Johnny Ludlow Third Series Part 100

"Just like her!" cried he, with a fling at Mrs. Todhetley. "Always devising some rubbish or other to gratify the little reptiles!"

The "little reptiles" applied to the school children at North Crabb.

They generally had a treat at Christmas; and this year Mrs. Todhetley said she would like it to be given by us, at Crabb Cot, if the Squire did not object to stand the evening's uproar. After vowing for a day that he wouldn't hear of it, the Squire (to our astonishment) gave in, and said they might come. It was only the girls: the boys had their treat later on, when they could go in for out-of-door sports. After the pater's concession, she and the school-mistress, Miss Timmens, were as busy planning-out the arrangements as two bees in a honeysuckle field.

The evening fixed upon was the last in the old year--a Thursday. And the preparations seemed to me to be in full flow from the previous Monday.

Molly made her plum-cakes and loaves on the Wednesday; on the Thursday after breakfast, her mistress went to the kitchen to help her with the pork-pies and the tartlets. To judge by the quant.i.ty provided, the school would require nothing more for a week to come.

The Squire went over to Islip on some matter of business, taking Tod with him. Our children, Hugh and Lena, were spending the day with the little Letsoms, who would come back with them for the treat; so we had the house to ourselves. The white deal ironing-board under the kitchen window was raised on its iron legs; before it stood Mrs. Todhetley and Molly, busy with the mysteries of pastry-making and patty-pan filling.

I sat on the edge of the board, looking on. The small savoury pies were done, and in the act of baking, a tray-load at a time; every now and then Molly darted into the back kitchen, where the oven was, to look after them. For two days the snow had come down thickly; it was falling still in great flakes; far and near, the landscape showed white and bright.

"Johnny, if you will persist in eating the jam, I shall have to send you away."

"Put the jar on the other side then, good mother."

"Ugh! Much jam Master Johnny would leave for the tarts, let him have his way," struck in Molly, more crusty than her own pastry, when I declare I had only dipped the wrong end of the fork in three or four times. The jam was not hers.

"Mind you don't give the young ones bread-and-sc.r.a.pe, Molly," I retorted, catching sight of no end of b.u.t.ter-pats through the open door.

At which advice she only threw up her head.

"Who is this, coming up through the snow?" cried the mater.

I turned to the window and made it out to be Mrs. Trewin: a meek little woman who had seen better days, and tried to get her living as a dressmaker since the death of her husband. She had not been good for very much since: never seemed quite to get over the shock. Going out one morning, as usual, to his duties as an office clerk, he was brought home dead. Killed by an accident. It was eighteen months ago now, but Mrs.

Trewin wore deep mourning still.

Not standing upon ceremony down in our country, Mrs. Todhetley had her brought into the kitchen, going on with the tartlets all the same, while she talked. Mrs. Trewin was making a frock for Lena, and had come up to say that the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g ran short. The mater told her she was too busy to see to it then, and was very sorry she had come through the snow for such a trifle.

"'Twas not much further, ma'am," was her answer: "I had to go out to the school to fetch home Nettie. The path is so slippery, through the boys making slides, that I don't altogether like to trust the child to go to and fro to school by herself."

"As if Nettie would come to any harm, Mrs. Trewin!" I put in. "If she went down, it would only be a Christmas gambol."

"Accidents happen so unexpectedly, sir," she answered, a shadow crossing her sad face. And I was sorry to have said it: it had put her in mind of her husband.

"You are coming up this evening, you know, Mrs. Trewin," said mother.

"Don't be late."

"It is very good of you to have asked me, ma'am," she answered gratefully. "I said so to Miss Timmens. I'm sure it will be something new to have such a treat. Nettie, poor child, will enjoy it too."

Molly came banging in with a tray of pork-pies, just out of the oven.

The mater told Mrs. Trewin to take one, and offered her a gla.s.s of beer.

But, instead of eating the pie, she wrapped it in paper to take with her home, and declined the beer, lest it should give her a headache for the evening.

So Mrs. Trewin took her departure; and, under cover of it, I helped myself to another of the pork-pies. Weren't they good! After that the morning went on again, and the tart-making with it.

The last of the paste was being used up, the last of the jam jars stood open, and the clock told us that it was getting on for one, when we had another visitor: Miss Timmens, the schoolmistress. She came in, stamping the snow from her shoes on the mat, her thin figure clad in an old long cloth cloak, and the chronic redness in her face turned purple.

"My word! It is a day, ma'am, this is!" she exclaimed.

"And what have you come through it for?" asked Mrs. Todhetley. "About the forms? Why, I sent word to you by Luke Mackintosh that they would be fetched at two o'clock."

"He never came, then," said Miss Timmens, irate at Luke's negligence.

"That Mackintosh is not worth his salt. What delicious-looking tartlets!" exclaimed she, as she sat down. "And what a lot of them!"

"Try one," said the mother. "Johnny, hand them to Miss Timmens, and a plate."

"That silly Sarah Trewin has gone and tumbled down," cried Miss Timmens, as she thanked me and took the plate and one of the tartlets. "Went and slipped upon a slide near the school-house. What a delicious tart!"

"Sarah Trewin!" cried the mater, turning round from the board. "Why, she was here an hour ago. Has she hurt herself?"

"Just bruised all the one side of her black and blue, from her shoulder to her ankle," answered Miss Timmens. "Those unruly boys have made slides all over the place, ma'am; and Sarah Trewin must needs go down upon one, not looking, I suppose, to her feet. She had only just turned out of the schoolroom with Nettie."

"Dear, dear! And she is so unable to bear a fall!"

"Of course it might have been worse, for there are no bones broken,"

remarked Miss Timmens. "As to Nettie, the child was nearly frightened out of her senses; she's sobbing and crying still. Never was such a timid child as that."

"Will Sarah Trewin be able to come this evening?"

"Not she, ma'am. She'll be as stiff as buckram for days to come. I'd like to pay out those boys--making their slides on the pathway and endangering people's lives! Nicol's not half strict enough with them; and I'm tired of telling him so. Tiresome, rude monkeys! Not that my girls are a degree better: they'd go down all the slides in the parish, let 'em have their way. What with them, and what with these fantastical notions of the new parson, I'm sure my life's a martyrdom."

The mother smiled over her pastry. Miss Timmens and the parson, civilly polite to one another, were mentally at daggers drawn.

The time I am writing of was before the movement, set in of later years, for giving the ma.s.ses the same kind of education as their betters; but our new parson at Crabb was before his age in these ideas. To experienced Miss Timmens, and to a great many more clear-sighted people, the best word that could be given to the movement was "fantastical."

"He came in yesterday afternoon at dusk," she resumed, "when I was holding my Bible Cla.s.s. 'And what has been the course of instruction to-day, Miss Timmens?' asked he, as mild as new milk, all the girls gaping and staring around him. 'It has been reading, and writing, and summing, and spelling, and sewing,' said I, giving him the catalogue in full: 'and now I'm trying to teach them their duty to Heaven and to one another. And according to my old-fas.h.i.+oned notion, sir,' I summed up, 'if a poor girl acquires these matters thoroughly, she is a deal more fitted to go through life in the station to which G.o.d has called her (as the catechism says), than she would be if you gave her a course of fine mincing uppishness, with your poetry and your drawing and your embroidery.' Oh, he gets his answer from me, ma'am."

"Mr. Bruce may be kind and enlightened, and all that," spoke Mrs.

Todhetley, "but he certainly seems inclined to carry his ideas beyond reasonable bounds, so far as regards these poor peasant children."

"Reasonable!" repeated Miss Timmens, catching up the word, and rubbing her sharp nose with excitement: "why, the worst is, that there's no reason in it. Not a jot. The parson's mind has gone a little bit off its balance, ma'am; that's my firm conviction. This exalted education applied to young ladies would be all right and proper: but where can be the use of it to these poor girls? What good will his accomplishments, his branches of grand learning do them? His conchology and meteorology, and all the rest of his ologies? Of what service will it be to them in future?"

"I'd have got my living nicely, I guess, if I'd been taught them things," satirically struck in Molly, unable to keep her tongue still any longer. "A fine cook I should ha' made!--kept all my places a beautiful length of time; I wouldn't come with such flighty talk to the Squire, Miss Timmens, if 'twas me."

"The talk's other people's; it isn't mine," fired Miss Timmens, turning her wrath on Molly. "That is, the notions are. You had better attend to your baking, Molly."

"So I had," said Molly. "Baking's more in my line than them other foreign jerks. But well I should have knowed how to do it if my mind had been c.o.c.keted up with the learning that's only fit for lords and ladies."

"Is not that my argument?" retorted Miss Timmens, flinging the last word after her as she went out to her oven. "Poor girls were sent into the world to work, ma'am, not to play at being fine scholars," she added to Mrs. Todhetley, as she got up to leave. "And, as sure as we are born, this new dodge of education, if it ever gets a footing, will turn the country upside down."

"I'm sure I hope not," replied the mother in her mild way. "Take another tart, Miss Timmens. These are currant and raspberry."

II.

The company began to arrive at four o'clock. The snow had ceased to fall; it was a fine, cold, clear evening, the moon very bright. A large store-room at the back of the house had been cleared out, and a huge fire made in it. The walls were decorated with evergreens, and tin sconces holding candles; benches from the school-house were ranged underneath them. This was to be the princ.i.p.al play-room, but the other rooms were open. Mrs. Hill (formerly Mrs. Garth, who had not so very long before lost poor David) and Maria Lease came up by invitation to help Miss Timmens with the children; and Mrs. Trewin would have come but for her fall on the slide. Miss Timmens appeared in full feather: a purple gown of shot silk, with a red waist-band, and red holly berries in her lace cap. The children, timid at first, sat round on the forms in prim stillness, just like so many mice.

By far the most timid of all was a gentle little thing of seven years old, got up like a lady; white frock, black sash and sleeve ribbons. She was delicate-featured, blue-eyed, had curling flaxen hair. It was Nettie Trewin. Far superior she looked to all of them; out of place, in fact, amongst so many coa.r.s.er natures. Her little arm and hand trembled as she clung to Miss Timmens' gown.

"Senseless little thing," cried Miss Timmens, "to be afraid in a beautiful room like this, and with all these kind friends around her!