LITMIR.BIZ

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of autumn in their veins.

      It is a great delight to order your own flower list. It means a true wealth of beauty in the future, brilliant colours and sweet odours, and the promise of so much in the present. Promise is often like the petals of last year’s roses, and yet full of delights is the garden of imagination. I sat on and dreamt of my future borders, in which no frost nor hail, nor any evil thing would fall, and sat on drawing little squares and rounds on white paper borders when my leisure was suddenly disturbed. Too much leisure is not given to any mother of the twentieth century. And Bess entered like a thunder clap.

      “Mama,” she called, “Mama, Crawley declares that you are going out sledging. May I come – I want to, I want to?”

      “Yes,” I answered; “but you must do just as I tell you, get out if I tell you, and not do anything foolish.”

      Bess agreed to all my stipulations. What would she not have agreed to, to gain her point? And conditions, before they happen, do not sit heavily on a child’s soul.

      At last even luncheon was over, and Bess awaited the sledge, expectant and triumphant on the mounting-block.

      Just as Bess was sure for the hundredth time that it must be almost tea time, and that something must have happened to Bluebell, the sound of the bells rang out across the frosty air.

      “It comes, it comes,” cried Bess, rapturously, “and oh, mama, isn’t it fun. It’s better than walnuts on Sundays, or damming up a stream with Burbidge, or even helping to wash Mouse with Fred,” and my little maid, in a flame-coloured serge mantle trimmed with grey Chinchilla fur, leapt about with excitement.

WE JOURNEY IN A SLEDGE

      A minute later, and Fremantle and the footman ran out with blankets, which they carried in their arms in great brown-paper parcels. Each parcel bore the name of one of the seven old women who were that afternoon to receive a pair of blankets. We got in, and then somehow all the parcels were piled up and round us – how I cannot really say, but like a conjuring trick somehow it was done. At last, when all was put in and Bess screamed out “safe,” I shook the reins, old Bluebell looked round demurely, and then trotted off. Mouse gave a deep bay of exultation, Tramp and Tartar yelped frantically, and away we went.

      The dogs barked, the bells jingled, and a keen, crisp wind played upon us, packages and pony.

      We drove along the old town. We passed the old Town Hall with its whipping-post, and so up High Street past the beautiful old house known as Ashfield Hall, once the old town house of the Lawleys, where Charles I. is said to have slept during his wars, and where Prince Rupert another time dined and rested with some of the gentlemen of his guard. Ashfield Hall is a striking old house, with a gateway, mullion and latticed windows, and beyond extends the old street, known since the days of the pilgrims as Hospital Street.

      Overhead stretched a laughing blue sky, and all round was what Bess was pleased to term the Snow Queen’s Kingdom. First of all, we went to Newtown. We passed the red vicarage with its great dark green ilex, and then up by the picturesque forge, where the blacksmith was hammering on a shoe, away by the strange old cottages on the Causeway, with a fall below them into the road of some seven or eight feet, on we went as quickly as fat Bluebell could be persuaded to trot. Then we mounted the hill, and I got out and led the old pony to ease its burden, for a sledge is always a heavy weight when it has to be dragged up hill. At last old Jenny James’s cottage was reached, and her parcel duly handed out.

      “I like giving things,” said Bess, superbly. “It seems to make you happier.”

      “Yes,” I answered; “but gifts are best when we give something that we want ourselves.”

      “Don’t you want the blankets, mama?” asked Bess, abruptly.

      “Well, not exactly, dear,” I answered. “Giving them didn’t mean that I had to go without my dinner, or even had to give up ordering my seed list this morning.”

      “Must one really do that,” asked Bess sadly, “before one can give anything?”

      “Perhaps, little one,” I said, “to taste the very best happiness.” Then there was a little pause, which was at last broken by Bess turning crimson and saying —

      “Mamsie, I think it must be very, very difficult to be quite, quite happy.”

GIFTS TO THE POOR

      I did not explain, but saw from Bess’s expression that I had sown a grain of a seed, and wondered when it would blossom. Then we turned round and slipped down the hill at a brisk rattle, all the dogs following hotly behind, to an old dame who had long had a promise of a blanket. The old body came out joyfully and stood by her wicket gate, beaming with pleasure. It is an awful thing, sometimes, the joy of the poor over some little gift. It brings home to us at times our own unworthiness more than anything else.

      Old Sukey, as she is called by her neighbours, took her blankets from Bess with delight. “I shall sleep now,” she said, “like a cat by the hearth, come summer come winter,” and her old wrinkled face began to twitch, and tears to rise in her poor old rheumy eyes. “Pretty dear,” she said to Bess, “’tis most like a blow itself. I wish I had a bloom to offer, but ’tis only a blessing now that I can give thee.”

      Again we turned, and pattered back post-haste up the Barrow Road to a distant cottage.

      “Is it a good thing to get a blessing?” asked Bess, suddenly.

      “A very good thing, for it makes even the richest richer.”

      “Then,” answered Bess, “when I grow up I mean to get a great many blessings.”

      “How, little one, will you do that?”

      “Why,” answered Bess, “I shall give to everybody everything they want, and buy for all the children all the toys that I can find.”

      “But supposing that you are not rich, that you haven’t money in your purse, or a cheque-book from the bank like papa?”

      “Then I shall have to pray – and that will do it, for I’m sure the good Lord wouldn’t like to disoblige me.”

      At last all our visits were paid, and we had left seven happy old souls, whom it was a comfort to think would all sleep the sounder for our visit of that day.

      As we drove home, Bess suddenly turned round and said —

      “Mamsie, why can’t they buy blankets?”

      It is very hard for the child-mind to grasp that the necessities of life – bread, blankets, and beds – do not come, in a child’s language, “all by themselves.”

      Puppies, pets, and chocolates, children can understand have to be paid for; but the dull things, they consider, surely ought to grow quite naturally, like the trees outside the nursery windows, all by themselves, and of their own accord, as they would say.

      I tried to explain to Bess what poverty really was, and told her what it would mean to have no money, but to buy the absolute bare necessities of life. Bess listened open-mouthed, and at the end exclaimed —

      “Why has God given me so much, and to poor children, then, so little?”

      “I wonder,” I replied; “but, anyway, as you have got so much, you must do what you can to make other little boys and girls happier. For God, when he gives much, will also ask much some day.”

      Bess did not answer, and we drove back in silence. It was very still along the country lanes, save for the tinkling of the joyous bells. Behind us followed our pack, Mouse panting somewhat, for she had fed at luncheon time, not wisely, but too well; but Tramp and Tartar scampered gaily after us. The whole country seemed enveloped in a white winding-sheet, and the sunlight was dying out of the west. A soft white mist was stealing up over all, but the voice of death was gentle, calm, almost sweet, across the silent world. Cottages looked out by their windows, blinking, and appeared almost as white as the snow beneath them.

      Old Bluebell seemed to know that her trot to the Abbey was her last journey, and went with a good will. We passed the new hospital, dashed down Sheinton Street, and so into the Italian gates by the old Watch Tower of the abbot’s, beyond the old Bull Ring

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