The Adventures of Herr Baby Part 6

Mother often called him "Herr Baby" for fun. The name had taken her fancy when he was a very tiny child, and Lisa had first come to be his nurse. For Lisa was _very_ polite; she would not have thought it at all proper to call him "Baby" all by itself.

Herr Baby kissed mother a third time, which, as he was not a very kissing person, was a great deal in one morning.

"Ses," he said, "him will always aks mother. Mother is so sweet," he added coaxingly.

"He calls everything he likes 'sweet,'" said Fritz. "Mother and the cat and the tiny trunk--they're all sweet.'"

But mother smiled, so Baby didn't mind.

CHAPTER IV.

GOING AWAY

"She did not say to the sun good-night, As she watched him there like a ball of light, For she knew he had G.o.d's time to keep All over the world, and never could sleep."

How, I can't tell, but, after all, _some_how the packing got done, and everything was ready. They left a _few_ things behind that Herr Baby would certainly have taken had he had the settling of it. They didn't take the horses, _nor_ the fireplaces, and, of course, as the horses weren't to go, Thomas and Jones had to be left behind too to take care of them, which troubled Baby a good deal. And no doubt Thomas and Jones would have been _very_ unhappy if it hadn't been for the nice way Baby spoke to them about coming back soon, and the letters he would send them on their birthdays, and that he would never like any other Thomases and Joneses as much as them. It was really quite nice to hear him, and Jones had to turn his head away a little--Baby was afraid it was to hide that he was crying.

It was a very busy time, and Baby was the busiest of any. There was so much to think of. The rabbits too had to be left behind, which was very sad, for one couldn't write letters to _them_ on their birthdays; neither Denny, whom he asked about it, nor Baby himself, could tell when the rabbits' birthdays were, and besides, as Baby said, "what would be the good of writing them letters if they couldn't read them?" The only thing to do was to get the little girl at the lodge to _promise_ to take them fresh cabbages every morning--that was one of the things Herr Baby had to see about, himself. Lisa lost him one morning, and found him at the lodge, after a great hunt, talking very gravely to the little girl about it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Zou will p'omise, Betsy, p'omise certain sure, _nebber_ to forget."--P. 61.]

"Zou will p'omise, Betsy, p'omise certain sure, _nebber_ to forget," he was saying, and poor Betsy looked quite frightened, Herr Baby was so very solemn. Fritz wanted to make her kiss her mother's old Testament, the way he had seen men do sometimes in his grandfather's study when they came to tell about things, and to promise they would speak the truth; but Betsy, though she was ready enough to _promise_, didn't like the other idea at all. She might be had up to the court for such like doings, she said, and as neither Fritz nor Baby had any idea what sort of place the court was, though they fancied it was some kind of prison for people who didn't keep their word, they thought it better to leave it.

The "calanies" and the "Bully" were to go, that was a comfort, and Peepy-Snoozle and Tim, the two dormice, also, another comfort. Baby's own packing was a serious matter, but, on the whole, I think mother and Lisa and everybody were rather glad he had it to do, as it gave other people a chance of getting _theirs_ done without the little feet pattering along the pa.s.sage or up the stairs, and the little shrill voice asking what was going to be put into _this_ trunk or into _that_ carpet-bag. He gave up thinking so much about the other packing after a while, for he found his own took all his time and attention. Mother had found him a box after all. Not _the_ box of course--that was left empty, by Baby's wish, till some day when he was a big man, he should go to the country of the fairy gla.s.s and buy mother some new jugs--but a very nice little box, and she gave him cotton wool and crushy paper too, and everything was as neat as possible, and the box quite packed and ready, the first evening. But it was very queer that _every_ day after that Herr Baby found something or other he had forgotten, or something that Denny and he decided in their early morning talks, that it would be silly to take. Or else it came into his head in the night that his best Bible would be better in the _other_ corner, and the scenty purse on the top of it instead of at one side. Any way it always happened that the box had to be unpacked and packed again, and the very last evening there was Herr Baby on his knees before it on the floor, giving the finis.h.i.+ng touches, long after he should have been in bed.

"And we have to be up so early to-morrow morning," said mother, "my dear little boy, you really _should_ have been fast asleep by this time."

"And he wakes me _so_ early in the morning," said Denny, who was standing before the fire giving herself little cross shakes every time poor Lisa, who was combing out her long fair hair, came to a tuggy bit.

"_Lisa_, you're _hurting_ me; _Lisa_, do take care," she added snappishly.

"My dear Denny, how very impatient you are!" said her mother. "I don't know how you will bear all the little discomforts of a long journey if you can't bear to have your hair combed."

On this, Denny, as Fritz would have said, "shut up." She could not bear it to be thought that she was babyish or "silly." Her great, great wish was to be considered quite a big girl. You could get her to do anything by telling her it would be babyish not to do it, or that doing it would be like big people, which, of course, showed that she _was_ rather babyish in reality, as sensible children understand that they cannot be like big people in everything, and that they wouldn't be at all nice if they were.

Baby always felt sorry for Denny or any of them when mother found fault with them. He jumped up from the floor--at least he _got_ up, his legs were too short for him to spring either up or down very actively--and trotted across to his sister.

"Poor Denny," he said, reaching up to kiss her, "him won't wake her up so early to-mollow morning."

"But we'll _have_ to wake early to-morrow," said Denny, rather crossly still, "it's no use you beginning good ways about not waking me now, just when everything's changed."

Baby looked rather sad.

"Is your box quite ready now, dear?" said his mother. "Well then, let Lisa get you ready for bed as quick as she can, and you and Denny must go to sleep without any talking, and wake fresh in the morning."

But Baby still looked sad; his face began working and twisting, and at last he ran to mother and hid it in her lap, bursting into tears.

"Denny makes him so unhappy," he said. "Him doesn't like everysing to be changed like Denny says. Him is so sorry to go away and to leave him's house and Thomas and Jones, and oh! him is _so_ sorry to leave the labbits!"

"And him's a tired little boy. I think it's because he's so tired that he's so sad about going away," said mother. "Think, dear, how nice it is that we're all going _together_, not Celia or Fritz or anybody left behind. For you know Thomas has his old mother he wouldn't like to leave, and Jones has his wife and children. And if the rabbits could talk, I'm quite sure they would tell you that they'd far rather stay here in their own nice little house, with plenty of cabbages, than be bundled into a box and taken away in the railway ever so far, without being able to run about for ever so many days."

Baby's face cleared a little.

"Betsy has p'omised," he said to himself. Then he added, "_Him_ won't like the railway neither if it's like that."

"But _him's_ not going to be put in a box or a basket," said mother, laughing. "Him will have a nice little corner all to himself in a cus.h.i.+oned railway carriage, only just now he really _must_ go to bed."

So she kissed him for good-night, and Denny too, who, by this time, had recovered her good-humour in the interest of listening to the conversation between her mother and Herr Baby, and soon both little sister and brother were fast asleep in their cots, dreaming about the journey before them I daresay, or perhaps forgetting all about it in the much queerer and stranger journeys that small people are apt to fly away upon at night, when their tired little bodies _seem_ to be lying quite still and motionless in bed.

It was strange enough--_almost_ as strange as a dream--the next morning when, long before it was light, they had all to get up and be dressed at once in their going-out things--that is to say their thick boots and gaiters, and woollen under-jackets (for it was very cold, though not yet far on in November), while their ulsters and comforters and caps, and the girls' sealskin coats and m.u.f.fs and hats, were all laid out in four little heaps by Lisa, so that they should be ready to put on the moment breakfast was over.

What a funny breakfast! Candles on the table, for it was not, of course, worth while to light the lamp, and everything looking more like a sort of "muddley tea," Fritz said, than their usual trim nursery breakfast.

"I can't eat," said Fritz, throwing down his bread and b.u.t.ter; "it's no use."

"And there's eggs!" said Denny, who was comfortably at work at hers, looking across at Fritz as if it wouldn't be very difficult to eat up his egg too. "I think it's very kind of cook to have got up so early and made us eggs 'cos we were going away, and----"

"'Twasn't cook, 'twas Abigail," said Fritz. "I saw her coming up with the eggs all in a pan with hot water, so that they shouldn't get cold, she said to Lisa."

"Well then it was very kind of Abigail, and----" said Denny.

"'Twasn't Abigail that made the eggs," said Baby, "'twas the hens zat laid them. Denny should say the _hens_ was werry kind."

"Oh bother," said Denny, "I wish you'd not interrupt me. I don't care who it was. I only want to say it's very stupid of Fritz not to eat his egg, when _somebody_ made them for us, extra you know, because we're going away, and I think Fritz is very stupid."

"Come, Herr Fritz," said Lisa, encouragingly, "try and eat. You will be so hungry."

"I can't," said Fritz, "I've got a horrid feeling just like when mother took me to have that big tooth out. I feel all shaky and cruddley."

"Yes, _I_ know," said Denny, going on with _her_ breakfast all the same, "but eating's the best thing to make it go away. I felt just that way the day I broke grandfather's hotness measure, and mother said I must tell him myself. I couldn't eat a bit of dinner, and I sat on the stair all _screwged_ up, waiting for him to go to the study."

"How dedful!" said Baby, with great feeling. But neither Fritz nor Celia seemed to think much of Denny's sufferings. No one had ever seen her nerves disturbed, and they did not therefore much believe in her having any.

"Grandfather's _what_ did you say?" asked Celia.

"His hotness measure--the little gla.s.s pipe thing with a blob that goes up and down. He's got another now, you know."

"You mean his thermometer; you really should learn the proper names of things," said Celia, "you're quite big enough."

Denny would probably not have taken this in good part, though the "quite big enough" at the end was very much to her taste, but there was no time _this_ morning for squabbling.

"Quick, quick, mine children," said Lisa, "the cart with the luggage is 'way, and the Herr Grandpapa is b.u.t.toning his coat."

"And Fritz hasn't eaten his egg!" said Denny, eyeing it dolefully, as Lisa was fastening her jacket.