The Happy Adventurers, Lydia Miller Middleton [mini ebook reader txt] 📗

the red bricks and waving in the air, as he contemplated a small steam-engine which he had been putting through its paces. Mollie, Dick, and Jerry sat on the veranda steps, the boys printing photographs, while Mollie idly played with the trailing garlands of morning-glory and traveller’s joy which hung around her. Between the blossoming almond trees she could see golden splashes of wattle in the field beyond. At her feet a mass of big Russian violets boldly lifted their heads above their leaves, and an acacia, which overshadowed the veranda, was dropping milky petals on the path. Mollie knew all the sweet scents by name now. It was queer, she thought, how the seasons came slipping round, each bringing its own fruit and flowers—here in Australia in Prue’s Time, and there in Chauncery in her own Time. She turned her head and stared at the shabby old grandfather clock which stood in a corner of the veranda. For forty years, she thought, its pendulum would slowly swing, till it said “How d’ye do” to the ticking clock in Grannie’s morning-room. Forty years was a long time to look forward to.

“Jolly nice smells here,” Dick remarked. “How ripping the almond blossom looks in the sunshine. We’ve got an almond tree in our backyard, and once there was an almond on it.”

“There are thousands of almonds here,” Prue said, pausing in her work for a moment and gazing dreamily at the delicate outline of almond branches against the sky. “They are nicest when they are green, but I must say they do give you dreadful pains. I wonder why so many nice things leave a pain. Music does too—and even one’s best friends sometimes.”

“Do you eat your best friends boiled up with green almonds to the tune of ‘Goodbye for ever—goodbye, goodbye’?” Dick inquired.

They laughed. “There’s an old gentleman come to live next door,” Prudence continued, taking up her sewing again, “who watches us through a telescope sometimes, and when he sees us in the green-almond trees he writes to Papa. He says it is for our good, old telltale. Once, though, he took us into his library and showed us some beautiful fossils. He said they were as old as Moses, and one of them might be a million years old. It was a fan-shell, quite whole and pretty. Fancy a million years! I wonder what the world will be like in another million years.”

“Bust,” said Dick briefly.

They laughed again and then were silent. Mollie looked round at the little group and thought how easy it was to be good when one had nice things to do and plenty of time and room to do them in. “Where is Miss Hilton?” she asked, “and where is Laddie? And why aren’t you at school this time? How do you ever learn enough to pass your exams?”

“Miss Hilton is housekeeper while Mamma is away,” Prudence answered, “and she hasn’t much time for lessons. Laddie is dead. He was poisoned. We couldn’t bear to have another dog. Papa doesn’t like exams. He likes us to be out all the time and not to stoop over books. He says we can ‘find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything’.”

Mollie gave a little jump. The very words Aunt Mary had quoted that morning! There was certainly something queer somewhere!

“What a jolly kind of father to have,” Dick exclaimed. “I wish my good parent held these views. His are quite otherwise. He believes in any amount of stooping over books, though I am always pointing out to him that it isn’t the chaps who swot over books that turn into Generals and things in the end.”

“When Mamma comes home Grizzel and I are going to school.” Prudence said regretfully. “I know we shall hate it, but I suppose we must learn grammar and geography some time.” She sighed at the distressing prospect before her.

Mollie smiled as she wondered what school would make of Grizzel. She looked at Hugh, absorbed in some great new idea. What would he be like in forty years. In Chauncery Time he must now be fifty-four. Were there then two Hughs? And if two, why not twenty? Or hundreds, for that matter, like the films of a cinematograph. Perhaps everyone had a sort of film-picture running off all the time, and some day, before those million years had passed, a way would be found to develop them. It would not be much more wonderful than wireless and flying and all those things that looked impossible to people in this Time. Mollie began to think of London, and of home in North Kensington, and then felt a sudden longing for her mother and Jean and the little ones—for all the familiar ways of home and school. This place was lovely, and the children were perfect dears, but it would be nice to feel a hockey-stick in her hand again—and she should like to see her own comfortable mother. In fact, she felt homesick!

“A balloon is all very well,” Hugh said, “so far as it goes.” He rolled round on to his back, clasping his hands under his head and staring up at the white clouds over which he had flown yesterday. “But it doesn’t go far enough. It will never be much use until we learn to steer. You have to go whichever way the wind chooses, which may be exactly the way you don’t want to go. I can’t see myself how one could ever steer without machinery, and to carry that weight you’d have to have a balloon the size of a mountain.”

“There’s wings,” said Prudence, “like Hiram Brown.”

“What’s the good of wings that let you drop the moment you try to fly with them. Hiram Brown is as dead as a door nail with his wings. No, wings fastened on that way will never work. Our internal machinery isn’t made like birds’.” As he spoke a parrot flew overhead, its brilliant wings flashing in the sunlight and then becoming apparently motionless as it swooped down towards the house. Hugh’s eyes followed it intently, and presently he rolled over again and resumed his study of the steam-engine.

“Wings,” he murmured, “after all wings are the right things to fly with. Why not make the whole thing, body and all.” He frowned hard as he concentrated his whole attention upon the toy before him. “Wings—and steam—a boiler—”

The boys and Mollie watched him curiously. This was the Thought that came before the Thing, Mollie thought, remembering her conversation with Aunt Mary. It was rather like a game of hide-and-seek. Hugh was getting warm—how near would he get? They tried to catch the disjointed words that fell from his lips at intervals. “Wings,” he muttered again, “and a place for the flier—why not a car—a—a—a box like an engine-driver’s, with handles for controlling—”

In the minds of the English children, now listening breathlessly, there arose a vividly distinct image of an aeroplane, darkly silhouetted against a pale English sky. How many they had seen!

Hugh’s mutterings ceased. It seemed to Mollie that the world had grown very still. She fancied that she could almost hear the blossoms dropping on the grass; there was a faint stir of leaves as a stray breeze came wandering by, and another sound mingled with that stir—a far-away hum—hum—growing louder every moment!

The English children looked at each other. Was this one of Grizzel’s miracles? Their eyes turned to the sky—yes, there it came! It winged its way like a mighty bird, singing its strange rough song. Prue dropped her work and stood up, Grizzel let fall her pencil and clung to Prue, Hugh leapt to his feet and ran down the steps, his face upturned to the clouds.

“Oh, what is it?” he cried. “What is it? Who are you?”

The aeroplane swooped down as the bird had done, till it was straight overhead, then, with a lovely curve, it skimmed away, the great wings outstretched as the bird’s had been, away into the distant blue!

Hugh held out his arms. “Don’t go—oh, don’t go!” he cried. “Come back, come back!”

But it had gone.

The English children looked at each other again, and from each other to Hugh.

“We brought it,” whispered Jerry, “it was a Time-traveller.”

Mollie turned to the Australians. The sunlight fell on Hugh’s pale face, on Grizzel’s ruddy curls; there was a faint smile on Prue’s lips.

“Oh, we have brought our Time too near,” she exclaimed. “It is goodbye! No, no, Prue! Oh—_this_ time it is goodbye!”

 

*

 

“No, no—I don’t want to wake up yet! It is too soon! I haven’t said goodbye. Not yet, Aunt Mary!”

“It’s not ‘goodbye’, my Mollie, it’s ‘how d’ye do?’ you’ve got to say! You have been dreaming too hard, child.”

Mollie sat up and rubbed her eyes in bewilderment, for it was not Aunt Mary at all, but Mother, standing there and smiling.

“No, it’s not my ghost,” she laughed, when Mollie had released her stranglehold. “I came down partly to see how my daughterling was getting along, and partly to ask Grannie and Aunt Mary if they would like two more troublesome, non-paying guests. Would it bore you unutterably to have to entertain your twin and Jerry Outram for a fortnight?”

“Oh, Mother! Not really! How perfectly lovely! Why?”

“Measles at school; so they are closing a month early, and it would be such a boon to Mrs. Outram and me if the boys could be quarantined away from home. Aunt Mary says she would like to have them, strange woman, and Grannie is already planning a course of Manners—the beautiful capital-M Manners of her young days.”

Mollie laughed as she gave her mother a comfortable unmannerly hug. “You are all frauds,” she said. “Don’t talk to me of your young days. I guess they weren’t one pin better than ours. I hope Dick and Jerry are coming soon.”

“Tomorrow. Now, I’ll have some tea, and then a little talk, and then I must be off again. I stole Father’s car, as he has gone down to Bournemouth. So there’s no time to waste. What beautiful strawberries!”

“They are ready just in time for the boys,” said Grannie benignly.