Littlebourne Lock Part 5

Mitch.e.l.l laughed scornfully. His wife also laughed a very little, and baby chuckled as if he too thought his aunt's ignorance of the world very amusing; but none of these laughs moved Juliet even to smile.

Then Emma Rowles began to tie her bonnet-strings, and to pull her mantle on her shoulders.

"I will take back the empty basket, please," she said. "And, Thomas,--Mary,--I want you to let me take something else."

"There's not much you can take," said Thomas.

"Will you lend me one of your children?"

"Oh, not my precious, precious baby-boy!" cried Mary, throwing aside the mantle. "He's the only baby we've got now!"

"No, not baby; I should be rather afraid of him. But one of the others."

"Well--" and Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l hesitated.

"Take me," said Juliet, in a low, hard voice. "I'm that stupid and awkward and careless that I'm no good to anybody. And I don't want to learn, and I don't want to be good. All I want is mutton-chops and puddings, and new boots."

Her sullen little face stared at her aunt with a look of stolid indifference on it. Was it possible that poverty had pinched her child's heart so hard as to have pinched all softness and sweetness out of it?

Mrs. Rowles's heart was full of softness and sweetness.

"May I take Juliet home with me? I can't promise mutton-chops, but there will be beans and bacon. And boots perhaps we can manage."

"I don't like parting with any of them. Though, to be sure, Florry can mind baby; or even little Amy can. Juliet, my child, shall I let you go?" and Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l clasped the girl in her arms, and tears streamed down the mother's face, while Juliet stood as stony and unmoved as ever.

"She's got no clothes for going on a visit," said Mitch.e.l.l.

"She can have some of my girl's; they are just of a size."

"All right, then, Emma. You're a good sister, you are. Not one of my people has come forward like this. They are all so high and mighty and so well-to-do in the world, they can't turn their eyes down so low as me and mine. But you've give me a turn for the better, Emma Rowles.

You'll see I'll be at work on Monday night, if not sooner."

Juliet being lent to her, Mrs. Rowles felt that she might now proceed on her homeward journey, which would occupy some three hours. So, after affectionate farewells she set off, her basket hanging on one arm and her niece hanging on the other; and they clambered into omnibuses, rushed over crossings and under horses' heads, ran full tilt against old gentlemen, and caught themselves on the hooks and b.u.t.tons of old ladies, in a way which Juliet alone would never have done. But Mrs. Rowles, being unused to London, was more fussy and hurried than any Londoner could ever find time to be.

CHAPTER IV.

THE "PRETTY CHURCHYARD."

IT was late in the day when the aunt and niece seated themselves in the train for Littlebourne. Mrs. Rowles counted up her money, and then counted up the time.

"It will be eight o'clock before we get home," she remarked; "it will be getting dark and near your bed-time."

"I don't care," said Juliet; "I don't want to go to bed."

"Oh, no; but I shall be tired and sleepy. Juliet, have you ever been in the country?"

"No."

"But you said you liked the Crystal Palace."

"No, I didn't," was Juliet's polite reply.

"I beg your pardon, my dear, I thought you did."

"I said," explained Juliet, slightly abashed by her aunt's courteous manner--"I said I wanted to go to the Crystal Palace. Father said once that he would take us on a bank holiday, but then we got poor, and so he never kept his word. We always have been poor, we never had mutton-chops but only three times; and now we are poorer than we used to be, and we don't even get rice puddings."

"Well, I'll try and give you rice puddings, and suet ones too."

"Oh, I don't care," said the child relapsing into her usual manner; "I don't want your puddings."

The carriage soon filled with other pa.s.sengers, and there came over Mrs. Rowles a slight sensation of shame when she saw how they glanced at Juliet in her patched frock and untidy hat. And the neat country-woman felt that to walk with this London child through the village of Littlebourne, where every creature, down to the cows and cats and dogs, all knew the lock-keeper's wife, would be a great trial of courage.

It was only now that Mrs. Rowles realized the condition of many of the working-cla.s.s (_so called_, for harder work is done by heads than by hands) in the great city, who yet are not what is known as "poor." The Mitch.e.l.l family had drifted away from the Rowles family. A letter now and then pa.s.sed between them, but Rowles had held such a prejudice against Mitch.e.l.l's employment that really no intercourse had taken place between the two families. Mrs. Rowles had been drawn, she knew not how, but by some sort of instinct, to visit her brother-in-law this day; and she had further been impelled to offer Juliet a trip to the country. But now she almost regretted it.

Juliet sat opposite her aunt, looking out blankly at the houses as the train pa.s.sed through the western suburbs. After a while she stood up at the window. Fields and trees were beginning to be more frequent than at first. Soon the houses became rare, and the fields continuous.

Juliet's lips were muttering something which Mrs. Rowles could not hear in the noise made by the train.

She leaned forward to the child. "What do you say?"

"Pretty churchyard!" said Juliet.

"_What_ do you say?"

"Pretty churchyard' pretty churchyard!"

"Whatever do you mean, my child!"

"I mean, this churchyard is bigger and prettier than the churchyards in London, where I used to play when I was little."

Mrs. Rowles's eyes filled with tears. She understood now that Juliet had only known trees and flowers by seeing them in the churchyards of London, disused for the dead, and turned into gardens--grim enough--for the living. And so to the child's mind green gra.s.s and waving boughs seemed to be always disused churchyards. Such sad ignorance would seem impossible, if we did not know it to be a _fact_.

"But, Juliet, these are fields. Gra.s.s grows in them for the cows and sheep to eat, and corn to make us bread, and flowers to make us happy and to make us good."

Juliet did not reply. She gazed out at the landscape through which they were pa.s.sing, and which was growing every moment more soft and lovely as the sky grew mellower and the shadows longer. She almost doubted her aunt's words. And yet this would be a very big churchyard; and certainly there were cows and sheep in sight, and there were red and white and yellow flowers growing beside the line. So she said nothing, but thought that she would wait and find out things for herself.

At Littlebourne station Mrs. Rowles and Juliet alighted. The ticket-collector looked hard at Juliet, and the cabman outside the gate said, "Got a little un boarded out, Mrs. Rowles?"

Mrs. Rowles shook her head and walked on. She bethought herself of a means by which to avoid most of her neighbours' eyes. She would go round the field way, and not through the village. It was a much prettier walk, but rather longer.

"Are you tired, Juliet?" she asked kindly.

"Of course I am."

"Well, we shall soon be home now."