The Thirteen Little Black Pigs, and Other Stories

[Illustration: no Pansy, no flower-pot, nothing to be seen!]

"Pansy," he said to his sister, "I've been thinking if you want the flowers to last as long as they possibly can, you must really give them a little more fresh air. It's all very well in the daytime when your window's open, but at night I'm sure the pansy feels choky and stuffy. You see flowers aren't like us, except hot-house ones of course, they're used to live out-of-doors."

Pansy looked very anxious.

"I wonder if it's that," she said. "I noticed, though I tried to think it was fancy, that one of the biggest flower-leaves," (she meant "petals," but she was too little to know the right word), "not the _leaf_-leaves you know, was a tiny atom of a bit crushed up, almost like," and here Pansy dropped her voice, as if what she was going to say was almost _too_ dreadful to put in words, "almost like as if it was beginning to--to wither a little."

Bob nodded his head.

"That's it," he said, "I bet you anything that's it. It's want of fresh air. Well, Pansy, I've measured the ledge outside, it's quite wide enough to hold the flower-pot and the saucer, and though it slopes downwards a very little, it's nothing to make it stand unsteady. Now suppose, last thing at night, we put it outside, I'm sure it would freshen it up, and flowers are just as used to night air as to day air."

Pansy agreed; she examined the outer sill with Bob, it seemed all right. So that evening when the children's bedtime came, pansy flower was told by Pansy little girl what her kind mamma and uncle had planned for her benefit, and with what Pansy called a kiss, a very butterfly kiss it was, for the little girl was as afraid of hurting the pansy as if it had been a sensitive plant, the flower-pot was placed on the ledge outside.

First thing next morning Pansy flew to look at the flower.

"Have you had a good night, my darling? oh, yes, I think so. You look very fresh and well, though a _little_ wet." For a gentle shower had fallen in the night. "Perhaps the rain will have done you good."

Bob was quite sure it had, certainly the crumply look on the purple petal was no _worse_, so the plan was kept to, and every night the pot was carefully settled on the ledge.

I think it was on the third morning that the dreadful thing happened which I must now tell you of.

When Pansy opened the window to draw in her dear flower and bid it good morning, there was no pansy, no flower-pot, _nothing_ to be seen!

With a sort of shriek Pansy flew across the day nursery to the bedroom where nurse was dressing baby Charley, while Bob, all ready, was giving the last touch up to his curly hair.

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"Nurse, Bob," she cried, "have you _possibly_ brought the pansy in while I was asleep?"

But nurse and Bob shook their heads. Then they all hurried back to Pansy's room, and nurse, bidding the children stand back, peered out of the window. There was a tiny strip of ground railed in between the house and the street. Nurse drew her head in again.

"Master Bob," she said, "run down and ask cook to let you out by the back-door. I think I see the poor flower down there. It must have fallen over."

Yes, _knocked_ over by a stray cat, most likely. The children had never thought of cats. There it lay! Bob and the cook did their best, but there was little to do. It was a poor little clump of green "leaf-leaves" only that remained, when the sad procession from the nursery tapped at their mother's door, Pansy's face so disfigured by crying that you would _scarcely_ have known her.

Mamma was very sorry for her, very, _very_ sorry. She knew that to Pansy it was a real big sorrow, trifling as some people might think it. But, still, as she told the little girl, sorrows and troubles _have_ to come, and till we learn to bear them and find the sweet in the bitter we are not good for much. So she encouraged Pansy to be brave and unselfish and not to make the nursery life sad and miserable on account of this misfortune. And Pansy did her best. Only she begged her mother to take the flower-pot away.

"I think I would like it to be buried," she said with a sob. "It's like when Bob's canary died."

But two or three days after that, it may have been a week even, one morning mamma came into the nursery looking very happy and carrying something in her hand over which she had thrown a handkerchief.

"Pansy dear," she said, "I waited to tell you till I was quite sure. I did not 'bury' your pansy root, and I have been watching it. And do you know there is another bud just about to burst, and a still tinier one, all green as yet, but which will come on in time. In a week or two you will have two new flowers quite as pretty, I hope, as the other ones."

"Oh mamma," said Pansy, clasping her hands together. Her heart was too full to say more.

And the buds did blossom into lovely flowers, even lovelier, the children thought, than the first ones. For there was the intense delight of watching them growing day by day, the gardener's delight which no one can really understand who has not felt it.

No accident happened this time, and when the season was over, the pansy root was planted in a corner of the little strip of flower border at the side of the house, where it managed to get on very well, and perhaps will have more buds and flowers for several springs to come.

There is one thing more to tell. Pansy's godmother was so touched by the story of the pansy, that she sent an "extra" present to the vicarage children that summer, though it wasn't any "birthday" at all. The present was a beautiful case of ferns, with a glass cover, so that it could stand in the house all the year round. It was placed in the window of the landing on to which the nursery opened, and there, I hope, it stands still. For it would be impossible to tell the delight this indoors forest gives to the children, who have grown so clever at managing it, that Bob really thinks they should try for a prize at the next "window gardening" exhibition.

For there _are_ such cheerful things as that, one is glad to know, even at smoky Northclough!

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PET'S HALF-CROWN

Mammas have troubles sometimes, though you mightn't think it. They have indeed. I remember when I was a little girl that it seemed to me big people _couldn't_ have real troubles; that only children had them. Big people could do as they liked, get up when they liked, not go to bed _till_ they liked; eat what they chose, dress as they pleased, do no lessons, and were never scolded. Things do not look quite like that to me now, when for many many more years than I was a child I have been a big person. However, as each of you will find out for himself or herself all about big people in good time, I won't try to explain it to you. Only, I do think the world might get on better if little people believed that big ones _have_ their troubles, and--if big people believed and remembered the same thing about little ones.

Some children seem wise before their time. They early learn what "sympathy" means--they begin almost before they can talk to try to bear some part of other people's burdens.

A little girl I once knew, who was called "Pet," (though of course she had a proper name as well,) was one of these. She was a gentle little thing, with large soft rather anxious-looking blue eyes; eyes that filled with tears rather _too_ easily, perhaps, both for her own troubles and other people's.

But she got more sensible as she grew older, and by the time she was ten or so she had found out that there are often much better ways of showing you are sorry for others than by crying about them, and that as for crying about _ourselves_, it is always a bad plan, though I know it can't quite be helped now and then.

Pet was the eldest, and a very useful "understanding" little eldest she was. _She_ knew that her mother had troubles sometimes, and she did her best to smooth them away whenever she possibly could.

One of the things she was often able to do to help her mother was by keeping her little brothers and sisters happy and amused when they came down to the drawing-room in the evening, and now and then, if it were a rainy day, earlier. For mamma felt sorry for the children if they were shut up in the nursery for long, and as all little people know, a change to the drawing-room is very pleasant for them, though sometimes rather tiring for mammas.

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It happened one afternoon, a very wet and cold afternoon in January, when there was no possibility of going out, that _all_ the children were downstairs together. There were four of them besides Pet, and it was not very easy to amuse them all. But Pet was determined to do her very best--for she knew that mamma was _particularly_ busy that day, as she had all her accounts to do. And indeed poor mamma would have been very glad to have a quiet afternoon, but nurse had a headache, and baby, who had had a bad night, was sleeping peacefully for the first time, and must not be disturbed. There was nothing for it but to bring the little troop downstairs.

"We will be very good and quiet, mamma dear," said Pet. "You can go on doing your accounts, for I know you can't do them this evening, as aunty is coming. Charley and I,"--Charley was the next in age to Pet--"will show all our best picture-books to the little ones."

Charley was very proud to hear himself counted a big one with Pet, and he did all he could to help her. They really managed to keep the others quiet, and Pet was hoping that mamma was getting on nicely with her long rows of figures, and that soon she would be calling out gladly, "All right. I can come and play with you now," when to her distress she heard her mother give a deep sigh.

"Oh, dear mamma, what's the matter?" she said, "are we disturbing you?"

"No, darling, you are as quiet as mice," her mother replied. "But I don't know how it is--I have counted it all up again and again, and I am _sure_ I have put down everything I have spent, but I am half-a-crown wrong. Dear, dear--what a pity it is! Just as I thought I had finished."

And again mamma sighed. She did not like to think she had perhaps lost half-a-crown, for she and Pet's father had not any half-crowns to spare.

"I will just go and see if possibly it is in my little leather bag that I always take out with me," she said. And she rose as she spoke and left the room.

Pet felt sure it was not in the little bag, for she had been standing by when her mother emptied it.

"Poor mamma," she said softly. "I can't bear her to be troubled."

Then the colour rose into her face and her eyes sparkled.

"Charley," she whispered, "keep the little ones quiet for one minute," and off she flew.

She was back in _less_ than a minute, though she had found time to run up to her room and take something out of a drawer where she kept her treasures. Then she ran across to her mother's writing-table and slipped this something under the account-books, lying open upon it.

And almost immediately mamma came back.

"No," she said sadly, "it was not in my bag. I fear I have lost it somehow, for I am sure my accounts are right. I must just put it down as lost."

But in another moment came a joyful cry.

"Pet," she exclaimed, "_would_ you believe I could be so stupid? Here it is--the missing half-crown--slipped under my account book! I _am_ so pleased to have found it. Now, children dear, mammy can come and play with you with a light heart."

"I am so glad you are happy again, mamma darling," said Pet; and if her mother noticed that her little girl's cheeks were rosier than usual, and her eyes brighter, no doubt she only thought it was with the pleasure of all playing together. For I don't think they had ever had a merrier visit to the drawing-room.

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You have guessed the secret before this, I am sure? That little Pet had fetched her own half-crown to play a loving trick with it. It was her only half-crown, her only money, except one sixpenny-bit and two pennies! But she gave it gladly, just saying to herself that it was a very good thing Christmas-time was over and no birthdays very near at hand.

And she kept her secret well. So well, that though a great many years have passed since then, it was only a _very little while ago_ that her mother heard, for the first time, the story of her child's loving self-denial. The smile on mamma's face, and the knowledge that she had brought it there were Pet's only reward.

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A CATAPULT STORY.

"Oh, well, you can have a catapult if you like," said Hector, with lordly disdain. "It doesn't matter to _me_, and it certainly won't matter to any one or anything else. You'll never hit anything--girls never do. They can't throw a stone properly."

"You're very unkind, and--and--very horrid," said Dolly, nearly crying. "It's very mean and un--it's not at all like knights long ago, always to be saying mocking things of girls."

"Rubbish," said Hector. "Besides, if you come to that, girls or ladies long ago didn't want to do things like--like men," the last word with a little hesitation, for he knew Dolly was sharp enough to be down on him if he talked big. "They stayed at home and did sensible things, for women; cooking and tapestrying, and nursing wounded soldiers."

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"They had to go out to the battle-fields sometimes to get the wounded soldiers--_there_!" said Dolly triumphantly. "And what's more, some of them _did_ know how to fight, and did fight. Think of Jeanne d'Arc, and--and--somebody, I forget her name, who defended her husband's castle."

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"All right," said Hector. "I'm not quarrelling with your having a catapult, and you can defend your husband's castle with it if you like--that's to say if you ever get a husband. _I_ should think a girl who knew how to sew nicely, and to keep her house very neat and comfortable, a much nicer wife than one who went about catapulting and trying to be like a man. And you know you're not really so grand and brave as you try to make out, Dolly. You screamed like anything the other day when I threw a piece of wood that looked like a snake at you."

"It was very mean and cowardly of you to try to frighten me," said Dolly. "And I know somebody that needn't boast either. Who was it that ran away the other day when Farmer Bright's cow got into our field? Somebody thought it was a bull, and was over the hedge in no time, leaving his sister to be gored or tossed by the terrible bull."

Hector grew red. He was not fond of this story, which had a good deal of truth in it. It seemed as if a quarrel was not very far off, but Hector thought better of it.

"I was very sorry afterwards that I ran away," he said. "You know I told you so, Dolly, and I really thought you were close beside me till I heard you call out. I don't think you need cast up about it any more, I really don't."

Dolly felt penitent at once, for she was a kind little girl, and Hector's gentleness touched her.

"Well, I won't, then," she answered, "if you'll teach me how to catapult."

Hector did his best, both that day and several others. But I must say I have my doubts as to whether catapults are meant for little girls. Dolly tried over and over and over again, but she never could manage to hit anything she aimed at. And at last her patience seemed exhausted.

"I'm tired of it," she said. "I'll give it to Bobby. I shan't try to catapult any more."

And it would have been rather a good thing if she had kept to this resolution.

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But the next day when she was out in the garden with her brothers, admiring Hector's good aim and the wonderful way in which he hit a little bell which he had hung high up on the branch of a tree as a sort of target, it came over her that she would try once again.

"Look at that bird, up on the top of the kitchen-garden wall," she said. "I'll have a go at it."

Hector laughed.

"I think the bird's quite safe," he said.

Dolly thought so too. She did not want to hurt the bird, she was really speaking in fun. But all the same she aimed at it, and--oh, sad and strange to say--_she hit it_! a quiver of the little wings, and the tiny head dropped, and then--in a moment it had fallen to the foot of the high wall on which it had perched so happily a moment before!

The children rushed forward breathlessly. Dolly could not believe that she had hurt it, scarcely that she had hit it.

But alas! yes. It was quite dead.

Hector held it in his hand. The bright eyes were already glazed--the feathers limp and dull.

And oh, worse and worse, it was a wren. A little innocent, harmless wren.

Dolly's sobs were bitter.

"I'll never touch a catapult again," she said. "A nasty horrid cruel thing it is. And I didn't really mean to hit the poor wren."

"It was only a fluke, then," said Hector, who, in spite of his sorrow for the wren, had felt some admiration for his sister's skill.

"N--no, not that," she said. "I _did_ aim, but I never thought I'd hit it. Still, Hector, it shows you I _can_ hit, you see;" and the thought made her leave off crying for a moment or two. But the sight of the poor little wren changed her triumph into sorrow again.

"I've done with shooting," she said, as she threw the unlucky catapult away.

And then she covered up the dead wren in her handkerchief and went in to tell her troubles to "mamma."

Her mother was very sorry too.

"You must think of it as a sort of accident," she said. "But let it be a lesson to you, dear Dolly, never to do anything half in joke, or for fun as it were, which could cause trouble to any one if it turned into earnest."

There was some comfort in the thought that it was late autumn, and not spring-time, so there was no fear of poor little Jenny Wren's death leaving a nestful of tiny orphan fledglings. And Hector helped Dolly to bury the bird in a quiet corner of the garden.

But all the same, Dolly has never liked catapults since that unlucky day!

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A VERY LONG LANE OR LOST IN THE MIST

Have you ever been lost? Really lost. I mean to say have you ever had the _feeling_ of being lost? It is rather a dreadful feeling. I had it once and I have never forgotten it. I will tell you about it.

I was about fifteen at the time. We were living for some months in a large country house belonging to relations of ours, in the west of England. In that part of the world many of the roads are really only narrow lanes, where two carriages cannot pass--it is very awkward indeed sometimes, if you meet a cart or any vehicle at a narrow part. One or other has to back ever so far, till you come to a gateway or to a little outjut in the lane making it wider just there. And these lanes are sunk down below the level of the fields at their sides, and there are high hedges too, so that really you may drive for miles and miles and scarcely know where you are. It is difficult to know your way even in broad daylight--even the people who live there always, have often to consult the finger-posts, of which, I must allow, there are plenty! And for strangers or new-comers it is _very_ puzzling.

We got on pretty well however. My elder sisters drove about a great deal in a jolly little two-wheeled pony cart, and as I was small and light, I was often favoured with an invitation to accompany them, sitting in the back seat, which was _not_ luxurious.

"It does very well for Thecla," my sisters used to say, "she is so thin. And she's as handy as a boy about jumping out to open the gates."

I didn't mind--I was only too pleased to go, in any way, and rather proud to be called handy.

So I got to know the country pretty well, and I would not have been afraid, by daylight at least, to go a good distance alone.

One day some friends who lived about three miles off, came to luncheon with us. There were two or three grown-up ladies, and a girl just about my age, named Molly. She was my principal friend while we were living there, as she was very nice and we suited each other very well. The older people, both of her family and of mine, drove away in the afternoon to a large garden party some way off, to which we were thought too young to go, or very likely there was not room for us in the carriages. But we were very happy to stay behind. We were to have tea together, and then it was arranged that I was to take Molly half-way home.