The Ffolliots of Redmarley Part 10

"She smacked me," said the Kitten, glowering at Nana, "she 'urted me"; and at that moment she met Ger's eyes.

The Kitten turned very red.

"Who smacked you?" asked Mr Ffolliot unwisely.

Ger stared at the Kitten, and the Kitten wriggled in her chair.

"Say what _you_ did," muttered Ger, still holding his small sister in compelling gaze.

Nana smiled. She had started with Grantly, and knew the family.

"Fahver," said the Kitten in her most seductive tones, "take me," and she held out her arms.

Mr Ffolliot succ.u.mbed. He went round to his youngest daughter and lifted her out of her high chair, only to put her down with exceeding haste a moment later.

"The child is all over some horrible sticky substance," he cried, irritably.

"'At was it," said the Kitten.

Mr Ffolliot fled to wash his hands and change his coat. Nana and Thirza sat down again. Ger shook his head at his small sister. "You _are_ a rotter," he said, sadly.

The Kitten began to cry again, but this time she cried quite softly, and Nana, in spite of the libations of golden syrup, took her upon her knee to comfort her.

Every evening the children went down to the hall to play with their mother, and when their grandparents were there things were more than usually festive. Ganpie never seemed to mind how many children swarmed over him--in fact, he rather seemed to like it; and Grannie a.s.suredly knew more entrancing games than anyone else in the world.

One Christmas Eve, just after tea, the whole family, including Mr Ffolliot, were gathered in the hall. Fusby had just taken the tray, the General was sitting by the fire with Ger on his knee, the Kitten sat on the opposite side of the hearth on her father's, while the rest of the young people indulged in surrept.i.tious "ragging." Uz and Buz, by some mischance, charged into a heavy oaken post crowned by a large palm, with such force that they knocked it over, and the big flower-pot missed their grandfather and Ger by a hair's breadth.

When the universal consternation had subsided, the scattered earth been swept up, and the twins had been suitably reprimanded, the Kitten scrambled down from her father's knee, and trotted across to her grandmother, was duly taken up, and with small insistant hand turned her Grannie's face towards her.

"Which would you rather?" she asked in her high clear voice, "that Ganpie had been killed or Ger?"

Mrs Grantly shuddered--"Baby, don't suggest such dreadful things," she exclaimed.

"But which would you rather?" the Kitten persisted. "You're all saying 'another inch and it would have killed one of zem'--which one would you rather?"

But Mrs Grantly flatly refused to state her preference, and the Kitten was clearly disappointed.

That night she added an additional clause to her prayers: "Thank you, G.o.d dear, for not letting the flower-pot kill Ganpie or Ger, and I'm sure Grannie's very much obliged too."

At her prayers the Kitten always knelt bolt upright with her hands tightly clasped under her chin, her nightgown draped in graceful folds about her--a most reverent and saintly little figure, except that she had from the very first firmly refused to shut her eyes.

She was fond of adding a sort of P.S. to her regular prayers, and enjoyed its effect upon her mother, who made a point of, herself, attending the orisons of her two youngest children. One evening when Mrs Ffolliot had been reading her a rather pathetic story of a motherless child, the Kitten added this pet.i.tion, "Please, G.o.d, take care of all the little girls wiv no mummies."

Mrs Ffolliot was touched and related the story afterwards to Uz and Buz, who grinned sceptically.

Next night, when the Kitten had been very naughty, and Mrs Ffolliot had punished her, she repeated her prayers with the greatest unction, and when she reached the usual postscript, fixed her eyes sternly on her mother's face as she prayed fervently, "And please, dear G.o.d, take great care of the poor little girls what _have_ got mummies."

A mystically minded friend of Mrs Ffolliot's had talked a good deal of guardian angels to Ger and the Kitten. Ger welcomed the belief with enthusiasm. It appealed at once to his friendly nature, and the thought of an angel, "a dear and great angel," all for himself, specially concerned about him, and there always, though invisible save to the eye of faith, was a most pleasing conception.

Not that it would have pleased Ger unless he had been a.s.sured that everyone else had one too. And he forthwith constructed a theory that when people got tired of doing nothing in heaven they came back again and looked after folks down here.

His views of the angel's actual attributes would much have astonished his mother's friend had he expressed them. But Ger said nothing, and quietly constructed an angel after his own heart, who was in point of fact an angelic sort of soldier servant, never in the way, but always there and helpful if wanted.

He could not conceive of any servant who was not also a friend, and having received much kindness from soldiers in the ranks he fixed upon that type as the most agreeable for a guardian angel. And although he greatly admired the two framed pictures of angels the lady had given them to hang in the nursery--Guercino's Angel and Carpaccio's "Tobias and the angels"--his own particular angel was quite differently clad, and was called "Spinks" after a horse gunner he had dearly loved, who was now in India.

The Kitten, far less impressionable, and extremely cautious, was pleased with the idea when it was first mooted, and discussed the question exhaustively with Ger, deciding that her angel had large wings like the one with the child in the picture.

"Does it stay with me in the night-nursery all night?" she enquired.

"'He,' not 'it,'" Ger corrected; "but perhaps yours is a 'she.'"

"I won't have a she," the Kitten said decidedly, for even at four years old she had already learnt that her own s.e.x had small patience with her vagaries.

"You'll have to have what's sent you," Ger said solemnly.

"I won't have a lady angel, so there," said the Kitten, "I'll have a man angel."

"I daresay they'll let you," Ger said soothingly. "A great, big, kind man with wings like you said."

"Has yours got wings?" the Kitten demanded.

"I don't think so," said Ger, "he's not that sort; but," he added proudly, "he's got spurs."

"Will it stay in the nursery _all_ night?" the Kitten asked again rather nervously.

"Of course that's what he's for, to take care of you, so that you'll feel quite safe and happy."

"Oh," said the Kitten, and her voice betrayed the fact that she found this statement far from rea.s.suring.

She said nothing to her mother, and Mrs Ffolliot heard her say her prayers as usual, kissed her, blessed her, and tucked her in. No sooner, however, had Mrs Ffolliot gone down the pa.s.sage than the most vigorous yells brought her back to the night-nursery, while both Nana and Thirza hastened there also.

The Kitten was sitting up in bed, wide-eyed and apparently more indignant than frightened.

"Take it away," she exclaimed; "open the window and let it out."

"Let what out?" asked the bewildered Mrs Ffolliot.

"The angel," sobbed the Kitten, "I don't want it, I heard its wings rustling and it disturbed me dreffully--I don't want it, open the window wide."

"The window is open at the top," said Mrs Ffolliot; "but why do you want to get rid of an angel? Surely that's a lovely thing to have in the room."

"No," said the Kitten firmly, "I don't like it, and I don't want it. I don't want no angel I haven't seen. I don't like people in my room when I go to sleep."

Nana and Thirza had melted away, only too thankful not to be called upon to arbitrate in the angel question. Mrs Ffolliot and her small daughter stared at each other in the flickering firelight.

"I'm sure," said Mrs Ffolliot, trying hard to steady her voice, "that no self-respecting angel would stay for a minute with a little girl that didn't want him. You may be certain of that."

"A she might," the Kitten suggested suspiciously.