinks differently now--"

"You sold him to the clergy-folks?" said Sybil.

"Ten pieces of gold! You never felt the pains of starvation, my daughter--nor perhaps those of jealousy, which are worse. The young clergywoman had no children, on which score she fretted herself; and must have fretted hard, before she begged the poor tinker's child out of the woods."

"What did Tinker George say?" asked the girl.

"He used a good deal of bad language, and said I might as easily have got twenty pounds as ten, if I had not been as big a fool as the child's mother herself. Men are strange creatures, my daughter."

"So you left Christian with them?"

"I did, my daughter. I left him in the arms of the young clergywoman with the politest of words on both sides, and a good deal of religious conversation from the parson, which I does not doubt was well meant, if it was somewhat tedious."

"And then--mother?"

"And then we moved to Banbury, where my son took his second wife, having made her acquaintance in an alehouse; and then, my daughter, I begins to know that Christian's mother had been a good 'un."

"George isn't as happy with this one, then?"

"Men are curious creatures, my daughter, as you will discover for your own part without any instructions from me. He treats her far better than the other, because she treats him so much worse. But between them they soon put me a-one-side, and when I sat long evenings alone, sometimes in a wood, as it might be this, where the branches waves and makes a confusion of the shadows--and sometimes on the edge of a Hampshire heath where we camps a good deal, and the light is as slow in dying out of the bottom of the sky as he and she are in coming home, and the bits of water looks as if people had drownded themselves in them--when I sat alone, I say, minding the fire and the children--I wondered if Christian had lived, till I was all but mad with wondering and coming no nearer to knowing.

"'His mother was a good daughter to you,' I thinks; 'and if you hadn't sold him--sold your own flesh and blood--for ten golden sovereigns to the clergywoman, he might have been a good son to your old age.'

"At last I could bear idleness and the lone company of my own thoughts no longer, my daughter, and I sets off to travel on my own account, taking money at back-doors, and living on broken meats I begged into the bargain, and working at nights instead of thinking. I knows a few arts, my daughter, of one sort and another, and I puts away most of what I takes, and changes it when the copper comes to silver, and _the silver comes to gold_."

"I wonder you never went to see if he was alive," said Sybil.

"I did, my daughter. I went several times under various disguisements, which are no difficulty to those who know how to adopt them, and with servant's jewellery and children's toys, I had sight of him more than once, and each time made me wilder to get him back."

"And you never tried?"

"The money was not ready. One must act honourably, my daughter. I couldn't pick up my own grandson as if he'd been a stray hen, or a few clothes off the line. It took me five years to save those ten pounds. Five long miserable years."

"Miserable!" cried the gipsy girl, flinging her hair back from her eyes. "Miserable! Happy, you mean; too happy! It is when one can do nothing--"

She stopped, as if talking choked her, and the old woman, who seemed to pay little attention to any one but herself, went on,

"It was when it was all but saved, and I hangs about that country, making up my plans, that he comes to me himself, as I sits on the outskirts of a wood beyond the village, in no manner of disguisement, but just as I sits here."

"He came to you?" said Sybil.

"He comes to me, my daughter; dressed like any young nobleman of eight years old, but bareheaded and barefooted, having his cap in one hand, and his boots and stockings in the other.

"'Good-morning, old gipsy woman,' says he. 'I heard there was an old gipsy woman in the wood; so I came to see. Nurse said if I went about in the fields, by myself, the gipsies would steal me; but I told her I didn't care if they did, because it must be so nice to live in a wood, and sleep out of doors all night. When I grow up, I mean to be a wild man on a desert island, and dress in goats' skins. I sha'n't wear hats--I hate them; and I don't like shoes and stockings either. When I can get away from Nurse, I always take them off. I like to feel what I'm walking on, and in the wood I like to scuffle with my toes in the dead leaves. There's a quarry at the top of this wood, and I should so have liked to have thrown my shoes and stockings and my cap into it; but it vexes mother when I destroy my clothes, so I didn't, and I am carrying them.'

"Those were the very words he said, my daughter. He had a swiftness of tongue, for which I am myself famous, especially in fortune-telling; but he used the language of gentility, and a shortness of speech which you will observe among those who are accustomed to order what they want instead of asking for it. I had hard work to summon voice to reply to him, my daughter, and I cannot tell you, nor would you understand it if I could find the words, what were my feelings to hear him speak with that confidence of the young clergywoman as his mother.

"'A green welcome to the woods and the fields, my noble little gentleman,' says I. 'Be pleased to honour the poor tinker-woman by accepting the refreshment of a seat and a cup of tea.'

"'I mayn't eat or drink anything when I am visiting the poor people,' says he, 'Mother doesn't allow me. But thank you all the same, and please don't give me your stool, for I'd much rather sit on the grass; and, if you please, I should like you to tell me all about living in woods, and making fires, and hanging kettles on sticks, and going about the country and sleeping out of doors.'"

"Did you tell him the truth, or make up a tale for him?" asked Sybil.

"Partly one and partly the other, my daughter. But when persons sets their minds on anything, they sees the truth in a manner according to their own thoughts, which is of itself as good as a made-up tale.

"He asks numberless questions, to which I makes suitable replies. Them that lives out of doors--can they get up as early as they likes, without being called? he asks.

"Does gipsies go to bed in their clothes?

"Does they sometimes forget their prayers, with not regularly dressing and undressing?

"Did I ever sleep on heather?

"Does we ever travel by moonlight?

"Do I see the sun rise every morning?

"Did I ever meet a highwayman?

"Does I believe in ghosts?

"Can I really tell fortunes?

"I takes his shapely little hand--as brown as your own, my daughter, for his mother, like myself, was a pure Roman, and looked down upon by her people in consequence for marrying my son, who is of mixed blood (my husband being in family, as in every other respect, undeserving of the slightest mention).

"'Let me tell you your fortune, my noble little gentleman,' I says. 'The lines of life are crossed early with those of travelling. Far will you wander, and many things will you see. Stone houses and houses of brick will not detain you. In the big house with the blue roof and the green carpet were you born, and in the big house with the blue roof and the green carpet will you die. The big house is delicately perfumed, my noble little gentleman, especially in the month of May; at which time there is also an abundance of music, and the singers sits overhead. Give the old gipsy woman a sight of your comely feet, my little gentleman, by the soles of which it is not difficult to see that you were born to wander.'

"With this and similar jaw I entertained him, my daughter, and his eyes looks up at me out of his face till I feels as if the dead had come back; but he had a way with him besides which frightened me, for I knew that it came from living with gentlefolk.

"'Are you mighty learned, my dear?' says I. 'Are you well instructed in books and schooling?'

"'I can say the English History in verse,' he says, 'and I do compound addition; and I know my Catechism, and lots of hymns. Would you like to hear me?'

"'If you please, my little gentleman,' I says.

"'What shall I say?' he asks. 'I know all the English History, only I am not always quite sure how the kings come; but if you know the kings and can just give me the name, I know the verses quite well. And I know the Catechism perfectly, but perhaps you don't know the questions without the book. The hymns of course you don't want a book for, and I know them best of all.'

"'I am not learned, myself,' says I, 'and I only know of two kings--the king of England--who, for that matter, is a queen, and a very good woman, they say, if one could come at her--and the king of the gipsies, who is as big a blackguard as you could desire to know, and by no means entitled to call himself king, though he gets a lot of money by it, which he spends in the public-house. As regards the other thing, my dear, I certainly does not know the questions without the book, nor, indeed, should I know them with the book, which is neither here nor there; so if the hymns require no learning on my part, I gives the preference to them.'

"'I like _them_ best, myself,' he says; and he puts his hat and his shoes and stockings on the ground, and stands up and folds his hands behind his back, and repeats a large number of religious verses, with the same readiness with which the young clergyman speaks out of a book.

"It partly went against me, my daughter, for I am not religious myself, and he was always too fond of holy words, which I thinks brings ill-luck. But his voice was as sweet as a thrush that sits singing in a thorn-bush, and between that and a something in the verses which had a tendency to make you feel uncomfortable, I feels more disturbed than I cares to show. But oh, my daughter, how I loves him!

"'The blessing of an old gipsy woman on your young head,' I says. 'Fair be the skies under which you wanders, and shady the spots in which you rests!

"'May the water be clear and the wood dry where you camps!

"'May every road you treads have turf by the wayside, and the patteran[B] of a friend on the left.'

"'What is the patteran?' he asks.

"'It is a secret,' I says, looking somewhat sternly at him. 'The roads keeps it, and the hedges keeps it--'

"'I can keep it,' he says boldly. 'Pinch my finger, and try me!'

"As he speaks he holds out his little finger, and I pinches it, my daughter, till the colour dies out of his lips, though he keeps them set, for I delights to see the nobleness and the endurance of him. So I explains the patteran to him, and shows him ours with two bits of hawthorn laid crosswise, for I does not regard him as a stranger, and I sees that he can keep his lips shut when it is required.

"He was practising the patteran at my feet, when I hears the cry of 'Christian!' and I cannot explain to you the chill that came over my heart at the sound.

"Trouble and age and the lone company of your own thoughts, my daughter, has a tendency to confuse you; and I am not by any means rightly certain at times about things I sees and hears. I sees Christian's mother when I knows she can't be there, and though I believes now that only one person was calling the child, yet, with the echo that comes from the quarry, and with worse than twenty echoes in my own mind, it seems to me that the wood is full of voices calling him.

"In my foolishness, my daughter, I sits like a stone, and he springs to his feet, and snatches up his things, and says, 'Good-bye, old gipsy woman, and thank you very much. I should like to stay with you,' he says, 'but Nurse is calling me, and Mother does get so frightened if I am long away and she doesn't know where. But I shall come back.'

"I never quite knows, my daughter, whether it was the echo that repeated his words, or whether it was my own voice I hears, as I stretches my old arms after him, crying, 'Come back!'

"But he runs off shouting, 'Coming, coming!'

"And the wood deafens me, it is so full of voices.

"_Christian! Christian!--Coming! Coming!_

"And I thinks I has some kind of a fit, my daughter, for when I wakes, the wood is as still as death, and he is gone, as dreams goes."

 

CHAPTER V.

"I really feel for the tinker-mother," whispered Mrs. Hedgehog.

"I feel for her myself," was my reply. "The cares of a family are heavy enough when they only last for the season, and one sleeps them off in a winter's nap. When--as in the case of men--they last for a lifetime, and you never get more than one night's rest at a time, they must be almost unendurable. As to prolonging one's anxieties from one's own families to the families of each of one's children--no parent in his senses--"

"What is the gipsy girl saying now?" asked Mrs. Hedgehog, who had been paying more attention to the women than to my observations--an annoyance to which, as head of the family, I have been subjected oftener than is becoming.

Sybil had been kneeling at the old woman's feet, soothing her and chafing her hands. At last she said,

"But you did get him, Mother. How was it?"

"Not for five more years, my daughter. And never in all that time could I get a sight of his face. The very first house I calls at next morning, I sees a chalk mark on the gate-post, placed there by some travelling tinker or pedler or what not, by which I knows that the neighbourhood is being made too hot for tramps and vagrants, as they call us. And go back in what disguisement I might, there was no selling a bootlace, nor begging a crust of bread there--_there_, where _he_ lived.

"I makes up the ten pounds, and ties it in a bag; but I gets worse and worse in health and spirits and in confusion of mind, my daughter; and when I comes accidentally across my son in a Bedfordshire lane, and his wife is drinking, and he is in much bewilderment with the children, I takes up again with them, and I was with them when Christian comes to me the second time."

"He came back to you?"

"Learning and the confinement of stone walls, my daughter, than which no two things could be more contrary to the nature of those who dwells in the woods and lanes. I will not deny that the clergyman--and especially the young clergywoman--had been very good to him; but for which he would probably have run away long before. But what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. He does pretty well with the learning, and he bears with the confinement of school, though it is worse than that of the clergy-house. But when a rumour has crept out that he is not the son of the clergyman nor of the clergywoman, and he is taunted with being a gipsy and a vagrant, he lays his bare hands on those nearest to him, my daughter, and comes away on his bare feet."

"How did he find you, Mother?"

"He has no fixed intentions beyond running away, my daughter; but as he is sitting in a hedge to bandage one of his feet with his handkerchief, he sees our patteran, and he goes on, keeping it by the left, and sees it again, and so follows it, and comes home."

"You mean that he came to you?"

"I do, my dear. For home is not a house that never moves from one place, built of stone or brick, and with a front door for the genteel and a back door for the common people. If it was so, prisons would be homes. But home, my daughter, is where persons is whom you belongs to, and it may be under a hedge to-day and in a fair to-morrow."

"Mother," said Sybil, "what did you do about the ten pounds?"

"I will tell you, my daughter. I was obliged to wait longer than was agreeable to me before proceeding to that neighbourhood, for the police was searching everywhere, and it would be wearisome to relate to you with what difficulty Christian was concealed. My plans had been long made, as you know.

"Clergyfolk, my daughter, with a tediousness of jaw which makes them as oppressive to listen long to as houses is to rest long in, has their good points like other persons; they shows kindness to those who are in trouble, and they spends their money very freely on the poor. This is well known, even by those who has no liking for parsons, and I have more than once observed that persons who goes straight to the public-house when they has money in their pockets, goes straight to the parson when their pockets is empty.

"It is also well known, my daughter, that when the clergyman collects money after speaking in his church, he doesn't take it for his own use, as is the custom with other people, such as Punch and Judy men, or singers, or fortune tellers; at the same time he is as pleased with a good collection as if it were for his own use; and if some rich person contributes a sovereign for the sick and poor, it is to him as it would be to you, my daughter, if your hand was crossed with gold by some noble gentleman who had been crossed in love.

"I explain this, my dear, that you may understand how it was that I had planned to pay back the clergy people's ten pounds in church, which would be as good as paying it into their hands, with the advantage of secrecy for myself. On the Saturday I drives into the little market in a donkey-cart with greens, and on Sunday morning I goes to church in a very respectable disguisement, and the sexton puts me in a pew with some women of infirm mind in workhouse dresses, for which, my daughter, I had much to do to restrain myself from knocking him down. But I does; and I behaves myself through the service with the utmost care, following the movements of the genteeler portion of the company, those in the pew with me having no manners at all; one of them standing most of the time and giggling over the pew-back, and another sitting in the corner and weeping into her lap.

"But with the exception of getting up and sitting down, and holding a book open as near to the middle as I could guess, I pays little attention, my daughter, for all my thoughts is taken up with waiting for the collection to begin, and with trying to keep my eyes from the clergywoman's face, which I can see quite clearly, though she is at some distance from me."

"Did she look very wild, Mother, as if she felt beside herself?"

"She looked very bad, my daughter, and grey, which was not with age. I tells you that I tried not to look at her; and by and by the collection begins.

"It seems hours to me, my daughter, whilst the money is chinking and the clergyman is speaking, and the ten pieces of gold is getting so hot in my hands, I fancies they burns me, and still not one of the collecting-men comes near our pew.

"At last, one by one, they begins to go past me and go up to the clergyman who is waiting for them at the upper end, and then I perceives that they regards us as too poor to pay our way like the rest, and that the plates will never be put into our pew at all. So when the last but one is going past me, I puts out my hand to beckon him, and the woman that is standing by me bursts out laughing, and the other cries worse than ever, and the collecting-man says, 'Hush! hush!' and goes past and takes the plate with him.

"'A black curse on your insolence!' says I; and then I grips the laughing woman by the arm and whispers, 'If you make that noise again, I'll break your head,' and she sits down and begins to cry like the other.

"There is one more collecting-man, who comes last, and he is the Duke, who lives at the big house.

"The nobility and gentry, my daughter, when they are the real thing, has, like the real Romans, a quickness to catch your meaning, and a politeness of manner which you doesn't meet with among such people as the keeper of a small shop or the master of a workhouse. The Duke was a very old man, with bent shoulders and the slow step of age, and I thinks he did not see or hear very quickly; and when I beckons to him he goes past. But when he is some way past he looks back. And when he sees my hand out, he turns and comes slowly down again, and hands me the plate with as much politeness as if I had been in his own pew, and he says in a low voice, 'I beg your pardon.'

"But when I sees him stumbling back, and knows that in his politeness he will bring me the plate, there comes a fear on me, my daughter, that he may see the ten pieces of gold and think I has stolen them. And then I knows not what I shall do, for the nobility and gentry, though quick and polite in a matter of obliging the poor, such as this one,--when they sits as poknees[C] to administer justice, loses both their good sense and their good manners as completely as any of the police.

"But it comes to me also that being such a real one--such an out-and-outer--his politeness may be so great that he may look another way, rather than peep and pry to see what the poor workhouse-company woman puts into the plate. And I am right, my daughter, for he looks away, and I lays the ten golden sovereigns in the plate, and he gives a little smile and a little bow, and goes slowly and stumblingly to the upper end, where the clergyman is still speaking verses.

"And then, my daughter, my hands, which made the gold sovereigns so hot, turns very hot, and I gets up and goes out of the church with as much respectfulness and quiet as I am able.

"And I tries not to look at her face as I turns to shut the door, but I was unable to keep myself from doing so, and as it looked then I can see it now, my dear, and I know I shall remember it till I die. I thinks somehow that she was praying, though it was not a praying part of the service, and when I looks to the upper end I sees that the eyes of the young clergyman her husband is fixed on her, as mine is.

"And of all the words which he preached that day and the verses he spoke with so much readiness, I could not repeat one to you, my daughter, to save my life, except the words he was saying just then, and they remains in my ears as her face remains before my eyes,--

"'GOD is not unrighteous, that He will forget your work, and labour which proceedeth of love.'"

 

CHAPTER VI.

"We are all creatures of habit." So my learned uncle, Draen y Coed, who was a Welsh hedgehog, used to say. "Which was why an ancestor of my own, who acted as turnspit in the kitchen of a farmhouse in Yorkshire, quite abandoned the family custom of walking out in the cool of the evening, and declared that he couldn't take two steps in comfort except in a circle, and in front of a kitchen-fire at roasting heat."

Uncle Draen y Coed was right, and I must add that I doubt if, in all his experience, or among the strange traditions of his most eccentric ancestors, he could find an instance of change of habits so unexpected, so complete, I may say so headlong, as when very quiet people, with an almost surly attachment to home, break the bounds of the domestic circle, and take to gadding, gossiping, and excitement.

Perhaps it is because they find that their fellow-creatures are nicer than they have been wont to allow them to be, and that other people's affairs are quite as interesting as their own.

Perhaps--but what is the good of trying to explain infatuations?

Why do we all love valerian? I can only record that, having set up every prickle on our backs against intruders into our wood, we now dreaded nothing more than that our neighbours should forsake us, and wished for nothing better than for fresh arrivals.

In old days, when my excellent partner and I used to take our evening stroll up the field, we were wont to regard it quite as a grievance if a cousin, who lived at the far end of the hedge, came out and caught us and detained us for a gossip. But now I could hardly settle to my midday nap for thinking of the tinker-mother; and as to Mrs. Hedgehog, she almost annoyed me by her anxiety to see Christian. However, curiosity is the foible of her sex, and I accompanied her daily to the encampment without a murmur.

The seven urchins we sent down to the burdocks to pick snails.

It was not many days after that on which we heard the old tinker-mother relate Christian's history, that we were stopped on our way to the corner where we usually concealed ourselves, by hearing strange voices from the winding pathway above us.

"It's a young man," said I.

"It's Christian!" cried Mrs. Hedgehog.

"I feel sure that it is not," said I; "but if you will keep quiet, I will creep a little forward and see."

I am always in the right, as I make a point of reminding Mrs. Hedgehog whenever we dispute; and I was right on this occasion.

The lad who spoke was a young gentleman of about seventeen, and no more like a gipsy than I am. His fair hair was closely cropped, his eyes were quick and bright, his manner was alert and almost anxious, and though he was very slight as well as very young, he carried himself with dignity and some little importance. A lady, much older than himself, was with him, whom he was helping down the path.

"Take care, Gertrude, take care. There is no hurry, and I believe there's no one in the wood but ourselves."

"The people at the inn told us that there were gipsies in the neighbourhood," said the lady; "and oh, Ted! this is exactly the wood I dreamt of, except the purple and white--"

"Gertrude! What on earth are you after?"

"The flowers, Ted, the flowers in my dream! There they are, a perfect carpet of them. White--oh, how lovely!--and there, on the other side, are the purple ones. What are they, dear? I know you are a good botanist. He always raved about your collection."

"Nonsense, I'm not a botanist. Several other fellows went in for it when the prize was offered, and all that my collection was good for was his doing. I never did see any one arrange flowers as he did, I must say. Every specimen was pressed so as somehow to keep its own way of growing. And when I did them, a columbine looked as stiff as a dog-daisy. I never could keep any character in them. Watson--the fellow who drew so well--made vignettes on the blank pages to lots of the specimens--'Likely Habitats' we called them. He used to sit with his paint-box in my window, and Christian used to sit outside the window, on the edge, dangling his legs, and describing scenes out of his head for Watson to draw. Watson used to say, 'I wish I could paint with my brush as that fellow paints with his tongue'--and when the vignettes were admired, I've heard him say, in his dry way, 'I copied them from Christian's paintings;' and the fellows used to stare, for you know he couldn't draw a line. And when--But I say, Gertrude, for Heaven's sake, don't devour everything I say with those great pitiful eyes of yours. I am a regular brute to talk about him."

"No, Ted, no. It makes me so happy to hear you, and to know that you know how good he really was, and how much he must have been aggravated before--"

"For goodness' sake, don't cry. Christian was a very good fellow, a capital fellow. I never thought I could have got on so well with any one who was--I mean who wasn't--well, of course I mean who was really a gipsy. I don't blame him a bit for resenting being bullied about his parents. I only blame myself for not looking better after him. But you know that well enough--you know it's because I never can forgive myself for having managed so badly when you put him in my care, that I am backing you through this mad expedition, though I don't approve of it one bit, and though I know John will blame me awfully."

("It's the clergywoman," whispered Mrs. Hedgehog excitedly, "and I must and will see her."

When it comes to this with Mrs. Hedgehog's sex, there is nothing for it but to let the dear creatures have their own way, and take the consequences. She pushed her nose straight through the lower branches of an arbutus in which we were concealed, and I myself managed to get a nearer sight of our new neighbours.

As we crept forward, the clergywoman got up from where she was kneeling amongst the flowers, and laid her hand on the young gentleman's arm. I noticed it because I had never seen such a white hand before; Sybil's paws were nearly as dark as my own.)

"John will blame no one if we find Christian," she said. "You are very, very good, Cousin Ted, to come with me and help me when you do not believe in my dream. But you must say it is odd about the flowers. And you haven't told me yet what they are."

"It is the bulbous-rooted fumitory," said the young man, pulling a piece at random in the reckless way in which men do disfigure forest flower-beds. "It isn't strictly indigenous, but it is naturalized in many places, and you must have seen it before, though you fancy you haven't."

"I have seen it once before," she said earnestly--"all in delicate glaucous-green masses, studded with purple and white, like these; but it was in my dream. I never saw it otherwise, though I know you don't believe me."

"Dear Gertrude, I'll believe anything you like to tell me, if you'll come home. I'm sure I have done very wrong. You know I'm always hard up, but I declare I'd give a hundred pounds if you'd come home with me at once. I don't believe there's a gipsy within--"

"Good-day, my pretty young gentleman. Let the poor gipsy girl tell you your fortune."

He turned round and saw Sybil standing at his elbow, her eyes flashing and her white teeth gleaming in a broad smile. He stood speechless in sudden surprise; but the clergywoman, who was not surprised, came forward with her white hands stretched so expressively towards Sybil's brown ones, that the gipsy girl all but took them in her own.

"Please kindly tell me--do you know anything of a young gipsy, named Christian?"

The clergywoman spoke with such vehemence that Sybil answered directly, "I know his grandmother"--and then suddenly stopped herself.

But as she spoke, she had turned her head with an expressive gesture in the direction of the encampment, and without waiting for more, the clergywoman ran down the path, calling on her cousin to follow her.

 

CHAPTER VII.

My ancestor's artifice was very successful when the race was run on two sides of a hedge, backwards and forwards; but if a louis d'or and a bottle of brandy had depended on my reaching the tinker-mother before the clergywoman, I should have lost the wager. We hurried after her, however, as fast as we were able, keeping well under the brushwood.

When we could see our neighbours again, the tinker-mother was standing up, and speaking hurriedly, with a wild look in her eyes.

"Let me be, Sybil Stanley, and let me speak. I says again, what has fine folk to do with coming and worriting us in our wood? If I did sell him, I sold him fair--and if I got him back, I bought him back fair. Aye my delicate gentlewoman, you may look at me, but I did!

"Five years, five years of wind and weather, and hard days and lonely nights:--

"Five years of food your men would chuck to the pigs, and of clothes your maids would think scorn to scour in:--

"Five years--but I scraped it together, and _then_ they baulked me. You shuts the door in the poor tinker-woman's face; you gives the words of warning to the police.

"Five more years--it was five more, wasn't it, my daughter?--Sometimes I fancies I makes a mistake and overcounts. But, _he'll_ know. Christian, my dear! Christian, I say!"

"Sit down, Mother, sit down," said the gipsy girl; and the old woman sat down, but she went on muttering,--

"I will speak! What has they to do, I say, to ask me where he has gone to? A fine place for the fine gentleman they made of him. What has such as them to say to it, if I couldn't keep him when I got him--that they comes to taunt me and my grey hairs?"

She wrung her grey locks with a passionate gesture as she spoke, and then dropped her elbows on her knees and her head upon her hands.

The clergywoman had been standing very still, with her two white hands folded before her, and her eyes, that had dark circles round them which made them look large, fixed upon the tinker-mother, as she muttered; but when she ceased muttering the clergywoman unlocked her hands, and with one movement took off her hat. Her hair was smoothly drawn over the roundness of her head, and gathered in a knot at the back of her neck, and the brown of it was all streaked with grey. She threw her hat on to the grass, and moving swiftly to the old woman's side, she knelt by her, as we had seen Sybil kneel, speaking very clearly, and, touching the tinker-mother's hand.

"Christian's grandmother--you are his grandmother, are you not?--you must be much, much older than me, but look at _my_ hair. Am I likely to taunt any one with having grown grey or with being miserable? It takes a good deal of pain, good mother, to make young hair as white as mine."

"So it should," muttered the old woman, "so it should. It is a plaguy world, I say, as it is; but it would be plaguy past any bearing for the poor, if them that has everything could do just as they likes and never feel no aches nor pains afterwards. And there's a many fine gentlefolk thinks they can, till they feels the difference.

"'What's ten pound to me?' says you. 'I wants the pretty baby with the dark eyes and the long lashes,' says you.

"'Them it belongs to is poor, they'd sell anything,' says you.

"'I wants a son,' you says; 'and having the advantages of gold and silver, I can buy one.'

"You calls him by a name of your own choosing, and puts your own name at the end of that. His hands are something dark for the son of such a delicate white lady-mother, but they can be covered with the kid gloves of gentility.

"You buys fine clothes for him, and nurses and tutors and schools for him.

"You teaches him the speech of gentlefolk, and the airs of gentlefolk, and the learning of gentlefolk.

"You crams his head with religion, which is a thing I doesn't hold with, and with holy words, which I thinks brings ill-luck.

"You has the advantages of silver and gold, to make a fine gentleman of him, but the blood that flies to his face when he hears the words of insult is gipsy blood, and he comes back to the woods where he was born.

"Let me be, my daughter, I say I will speak--(Heaven keep my head cool!)--it's good for such as them to hear the truth once in a way. She's a dainty fine lady, and she taught him many fine things, besides religion, which I sets my face against. Tell her she took mighty good care of him--Ha! ha! the old tinker-woman had only one chance of teaching him anything--_but she taught him the patteran_!"

The clergywoman had never moved, except that when the tinker-mother shook off her hand she locked her white fingers in front of her as before, and her eyes wandered from the old woman's face, and looked beyond it, as if she were doing what I have often done, and counting the bits of blue sky which show through the oak-leaves before they grow thick. But she must have been paying attention all the same, for she spoke very earnestly.

"Good mother, listen to me. If I bought him, you sold him. Perhaps I did wrong to tempt you--perhaps I did wrong to hope to buy for myself what GOD was not pleased to give me. I was very young, and one makes many mistakes when one is young. I thought I was childless and unhappy, but I know now that only those are childless who have had children and lost them.

"Do you know that in all the years my son was with me, I do not think there was a day when I did not think of you? I used to wonder if you regretted him, and I lived in dread of your getting him back; and when he ran away, I knew you had. I never agreed with the lawyer's plans--my husband will tell you so--I always wanted to find you to speak to you myself. I knew what you must feel, and I thought I should like you to know that I knew it.

"Night after night I lay awake and thought what I would say to you when we met. I thought I would tell you that I could quite understand that our ways might become irksome to Christian, if he inherited a love for outdoor life, and for moving from place to place. I thought I would say that perhaps I was wrong ever to have taken him away from his own people; but as it was done and could not be undone, we might perhaps make the best of it together. I hope you understand me, though you say nothing? You see, if he is a gipsy at heart, he has also been brought up to many comforts you cannot give him, and with the habits and ideas of a gentleman. You are too clever, and too fond of him, to mind my speaking plainly. Now there are things which a gentleman might do if he had the money, which would satisfy his love of roving as well. Many rich gentlemen dislike the confinement of houses and domestic ways as much as Christian, and they leave their fine homes to travel among dangers and discomforts. I could find the money for Christian to do this by and by. If he likes a wandering life, he can live it easily so--only he would be able to wander hundreds of miles where you wander one, and to sleep under other skies and among new flowers, and in forests to which such woods as these are shrubberies. He need not fall into any of the bad ways to which you know people are tempted by being poor. I have thought of it all, night after night, and longed to be able to tell you about it. He might become a famous traveller, you know; he is very clever and very fond of books of adventure. This young gentleman will tell you so. How proud we should both be of him! That is what I have thought might be if you did not hide him from me, and I did not keep him from you.

"And as to religion--dear good mother, listen to me. Look at me--see if religion has been a fashion or a plaything to _me_. If it had not stood by me when my heart was as heavy as yours, what profit should I have in it?

"Christian's grandmother--you are his grandmother, I know, and have the better right to him--if you cannot agree to my plans--if you won't let me help you about him--if you hide him from me, and I must live out my life and never see his dear face again--spare me the hope of seeing it when this life is over.

"If I did my best for your grandson--and you know I did--oh! for the love of Christ, our only Refuge, do not stand between him and the Father of us all!

"If you have felt what he must suffer if he is poor, and if you know so well how little it makes sure of happiness to be rich--if in a long life you have found out how hard it is to be good, and how rare it is to be happy--if you know what it is to love and lose, to hope and to be disappointed in one's hoping--let him be religious, good mother!

"If you care for Christian, leave him the only strength that is strong enough to hold us back from sin, and to do instead of joy."

The tinker-mother lifted her head; but before she could say a word, the young gentleman burst into indignant speech.

"Gertrude, I can bear it no longer. Not even for you, not even for the chance of getting Christian back. It's empty swagger to say that I wish to GOD I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that sulky old gipsy hag."

Whilst he was speaking the tinker-mother had risen to her feet, and when she stood quite upright she was much taller than I had thought. The young gentleman had moved to take his cousin by the hand, but the old woman waved him back.

"Stay where you are, young gentleman," she said. "This is no matter for boys to mix and meddle in. Sybil, my daughter--Sybil, I say! Come and stand near me, for I gets confused at times, and I fears I may not explain myself to the noble gentlewoman with all the respect that I could wish. She says a great deal that is very true, my daughter, and she has no vulgar insolence in her manners of speaking. I thinks I shall let her do as she says, if we can get Christian out, which perhaps, if she is cousin to any of the justiciary, she may be able to do.

"The poor tinker-folk returns you the deepest of obligations, my gentle lady. If she'll let me see him when I wants to, it will be best, my daughter; for I thinks I am failing, and I shouldn't like to leave him with George and that drunken slut.

"I thinks I am failing, I say. Trouble and age and the lone company of your own thoughts, my noble gentlewoman, has a tendency to confuse you, though I was always highly esteemed for the facility of my speech, especially in the telling of fortunes.

"Let the poor gipsy look into your white hand, my pretty lady. The lines of life are somewhat broken with trouble, but they joins in peace. There's a dark young gentleman with a great influence on your happiness, and I sees grandchildren gathered at your knees.

"What did the lady snatch away her hand for, my daughter? I means no offence. She shall have Christian. I have told her so. Tell him to get ready and go before his father gets back. He's a bad 'un is my son George, and I knows now that she was far too good for him.

"Come a little nearer, my dear, that I may touch you. I sees your face so often, when I knows you can't be there, that it pleases me to be able to feel you. I was afraid you bore me ill-will for selling Christian; but I bought him back, my dear, I bought him back. Take him away with you, my dear, for I am failing, and I shouldn't like to leave him with George. Your eyes looks very hollow and your hair is grey. Not, that I begrudges your making so much of my son, but he treats you ill, he treats you very ill. Don't cry, my dear, it comes to an end at last, though I thinks sometimes that all the men in the world put together is not worth the love we wastes upon one. You hear what I say, Sybil? And that rascal, Black Basil, is the worst of a bad lot."

"Hold your jaw, Mother," said Sybil sharply; and she added, "Be pleased to excuse her, my lady: she is old and gets confused at times, and she thinks you are Christian's mother, who is dead."

The old woman was bursting out again, when Sybil raised her hand, and we all pricked our ears at a sound of noisy quarrelling that came nearer.

"It's George and his wife," said Sybil. "Mother, the gentlefolks had better go. I'll go to the inn afterwards, and tell them about Christian. Take the lady away, sir. Come, Mother, come!"

I've a horror of gipsy men, and even before our neighbours had dispersed I hustled away with Mrs. Hedgehog into the bushes.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

Good Mrs. Hedgehog hurt one of her feet slightly in our hurried retreat, and next day was obliged to rest it; but as our curiosity was more on the alert than ever, I went down in the afternoon to the tinker camp.

The old woman was sitting in her usual position, and she seemed to have recovered herself. Sybil was leaning back against a tree opposite; she wore a hat and shawl, and looked almost as wild as the tinker-mother had looked the day before. She seemed to have been at the inn with the clergywoman, and was telling the tinker-mother the result.

"You told her he had got two years, my daughter? Does she say she will get him out?"

"She says she has no more power to do it than yourself, Mother--and the young gentleman says the same--unless--unless it was made known that Christian was innocent."

"Two years," moaned the old woman. "Is she sure we couldn't buy him out, my dear? Two years--oh! Christian, my child, I shall never live to see you again!"

She sobbed for a minute, and then raising her hand suddenly above her head, she cried, "A curse on Black--" but Sybil seized her by the wrist so suddenly, that it checked her words.

"Don't curse him, Mother," said the gipsy girl, "and I'll--I'll see what I can do. I meant to, and I've come to say good-bye. I've brought a packet of tea for you; see that you keep it to yourself. Good-bye, Mother."

"Good-evening, my daughter."

"I said good-bye. You don't hold with religion, do you?"

"I does not, so far, my daughter; though I think the young clergywoman speaks very convincingly about it."

"Don't you think that there may be a better world, Mother, for them that tries to do right, though things goes against them here?"

"I think there might very easily be a better world, my dear, but I never was instructed about it."

"You don't believe in prayers, do you, Mother?"

"That I does not, my daughter. Christian said lots of 'em, and you sees what it comes to."

"It's not unlucky to say 'GOD bless you,' is it, Mother? I wanted you to say it before I go."

"No, my daughter, I doesn't object to that, for I regards it as an old-fashioned compliment, more in the nature of good manners than of holy words."

"GOD bless you, Mother."

"GOD bless you, my daughter."

Sybil turned round and walked steadily away. The last glimpse I had of her was when she turned once more, and put the hair from her face to look at the old woman: but the tinker-mother did not see her, for she was muttering with her head upon her hands.

* * * * *

It was a remarkable summer--that summer when I had seven, and when we took so much interest in our neighbours.

I make a point of never disturbing myself about the events of by-gone seasons. At the same time, to rear a family of seven urchins is not a thing done by hedgehog-parents every year, and the careers of that family are very clearly impressed upon my memory.

Number one came to a sad end.

What on the face of the wood made him think of pheasants' eggs, I cannot conceive. I'm sure I never said anything about them! It was whilst he was scrambling along the edge of the covert, that he met the Fox, and very properly rolled himself into a ball. The Fox's nose was as long as his own, and he rolled my poor son over and over with it, till he rolled him into the stream. The young urchins swim like fishes, but just as he was scrambling to shore, the Fox caught him by the waistcoat and killed him. I do hate slyness!

Numbers two and three were flitted. I told them so, but young people will go their own way. They had excellent victuals.

Number four (my eldest daughter) settled very comfortably in life, and had a family of three. She might have sent them down to the burdocks to pick snails quite well, but she would take them out walking with her instead. They were picked up (all four of them) by two long-legged Irish boys, who put them into a basket and took them home. I do not think the young gentlemen meant any harm, for they provided plenty of food, and took them to bed with them. They set my daughter at liberty next day, and she spoke very handsomely of the young gentlemen, and said they had cured the skins with saltpetre, and were stuffing them when she left. But the subject was always an awkward one.

Number five is still living. He is the best hand at a fight with a snake that I know.

Numbers six and seven went to Covent Garden in a hamper. They say black-beetles are excellent eating.

The whole seven had a narrow escape with their lives just after Sybil left us. They over-ate themselves on snails, and Mrs. Hedgehog had to stay at home and nurse them. I kept my eye on our neighbours and brought her the news.

"Christian has come home," I said, one day. "The Queen has given him a pardon."

"Then he _did_ take the pheasants' eggs?" said Mrs. Hedgehog.

"Certainly not," said I. "In the first place it wasn't eggs, and in the second place it was Black Basil who took whatever it was, and he has confessed to it."

"Then if Christian didn't do it, how is it that he has been forgiven?" said Mrs. Hedgehog.

"I can't tell you," said I; "but so it is. And he is at this moment with the clergywoman and the tinker-mother."

"Where is Sybil?" asked Mrs. Hedgehog.

I did not know then, and I am not very clear about her now. I never saw her again, but either I heard that she had married Black Basil, and that they had gone across the water to some country where the woods are bigger than they are here, or I have dreamt it in one of my winter naps.

I am inclined to think it must be true, because I always regarded Sybil as somewhat proud and unsociable, and I think she would like a big wood and very few neighbours.

But really when one sleeps for several months at a stretch it is not very easy to be accurate about one's dreams.

 

FOOTNOTES:

Footnote B: _Patteran_ = the gipsy "trail."

Footnote C: "Poknees," gipsy word for magistrate.

[The end]
Juliana Horatia Ewing's short story: Father Hedgehog And His Neighbours

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